Writing is hard work. And if you’re like most authors, you feel more like the juggling clown in the center ring than a writer. You have too many balls in the air at one time and usually the one that drops is writing. When you do find a few spare minutes to sit down, the muse turns her fickle nose up at you because you ignored her the other day in the car. Never mind you were trying to find the house with the birthday party, referee your kids fight and navigate traffic in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Oh, and did I forget to mention the pile of chores and housework waiting at home that was nagging at the back of your mind when the GEICO squirrels ran out in front of your car.

Now, you have thirty minutes to spare to write before another ball drops. What do you do? The muse isn’t talking. I find instead of looking at a blank screen going back a couple of pages and reading helps. It grounds me back into the story so I can pick up where I left off. By the time I get to the last written sentence and the blank pages take over, I’ve connected with my characters again, the muse’s feeling are assuaged and the words flow.

This is all of course if I’ve stopped writing and I still know where the story is going. But what if you don’t know what happens next? Some writers are neat and organized. They sketch out a draft, the plot with charts and use fancy methods to get from the beginning through the middle and to the end.

Me? Not so much. And the muse knows it. She’s in charge of the story and she lets me know it too. As soon as I make a hard plot, she turns up her nose at me. My characters take her side. They refuse to be who I want them to. Like when I wrote my story Missing Pieces. I like beta heroes and my hero, Addison Cougar, started out as a beta. The story starts in his POV. I’d gotten a few sentences into the story and he pulled a switch on me that made my head swim. No matter how I tried to force it, he refused to be a beta. He was an alpha all the way and would not bend. I think the muse was sitting smugly in a corner laughing at that one. When I changed to her way of thinking, the story poured out of me. 

So I make what I like to call a soft plot. I come up with a few things up front. Like a GMC (goal, motivation and conflict), a few twist and an ending. I take one chapter at a time, figure out the beginning and an ending hook. For each chapter I have to have down time. I literally lie down and close my eyes. I listen to my characters tell me their story and see it play out in my head like watching it on a movie screen. Then, when I have time to write again, I start the next chapter from what my characters told me. I proceed to follow the steps as I mentioned above until the chapter is done and it’s time for down time again.

If in down time nothing comes to me, then I know the story took a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe I have my characters doing something that isn’t their personality and they clam up. Turn fickle on me again. Take the muse’s side. Once I fix the problem and my character’s actions are back in line with who they are the words flow again.

In defense of the muse, I have to say that I, too, can sulk at her. I don’t always like the way she takes the storyline, and I can walk away because I just don’t want to write the scene. I fall in love with my characters, and I hate to make them suffer. My conflicts and black moments can be soft blows. Sometime the muse allows this. But on my current WIPP I’m afraid she’s not going to. I already know what she has in store for the black moment and I’m dragging my feet to get there. I wrote 18K in a few short weeks, which is very good for me. Now that I’m getting closer to the black moment I’m prolonging it. I’m at 24K. I’ve had time to write, but I don’t want to make my hero suffer the fate I know he is about to be dealt. I know I have to. This story is calling for it and it’s time to cut deeper. And if I want to keep the ball in the air, I’m going to have to do it. But I’m going to drag my feet and fuss at the muse the same way she fusses at me. I just hope I give in soon, because I know she won’t. She has no problem letting the ball drop.  

Jsmine Black

http://jasmineblackromnce.blogspot.com

What’s the surprise that I mentioned yesterday on the Avoid Writers Hell Group and AWH Chatters? What is it that had all the AWH puppies calling me and Tess teases?

Well, Michelle “Emmy” Ellis designed our first AWH Magazine!!!

I came across an online magazine the other day that was so cool, and I sent the link to her and Tess, mentioning how I’d love to be able to do something like that for PDFs or whatever.

Next thing I knew, Emmy is asking me lots of questions, lol, and sends me a link later in the day.

My. Jaw. Dropped. This magazine is damn amazing!

However, this is NOT to be confused with the AWH newsletter. The AWH Newsletter is a monthly publication and is for my AWH puppies to share their news, their accomplishments, reviews, who is sick, who got out of the hospital, who had a baby, so on and so on. The AWH newsletter is only available to AWH members of either or both groups unless a member forwards it to someone, which is perfectly fine.

The AWH Magazine has articles, short fiction, recipes, Author Splashes, and much, much more. It will be available on the AWH blog site and anyone can access it, so if you have a story featured in it, your work will be presented to others, both readers and writers, outside of the AWH groups! However, the new issues will only be published when Emmy has the time to put them together. A day here, a day there, until she has enough material and has everything edited and formatted to publish the next issue.

Can you submit something to the AWH Magazine? Yes, but there are guidelines! Those are pending, so please be patient.

Here’s what Emmy has to say:

“Short fiction really does need to be short—no more than 1K words like your story, Faith—and edited [polished] as best the author can get it before they send it to me. I haven’t got time to do extensive edits. Writers must treat the AWH Magazine like any other mag submission.
 
“Also, if any puppies want their picture as the front cover, they’ll need to send me one. First come first served etc., on that—it will also depend whether or not the pic is small with low res as opposed to bigger and high res. Small and low res will make for a grainy, pixilated effect, so their pic may have to appear as a small one inside a frame like they have on mag fronts. Small ones would be cool if they also feature inside on Author Splash or the Author Bio pages.
 
“Aaaaand, basically, what they see in Issue 1 is what they’d have to send to me should they want to appear as any of those features. So, the sidebar stuff and recipes would have to be low word count. Author Splash!…they can see what info I want from Kiyara Benoiti’s double page—a personal quote is a must for that page because I want readers to connect with the author better. If I get too may Author Splash! requests, some might have to be held off until future issues. Any Top Tips, Dear Editors (these will be in confidence), and the confessions page—can stretch to two pages on those features if we get a lot of stuff sent. Confessions page is in confidence too.”

Guidelines will be available in the groups’ FILES section and on a page at the AWH blog site too (http://authorsalacart.com/awh/). PERMISSION TO FORWARD THIS MESSAGE GRANTED.

And drumroll…LOL…here is the link to view this amazing magazine:

http://en.calameo.com/read/000149014352beed9ca2e 

Play with the tools on the mag to tailor it how you are comfy viewing it. Note that wherever you point the curser it will move the entire page. No scrolling needed, which I find so nice.

Faith, Group Owner

www.faithbicknellbrown.com

Weaving Magic into Romance…
   

If you’re a writer, have you ever had that one story, novella, or novel that would only flow in fits and sputters? I have one of those. It’s my latest manuscript that I’m finishing up and preparing to mail off to my agent this month. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I can only work on it in sections, then I have to walk away from it for a while. 

Granted, this novel is very complex. RUBY is an erotic paranormal romance (Ruby is the name of my heroine and the first word in the novel’s title). It’s all told from my heroine’s POV (point of view), but she has so many personal issues to resolve due to her weird and very hard life, then there’s the romance and her unusual hero, plus things from her past come back to haunt her, and there’s the subplot of her friendship with a Marilyn Monroe look alike who’s not what she seems, and…pant-pant…the novel’s paranormal mystery to solve. 

I have cussed this novel so much it’s pathetic. I’ve gone back and revised, revised, revised—six revisions thus far—up to these last three or four chapters that wrap up the novel. 

Then I caught a minor flaw in a subplot and had to go back and rewrite sections or delete them. 

However, I started writing this novel six years ago. Even then, it irked me to no end, and I finally put it away for a while. During that time span, I  pulled it out of the “drawer” every now and then. Revised the old—I guess that means there’s been more than six revisions—added more chapters, then I put it away for months or a year or two during this six-year period. 

What IS it about this novel that is so frustrating? 

I’m really not sure.

My readers who dissect and blurb my work are waiting for the finished product, and my agent knows he’ll be receiving the manuscript soon, but Lord have mercy, why can’t I get the words to flow on this particular novel where they keep flowing until I type THE END? It’s not like I have half a novel to write. I’m down to the last three or four chapters. 

Is it stress? No, not really. I have other WIPs (works in progress), but I don’t have this problem with any of them. It’s just my RUBY ms. 

Is it lack of time? Hmm…partially, but only a small part. And lack of time translates more into constant life interruptions. The phone rings, teenagers arrive unannounced, the youngest is crying in the living room and no one knows why and only Mom can solve it, kids are sick with viruses and colds, and lately I’ve had to pick up my husband’s chores since he’s been laid up from a surgery. I’ve also had to stop taking on private editing clientele because I had so many manuscripts to edit. 

Maybe I’m not in love with the novel? No, I am very much in love with the plot and characters, and I truly believe that this is a story that’s going to knock readers’ socks off. 

Is it the fact I don’t have a comfortable place to write at the moment? Partly, yes. I’ve been unable to furnish heat for my camper office this winter, and, since I do 95% of my serious writing on my laptop, I don’t have a quiet place to go, nor a comfortable chair of some sort to sit in. For the last three months, I’ve been writing on the bed. Add to it the fact my sciatic nerve is screwed up and I can’t sit in certain chairs without making it flare up…yeah, that’s irks me to no end and puts me in a foul mood. 

But what IS the key to why this novel is driving me insane and not flowing well? 

I think I’m afraid of failure. 

What, you say? Me? Afraid of failure? 

Those of you who know me well understand this comment. But for those of you who don’t, it boils down to one thing. I’ve had the carrot dangled in front of my nose only to have it yanked away so many darn times it’s ridiculous. In my subconscious, I think I feel RUBY will be yet another one of those glowing rejection letters raving about my work with a ‘but’ added to the end. 

However, as I’ve always said to my AWH puppies, I truly believe half the NYC publishing battle is determination. Don’t give up. 

I have to chant that to myself. 

Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up….but oh, how tempting it is at times! 

Is it just me, or have any of you had a similar manuscript that gave or gives you fits? If so, did you determine the reason it bugged and frustrated you so much? Share it with me and my AWH puppies in comments. 

Don’t give up, don’t give up, don’t give up….