Vixenwriter

You should pop over to the Sven Blog to check in!

Despite the holidays happening in the midst of the challenge, Sven was really successful for me on multiple levels. First and most important - It helped me to keep writing as my main focus. It made me accountable to myself because I had to think about it every day. And while I tend to do that anyway, it helped me keep on task when I’d have preferred to play scrabulous or check my email or whatever. And because of that, I was ahead on my task list and word count which played nicely into my sale to Berkley when I could turn in a finished manuscript early (yay!).

Wordcount wise - it was huge for me as well. I stopped counting after I hit 120K but I finished multiple books, wrote a few proposals and did a lot of revising and editing. I even finished one book from start to finish (instead of from chapter four to the end if I sold on a partial). I just got caught up in the challenge and it worked out nicely. Some days I did next to no new words because of all the editing I did, but other days, I just sailed through and made up for the low count days.

I’m going to keep the Sven Challenge going for myself because I think it’s been a big help to me. I hope it was for you all too.

We don’t all write at the same speed. We get blocked. We have outside demands on our lives so some days, some weeks, etc, are more productive than others wordcount wise. The important thing is - did you put writing where it needed to be in your life?

I’m old school about this writing gig. People approach it differently but I believe in doing what works for you. When you were tired did you try to get at least a page done or did you fall in front of your television? That’s a choice you make. It’s a choice I make. But it’s a choice nonetheless. You can talk about being a writer, or you can be a writer - again, that’s a choice. You don’t have to write every day if you simply can’t fit it into your schedule. But if you don’t write regularly, into all the time you can, *you’re* making the choice not to.

It isn’t easy. When a story is kicking my ass and my kids are having trouble in school and I have a four foot high pile of laundry to deal with and I haven’t had a moment to myself in weeks and I’m TIRED - I don’t want to do anything. I want to watch television and veg. And sometimes I do, but 9 times out of 10 I make myself get back in that chair and 9 times out of 10 I’m glad I did.

Okay so here’s the deal, a very real issue is being muddied in the middle of this war of personality. But the very real issue is what I’m most interested in as an author. I’d like to have a discussion about how to handle source material here. To try and learn from each other what we do and how we do it. Not just from a legal standpoint but from an ethical one because this isn’t an easy issue at the margins.

Participation is welcomed and encouraged! I think this is such a great place for a teaching moment about the business of writing and I’d really love to explore that on behalf of the 95% of us who try to do the right thing. But please let’s stay on topic. I’m not interested in re-hashing what’s happening between personalities - I want to talk about the *issue*

I use outside material when I write. By that I mean, I use research material and reference books. For instance I have a thing about Celtic mythology. I love it. But I love mythology in general so I’ve also used Indic mytho religious structure as well as Greek and Roman myth. I’ve used the Scotts version of Fae mythology and the Irish version as well as some Germanic mythos. It’s all fabulously interesting.

I also use city and state webpages, encyclopedias, treatises, and the gazillion law books taking up space on my shelves and taunting me with my student loan bills.

Generally, so far anyway, I haven’t cited the material because I tend to read books about mythology all the time and I use characters from mythology (like Aoife for instance) and give them a spin - also like Angra from Indic mythos from my early WK books. Certainly, the way I see it, if I used one source a lot, or actually took something word for word, I’d cite. That’s basic for me and I got that back in college.

Still though, the lines aren’t so clear to me out here at the margins. Should we then, as authors, put a list of books we read during the writing of our novels in an index? Not as cited material, which is different as I note above, but out of basic graciousness and appreciation to our bretheren who spend all that time writing these research books we use?

Where is that line? That’s what I’m interested in. I know where the line is in the middle and I know how to cite source material if I use it or quote it. But if we read a variety of creation myths to do background on a story but the story isn’t about creation myth so much and we’re using something that’s been passed down over and over and is in a multitude of places - do we acknowledge it anyway? I have like five books on baby names for instance, from back in the day when I was reproducing - I use them all the time to think up names. Do they need to be referenced in some sense?

What do you all think? Authors, where is your line? Will your line change now that this whole thing has surfaced? I must admit I’ve been thinking on it very strongly. Not because I’ve taken whole paragraphs’ worth of anyone else’s work but because I do a lot of outside reading for some of my stories and I want to do the right thing.

I’ve been asked what certain parts of my editing and revision process looks like so I’ll do my best to answer and try not to look too much like a tool:

So I’ve got this big black binder sitting open on a stool next to where I’m sitting. Inside are the 460 pages of Undercover. It works thusly - I write a first draft. No one sees the first draft and I’m always convinced it’s crap until I do the first read. Then I print it and put it in a binder and begin hand edits for revision.

Some pages are blessedly free of notes while others have stickies and hand written edits in the margins. My handwriting starts off very legible but I can tell when I look back when I’ve been at it a while. I begin to see what my repeated crimes are and attempt to purge them (overuse of a certain word or phrase - “murmured” is one, “just” or “well” often too).

Then, I take it chapter by chapter and upload it to my crit group.

They’ll find things I couldn’t see because I’m too close the material. They’ll call me out on my grammar crimes and my overlong sentences. They’ll help me make it better.

I’ll take their crit and make changes to the manuscript and then it’ll go to my agent. She’ll take a gander and will make comments and then I’ll tweak it at long last and send it to my editor.

All in all, the revision process will take about ten days. More if there are a lot of problems to be fixed.

Not very complicated or mysterious really. This part of the process is where everything shiny threatens to derail me. I start thinking about new projects. I get antsy about my schedule. I have to be really hard assed with myself.

Anyway, that’s a glimpse of my totally glamorous life. BTW, I have to hide my highlighters because my three year old likes to steal them to color with and now that my kids are reading (two of the three) I can’t use my old manuscripts as scrap paper with the older ones, at least the sex scene parts anyway.

Any other questions? I can’t promise I’ll know the answer or that I can give the answer but I’m usually pretty open…

So for a while because Megan, Anya and I had been ridiculously busy, we let the Maverick Authors slip a bit but we’ve got a brand new blog up, design courtesy Dreamforge Media (with a lovely helping of some technical stuff from Frauke who is also making me all sorts of shiny things I can’t wait to show you all)

I have some really exciting news but I can’t share it just yet…

BTW - did you all know my buddy Megan Hart (some might even say BFF) has a new release out from Spice? Well she does! It’s a very sexy short called This Is What I Want and you can grab it right now right through this here link!

Also, Lacy Danes has a Brief as well! Hers is called “The Invitation”

First a shout out to Frauke at Croco Designs who has (as usual) gone above and beyond the call of duty to not only create a fabulous splash page for my Vegas anthology but who’s spent a huge amount of her time in moving my website from my old host to her fabulous new digs at Janus Portal. She’s a fabulous designer and I adore her work and her as a person!

Also, the fabulous Dreamforge Media is designing a new blog template for the Maverick Authors! I can’t wait to unveil it. All kinds of exciting stuff going on!

Also, yesterday, the new RT came in the mail. I already knew I’d gotten a fabulous review for Ascension but EC had a backpage ad with one of the anthologies I’m in - Feral Fascination as well as in the Spring books preview, the Vegas anthology got a mention! It was quite lovely to see. Also, some friends got some great reviews, which is also nice to see.

Cooking on Battlefront - and I made a Battlefront book page here so you can read the loose blurb for it and get an idea of what the book is about. I’m just shy of 50K now, over halfway finished with the book and now that I’m getting ready to transition, I’m feeling better about pacing. The middle of a book is always the hardest for me to write!

Tonight is Battlestar Galactica Razor with my dude! It’s a movie that gives you the story of what happened on the Pegasus when the Cylons attacked up until the start of this upcoming season. Yes, yes I am a sci fi freak and I’m proud of it! This movie is on my calendar I so love the series, LOL. Plus, it’s good date night fodder with my husband.

Monday I’ll work on Standoff, it’ll have been a week since I finished so it had some time to digest.

Um, that’s really about it. I’m going to gorge on Gordon Ramsay today on the BBC. I love him so much.

I finished Cascadia Wolves: Standoff last night. And now my brain has eaten all my every day words. I spent part of my morning as I ordered my children around, pointing at stuff and making “I’m totally serious!” noises. Not that they took me serious or anything, but we all have appearances to keep up.

I’m happy, so very happy with this book. Made me cry when I finished it and it had a sort of rough start but once I hit that sweet spot it really just finished itself with me riding along and typing as fast as I could. I’ll leave it until next week and we’ll see how I feel when I pick it up again.

Now I have edits on Celebration for the Dead and second round on Wolf Unbound and then it’s on to Battlefront! I have it all printed out and waiting for me to pick it up and re-immerse myself in Sera, Ash and Brandt’s world.

All the while listening to Songs of Faith and Devotion over and over. Next week it’ll be something else, but for now, the dark emotion of the songs really gets to me. I don’t think I’m going to have happy and light music in my playlist for a while, LOL.

I had something else I was going to say but my brain ate it. So it probably wasn’t important. Probably. BTW, Jill Shalvis owns my heart right now. I love her writing. I keep wanting to stop what I’m doing to sneak some reading time in.

50K on Standoff! Yay!

Also, in yay news - Witches Knot: Thrice United is now available in print from Ellora’s Cave’s new print store!

To celebrate the recent release of Feral Fascination, the anthology containing Reluctant, in print, several of the anthology authors will be at the EC Reader Chat tomorrow afternoon so pop over to say hello, read fun excerpts and have a good time!

I’m caught up in writing today so I don’t have much else to say! Oh, other than if you write a disgruntled letter to the RWR and pretend to be just a reader but you’re really an author in competition with the books you’re complaining about? Naughty. And not the fun kind of naughty either.

But on to the good kind of naughty - I hear it’s Gerard’s birthday. My goodness, I think someone needs some birthday spankings!

oh and

after looking at those it feels more like it’s my birthday!

I have now turned the corner in Standoff and I’m entering the “end of the book” stage. I do have that vague, “god is this all just words put together in no coherent fashion” feeling in the back of my head as I ususally do at this part, but I’m flipping it off and I totally will call it a diva and shove it if I have to.

Also, in news that makes me giggly - So last night I got an email from the totally fabulous Rhian who’s sent me a link. She’s made a mini-movie and I’m in it. I watched it and laughed and laughed and laughed some more.

It’s violent in that summer movie at the lake is so if you’re very sensitive, don’t click the link. However, it’s totally cartoonish and also features Anya Bast and Megan Hart as well as Lila Dubois and Jill the Acadian.

Check it out!

Last night the dude and I watched Rise - a vampire flick starring Lucy Liu. I love vampire movies and this one was unusual and in the end I enjoyed it. I did think the timeline issues - flashback sequences threaded with current time sequences - were jarring and IMO, took away from the fluidity of the story. It was confusing AND, as my husband pointed out, kept calling attention to how she apparently had time to stop in at Gene Juarez for a color and makeup session in between killing evil undead. She did look very stylish, by the way. I think the wardrobe people did a great job.

It got me thinking about how technical issues in how we choose to tell a story can either enhance or take away from the overall experience for the reader/viewer. On one hand, it’s a bold move to do the flashback sequences the way the director did. An info dump slows down the story but with a story like Rise, it’s necessary. It could have moved more traditionally from the moment she was changed to the end, but he went another way. Interesting choice, it opens with girl kissing which well, let’s face it, keeps the dudes happy and it’s not like Lucy Liu is hard to look at by any stretch of the imagination, but it sort of fed into a quick buck sort of feel and then you’re jerked backward in time and then forward again.

Anyway, I’m rambling, but it made me think of Outlander (a book I love, love, love) and essentially, you do have some folding back and forth in time but it’s judicious and in Gabaldon’s case, it totally works because it’s judicious.

What do you guys think? What are some unusual technical things that worked for you and didn’t work? Memento comes to mind as a really brilliant story told unconventionally and just works well. Pulp Fiction too because it’s circular and you don’t quite realize it until the end and you’re like, “Oh!” In books though, I think messing with timelines is far more tricky than in a movie because the thread is mental and not visual. It takes longer to track back to the main story.

Over 5K yesterday on Standoff and I’m so thrilled! Last night as I was writing a scene that really only came to me a few days ago, I hit that sweet spot where the words just fell from my fingertips. I’m pleased with what came out and I feel like I *truly* know Grace now where I only got glimpses of her before. I love that! This book has been a lot like Chased was as I wrote it. I feel like I started off with an idea of who Liv was but she really revealed herself to me midpoint and it was a revelation to us both.

Books ebb and flow. Sometimes they’re fast and relatively painless to write. Other times you have periods when you’re sure the book sucks swampwater. I feel with this book I’ve had a clear overview but the writing has been a series of small discoveries as I put it all together.

Each time I write something I learn more about myself, my process and really, about writing in general. There are times when you feel like it’s just not coming together but you keep working and working and suddenly, things move and clear up and wow, it’s not the way you’d originally imagined it at that level of detail but it’s just exactly what it should be.

Because this book is the last in a four book story arc, I’ve had to be careful and weave all the loose threads into the whole. This is an interesting challenge. First because I hadn’t imagined it would *be* a four book story arc when I wrote Enforcer. It just worked out that way when I wrote Tri Mates and suddenly I thought, hmm, this is a big story, wouldn’t it be fun if I actually, oh say, planned out the series in advance?

Anyway, I outlined Wolf Unbound and Standoff at the same time, closing the loop and ending the story and the series. We’ll see if I want to do this again when I finish Standoff, LOL, but right now I’m thinking I would in a heartbeat.

Speaking of Wolf Unbound - I got my cover a la Dawn Seewer yesterday

WHEE! I love it. I’ve not worked with Dawn before but once I opened that jpg I was a fan for life.