Monday Musings--There's an APP for "that"!

Calvin and I are at Bob Evans, having a late breakfast. The whole staff knows us here by name. As soon as I take a seat, one of the waitresses hooks me up to an IV of coffee and I get to work. Calvin reads his iPad and shares headlines and stories he finds interesting or kooky. Like just now. "Headline," he says. "Want to get pregnant? Now there's an app for that."

Well! That's certainly going to make writing my sex scenes easier. Hug, hug, kiss, kiss, touch, sigh, undress, ogle various parts, kiss, kiss, insert app. BOOM! Done.

Think of it. No more men with erectile dysfunction, having to resort to taking the pill also referred to as the Pfizer Riser. Although we will have problems with DA--dead apps. "What do you mean you forgot to charge the phone? How will the app work?"

I'm sure the article was referring to keeping track of a woman's fertile period and not the craziness my mind just whipped up. But that's how a writer's mind works, you see. Give us a serious fact and we'll create havoc with it...every time.

My Calvin is a writer, too, so you can imagine the amount of laughter at our house. He has a fabulous sense of humor. He has to to live with me.

That's all from me this Monday. I'm back to the writer's cave. Working on Shifters of Sonas Isle: KENDRIC.

Decisions...Decisions...

I cannot begin to explain the scope of my emotions these past two weeks. As a writer, I should find this an easy task. Working with words is my thing, after all. But when a long-held dream comes true, words do tend to fail. 

I'd started penning short stories in the fourth grade. They were comical little pieces about a little man from Mars who came to Earth, trying to make sense of things we humans did. He was constantly getting into trouble. Picture Lucy (of I Love Lucy) with green skin, a large pointy head and four-foot stature. I fell in love with my classmates' laughter as they read those goofy stories. This is what I want to do, my heart cried. Write!

So I promised myself that once I got out of school, I'd write a book. As with the dreams of so many people, life got in the way. Marriage, children, family responsiblities, college, work...excuses all. I was afraid, if the truth were told, afraid to try. What if I tried and failed? Then my dream would die. Thus I held my dream close to my heart, afraid to share it.

Now, as a parent I would never have allowed such nonesense from my children. I'd have encouraged, pushed, proded, yelled until they threw their fears aside and pursued their dreams. Yet I was afraid to pursue mine.

Enter stage left: Calvin Davis. A man I fell in love with and married late in life; a man who asked me what my dreams were. When I shared, he told me in no uncertain terms that I must write. I frantically looked around me for excuses--I'm so good at that, you know. He would have none of them. "Write," he'd say in that school teacher voice of his.

So I began and shared my floundering efforts with him. He edited, and I sulked. How...how could he be so harsh when my writing was so "wonderful?" I began reading articles and books, soon to realize that I was doing many things wrong. I began to grow as a writer.

Two weeks ago, my agent started "shopping out" Storm's Interlude. In less than a week, I had a contract offer. This week, I've had another. After all those years of fearing I wouldn't be good enough, two publishers want my romance novel. Mere words could never describe my feelings. For dreams can come true, once you cast aside your fears.

Now I must decide which publisher to go with...decisions...decisions.

It came to me in a dream...

Paul McCartney said in an interview that his song, Yesterday, came to him in a dream--both the words and the music. Wow! Yet our minds often work best in our "off hours," when the distractions of life aren't stiffling our creative thoughts.


I'd been in a funk all weekend feeling lost without a writing project. Really, I should have been celebrating that my manuscript was off my hands for a while and in Dawn's, but for some reason I wasn't. What am I going to do now, I kept asking myself. Honest folks, it was akin to that "empty nest" feeling.


So I kept asking myself, do I revamp and do a major rewrite to a finished manuscript or do I finish the one I'd abandoned to write Storm's Interlude? I cried on my agent's shoulder, who patiently said, "It'll come to you. Relax." I imagined her doing an eye roll as she replied to my instant message.


She was right; it came to me--in a dream. Mercy, I'm just like Paul McCartney!!! Okay, maybe not. But I woke up from a sound sleep around 3:20 with the first paragraph of my next novel racing through my brain, along with a rough blurb about the book. How wierd is that? Uh hunh, about as wierd as I am, you say. Okay, I can see I'll get no respect from you. Just remember, Paul McCartney and I are on the same dream-wave-length...and with that thought, I'll take "Wings" and fly.

THE END let down.

Today I feel like the line from a Rudyard Kipling poem: When earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dry. I've been consumed by my writing these last two weeks. I'd finished the first draft of Storm's Interlude, a contemporary romance, last Saturday.  This week involved giving it a read through, making corrections, deleting sections that didn't move the story forward, erasing people who weren't essential to the storyline and rewriting a weak scene. 

Tuesday evening I shared my weak scene--where the heroine finds her abusive ex-fiancee hiding in her closet--to my writers' group. In a movie, when something like this happens, a dynamic musical beat produces surprise, shock, fear. My question to them was, how do I convey this with words? Ideas were thrown out and suggestions made. Suddenly I realized that I'd been setting something up throughout the entire book. Odd that I needed them to turn on the old light bulb in the cobwebbed closet of my brain, but there you have it.

I spent the next two days rewriting that scene, pleased with it as it took shape--stronger, scarier and more realistic. As I wrote about the guy strangling my heroine, I realized I needed to know the physical effects of strangulation. Would there be bruising? A sore throat? A change in voice tone? Those questions spurned hours of online research.

When I read several articles that laws have only recently been passed listing strangulation as a violent crime, especially in relation to domestic violence, I was appalled. Medical professionals are just now learning all the signs of strangulation. Take bloodshot eyes, for example. Previously, reddened eyes were attributed to the victim's crying. Now they realize that the act of strangulation forces blood into the whites of the eyes. Pardon me while I ask, "Are we in the twenty-first century here?" (Note strong degree of sarcasm.)

One could say my research sent me to my soap box. Having been a victim of violence, I get testy in a hurry on the subject. I knew I'd have to include some of this information in my manuscript. This decision meant a total rewrite of two chapters--a worthy cause, I felt.

Last night at nine o'clock, I emailed my 83,300 word manuscript to my agent. I thought I'd feel elated. Instead I feel like Kipling's paint tubes--twisted and dry.    

Who are these people?

I was at 48,000+ words on my manuscript when I realized I didn't know my characters. Odd that. I'd created them, shouldn't I know them?

My heroine, who'd been prim and proper at the beginning of the novel was suddenly acting rather...ah...bold. The hero, who'd been tough as steel, was now more of a caretaker. Words were popping onto the screen, and I was saying to myself she wouldn't act like this. And Rachel, my heroine, replied, "Wanna bet? Watch me!" Whoa...

Time to reassess. Who are these people? Granted we expect our characters to change in the course of a novel, but these personality changes were too drastic. Was my heroine docile or plucky? Was she self-assured or wishy-washy? What about my hero? Could he be strong, yet tender? Crass yet caring? Which couple did I like the best? The ones I'd created in chapter one or the dynamic characters that revealed themselves to me between the lines of dialog and thoughts in chapter fourteen?

Back to the drawing board, as they say. Back to chapter one, tweak this, change that, add here, chop there. I'm slowly working my way through the chapters so actions, thoughts and dialog are all true to the characters. After all, few people turn out to be the people we thought they were when we first met them. Smiling, nice folks sometimes turn out to be stinkers behind the genial masks. Distantly cool people become warm and engaging once we know them. No one knows anyone at first meeting; there's always more under the surface. So it is with our characters. However, as writers, it is our job to know them...even as they start taking control of the story. Write on....