My Journey #7: Reflections on the Writing Process

Wow, it’s been a while since my last post. For that, I apologize. I came to the realization after my last post that I just need to shut up and write if I was ever going to get my book finished.

Well, I can very happily say that it’s finished…almost. It’s actually with my editor right now. I should have cover designs in the next week. Then the book still needs to go through a copyeditor and formatter. So the release date is still TBD depending on when I can get those scheduled.

As I look back over the last 6 months that it took me to birth this book, I have learned a few things from the process. I’m sure I will continue learning as I enter the publishing stage, but I wanted to share my take-aways on the writing process.

•  I heavily researched how to write a book before I started this process – how to outline a novel, how to write engaging dialog, how to write fantasy (rules around magic, creating creatures, etc.). I even attended a writer’s conference. The research and outlining alone took me 6-8 weeks before I even produced the first line of the novel. As a first time writer, I think all of the research was helpful. It was hard to keep track of and implement every piece of advice, but it gave me the confidence I needed to get started.  As I start on my second book, I don’t expect I will need to go through this process again.

• I had taken the approach of writing chapter at a time, editing it, and sending it out for beta feedback. As I embark on book 2, I plan to write and edit the entire book first before sending it to beta readers. I found that I couldn’t keep up with the feedback because going back and fixing was delaying my forward progress. I also found that as I wrote, the story would take a different direction that required me to go back and make some significant changes to chapters that had already been beta read. I don’t want to waste my beta readers’ time by asking them to re-read chapters. It also made it difficult for them to continue reading forward because they future chapters were now out of context due to the changes made earlier.

• Rather than making sure every chapter was perfect before going on to the next, I stopped editing each chapter in favor of just continuing to write. Whenever I would hit a roadblock – couldn’t think of a word, or thought writing a description of something would take too much time – I would insert a place-holder in the text and keep moving. Then after the first draft was complete, I went back and filled in all of the place-holders. This kept my forward momentum going so I didn’t get stuck in a rut. 

I have starting outlining book 2, but it is already a quicker and easier process. I am very excited to be entering the publishing phase of this journey, and I will share that experience as well.

In the meantime, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on the cover reveal and the release date. I’ll also be offering special pre-release promotions for readers get on board early!

My Journey #6: Pitch Slam

This past weekend I attended my very first writer’s conference, the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in New York City. I am only an hour from Manhattan, so I felt like I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check it out. It had a varied agenda over the course of 3 days that included sessions dedicated to improving your writing technique, marketing your books, and discussing self-publishing vs. traditional publishing.

However, the real draw of the conference was the Pitch Slam – an opportunity to pitch your novel to literary agents. You get one hour to pitch to as many agents as you can get to in that time. It was a lot like speed dating for writers. I spent days preparing the perfect pitch that had to be delivered in less than 90 seconds. Then the agents get 90 seconds to respond to your pitch.

Approximately 50 agents were in attendance and the key is to do your homework in advance and select the ones that are interested in your genre. Since I was vying for their time with a few hundred other writers, I managed to get to 6 agents in my allotted 60 minutes. I was thrilled when all 6 agents were interested enough in the pitch that they asked me to submit my first few chapters for their review! I have sent everything in, and now the waiting begins.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my pitch with you and would love to know what you think of it. Please post your comments to my FB page. Thanks!

My Urban Fantasy novel, Unhidden, is the first book in a trilogy about Emma Hayes, a 28-year-old woman with a long forgotten past whose choices will impact the fate of worlds.

Emma, a former military Special Forces soldier turned deadly mercenary for hire, was told she had been in a terrible car accident 10 years prior that left her with no memory of her life before the crash.

The meticulous and highly calculated world she has created for herself comes undone while carrying out a routine mission, when she is attacked by supernatural creatures intent on capturing her. As Emma fights to survive the next few days against the growing hoard of monsters that are in pursuit, she discovers that they are being controlled by a frighteningly powerful mage who she finds herself strangely drawn to.

Emma realizes these attacks are somehow connected to her forgotten past.  In order to save herself, Emma must unravel the mystery of who she was and why she is both feared and coveted by her enemies and allies alike. As she embarks on the journey to discover her true identity, she learns that the lines between good and evil are sometimes blurred, and she’s not sure which side she falls on.

Unhidden is a fast-paced, suspenseful, action-packed novel about a woman struggling to uncover the secret hidden in her past. Her ability to come to terms with who she is and what she is capable of may decide the fate of the coming war between humans and supernatural creatures.

Unhidden Teaser #3

Unhidden Teaser #2

My Journey #5: Be Brutally Honest

I have been up to a lot over the past few weeks in the way of writing this book. It all stemmed from a desperate need for feedback. I have 8 chapters in the bag and the only person who read the entire thing was my husband. Don’t get me wrong – he is absolutely awesome and his feedback has been invaluable, but I just needed more of it. So where does one go to get such needed commentary? A few different places…

One of the first things I did was check out a website called Meetup.com. For those of you not familiar with this site, it is a place where people can create or join groups on pretty much any area of interest that someone can think of. I went on the site looking for writing groups where I could connect with other authors and we could talk about each others’ work to make us all better at the craft. I was able to find a group in my area and I joined.

It was an interesting experience. I live in a fairly rural area, so the group has so far consisted of only about 5-6 people…and they are quite an odd cast of characters. We meet every other week in a local auto body shop and we each read a segment of our work and provide feedback. It’s been okay so far, but it’s difficult to get really substantial and useful commentary when it is based on only a small segment of the book at a time, and occurs so infrequently. I really needed some folks to read the entire set of chapters and let me know if I was headed in the right direction.

My next step was to enroll in an online course through Writers Digest University called Writing the Paranormal Novel. The course is lead by a published author, so I was very excited to get input from someone knowledgeable and experienced. The cost was $199 for a 6-week course and there is an online forum available to post assignments, share your work and collaborate with the other students in the class.

I am 4 weeks into the course and have found the reading assignments to be very helpful (our “textbook” is Writing the Paranormal Novel by Stephen Harper). I have also gotten some useful advice from the other students on the assignments I have posted. Again, they only consist of 500-700 word excerpts from my book, but the comments have been sound. The biggest drawback is that the professor has been almost entirely absent. He has been weeks behind on grading our assignments and hasn’t been actively engaged in the dialog…and hearing from him was the entire reason I signed up for the course. But I do still think it was a worthwhile step to take in this journey.

I then turned to Facebook for beta readers. I posted inquiries on my FB page, but this didn’t net me much because I am still building my network and didn’t get any takers. So I reached out to my sisters who run the Love Between the Sheets book blog and tried to leverage their network. This worked out much better for me and I was able to find a few beta readers. The feedback is still coming in, but so far the consensus is that I’m on the right track.

Here is some feedback I just received on my last graded assignment from the online writing course. The assignment was to write a scene of conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist.

A good action scene and the dialogue crackles. Your protagonist is good at martial arts and other combat stuff. I think you have a real talent for action. Lots of tension, jeopardy, conflict, and drama comes out of this scene, but it is not melodramatic. Possibly some of the dialogue is too elaborate for the situation, one person having a choke hold on another. I think if you pare down the talking a little, that problem might go away. Make the exchanges short and terse. There isn't usually any long-winded sentiments in a situation like that.
Otherwise, your writing really flows. The personalities are thrown in sharp relief. This is a really terrific story you have here, and it really engages the reader's attention. It's a good old pulp fiction tale that could have been in Thrilling Wonder Stories or Unknown or any of those science fantasy magazines. 

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Unhidden Teaser #1

My Journey #4: And Let the Writing Begin!

In my prior to posts I talked about where ideas come from and outlining your novel. I think I spent about 6-8 weeks preparing to write my book, from researching how to structure a novel, to developing an outline, to building character backstories. I probably could have gone overboard and continued to refine my outline, but I wanted to leave some wiggle room for creativity and change as I developed the story. In any case, I was getting antsy to start writing, and so I did.

On my first day, I was able to squeeze in about 15 minutes of writing in the early morning before my kids woke up and found me on the patio with a cup of coffee. On the second day, I grabbed 20 minutes at bedtime after the kids when to sleep and before I passed out with exhaustion. My first efforts produced 1,500 words. This made me feel a bit inadequate after seeing authors on Facebook post that they wrote 10,000 words in a single day. It’s hard to put that into context until you start writing.

I have read that there are approximately 200 words per page, and the average novel should be between 300-500 pages, or 60,000-100,000 words. That might put it into some context. It ended up taking me two weeks to write my first 2 chapters – 8,422 words. That’s less than some writers produce in a day! I might have been slow in comparison, but it was more for lack of available time than writers block.

In fact, I found that I was able to write the first few chapters fairly easily. The story flowed out of me, and I attribute that to having done the outlining work in advance. The outline gave me guidelines, but I still found that I left myself enough flexibility to make modifications as I went along. Also, my first three chapters are heavy on the action to draw the reader in. The next two chapters involved more dialog and character interaction. I found that writing the action scenes came fairly easily to me, but I struggle a bit with the dialog.

I have found myself hitting spots where I can’t easily find the right words, or just the right description, or even the right sequence of action. But rather than getting stuck in those places, I make a note in brackets at that point in the text, highlight it so I can easily come back to it, and then I move on. I refuse to allow myself to get bogged down trying to make it perfect the first time. I figure that I can always come back later and fix it – it’s more important just to get the first draft down on paper. My method is to then return to those highlighted sections after I finish the chapter and clean them up before moving on to the next chapter. This process seems to be working well for me so far.

As of this blog post, I have completed the first five chapters. The biggest challenge I have had so far is in finding people willing to read it and provide me feedback! I have given it to all of my family members, but no one has yet had the time to read it (running Love Between the Sheets is a big job after all). My husband is the only one to read the entire story, but I would prefer someone more objective. If there are any beta readers out there interested in helping me out, please PM me!

Given the challenges I have had in getting feedback, I started seeking out local writing groups in my area. In my next blog post, I’ll tell you more about that experience. Talk to you next week!