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Ten Steps to Publication

August 28, 2009 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

On Saturday August 22, Charlotte Lobb and I taught a full day workshop sponsored by OCCRWA. It was a special workshop arranged by the OCC Board to offer more resources for writers, and it was the second such workshop offered this year. The first one was a Plotting workshop by Diane Pershing back in January.

I discussed Character and Conflict, and Charlotte talked about Point of View and Dialogue. Every writer can always learn something new, even after many books (I picked up some great tips on dialogue from Char.) It was a small group, only about 17 people or so, which made for an intimate class that encouraged discussion. This made me think about the great resources available to aspiring writers from groups like OCC, which sounded like a good topic for a blog.

Ten Steps to Publication:

1. Write. If you don’t write it, you can’t submit it and no one can publish it! Find your own schedule, your own rhythm. Every writer’s life is different, and every writer’s process is different. Find what works for you and do it, no matter what. Make the time.

2. Join a writer’s group. OCCRWA is a great example of a valuable writer’s group. There are monthly meetings with two speakers every month! There is the contest, which gets your work in front of published author and editor judges. There’s the newsletter and the email loop. There’s cool special workshops like the one Char and I just did. The most important thing a writer’s group can offer, however, is support. No one understands the angst of a writer better than another writer.

3. Get a critique partner or group. Writers tend to be introverted individuals who hang out alone in front of their computers. Some of them are even too afraid to show their work to anyone. In my seventeen years as a serious writer, I have found critique partners/groups to be an invaluable objective eye. Every writer has a blind spot. Is there a phrase or word that you overuse? Is there a grammatical error you always make? Your critque partners will find it and alert you to it before you send off the manuscript.

4. Enter contests. Entering contests is a good way to get objective feedback, but you should have reasons for choosing the contests you enter. The Orange Rose from OCCRWA is one geared to get your manuscript ready for the Golden Heart or submission to an editor or agent. Or maybe you want to enter a contest because a certain author or editor is judging. Perhaps you’re worried about your synopsis so you enter a synopsis contest. Always have a reason, even if that reason is just to support your local chapter. 🙂

5. Know when to stop editing the first three chapters. Many aspiring authors write a dynamite three chapters, then edit them until they squeak. There is such a thing as editing the life out of pages, and you want to avoid that. Walk away from chapter three and move on to chapter four. An editor can’t buy only three chapters of a book.

6. Finish your book. As stated in number 5 above, an editor can’t buy only a few chapters. They need to see the whole book. Just do it. You will be astounded at the sense of accomplishment you get from writing The End.

7. Read new authors. The new authors are the writers who sold their work within the last year. This tells you what editors are buying. Plus you get some great reading material!

8. Learn about the market. Writing is a joy, an outlet, a balm to the soul. Publishing is a business. If you want to get paid for your work, you need to learn about the market. Read the RWR. Subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/) so you can get Publisher’s Lunch, a daily email that tells you the news in the marketplace. There is also a daily email listing the deals made that day by editors and agents for all genres of books–and the subscription is only about $20 a month.

9. Set goals. No one gets anywhere without setting goals. If the idea of writing a whole book overwhelms you, then concentrate on writing the next page, or the next paragraph, or the next chapter. Keep your goals realistic according to what you can reasonably accomplish. Setting impossible goals guarantees failure. Remember: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

10. Let go of the fear. We all have a fear about getting published. I’ve published 11 books (#12 currently in the works), and I still get nervous around release time. Every writer is worried someone will tell her that her baby is ugly. Don’t project, just deal with the here and now. And don’t be afraid to finish that book and send it out. We’re all dying to hear what you have to say!

See you on the shelves!

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e-maginings: Writing Again

July 17, 2009 by in category The Romance Journey by Linda Mclaughlin tagged as , ,

This week I started writing again after, literally, months of hibernation. That is, if you count a three-page synopsis and revisions as writing. I did spend a lot of time thinking about the project and tweaking the plot until I felt I had a complete story. I have to say, it felt good.

That’s the good news. The bad news is I was thinking about my story and not what I was going to blog about, so I have nothing. I don’t feel too bad about it though. You see, I started writing this week after a very long hiatus. 😀

Now if I can just keep up the momentum, maybe I’ll even finish the story. Wish me luck.

Linda McLaughlin
w/a Lyndi Lamont

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e-maginings: June Year’s Resolution

June 16, 2009 by in category The Romance Journey by Linda Mclaughlin tagged as , ,

I’m thinking of going on a diet after years of eating whatever I wanted, which reminded me of this entry from the Urban Dictionary.
I subscribe to their free Word of the Day and find many of them quite entertaining.

June Year’s Resolution:

A New Year’s Resolution that starts June 1st instead of January 1st. This is assuming the original act of self improvement has failed from January to June and it is time to start over with something else.

Tim: “I thought you quit smoking as your New Year’s Resolution?”
Eric: “Yeah, I tried but… I’m going to work out instead. It’s my June Year’s Resolution.”

June is a good time to reassess those New Year’s Resolutions or goals or whatever you want to call them. If you made any resolutions or goals, that is. If you’re like me, it’s all too easy to drift through life, letting each day run its course and focusing on whatever seems most urgent. Lately I seem to feel more and more unable to focus. I used to have an adult attention span, but now I seem to have one more like a two-year-old. I don’t know if it’s the passing years or the fractured nature of modern life. So many things compete for our attention: 24-hour news cycles on TV, email, blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, etc.

Recently I started reading Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher, who says “The skillful management of attention is the key to happiness and fulfillment. Live the focused life.”

This is good advice for any writer, as the act of writing requires our focused, rapt attention. It has been a while since I’ve really been able to get caught up in writing a story.

Dieting requires focus, too, since the dieter has to pay attention to what goes in the mouth, not just nibble mindlessly. Maybe being able to focus on one will help me focus on another. Wish me luck.

What about you? How are you doing with your goals and resolutions?

Linda McLaughlin / Lyndi Lamont
http://flightsafancy.blogspot.com/
http://www.lyndilamont.com

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Presenting…Mary-Theresa Hussey, Harlequin Executive Editor

April 24, 2009 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , ,
MTH Presenting…Mary-Theresa Hussey

Did you know that when Harlequin Presents launched, it was intended to simply be a verb, that is Harlequin was “presenting” the author to the readers? Well, here I am to present Mary-Theresa Hussey, Executive Editor of the Silhouette imprint.

What does she do? She is responsible for overseeing the overall direction for all Silhouette lines: Desire, Special Edition and Romantic Suspense at the moment, as well as working with her own individual author base.

She is a remarkable reader with an amazing memory and is the unofficial “go to” person for all queries received that start: “I read a book about a guy with a girl and an escaped bear and a car race, but I can’t remember…” But let me let her speak in her own words! Tell us, how did it all begin?

“I began as an Editorial Assistant for Silhouette Romance, working for Tara Gavin in ’89. She said she knew she wanted to hire me when I sat down, saw Diana Palmer and Ann Major covers on her wall and knew the characters names!

From that point on I moved from Silhouette Romance, Special Edition and Intimate Moments, back to Silhouette Romance to be Senior Editor and then Executive Editor for Silhouette. I was also lucky enough to be in on the start of LUNA Books, and still work with many of those authors.”

My list is fairly eclectic. I’d love some Romantic Suspense or Desire writers, and currently work with Red Dress Ink and MIRA authors as well as a lot of paranormal/fantasy writers for Romantic Suspense and Nocturne as well as LUNA. While I’m not as active in acquiring as some other editors–I have a lot of management responsibilities as well–I do keep an eye out for strong projects to bring forward for the company.

“I first started reading series romance when I was 11. We were in Ireland and I ran out of my Nancy Drew titles and my aunt (also Mary Theresa), gave me a batch of Mills & Boon titles. The first one was a Janet Dailey title called THE MASTER FIDDLER and I was hooked by Cholla (yes, that was the hero’s name!). After that, I discovered the stash in the library and used book stores and I’ve never looked back!

“Even in college I used a friend’s local address to get access to the library so I could feed my addiction throughout the year. (I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out on that crime. 🙂 ) I still love the books we publish, and my only frustration is that I’ll never get to read them all!

“I read a lot of Presents, Desire, Romantic Suspense, Special Edition, Intrigue and Blaze and a smattering from the other lines. I’ll also read a bunch of the MIRA and HQN titles as well. And of course all the LUNA titles I didn’t work on! So when I graduated and discovered I could actually get a job working for this company and get these books for free…Well, my fate was sealed!

“I was a series addict from a young age! Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Rick Brant, Cherry Ames, Vicki Barr, Trixie Belden, The Happy Hollisters, The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Tom Corbett and more were followed by Tolkien, Heinlein, Norton and others. Characterization, dialogue and fast-paced plotting are and were key. Along with romance, I still love fantasy, romantic suspense, mystery, thriller and larger than life stories.

“The best part of this job is access to the wonderful people—authors and colleagues and readers. Even when I’m reading a manuscript that won’t be publishable, I feel that there’s a sense of hope and positivism in romance that I don’t always find when reading other genres.

“For me, the most difficult part of the job is rejecting manuscripts and dashing hopes. It’s especially hard when it comes to projects that aren’t really very bad, but there’s nothing special about them. As we say, we can often work with a storyteller who needs structure, but someone who has structure but no voice, well, that just isn’t something that an editor can easily fix.

“On the positive side, one of my purchases has been for debut author Rachel Vincent’s werecat series. STRAY came out in ’07 and ROGUE in ’08. [Isabel interjects that Rachel made her debut on the April 13th 2008 New York Times Bestseller list at #32, whoo hoo!] and PRIDE is out now. I’ve already read the proposal for PREY. She’s got a wonderful voice and energy and enthusiasm and I really look forward to everyone else reading these projects.

“I have always felt that series novels have a ‘formula’ in the same way that other genre fiction or certain types of poetry does. There’s a structure, a rhyme scheme, an expected conclusion and a theme, but the writer’s voice and subject matter make it sing…or falter.

“And at the heart of genre fiction is the characters. The reason readers can return to a familiar story idea is the characters are believable, relatable and filled with emotion. The ability to have a reader live vicariously through the character is what makes a real storyteller.

“It’s not an easy thing to do either—I’ve tried maybe twice to write something and never got beyond two pages. The commitment needed to finish a book is intense, and the work is hard! I have total respect and admiration for those who make it look easy and who can face the screen or empty page day after day.

“As for what it takes to make a good editor, most editors I know are intensely curious about a lot of things, but always about people. They watch movies, read magazines, obsess about TV and pop culture. They respond to the zeitgeist, but what interests them is the individual in the situation. They also have to have great memories and incredible patience, as they read a manuscript multiple times!

“They must be willing to invest themselves by striving to help the author say what she wants to say as clearly and cleanly as possible, walking a delicate balance between being a “first reader,” a representative of the publisher and an advocate for the author. Communication is key, and making sure that the end goal—of a “good story, well told”—is achieved.

“If I wasn’t going to be an editor—and money, skill and talent were no object!—I’d probably like to be a photographer for children, landscape or even weddings. But it makes a nice hobby at least!”

Their loss is our gain—though Matrice is also our unofficial photographer and in between the numerous piles of books, her office has many beautiful photographs of children and landscapes and family events. Truly, a renaissance woman.

Isabel Swift
http://isabelswift.blogspot.com

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Writer-Person Digs Deep

October 3, 2008 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

by Cait London

We all have life-lint, memories/incidents/visual scenes that attach to us while we travel through our lives. Bits of our lives remain quietly attached to the writer, waiting to be tapped and used in a unique story.

Question: Are there really unique stories?
Answer: While certain underlying elements can be common, each writer’s style and life experiences create a unique story. Repeat: We are each unique with our own stories.

IMHO, the best stories are built from scratch, from digging around within our collection of life experiences. To start from a pre-made story line (i.e. Secret Baby) is not digging deep, not exploring the who/what/why layers, though the final story may fall within that pre-made category. For instance, in developing my psychic triplet trilogy, (FOR HER EYES ONLY* is an Oct 2008 release) I basically understood how a mother relates to her daughters, and how those daughters relate to each other (well, not in the psychic sense J). Or as Kathleen Eagle says, “I’m selling them off in pieces.”

Sponge-like, the writer absorbs everything around him. My best story lines came while sitting in waiting rooms. Or traveling. The feel of the story locations came from actually visiting Montana, Lake Michigan, and Lexington, KY, the psychic triplets’ homes. Since I am basically artistic (a trait common to many writers), the handbags, sculptures, and jewelry designs were fun to fictionally create. I love Celtic jewelry and an ancient brooch is spotlighted in the psychic triplets’ story arc. Runes and Vikings have long intrigued me, as have psychic-seer elements. In short, much of Me is chocked within my novels.

Our own life experiences can be fictionalized. Just for fun, let’s bump them up, taking them to another dimension. Here’s mine (these can make a fun bio):
Landscape Designer (I’ve planted a few roses in my day.)
Interior Decorator (I’ve painted walls, shoved furniture around.)
CEO (I run my household.)
Technical Engineer (I can use a television remote.)
Chef (Pots and pans manager.)
Lighting Engineer (I change light bulbs.)
Director of Security (I lock the house doors.)
Director of Finances (I pay bills and budget.)

While that’s fun, it’s also a serious examination. When you actually make a list of what you do throughout the day, it’s quite long and filled with great story-fodder. Tap into yourself. Use You.


Cait London’s OCC writer series began last month. Visit CaitLondon.com for more on craft. FOR HER EYES ONLY, the conclusion of her psychic trilogy is an October 2008 release.
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