The HEA Cafe

Everything I know about writing I learned from my dog, Yofi. Oh sure, her lovemaking scenes involve more buttsniffing than mine, and there was that disaster where her hero was distracted by a can opener while he was disarming a bomb, but overall, I can learn a lot from her.

For example:

Stay focused.
When she’s in the backyard hunting moles, Yofi can stand still forever, not an eyelid twitching, not a hair moving. She has her eyes on the prize, and she will do whatever it takes to get it. When she makes her move, her muscles explode into action as she begins digging furiously.
She’s not distracted by laundry or other books or rejection letters from publishers. She’s going to get that mole, and that’s all that matters.

Be a big dog in a little package.
Sure, we snicker at wiener dogs, but as dachshund owners know, inside, they’re Rottweilers. They’re willing to take on all comers, and they don’t back down. They don’t let their size keep them from doing what needs to be done. Remember, it’s not the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog.
Same thing with writing. Don’t be intimidated by writers who make the NYT list or blog about their world book tours. You can be a big dog, even if you’re writing for a small publisher. You just have to put all of your fight into it, and believe in your heart that you’re a Rottweiler.

When you’re not working, relax.
When Yofi isn’t trying to save the world from moles, she doesn’t obsess over them. She puts them behind her, and makes sleeping an art form. She saves her energy for what’s important. She takes time to sniff…well, not the roses, but you get the idea.

Characterization.
I admit, dachshunds don’t have to work that hard at characterization because they’re so darn adorable. It’s not like they’re cats or something.
But even when it comes naturally, it’s important to remember that you need to pick out the details to make the character come alive–how he stands, how he laughs, what he enjoys and doesn’t enjoy, whether his tail wags and his ears perk up when he sees the heroine, that sort of thing.

Set goals.
One evening I heard the dog barking in an especially frantic manner, and then quiet. I knew this meant there was another animal about, so I rushed out into the yard. Sure enough, she had her jaws clamped around the tail of an armadillo that outweighed her and was armored as well. But Yofi wasn’t letting go. She dug in all of her 12 ½ pounds and held on for dear life while the armadillo scrabbled at the ground. I finally got them separated with a broom and the ‘dillo scampered off to safety, but that dog was as proud as if she’d just won Westminster.
She set her goal and she achieved it. She was going to capture that invader, even if the whole world thought she was too small to make it happen.
Do you have days when you think you’ll never finish the book? Clamp your jaws down and don’t let go.

So my muse inspires me as she lies on her bed in my office. Sometimes when I get stuck, I ask myself, “What would the dog do?” Usually the answer isn’t at all helpful–licking yourself really doesn’t replace conflict resolution, but sometimes she leads me in the right direction. All I have to remember is that if it’s a dog’s life, it could be one we would be wise to learn from.

I’m not as far along as I’d like with my WIP (Work in Progress) because I sent a partial to my agent, and he sent back a note saying, essentially, “Kill the backstory and start with someone bleeding.”

When I saw this I slapped myself upside the head and said “D’oh!” because it took me back some years to when I worked in news. I’ve been a news reporter, radio news anchor, radio news director and producer of the local TV news. There’s a nasty little saying in broadcasting: “If it bleeds, it leads.” This means if you have a shooting, horrific accident or tornado, it goes at the top of the newscast. In a newspaper, it’s called “Over the fold”.

There’s a reason for this: You want to grab peoples’ attention and hold it. A story about the proposed tax hike is important to everyone in the county, but it’s a snoozefest–unless you can tie it to some poor schlub who’s going to lose the little hardscrabble piece of land his family’s owned since they settled it before the Civil War. That’s exciting! That grabs attention! It tugs at your heart-strings!

It’s just like the first and most basic rule of newsgathering: “Dog bites man isn’t news. Man bites dog is.” Get the reader’s attention by showing them something they’re not expecting. The ordinary isn’t news, the out-of-the-ordinary is news. One of my best journalism professors would snidely scrawl “So what?” in red ink across my news stories if all the facts were correct, but the story was b-o-r-i-n-g.

And he was right. It’s the same thing with writing your novel. “Make someone bleed!” is good advice. Don’t get sucked into loading your backstory up front because your reader 1. Likely doesn’t need as much information as you think she needs and 2. You can work it into the story down the road. Make the reader ask “What? How did she get onto a pirate ship? How’s she going to stay alive on a pirate ship? Is that guy going to die?”

They’ll keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. You can always insert details of her terrible childhood later. Think about all the exciting books you’ve read, the ones that kept you up past your bedtime ‘cause you had to find out what happened next–if you can hook ‘em at the beginning and keep the excitement rolling, the reader will stay along for the full ride.

I don’t know if any of you are guilty of this or not, but when I start tinkering with something, it’s hard to stop. Even when I dress my four-year-old daughter, I’m always adding a little headband or maybe a ribbon or adding a sweater. And yesterday, before sending galleys back to my publisher, I had to call Chessie, my critique partner, and quiz her about a single word. Do I scratch it out? Do I leave it in?

The kicker is, I don’t think our books will ever be as perfect as we want them to be. There will always be something to adjust, tweak, change or think about way too hard. To the point where I almost drove right past the UPS store last night and kept my galleys for one more day. After all, they’re not due until tomorrow. I could have overnighted them today. Taken one more look, thought more about that one word.

So how do you tame your “perfectionist” streak when it comes to your writing? Or do you? Does the same drive that makes us crazy also improve our work? Or do we just need to stop overthinking, stop the car and let our books go?

Publishing is a relatively small world, especially in the confines of RWA. Even though there are upwards to 9000 members in our community, chances are you “know” many of the membership, whether it be through the online world of the RWA yahoo groups, online chapters, or live chapters. Most of the active members have “met” one way or another.
The sense of community we have is very strong, but like with any close-knit family, our closeness can also be our weakness.

We’re only human, after-all.

We’re not only human, most of us in RWA are also women.

Women are funny creatures. I’ve had (almost) 39 years to study them, me being a woman and all. On the whole, we are fiercely loyal, hardworking, supportive, and creative. I wish I could stop with our positive traits. I do. Because our positive traits are what make us such good mothers, wives, friends and employees.

Unfortunately, being human and all, we women also have a set of negative traits we carry around. Most times, we keep them buried because they directly interfere with the very things that make us so awesome.

Sometimes we have no choice but to be ugly. It’s a part of who we are. Something important in our life is threatened and Katie bar the door, we come out bearing our claws and fangs. We do what we have to do to make things right for those we love.

But in our little family of writers, I’ve noticed another kind of ugliness. Not the kind that comes out when someone you love is threatened, but the kind that rears its head for no reason other than pettiness. Ugliness. Bitterness.

Some people (mostly women, though I have heard a few things from some men in the industry as well) will badmouth anyone, whether they know them or not. It makes them feel better about their own mediocrity to bag on the successes of others—who happen to be mostly women. Funny that.

In a community built for women, by women, I am constantly surprised at the sniping and backbiting that goes on here. Are we adults? Because after some of the things I’ve heard, I have to wonder.

Publishing is constantly changing and you either change with it, or fade away. Nobody is successful because of pure luck. Sure, luck has something to do with it, but their success was built on the back hard work. They write, sweat, toil, and bleed over their manuscripts. Oftentimes they sign with their perfect agent who works, sweats, toils and bleeds over the negotiations. As a new writer, we want to take the first offer given. We have to leave it in the hands of our agent who work hard at getting us the best deal possible.

I’m almost amused by the whisperings I hear. Instead of genuine happiness, you hear things like “I bet that was a small deal. Probably just the basic. No negotiation there. She’s wasting commission with that agent.” Or “She’ll never sell through that advance.” So, damned if we do, damned if we don’t?
It’s hard work. All around. And in this world, the only way to succeed is to continue working hard. Badmouthing others might serve as temporary lidocaine to the bitterness in your gut, but it certainly won’t get that book written. Or more money in your pocket. Or make you happy with your career or lack thereof. And it won’t make those who are happy and successful any less so.

I guess all in all, this post boils down to choice. We’ve all had these feelings; it’s how we choose to act on those feelings that matters.

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” Willie Nelson

I usually save my whining for my personal blog over at another site, but when I was trying to think about what to write today, all I could think about was how I haven’t had hot water in my house since February 20.  I’ll spare you the details, but we have a leak that’s resulting in the entire house having to be re-piped, an on-going effort.

Now, if I was writing erotic romance, hunky plumbers would show up at my door with tool kits…

But this is the real world.  I’m getting “competent” over “hunky”, but there’s nothing wrong with that.  In fact, when it comes to plumbing, electric, carpentry or brain surgery I’ll take “competent” over “hunky” any day.

Anyway, it’s made me think about bathrooms and plumbing–a lot–especially since I write historicals.  Many of my books are shipboard romances, and the intricacies of taking care of business in the past, especially in the small confines of a ship, fascinate me.

Sailors use to have two ways they’d relieve themselves:  They would urinate into large tubs, because hey, liquid is liquid, and if you need to put out a fire in a hurry, it’s better than using the drinking water.  The other bathroom needs were taken care of by hanging onto lifelines with your backside dangling over the bow of the ship, at the ship’s head, which gave rise to bathrooms aboard ship being called the “head”.

In her book Rough Medicine–Surgeons at Sea in the Age of Sail Joan Druett makes a point that other writers of naval medicine have made:  One of the biggest problems in the age of sail was constipation.  Combine bad food, not enough roughage or water, and then being told that you’re going to hang over the side to go while cold waves are jumping up at you…well, it’s not hard to understand why this was a continuing issue.

Now, I’ve got two sons, a husband, and four brothers, so “potty humor” has been a huge part of my life.  I sometimes wonder if I think about this stuff more than other historical writers, but it niggles at me.  If I’ve got a woman disguised as a man aboard ship, how’s she doing her stuff?  What happens when she menstruates?  I had to change the plot of one of my novels to a scenario where the heroine wasn’t bunking down with the boys for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was she couldn’t hang her butt out on the lifelines.   In another novel my heroine had a cunningly carved gourd funnel she kept pinned inside her trousers so she could stand up like the guys.  And if you want your own disposable funnel for being able to stand and deliver, I recommend these.

And then there’s the daily bathing thing.  Forget about it.  Most people were content to wash the important parts and not immerse their entire body in hot water on a daily basis, with good reason.  It was hard to get hot water, hard to fill a tub, hard to empty the tub. Plus, we always think to ourselves, “Euwww!  I could never live in the past ’cause they all smell awful!”  Well, yeah, they did, but you get used to it.  Seriously, your olfactory glands adjust.  That’s why you can’t smell yourself like other people smell you.  And if you think about it, our modern life with its smells of carbon exhaust and overly perfumed air might smell pretty rank to someone from 200 years ago more used to the fresh smell of manure.
Anyway, the plumbers assure me we’ll have hot water again.  Maybe by the end of the week.  So I’m optimistic.  In the meantime, I’ll keep writing about pirates and privateers and asking myself the really important questions.