Archive for the 'Writing' Category

January 18, 2006 | Writing

I met with my critique partners, Beth and Sloane, last night. We celebrated Sloane’s sale to Triskelion with champagne, talked about writing for awhile, and then, they proceeded to kick my butt until 11pm. I was prepared, open, and took it like a trooper. Then I decided that maybe selling used cars, would be a much better career. I’m not saying anything derogatory about used car sales people. I’m just picking on them. I can at least take heart in the fact that my story is solid, my characters are developing, the black moment between Elizabeth and Stephen is about to happen, and I’ve got point of view down. It’s me and comma’s, and I’ve exorcised my fascination with the word ‘that’, but apparently picked up a couple more. Easy fixes and I made notes and will correct all of the problems, PLUS, rewrite my basement love scene. Somewhere along the line, I went out of point of view and all sensuality disappeared, like the heat in the basement. So, this evening, I’ll read the lecture Beth wrote on writing love scenes, put on some Barry White, put myself in Elizabethan point of view, close my eyes, and hope my son and husband don’t come in the room and think I’m having a seizure. Well, I know hubby won’t think it’s a seizure, but he’ll get other ideas. I don’t think he wants me asking questions about what he’s feeling, physically and mentally during our ‘private time’. So he would just turn around and leave.

Yes, sell used cars. It’s not a bad job. I could get lots of fresh air, meet different personalities, schedule my own hours, and even write while working. I want to hear my name called from a microphone, and as a sales person it would be. “Yasmine Phoenix to the showroom.” “Yasmine Phoenix, where are you?” “Yasmine Phoenix, your agent on line two.”

So this morning, I’ll clean up around my house, scan and make notes on Strunk and White’s, The Elements of Style, and run errands. Then this evening will be free to get back to line editing and get the entire manuscript for them to read before I send it out.

Writing is in essence a lonely career and harder than it looks. If we’re not beating own selves up, some agent or publisher is doing it for us. When we get the call, and finally see our story in print, friends and family either wonder what took us so long, or think ‘Hey, that looks easy.’ It took Tom Clancy over ten years to get The Hunt for Red October published. As writers, we go ‘there’, as Beth calls it. We go where our characters live and love. We feel their emotions, and put it on paper. Then we tear up the first draft and do it again.

It’s like I was taught in tennis, one point at a time, one game at a time. Writing is one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one emotion at a time, one paragraph, one story at a time. So, I’ll keep the car sales position in the back of my mind, but I’ll keep working on being a damn good writer. What job have you thought would be easier than writing? I hear they’re looking for owl vomit collectors?

January 11, 2006 | Writing

I haven’t blogged in a couple of days, due to a physical ailment that resolved itself. Unfortunately, it didn’t until I drank two bottles of a barium cocktail for a CT scan. My insides are all normal and glowing, thank you very much. Luckily, the scan wasn’t for my brain.

Right now, I’m taking a couple of online classes which are really fantastic. Line editing my book, and I WAS reading a couple of short books on writing. One of them, I’ll be posting on my Favorite Article and Book page soon.

But all of this knowledge started wearing heavy on my brain, making my eyes hurt. My brain went into overload and damned if I thought I couldn’t write a single word! Is there such a thing as too much information? I’m not talking about the kind of information you get while sitting in a bathroom stall and the woman next to you is discussing on her cellphone how she caught her husband cheating, and was asking her friend what should she do? True story. In January, all of the writing magazines, and other magazines do it as well, are filled with articles on how to write, how to set goals, how to start the year off writing. Getting goals for losing weight, saving money, etc. How to, how to, how to. If you read all of them, which unfortunately I almost did, you could start doubting if you’ve gotten the right characters, or point of view, or even the right genre. Articles that tell you how to set schedules, deadlines, meet your goals. Then if you read and make notes, you’re supposed to sit at your desk and write. Write ,with all these ideas swirling around in your head? Write, when you’re trying to make sure you printed your spreadsheet out correctly to track your daily work? Write, if your muse says, ‘Forget it, I’m not going to be put on some schedule like a train!’ Then leaves you high and dry, as to try to write an emotional, highly charged sex scene! How dare she!

Well, take heart. Or at least one sentence or paragraph from an article. Or, have critique partners like Sloane Taylor and Beth Anderson, who have already written blogs and articles that you can cut and paste to fit your writing style. The major word – your. I know I fall somewhere between those who write by the seat of their pants and those who keep detailed journals. I know I need to plan days maybe weeks in advance, and leave open spaces for those emergencies that pop up. I know my muse will haunt me in my dreams for nights on end, if I don’t sit my butt in my chair and write every day. I know I need to track my work, not word by word, but for me scene by scene, chapter by chapter. I know that there are some things I can control in this writing life of mine, and other things I can’t. I need to keep clearly distinguishing between the two. What motivates and keeps me on track, may put you in writer’s hell, stunt your creativity. We all write, but we don’t all write the same way. The trick is what works for you, so that one day, YOU can write an article on how to write!

January 6, 2006 | Writing

Well, it’s the first Friday of 2006 and today has been busy. Not with writing though. I had tennis practice and running around to do for the family. But this weekend, I plan on continuing my line editing. I found when I changed my story around to focus more on the relationship between Elizabeth and Stephen, there were other subplots that had to be removed and saved for the sequel. My critique partner, Sloane Taylor, blogged her business plan for writing and I’ve taken some notes to try and use some of her plan for mine.
So, I have questions for you, and the answers can’t be written until Sunday evening. How did you spend your weekend? What writing did you do? Did your muse up and take the weekend off? Or did your characters go sit in a corner and refuse to participate?
Also, starting on Wednesday, January 11th, Beth Anderson will be answering questions on my Writing, Humps, Lumps and Dumps page about point of view. Stop by, read what she has to say and she’ll answer questions. This will be a weekly event, January 11th, 18th and 25th. Questions should be sent to my email address, YasminePhoenix@aol.com
Hope you have a writing good weekend and hope to hear from you next week!

January 3, 2006 | Writing

How did you decide what story you wanted to write? Did you immediately know what genre you wanted to write for? Do you know what a genre is? Did you know the names of your heroes and heroines? For me, it was 1989 and I was watching Cher on tv. I thought, what if Cher was really bi-racial? What if Cher had hid her ethnicity and had a black family that didn’t know anything about her? Then, I started thinking about a black successful attorney in love with a white attorney and both families opposed to their union. Her father, is opposed because he was once married to a white woman at a time when such marriages were illegal in the U.S. Cher, or Chantel, would be the daughter that shows up when her father dies and Elizabeth, the black daughter, is told about her. Then, I added a black attorney, who is interested in Elizabeth and causes her white boyfriend,Stephen, to be jealous and break up with her. Romeo and Juliet in black and white and don’t die. Looking back, my original story was very raw. Still on the cow, raw. Obsessed with writing this behemoth of a book, I enrolled in Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Program. Of course, after I finished the program, I figured I had a book that agents would be beating my door down to present me. That illusion, still exists, but tempered by years of rejection, learning point of view, syntax, what is a romance, and crying. Looking back, I’m so very glad I was rejected. The story was in the book, but it wasn’t a book. I even avoided paying a so-called agency to pitch my book to agents and editors.
Next came years of writing sometimes, you know, when you’re not busy working a full time job or having a second child, or raising both children. I joined a writers group in a suburb and that helped for a time. An article I read in the Sun Times, by Mary Mitchell, about black romances, directed me to Romance Writers of America. From there, I found Love Designers, a RWA chapter, less than thirty minutes from home. I attended their yearly conference, joined the group and began reading romance books of all types for review. This helped my writing and putting my story together better. From Love Designers, I found Beth and Sloane. Actually, Beth found me and Sloane. There was a fourth person, but she didn’t work out. Beth is the one with the 2×4, and she will repeat what you haven’t learned until you do. Then she moves on to something else, so it benefits you to learn it – quickly. By now, my story was better, but still not tight enough. I still had Chantel and my hero Stephen was weak. I submitted the entire novel, per request to Genesis Press, and it was rejected. But the acquisitions editor rejected me with a two page letter, that outlined my story problems, and she said I had potential. Well, I do. So now, the story has a stronger Stephen, Chantel is not even in the first book, the father doesn’t die, Elizabeth is still torn about marrying Stephen, but this time when I submit, the book will be better. Romeo and Juliet, in black and white and alive. Tomorrow, I’ll post about interracial romances, why I think they’re really hot right now, and how I detest when the story is weak.