This is the title of my post at Romance University, where I give some hints on how to crack the WIP before it cracks you. I discuss things like braincrumbs, and snake bombs, and mom spit -- which means you're dying to check it out, right?
Head on over there and hopefully you'll get some inspiration, or at the very least, some laughs. I'll be right here, working on this WIP. *cracks knuckles*
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Ever since I mentioned my Hierarchy of Avoidance, people have been clamoring to hear more. (By "clamoring" I mean I got an email, from one person. And it was about something else entirely. But it WAS on the same day I made my initial comment.)
So, my Hierarchy of Avoidance theory. . . Actually, it's not really fair to call it a theory, since I've used it so many years now. It's definitely become a lifestyle, and a very productive, workable one.
Don't be put off by the word "avoidance". At first glance it may seem like it's in the same evil category as procrastination. But this isn't the case at all. The Hierarchy of Avoidance (HOA) is actually a useful tool for getting things DONE, whereas procrastination. . .well, we all know it just stockpiles tasks until there's so many of them that you just get buried, and then you're tapping out a Morse code signal from inside the rubble, hoping for rescue (preferably from a hottie with a refreshing beverage).
The important thing to remember about the Hierarchy of Avoidance is this: Not All Tasks Are Created Equal.
There is always a WORSE task than the one you don't want to do. Think of it as a Food Pyramid for To Do lists. Or for the medical types, it's triage, only for chores.
Now I'm not advocating that you ignore tasks, because that would turn into the Hierarchy of Ignorance, and that's a different situation entirely.
With my patented HOA program, you actually get things done, by avoiding other things you don't want to do. You can accomplish a task that seems yucky, or too difficult, or agonizingly debilitating – by comparing it to something that is even MORE yucky, MORE difficult, or WAY MORE debilitating to your psyche.
Okay then. Deep breaths, through the nose. And exhale, repeating after me: ACCOMPLISHMENT, through AVOIDANCE.
Let me give you an example. You need to clear those cobwebs in the corner of the living room ceiling before they celebrate their one-year anniversary. But you also should take the clothes out of the dryer while they are still your size, and the dishes sitting in the sink are looking like a science project run amok. So what do you do?
You pick the task you don't want to do. Then you pick the one that's worse than that, and then the one worse even than THAT. You are prioritizing things by their awfulness. You do the one that is LEAST yucky, avoiding the yuckier and yuckiest ones. Once the yucky one is out of the way, the yuckier one doesn't seem so bad, because it's not as awful as the yuckiest one, so you do it next.
I actually used this application on some recent revisions. That's right. I do all the rigorous testing beforehand so you can enjoy the final product without any bugs. Anyway, there were several different items in this list of revisions, and while all of them were challenging, it's not a big spoiler when I say some tasks were worse than others.
So I whipped out my HOA chart (don't expect to see this in stores right away, since it's still in beta form). I wrote down what I needed to accomplish, and then re-arranged the chores according to their relative Avoidance Quotient. Actually, I shifted them around so many times, it looked like I was practicing for a three-card monte competition.
So what did I have to avoid?
A new love scene. Okay, that's not as bad as this task, strengthening the conflict. And all those words I repeat over and over and over. . .yikes. That went straight to the bottom of the pyramid, because apparently I only use three different words to tell an 80,000 word story, so this would require a little more creative effort before it was off the list.
Even though it seemed daunting at first, I avoided, systematically, until everything was accomplished. Once I'd ninja-kicked the simpler tasks out of the way, I was confident and pumped up, ready to kick ass on the next thing on the chart. Amazingly, that item didn't seem so bad anymore, because there was SOMETHING WORSE than that!
One last insider tip: don't feel like you can't mix and match avoidance chores. This blog post was accomplished in record time because I was avoiding unpacking some boxes that have been in storage for two years. And the scene in my WIP that's making me grab a bottle of antacids is getting done next because I'm avoiding vacuuming out the sand that's accumulated in my car all winter. (That's how most housework gets done, actually, by avoiding writing tasks.)
Just remember: Accomplishment, through Avoidance.
Millions of happy avoiders can't be wrong.
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Today I'm happy to welcome Angela Quarles to my blog. I met Angela through Six Sentence Sunday, and it's where I first got to enjoy her fun brand of contemporary and historical romance. I also was lucky to beta read an earlier version of her new release, Beer and Groping in Las Vegas, and I can't wait to read this on my Nook.
Welcome, Angela! You refer to yourself as a geek girl romance writer. What started you on the path to geekdom?
My dad! We used to watch reruns of the original Star Trek when it came on Sunday evenings back in the 70s (man, I'm showing my age). I loved that show. If my brother and I weren't playing Cowboys and Indians, we were going on Away missions outside, with our bridge we made out of sticks and things. We ordered communicators and those plastic phasers, which shot little round discs, from ads in the back of comic books, and we used dad's light meter as our tricorder. I really wanted to order a pair of Vulcan ears, LOL. I also remember going on road trips and when my parents would say 'another hour' I'd run through in my head a Star Trek episode to pass the time.
Then in 1977, when I was ten, Star Wars! My brother and I saw it ten times in the theater that year. We got to a point where we could recite every line as we watched it, which I'm sure annoyed the other patrons. We ordered the Star Wars Fan Club kit and held our local chapter meetings (consisting of just my brother and I, you understand) on the floor of our kitchen.
My dad later introduced me to science fiction books, which I still love reading. It was my boyfriend after college that solidified my geekdom by introducing me to computer games, which has become one of my few addictions. Before that, computer games to me were games like Pong, or even back when I was really little, ones where my brother and I tried to play games by typing in lines of Basic computer code from a little spiral-bound notebook for our Commodore 64. But the boyfriend and I played an adventure game that took place in the Arthurian world (can't remember the name) and it would show a still image and a blank box beneath where you typed in what you wanted to do, like 'dig under stone' and I was hooked. We also played Civilization when it came out as a computer game; before that we used to gather with friends and play the board game in an all-day marathon.
I'm laughing about Pong, because I remember how that seemed so high-tech! You have some of the best book titles I've ever seen. Do you come up with the title first, or the story?
Thank you! I wrote a blog post yesterday on Jillian Chantal's blog about how to brainstorm titles, but in short, they come to me now during the brainstorming phase. I say 'now' because Must Love Breeches did not come to me until the third draft. However, after I got my brain tuned to the idea that I needed good titles, they've come either before the story idea or during brainstorming (so far!). Beer and Groping in Las Vegas, which released Wednesday, is the only one where the title came first.
It's such a great title! How did this story come about?
I work in a bookstore and was trying to think of possible titles for a new project (but one I didn't have a premise for yet), and was shelving some Hunter S. Thompson, and I was like hmm, what could be a twist off of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and first I was like Beer and Loathing, but I write lighthearted romances, and then 'groping' popped into my head. In the next instant I had the hero, as I thought he should be a microbrewer, and that the heroine would be an overworked software programmer. Once I had that, things started falling into place, including the description for him of being a geek trapped in a good ole boy's body. I had that tagline for him before I even started writing the story. I knew I wanted to try my hand at writing a shorter length than a full novel, and this seemed like a good candidate.
Tell us more about the book trailer you just made. I'm not usually a fan of them, but I loved this one.
Thanks! I did a blog post Wednesday at Cara Bristol's on how to make trailers. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I could pull it off myself, and on a small budget to boot, but I thought I would try and if I wasn't happy with it, no one had to even know I'd tried! I think once I saw this book trailer by Maggie Stiefvater for a book about kraken love, it showed me that I could not only do something myself, but also that I could have a conversational style and have fun with the viewer, which I felt set the right tone for Beer and Groping. Snippets of one-liners started popping into my head. I had a lot of fun, and giggled a lot while making it :)
I did a lot of giggling while watching it. It's really fun. I tried to embed it here, but my geek skills are lacking today, so everyone, just click here to see it. Angela, do you have a favorite writing spot?
It really depends! If I'm writing the first draft, it's usually at my desk at home, but if it's the weekend, I sometimes go to Starbucks to get that word count in. For revising, I like to sit on my front porch, which is one of those old, wide, deep Southern porches. If the weather is bad, then I have a table in a nook off the Library where I revise. Both spots are nowhere near my laptop, which is critical!
I love front porches! I think I could do a lot of great writing on one. When the writing gets tough, what keeps you going?
Yerba Maté tea!
Seriously, I think the support I have from other writers helps, but if you're talking about just making myself get the wordage down and stop putzing around, I LOVE #1k1hr on twitter as it keeps me focused and on task. I've also started keeping notes from contest feedback or reviews in my writer's journal so when I start dealing with bad reviews and it gets me down, I can look back at those to stay positive and keep going.
If I'm stuck as far as where to go, I turn to that same journal and just start having conversations with myself, writing it long hand, where I go over what I know so far, and start asking 'what if' questions about the plot and characters to see if anything jars loose.
I get so much done when I do the #1k1hr sessions. Plus it justifies me being on Twitter! So what are you working on next?
I'm in the research/brainstorming phase for a sequel to Must Love Breeches, my time travel romance, and all I can say right now is that it will be another time travel set in the past. How's that for vague? LOL. I don't want to say more as my agent and I are still working that out and I don't want to make any promises I can't keep.
I don't blame you for being vague. Sometimes I get a little superstitious about talking about a story too early. If you could play hooky today, what would you do?
Read! I know that sounds boring, but the only leisure time I allow myself to read is when I'm eating or when I go to bed at night, so curling up with a book during the day would be awesome! I love going someplace private in the house and just reading for a whole day and allowing myself to be completely immersed for hours in someone else's world. Now, if you'd said money was no object, and I had access to a transporter, I'd beam over to Scotland or some other country and explore for a day.
I know what you mean about reading. It's such a rare treat now. If you could sit and have coffee with any writer, living or previously living (I didn't want to say dead, because ewww!)--who would it be?
LOL! Can I have tea? I prefer it to coffee, as I can only drink decaf (You just fell out of your chair in shock, didn't you? That's tantamount to heresy for you!) But anyway, I'd have to say Jane Austen!
I did fall out of my chair! But yes, you can have tea -- as long as you share Jane Austen with me. I'd love to visit with her too. Thanks again for visiting, Angela, and I know you'll have great success with your books. This year has been a banner one for you!
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Beer and Groping in Las Vegas
Can a djinn and a magic slot machine bring two geeks together?
Riley McGregor is a geek trapped in a Good Ole Boy body and as owner of a microbrewery, smart chicks never look at him twice.
Rejected by a geek who wanted to “trade up,” Mirjam Linna would rather immerse herself in work than be the girlfriend-of-the-moment. Stranded in a Vegas hotel, she makes a wish—a night of hot sex with the man of her dreams. It's granted. She agrees to dinner, but afterward, she’ll say thanks, but no thanks, and see what’s on the SyFy channel. But when they meet, they're surprised to find they had a shared connection in their past. Sparks fly as these two learn to be in the moment, be themselves and find love.
Fans of Star Trek, Star Wars, Monty Python, Firefly and Marvin the Martian will enjoy this romantic comedy.
Bio: Angela works at an independent bookstore and lives in an historic house in the beautiful and quirky town of Mobile, AL, with her two matched gray cats, Darcy and Bingley. When she's not writing, she enjoys the usual stuff like gardening, reading, hanging out, eating, drinking, chasing squirrels out of the walls and creating the occasional knitted scarf. She's had a varied career, including website programming and directing a small local history museum.
She's an admitted geek and is proud to be among the few but mighty Browncoats who watched Firefly the first night it aired. She was introduced to the wonderful world of science fiction by her father, by way of watching reruns of the original Star Trek in her tweens and later giving her a copy of Walter M. Miller Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz as a teenager. She hasn't looked back since.
She has a B.A. in Anthropology and International Studies with a minor in German from Emory University, and a Masters in Heritage Preservation from Georgia State University. She was an exchange student to Finland in high school and studied abroad in Vienna one summer in college. She recently found representation with Maura Kye-Casella at Don Congdon, Assoc.
Links:
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This has been a fun week to be a writer!
I received a wonderful review for Lord Midnight from Bridget at The Romance Reviews. It's so beautifully written, and it actually gave me some new insights into my own characters. It was definitely a treat to read (and re-read!)
And today I'm being interviewed by author Mae Clair, who has an intriguing book titled Weathering Rock coming out October 8th. There's a yummy hero named Caleb who time travels from the Civil War era, and is also a werewolf. I've gotten to "know" Mae from reading her Six Sentence Sunday snippets and she's a delightful writer. She's also an amazing interviewer. So stop by and see her skills in action!
I also received some fun things from Crimson Romance: an author questionnaire and a cover art information sheet. So I'm going to be looking through I Do. . .or Die to get all the pertinent details about Shelby and Ryan, as well as their stomping grounds. I want to make sure it's as accurate as possible so the cover can reflect them and their fun and crazy world. The author questionnaire? That will be easy. Heck, that's why I write fiction!
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Surprise!
I'm posting on Friday, because there were a few things I wanted to mention.
First up, my two latest posts on the Heroes and Heartbreakers blog. I did a post titled Not-So-Ordinary First Kisses from Loretta Chase, Laura Kaye, and Julia Barrett. There are some great first kiss scenes there, so scoot over and check them out.
The other post is about Ruthie Knox's latest book, About Last Night, which just released a few days ago. This is a wonderful book, and I had a tough time choosing a favorite part to write about. I finally picked a scene that reminded me of a Regency heroine dealing with her future in-laws. Go check it out and let me know if you agree (or not!)
And next, Angela Quarles has tagged me for a Lucky Seven meme, with the rules as follows:
So here are my lines, from Lord Wastrel, an upcoming Regency historical. The hero, Hugh, has just come home from a very long night of partying and carousing and well, being a rake, only to learn he has a young daughter he knew nothing about. He is the girl's only parent now, since her mother, Hugh's former mistress, has died. He's not quite ready to embrace fatherhood though:
"I cannot have a child in my life right now," he blurted, with more ferocity than he had intended.
The little girl stepped back from him. Her bottom lip quivered, and for the first time she lost her composure. Hugh could feel a wrench in his heart, and even though he resisted the odd emotion, he was powerless against it when tears started pouring from those innocent blue eyes.
His daughter. And he had been the one to finally make her cry.
The lump in his throat nearly choked him.
And here are the Lucky Seven:
Hope everyone has a great weekend. We'll see you back here for Six Sentence Sunday!
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I've been thinking a lot lately about how to maximize my writing time, which seems to be dwindling despite my best efforts. I've got a lot of stories I want to dive back into and finish, and a ton of new stories poking at my brain, trying to convince me to move them to the top of the list.
I finally decided the best thing to do is to reduce my blog posts from twice a week to once a week.
I've been doing the twice-weekly posts for a little over two years now, and I've really enjoyed them--hopefully you have too. However, I feel like reducing the blogging to once a week will free up some more of my time and mental energy, which I can devote to these stories I want you to be able to read one day.
I also would like to do a little re-organizing, making it easier to find certain things within the site, so I'm planning to do that in the next few weeks as well.
So, I will continue to do the Monday Mojo posts, in the hopes they will inspire you for the rest of the week. I'll also be posting the Six Sentence Sunday snippets (on Sunday), because I've been having a lot of fun reading everyone's comments, as well as going around reading everyone else's posts. I won't be posting any more Friday Fave posts for the foreseeable future.
I hope these changes will give you more writing time too! It should be a win-win situation for everyone.
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It's thrilling when someone who doesn't know me decides to give my books a try.
Everyone's reading time is limited, and thus extremely valuable, so we all want to make sure we can sink into a book and enjoy every minute of that story.
I think many of us do what Alex Sokoloff described in her post, The Central Action of a Story, on the Murderati blog.
Ms. Sokoloff says she does a "read-and-discard" to find a book she wants to finish reading. If she likes the first couple of chapters, she needs to know where the plot is headed if she's going to keep reading.
She says, "So much of storytelling is about you, the author, reassuring your reader or audience that you know what you’re doing, so they can relax and let you drive."
This requires a certain amount of trust between the author and the reader. If it's an author I've read before, we've already established a relationship of sorts, so there's a fairly high amount of trust involved. This means I can lean the seat back, and even unbuckle the seat belt, knowing we'll get where we're supposed to, and I'll be happy with her driving skills along the way.
With an author that I'm reading for the first time, it's a bit like taking a ride with someone who's just gotten their learner's permit. I'm debating if I really want to do this, nervously trying to figure out whether to take that leap of faith.
I typically make up my mind after reading the back cover, the first line, and maybe even the first couple of pages. Even after going through this pre-drive checklist, I've still been disappointed on occasion, but so far there haven't been any fiery crashes, although a wheel has flown off once in a while.
Still, the author is promising a certain kind of story in those first few chapters, and the reader has certain expectations, which hopefully are going to be met during what is essentially a cross-country road trip.
How often have you seen this movie blurb: "Joe Schmo is a car thief/cat burglar/petty shoplifter who is ready to retire, but he is pulled into ONE. LAST. SCORE."
Yeah, it's been done about a zillion times, but you never hear anybody say, "I've already seen that. I don't want to see it again." Moviegoers like that scenario, so you'll see it get made a zillion times more.
There is a certain expectation of where that plot will go, based on implicit promises made at the beginning, even if the viewer can't predict what will happen during the heist. But if all of a sudden zombies jumped out and devoured the protagonist's brains while he's cracking open a safe. . . well, the writer has pretty much lost their driving license, right?
Whenever I read a review of a book that has gotten a low ranking, it's generally because the reader feels it didn't live up to their expectations. This could be because of misleading back cover copy, or from a plot thread that was left dangling or even unexplored. Readers like to be surprised, but not in a way that makes them feel foolish, or angry, for agreeing to let you drive them around in circles without a map for hours on end.
I highly recommend you read Ms. Sokoloff's entire post. She has really great information on having a PLAN that readers can, and will, follow during your thrilling car race of a story.
Next thing you know, you'll be on readers' auto-buy list. I'm hoping to be on that list one day too.
What makes you decide to read a new author? What makes you put someone on your auto-buy list?
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This is a fun thing going around the writer community this week. You open up your manuscript to page 77, and after you find line 7, you post the following seven sentences. (That is a heckuva lot of "s" words. I'm not even going to try to say that sentence out loud.)
I was tagged by Serena Bell and Raine Patton to be a part of this, so I want to thank them for including me.
This is from my romantic comedy, I Do. . .or Die, featuring my heroine Shelby, who has been starring in the Six Sentence Sunday snippets (even more "s" words!). She is a commitment-phobe who keeps getting talked into being her best friend's bridesmaid, and at the latest wedding, she was shot at.
Shelby is gunshy, in so many ways, and for so many good reasons. She's trying to fight off her attraction to Ryan, the detective who is also her bodyguard, while they try to find the shooter. In this scene, it looks like they might have found another gunman who has just taken a shot at her:
I lowered the gun to my side, as naturally as if I’d done it all my life. My brain struggled to find answers that would fit all the questions this situation brought up. Why would a gas company employee want to mow me down? I hadn't paid my bill late, at least not last month.
I just couldn't see the gas company sending out assassins as a collection strategy.
"You're so lucky I didn't shoot you," I said, and my legs trembled at the thought.
"That's why I took the clip out first," Ryan said.
So there you are. If you'd like to post your own Lucky 7 sentences, you can do it on your blog, and leave a link in the comments here. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to leave your sentences in the comments instead.
I'm looking forward to your Lucky Seven!
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There are a lot of differing opinions about whether a writer should acknowledge the reviews they receive.
Some readers feel like it has a chilling effect on open discussion about a book if they know the author is reading their comments, or waiting in the wings to say something.
Others feel it is rude of the author to NOT comment.
It is difficult to know what to do. No writer wants to alienate readers. Nor do they want to ignore bloggers and reviewers.
It's hard for me to not thank someone, so I typically send reviewers a private email, and let them know how much I appreciate their review. I've received some wonderful ones lately, and it truly makes my day to see bloggers describing what they liked about my book, as well as the areas where they had hoped things might have been done a little differently.
I also click on the "like" button for the reviews of my books when they are posted on Goodreads. It's an easy, non-intrusive way to let the reader know I appreciate their review. If I ever conquer Facebook, I'm sure I'll do some "liking" there as well.
I've recently added a page on my blog where I have links to all of the book blog reviews.
Still, it doesn't seem like enough to me.
I know how challenging it is to get enough reading time in to the daily schedule. (Oh boy, do I know that challenge.) I also know that when a person's hobby becomes more like a job, it can squeeze the fun out of the whole process. (Been there, done that, wrote the book.)
I'm also in awe of reviewers' ability to write such a great synopsis of my story. I wish I could hire all of them to write my next synopsis, before I tackle the book.
So I want to say a public thank you here to everyone who reads me, whether it's my books, my blog posts, my guest posts, or even my tweets. It means a lot, not only that you take the time to fit my words into your reading schedule, but that you also reply and comment and review and express your thoughts in response to mine.
I still haven't decided what to do yet about commenting publicly on bloggers' reviews, so this is where your thoughts would be very helpful.
What goes through your mind when you see an author replying--or not replying--on a review of their work?
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Sometimes we can make things harder than they need to be.
I've just read two different posts this morning about "choice". It made me realize how we try to characterize our actions in a way that will make us blameless—that's one of our specialties as human beings—so if things aren't going the way we want them to, we try to find something to blame. Something besides ourselves.
It could be fate, our insecurities, our obligations. It doesn't matter WHAT it is so long as it fills the requirement of letting us off the hook.
I'm not pointing a finger at anyone, because I do this as well. I couldn't very well recognize it, let alone write a post about it, if I didn't have master-level black-belt status.
Choosing to write can be hard sometimes. We want it to be as effortless as reading. Sometimes it can be that way, when the words flow out of us in a never-ending stream of brilliance. Sometimes the characters are well-behaved and delightful, so why wouldn't we choose to play with them?
But a lot of times writing seems too hard. We are trying to create something out of nothing, for goodness sake. That requires superpower abilities, something that deities possess. No wonder we would choose to "not write". We can even conjure up good reasons for that choice.
The problem is then your stories stay in that embryonic stage. They sit inside you and cause a great deal of discomfort, which grows, causing you to feel out of sorts. It's like a virus has taken over somehow. You try to make those annoying feelings go away by doing something else, anything but writing.
How could you possibly write when you feel like this?
The only way to dispel that sensation is to write. I joke all the time about avoiding and procrastinating, and they are valuable tools in the writing process—unless the avoiding and procrastinating turn into full-time careers. If that occurs, what happens to your stories? Your characters end up in some kind of purgatory, even though they have done nothing wrong, and truly deserve better.
I think most stories burst forth with a wonderful idea, and writers grab on to it with enthusiasm, and then when they realize they have to figure out the rest of it, they panic. They wrap the story in layers of "I can't do this". They are happy for the gift, but don't know how to make it keep on giving. They choose to give in to the fear and anxiety, not realizing those will grow bigger the longer they avoid trying to write.
So today let's choose to write. Think in smaller bites, and shorter timeframes. Write a sentence. Think of another one that could follow that. Take 15 minutes of your lunch hour, and sketch out a scene or a blog post. Combine writing with other tasks. I've worked through troublesome scenes during the tedious job of stirring risotto, or scrubbing the bathtub.
You don't need a huge block of time to accomplish a lot of writing. We like to believe that, but it's not true. What we do need is a huge block of commitment, as well as concrete evidence that we can do this.
Today I choose to write.
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