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Not
all writers emerge from the womb fully formed, and that
certainly wasn’t the case for me. I had to study the writing process
to hone my craft. As I learned, I realized that the process is different
for everyone, and it mattered how the information was presented whether
or not I really “got” it.
For instance, I struggled with “motivation” for years, hearing
the word, and knowing that my characters had to have it. However, when
I came across the word “agenda” in regards to character motivation,
it instantly clicked with me. Coming from the business world, I understood
that an agenda is the instruction sheet a person operated from. It is
the basis for action in the past, present, and future. Now, whenever I’m
in a character’s point of view, their agenda is always foremost
in my head.
So, in the hopes that someone else will have an “agenda” moment,
I wrote articles about what I've learned, and I've posted them below.
The topics vary from straight crafting (writing scenes, creating conflict,
etc.) to dealing with writerly doubt to making your work really stand
out.
Find the crafting materials that speak to you, become the best writer
you can be, and then there’s only one thing left to do. Write from
your heart.

Clicking on a title
will take you directly to the article
All
That Glitters Isn’t Gold: When Your Scene Doesn’t Work
Are
You Invisible?
Banishing
Your Wolf of Self-Doubt
Conflict
Vision
Cooking
Your Way Out of the Slush Pile
It's
a Jungle Out There
Make
It Sparkle! Seven Steps to Polish Your Work
One
Writer’s Odyssey
Your Work Shows Great Promise
This article first appeared in the March 2003
issue of Update, the newsletter of Washington Romance Writers.
All That
Glitters Isn’t Gold: When Your Scene Doesn’t Work
We’ve all had that moment of realization. Those words that glittered
so brightly as we committed them to paper, they just don’t hold
up in the bright light of day. The scene isn’t working. As writers,
it’s one of our worst nightmares.
We all recognize good prose. It reaches us on many levels. Similarly,
when we read something that doesn’t work, we recognize that it doesn’t
reach out and make us care what happens next. So what can we do? How do
we get that tarnish off our words and polish our scenes into what’s
sure to become the next best seller?
Anyone who’s ever read Deborah Dixon’s GMC: Goal, Motivation,
and Conflict will tell you that a scene has to advance at least one
of these key elements listed in the title of her book. As you look over
a nonworking scene, check for this first. If the scene doesn’t convey
something additional about the point of view (POV) character’s goal,
motivation, or conflict that is relevant to the storyline, this needs
to be addressed first.
So, if goal, motivation, and conflict are the messages that we writers
have to get across, what is the most effective way to do this? Writing
books abound with instructions and rules, so many that it’s easy
to become overloaded with tools of the trade. My simplistic view is to
paint a compelling picture with thoughts, words, and deeds. If you have
a scene that’s not working, stop and ask yourself, what’s
the point of this scene? How does it add to the story? If you can’t
answer these questions, work backwards, crafting the answers you want
the scene to provide and then working that intent into your scene.
Another key concept mentioned in Dixon’s book is that a scene must
do at least three things. In other words, we need to multi-task our scenes.
The best way to illustrate this point is to review a scene from your keeper
bookshelf. A scene that immediately springs to my mind is from Jayne Ann
Krentz’s Soft Focus. Briefly, the heroine publicly confronts
the hero over lunch about his deception. She vents her fury over his prior
destruction of her friend’s business. This information is filtered
through the hero’s POV, only he’s still thinking about his
inadequacies from making love to her the previous evening. The scene ends
with his stony reminder that their business contract binds them tighter
than husband and wife.
Lots of things are going on in that opening scene because Krentz gets
in goal, motivation, and conflict for both main characters. But like any
truly great scene, there’s more here than meets the eye. Even though
this scene contains relatively little action (two people meeting for lunch),
our interest is held by the swift pacing, the sexual tension, and the
emotional impact. This scene works because readers care about what comes
next.
As a writer, I find scene dynamics are the hardest to get right. Pacing,
tension, and emotion remind me of manually winding up a clock. If you
don’t wind it enough, the clock runs down too soon. If you wind
it too tight, the clock may break. In the same way, pacing, tension, and
emotion control the flow of a story. It’s not enough to convey information
about goal, motivation, and conflict. If it was, our stories would all
resemble first draft synopses. The true challenge is to layer a scene
seamlessly in a way that leaves the reader wanting more.
So, how do we put the glitter back in our scenes? One of the first things
to remember is that our characters are complex individuals. We need to
know who they are, what they want, and what colors their thinking. Second,
we need to realize that scenes must move the story forward. The immediacy
of the scene must telegraph its urgency through the POV character to the
reader. Thirdly, scenes must build on each other. A good example of this
is the tv drama program Law and Order. Every scene of the show
is embedded with a nugget of information that propels viewers into the
next scene. And finally, use the tried and true maxim of ‘show don’t
tell’. Don’t inadvertently distance the reader by telling
what is happening.
If the information in your scene isn’t relevant or compelling, ask
yourself these hard questions. Why is it there? Is it told from the most
interesting POV? What’s at stake? And finally, what would you lose
by taking the scene out? Your answers to these questions will dictate
how you fix your broken scene.
This article first appeared in the October
2004 Update, newsletter of the Washington Romance Writers.
Are
You Invisible?
Tired of being invisible? Here’s a practical solution. Write an
article for your chapter newsletter. After you finish reading this, you’ll
want to get started right away. Here’s why:
Writing Sharpens Your Skills. Crafting articles about the writing profession
forces you to focus on your subject material. It helps define and perfect
your strategy for the art of story crafting. Every time you sit down to
write, you flex creative muscle. Just as athletes practice to improve
their skills, writers must write to reach and maintain peak performance
levels. Empowered writing increases reader interest and improves the likelihood
of publication.
Shared Experiences
Bring Fellowship. Through sharing your writing journey with others, you
lessen the sense of isolation within this solo profession and build camaraderie.
Like a candle shining in the darkness, an article can bring inspiration
and hope to those who struggle with similar issues. Fellow authors hunger
for details from those overcoming hurdles, those just published, those
building a name for themselves, and especially from those at the top of
the heap.
Articles Cure What Ails You. It’s admirable to write about things
you do well. But, if you go one step farther and write about subjects
that give you fits, you might come up with solutions to formerly insurmountable
obstacles. Writing about your weaknesses helps you focus on what needs
to be changed in your writing and is instrumental in devising solutions.
Got a problem with integrating setting into the flow of your story? Research
the problem, write about it, and before you know it, you’ll be following
your own advice.
Publication Reinforces the Dream. Writing is what we do. It is an affirmative
response to our unrelenting urge to tell stories. Newsletter publication
won’t suddenly transform you into a literary guru, but it does build
confidence that you can do this. Your article can be the first step to
opening many doors in the publishing business. Best of all, your published
article is a valuable highlight on your writing bio.
Articles Build Name Recognition. Let’s face facts. Name recognition
drives book sales. Your newsletter article will be in front of your chapter
members, available to internet surfers who visit the chapter website,
and available to every RWA newsletter editor through posting on an editor
email link. These editors may choose to reprint your article or forward
it to a chapter email loop. One article may seem like a small stone in
a big pond, but the ripples that occur can be far reaching.
Editors Need Submissions. There is a high demand for chapter member articles.
Chapter newsletter editors want to feature and promote their members.
Each newsletter issue brings with it the demand for new material. The
good news is that the incidence of rejection of newsletter articles is
relatively low. Send that article in and chances are, you’ll have
a publication pending. Newsletter editors need article writers.
The Sky Is The Limit. A brief bio runs with each newsletter article. Included
in this bio are titles of your upcoming or recent books, contest wins,
or website contact information. You might also consider becoming a regular
columnist. Several columnists from different chapters have developed niche
columns (on market news, research, contest opportunities, etc.) that are
in such high demand that they are published simultaneously in multiple
newsletters every month. Believe me, these folks are very visible.
There you have it. Seven compelling reasons to craft that article you’ve
been thinking about. Writing newsletter articles builds self-confidence
and raises skill level. It gives you immediate visibility. Get your name
out there and see if your fiction doesn’t start attracting more
attention.

This
article first appeared in the March 2004 Update, newsletter of
the Washington Romance Writers.
Banishing Your Wolf of Self-Doubt
My wolf of self-doubt is back. I can feel him prowling around the edges
of my mind. Every now and again he darts out and gnaws on my confidence.
His sharp teeth make quick work of the thin skin covering my vulnerabilities.
He howls gleefully when those SASEs in my handwriting come in the return
mail. Like a silvery shadow, he ebbs in and out of my consciousness, striking
when I am weak.
My wolf of self-doubt is at his most bold when I am between projects.
His snickering voice tells me that there couldn’t possibly be a
marketable story in this disorganized chaos I call a brain. He sniffs
disdainfully at the lists I make, the things I want to write about.
He bounds across the snowy white computer screen, the one that is barren
except for the mocking slash of the blinking cursor. In my midnight hour,
I take a stand against my self-doubt. I reach deep inside and believe
that the next story will come.
Just as characters have arcs, so do writers. It isn’t easy to change
and grow; it takes a giant leap of faith to abandon the safe world of
your last story and people another universe with new characters. Here’s
how I face this challenge.
I cast out my wolf of self-doubt with determination. I scan headlines
and watch movies and listen to conversations everywhere I go, absorbing,
assimilating, what-iffing. With each new idea, creativity sparkles and
story possibilities glimmer. I boost my imagination by exploring other
artistic pursuits: music, arts and crafts, sewing, gardening. I recharge
until I reach a critical juncture, one in which ideas saturate my thoughts.
This primordial stew is flavored with my past experiences, my unconscious
themes, and my level of expertise at crafting stories. In the steamy mist
of prewriting, I envision a spunky heroine, a capable but flawed alpha
hero, and an emotional conflict that puts this man and this woman on a
collision course. From this simmering broth comes a series of character-driven
events that propel these people towards a problem they can’t overcome
without character growth.
The words come in dribbles, then in torrents. Paragraphs become pages,
pages become scenes, scenes connect to form chapters. Turning points,
obstacles, choices, crises, commitments, black moments, and triumphant
happy endings – these necessary ingredients lend form and substance
to this new world.
When the story flows, I don’t sense my wolf at all. He can’t
tolerate the bright campfire of a fresh plot and three dimensional characters.
There is no room in my head for failure when words blaze across my computer
screen.
Why can’t I banish my wolf of self-doubt forever? Because doubting
is as much a part of my writing process as the flash and burn. Without
extending myself past my comfort zone, I wouldn’t continue to grow
as a writer.
Maybe your wolf goes by another name, but he’s there, lurking in
the shadows, waiting for your personal dark moment. You want to beat your
wolf of self-doubt? Stare him dead in the eye and banish him with the
most powerful affirmation in your vocabulary: I am a writer. Now, get
to work!
This article first appeared in the February
2005 issue of Update, the newsletter of Washington Romance Writers.
Conflict
Vision
Better one or better two? Anyone who has ever had vision correction will
recognize the previous sentence. During an eye exam, small lenses of differing
strengths are placed in your field of vision until the image on the far
wall comes into focus. Through a process of elimination, the correct lens
is chosen. The perfect lens results in a crisp, clear image.
The perfect lens results in a crisp, clear image. The more I thought about
that profound statement, the more I realized that it was something that
could apply to my writing.
Donald Mass, Debra Dixon, Alicia Rasley, and many more fiction writing
experts agree that conflict is an essential element of crafting a quality
story. Maximizing conflict maintains high reader interest in your story.
I had read these words of wisdom in multiple places and thought I had
a handle on conflict.
In my infinite wisdom, I treated conflict as another item on my check
list. Setting? Yeah, I got that. Characters? Yeah. Got them. Conflict?
Yeah. That’s in there.
It wasn’t until I started dissecting stories by published authors
that I realized how restricted my conflict vision was. Just having conflict
in my story wasn’t enough. Conflict is too big to be relegated to
a checklist. It has to be integrated into the very seams of the story.
Two dogs and one bone. That’s conflict. Make it matter. That’s
conflict. Make it emotional. That’s conflict.
I crafted more elaborately detailed plots, invented characters with multiple
flaws, and beefed up my settings. I cut pictures of my characters from
catalogs and drew up story boards with multi-colored tiered charts and
created electronic filing systems for quick recall. But my rejection letters
still featured the same tag line: “I wasn’t captivated by
the story.”
Argh. Nothing worse than an editor thinking your story isn’t captivating.
So, back to the drawing board. How to bring conflict into the crispest
focus possible? For any given scene, what is the most compelling way of
presenting the conflict. For this to happen, I had to be open to new possibilities,
to new ways of story elements fitting together.
The best way to illustrate this new mindset is to use an example. Let’s
assume we are writing a scene about a woman needing to get her driver’s
license renewed. This is a conflict inherent process involving multiple
long lines and a shortage of clerks. It can easily take three hours to
navigate through the bureaucratic process. Now imagine that our character
doesn’t have three hours to spare because she has to pick her handicapped
child up at school. The process will, of course, take three hours. That
feels like conflict.
But is it enough? Is it captivating? Probably not. Let’s sharpen
the focus. If the clerk who finally waits on her is someone our heroine
doesn’t want to deal with, that brings in a deeper emotional element
to the conflict. If we show that the handicapped child needs a med change
and that it’s critical the mother gets the child to the doctor’s
appointment on time, then that adds tension to the conflict. If the woman’s
son’s missing gerbil has been sleeping in her purse but jumps out
when she goes to pay and the clerk is experiencing a rodent infestation
at home, that’s using the setting to increase the conflict.Adding
additional story layers to the conflict sharpens the focus and makes the
reader care. Next time you create a scene, ask yourself if the conflict
is as strong as you can make it. If not, why not try the “better
one, better two” process? Add power and depth to your writing and
you’ll ensure that your readers are captivated. Use the perfect
lens and you’ll see the difference in your writing.
This article first appeared in the December
2003 issue of Update, the newsletter of Washington Romance Writers.
Cooking
Your Way Out of the Slush Pile
Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in the slush pile? Do you
wish you knew the magic answer that would ensure publication? Many of
us believe we’re close to achieving publication. We’ve earned
our RWA Pro-pins, we’re doing well in contests, we’re volunteering
at local and national romance chapters, so why are we still in the slush
pile? What is holding us back?
Here’s my simplistic take on the situation: we’ve got to have
a great story and we’ve got to be in the right place at the right
time. I can’t help you with the timing of your submission, but maybe
a few tips from my kitchen may give you that missing something that editors
and readers want.
Cooking Tip # 1: Chicken Soup. I’ve been cooking for years, but
it wasn’t until a friend made me some of her chicken soup that I
learned a valuable lesson. My chicken soup is adequate, but hers, well
my mouth is watering just thinking about it. There was a certain fullness
to the taste and a body to her broth that lingered in my mouth long after
the soup was gone. When asked about the secret of her soup, my friend
said there was nothing secret about it. The only difference between my
recipe and hers was that she started with chicken stock instead of water.
That got me to thinking. Starting with prepared stock enhanced the entire
texture of chicken soup. It was thicker, richer, fuller in a way I’d
never experienced in my own cooking. A parallel in writing immediately
occurred to me. Start with stock characters and then add your own ingredients.
Using a stock character gives you an immediate base to build on, it gives
you a set of easily identifiable reactions that jump-start your writing
onto a whole new plane. Don’t make your writing clichéd,
but freshen something familiar with what you do best. Haven’t you
seen reviews or book blurbs that say: Cinderella with a fresh twist or
Beauty and the Beast as you’ve never seen it. Fairy tale themes
have a familiar resonance. What woman wouldn’t want to find true
love and have her whole life come together? Make your story one that will
be remembered long after it’s read. Find the magical “stock”
that breathes fresh life into that shelf of rejections.
Cooking Tip # 2: Breakfast Casserole. Have you ever been to one of those
brunches or church socials where several women made the same recipe for
“Breakfast Casserole” and all of the cooked dishes looked
similar? Then when you tried them they all tasted different? The analyst
in me couldn’t get over how different and yet the same they were.
The key to the differences was unique to each cook. One lady always used
butter even if a recipe called for margarine, another used sharp cheese
instead of mild. You get the general idea. Different but yet the same.
Writing for category romance can be likened to those breakfast casseroles.
Each category has a certain set of ingredients it looks for, things that
the loyal reader recognizes and wants to read. The editors are looking
for something familiar and yet different. They want to see tried and true
plot devices because they know their market. Our challenge is to find
the combination of familiar ingredients that makes our stories uniquely
marketable. I have a whole shelf of Silhouette Romances and from the big
print on back covers it is easy to see what types of stories they want.
Babies sell. Cowboys sell. Secrets sell. Marriage of conveniences sell.
Do the research to find out what sells in your target market, and then
write the best book you can. One that’s uniquely your own take on
a familiar recipe.
Cooking Tip #3: Chocolate Chip Cookies. Everybody knows the difference
in a store-bought cookie and one that’s just out of the oven. It’s
like night and day, isn’t it? I was sure my homemade cookies were
The Best because they were better than store-bought. I believed this until
I tasted someone else’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. The combination
of taste, texture, and aroma of her magnificent cookies was in a whole
different league than my cookies. Even though I knew her cookies had to
be loaded with calories and fat and everything that wasn’t good
for me, I couldn’t keep myself from reaching for more. Hmm.
The master cookie chef reluctantly loaned me her secret. I was appalled
by how simple it was. She baked cookies every chance she got so that she
knew the exact proportion of ingredients and cooking conditions required
to yield the cookie of her dreams. The lesson I learned from this is that
she worked hard at her craft until it was the very best she could make
it. Then she kept at it to keep her quality at a very high level.
This was starting to sound like writing again. With the wisdom of hindsight,
I see that my first writing efforts, the masterpieces that were surely
breakout novels, were a lot like the misshapen slightly burnt cookies
of an amateur baker. In order to turn out the lightly browned, chewy but
crisp delicacies that taste divine (or the manuscript that makes you a
household name), you have to go beyond adequate. Just because your story
is better than the worst book you ever read doesn’t mean your story
is ready for the big time. If you work diligently at what you do, your
craftsmanship will improve. You’re not competing with the worst
that’s on the market. You’re competing with the very best
romance has to offer.
So there you have it. Three simple lessons from the kitchen. Start with
familiar or stock ingredients to give your story more body. Flavor your
story with the seasoning that is uniquely yours. And hone your writing
ability through practice to keep readers reaching for more. Piece of cake.

This
article first appeared in the April 2008 issue of the Scarlet Letter,
the newsletter of Southeast Mystery Writers of America

It’s
a jungle out there!
Selecting the most cost effective avenues for marketing is tough. The
array of choices is dazzling. So, how do we get the word out about our
books? How do we hack through the marketing jungle to find daylight? Let’s
review some marketing choices.
Print ads. The most successful book ads target your market and exploit
marketing hooks. Are you selling to librarians, mystery readers, thriller
convention-goers, or the beach-read crowd? Select your ad placement based
on the widest possible target audience.
Promotional items. Many authors buy pens, pads, bookmarks, postcards,
etc. with their name or website imprinted on them. For maximum effectiveness,
these need to have value to a reader.
Multi-media campaigns. Many authors are interviewed on radio or television
in conjunction with an event or book release. Consider speaking engagements
and public appearances to broaden your reader base.
Press releases. Send these out to every relevant magazine and newspaper.
Mine the marketing hooks in your book. A book with a boating crime scene
might suit a nautical publication or a marina newsletter.
Online promotions. Yahoo and Google have reader and special interest groups.
Virtual book tours involve blogging at various sites. What about a podcast
or a book trailer? With these tools, your promotion material will be available
on the web indefinitely. Online social networks like MySpace and Shelfari
allow you to mass mail bulletins about your new release or event to “friends”
in moments.
Book giveaways. This sounds counterproductive when we’re after sales,
but this strategy drives readers to your website and promotes interest
in your backlist. Give books away at charity events, conferences, or other
relevant reader hang-outs.
Sales are the best indicators of marketing effectiveness, but unless you
track sales in real time, discerning marketing effectiveness may not be
possible. However, increased website traffic can monitor interest. Many
web hosts track site visitors linearly through time, allowing you to link
marketing strategies to website hits. The tracking indicates IP addresses
of where site visitors linked to you from.
One of the first thoughts I had as a published author was that I could
never get a handle on all of this. Doing a little bit at a time worked
for me, and I didn’t do everything for every book. The key is doing
what you enjoy within your time and money constraints.
This article first appeared in the March
2006 issue of Update, the newsletter of Washington Romance Writers.
Make
It Sparkle! Seven Steps to Polish Your Work
The big day finally arrives. You type “The End” on your work-in-progress.
Take the time to celebrate that success. Many people talk about writing
a book, but few persevere. So, go ahead and enjoy that feeling of accomplishment.
Then roll up your sleeves because it’s time to get back to work.
Writing that first draft is only the beginning of having a publishable
manuscript. To polish your piece you must look at your work objectively.
This may sound daunting for a 100,000 word book but breaking the analysis
into smaller sections works well.
1. Story movement. Whether you review one chapter or multiple chapters
at a time, the first element to check for is story movement. In romance
novels, both the hero and the heroine need to have goals, motivation,
and conflict, and these should be internal and external. Make sure the
characters change and grow as a result of the plot events. Fine-tune the
pacing and heighten the tension.
2. Story logic. After you smooth out movement inconsistencies, examine
your story logic within each scene. Verify that the events you’ve
written about make sense. Can your hero really catch a galloping horse
when he’s on foot? Did the objects in the scene stay put or move
about as you wanted them to? Is your heroine furious about being slighted
or is she merely irritated?
3. Setting. A mistake many beginning writers make is in impersonally describing
the setting. Instead, have your POV character react to the setting. Let
the wind blow through her hair and the giant raindrops pelt against her
skin. Write your setting as a sensory experience and you will hook your
reader.
4. Narrative. Writers want to tell all, to let readers see how intimately
we know our characters. But narrative can be overdone. Take a harsh look
at your narrative passages. Is there anything that can be moved into dialogue
and action? Can your narrative sections be condensed? Make it so. Study
published books in your target market. If the balance of narrative-to-dialogue
in your book isn’t the same, make those adjustments.
5. Dialogue. Your dialogue should reflect the essence of your characters.
It should flow naturally without sounding stilted. A good way to check
for this is to highlight the dialogue and only read the highlighted text
out loud. To ensure you have a distinct voice for each character, you
may choose to read one character’s dialogue at a time. Use dialect
sparingly.
6. Showing. How many times have you heard “show don’t tell?”
Incorporate sensory responses to the setting and emotional responses to
events in an action-reaction pattern, and you won’t hear that criticism
again.
7. Wordsmithing. Lastly, word choice matters. Get rid of filler words
like felt, seemed, just, and really. Cull overused –ly words. Use
the “Find” feature of your word processing software to locate
the useless words and eliminate them. Incorporate action verbs for weaker
verbs. Every “was” that you can change into an active verb
will add to the immediacy of your story. Check for overused character
tags. If you have the hero’s eyebrows waggling on pages 1,3 and
5, we’re going to think he’s Groucho Marx. Vary what you say
and how you say it.
If you polish your work, it will sparkle with freshness and originality.
Your voice will ring true in that elusive editorial ear. Take the time
to improve that first draft. It will be time well spent.
This article first appeared in the October
2001 issue of Update, newsletter of Washington Romance Writers.
One
Writer’s Odyssey
In 1995 my book-doctored historical romance was being actively marketed
by my agent, the sequel was completed, and the final book of the trilogy
was in the outline stage. I joined RWA and WRW to network the business
side of things. I made contacts with other authors, smugly smiling to
myself because my writing career was taking off. Life was good.
When I was soundly rejected in every market, my agent announced a new
side business of printing books and offered to print my book if I was
interested. Having been through the self-publication process with a family
history several years earlier, I declined.
My analytical brain took charge. I have two college degrees and the necessary
connections through my romance author’s association, so why did
I need an agent? From this brilliant insight came the Year of the Editor.
Valiantly I marketed my second historical. Whenever a rejection came in,
I mailed out a letter to the next publishing house on the list. One year
later, I had three unpublished historical manuscripts.
At the next yearly WRW meeting I chanced to hear a passing remark and
almost forgot to breathe. The time period I had selected for my historical
stories (1900-1920) did not count in the true historical market. I met
with polite editors at the conference who hesitantly agreed to look at
my work. But, the setting problem worried me.
The next year
was the Year of the Rewrite. I moved all three stories to an earlier time(1860
to 1880). This was no small feat due to all the period research involved.
My romance author friends supported me through e-mail, and my family assumed
I was receiving nourishment from the computer because of my umbilical-like
attachment to the thing.
As I was launching my writing career, my daughters were graduating high
school, my house and yard work stacked up, my husband’s understanding
wore thin, and of course, there was my day job as a scientist. My rational
side began to war with my artistic side. I didn’t even know I had
this split personality kind of thing until I began attending writer’s
meetings. Was I an author? It didn’t feel like it.
Out of the blue I discovered another way to get professional feedback.
The next year was the Year of the Contest. I judged contests. I entered
contests. Rejection reached a whole new level of pain. My motivations
weren’t strong enough. My characters were too melodramatic. But
where was this place I was writing about? My peers all wanted to go there.
A future writing travel brochures was not what I had in mind. I needed
help like a junkie needed a fix. Wasn’t I an author? Where would
an author get help?
Along came the Year of the Critique Group. Actually the Critique Group
only lasted six months but I got two strong leads out of the group. First
off, our goal was to target a line and write a story that met all of that
line’s requirements. It sounded so easy, so rational. Why hadn’t
I thought of this before? Secondly, three other romance authors were quite
certain that my writing voice was contemporary. I argued that I loved
reading historicals. They countered that reading and writing were two
very different things. Understanding dawned. I could change. I was an
author.
After trying for two months to rewrite one of my historicals as a contemporary,
I went on to craft a new category romance. The feedback for the outline
and opening chapters of the book from my critique partners was positive.
I slogged on through the chill of winter creating my marketing masterpiece.
Rejected again. And with a story that was unique to only one market. How
could I have been so shortsighted? Would a real author have made such
a mistake?
My brain chugged to a start. The problem must be that I didn’t know
enough about what I was doing. Lucky for me, the national meeting of RWA
was in DC that year. The Year of Education brought smiles to my credit
card company. I bought every book known to man about writing, several
on police work, the Merck Manual, reference books on personalities, herbs,
and Maryland. I had no idea where I was going, but I wasn’t going
to be stupid again.
My next contemporary manuscript was set in my oldest daughter’s
college town. I did on-site research at Parent’s Weekend and through
the Internet. I knew the names of all the roads, restaurants, hospitals,
and hotels. This story was peddled to agents, editors, and went through
a contest or two. Rejections abounded but something interesting happened
with my contest scores. Instead of getting mediocre marks, I was now getting
very high and very low marks. My writing friends said I was an author
and not to let the low marks bother me.
Working with a therapeutic riding center gave me my next book idea. This
story meant a lot to me and I felt quite strongly about the subject. This
spawned the Year of the Query Letter. I set about writing the most interesting,
most provocative, most compelling query letter of all time to market my
completed horse story. Ten out of eleven publishing houses weren’t
interested. But one house, and I reminded myself that it only takes one,
said it was a very promising romance and if I’d be willing to change
this, this, and this, they would like to see it again.
I was stunned. Voices whispered in my head: I am an author. I might even
be published if I get this right.
I reread the personalized response twenty times and wondered if it was
appropriate to frame the letter. It wasn’t an offer, but it was
validation. And I would apply myself wholeheartedly toward reaching this
new goal.
After all, I am an author. Life is good.

This article first appeared in the March 2007 issue of Update, the
newsletter of Washington Romance Writers.
Your
Work Shows Great Promise
While judging a recent package of contest entries, it hit me. I could
place a check by “published judge” on the score sheet. A small
thing, really, but with the change of my judging status came a much greater
sense of responsibility.
During my long road to publication, I’d been on the other side of
dozens of contest score sheets. Remarks from published judges made me
sit up and take a bit more notice. After all, the published judges had
what it took. They had the elusive “it” factor that I so desperately
craved.
Truthfully, I looked everywhere for this prize, but it wasn’t dangling
from the apple tree just waiting to be plucked. With the fervor of the
newly baptized, I’d assumed I had “it” with my first
manuscript, a manuscript that will never again see the light of day. My
first critique group saw promise in my work, my second critique group
identified the flaws in my writing.
Contest entries washed back up on my expectant shores, loaded with bad
tidings. Poorly motivated characters. Insufficient conflict for a story
this length. No distinct voice. Thank God for formatting points or I’d
have bombed my first contests. But the news wasn’t all bad. The
most helpful judges offered encouragement and insight about the writing
sisterhood.
In those early days I didn’t realize how connected story elements
had to be. But contest by contest, year by year, my writing improved and
connected. As my plotting tightened, my characters’ motivations
rang truer, and I wrote with passion.
Writing better and smarter won me two publishing contracts in three months,
and the unparalleled thrill of a third publishing house writing me to
ask for a submission. Granted, I’m a very tiny minnow in the ocean
of publishing, but I’m swimming with the big guys.
Which brings me back full circle to those contest entries on my desk.
Very few of us are born with “it;” most of us find it along
the way. And I certainly had received my share of assistance. How could
I make a difference in someone else’s writing? Could I help newbies
avoid the mistakes I’d made?
Taking a leaf from the medical profession, I applied the standard of “first
do no harm” to my published judgeship. Then I showed through examples
some ways in which the entry could be strengthened, being careful not
to overwhelm the writer with too much information or negativity. As I
wrote, I realized the lessons I’d learned were meaningful because
I’d learned them firsthand in the trenches. If this writer improved,
it would be because she had gone out and learned how to be better, not
because of any profound insight I shared.
Encouragement was needed. “It’s clear that you have a passion
for your story,” I wrote on the score sheet. “Your writing
shows great promise.” Then I checked off the box for published judge.
I’d done my part. The rest was up to the writer.
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