I’m hyper-aware right now of how much I have to learn when it comes to writing.

Last month, I spent an idyllic few weeks at Lake Tahoe, writing, hiking and getting back in tune with who I want to be. During that time, I got some late feedback on some pages I’d posted to my online critique group that threw me for a total loop.

It wasn’t that the critique was off; it was dead-on. But oh, did I not want to hear it. I did not want to revise those pages one more time. I’d gotten a lot of other feedback on the same pages that implied I was good to go, but this one dissenting opinion haunted me.

I felt sorry for myself. I called my husband so he could tell me to ignore it. I drank some vino. I took a long walk and argued with myself, telling myself the changes my friend recommended simply couldn’t be done.

In the end I set it all aside for a good long month, until I got home to Austin.

Once here, I incorporated all the other feedback into those pages. I revised, again, for action verbs and the five senses. I ran the sucker by my true-blue best friend for her final word. I had Approval. I was good to go.

And riding that high, I made the revisions suggested by the Dissenting Opinion, just to see — and making those changes raised the level of my pages to a whole new high.  Even my husband smiled when he read the new version. (He’s by far my harshest critic, bless him.)

Have I learned anything? Hopefully. I suspect I’ll go through similar convolutions every time I hear feedback I know in my gut is going to help my writing, but which would require a lot of work or sacrificing copy I love.  But next time, I won’t wait a month to make those changes, not if I know they’re right.

I’ll try to remember that it’s far more important to get something right in the end, than to be right the first time out of the gate.

I’ve just discovered a wonderful thing, a lifesaving, marvelous, adorable thing: Leechblock.

This gem of a Firefox plugin allows me to block myself from viewing certain sites at certain times of the day. (Leeching away my valuable writing time.)

It’s simple: when I sit down to write, I enable Leechblock by selecting “Lockdown” for a certain amount of time. I can still get to Wikipedia to look up that all-important street name I need for a scene, but I can’t get to Gmail or News of the Weird or IMDB YouTube or any of the blogs I follow.

Voila! The best thing about this plugin is that it’s smart. It has options to disable its own options while a block is active (! get your head around that!) so that my very tech-savvy inner procrastinator doesn’t do a system runaround and turn the internet back on when I’m jonesing for a fix.

Check out the plugin author’s site to get a full list of the many terrific options.

Who needs more than a pen and a wordprocessor, right?

Right.

When I started writing, I thought that Word would be enough. Then I read a book that recommended outlining your story using index cards. Once you had your notes down, you could easily move them all around on a big corkboard to rearrange your story. So much easier than printing out actual scenes and rearranging them!

But not so easy to take with you - on the corkboard - to a coffee shop. And guess what happens once you take those cards off the corkboard? Yeah. Order, schmorder. I ended up with piles of index cards laying around my office - index cards with post-its attached, no less. Colorful but sad.

Then I heard a rumor that FinalDraft, the popular software program for screenwriters, had a ‘cards’ feature which would virtualize - huzzah! - my card dilemma. Some dollar$ later, I had hacked my way to a standstill. FinalDraft is just dandy - if you use it as it’s meant to be used. One day I’ll be writing a screenplay with it.

I was back to Microsoft Word and cards until one magical day I wandered into the wonderful world of SuperNoteCard. A program that’s actually meant for novelists sick of using index cards! for only $29! It has a few flaws and isn’t entirely intuitive, but it’s pretty damned great and helped me enormously as I made my way through First Draft in 30 Days, outlining my little heart out.

Then today as I was reading Nathan Bransford’s blog - ahem, writing - I came across a comment that led me to yWriter.

(The above pic is a screenshot of a yWriter storyboard showing scene progression arranged by POV.)

From my initial forays, this is the program of programs. It combines the best of SuperNoteCard - easy shuffling of scene order, ability to cross-reference settings, characters and objects, and an encapsulated view of my entire humongous manuscript - with the other key elements I’d hoped SNC would provide: a built-in scene timeline, POV indicators and chart, and a way to both describe a scene and write a scene on one “card.” Plus, drag-and-drop! And it’s FREE!

One caveat - the person who initially recommended this program did have an issue where they lost a draft of their manuscript due to a crash. Taking that into account, I’m backing up frequently. But I don’t think I’m going to stop using this program anytime soon.

Unless, of course, there’s something better out there. Anyone?

*** UPDATE ***

Nope, nothing bad - I’m even more convinced of the loveliness of yWriter. I just corresponded with Simon Haynes, the writer and software developer who created this in his (spare!?) time, and he’s very nice. He’s even set up a Google Group where users can go to request features and chat with each other about how great the tool is - check it out here: http://groups.google.com/group/ywriter. I’ve also learned that the software has received a 4-star review at PCMag, a very prestigious computer magazine. Congrats, Simon!

It’s always the first question I get when I tell people I’m writing a novel: What is it about?

I cringe, and describe the basic high level plot. Ah, oh. Vacant nods. It must be hard, it must be fun, it’s so admirable that I’m even trying.

I smile and say thank you and crawl away, wishing I knew what the hell my novel is “about.” I don’t even know what that *means*. How can I possibly define it? What could I have said that would have boiled a 400-page manuscript down into something not only digestible but tasty?

Well, now that I’m working full time on revisions on this blasted manuscript that I’ve been living with for nearly two years, I think I’m beginning to get a clue. This should not have been news to me: “What is it about” is a question of theme. My interragators may not have meant it that way, but that’s what *I* needed to know.

Theme. I didn’t have one, and my plot suffered. My characters suffered. My brain suffered. The theme ties the whole together, and I couldn’t see it until I had every plot point, turning point and character motivation top of mind, until I’d questioned everything from inciting incident to final resolution and thrown out all my safe assumptions about what the hell I’m doing writing a book. And now that I have a theme, I’m going to have to rethink everything again. But it will be worth it. Now I know what I’m going toward, and my characters will become more passionate and my plot will deepen and I’ll write a book I can be proud of. Goddamn it.

On a sidenote, while I’m sounding all high-falutin’ and grand and motivated and thematically sound, I’m simultaneously making resolutions, like: I will never start a manuscript without knowing its theme ever again. Which follows the many other resolutions I’ve made, such as “I will never start a manuscript without a thorough undertstanding of all my characters’ inner and outer motivations again, or without an outline, or without doing my research, or without a map.” I don’t know how much of that is actually possible, though. How much can a writer realistically know before starting a manuscript?

How would you end the sentence “I will never start a manuscript again without…”?

Anyway, to return to where I started. That’s the first question I get: What is it about? The second question varies, but so far my favorite has to be:

Will it have pictures?

I’m having a hard time staying focused on Panty Snatch today as I had an exciting idea for the premise of Booby Trap last night that’s just not leaving me alone. Great problem to have, right? I’m getting it all down in SuperNoteCard while I have it in my head and it’s flowing like butter down the side of a volcano. And the premise for the third book in my head, Tail Gate, is beginning to bubble as well…

I’ve also been thinking about yesterday’s post where I listed a couple of the things I fear about embarking on writing full time, and I realized that I said I feared I’d never get published. But I don’t. I’m not really scared of that at all - I think I wrote it because I’m expected to feel that way. It’s a trope: Aspiring writer fears she’ll never be published.

Actually I fear low-quality publication or my own loss of enjoyment in the act of writing far more than not being published. I *know* I will be published - it might take ten years, but if I keep learning from criticism, improving my writing, and never give up, it will happen. My writing career has already begun. It’s just the course of it that’s up in the air. Will I be published next year or in 2014? Will my first book sell well, or poorly? Will my second be published at all? Will I shift genres? What new tricks will I learn once I start hearing feedback from a wider audience?

All interesting questions, but not really scary. The only scary questions are: will my writing suck? Will I know when “good enough” is actually good? And will I ever be happy enough with my work that I’m willing to stop revising it to death?

Yes, that’s deliberate - adieu, not au revoir. I left my day job at a wonderful marketing agency on February 1 and haven’t looked back since.

It is simply delicious not working full time for someone else.

For the first time in six years, I’m determining what I do with each moment of my day. I map out my own plans, stick to them or not, and pat myself on the back - or not. When I feel inspired to do something out of the ordinary, often as not I can go ahead and do it. Need to watch Pride and Prejudice for the fifteenth time at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon? Go for it. Want to exercise at eleven in the morning? Hell, yes. Create a new recipe and cook it at 4pm? Sure!

Not to say work doesn’t come into it. I have a schedule - first revisions on my work-in-progress Panty Snatch, then writing a draft of my next manuscript (tentative title = Booby Trap). All in a few months, which means long hours and almost no time off.  Sometimes keeping my ass in the Aeron (yes, I bought myself an Aeron, I’m so not used to being poor yet) takes more willpower than Weight Watchers. I get discouraged and tired and fear I’ll never get published. Or worse, I’m afraid I’ll get published with a book so execrable I’m ashamed to tell anyone I wrote it.

But it’s all worth it. This is something I’m doing for me. I’m opening channels in parts of my brain that haven’t been used since college, as as those channels get cleared of the muck and dead animals  accumulated over all the years of non-use, the creativity will flow faster and faster like shit shooting through the sewers of my brain. Right out onto the page.

Now who wouldn’t want to do that for themselves? I ask you.

I’ve been a slug about blogging and the guilt has finally gotten to me, so here I am once again.

What have I been doing to keep me away? Revisions. Revisions, revisions, revisions. I am taking my current work-in-progress and revising the hell out of it. Well, some hell will stay in, but most of the hell - outta there. I’m looking at characterization (are my characters likeable? do they develop naturally-yet-surprisingly over the course of the story?), pacing (I tend to start too fast, I’m finding, and need to slow myself down to let readers enjoy the unfolding motivations and escalating conflict), description (those damned five senses, including, yes, smell, I’ll get smell in there if it kills me), the funny (it’s a romantic comedy, so both tone and plot must contain hints of insanity), the list goes on and on.

Written on sticky notes on my monitor right now:

EDGY
on the edge of being pissed off or thriled or excited or
EDGY

and

EVERYTHING HAS CHARACTER.
EVERYTHING IS CHARACTER.

The Edgy note is a reminder on tone and attitude for my main characters. The Character note reminds me to imbue my descriptions of secondary characters and inananimate objects (houses, rooms, cars, trees, everything) with character. So instead of describing a room as ‘cluttered’ I’d write something like ‘objects marched over every surface’… and then play off that metaphor to make the description of the room really a description of the owner of the room, the state of her mental health etc etc. Great in concept, but it didn’t come naturally in the first drafts and I’m going to have to go back and re-read umpteen bizillion times to catch all the meaningless descriptions I have scattered throughout my manuscript.

All of which is to say, WAAAA. I’ve been busy, and I’ve been lazy about updating my blog.

And I’d really like to tell y’all about my plans for the new year - my last day at my day job is February 1 - but that will have to be another post on another day. I’ve got revisions to do.

One and a half years after my short story “A Spaghetti Kind of Love” was accepted for inclusion in the anthology Recipe for Love, the book has appeared on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble!

This has been a great experience for me. I’ve learned a bit about the publishing industry - from this lowly angle I see large wheels, spinning slowly, no matter what size the publisher - and I’ve had my first taste of having my work edited. (I liked it.)

I’m a bit scared to read my story once my copy of the book actually arrives since it’s been so long since I wrote it. What will I see?! I’m betting that I’ll be tempted to rip it apart, filled with new ideas for making it better. To be honest I’m hoping that will be my reaction. If my writing hasn’t improved in a year and a half, I haven’t been working hard enough.

I am loving this conference! It’s very different than my first “nationals” last year, where I walked around in a gaga-haze, nearly fainting at the sight of my favorite authors doing exotic and unexpected things like eating food and drinking beer.

Because I started off this conference with the fantastic news about my contest win - which was totally unexpected as I thought winners would be announced August 15, the date I had marked on my calendar to start worrying - I’ve been spending more time trying to talk to agents than I’d originally planned.

I’ve heard a bunch of agents (and editors) speak, and have a better sense now of their personal styles and who might be a good fit for me both in terms of my personality and my planned career. I’ve even spoken to a few, including Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency, who’s just as nice, funny and intelligent in person as she is on her terrific blog.

I’m thrilled — my contemporary romance has placed first in the first contest I ever entered, the Central Ohio Fiction Writers’ “Ignite the Flame” contest. My twelve pages and short optional description (which has now changed, but you can read it in my post from May) are on their way to the desk of Chris Keeslar, a senior editor at Dorchester Publishing.

Even better, I learned that I won the contest on Wednesday while I was here in Dallas at the Romance Writers of America national conference, and I’ve had the opportunity to both meet and hear Chris Keeslar speak, and he seems like a very smart and personable guy.

*Curtsying to Chris across the cybermiles*