How long/fast/often do you write?

For inspiration, I've been listening to conference workshops and reading writing/revising books. I found a couple references to stealing bits of time out of your day to write and writing the first draft in one fast gulp.

Stephanie Bond said her books are written 15 minutes at a time. She has a friend who writes six pages in an hour and then spends the rest of the day doing other writerly tasks. Julia Cameron talks about not waiting for big chunks of time to start writing because you can forever figure out an excuse not to write.

It's very rare that I sit down to the computer for more than an hour. I tend to write in short spurts of twenty to thirty minutes with breaks in between to do what needs doing. The breaks give me time to think where I'm heading next and formulate where the next two to five hundred words will take my characters.

I've taught myself to write fast. At the beginning of the book I'm working on now, I wrote 2000 words in 2 hours. That doesn't usually happen during the middle or end of the book, when I'm struggling through the plot or trying to wrap up the conflict/loose ends.

Since NaNo, I've discovered I can get a book written in 30 or so days if I don't reread what I've done or go back to fix things that change as I discover where the book is heading. I make notes and keep moving forward to the end. It's allowed me to write 3 first drafts in 3 months. Granted, they're full of messy, ugly writing, but I feel a great deal of accomplishment knowing they sit like unformed clay on my hard drive.

I like writing first thing in the morning, but that's not always possible. If I write soon after rising, I accumulate more word count at a faster pace and in a bigger lump of time. Otherwise, I snatch minutes here and there throughout the day. When crunch time comes and it's eight o'clock, however, it's amazing how much I can pound out before bedtime.

What's your process? Hours of writing or minutes? Do you write a fast first draft and then edit or edit as you go? Have you ever tried another way?

Selling on Proposal

For the last few months I've been thinking in terms of selling a book on proposal: three chapters and a synopsis. The idea worries me because I am a pantser. I start with an idea, some characters, and let the rest just unfold. Cool stuff comes out of nowhere and amazes me. The characters say things that takes the book in a little different direction. Reading the first draft through, you can see how the plot and the characters evolve.

At the beginning of this book, to determine if I could, I banged out a synopsis. A rough one to be sure, but it outlines the book start to finish.

I got to work on the first draft of my current WIP, grappled with keeping the characters on task and stewing about how to end the story. Today I had a brainstorm about a direction for the last third of the book and worried that it differed from how I'd written the synopsis. But today, when I reread where I originally intended the story to go, it ends up being much closer to the actual end than what I figured.

This makes me realize that even though I don't think I can plot and I like my characters and stories to unfold organically, I'm doing better in the planning stages.

That gives me hope. When that day comes for me to sell on proposal, I might just be able to do it.

Heroine's POV much better

I think when I get the hero and plot stuff figured out, I might have a book.

Still have a lot of work to do with the scenes and the details, but from the heroine's POV, the plot, her motivation and conflict are all really solid.

Next step look at each scene, one at a time. Do I need it. Is it a little mini story. Is there conflict?

I made up these scene sheets that I'm going to fill out for each scene to make sure it has purpose and moves the story forward. I figure I have close to forty scenes in this book. Even if I do one a day this will take me a month and a half.

Better get going.

Warning, two dimensional hero!

I started my revisions this week.

I read through the entire story from just my hero's POV. I chose to start with him because my heroine drives the story. She is the prime protagonist and goes through more.

My hero drifts through the story, tackling business difficulties having to do with the heroine, but not dealing with a big personal issue that only partially involves her.

Because his big goals are mostly solved prior to the start of the story, he's reactive in the story instead of active. This means he doesn't leap off the page with energy. Toward the end he does act and that's when I started to like him better.

What an eye opener this has been. I've never tackled a story from one POV before. I got completely confused in the middle of the book because the hero didn't explain why he acted a certain way (not in his POV) before it happened or after when he should have been reacting to his actions.

I made lots of notes and I'm going to type them up like a revision letter to myself. Then, I need to solve the problems in my mind before I tackle them on paper.

Revising is really hard work. I wish the darn book would fix itself. Or that the magical elves would do it why I was sleeping.

Next step: Read through in the heroine's POV. Should prove interesting.

Belated Happy Chinese New Year

It's my year.

The year of the tiger.

Great things are going to happen for me this year; I just know it.

Tiger characteristics: Enthusiastic, courageous, ambitious, leadership, confidence, charismatic.

Do you know your Chinese Zodiac sign?

Happy Valentine's Day

Nothing says love like matching outfits.

After receiving a lovely handmade card from my daughter, I dropped her off at my parents house and I'm spending the rest of Valentine's Day with people I've made up.

I think that pretty much sums up my love life.

Hope yours is full of real romance.

Starting revisions

With a first draft written in November (NaNo), another one finished in January, and a third book nearing the half-way point, I decided it might be time to start thinking about revisions.

First let me state that writing like this is a recent process for me. Formerly, I used to start writing something, get a couple chapters done and run out of steam or get distracted by finaling in a contest and having to polish a full of (a.k.a. finish) a different book for an editor.

With a manuscript at Harlequin and a moratorium on entering contests, I don't have this distraction. I'm delighted that I've written more in the last 3 months than in the last year. Shutting off my internal critic and tasking myself to dump a book out of my head in thirty days has given me great satisfaction.

But it's a very small part of the whole process. After the first draft is when the real work begins.

I'm collecting advice from author workshops I've attended. I ordered a book on revising.

I printed out the book. Marked his POV with blue flags. Her POV with pink flags and all scenes with secondary characters with purple flags.

Next, I'm working to nail down the character arcs for in there comes my conflict. I'm helped by Archetypes and Enneagrams.

I'm going to read through the book by the weekend and make notes. I'm afraid there's going to be a whole lot of things I need to fix. But by organizing the process into steps, I hope the first round will go relatively smooth.

Frankly, I'm intimidated by the sheer enormity of what awaits me and my ability to do the book justice.

How do you handle revisions? Anything in particular make the job easier?

Confessions of a Contest Addict

For the last 3 years I've entered a ton of contests. It's ridiculous, really, how much money I've spent to have people tell me what's wrong with my writing.

I told myself this year that I would save some money and not enter any, or at least very few. So, here I am, it's the beginning of February and I'm getting twitchy.

I keep telling myself that entering a contest that doesn't have good final judges makes no sense. I miss polishing madly before a deadline. I miss having no stake in waiting for the finalists to be announced. And to be completely honest, I miss that thrill of finding out I finaled.

I'm trying to be practical. It's no fun.

Anyone want to guess how much I spent in contest entries last year?

A new month, a new book.

I've updated my WIP bar on the side. I've gone from done to starting all over again. A new book, not a revision. I'm saving revisions for the end of March, beginning of April when I've had a little distance.

In the last story, the characters had built in conflict because of a past relationship. Reunion stories are fun to write. So much baggage to deal with.

This story requires me to dig a little deeper for his conflict because it isn't based on past events, but current situations. That makes it harder to write compelling conflict. My hero just isn't tortured enough yet. That means I need to establish what he believes in. What his values are. And make certain the heroine is the exact opposite of those things.

My hero is big on image. From childhood, he learned from his mother how important face is. Everything he's done has been guided by not what he wants, but what he believes he should do given the circumstance. Since many things run contrary to his desires, he has struggled long and hard to be disciplined.

Enter my heroine who is going to blow the lid off. She's going to drive him crazy and get him into one scrap after another. It should be fun.

I don't usually write a free spirit as my heroine. Already she's taking over the book. Both the hero and I might be in for a crazy ride.

We all put a bit of ourselves into our characters. I'm definitely more like my hero in this book. I'm modeling the heroine after my daughter.

Do you have particular characteristics that you write into your hero and heroine? Ever feel like stretching into something completely different?