A Writer’s Life

Eight Steps to a Winner

| Melia Alexander

Many thanks to those who dropped by my last blog!  And to those who made a stop at Jacquie Rogers’ blog, too, I’m considering a character based on my mom for a future book.  I’ll have to tone her down, though.  Maybe lose the cigar?

When I chatted with Ashlyn Mathews at the Emerald City Writers’ Conference last week, she swore using Rafflecopter to randomly choose a winner from the list of blog commenters would be easy.  So.  I didn’t believe her.  (Sorry, Ash!)  Rather than figure out yet another techie-like thing, I decided to go old-school.  Listed below is the Fur Baby Selection Process.

Congratulations to the winner!  (Yeah, I’m making you scroll down to find out if it’s you!)  🙂

Step 1:  Place names in cat bowl.  Remember it’s 5 AM.  Try to be as quiet as possible so as not to alert kitties of activities that might remotely resemble food is on its way.

Step 2:  After unsuccessfully completing Step 1, stop the yowling by actually giving them food.  Now that they’re distracted, place the raffle bowl in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Pull hand back quickly so you can steady the camera (used to verify you actually went through the process in a fair manner).

Step 3:  Since camera was left on the counter, pull bowl off the floor before kitties realize there’s PAPER in it and actually pull out a winner, thus thwarting your documentation efforts.

Step 4:  Pull food bowls off the floor so they become more willing participants.  (Don’t they realize people are waiting for the results?)  Ignore scowls and vocal complaints.

Step 5:  Turn camera on and then place bowl on floor.  Avoid stepping on Alex’s tail or he’ll nip your ankle, hiss, meow-up a storm, and leave, thus putting all the pressure on Bennett to pick a winner.

Step 6:  Position yourself off to the side so you can take a great shot.

Step 7:  Repeat Step 6 because cat heads fill the frame.

Step 8:  Wait exactly eighteen seconds until a winner is chosen.

And the winner of Melia Alexander’s very first contest drawing is (insert drum roll here!): 

Congrats, girl!  FB message me to verify your e-mail addy.

Okay, fun’s over.  Back to edits.

-Melia

Tailgaters and Football and . . . Romance?

| Melia Alexander

I’m a huge fan of Duck football.  Have been for years.  Which is something of a surprise since for most of my adult life I’d considered the sport a huge waste of time.  (I know, huh?!)  But thanks to Hubby, it was either learn to tolerate the game or end up on the sidelines for at least four months out of the year.  THAT wasn’t happening.  I also figured that if I was going to spend a minimum of three hours per game watching a bunch of guys chasing after a ball, I might as well learn as much as I could.

I don’t know about other writers, but I have a hard time turning off the writing brain.  Okay, okay, so I managed to forget about my WIP through the tailgater last weekend.  It wasn’t hard.   

But as I sat in the stands at Autzen Stadium and cheered on the Ducks later, the writing brain clicked on, which led me to an interesting observation: there is a parallel between football and crafting a romance.  And it’s all about conflict.  (Can you tell I’m in edit-mode with my WIP? 🙂 )

I mean, think about it.  The opposing team runs onto the field and the crowd boos.  Yet, without the opposition, we wouldn’t have a game, now would we? 

So too with story.  Happy people doing happy things in a world where everything was perfect all the time is kinda lame.  There would be no story.

In a romance, conflict questions how two people with differing views can possibly fall in love and have a happily-ever-after.  If it isn’t easy to justify a relationship with REAL conflict in REAL life (beyond “he doesn’t put the toilet seat down”), I think it’s even harder when you’re making up a story!  Although some authors are brilliant at it.  Alas, that isn’t me. . .. (Umm . . . hello?  Why else would I be thinking about this stuff during a football game?)

So as I cheered the Ducks, I also came up with a couple of more ways to create greater conflict for my hero and heroine.  (Funny how that worked!  They are sooo gonna hate me!)  Life, after all, isn’t always about the tailgater.  Sometimes, you gotta pay attention to the football game, too.  😉

-Melia

And The Work Goes On

| Melia Alexander

I’m spending lots of time with my hero and heroine these days, mercilessly putting them through what the uber-talented Cherry Adair refers to as “what is the f***ing point of this scene” test.  Yep,  I’m in edit mode.

The most difficult part of the process for me is answering Cherry’s question.  What is the point of the scene?  Is it necessary?  Does it add anything to the story, or do I just love the words and want to keep them?  Worse, do I just not want to gut the entire scene — even when soul-deep I know it needs to go?  (Said like I’ve never experienced that before!  🙂 )  Truth is, I’ve hacked off more words from a WIP than I would’ve liked over the years, and am loathe to do it.  Even now.

But in order to fulfill my promise to my readers, I have to be tough.  I have to be merciless.  I have to make full use of the delete button.  Working on it!

In my experience, editing is where either the magic happens or splitting a vein open would be easier.  As far as this WIP goes, we shall see. . ..

-Melia

From Writers . . . With Love

| Melia Alexander
Left to right: Melia, Paty, Ella, Diana, Marie, and Karen

I made a special trip to visit my writer-friends in Central Oregon over the weekend.  Aside from the total confusion whenever I drive there — I swear, even a navigation system doesn’t help! — I always have a great time with my fellow chapter mates (RWA’s Rose City Romance Writers).

Sure, the drinks flowed.  Sure, there were a ton of laughs.  And, yeah, there was some conversation about the, umm. . . attributes of the perfect, mouth-watering hero.  (Well, duh.  We are romance writers, after all!)  But through the three or so hours we were together, our conversation was dotted with serious discussions about the business end of writing.  Taxes, anyone?  To incorporate or not?  And what about marketing for authors who write in multiple subgenres?  Is this any more of a challenge?  (Think Paty Jager who writes Western historical, Western contemporary, and Native American romance.)

One of the last questions we tossed around: When we hit the bestseller lists 🙂 what advice would we offer fellow writers?

Ella Zane:  You’re writing to entertain.  Go ahead and be excited about your character, but know your plot!

Paty Jager:  Learn craft, and read the genre that you write.

Karen Duvall:  Always ask “why” as you’re writing.  Why is the character doing this?  Why are they saying that?  Why do they want this?  Everything a character does has to be motivated, tied together, and the reader has to be clued in.

Marie Harte:  Entertain yourself, and you’ll entertain your readers.

Diana McCollum:  One word – perseverance.

Melia Alexander:  Write with passion.  Live your characters as you write their stories.  Allow them to shine through the words you put on the page so that they  invoke emotion in the reader and she lives the story, too.

All in all, re-connecting with my Central Oregon Roses was a fabulously, fantastical, stupendously awesome evening!  (Beat that Marie Harte!  🙂 )

And it turns out even sassy, sexy, fun writers can be serious, too.

Sometimes.

But not too often —  heaven knows life’s too short to be taken seriously most of the time. . ..

-Melia

It’s All About The King and I

| Melia Alexander

Yep.  Hubby and Niece dragged me away from my writing cave last Saturday.  (Groan.  As if I’d done nothing but lounge around all day, just waiting for something to do.)  And while I’d always wanted to see The King and I, the timing couldn’t have been worse – I’m in the home stretch of this draft and I need to get it done!

I digress.  The point is, I did go.  I even put on a dress.  (Mainly because it was clean and didn’t need to be ironed.)  And, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed myself!  But, true to my writer-self, I couldn’t help but analyze the storyline.  (Sick, I know.)

You see, for me, the most important word in storytelling is CONFLICT.  Without it, there isn’t much of a story.  Who wants to read about the perfect hero and heroine living the perfect life?  B O R I N G!!

The importance of conflict was brought home as I sat through nearly three hours of this musical.  How could two people from two completely different worlds ever be able to see past their differences to the essence of who the other is?  She’s a schoolteacher from England, a single mom, and totally believes in equality of the sexes.  He’s an arrogant, self-centered, alpha-male with a bunch of wives and sixty-seven children (at the beginning of the story) who also knows that with one word he could make anything happen.  Oh, yeah, and he’s King of Siam, too.  Pfft.  Talk about conflict!

Throughout the show it made me really think about the elements that make this story a classic.  And, yeah, I thought about what’s needed to fill in the gaps in my current manuscript.  (I love when that happens!  I think. . ..)

So.  Thanks to The King and I, I’m back in my writing cave, wondering if the conflict between my hero and heroine is strong enough.  Hmmm. . ..

-Melia

Heroes, Bestsellers, and Chocolate Bliss

| Melia Alexander

On a gorgeous Pacific Northwest day, I came out of my writing cave, and met up with Lily Santana and Jessa Slade. 

Lunch with my fab writing friends, Jessa Slade and Lily Santana!

Our meeting place: The mother ship, that beacon of brick and mortar that draws writers and readers into it, sucking hours of life away in continuous bliss – Powell’s Books.  At least, that’s where we were the first three hours.

Over coffee, lunch, and drinking chocolates, we shared our writing process, what makes us excited about writing, and the importance of chocolate.

And so I give you our nuggets of wisdom:

–  Chocolate, we all agreed, stimulates creativity, so for writers, this is a must.  (That one was easy!)  Which was why Jessa and Lily later decided we deserved lots of it for each chapter we completed.  Lily suggested 160 ozs. per book (8 ozs. per chapter x 20 chapters).  Personally, I go through waaay more than that!  (Life’s short.  Books take a long time to produce.  Why have limits?)

Chocolate bliss!

–  Writing is hard.  You know that saying we writers have heard over and over?  About how splitting a vein open is easier than writing?  Personally, I think that’s true.  Yet we pound away at the computer, we agonize over sentence structure, we give up sleep, and we help our process along with a lot of chocolate (see the first nugget above).  And in spite of the relatively low return (unless you happen to like rejection), we do it over and over again.

Jessa said, “If you can be happy doing something else, do that. . ..  Then again, happy is overrated.”

Lily said, “What I like and don’t like about writing is the the same thing: it requires a level of focus I don’t find anywhere else.”

–  Why do we write?  Lily admitted, “I love the feeling of falling in love.”

Jessa was blatantly honest.  (Would you expect anything else?)  “I like hot guys.”

I write because I can’t seem to quit.  It’s an addiction, this driving need to commit words to paper in some form that makes a reader smile.  Besides, in this crazy world, where life sometimes spirals out of control, I’m a sucker for a happily-ever-after.

–  In choosing story structure, Lily builds around a scene that comes to her.  She has to know the hero first (like I do!), what makes him tick, and why.  The heroine comes next because, as she stated with a grin, “I’m always the heroine.”

Chocolate-induced happiness!

For Jessa, she starts with an idea.  “But that’s a bad thing.  Why?  Starting with an idea can lead to preaching, whereas starting with a character or situation has story implicit in it and gives you a stronger start.”

–  Bestseller lists.  What author doesn’t dream of hitting the bestseller lists?  When she does, Lily said, “I’m buying a waterfront home for my family to enjoy.”

After careful thought, Jessa piped in with “a lake front home, a mountain home, a beach home.  All with housekeepers!”

Me?  I’ll take a custom-made pair of Christian Louboutin shoes.  Oh, and what Jessa said.  But I’d like a cook and a gardener, too!  😉

After wandering through Powell’s Books, eating lunch al fresco, and consuming the perfect drinking chocolate at Cacao Drink Chocolate, I felt refreshed, reconnected, and strangely validated as a writer.  Then again, books, food, chocolate, and the company of fabulously supportive writer friends will do it every time!

-Melia

Can You Say “Happy”?

| Melia Alexander

I feel like singing!  Which, depending on where you are relative to my location, could be a bad thing.  My sisters seem to have the singing and dancing part down.  I do not.  I have been told I can write, so I’m going with that.  Which is why I feel like singing!  Yeah, I’m in a mood. . ..

Anal writer that I am, I generally give myself about four weeks to figure out the hero and heroine’s inner and outer journey.  I know, I know!  Four weeks is FOREVER!  But, I do have a day-job — also affectionately known as the male observation lab — so four weeks is about right.  This time, I finished a bit ahead of schedule, which means the draft is, theoretically, ahead of schedule.

So, I leave you with the beginning of my storyboard, while I happily pound away at the keys!

Storyboard for my current manuscript (I swear the wheat grass and water bowl are not for me!)

Happy writing!

-Melia

The Journey Continues

| Melia Alexander

Rejection, rejection, rejection. Blech. A few weeks ago I received one from an editor who didn’t like the way the relationship between the hero and heroine developed. There was no request to see anything else I might have. Sigh. Well, okay. Throw that one on the pile.

And just a couple of weekends ago, I’d left a meeting with my critique partners. As per their M.O., they’d rightfully bashed the manuscript I’d brought. (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that they’re doing their job, but are you kind of seeing a trend here?)

So it was an unbelievably thrilling surprise when I opened up my e-mail while at a grocery store I’d stopped at on the way home from that meeting. What I thought was yet another editor rejection instead turned out to be something else entirely – an invitation to discuss the possibilities of a manuscript I’d submitted. REALLY? I had to read the darned thing three or four times to convince myself it was meant for me.

It was. The world pin-pricked into a single point then. Just me and my grocery cart full of red wine and a couple of packages of dark chocolate. (Hey, I was re-stocking essentials for the week!) After performing my version of what my author-friend Jenna Bayley-Burke terms the “kermit-flail,” I took a deep breath and tried to ground myself long enough to get out of the store. (By the way, my apologies to those at Trader Joe’s who witnessed that display. And thanks to the staff for not throwing me out!)

After I floated back to the mortal world, I came to an important realization. Sometimes we writers who choose not to go the self-publishing route get so many rejections we forget something inherently true in this business: being published means finding the right editor. I don’t know about you, but for me, finding that one special editor who believes in the story, and who believes in my writing skills, is who I’m searching for.

Discussing my manuscript with the editor above was surreal (Should I say this? She’s probably following my blog!) and EXTREMELY informative. I’ve learned so much about where I need to focus in order to make my story a better experience for readers. That’s always been my goal, and I’m excited to know she supports it! Now I just need to make the necessary story changes. Piece of cake, right? 😀

Meanwhile, the journey continues.

Okay, so I’ve bared my soul, now it’s your turn. Care to share where you are on your writing journey?

Retreating back to the edit cave,
-Melia