Why Writers Like the Rain

It's raining now. The forecast is rain, baby, rain for days. The enemy to writing is beautiful weather. Warm, balmy days, blue skies, birds singing, people telling you to get outside and enjoy the day - bleh.

It's a guilt sandwich. Go outside and feel guilty that you're not inside getting words down. Stay inside and feel guilty that you're wasting a gorgeous day. 

Rain fixes that. 

I'm currently at work on book five in the St. Ives Book Club Mystery series, The Body in the Ravine, and I'm having a blast. It's due for release on July 12, 2022 barring Acts of God that knock out the power at the eleventh hour. Ontario was pretty badly hit by a major storm on the weekend and many people are still without power. 

This one is a little different for Elliot Marks and the St. Ives Book Club. 

While birdwatching with her group, Veronica Wakefield-Brice discovers a body hanging in the ravine behind her stately Ontario mansion. She is put out that the man chose her ravine in which to kill himself when there are so many other trees in St. Ives. His death is ruled suicide but when Elliot Marks finds a pair of shoes in Rainbow Lake, Veronica finds herself in the middle of the book club's murder-solving hobby. 

---

A few more weeks of crappy weather and I'll be finished. My significant other bought me a new electric lawnmower yesterday. (I am the mower of the lawn in our household) Fortunately the rain prevents me from leaving my desk for a few days yet. 

Hah! Foiled again, you people who want me outside!

My Secret Weapon for 2022 - Plottr

I've always been a pantser. I'd get an idea for a story, see the end or the main point in my head and off I'd go writing myself in and out of corners until I lurched to the finish line. 

The "finish" line was followed by weeks of (hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing) editing until I could declare the book complete or too stupid to live. 

My process was long, tedious and increasingly joyless. Worst of all, it did not result in book that was as tight as I would have liked it to be because I was exhausted and hated the thing by the end. 

There has to be a better way, right? Well, there is. It is called drafting an outline which is something normal people do. I've tried to nail that sucker down for years without success. The act of writing an outline to write only led to me hating my story faster. 

I can't even remember when I heard about Plottr or where, but on impulse I signed up for the online demo of the software. I am cheap. Some might even say stingy. I am immune to impulse buying or sales pitches. But I loved the demo. I could see instantly how this program could work for me. I could play with it, I could manipulate it to work the way my brain works. Sometimes I plot very tightly with it. Sometimes I follow one of the templates. Sometimes I use it for the timeline to shift scenes where I need them to be. I can see how the story is progressing in each box where I jot down everything from dialogue to clothing to weather.

The random bits that flesh out a scene get plugged into Plottr and make writing faster, easier and stronger. Less editing, less time wasted hunting around for where I put what. My daily word count went from an exhausting 2K day to a relaxed 5K a day.

I'm not sure how it does what it does. It's visual so that's a huge help when you're trying to figure out what comes next. It's also liberating because it's easy to plug in the bits that come to me and dump them if they're not working. I can move stuff around. It's not set in stone. There's room for some pantsing but I get a look at the dead ends before I start writing. I waste less time and brain energy when I'm cranking out the words. 

To make a living in self-publishing, we have to produce and Plottr is my secret weapon to amp up production. I have five books planned and instead of feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, I have this cool little tool at my side to get the stories out. 

If you are interested and want to check it out for yourself go to www.plottr.com. There is a rate for a lifetime license which is what I bought. The service is excellent. The thing works. 

Unpublishing a book is like....

Getting a divorce.

It smarts. But I had to do it.

My foray into the fast-paced world of writing fast and dirty was a bust. I conceived the idea for Razor Wire for the brand-spanking-new Kindle Unlimited program. It was designed to be read in installments, ending in a cliffhanger like a thriller television show. I'd outlined 6 'episodes', wrote 3, and then Kindle Unlimited changed its royalty structure for payment and the serial format lost its value overnight.

I bundled the installments, thinking I would come back to the series in future to write Razor Edge and Razor Close.

Heh. Well, here's the thing. I lost steam or my mojo or whatever that thing is that makes a writer connect to a story long enough to get it out. I tried many different methods to get going again but my brain wasn't having it. Creatively, the series was dead in the water.

And dead sales-wise too. I think I sold less than 10 ebooks and 5 print books that were mostly pity sales. A local fan said it wasn't anything like my other books. Yeah, well, a girl's gotta try new things or she becomes stale. I'm not sorry I wrote it because it pushed me out of my comfort zone to explore a new sub-genre. I think of Razor Wire as a creative experiment in writing to market, in which I proved to myself that the book market is a moving target.

Razor Wire is unpublished (or is in the process) at all retailers as of today. CreateSpace will still sell the print edition. My plan for the thriller is to go back to my original idea and publish it as a trilogy. I'll beef up the story, explore some themes I rushed through and go deeper into the psychology of the characters. I believe there's a good story there and I didn't give it its due. I'll release the serial in July in three complete installments. CreateSpace will get the complete edition for print at the same time.

Writing fast is dandy for first drafts, but the process has to slow down after that to get to the good stuff. Lesson learned. It only hurts a little. Lives were not lost.

Takeaways:

1. Stick to your vision.
2. The story wants to go the way the story wants to go. Be the pencil.
3. Slow down. You are creating worlds not making a cheese sandwich.

Daniel Razor and his troubling sidekick, Charlotte Dawson, will return new and and improved in the summer. Bigger and brighter in three juicy installments. 

A Writer's New Year's Resolutions

1. Write better books.

2. Get more exercise.

3. Write more books.

4. Make more money (anything above poverty level will do)

Resolution 4 used to top my list. Year after year, making money was my number one priority and year after year, it was never enough. I make more now than I did last year but at the expense of my body, emotional well-being and the joy of writing. So I'm ditching Resolution 4. 

Selling books is a crap shoot. Writers can spend years crafting novels and never make enough to pay the Hydro bill. Or they can spend 14 days writing a novel that lies there like a dead dog in August and never sells a copy. Or they can spend years working on craft and net thousands upon thousands of dollars from one book, or the exact same result could be achieved after a weekend of booze-induced scribbling. Total crap shoot.

I hereby resolve to ignore sales reports, do my best and let the money take care of itself. Sink or swim, the book is on its own. 

Next!

Resolution 1 and 3 can grow to like each other with steady, daily application to the word count. 200 words a day for 365 days equals one reasonably-sized book. 200 words is a walk in the park. For me and other writers, the demarcation between "good writing" and "cranking it out" is 2000 to 3000 words a day. 2K for me is a good day's work. A friendly, patient approach and good books will come in great quantity.

I resolve to write good books and more of them with daily dedicated application of 200 to 2000 words.

Which brings us to Resolution 2. All of us who sit in front of a computer for hours at a time need to stand up. Right now. I can see you. You're not standing. It has become life-threatening to sit for hours. (It probably always was but we're just learning about it.) I've restructured my office to allow me to stand and work. But that's not enough. Daily exercise outside improves just about everything.

I resolve to take a daily walk, which will help me stick to Resolution 1 and 3 and increase the odds of number 4 happening in my lifetime. 

I'll report back on December 31, 2016 (God and Blogger willing) on how my 2016 Resolutions panned out. Because that could be fun. Or not. We shall see!

Venosta, Quebec Writers' Retreat

I am off on a Writers' Retreat Sept. 25th to 27th in gorgeous Venosta, Quebec. I have never taken a retreat before due to lack of time and money and a deep-seated insecurity about the work. None of which has changed but I'm a sucker for a heritage farm house in the Gatineau Hills and I have a new series I'm struggling to get locked down for 2016.  

Mark Frutkin is the artist-in-residence. I read Erratic North and loved it. Thus, I am excited by the work ahead, tempered with rational dismay by the work ahead. 

Here is where the retreat is being held:  

http://www.venostawritersretreat.com/

What else is happening in my writing life?

I'm trying to zero in on the titles that did well since I began self-publishing, the titles that show promise and the titles I should put to bed. It's finding what interests me, what appeals to the market (readers) and the time I have available all in one place and then directing my energy there. Some writers nail this out of the gate and others (me) are slow learners. Onward!

Have a blessed weekend and don't forget to download your free copy of Heathcliff today on Amazon.

Because it's June! June, June, June!

You would have to enjoy Broadway show tunes to get the reference. Or live in a cold country.

I'm too busy to enjoy the summer. I have a writing schedule that would fell a horse. To help me out, I recently acquired a headset with microphone to use the Speech-to-Text function already loaded on my computer. It is an amazing tool for getting out that all-important first draft. I can talk out a lot of the subtext in the story and edit it in later. My wrist and back have been killing me from sitting long hours hunched in front of the screen. But it's not like a car that parks itself. My first go at it was only modestly successful. I had to do a lot of editing because APPARENTLY I talk a lot about stuff of absolutely no interest. I bored even myself.

In other news, my daughter is going to have a baby at the end of November. So that will be three grandchildren. Let me tell you something about kids. You tell them to do something and they don't do it. You tell them not to do something and they do it. I specifically said I wanted my fifties to get my ducks in a row before I became a grandmother. Did they listen? No.

I'm thrilled, but also under the gun to get the house finished so I have room to put them all up when they come to visit. Between us, we have four children who are all married or getting married and starting families of their own. Still, after spending ten days with my two-year-old grandson, I'm glad my kids didn't listen to me. That little guy wore me out.

My goals this summer:
1) A rough draft of a new series
2) Daily exercise (I should just 'cut-and-paste' this every month.)
3) Get over snake phobia and weed garden.

Write More. Write Fast. Write Now.

I'm hard at work every day on two new short series for Kindle Unlimited. I write 3000 words a day. It's not easy. The back is the first to go. The wrist is next. I have 20 years of writing experience. There's no excuse for a pitiful word count anymore. (Except blogging. Blogging is a good excuse.)

Tips For Increasing Word Count:

If you're just starting out, the best thing you can do for yourself is just write like hell. It's going to suck. But it's easier to fix words than it is to come up with new words. Write out of sequence if that helps. Write the bits you're interested in. You can knit it all together later. Revision is your friend. Don't worry, you'll get there. But not until you have a first draft with a beginning, middle and end.

If you have years of writing experience and just want to squeeze more productivity out of your writing time:

1) Know that you can write more. If I can do it, you can do it. Don't listen to the voice that says you can't. You can. You already know how to tell a story, it's a matter of typing it.
2) Don't think when you're writing. You can think later. If you get stuck thinking, skip to the next most interesting thing in your story and think about that. You'll want to write it and hey! there's no reason why you shouldn't.
3) Revise as you go along. Hah! I thought I couldn't do this either. But it's amazing how the brain will cough up corrections to scenes, adjust dialogue, add details, etc. if you just let it do its job.
4) Set a word goal and keep a beady eye on the number. It's your cookie--your validation--it loves you. Feed it and watch it grow.
5) When you get to the end of your novel and it resembles a novelette, DO NOT PANIC. This is where the fun happens. Go back to the beginning and flesh out the chapters with description, deepen dialogue and character, add bits of business. You'll be amazed at how painlessly word count grows to full-length novel.

To Outline or Not to Outline, That is the Question.

Some very prolific writers swear by their outlines. Based on my own experience and hearing from other writers, I think the outline works for a particular type of brain. Many authors start with an outline and then scrap it. I start by writing a first draft and the outline emerges from there as I go along.

If outlining exhausts your creativity when it comes time to write, don't bother with them. If you are inspired and excited by outlining and write like a white hot genius when you get to work, count your blessings. Keep what works, chuck what doesn't.

Is it possible to write a book in one month? I think it is but I think first and foremost, it's better to learn your own mind and take the time to say what you want to say. Ultimately, that's where the real joy of writing lies.

Wedding Madness

This is a quick fly-by post because I am supposed to be:

1) setting up chairs
2) writing my speech
3) vacuuming (again!)
4) fixing the hem on my Mother of the Bride outfit
5) foraging in the forest for fall cuttings to decorate house

I've discovered that the only thing worse than writing is not writing. Going a bit crazy actually. I hope this month off results in a huge surge of productivity when the wedding is over. Not writing causes me to over-think my life and that leads to stressing over non-issues like the thread count in sheets. I can tell you one thing: I will not be doing any more housework for the foreseeable.

I got a new haircut out of the deal though. My first professional cut since 2009 and wow, what a difference! I thought I was doing a pretty good job cutting my own hair until now. Who knew?

(As it turns out--everyone. I'm the only person who thought my hair looked okay.)

Wedding-wise everything is under control. The weather has vastly improved. There is never enough money but we haven't set fire to the credit card yet. My book sales paid for some of the extras which is amazing considering where I was a year ago as an author. My daughter is very happy with her groom and the wedding plans. I'm going to see my sisters again and my beautiful nieces and my sweet little grandson will be here as well....

Who am I kidding? I'm a nervous wreck. Giving birth was less terrifying.

Phone calls, deadlines and the self-employed writer

I don't like it when the phone rings in my house. But I like it even less when the call is for me. A woman I met at a party this weekend has called and left a message for me. She wants to talk about something we enjoyed discussing at the party.

Now here's the thing.

I've talked already. I went to the party and I did all the talking I plan to do for a full week. Now I am writing. I write all day. Not always happily or willingly or with mad love in my heart for writing. Quite often I hate it. But it's what I do. Over years I've learned when the writing sucks, when I hate it---that's when I'm in the most danger of losing it. I've learned to dig deep and shut out all distractions and potential derailments. I've learned to stick with a troubled book like a fireman sticks with a person in a burning building or a mountain climber sticks to a mountain.

I have to get this book and another one finished in semi-finished draft form before the end of August. It's a deadline no one cares about or values except me. So do I keep working or call this person back? Now you know why writers are considered arrogant, nasty brutes. I feel like biting somebody. Where's the bloody phone number?

BOOK READ THIS MONTH: "Up and Down" by Terry Fallis. Funny, goofy read. I liked it. Book club was meh. I think you have to be in the mood for light satire and I was.

The Power of Churn

My first lesson (again, this lesson comes back to haunt me) is to NEVER throw anything out. Words, I mean. I don't care about other stuff. Other stuff can be replaced. Words not so much.

See, what the average author does is write and write and write and so much of it is rubbish that the writer despairs of ever being anything more than a hack. It's disgusting garbage the writer churns up in an effort to get at what the story is all about. The essential truth of the thing. The purpose, the meaning, the freaking point.

And then, eventually, it becomes clear. This is the point I reached at the beginning of September with THE RIVER BRIDE.  Now that it's clear though, I realize a lot of my earlier churn contained shards of gold. In whole pages of dreck are one or two useful observations. A couple of truths. I remember writing them. Can I find them again? NO! Because I cut and deleted and said, "Oh, lord, you'll never want THAT again."

Churn. Never underestimate its power.

Enough about me

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. 
”

Ernest Hemingway

I had a conversation with a woman at a wonderful gathering held recently at a historic stone mill in our village. She asked me about writing. Was it a huge undertaking to write a book and how did one start? I blinked back tears. How did one write a book. I wish I had asked myself this question back in 1995. Is it a huge undertaking? No, unless you consider your life an undertaking.

Books are sneak attacks. They take an unsuspecting soul by stealth. How does one write a book? By ceasing to care about anything or anyone until the story is out. At which point you throw it at an agent who will try to midwife it into the world.

Sounds glamorous. It's not. It's not showering. Teethbrushing is forgotten. Writing means you stop doing the things normal people do. When you do find yourself out somewhere where you're expected to enjoy yourself, all you can think about is the work in progress. It's putting on a smile for family and friends when the rejections are rolling in. It's finding peace only with other writers who are suffering or musicians who are always suffering. It's a blinding obsession that in our current culture you're pretty sure you need to be medicated for.

But the book demands to get out. Is it a Great Novel? Hell no. Stephenie Meyer didn't wonder if her fledgling unknown was the Great Novel either as it pulled her out of sleep and drove her to write where ever and whenever she could,  with little kids and a husband in tow. She wrote. Obsessed. That is what it is. And it is lonely.

I haven't read the Twilight saga. The success of the final product isn't the point. Because you have no idea what that success might be. Meyers didn't know. Anymore than I do. That's the point. To be a writer, you have to surrender to the unknown and write anyway.

So to the lady who asked: How does one start? One doesn't. One is taken by force.

Absolute Write Water Cooler

Some of the funniest writers I've ever encountered hang out (incognito) at Absolute Write Water Cooler. I'm not a member because I think it would be very, very bad to play with these kids on a regular basis. My mom would disapprove. They're the sort of kids who smoke in the bathroom and swear at the teacher but have the best conversations when they're alone.

I'd never get any work done if I became a member and I'd probably stop wearing underwear or something radical like that.

(Although I'm not actually getting any work done at the moment because I'm lurking in the Cooler, but I'm operating on the theory that I'm minimizing the damage by not signing up. And I still have my underwear so it seems to be working.)

Be warned. This is a true writers' site. Books are like hot dogs--we like 'em but we'd like 'em less if we knew what went into the making of them. Keep your illusions about literature and stay away from This Site if you want to chow down on your book without the visuals.

But if you don't mind a little reality mixed in with your fiction, pay the forum a visit and learn what it really means to be a writer. Stephenie Meyers wouldn't have lasted five minutes in this playground.

If I were an editor, I'd buy everything these maniacs wrote.

Just saying.

vigil: n. 1. night-time period of staying awake to look after a sick person, pray, etc.

My fledgling career as a writer is either on life support or growing healthier by the second--I have no way of knowing because I'm not there. Literary forces are at work in faraway lands.

Nothing to do but light a candle. Hold vigil. Seek solace in company of same in Rejection and Dejection at Absolute Write's Water Cooler. My personal favourite is: Purgatory's Pit of Doom.

It's funny like a heart attack. Speaking of heart attacks...

A gentleman called my home the other day looking for my Significant Other, but finding me in a weak moment of answering the bloody phone, said brightly: "I understand you're an author."
Me (deep in Slough of Despond): "Um, yep. I, yeah, wrote a book."
Gent: "That's wonderful. You know, a friend of mine--nice guy--had a triple bypass and when he came out of the surgery, he sat down and wrote like crazy every day for like 6 months. The words just poured out of him. And then..."(Gent gives a soft chuckle that speaks volumes) "He shows his writing to an agent and boy! He landed a huge contract with a big publishing house and I think there's even a movie deal. And it all happened in 6 months!"
Me (mercifully too sleep deprived from nightly vigils to feel much): "Wow. That's, um, swell."
Gent (after a respectful silence signalling he expected more enthusiasm from me for his triple-bypass buddy): "And so you're an author too?"

Lessons from the Pit: Writing is not for wimps and triple bypass guys have all the luck.

Exercise and this writer

I never liked gym when I was in school. I liked Library.

However, I'm all grown up now and I have a dog. He's not quite the same as gym class. The dog doesn't taunt me or pick me last for team sports but he's annoying all the same. The dog expects to be walked. Every day. The dog doesn't understand anything about me as a writer--the need I have for space and time to loll about reading and doodling and...and...sloth. Brain work that has nothing to with the dog or what the dog wants or where the dog wants to go. The dog--an obvious jock--could care less about my writing life.

Dog guilt gets to me. Bloody exercise vital to health and well-being, blah, blah. Put on my coat and boots. Dog goes berserk with joy. No one in gym class was ever that happy to see me on their team.

Kind of flattering. Besides, walking is supposed to be good for inspiration.

Summer's over

 The September rains are upon us. The outside world has gone back to their jobs, the kids are in school, the cottagers are closing up and going home. A great time to hole up in the office and get into the new work. I've had an amazing summer, reading, walking, thinking about stuff. I took a parttime job working in an independent bookstore and discovered what it was like to be on the other side of the counter. Fun and tough at the same time. Fun talking books to customers and discovering some gems of my own with my employee discount; tough eavesdropping on customers who were planning to buy on their Kindle instead.

Even I could see the writing on the wall. The independent bookstore is on its way out as a place to buy books, particularly in cities, but perhaps they can be repurposed as literary salons, venues for readings, book clubs, discussions. Heck, they already have the coffee. I think more we'd sell more books, no matter what the format. 

Case in point: My bookstore hosted a reading at the end of August as part of Wakefest 2010, an arts event staged every year in my tiny town. This year's Authors on the Lawn featured Brenda Chapman, Tom Henighan and Diana Beresford-Kroeger whose book, The Global Forest is garnering international attention. Diana's presentation was so passionate, I couldn't hear her without wanting to leap into action to save our nation's forests. Isn't that the whole point to writing, publishing, bookselling? We are trying to get ideas across. We are trying to save the world.

This is me chatting about THE GREY LADY, my most recent manuscript. Trying to save the world, one murder at a time. Many thanks to mystery author, Brenda Chapman for taking this. 

I am launching...

Today is the first day of my blogging life.

I like this Blog Host whoever they are. This was not stressful.

I had a website but it disappeared. Since I prefer to read what other writers are doing and saying, and how their writing life is going, and as I rarely visit websites anymore, I thought: Hey! A blog might be the thing for me too.

Day One of This Writer's Life went something like this:

Put 300 page manuscript on thumb drive.
Drove to Bureau en Gros to have printed.
One hour and $40 later, picked up mss.
Drove to Canada Post, bought oversized bubble mailer.
$50 later, mss is off to London, England to be perused by agent.
Shell shocked and weak, I drive home to eat salt and vinegar chips
and drink tea. Channelling my inner Brit.

Decide to set up blog to ward off feelings of inadequacy.

Cheers.