Six Sentence Sunday - Jess and Kyle's first meeting

Another six-sentence excerpt from my 2011 release of 'His Leading Lady' with the first meeting between Jess and Kyle. This is a continuation from last week when Jess told Kyle she had no idea where her sister Lora was.

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” Kyle growled. “If she contacts you, find out where she is and call me.” He withdrew something from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her.

Jess glanced briefly at the expensive-looking embossed card. Again he had irritated her with his curt order and she fought back the temptation to click her heels and salute.

“If Lora contacts me, then I will ask her to call you,” she replied coolly.

'His Leading Lady' available as e-book and paperback from www.whiskeycreekpress.com or from Amazon http://amzn.to/opp1ky

Check out the other 'Six Sentences' here.

I'm a Winner!

Yay, my NaNoWriMo 50K words were validated and I got my winner's certificate and badge.

Now I'm trying to re-invoke my inner editor (which I abandoned during NaNo) as I return to the re-write of my 'work in progress'. I'm leaving the NaNo novel for a while, until I've completed the WIP.  Returning to it later, hopefully with fresh eyes, will either reinspire me or make me cringe at the sloppy sprint write style I used.

Meantime, at lunch with a friend yesterday, she gave me another idea for a novel.

So many ideas, and not enough time to write them all!

NaNoWriMo Update

Yes, it's done. 57,380 words in 21 days. Phew!  Hero and heroine have overcome all the obstacles and conflicts I threw at them and reached their 'Happy Ever After' ending.

But when I say it's 'done', all I really mean is that the FIRST draft is done. I still have a lot more work to do.

In this month’s UK ‘Writing’ magazine, one publisher says that most aspiring writers make their first error by submitting far too soon without realising how much re-writing needs to be done.

He lists a ‘10-draft’ process: typing out a rough draft, tightening the structure, developing the characters, improving the dialogue, working on the language, restructuring some parts, adding layers of conflict, improving crucial opening pages, more work on character development and finally proof-reading for mistakes.

A pretty scary list, right? I’m not sure it would actually take 10 drafts, since some could be combined. But the important point is that a first draft is very much a ‘first’ and can’t be considered as a manuscript which is ready for submission.

Normally, even in my first drafts, I tend to agonise over language and dialogue, trying to get it right the first time. However, having taken part in NaNowriMo for the first time, I’ve surprised myself by being able to abandon my ‘inner editor’ as I sprint-wrote the whole story in 21 days.

Okay, so it was pre-plotted (unlike my normal pantser method) as I was trying a rewrite/updating of a novel I wrote in the 1970’s. It did require some serious updating, especially my style, and also some of the content, since the world has changed since the 1970’s. Cell phones and email probably present the trickiest problem in updating, it’s so much easier now for characters to contact each other.

Even so, I’ve been aware that it was what I call ‘lazy’ writing. I ignored my usual careful honing of words to convey the exact meaning I wanted, I let adverbs and speech tags slip by, I repeated my favourite words and phrases (probably ad nauseam), my heroine’s heart did so many jumps and jerks, she’s  in danger of an imminent heart attack. I also ignored the detailed research which can often hold me up for a long time. My mantra became ‘I’ll fix that later.’

But, at the end of 21 days, I have a first draft. The hero and heroine finally got to their happy ever after ending. However, I’m nowhere near that ending.

Could I submit this as it is now? No way. It’s the first time I’ve ever written a real ‘rough draft’ and, believe me, it IS rough! I know I still have a HUGE amount of work to do. 10 drafts? Maybe that’s what it will need.

How many drafts do you write, and what do you concentrate on improving with each draft?

Six Sentence Sunday - Jess and Kyle's First Meeting from 'His Leading Lady'.

Another six-sentence excerpt from my 2011 release of  'His Leading Lady' with the first meeting between Jess and Kyle. This is a continuation from last week when Kyle told Jess her sister had disappeared, the week before rehearsals were due to start for the West End Show in which Lora had the lead role. Jess felt smug when she matched his patronising tone.

Her victory was short-lived. “You must have been a wow with the drop-out kids at school,” Kyle said dryly. “I’m glad I wasn’t one of your students.”

“And I’m glad I’m not one of your actresses,” she countered and regretted it when she saw his lips tighten. She didn’t usually indulge in stupid back-biting, but then she’d never met such an infuriating man.

After she’d deliberately drawn in a deep breath, she said coolly, “However, as that’s not likely to happen, maybe we should confine our conversation to my sister, although I can’t assist you as to her whereabouts." 

'His Leading Lady' available as e-book and paperback from www.whiskeycreekpress.com or from Amazon http://amzn.to/opp1ky
And see the latest review of His Leading Lady at http://words2follow.blogspot.com/

Check out the other 'Six Sentences' here.

Six Sentence Sunday - Jess and Kyle's first meeting

Another six-sentence excerpt from my recently released 'His Leading Lady' with the first meeting between Jess and Kyle. This is a continuation from last week when Kyle told Jess her sister had disappeared, the week before rehearsals were due to start for the West End Show in which Lora had the lead role. He's trying to find her because they have a promotional event in two days' time.

He spoke to her as if she was a complete idiot and Jess’s hackles rose again.  “Yes, Mr Drummond,” she replied in exactly the same tone.  “I understand perfectly, and I wish I could help you, but I hope you now understand that I know even less about Lora’s whereabouts than you do.”

Kyle Drummond raised his eyebrows briefly and, despite her simmering anger, Jess smirked inwardly, knowing she’d scored a small victory.  This arrogant man wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in his own condescending manner.  He was probably far more used to fawning starlets gushing ‘Yes, Mr Drummond – no, Mr Drummond’ at everything he said.

More next week.

'His Leading Lady' available as e-book and paperback from www.whiskeycreekpress.com or from Amazon http://amzn.to/opp1ky
And see the latest review of His Leading Lady at http://words2follow.blogspot.com/

Check out the other 'Six Sentences' here.

NaNoWriMo Update

Another week, and tonight I hit and passed the halfway mark.  Currently, I'm at 26,853 words, so I think I'll probably make the 50K target.

More important than the target word number, though, is what I've realised this past week. This novel is a "re-write" of a novel I wrote thirty years ago. I have put re-write deliberately in inverted commas, because it's becoming far more than that.

First, I've had to update the story itself. Set in a High School in the 1970's, I've had to change the issues in the school. In the original the hero was trying to introduce something new at the school based on Equal Opportunities which was the 'in' thing at the time. Obviously it no longer applies, so I had to find something different. I've been out of teaching now for nearly 20 years so had no knowledge of current initiatives. Fortunately, one of my daughters is now a teacher, so several phone calls to her gave me new ideas, supplemented by some online research. And how much easier it is now to do that research now compared with the pre-internet era.

Other 'updates' have included the use of mobile phones and computers too. Communication is so much easier these days, which sometimes works to our disadvantage when writing romance novels, since we have to find alternative reasons why our characters can't contact each other to sort out some misunderstanding (losing phone, internet down, even dead batteries on phone or laptop are options).

Another update has simply been the language. Reading through my original story, I decided my characters tended to talk like people in a 1940's movie. Totally unrealistic and not how people talk in 'real life' today. Updating their dialogue has been fun.

The other great 'learning curve' with NaNoWri Mo has been to turn off the inner editor, and to accept that this is very much a first draft, concentrating on quantity rather than quality. I had my doubts about whether I could turn off my 'inner editor' - and there have still been times when I've agonised over the right word to use. But, during this past week, I've realised I actually CAN do it.  It doesn't actually matter, at this stage, how many time the heroine's heart jerks or the hero raises his eyebows. I'm aware of my repeats and I can sort those out later.

That's been the biggest lesson I've learned. Get the actual story down in a first draft.  Time later to edit, revise and refine. I know already how much work I'll need to do after the end of November. I've read recently that a first draft is where you draw the outline, and then, once that draft is done, you can then colour in the whole picture. Since I've always said the editing process is the part I really enjoy, NaNoWriMo has taught me the value of getting that outline or draft done first, without agonising over the details.  Then, once it's done, the real work starts.  

  

Six Sentence Sunday - First Meeting

Another excerpt from my recently released 'His Leading Lady' with the first meeting between Jess and Kyle. This is a continuation from last week when Kyle told Jess her sister had disappeared, the week before rehearsals were due to start for the West End Show in which Lora had the lead role.

“She’s probably gone away for a holiday somewhere before rehearsals start next week,” Jess said, more calmly than she felt. “I’m sure she’ll be back in London for those, wherever she’s gone.”

“She’d better be back before then.”

A bolt of alarm shot through her at the implied threat in Kyle Drummond’s voice. “Why?”

“Because, Ms. Harper, she’s under contract for various appearances as part of the advance publicity, and one of those happens to be the day after tomorrow, so perhaps now you understand why I’ve been trying to find her.”

More next week!

'His Leading Lady' available as e-book and paperback from www.whiskeycreekpress.com or from Amazon http://amzn.to/opp1ky 
And see the latest i.e. yesterday's review of His Leading Lady at http://words2follow.blogspot.com/

Check out the other 'Six Sentences' here.

NaNoWriMo Update

So it was going well - with last night's total of 6200, I was well over the average needed per day.

Today I had to drive up to Preston (about 30 miles away) to start clearing my step-mother's apartment  (she died last May but, due to various complications over her estate we've been in limbo since then). Anyway, I spent the day sorting through her living room while a couple of friends tackled the huge amount of clothes in her bedroom and bagged them, ready to take to the charity shops.

Back here, after a few traffic jams, on the way at 5pm, and soon I start writing again.  Then, after I'd done about 1,000 words, I hit some key and the whole thing disappeared!  What????  When I finally found it again, it was at the point I'd left it last night!  What on earth happened to autosave, set at 5 minutes? 

After half an hour of trying to find and restore the updated document with no success, I gave up and decided there was nothing else for it but to rewrite those 1,000 words.

This kind of thing would be annoying enough (hmm, that's putting it mildly - and politely!) when you're writing anything, but with NaNoWriMo, where every words counts, it was nothing short of disastrous. But, with the bit between my teeth (and after a few swear words), I started writing those 1000 words again.

Fortunately I was able to rememebr most of what I'd written (cue for loud cheer that my short-term memory still seems to be functioning okay), but really, one does not need this kind of thing during NaNoWriMo! I've checked that Autosave is set to 5 mins, but I don't trust it because some key on keyboard bypasses that system somewhere, so I'm hitting save virtually every 10 words.

So- tomorrow is another day :-)

BTW anyone know what key I could possibly have hit to delete today's update on a document without some pop-up box askijg me if I wanted to save it???

NaNoWriMo

Today is the first day of the National Novel Writing Month. The aim is to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. This works out at 1,666 words per day.  In theory it sounds fairly easy - about three Word pages, single spaced, per day.
Easy?  Sometimes I can agonise over a single sentence for an hour or more - in between munching wine gums, staring into space, playing another game of Pyramid (my excuse being that it's 'thinking time'), checking emails, Facebook and Twitter, writing a blog (just like I'm doing now) and otherwise procrastinating. 
The trick, or so I've been told, is to turn off the 'inner editor' and simply write.  Revision and editing can come later.  That's going to be the hardest part for me, since I edit constantly.  I also research as I go along, since that's so much easier to do than it was in pre-internet days.  Already I've broken off from writing to research courses in French culture at the Sorbonne in Paris.  Then, drawing in a deep breath, I forced myself to bookmark a website so that I can look at it in more detail later.
Usually I'm a pantser, but in this case my NaNo novel is already plotted, as I'm rewriting one of my early novels, published in 1981.  Is that cheating?  No, not in this case.  The novel needs serious updating - technology has changed, for one thing. Mobile phones and email make it easy for the characters to get in contact with each other.
The story is set in a school and they've changed too.  Educational issues in the late 70's when I wrote this novel are completely different from school issues today. As a former teacher, I knew what those issues were when I first wrote the story, but I've been out of teaching now for nearly 20 years.  Fortunately my daughter is a teacher, so I grilled her last week about current issues, and she came up with one I think I can use.
Quite apart from the background and setting, I'm already cringing at my early style of writing.  So much telling instead of showing - ouch! Long, unwieldy sentences, speech tags, far too many adverbs, and, oh dear, exclamation marks galore (my friend Michelle will laugh her socks off at that last statement).
So I'm treating it as a partly pre-planned novel because I know I'm going to have to make a lot of changes as part of the updating process. In fact, it wouldn't surpise me if, at some point, it took off in a different direction than the original story. We shall see ...