Anatomy of a Romance

Finn or Derek?

Nice guy with his heart on his sleeve, or married guy who doesn't know what he wants but is, apparently, great in the sack?

This, of course, is the dilemma facing Meredith on Grey's Anatomy. Forget the fact that her friend is lying catatonic on the floor in a prom dress. Or that she's supposed to be a surgical intern saving lives. Or that the hospital is under quarantine for possible exposure to the plague.

No, we're fascinated with the romance here. The gut-twisting, agonizing, on-again, off-again attraction between all the characters.

Most of my girlfriends vote for Meredith to be with McDreamy. Why? He's gorgeous, sufficiently flawed, and (as of last night) able to profess his love for her while taking the terribly chivalrous position of telling her to take her time making her decision.

A few of my friends think he's creepy. I mean, he is still married. If he really loved her, they say, he would let her move on, be with Finn, not chase her down and make love to her in an exam room.

And what about Finn? He's certainly likable enough, the sad guy who's just learning to open his heart again. He's cute, talented and (as of last night) strong enough to tell Meredith he's not giving up on the fight. Who wouldn't want him to win?

So who do we cheer for? Who do we want her to end up with? Why is it so hard to make that choice?

A Few Little Nibbles

So I've started sending out a few queries on my latest work, One Night in Boston, and to my surprise, have gotten a few requests back already, which thrills me to death. Of course, I've been down this road before, and the requests didn't amount to anything, but still. It's nice to at least know that my letter and general concept seem decent.

I actually got a telephone call from an agent yesterday...who only wanted clarification on a couple of things on my website and in my letter. The vibe I got was actually a little weird, so if she doesn't ask to see anything more I can't say I'll be heart-broken.

After that somewhat awkward conversation, though, I came home to find two other requests for partials, so that cheered me up. One is from a pretty big name, though I hesitate to mention her specifically only because her assistant also sent me this 2-page release form to fill out and send in with my sample material waiving any obligation on their part etc. etc. I'd never seen anything like it before but it's a big agency (Trident Media) so I read it over about 3 times and will probably go ahead and send it in.

Otherwise, still trying to move ahead with my serial work for Virtual Tales (I really do owe them about 30,000 words by the beginning of next week) and figuring out what other agents I want to query in the next few days.

Grey's Anatomy last-season finale tonight! Gotta go!

Prison Break

I'm addicted to this show. Well, this and Grey's Anatomy, but GA is at least in the ballpark of my writing style, whereas PB is nowhere near. And yet still I love it. Can't be the testosterone, though I'll admit I started watching because I liked the looks of Wentworth Miller. (Still do).

But when it comes to creating compelling characters, the producers of this show have hit a grand slam. They're all terrific, multi-faceted, flawed (well, of course; most of them are felons), stomach-turning, and yet somehow so fascinating that at times you're cheering for them all the same.

The best character? By far, it's T-Bag. You hate him - he's disgusting, he's a pedophile, he's manipulative and evil and doesn't have a decent bone in his body. But he is absolutely riveting to watch. If nothing else, every Monday night I am reminded about the intricacies of character development.

On the writing front, it's query time again! I have a list of about 25 agents that I'm targeting for this go-round. Half of them are e-queries, which is really helpful. My goal is 5 a day for the next week or or so and then we'll see what the feedback is.

Meanwhile, still working on my serial novel that Virtual Tales wants to look at - trying to have the first 30,000 words polished up in the next week also. It's been workshopped a bunch of times in the past, so I feel OK about it. We'll see. Those OK feelings tend to change without warning.

Luckily, no must-see TV in the next couple of days, so I can tie myself to the computer (well, not literally. Might be a little tough to get much accomplished) and produce. I hope.

Juggling Too Many Balls

Have you ever found youreself in a place where you have all these ideas, all these storylines that desperately want and need attention, and so you're splitting your time trying to juggle them all?

It's funny. I've been working on my current WIP for the last 9 months or so, and just this morning finished the third revision. Yay! Feeling really pretty good about it. I have a query letter worked out, a 2-page synopsis (and no I'm writing any other version unless someone specifically asks for a 10-page one. Hate writing them at all), and a list of about 20 agents I'm going to start querying this week.

I also have the re-visited novel that I mentioned last post, the serial novel that Virtual Tales wants to see more of, so now I have to scurry around and work on the later chapters of that.

My website needs updating.

I need to decide if I'm going to enter anything in the Golden Heart contest this year.

I really should read and review some pieces I've been neglecting at one of my writer's groups.

My gardens need weeding and the pool needs closing and the lawn needs mowing and the outdoor furniture needs to be put away.

A stack of papers needs grading.

And the house could really use a good vacuuming.

How do people do it, who work full-time and put out 1 or 2 or 3 novels a year? I guess they don't sleep more than 5 or 6 hours a night. Or maybe they write faster than I do. Or maybe they don't have an addiction to Grey's Anatomy. Or spending hours online reading blogs and writing their own.

Gotta go. Have a terrific day.

Good News in a Funny Package

A couple of weeks ago, I was needing a break from my current WIP, so I sifted through some old stuff and found the very first novel I attempted. After cringing a bit at the plot - or lack of - I remembered how much I liked the characters, so I decided to give them a different life.

Around the same time, I found this website that publishes serial online works, Virtual Tales. You can order so many issues or chapters of a story and download as you read. They're looking for romance, among other genres, so I sent in a query.

Today I heard back from them - they want to see more. (One nice thing is that you don't have to have a finished manuscript. They'll read what you have and ask when they can expect the next series of chapters, etc.)

So hooray! Sort of. The way the email was phrased was so odd:
Our editors have evaluated your story and believe it is worthy of a more serious look.

So the first look was not a serious one? It was a hey, let's have some laughs one? I suppose that's what editors and agents have to do to wade through all the queries they receive. I can imagine them sitting back with their cup of coffee (or bourbon), skimming the letters and partials, laughing, crumpling up the bad ones and chucking them in the direction of the garbage can, calling their friends to read out loud the worst ones of all.

Don't get me wrong - I don't really care how they phrase it, if they want to see more. I just thought it was a funny, if rather honest, way of doing it. And this time, with our serious faces on, we'll take more than sixty seconds to read it over...

Guess I'd better get back to work.

Loving the Conflict

So I am at the point in my WIP, about 3/4 of the way through, where the conflict is taking off and the Big Black Moment is just around the corner. And I'm loving it. Not that I love watching my characters suffer, poor things, but I know what's in store for them a few chapters down the line, and I can't wait for them to get there.

In some of my earlier works, readers would always say, I love the characters, great voice, but not enough conflict. I got so frustrated. Not enough conflict?? Why does everything have to be so difficult? Can't two people just fall in love and spend the rest of their lives together?

Of course not. Not in fiction, anyway, where conflict is everything. This is what I've discovered: external conflict is key to any story. But that finicky, difficult-to-develop inner conflict makes my stories that much richer. I still struggle with it but I think I'm making progress. I looked back at an earlier version of my current WIP and realized how much was lacking.

OK, enough rambling. Back to my WIP. I left my hero at the scene of an accident in which he is about to realize that the woman he loves may not make it through the night...

5 Years

There have been a lot of television programs and even big-screen productions of the 9/11 events in the last six months. And today, of course, it's been 5 years. It is difficult for me to think back to life before, to, as our local paper calls it "the last normal days we ever knew" - perhaps this is because I live 60 miles outside of NYC, perhaps because more than half the people I know and live and work with lost someone that day, perhaps because I too lost a friend on Flight 93, whose daughter is entering kindergarten this fall. 5 years.

This I do know: 5 years ago, I decided to start writing in earnest. I had been playing around with it for a long time, since I was a child really, but in the weeks after the terrorist attacks, I began to put together an essay on how it affected me and the students I teach.

It was the first thing I ever published.

Since then, I've become a lot more serious in pursuing publication as a novelist. I know that I've grown tremendously, polishing the craft in ways I never thought possible or necessary before.

I've often wondered why I found my niche in romance. I don't particularly favor the genre, not above any other, really. I guess maybe it's because there is (almost) always a happy ending. I've always been drawn to the power of human connection, to the mysteries of what can happen between two people against all odds. Maybe that's why 9/11 inspired me to write. Maybe I needed to make sense of things. Maybe I needed to convince myself that happiness could still be possible, even after so much agony and loss.

Today I may go to a memorial service. Or I may not. I may pay respects and remember in a different way. I may say a prayer or two. I may weep. But I do know this much: today I will write. I will sit down at my keyboard and compose. I will revisit the characters I have come to know and love. I will give them life and love and happy endings.

Telling a Good Story

The other day someone asked me about my favorite books. So I tried to think of a top 5. And when I looked at what I had come up with, I couldn't believe how different they all were. To look at them, you'd think I have absolutely no genre preference at all.

It, by Stephen King
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon

Close runners-up would probably include The Pact (Jodi Picoult), The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas), The Dogs of Babel (Carolyn Parkhurst), and The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini).

See what I mean?

But then I thought about it, and I realized that every one of these stories I love, for the most part, because it tells a fascinating story. I care about the characters. I want to hang out with the characters. I feel for them, cry with them, cheer for them. And I'm sad when the story's over. Ayn Rand I also like because of her views on the individual-vs-society. And Sebold, Picoult, and Parkhurst do some beautiful things with language.

King, of course, rocks as one of the best story-tellers of all time. Plus his book On Writing is brilliant too.

But back to the story. That, I guess, is everything. Of course.

First Sales

I have a confession. Whenever my monthly Romance Writers Report arrives, I always turn to the same section first: the First Sales column. I want to live vicariously through whoever has been fortunate enough to grab her first sale in the romance biz. I want to see what houses are buying, what titles and genres are selling, and inevitably, I want to see how long these people have been struggling before getting their big break.

And that's where I run into a problem. Because I'm happy for all these fellow authors, really, I am. I just can't tell you how amazingly frustrated it makes me when Suzie Smith reports that she's been writing for 2 years, and this was the first manuscript she completed before selling. I mean, come on. Who actually sells their first manuscript, after writing for only 2 years?

Sigh...so let's look at this month's and see if there's room for hope for the rest of us under-achievers.

17 First Sales in this month's column. 8 of those to Triskelion Publishing. They've been buying a lot lately. Hmm.

Moving on...a bunch of 4th and 5th manuscripts sold, and...Hooray! Only one author who sold the first manuscript she ever wrote, and two who sold their second. Ooh, and here's one that's been writing for 13 years. Wow! I'm also loving the woman who sold her 11th complete manuscript, because first of all it takes some persistence to stick it out through that many stories, and second of all, she landed herself a 3-book deal with Avon. Way to go! See, it does pay off.

Okay, enough drooling over other people's success. Time to get back to the keyboard and chug along toward mine.

The Excitement of Starting...and the Agony of Finishing

Don't you love when you've got a terrific new idea for a story, characters you love (with just the right names and just the right combination of traits that make them utterly believable and likable), and a plot that you can't wait to unfold?

It comes to you all at once, sometimes, a thunderbolt of inspiration, or in a series of dribbles, an idea upon an idea, until you flesh it out and think Great! I love it! You sit down to write, get a few thousand words in...and stumble to a stop.

What a stupid idea. What a lousy plot. What a gaping hole in the main character's motivation. And how am I ever going to get 85K words out of this?

The frustration of the middle can be staggering. You try a plot twist, you add a character, you tweak a conflict, and sometimes it takes shape. Sometimes it gets worse. Hopefully, it gets better. But finishing - that's something I continue to struggle with. Finding just the right way to wrap it all up, finding the perfect words, overwhelms me.

I'm in the middle of a 3rd revision of my latest WIP, and while avoiding working on the final few chapters, I looked through old works. Found a story I loved, with characters I loved, and decided I should dive back in and work on that one.

Changed up the plot, deleted some characters, and now I'm in the honeymoon stage with that one, wanting to move it forward.

Trouble is, I know I should really finish my current WIP. Which brings us back to the agony of finishing. Anyone have any good ideas about motivating myself through the final gates? Procrastination has set in the last week or so, and it's not a good thing. I want to get this finished. I want to send query letters out. I want to move on.

So why am I dragging my feet?

Why I Don't Do Contests

A few years back, when I first started writing seriously, I dove into contests every other month or so. I thought, how great that I can get feedback from very wise judges on my WIP! And if I win or place, I might actually get that WIP in front of an agent or editor.

5 or 6 contests later, disillusionment set in, and here's the reason I rarely enter contests anymore: they're WAYYYYY too subjective.

By that I mean that, without fail, I get one judge who loves my entry and one who can't stand it. One says it's the best entry she read, that it's ready for publication, while the other struggles to find something positive to say at all. I've had one judge say the characters were interesting and likable, while the other said they were cold and the dialogue stilted.

After awhile, I figured I was spending too much money to get a split decision every time. And I got irritated, really. This past year, I decided to be a judge for RWA's Golden Heart contest. Figured it would be good to be on the other side, for a change. I got my 7 manuscripts in the mail, settled in for an afternoon, and read my little heart out. I'd say 4 were pretty average, in story and style, 2 were close to publishable, and 1 was below average: awkward writing, grammar problems, interesting story but too many convoluted plot twists and coincidences. I sent in my scores and waited to see the results. Of the 7 I read, one actually finaled. Guess which one?

I spent about a week questioning the whole point of writing, when the whole business is so damn subjective...and then I realized, wow! How great! The whole business is so damn subjective. That means that for every person who doesn't like my story, someone else might. There are a zillion different literary tastes out there, and from what I've seen so far, there is enough disparity in what's published these days to please a lot of them.

I'm still not sure I'll enter a contest anytime soon. But it's worthwhile to remind myself that the beauty of literature is the variety of styles, of writers and readers and publishing houses. Somewhere out there, if I work hard enough, I still believe there is a niche for me.

Remember that the next time you're feeling low about the whole business...

The Nice to Know and the Need to Know

One of my writing friends insists that the most important thing writers can do is separate the "nice to know" from the "need to know." That is, it might be nice to know what color dress the heroine is wearing, and that she took the time to put on her favorite perfume that morning, but all we really need to know is that she didn't have time to finish her laundry so she's stuck wearing her granny pants on the day she finally meets - or beds - Mr. Right.

Well, shoot.

I posted this lovely chapter a couple of weeks ago, for one of my writers' groups, a scene with my heroine and her friend. Thought their conversation was conflict-rich, their actions revealing of their inner emotions, and was ready to move on to the next chapter when one of the group said, "Well, it's a nice chapter overall, but all those little mundane details about the characters? Not really needed."

Crap.

Of course he was right, when I went back and looked at it. I think I've gotten better at separating the two, though it's still hard sometimes. I'm about halfway through a 3rd revision of my latest WIP and am finding a lot of small sections of "nice to know." I delete them and realize that the chapter is not the least bit lacking once they're gone. Of course, this is also cutting down on the length of the work, which right now is around 85K words when I'd really like it to be around 90K for a mainstream novel. Ah, well. I'm getting into the heavy conflict soon, so I can probably throw some more at my characters and see how they deal with it.

Poor things.

Open Blog Night - Check it Out!

Vey exciting news...

A blog that I had submitted for Romancing the Blog's Open Blog Night was posted today! (That's Sunday, Sept. 3, BTW) Of course I didn't know it, and it was a good thing that I came back from vacation a day early (too much hurricane rain and wind, even up here in NY). So when I finally sat down tonight to check my email and my bookmarked sites, how very cool to see my own blog staring back at me!

In the meantime, I've been wondering a lot about characters' names. In my latest WIP, the hero's name is Jack Major. Strong, single-syllabled, I liked it. At first. But since the WIP is sort of modeled after the TV show "24," I think I have to change my hero's name to something that doesn't sound identical to Keifer Sutherland's character. Also, I'm getting the feeling that Jack/Jake is a too-popular name for romance heroes these days. In fact, I got a rejection letter a few months ago (before the latest major revision...which prompted the latest major revision, actually) in which the agent wrote all these very helpful comments about the story and referred to my hero as "Jake." So clearly I need a name that stands out more.

But what? I seem to go for single-syllabled first names in a lot of my stories and novels. Not sure why. I actually had a dream last night that featured this guy who would be terrific as a romance hero whose name was Roman. Roman??? But actually, that's a strong name too.

What do you think? Favorite hero names, anyone? Favorite hero names that aren't already over-used?

And hey, check out my blog on over on www.romancingtheblog.com tonight if you've got a minute.

Posting Pictures and other ways we strip ourselves naked for the world to see...

The online world...

It's this whole amazing place where you can be whoever you want, where you can create a persona for yourself from scratch if you so desire--choose a new name, a new identity, a new voice that is completely different from the one you use in the everyday real world. And in turn we on the other end conjure up a face to go with the persona, a build, a bodytype, a smile, a voice.

Of all the members of my writers' groups, I've seen pictures of a whole 3 of them (of course, I think they're actual pictures, but who's to say that everyone out there isn't splicing in and doctoring up the details?) How weird is it when you see that picture for the first time? When you can finally put a face with a name that has been talking to you for the last however-many years?

I didn't want to put my picture on my website AT ALL. I like my online anonymity. Once your face is out there, it's out there, in all its flawed reality, and you can't pretend you have perfect skin or a perfect figure or long flowing dark hair that looks perfect everyday.

What do you think? Do you like being able to put a face with a name? Does it change your perception of the person, the author, you thought you knew? How close are you in matching the real face with the one you created for that person in your head?

Revisiting my babies

So in the name of good old procrastination the other day, I started going through old files saved on my computer. Amazing what things we (OK, I) leave out there over time. I came across about 5 versions of the first novel I ever attempted, about 4 years ago. Started reading...

And I thought, wow, some of this is really bad. And some of it isn't too bad at all. And I fell in love with a couple of my characters again, enough to want to see them have a real story to live in. Believe it or not, I'm actually brainstorming ways to fix the plot ('cause it's really the plot that needs fixing more than the characters or the voice, even. How on earth did I think I was going to write a romance with zero conflict?). Now, I'm really supposed to be finishing up a final edit on my latest WIP, but I've been in a rut lately. I figured maybe revisiting this old piece will rev up my creative juices. That's what I'm hoping, anyway. Either that or I'm just avoiding looking at my WIP for the thousandth time and trying to see it with fresh eyes.

Ugh. Revising is so hard...

Adolescents on the 'Net

Today was my first day back in the classroom, and I had my new students read an essay titled "What Adolescents Lose by Growing up in Cyberspace." It was all about how teens (and adults, really) spend so much time online--shopping, surfing, socializing--that social interaction in our society has decreased significantly over the last 10-15 years.

I asked them to read and then to respond. I really wanted to know what they thought. I figured most of them would disagree, since the Internet is really where they socialize and develop their identities and meet people and make plans and fight and make up and...

Out of 32 students, 2 disagreed with the article. The rest agreed whole-heartedly and, really, it was almost sad to see how aware they are of the social and person-to-person skills they know they do not have. The Internet gives us so much in terms of resources. But what has it taken away?

KidWorld

OK, this blog doesn't really have anything to do with writing, but in our Sunday paper today there is a huge article about how "KidWorld" has taken over adult world. That is, kids and their sports activities are the focus of every family's life, in a way that didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago. This, of course, doesn't surprise me, as everywhere you turn you will see 3 year olds on the soccer field or moms and dads coaching on the sidelines or minivans racing down the road in an effort to get to the next game on the schedule.

Sports--heck, any kind of organized activity--is great for kids. Don't get me wrong. They learn all kinds of things about life and cooperation and hard work and goals and dealing with victory and failure. But at what point does it become too much? According to this article, the majority of families have sacrificed any adult time to be with their kids on the playing field rather than taking an afternoon to read an adult book or a Friday night to go to dinner with a spouse or, God forbid, a Sunday morning to go to church together.

What concerns me is that, as a teacher, I see the negative effects of KidWorld way too often. My students have been told, and shown, that they are the center of their parents' world, since the day they were born. Their events, and really, their wants and needs, are more important than Mom's or Dad's. Here's the problem with that: they begin to think that their wants and needs are more important than anyone else's in every other arena, too.

Newsflash: this isn't really preparing kids for the adult world. Once they leave the cozy nest of home, their employers or college professors aren't going to buy into the whole notion of the world-revolving-around-Johnny.

And what then?

Writers' Groups

Love my writers' groups. Love them.

It's funny to think back about 5 years when I first ventured online in search of one to join. I was terrified, really, to share any of my work. Now...well, they're really the reason I'm still writing and the reason my writing is any good at all.

But don't you hate when someone in your writing group comments on something...and you know she's right but STILL you worked so hard on that scene/character/dialogue/opening that it breaks your heart to admit that it still has problems?

Guess that makes the positive comments, the ones that say "Wow I loved this part..." even more valued, right?

Love my writers' groups. Love them.

Silver Screen Romance

I discovered, the other day, a list I had apparently cut out of our local paper a couple of years ago titled "10 Movies to Put You in the Mood for Love." Not sure who compiled it - probably the local news editor - but I found it interesting because I am a sucker for a great romantic movie. Most of these I've seen, and some I do adore. Others...not so much. I'd love to hear what anyone else thinks. Do you have a favorite romance from the big screen?

1. West Side Story - OK, I guess you can't really dispute this one.
2. Dirty Dancing - Loved it when it came out (but I was a teen, so Patrick Swayze was To Die For).
3. The Princess Bride - In the Top 10? I don't know...
4. When Harry Met Sally - This is actually my all-time favorite movie of any genre.
5. Say Anything - You have to admit that John Cusack-with-the-boom-box scene is a heart-wrencher...
6. Ghost - I cried at this one too. Maybe it's a Swayze thing.
7. Sleepless in Seattle - Do Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks ever make a bad movie?
8. The American President - Never saw it.
9. Jerry Maguire - Well, I'm not a Renee Zellweger fan, so I thought it was over-rated. Liked Cuba Gooding Jr in this one, though.
10. Titanic - This one didn't blow me away either.

Which movies would I add? Probably The Notebook, because it was better than I expected it to be; The Age of Innocence (did anyone else see this one? Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer in a carriage scene that will make you melt); and this summer's release, The Lake House. That last one also surprised me with its intensity.

So...what do you think?

Summer Reading

Since summer is my official time off, I always try to catch up on my reading. This summer, I've read quite a bit by Jodi Picoult (loved The Pact, really disliked My Sister's Keeper) along with some light stuff (Good Grief by Lolly Winston) and some not-so-light stuff, specifically Pride and Prejudice and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Why P&P? It seems like every other agent/editor that is interviewed in the Romance Writers Report mentions it as the best romance novel of all time. I thought I had read it in high school, but I coudn't remember. Anyway, turns out those agents and editors know what they're talking about! Though the Victorian language is tough to get through at times, the characters are beautifully drawn and the love story between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy is magical.

Why COMC? So many of my students had read it and loved it, I decided I had to pick it up so I could discuss it with them. And, though it isn't a romance novel per se, it is a TERRIFIC story with so much conflict and so many well-drawn characters that, though 600+ pages, it's nearly impossible to put down. There is one moment, near the end, when 2 lovers reunite after years apart and Oh My Gosh it brought tears to my eyes. Not bad for something that was written in 1844.

Guess they're called The Classics for a reason.