One Hundred Days of Write-itude

The Romance Writers of America conference is in less than ten weeks! I wasn't planning to attend this year, but after finding out that AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE is a finalist for a Golden Heart award, I immediately changed my mind.

So, I'm going to DC, where I intend to meet the other lovely ladies I'm becoming acquainted with online, attend some great workshops and retreats, sightsee in our nation's capital, and party my heart out until the awards ceremony. But, there is much to do before I get to Washington; while finding a dress and obsessing over shoes will take some significant thought, the main focus is trying to finish the first draft of Madeleine and Ferguson's story. Obviously, I hope that I sell MARRIAGE and that all my wildest dreams come true, but I'm not holding my breath -- and I think I'm on to something special with these characters, so I would like to have a finished draft in time to submit to the 2010 Golden Heart in December.

This is doable; I'm about as far with them right now as I was with Amelia and Malcolm last year, so finishing by December is feasible. It just won't be easy, given the demands of the day job, my summer travel schedule, and all the little things that seem to conspire against me.

My hardcore writing was supposed to start today, but instead I did five loads of laundry, reread segments of a great book (Robin McKinley's CHALICE -- a nice blend of old-timey high fantasy, romance, and beekeeping), and talked to my parents for Mother's Day. But, starting now, I'm recommitting to my hermitage; spending the next hundred (or, hopefully, only seventy) days holed up and working on Madeleine and Ferguson's story should give me something complete enough that I can start working on the second draft after the RWA conference. I will either return elated and eager to get back to the book, or despondent and in need of a distraction, so having something to edit will be key.

You can tell by the length of this post that I'm procrastinating :) No more of that -- it's time to get back to business!

I Love Me Some Star Trek

I didn't expect to love "Star Trek" quite as much as I did, but it had the perfect blend of action, comedy, and character development to kick off the summer movie-going season. And quite unexpectedly, this is the only movie I can remember in which I cried in the first ten minutes.

And if nothing else, I have a new inspiration for my bad-boy heroes -- Chris Pine as Captain Kirk is fabulous! Check him out below...

Broken Glass, Continued

I'm listening to "Walking on Broken Glass" again -- I can't work on the book because I'm at work, and I have a pressing mid-afternoon deadline that I feel loath to meet. I will meet it, of course, but "Walking on Broken Glass" is a good five-minute distraction.

Madeleine and Ferguson will demand much of my time this weekend, but I will still call my mother on Mothers' Day. What are your Mothers' Day plans?

Writing, comma, How Not to Succeed At

The best way, hands down, to not succeed at writing is to never make time to write. And unfortunately, that is the position that I find myself in this week. Despite my best intentions, I have not written since Sunday. Three days is really not such a long break, but I'm so excited to get back to working on Madeleine and Ferguson's story, and so a three- (or more likely, five-) day hiatus is frustrating.

Then again, given the state of the economy in general and my expensive tastes in particular, having a day job is a good thing, even if the day job is keeping me so occupied this week that I can't find time to write. Yes, I could make faster progress on the road to publication if I could devote sixty hours a week to it, but it's hard to slog down that road if you have scurvy because you can only afford to eat ramen. I suppose I could give up my Sephora habit -- but until they develop drugs to help ease the withdrawal pangs I would feel at never buying Nars eyeshadow or Shiseido lipstick again, I'm too hooked to drop it.

What about you? What silly expense are you unwilling to drop?

Ferguson and Madeleine -- the Story (Finally) Continues

I finished editing AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE yesterday, and while it would be nice to take a break, there's no rest for the wicked (or rather, no rest for those who dream of publication). So, I woke up early this morning and spent an hour at Starbucks before going into the office so that I could focus on Book Two.

The task for today was to reread what I had written of Ferguson and Madeleine's story so that I can jump back into the first draft where I left off in March. The Golden Heart hoopla and all of the chaos with my day job took its toll on Ferguson and Madeleine, and they've been chilling in limbo for the past six weeks. So imagine my delight when I picked up the manuscript again and realized that I already had 177 pages written; my memory thought that it was ~100 pages, so I'm much further into the book than I thought I was.

Even better, I genuinely like most of what I've written. While there are things that I will need to go back and change (including the addition of a whole bunch of historical detail; the first draft is full of incomplete phrases like, "Madeleine paused, savoring the taste of [taste] on her tongue," where I've used brackets to indicate a missing detail that I need to figure out), I'm very happy with the characters themselves. In fact, I adore them both and want only the best for them, and so I'm going to have to embrace the dark side while I put them through another 200 pages of torment before granting their happily-ever-after.

I'll keep you posted on their progress, but sleep is vital if I'm going to help them along their merry way tomorrow...

Here Comes the Rain Again

It is another cold and rainy weekend in San Francisco. It's unclear to me what SF has done to offend the weather gods, but for whatever reason, it feels like the weeks are nice and the weekends are not so nice. Obviously I would prefer to have it be the other way around, but I suppose there is something to be said for the "inspiration" the rain provides for my British-set romance novels.

I'm still slogging through edits for AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE, but I believe that I can be done tonight. Then it's back to the grind in multiple capacities -- both in my day job, which will be somewhat intense this week, and in my writing job, which demands that I start querying my heart out.

Okay, it's time to find a coffee shop and hole up there for the immediate future. Happy Sunday!

I Need To Get On the Rewriting Classics Train

My favorite new deal from Publishers Marketplace for this week is:

Janet Mullany's THE IMMORTAL JANE AUSTEN, a humorous novel about Jane Austen in Regency England who joins the vampire resistance in Bath when England is invaded by French forces, to May Chen at Harper, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency (world).

WTF? What is it with Jane Austen being rewritten in a variety of ridiculous ways? I need to get on this bandwagon; it's just too bad that by the time I finish a book for this trend, the trend will already be dead. I suppose that means I should focus on submitting AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE, rather than developing a version of Upton Sinclair's THE JUNGLE in which he explores the horrors of the meatpacking industry and discovers that all meatpackers are, in fact, syphilitic zombies intent on infecting the American population in an effort to upgrade from their filthy tenement apartments.

Actually, given the state of the market, that idea may have promise...