Weekly Check-In

Despite this being the last few days of the Savvy Boot Camp, it was a lazy week.  I read Kiss of Snow instead of sleeping, and slept instead of writing, and as soon as the clock rolled over to June 1st all responsibility to write like the wind was gone.  We still don’t know the results for who won the boot camp, but it was a close race to the end.  June is the month that I want to do revisions rather than writing, but I’m still writing.  I got off to a good start, but I’ll talk about that below.

I haven’t been talking about A Round of Words at all, and for that I fail.  I haven’t forgotten that I’m working on that challenge, but I haven’t been as mindful of updating my progress on it.  I solved that yesterday.

Blogging.

Judging by the twitter conversations and the comments left on Suzan’s blog and here I would say that the Let’s Talk About Sex series is off to a good start.  We discussed underwear and what that says about your characters.  Suzan took the girly side and I discussed all things buff and hunky.  This week we’re talking about heat levels and language particular to the romance genre.  While a lot of people already know this stuff, not everyone does and it’s good to talk about it.  We’re also having a blast while we’re at it, so that’s all that really matters.

Revising.

I started revisions on Rescue Me – again.  These were pretty light, going over what one of my critique partners suggested.  A lot of it was grammar, and of that commas.  I have comma issues.  I conquer the apostrophe and now the comma and I are at odds!

I’m really happy with Rescue Me.  I have it up over at Book Country for review if anyone is a member there and feels like giving me some feedback.  I plan to submit it next month after I take my submission package class and hammer out the submission details.  I’m less confident about those, but that’s the reson behind taking the classes!

This weekend I broke open Decoy.  I’m almost halfway through it and hoping to be done with this first pass in a few days.  It’s kind of ugly at this point and there’s a lot of red, but I’m hoping that in the end it will pay off and it will rock.  I’m crossing my fingers that I finish this draft Tuesday or Wednesday and then the super picky stuff starts.

Plotting.

Um, I’m kind of stalled out on plotting.  I’m worried that letting an idea stew this much is a bad idea.  I get bored of the shiny and move on to something else.  I still like the idea and I want to write it but it’s not a driving desire of want any more.  I’m afraid that this is bad.  Very bad.

I replotted my superhero story I was supposed to write during Boot Camp.  It’s a whole new idea and more naughty than the original, but again I waited too long to write it.  So I’m going to write the naughty one and just go for it.  If it flops in the draft process it flops and I’ll move on.

I plan on doing more reading this month to get myself in a place to write certain things.  We’ll see how this goes!!!

Writing.

Yeah, so since it’s June I’ve slacked on writing….

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I had an idea for this while watching Deadliest Warrior, of all things.  The story is actually at a very interesting part, so it shouldn’t be hard to jump back in and hopefully hammer it out soon.  My problem is that I’ve been distracted by being lazy.  And revising.  I’m going to attempt to write 1-2K a day on this a day this week in tandem to doing revisions.  It’s not a lot, I know, but I want to keep the ball rolling and finish this sucker.

What I read.

• Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

WWYK: The Dilemma

I have a dilemma.

I picked out an ebook recently for the sole reason that the heroine was a rockabilly plus sized model.  Basically she has tattoos (like me) and dresses like I would if I wanted to expend that much effort on my daily appearance.

We’re told to write what we know, thus these occasional posts, but how much of us is too much in our writing?  When should we draw the line?

I have resisted writing things with tattooed heroins, rockabilly, the music scene, roller derby, and anything ‘country’ because they felt too close to home.  Too much like me in some ways.  I wrote a romance short about a country girl living in the suburbs of New York and I’m still on the fence about being okay with the story because it might be considered too similar to me.  Does that make sense?  I’m not like the heroine, but I drew heavily on my experiences with horses for it.

Does anyone else have this problem?  Writing out fantasies is a personal kind of thing. It opens us up to criticism that will hurt more.  Right now I’m wondering if I should even write these little bits.  I want the ideas out of my head, but at what value or cost?

How do you handle the problem of writing too much of what you know?

WWYK: Your Family

This is the family edition of Write What You Know!  The general idea of these Write What You Know blogs is to take something familiar to you, and look at how you can use it in writing.  I don’t know about you, but I see it said all the time that you need to: write what you know.  Now I know what you’re thinking, write about my family?  Um, what?

Family is something every character you write is going to have.  Maybe they aren’t in touch with their families, or maybe they don’t know about their family – that’s fine.  For me, most of my characters know their families and are in some form of contact with them.  More importantly, that family element has shaped them as a character.  Figuring out the family dynamic will often tell me more about a character.  But I can realistically only write about family situation I know, the rest is just speculation.

My dad refuses to take 'normal' looking pictures. He doesn't usually look like a crazy killer.

So I guess it’s a good thing I’ve had a very strange family.  Lets look at some of my family dynamics and how I can use them in writing.

For starters, I am my dad’s third child and my mother’s fourth.  My older brother and sister, my father’s other children, are much older than I am (at least 20+ years older), so I missed out on the dynamic of having brothers or sisters.  What I have experienced is the dynamic of a blended family.  My sister’s daughter is only a few years younger than I am.  Now, how can I take what I know and write about it?  Well, I can write about characters who experience this family dynamic.  Say a character is a young adult and their brother or sister moves back home with a new born baby.  That’s outside of my experience, but I have that background that I know some of the ways that will test a family.

My mother. We know I have to be hers because I was the only white child born at the hospital that week.

My parents are still married, going on 30 years.  However, we have not lived together that entire time.  Not because my parents were separated but because for the first half of my parents marriage and the first ten years of my life, my mother traveled the rodeo circuit.  Growing up I knew my dad, but we only lived with him half of the year so he was a distant presence.  I didn’t have that close relationship with him as a child.  That being said, I identify a lot with other people who have had absent fathers or their mothers remarried.  My dad is a great person, and he would do anything for me.  I love my dad!  But I can turn that around and write about characters without father figures, experiences growing up with only one parent, or getting accustomed to a new parent.

Think back on family traditions, things that are unique to your family.  My family was big into rodeo and livestock.  Someday I’m going to use those experiences and write something about a contemporary ‘cowboy’ family, which is something I could do because that’s the life I lived.  My family didn’t take family vacations.  My mother and I did, but my father wasn’t the vacationing type.  My parents have always accepted me, despite my oddities, so it’s always been hard for me to write about families who kick people out for not accepting them.

I think a lot of times as writers we discredit our personal experiences, especially our family life because to us it’s normal.  People are often times surprised when I talk about my upbringing, but to me it’s normal.  It’s just part of who I am and not extraordinary.  But even the ordinary in our lives can be twisted, turned on it’s head, and put to work in our stories.

There is this disclaimer: Writing about our families and friends can be dangerous.  If you’re going to use something that clearly comes from your life or reflects on a family member, talk to them before you do it.

What are some family dynamics or traditions you could change and put in your novel?

Write What You Know: Hobbies!

Welcome to this edition of Write What You Know!  Today I want to talk about hobbies.  Those things we do apart from work, or our obligations.  Sometimes we enjoy our hobbies with our families or friends.

Besides writing, my hobbies are kind of tame.  I knit, I read, and I help my mom by crewing for her whenever she has a really big cycling event.  Not really the stuff to write novels about, I know, but novels really can’t be all about fast car chases, explosions and hot sex.  Your characters need hobbies, things that make them feel more like real people.  I realized this when I was standing in the scrapbook section at a craft store this last weekend.  I was getting some extra things for my collage you’ll see on Thursday and I realized that one of my protagonists has a very well rounded personality and life – while the other was just her job and…. nothing.

Your characters should have interests, things that the enjoy during the ‘quiet’ moments of the novel.  Fishing, playing cards, whittling, making soap or knitting.

Sometimes you can twist a hobby into the material of a story.  Last year during Story a Day in May I wrote a kids story about a little girl whose magic power was in her knitting.  It was cute and only slightly moral, mostly entertaining.

My one hobby that I have turned into serious novel material?

Roller derby.

I used to referee and play roller derby.  Actually, I might start reffing again in the near future.  That’s besides the point!  I really love the sport, and I began to think about how I could write about roller derby and what I liked to write.  If you’ve read my blogs for any space of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about Derby Girls Are Dangerous, a paranormal romance project I’m working on about what happens when shape shifters meet roller derby girls.  It’s great fun, and I enjoy writing and sharing my hobby that way.

What hobbies do you have that you could see sharing with your characters?  Is there a hobby you have that could inspire a story?

Write What You Know: Work Edition

Welcome to this edition of WWYK: Work Edition, where I take a seemingly everyday occurrence in my life, or something that might be a normal act, and figure out how to make it worth writing about!

Most of us have day jobs.  I don’t know about yours, but I sit in an office for mine.  My working situation is different from most.  I don’t normally talk about it because I do prefer to keep my writing and work separate, but I have had this idea going through my head for a while, and I figured I had to share it!

During a normal week, you might go to work, Monday through Friday, morning to evening, or whatever combination your job requires.  I sit in a large reception area, in a U shaped desk with lovely almost floor to ceiling windows on the first floor of the office building.  On a normal spring day, the view is lovely; a blue Texas sky, a green desert tree and sometimes some white puffy clouds.  Sometimes though, the building maintenance needs to climb into the plant bed to check the sprinkler, sometimes the window washers are there, or some other person.

Now, if you know me, you know I have a thing for zombies.

So what would happen if the zombie apocalypse happened and I was at work?

Floor to ceiling windows turn from a pretty luxury, into a liability.  I’ve thought through the necessary steps I would need to take in the event of a zombie attack.  My choices are limited due to the large number of windows through the office, and doors with glass inserts.  Were I to be attacked, I would either have to make the decision to run to my Jeep, which is parked an awfully long way away when considering the plague of the undead, or taking refuge in the supply closet at work.

Here’s an article about real life zombie ants. It seems that the zombie apocalypse is underway, we just haven’t been aware of it yet!

If you were at work, and zombies attacked, what would you do?  Are you ready for the zombie horde?

Write What You Know: Dentist Edition

This is my first real edition of Write What You Know, or WWYK as I’ll probably be chopping it down to.  These are topical blogs that feature an every day event of life, and altered a little, so in essence the idea is writing what you know!

Today I want to talk about your dentist.  Well, maybe not your dentist but you’ll see what I mean.

In February I started a long dental process.  I had a consultation and a visit and a surgery and it just keeps going on and on and on.  Basically, I’m going to be spending a heck of a lot of time with my dentist.  During my first big visit involving a lot of cutting there was this moment when I’m laying in the dental chair, I’m completely numbed and half a step from being knocked out when I realize that in order for my dentist (who by some cruel stroke of luck is hot) to get the right angle into my mouth, he’s totally feeling me up.  There’s no way around it, and I have no suspicion of him doing it on purpose, but he is!

I barely kept myself from laughing, which would have spurred another of those awkward moments when I couldn’t control my mouth and spit on myself (which of course because said dentist is HOT it is required that I’m a figurative fountain of saliva).

So I started wondering – what kind of people would see that kind of contact and want to be dentists?  What would this person’s goals be?

Maybe I’m on a serial killer kick lately, but I had an entire idea for a dentist serial killer in my head by the time I left the dentist! Okay, NOT the most comforting thing to think about, especially considering all of the stuff I’m having done to my teeth right now.  But what if there really was a serial killer out there who chose his victims based on how well they took care of their teeth?  There would have to be some other method to how the dentist picked his victims because it would be too easy to see that all of the victims had the same dentist – unless it was a rural setting and then everyone would have the same dentist.  I know this from experience!

OR!

What if a person chose to be a dentist because of the close proximity to people’s chests?  Or what if this person has a fixation for lips or teeth?  What kind of a story would that make?  The possibilities are endless!

Of course, you could always take into account how such close proximity to a patient might affect a dentist.  Imagine an attractive dentist, and an attractive patient – what could happen?  What would you want to see happen? (Within patient-doctor believability at least for this first interaction!)

Write What You Know

How many times have you heard the advice: write what you know?  Chances are that you’ve heard it many times over.  But how often do you stop to think about the every day occurrences of your day as fodder for stories?

I had an idea earlier in February after thinking about a very normal event in my day from an outside perspective, thanks to some anesthesia.  I was wondering how to blog about it, because between the running commentary in my head thanks to the anesthesia, and the twisted story I was weaving in my head I wasn’t quite sure how to relate the full story without a lot of preamble.

So this is the introduction of a feature I’ll be doing whenever inspiration strikes me.  My Write What You Know posts will give what I hope is a new take on a seemingly every day event in life, and where it could go if things were to be different.  I hope that you’ll be entertained, or maybe even encouraged to join in the fun with me!