Novel Success!

Five months of writing to the date.

86,456 words.

335 pages.

Having a finished novel sitting on my desk ...

PRICELESS

I finished my paranormal romance novel Reap 'Em & Weep tonight. You'll read this tomorrow sometime. It feels like a real accomplishment. I sort of like just carrying it around.

I have no idea if it will ever see the light of day but I always wondered if I could do it. Stick it out until the end. See it through. Turns out I can. That feels pretty damn good.

The only thing better than having a project is having a completed project.

My plan now is to let it sit and percolate for a couple of weeks per Stephen King's advice in his book On Writing. The idea is that when you go back to it and read it to do so in one or two sittings so you don't lose focus on it. Also, after letting it sit for a while and going on to new things, it will be like reading someone else's writing. You'll have more perspective on it.

I think that idea is swell.

Bryon is begging me to read it. Now that it's done, I'm chicken to share it. It's not ready. I know there are some plot inconsistencies I need to iron out. Other things I need to flesh out. Still more I need to take out. I think it will be like a scab that you can't stop picking. At some point, I'm going to have to share it. And I will, I promise. I can't keep a secret, let alone something this big.

Just not now. Just not yet. I need to pick at it a bit more first.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to do it. Thanks to Bryon and Grace who endured Ramen noodles and Beanie Weanies more nights than were probably healthy.

Tomorrow I plan to start another one. A rolling stone gathers no moss. This isn't a sequel yet, although I have at least two more in mind for a Reap 'Em series. God knows how I like a series.

I'll let you know a little about the next one when I get rolling, for now I can tell you it's going to be based on the Worst Case Scenario books. Did you know they have a paranormal one? They do my friend, they really do.

Write & Wrong

So this month is National Novel Writing Month  in which I am not participating. Saturday was the Ozarks Romance Writers' meeting and several of those members were participating, so I had some writing envy. I decided I needed to love the one I'm with and work on my own already in progress novel.

I have waffled between rewriting it from third person or sticking with the first person point of view. Why I didn't just do that from the beginning I can not explain. Honestly, I didn't think it would really matter what point of view I used. I've read plenty of paranormal romances from both viewpoints.

Harelequin is probably the most new writer friendly publisher. Probably because they publish so many romances each much. Lots of awesome writers have cut their teeth in serial romance. In fact, so writer and submission friendly is Harlequin that they are having a free online conference all this week specifically on the how to's of writing romance. You can check it out at So You Think You Can Write if you are interested.

Last night I was trying to check out all of the events and podcasts from the first day and the main editor that accepts submissions for Harlequin Nocturne (the paranormal romance editor) had a podcast. She seemed great and gave good advice but also dropped a couple of bombshells. First, the word count for Harlequin Nocturne just got raised from 70,000 to 80-85,000. Yeah, I have 51,858 now. I've got some work to do.

Secondly, at the very end of the podcast she just happened to mention that submissions needed to be in third person point of view. Nowhere on the submission guidelines did it say that. Maybe it was supposed to assumed. Maybe I just didn't know what I didn't know what I didn't know. Now I know.

So my dilemma has been resolved for me. I have to rewrite it.

I guess the hardest part is committing to a course of action. Once there's a solid and clear plan, it's usually easier to proceed, right? It's good to have a plan.

So after all that waffling and hoping to take the easy way out, now I know, as with most of the things in life, there is no easy way out.

Bryon's pretty sure I'm windy enough to make it all work out. He's probably right. I just need someone to offer up their lake home to me for a long weekend so I can work on it without distraction. Either that or I'm going to have to check myself into a hotel.

Either way ... I got this. 

The Write Stuff

This is my novel manuscript so far. Today at lunch I sat down to start to rewrite it from the third person perspective. I didn't even make it through the first two pages and decided that was just nuts. I like it like it is. I like my character's first person voice. I'm not rewriting it.

Tonight I started editing it instead. Like riding a bicycle, marking with a red pen came right back to my inner English teacher self. It's been a month since I really worked on it so now it's like reading someone ELSE's writing, which is pretty cool.

That was one of Stephen King's suggestions in On Writing. Let it sit, then read through as much as you can of your work in one sitting and with that distance from it, it will be like reading someone else's work. He is totally right. Well of course he is, he's Stephen King, duh.

It's easier to be critical of someone else's work and let the red ink flow. Sort of like grading one giant paper. But a lot more fun. With no pesky teenagers to interfere.

At the last ORA (Ozarks Romance Authors) meeting a published author showed us her editor's change requests letters for two of her novels. One had only about twenty changes. The other had over a hundred and twenty. I decided to try that with my own novel so I'm making notes with page numbers and notations in a spiral notebook as I go so I can go back and fix/add in the big stuff when I get through the whole manuscript.

Then when I have it as good as I can get it, I'll let a couple of people read it. Probably my two paranormal romance loving friends Dawn and Carla. After that, if I have the 75,000 words I need, I'll pitch it to Harlequin. I know, I know Harlequin sounds cheesy but if you haven't read a Harlequin romance lately, you don't know what you are missing.

Mine won't have a secret baby, or a Sheik so no worries there.

They have a line called Nocturne specifically for paranormal romance and they have some very noteworthy and respected authors. Seriously, you should check it out. It's not your mother's serial romance anymore.

I still think I can make it into a series if I can get away with doing the next book from one of the OTHER character's perspective, first person or third, I still haven't decided. That may be a big writing no no but I've made this bed and now I'm going to lie in it.

Speaking of bed ... time for some zzzzzzzzzzzzs.