E is for Editing - A to Z Challenge

I have a love/hate relationship with editing. I love editing because it can make or break a book. Bad editing can be so distracting a book becomes difficult to read. Good editing sculpts a rough draft into a well-crafted read.

Even my Sims are writers!

On the other hand, I hate editing because I’m so picky, it’s hard for me to know when to quit. And by the time I finally do finish, I’m sick of the story, the characters, even the Word file staring at me from the computer desktop. I regain my sunny disposition and enthusiasm for the project as soon as I had a few days to decompress, sleep in, and play a few hours of the Sims 3!

I’ve just finished a couple of rounds of edits by myself and turned in the manuscript to my editor. Now, I’ll follow my editor’s advice for about 3 more rounds, and off to the printer the book goes!

We're gonna need another red pen soon!

You’ll find plenty of editing advice out there on the internet, but here are the most useful ones I’ve found:

1. Show not tell. I wrote an earlier post about this here.
2. Cut out extraneous words. Apparently, I like to use “just,” “very,” “that,” and “really” a lot. Autocrit programs are a great way to help you make your manuscript a sleeker read.
3. Use tangible descriptions. Check out this great article to see how specific words stimulate your brain.
4. Search and destroy those passive verbs. Was/were/is, etc. make for a weak sentence. Try to rework it and choose active verbs instead.
5. Keep dialogue tags simple. I’ll tackle this topic in next Monday’s blog. 

These are some of my most common mistakes. What are yours and how do you fix them?

D is for Dreams - A to Z Challenge

Dreams are funny things. Take this one for example:

Aliens love to mall walk!

I'm at an abandoned mall turned airport getting on a plane (but the plane is more like a spaceship). Then I volunteer to get off the plane to deal with the aliens (think Sigourney Weaver) in order to clear the way out of the mall. A few of us start shooting the aliens (because apparently we all brought guns to the airport and nobody cared) and I tell everyone to shoot for the head. I realize I'm really low on ammo and then I wake up.

Weird, right? My mom blamed it on watching a little too much “Walking Dead” - as if there could actually be too much of that excellent show!

Sunday night, after new episodes of "The Walking Dead"

Whatever the reason for dreams, they can serve as excellent inspiration. The basic idea behind my first book was dreamed up… literally. I woke up thinking about a pair of twins casting a spell and the idea for a book was born.

I love writing dream sequences. They can be full of crazy imagery, buried meanings, and a stream of consciousness style. And those dreams can mean anything - from character worries to premonitions to story foreshadowing. Several dreams figure in my upcoming book, along with a couple of nightmares as well. The characters wonder what the dreams mean, and sometimes they think they know... but can a person ever be sure they understand the meaning behind their dreams?

What’s the craziest dream you’ve ever had? What did you think it meant?

C is for Conference - A to Z Challenge

NEC RWA Conference

At the end of this month, I’ll be attending a writer’s conference in Salem, MA. It’s an annual conference held by the New England Chapter Romance Writers of America.

I’ve only been to one other writer’s conference, the RWA national conference in New York City several years ago. I hadn’t been published yet and was looking for a home for my historical romance novel, Pandora’s Legacy. While I didn’t find a publisher at that conference, it was well worth it. I learned a lot of writing, plotting, and marketing tips.

Most importantly, the conference made me feel like a real writer, not just a crazy person talking to the people in her head and scribbling sex scenes in the back room. Writing can be a very solitary occupation, and getting to talk shop with others made the whole thing feel much more real. The idea of writing something that would then be turned into a physical book… well, of course that’s the goal, but here’s a whole building full of people who did it! If they can do it, I told myself, with enough hard work, I could do it too.

So I’m totally psyched for the Salem conference! It’s my first one as a published author and the first time I get to meet the owners of Crescent Moon Press in person!

If you’ll be at the conference, let me know and I’ll look for you while I’m there. 

B is for Books - A to Z Challenge

Today, I’m going to write about books. It goes without saying that I love them. I could (and have) read for days because it’s easy to lose myself in another world.

It turns out there are scientific reasons I love books too.

You know that great smell an old book has? It’s caused primarily by lignin, a compound in the wood used to make paper. Lignin is similar in composition to vanillin, so as the lignin breaks down over time, it releases a vanilla scent. The paper is often treated with various chemicals as well, which, as they age, can add notes of camphor, wood, mushroom, and almond.

As it turns out, there’s also science behind the ease with which we can lose ourselves in a good book. Reading fiction, especially when it’s particularly descriptive, stimulates specific areas in the brain. Whether you read about something or actually experience it, your brain will respond similarly. There’s an excellent article on the subject here that I highly recommend.

Happy reading!

A is for Astrology - A to Z Challenge

Welcome to day 1 of my A-to-Z blogging challenge! Nearly every day this month, I’ll be writing a new blog post. Yep, that’ll keep me busy! 

Speaking of busy, I’ve been working on a project recently. It’s a novel for Crescent Moon Press’s Sabian Symbols signature line. I sent the first official draft of my book to my publisher Friday night!

My new book's tag line:
In a Zodiac-based world, finding a mate is easy.
Falling in love is the hard part.

The story takes place in a world that believes strongly in astrology. It was fun to write, but a challenge to research. I relied heavily on the expertise of my husband, John. He’s been studying astrology for years and can actually make sense of those scary-looking natal charts! 

There are so many facets to astrology, I had plenty of ways to explore what I thought this fictional astrological world looked like. People’s charts could determine everything from where they would live to their chosen careers. The most interesting aspect to me was the idea of a council that determined your best romantic match based purely on how well two people’s astrology charts matched with one another. 

What are your views on astrology? And if such a world as I described existed, how would it be different from this one?

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