Losing it.

Still haven't blogged about how I got into focus with my revisions, have I? Life keeps getting in the way of my writing. Good news is, my editor says the revisions were great. Phew.

And, kangarooing onto a different subject all together, I found my time management book. I'd actually put it away in the bookcase. Now, that would seem to be the obvious place to look, wouldn't it? But, before you all say "Doh!", I hardly ever put a book back on the shelf unless I've finished it. If I'm still reading it, it will probably be either on my bedside table, on the window sill next to the bath, in my handbag or buried under the junk my family seems to create without even trying. Must have had been inspired by the book and had a moment of uncharacteristic tidiness.

Would it be even sadder to tell you I lost a brand new pair of shoes still in their box? Not surprsingly, I found them in the bottom of my wardrobe. That's the thing about being organised. It puts my whole chaotic system out of order.

Being too clever for my own good.

Revisions on “Magic Hour” are completed. Phew!

Sections of this book were pig-awful to write. Funnily enough, those were the sections I had to revise. D’ya think I should have cottoned on to that at the time? I shall certainly watch out for that on the next wip.

In my efforts to create a multi-layered conflict I had, in fact, just created clutter. Too much bickering, my editor said. She was right. They were stuck in car arguing about who did the laundry quite a lot. Zzzzzz.

I had wanted to introduce little niggles that were symptoms of the bigger problems, but all I’d ended up doing was muddying the waters. In the end, I hadn’t spent enough time on the central issues and there were some nice things that I could have developed more, but didn’t have the space.

At first I just started going through the ms cutting a sentence here, adding a phrase there, but the whole thing felt a bit disjointed and pasted together. And the sections I had problems with were still giving me a headache. I still wasn’t bringing the central conflict into the forefront.

I was too close. I needed to get away from the words and sentences level of doing things and concentrate on the big picture. More on this tomorrow…

Revisions, revisions, revisions

I'm in the depths of revisions for Magic Hour. Brain similar to noodle soup.

I'm struggling a bit to juggle two jobs, two kids and running a household so I bought a book called "Time Management for Manic Mums". Lost it in the mess before I'd finished chapter one. Says it all, really.

I'm not here

I'm avoiding my blog.

I'm in a post-book slump. My brain cells have all gone into hibernation and I have nothing interesting to say.

However, a new idea is staring to brew. I have a pink-haired heroine and a stuffy hero. This one could be fun...

good times

Yesterday was the annual AMBA (Association of Mills & Boon Authors) lunch in London. My first ever one. Writing can be a very solitary pursuit and it’s always lovely to meet other authors, but I was especially looking forward to this as I would get a chance to see some online friends that I hadn’t met in the flesh.

I was feeling very famous after a couple of people said they recognised me from my photo in the RNA’s ‘Romance Matters’ magazine. How bizarre is that? And Abby Green, new author for Modern Romance, is forever in my good books for saying I didn’t look old enough to have a nine-year-old daughter. God bless her!

And after the lunch it was off to the famous Brooks’s gentleman’s club for a party thrown by HM&B for their authors. The champagne was flowing, but I stuck to water as I’m on anti-sickness pills to combat an ear infection. Still, better to be able to go to the do than be home feeling queasy.

I left the party with the phrase “send it in” ringing in my ears. I had all three of the Romance Team: Kim, Meg and Lydia, chanting this in my ear while I was warbling on about having finished the second draft and being too close to it to see where it needed work. Looks like I’ll be sending Nick and Adele’s story in on Monday. (Once I’ve had a little chance to read through and tweak, of course. Perfectionist? Moi? Never.)

Haircuts and other horrors

I've been too busy to blog for the last few days. The current book is in the editing stages and I don't seem to be changing much - which is worrying me. I think I'm too close to writing it to be able to see the holes at the moment but, as my editor asked if I could possibly get it in a little earlier, I don't have time to slow down.

I've also fallen foul of life's little hiccups this week:

I got a parking ticket, even though I'd bought a pay and display ticket and stuck it on my windscreen with the little sticker they give you. It was a hot day and the sticker gave out and my ticket fell on the floor. The local authority don't consider I made a proper effort to display my ticket correctly, so the won't drop the penalty notice, even though I could produce a valid parking ticket. Grrrrr. It's either £40 now, or £80 if I risk a formal appeal. What more could I have done? Stood by my car for the three hours it was parked there to make sure the ticket didn't fall off?

Then, of course, I spent most of yesterday waiting for a piece of furniture to be delivered. should have arrived by 2pm. My husband phoned the helpline and, after being on hold for an hour, hung up. My phone bill is going to be huge. Furniture arrived at almost 5pm.

And on Friday I had a haircut. I decided to splurge and go to a salon I haven't been to in a while and get a really good hairdresser to do my hair. While this bloke has cut my hair before and it's looked fabulous, this time was the one that bucked the trend.

I have naturally curly hair and, at it's longest, it was reaching my bra strap on my back. Since it had got a bit too long and heavy, I asked if I could have a few more layers and have it shaped round my face a little more. However, he definitely took more than four inches he said he was going to take off the ends and when my hair gets cut it can spring up and go a bit mad. I walked in with ringlets flowing down my back and left wearing a curly football helmet that barely reaches my shoulders. I went home, lip quivering, and washed it myself and, thankfully, the result isn't as bad as I first thought. If it were a few inches longer it would be just what I wanted. It'll grow, so I'll just have to be patient.

One more under my belt

Phew! I've finished the first draft of mt latest book. Now I've got a couple of weeks to lick it into shape before I send it off.

I'm quite amazed at how much I managed to get done when I knuckled under: 28,000 words in the last sixteen days (since I got back from holiday).

I tend not to edit much as I go, so reading the opening chapters should be somewhat of a surprise. I've probably forgotten a lot of what I've written. I know I'll read some back and think, 'Hmmm, better than I thought it was going to be', and I will read some bits and think, 'Euch!' Funny thing is, the bits I considered the good bits when I was writing them invariably make me go 'Euch!'.

A thing of beauty

I have a new toy.

When I won the RNA's New Writers' Award, I decided to spend a little of my prize money on a PDA. I've resisted getting such a device for ages, always preferring using a pen and paper whenever possible (I just like writing). But my filofax was starting to feel like a brick in my handbag - that's if I could fit it in there in the first place.

In the spirit of 'going the whole hog', I later ordered a foldable keyboard to go with it. Both PDA and kyboard fit into my handbag more easily than the brick did and I think they weigh less too. The darn thing was out of stock almost everywhere and I've had to wait over three months for it to arrive, but it was worth the wait.

Now I am truly portable. I can write wherever and whenever without having to scribble in a notepad and type up later (although, sometimes that helps. I might blog about that another time.) And the design is so clever. I'm far too busy drooling over it to actually have used it much yet.

Rolling down the hill towards the end

I've had a rather productive week! In total, since Monday, I have written 12280 words - a quarter of my current book. If I could write like this all the time, I'd be able to get a first draft done in a month. But I'm not going to get my hopes up; I know I need fallow periods between the times when the words won't stop flowing.

Hopefully, the flow will continue long enough for me to have the book off to my editor by the end of this month. This is a good stage of the book for me. I've got over the end-of-chapter-three hurdle and waded through the chpaters-seven-and-eight-bog. Now I'm rolling down the hill towards the end.

Kind of like this picture of my eldest rolling down the hill in Greenwich Park. Once you get started you just can't stop, even if it's a bumpy ride along the way!

Back to real life

I'm back from a holiday in the Cotswolds and ready to dive into the wip. I had intended to get a little writing done while I was away, but somehow I got obsessed with a rather large jigsaw featuring masses of frosty foliage and used a lot of my spare time that way instead. Still, the lovely villages and cottages were truly inspirational and I'm sure I'll use the Cotswolds as a setting one day.

And just to prove to myself my stuck-in-chapter-seven phase is almost over, I've written almost 3000 words today already. Yay for me!

Up on amazon

I'm going to have to get out the smelling salts, I really am. I just checked amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and my book is up! No cover. Nothing but the title and my name. So why did I get a jolt of adrenaline when I saw it? Because, it's very very very exciting, that's why.




Amazon.com has it up as a Silhouette Desire and not a Silhouette Romance, but I've put them right on that pretty sharpish, I can tell you.

Would it be really sad if I told you I've been checking every day for weeks to see if it was up? It would? Okay. I'm not telling you then.

Check it out here for the US and here for the UK!

It's real!

Things are getting very exciting at the moment. Last week I saw my cover for Blind-Date Marriage; this week my harback copies arrived. Real books! With my name on them! And words I wrote printed inside. I have to confess to having kissed a copy. How embarrassing is that?

I'm very excited, but nervous at the same time. I read a bit back and all I could see were clunky bits I wish I'd changed. Does this happen to anyone else? I'd be tempted to slip futher into writer's paranoia, but I've managed to remind myself that this book won an award. Even if all I see is clunkiness, others have read it and think it's good.

If I'm this bad now, what'll I be like when it finally hits the shelves?

Rampaging commas and the like

I went to the RNA South East’s chapter meeting yesterday and it was very informative. Jay Dixon spoke to us about “What A Copy Editor Wants”. Now, I’m still fairly new to the biz, so this helped flesh out my knowledge of how the system works.

Checking through every word and punctuation mark when the proofs arrive is a bit tedious but, in the most part, I’m learning a tremendous amount from seeing the changes – especially to my punctuation.

I went to school at a time when teaching grammar was about as fashionable as nylon polyester is now. The bits I did learn, I remember well, but there are huge gaping holes in my knowledge. Thankfully, things have changed and my children are not going to have the same problems. My nine year old quite happily talks about ellipses and stuff like that, yet it was only in the last couple of years I discovered the proper name for those three little dots.

I’ve been reading lots of grammar books since I started writing seriously. I’m improving, but there’s still a way to go. If you could be jailed for punctuation mark misuse, I would be banged up for wilfully abusing commas. Hardly a page goes by in my proofs where, like the Lord on high, the copy editor gives commas and takes them away. At least I’m getting a feel for when they are in the right place now.

Secretly, I suspect my mss are populated by a pack of rogue commas. I swear they all jump up during the night and settle themselves back down in completely inappropriate places just for fun. That’s my defence, guvnor, and I’m sticking to it.

I Have A Cover!!!!!

As you can see, I'm mildly excited about seeing my first ever cover. Here is the North American version of Blind-Date Marriage which will be published as a Silhouette Romance.

The UK cover will use the same artwork, but have different branding. if you want a peek at the new look M&B Romance covers, hop on over to the Mills & Boon site.

Boasting

Today I am boasting on behalf of my fellow Romance authors, Liz Fielding and Marion Lennox.

For any one who doesn't know, the Oscars of the romantic fiction world are called the RITAs and the winners were announced at the end of the RWA conference on Saturday night.

Liz Fielding won the "Best Short Contemporary" category with The Marriage Miracle and Marion Lennox won the "Best Traditional Romance" category with Princess of Convenience.

I've read both books and they were wonderful. HM&B Romance authors rule!

Now, what is the next step in our plan for world domination? Mwaahaahaa!

More punching

Okay, here's a little bit from "Her Parenthood Assignment" to illustrate what I think of as echoing and shadowing. (Someone else may have a completely different take on it, but so what!) Here's some blurb so you know what you're reading:

Luke Armstrong has spent five years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. And things don’t get any easier when he’s pardoned. He has to get to know an eleven-year-old daughter he barely knows.

Divorced Gaby Michaels is breaking out of her former role as a corporate wife to return to being a nanny. She agrees to take care of Luke’s difficult daughter, even though she knows she has a problem keeping her professional distance.

But this time it’s not the child she falls for—it’s the boss! And Luke is secretly entranced by the ordinary-looking woman who has the extraordinary ability do the warm and fuzzy stuff he’s long forgotten.

* * *

Luke tugged frantically on the strings of the kite, but it was too late. It fell out of the air and crashed on to the deserted beach. He sighed and trudged towards it. Gaby might be a bit of a shrinking violet at times, but she could talk an Eskimo into buying snow, and what’s more, he’d love her for it!

This outing to the beach with Heather had been her idea. You’re not working this Sunday, she’d said. The weather report says it’s going to be sunny, but windy, she’d said. Great weather for flying kites. Heather would love it…

And before he knew it, he was buying a multi-coloured contraption in town and spending his Sunday afternoon watching it nose-dive into the shingle again and again.

Heather had lost interest after ten minutes. So now he was left to keep up the pretence while she and Gaby wandered along the shore, arm in arm, and collected shells and bits of quartz.

He stopped to watch them. They were deep in conversation, sharing girl-type secrets, no doubt. His heart squeezed a little. Gaby had made such a difference to their home in the last three weeks. He still had to duck when Heather was in a foul mood, but more and more she was laughing and smiling, and he’d even caught her singing to herself.

He could see glimpses of the happy little girl she’d once been. That same cheeky smile she’d had, aged three, when she knew she’d said something funny or cute. They way she stroked a strand of her own hair when she was tired.

And it was all down to Gaby. He couldn’t take credit for the tiniest bit of it. All he managed was to stretch his mouth into a smile when it was required, and to say the right things—as if he were reading from a script—and watch his daughter blossom.

Gaby was getting closer and closer to Heather and, miracle of miracles, Heather was letting her.

And, all the while, he stayed on the fringes and watched. He was just as much on the outside of his daughter’s life as he’d been all those years behind bars. Why he couldn’t work his way into the centre—where all the laughter and warmth was—was more than he could fathom.

He watched as Gaby and Heather broke into a run and chased each other along the edge of the surf. The wind was cold and it blew their scarves in front of their faces, which only made them laugh all the more.

How did she do it? The woman he’d thought at first seemed ordinary, nothing special, had the ability to reach out to a heart and see it respond. A very rare thing indeed. He caught himself studying her, trying to work out what her secret was, where all that warmth and courage came from.

He alternated between admiring her and hating her for it.

He tore his gaze away and returned it to the kite lying a short distance away on the small, round pebbles. It seemed injured, lying there fluttering half-heartedly. He walked over and surveyed it with dismay.

The two figures walking along the shore hadn’t even seen it crash.

It was all in a tangle and he didn’t know what to do with it.

* * *

The emotional hit is that even though Luke's daughter is healing from her ordeal, he seems incapable of it. He feels just as much on the outside as he always did. The fact he can't fly the kite either echoes this.

In the last three paragraphs I've used the image of the damaged kite to reflect Luke's emotional state:

"He tore his gaze away and returned it to the kite lying a short distance away on the small, round pebbles. It seemed injured, lying there fluttering half-heartedly." (Luke is also injured and floundering)

"The two figures walking along the shore hadn’t even seen it crash. " (Luke is alone and no one knows how much he is struggling).

"It was all in a tangle and he didn’t know what to do with it." (it's Luke who is in a tangle and doesn't know how to remedy the situation)

I find I use this technique quite a bit. sometimes it's more obvious, like the kite example, and sometimes it's more subtle and nobody else might spot it. But I hope that, almost subconsicously, it helps the atmosphere of the scene.

Screwing the Punch

Janet asked me this after I reported back from the RNA conference:

Hi Fiona,I just read this on yesterday's blog:'The thing that stuck most was the phrase “screw the punch” (a boxing term), meaning deliver the emotional hit, then echo and repeat it, making the situation worse.'Can you remember from the talk what an emotional hit is and how you echo and repeat it. Sounds very interesting, Janet

I replied:

Janet, I'm thinking on this. I don't want to use any examples from my first book because they give away the plot too much. Trying to find a good example. It's one of those "I'll know it when I see it" things that are hard to put into words.

Now, I confess to still having my “L”plates on (learner driver plates for those of you not in the UK) when it comes to talking about "screwing the punch", but I came across an example today. This may not be the best example ever, but it'll do for now.

I was watching You’ve Got Mail and there was a scene where the big emotional hit came and then there were a couple of little emotional ‘ouches’ just to ram the point home:

Kathleen owns a small bookstore which is threatened by the opening of a big discount book store in the same neighbourhood. She doesn’t realise that the man she is starting to fall in love with through an email relationship (Sam) is one of the owners of the store. Neither knows the other’s true identity.

They agree to meet in person. Sam is so excited he tells his friend he would be a fool not to marry this woman, but he turns up at the rendezvous – a little café – and discovers the woman he is about to meet is none other than Kathleen and he knows she hates him both professionally and personally (Big punch).

Sam is too nice to leave Kathleen sitting there thinking she has been stood up so he goes inside. She is not pleased to see him but, now he knows that underneath the spiky exterior is the most adorable woman he’s ever met, he tries to build bridges. He tells her she might discover a lot of surprising things about him.

Kathleen tells him she would only discover a cash register instead of a brain and a bottom line where his heart ought to be. (Ouch!) Then goes on to say how she never manages to come out with the perfect retort when faced with a horrible, insensitive person (ouch!) and has just managed it with him.

Sam suspects that Kathleen’s sees the kind, funny man she has met on the internet as the polar opposite to the real Sam Fox and that, in her mind, the two could never be the same person. If he confesses, he will lose her.

He tells her the other guy isn’t here (implying he is) and she tells him that, unlike him, the other guy doesn’t have a cruel bone in his body and has a good reason for not turning up. She ends with the line: “You are nothing but a suit!”. (Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!)

There is an awful silence in which Sam realises there is no hope and he leaves.

Each time Kathleen says something it’s another nail in the coffin for their budding relationship. It had the impact after he first outburst, but after it has been repeated a couple of times in the ensuing conversation, you know that all hope is well and truly dead.

I also think I found an example in one of my books that doesn’t give the whole story away, but this post is long enough already! I might post it tomorrow.

Stuck in the middle with you

Okay. I’m stuck in the middle of chapter three, which I seem to do every time, but this is an odd one for me. I know what the next scene should be, but I can’t seem to get started on it because the previous scene seems a bit flat. I feel I need a better foundation before I keep on writing.

Normally this would not be such a problem, but since I still have a black hole in my plot at the beginning of act 2, I need to make sure things are tight and focused now, otherwise I won’t be able work out what happens next. I’m reading Debra Dixon’s “Goal Motivation Conflict” at the moment, which is helping things a little, but I’ve decided to resort to another little tool that helps when I need to focus on what I’m writing. (The plot board isn’t helping – it’s just sitting in the corner, with a big blank space, laughing at me.)

I'm going to use a scene sheet. It’s an amalgamation of ideas I’ve got from various books I’ve read. James N. Frey uses a “step sheet” described in “How To Write A Damn Good Novel” and Raymond Obstfeld recommends little index cards with scene info on in "A Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes". I’ve taken the basic idea, used bits that work for me and added anything else I wanted to add.

I don’t use them all the time – in fact, I only have an example for the first scene in my book. Sometimes the ideas flow and I don’t want to stop to mess around with scene sheets. But, when I’m stuck, it can help to go back and do one for each scene to make sure I’m building on the last scene in a consistent way. Here’s what I put in my scene sheet:

1. PRACTICAL STUFF

• Scene no. & title I like to title my scenes in the same way I give a working title to my books. It gives me a hint as to the purpose of the scene.
• Aprroximate word count
• POV – who’s point of view am I in for this scene?

2. OUTLINE

• Plot - I give a brief as possible outline of the plot.
• Purpose - three reasons why this scene should be there. Does it move the plot forward, develop a character, develop the theme, add suspense? Is it needed introduce a character, develop a character's motivation, provide the next obstacle to the protagonist's goal? (Debra Dixon suggests that if you can't find three good reasons for a scene, it should go!)

3. Goal, Motivation and Conflict

I then like to summarise what’s happening with my characters. I find distilling all the info into a few sentences helps me keep focused on what they are feeling and thinking.
I like to add a little sentence at the top to remind myself what’s going through the character’s head.

In my first scene in "Magic Hour", Adele is thinking: “I do not need a man to help me catch a spider!”. It shows her fierce independence, even when terrified, and sets up the idea that she doesn’t want to need a man at all – especially not the man who’s just about to ring her doorbell (estranged husband Nick).

Then I look at the GMC – internal and external

• Goal: what does this character want?
• Motivation: Why do they want it?
• Conflict: Why can’t they have it?

Adele’s external GMC for this scene could be expressed like this:

“Adele wants to have a bath at the end of the day, because she needs to de-stress, but a spider is lurking in her bath and she is terrified of them, sending her stress levels even higher.” By the time Nick rings the doorbell, Adele is already completely wound up, increasing the tension of the situation.

Adele’s internal GMC could be expressed like this:

“Adele wants to prove to herself that she doesn’t need anyone else, because she has loved people in the past and they have let her down, but the man who hurt her the most turns up out of the blue and threatens to weaken her resolve.”

See? Now I have homed in on what is making Adele tick at this point in time. Having that knowledge in the back of my head as I write or edit helps me see where I need to go or make changes. Maybe the dialogue doesn’t reflect this strongly enough. Maybe the emotion isn’t coming through clearly enough. If I want my readers (please, let there be readers!) to become engaged with my characters, then I need to make Adele and Nick's fears and desires clear and attention-grabbing.

4. Foreshadowing and payoff.

This is a little note to myself of things I may be able to use in the future, or emotional moments I can intensify by adding something in earlier in the book.

For example, my heroine in my second book "Her Parenthood Assignment" admits to the hero that her ex-husband never told her she was beautiful. I slipped this in a few scenes before a big party when the hero is completely gobsmacked by how gorgeous she looks, even though she thinks of herself as ordinary-looking. The heroine's revelation sets up a bigger emotional hit (the pay off) a few chapters later. Of course, the fact that the hero thinks she's beautiful on the outside, echoes that he thinks she's beautiful on the inside too - a fact her ex-husband sadly missed.

So, all I need to do now is go back though the last couple of chapters and make sure I focus on the right emotions and thoughts. As I do this, I often go one layer deeper in understanding my characters and will get a brainwave for where the next scene should go and I'm up and running again.

RNA conference - part 3

I started Sunday morning of with “Jessica Hart’s A-Z survival guide for Romantic Novelists”. She is soooo funny. But, if you have read any of her books you will know that.

My personal highlight was D for deadlines. She gave us a run down of how she copes during her two month writing slot for each book:
Chapters 1-3 – not bad
Chapter 4 – slowing down
Chapter 5 – struggling
Chapter 6 – plodding
Chapter 7 – stop. Panic. Go down wine bar.
(In fact there were an awful lot of pics of Jessica at her local wine bar in her powerpoint presentation).
Chapters 8-10 – with 12 days to go, write in a complete frenzy and finish minutes before deadline.

Then I listened to Diana Burchall give a talk on ‘Life in the Hollywood Story Department’. She reads books for Warner Brothers to see if they can be made into films. Interesting. She also told us about her grandmother who was a story analyst in the early days of movies and who was rather eccentric.

We then had a PR forum and Jenny Haddon and Catherine Jones talked about raising the profile of both Romantic fiction and the RNA.

Katie Fforde talked for ten minutes about ‘The First Page’ then let us grill her with questions about her writing career.

Jenny Haddon (who writes as Sophie Weston for M&B) then gave a brilliant seminar on upping the emotion in our writing. I took home lots of nuggets from this one. The thing that stuck most was the phrase “screw the punch” (a boxing term), meaning deliver the emotional hit, then echo and repeat it, making the situation worse. I think I do this anyway sometimes, but it's always better to consciously use these techniques than just stumble along in the dark, I think.

Last of all Liz Bailey gave us a drama workshop to help us to tap into our emotions better. I must admit I got rather competitive about a game of “What’s the time Mr Wolf?” and managed to convey a rather rude gesture only by using a yellow feather.

I then spent a rather brain dead evening in the bar where Liz and I would lapse into silence because our brains were too tired out to think of anything to say. And the last few braincells gave up and went home during Stephen’s fiendish bar quiz. I now feel really thick and am sure I know nothing about the publishing industry – although I did do rather well on the low-brow music round. Curses!

Finally!

I have a website! It's pretty basic at the moment, but it does the job. Take a hike over to fionaharper.com and nose around! There's an excerpt from my award-winning first novel under 'books'.