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I received copy edits today for my April 2010 release, In the Darkest Night. This is a little earlier than I thought they were going to show up and I’m going to be really busy for the next 2 to 2.5 weeks.
In that vein, I’ll try to answer comments over the weekend, but I’m not going to have time tonight. Also, I didn’t get a chance to write a blog post today, so I thought I’d share a video. This is the hivinau dance from Tahiti and it makes me think of the Work In Progress (WIP).
Last night, I was minding my own business and watching the Cubs-Astros game. I had the lights off and the computer booted down for the night because I was on my way to bed and I was only going to watch the bottom of the eighth inning before I turned the television off, too, and went to sleep. The Astros’ pitcher was ejected from the game and they brought in a new one from the bullpen. His name was Valverde. “Valverde,” I said. “Let’s hit this guy.” And that’s when it happened.
If you guessed a new character showed up, you’d be right. His name? Valverde.
I have no clue who he is. I have no clue what his story is. I have no clue if he just showed up briefly or if I’ll be writing him at some point in the future. He told me that he wasn’t part of any of the stories/worlds that I have on my To Do Project List, but characters have lied about this in the past.
All I know about him is that he’s fairly easygoing. Or at least that’s what his energy felt like. That could very well be surface stuff that he puts out to the world to hide his intensity, but I won’t know until I spend more time with him and get to know him. Of course, he’s not around today. I wanted to kind of check in again and get a sense of him again, but he’s gone. Will he come back? I don’t know. If he does, I hope he waits until I’m done with the stories that I want to work….
Ooooh. I think I just figured out which world he belongs to. Interesting. Very interesting. I’m going to end this blog here so I can mull this over a little bit.
Each character has their own voice, their own way of talking and thinking in various situations. For me, a lot of the writing at the beginning of the book has to do with finding those characters’ voices. The thing that makes it so difficult is that it’s situational.
The original chapter one in my Work In Progress (WIP) was in my heroine’s Point of View (POV) and I had her voice. But this chapter took place when her world was almost completely ordinary.
In the original version of chapter two, the hero’s voice was the one I struggled to find. I’d written the prologue in his POV, but that had been maybe a year and a half and two (or three) other heroes ago and I didn’t have it when I got to his scene. Then, after much cutting and rewriting, I had him! And there was much rejoicing.
All was not well in Patti-land, though. I knew there was something wrong with what I had written in the book. I just couldn’t figure out what. I added another scene to the front of chapter two, but that still didn’t fix it. And then one of my writing buddies said that after the prologue, chapter one was just flat. There was nothing in the chapter that did anything for the story until the very end. She suggested I start with the scene in my hero’s POV instead.
And she was right. I did what I always tell beginning writers not to do–I wrote a whole chapter explaining the story to the reader. Blah, blah, blah. While the interaction between the heroine and her friends was interesting (and helpful) for me, it had no place in the book. I cut it with barely a whimper.
This required a great deal of rewriting of the hero’s first scene which was now the opening of the story. It took a few fits and starts–okay, it took a lot of fits and starts. I have more versions of chapter one for this book than I’ve ever written for any chapter in any book ever–but I did eventually persevere. And then an interesting problem cropped up with chapter two. I lost my heroine’s voice.
I knew why. The situation had changed. Events that I saw happening at the end of the original chapter one have now already happened and that changes her actions and behavior. Plus I’m opening with her in a scene that’s high stress for her anyway and really unusual.
I’ve been struggling and cutting and restarting this chapter over and over, too. But today I think I finally found her voice. I think I finally have keepable pages in this chapter. I think. I hope.
If you’re one of my Twitter followers (www.twitter.com/Patti_OShea), you’re aware of my purchase a few weeks ago of a Dell Mini 12. I was hauling a 15.4 inch laptop in and out of the Evil Day Job and I’d reached a point where there was so much pain, I knew I had to come up with an alternate way of writing. I had an Asus eee, but that was 8 inches and when I tried to use it to write, it was a complete fail. The keyboard was too scrunched up for me to build up any speed and hunt and peck made me insane.
I decided to go looking at what was available in light weight laptops/netbooks and I discovered there were a couple of computer makers selling 12 inch netbooks. My first laptop was about that size, and while it weighed as much as a tank, I knew the size was workable for both screen and keyboard. I decided against the ten inch because I didn’t want to risk it still being too small to work on.
I comparison shopped next, looking for which companies offered a 12 inch, how much their model weighed, and price. I eliminated all the 12 inch netbooks that were in the $1000+ range. That was ridiculous! That left me with Dell and HP, and since the Dell weighed enough less to make a difference, that’s the one I ended up buying.
So after about a month, what do I think of my new netbook?
Big thing is that the weight made a huge difference. I no longer have pain from hauling the laptop in and instead of carrying the case on my shoulder, the netbook fits in my tote bag. It’s incredibly light and that was huge for me!
The other big thing is that the keyboard is nearly full size and I can type easily on it. The period and question mark keys are a little tiny and I have trouble hitting the right one (I usually hit both), but that’s the only issue I have with typing on it.
These two things along make the purchase a total win! There are a couple of negatives, though.
I hate the touch pad. I finally found a way to turn off the scrolling feature. It was disconcerting to suddenly have the entire page scroll to the side, especially when I didn’t realize the touch pad had a scrolling feature. It’s better now that it’s off, but I still have a problem getting the cursor to move despite adjusting the sensitivity of the pad. I’m debating buying one of those little laptop mice to alleviate this issue.
No disk drive. I ended up buying a USB plug and play CD ROM drive so I could load software to write on. Let’s face it, if you’re a writer, Microsoft Works doesn’t cut it for word processing.
These are minor nits, though, and while the mouse thing is frustrating, it’s not unworkable. The big thing is that the Dell Mini 12 is light and usable. I’m giving this purchase a thumbs up.
It’s no secret that I’m awful at titles. There are some authors who are so good. I see their titles and I think, man! I wish I was that quick and clever. Unfortunately, I’m not and this is something I struggle with on every single project.
My latest title saga begins with the synopsis I wasn’t supposed to be working on. It’s for a project that I want to get to next, but not now. Now I’m supposed to be writing the Work In Progress (WIP), but instead, I wrote a synopsis, revised it, and got it ready to send out to my writing buddy. But I need a title for this project that I’m not supposed to be working on.
My first thought was Screaming Like Demons. Yes, I was listening to Nickelback. Hey, music helped before! In the Midnight Hour got it’s title from Rebel Yell by Billy Idol. I was desperate, okay? 
I never thought it would stick with the book, but it did. I’ve had more people tell me that they start singing Rebel Yell when they see that particular book. Could have been worse. At least the radio station didn’t play REO Speedwagon or the Little River Band.
But back to my current saga. So I thought about “screaming like demons” only my h/h are demons, so that didn’t really work. Okay, I thought, what about “Demon’s Scream?” Um, no go there either since there’s really no screaming involved. “Swinging From the Ceiling?” Okay, I decided, it’s time to turn off Nickelback.
Maybe some word with demon. I tried a variety of different combinations and I actually came up with one that I like and that fits the story on two levels. And then I began wondering if it sounded too much like it belonged on a horror story. Sigh.
For now, I’m using it, but I’ll continue to try to come up with something more paranormal romance and less horror. I’m not holding out much hope.
Remember, I’m doing a workshop tomorrow, Friday July 17th, at Romance Divas called Torture For Writers: Putting the Screws to Recalcitrant Characters. In it, I’ll cover ways to get to know your characters better, to go beneath the surface. I’ll also talk about how writers can get in their characters’ ways and a couple of ways to stop the left brain from blocking the right. I hope you’ll stop by and ask questions! (You’ll need to register.)
I received word that the art department is working on the cover for IN THE DARKEST NIGHT, my April 2010 book, so if y’all would like to offer positive vibes to the universe that I get a great cover, I’d surely appreciate it. I’ve so got my fingers crossed!
It sounds as if my cover is going to have a more action/adventure bent (And since I write action/adventure romance, that’s perfect) and that both my hero and heroine are going to be there because I was asked if they use weapons in the book.
They use magic, not weapons, but I offered to add some cool looking knives to one of the fight scenes. I was thinking maybe my heroine transports them into their hands because they’re elaborate, something more likely to be used in a different world, and if someone wasn’t trained to use them correctly, possibly dangerous to the wielder. I can hear Kel thinking if he wasn’t careful, he’d slice himself up. I can also hear him complaining that the weapons were much better for close, hand-to-hand combat than for the kind of fight they’re waging. But then his heroine isn’t trained, so she doesn’t know better.
The hard part is waiting to see what the cover will look like and that won’t be for another month to six weeks. Most authors actually have no say in the cover (in case you didn’t know that). The closest we get is filling in the art facts form describing what our characters look like and what the book’s about. Then we wait. And hope. And beseech the cover gods. 
It’s tough being a control freak without control.
A couple of news items to report. First, IN THE DARKEST NIGHT, book 4 in the Light Warrior series, is now on the schedule for an April 2010 release. They’re working on the cover now, so I’m offering up pleas to the cover gods as we speak.
Second item, I’ll be giving a workshop at Romance Divas on Friday (I’ll check comments on Saturday, too) titled: Torture For Writers: Putting the Screws to Recalcitrant Characters. My workshop will deal with some methods to get more information from the characters and also what to do if the writer is the one getting in the way of the story. I always add the caveat that there are more ways to do things than what I mention and that you should do whatever works best for you. I’m offering a few more tools for the arsenal.
For the last week and a half, I’ve been dealing with computer issues–or rather one computer issue. I lost some of my email folders. I could still see them on the machine, but they weren’t showing up in Outlook Express. For the first week, I tried to fix it myself. I did online search after online search, tried free programs, tried a program I had to buy and nothing retrieved my email.
I would have given up here because most of the email on my computer isn’t that important–in fact, a lot of it is there because I haven’t taken the time to go through it and see what I can get rid of–but I also have this habit of emailing notes to myself about various books. Some of them are stories I’ve finished, some of them are ones I’m working on, but others are just ideas. Those were the bulk of the missing folders. 
That meant I needed to call in an expert. And after four days of working on it, he managed to retrieve about 2/3rds of my missing folders. I don’t remember the emails inside the folders, so I have no clue what, if anything, is missing from within, but at this point I considered it a miracle to have anything back at all.
I’ve learned my lesson. I will never hard boot down my computers again. I will back up email in two places. I will use gmail to back up email as a third place.
My other realization out of this mess is that I need to go through my email. I have 89 notes in my inbox and nothing stays in my inbox that I don’t have to deal with in some way. If I get a note and I don’t have to do anything, I stick it in another folder. Some of my notes date back to April 2008. Some of them are important.
I also decided that I need cleaning out the email that is unnecessary. A lot of it was kept for a reason at the time, but that time has passed and so has the information. For example, I started doing some deleting last night and found notes from my writing buddies from 2005 about books that that had been released years ago. Why was I keeping all those notes? Um, no time to go through them.
Can I go through all my email and trim before I either get 1) too busy or 2) too bored? I don’t know, but I have to give it a try.
Characters can be funny. When I started the Work In Progress (WIP), it was in my heroine’s Point Of View (POV), and though I had a few fits and starts, she was talking and it rolled. Then I hit chapter 2 and it was in the hero’s POV and I struggled to find his voice. I kept thinking maybe I should just stay in her head since I’m having so much trouble with him.
Then, as it turned out, I trashed everything I had and started over with that chapter 2 scene in my hero’s voice/head. After some revision and smoothing, it worked and then it was time to do the new chapter 2 in my heroine’s POV.
Um, yeah. She’s not talking now. Because of what happened between the original chapter 1 and the new chapter 2, how she thinks and feels has changed in the story has changed dramatically. That means the pages I have from earlier aren’t helping me get in her head for the pages I need to write and they’re not helping me figure out what she’s thinking and feeling now.
I know she’s nervous, but I’m not sure if she’s unnerved by the situation or the hero or both. But at the same time, she’s a confident person and she’s dealt with a lot of people in her life. She’s not going to be a tongue-tied wallflower. But knowing what she’s not isn’t helping me figure out what she is.
That leads to a lot of cutting. I write some, it feels wrong, I mull, and then I delete what I have and start over. I’ve done that a lot with this story, more than I have with any other at least with the first two chapters. I’m hoping that once the situation and characters are in place that things will be easier.
In the meantime, I get no real guidance from her and I write blind. The other morning we’ve (that would be the heroine and I) decided that regret is too strong a word choice. We’re going to try sorry and see how that works. A day later, she decides that yes, regret is the appropriate word. She’s killing me!
The ironic thing in all this is that I’m putting together a workshop for Romance Divas called Torture For Writers: Putting the Screws To Recalcitrant Characters. None of my outlined methods are working here. Of course, my heroine isn’t exactly recalcitrant, just reticent, so maybe that’s the difference. End result is the same, though–no keepable pages. Maybe I just need a day where I immerse myself in my heroine’s world. I have a lot of music on my iPod for her, so it might be a viable option even though I rarely write with any sound to distract me.
Patti O'Shea's passions are writing, airplanes and traveling. Fortunately, she's been able to enjoy all three. Find out more about Patti.
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