THE AUTHOR AND HER SPORT

I think we writers need sports. We can sit at a computer just so long, building characters and plotting, crafting worlds and words for ourselves…and for readers who aren’t even in the room. The sport should pull us out of our chairs, get us outside, involve real people and provide a more tangible goal than writing does. I’m pretty pleased with my choice: golf. I play eighteen holes at least once a week and I’m active in my local women’s golf group. With my club, I’ll whack (with all my might) a small, dimpled ball, ninety to one hundred times in five hours. Note two more beneficial elements of golf…getting rid of pent-up aggressions and seeing a goal met immediately: getting the damn ball in the hole in the least strikes possible. (I didn’t say the sport you have to pick is easy, did I?)

Sure there are similarities between golf and writing. Both are challenging. I pick a club, align the ball and calibrate my swing as carefully as I choose words for my novels. I love playing with great golfers as much as I’m inspired when I read novels by fabulous writers. Practice? Vital to a golfer as it is to an author. Have I written a novel about golfing? Absolutely. And here’s the cool part…my heroine (in BAD LIES, a novel I haven’t released yet) plays great golf. Now you see the advantage of being a writer who also golfs…through my character, I can be the outstanding golfer I want to be!

Resurrecting the Tomb

It’s been a long time since I’ve sold a book. More than a year, which for me really is a long time, as for a while there I was selling a new book at least every couple/few months. Then the littlest child was born, the day job became more tedious, and writing life ceased to exist. As long as it’s been since I sold a new book, it’s been longer since I’ve truly written. Well, it had been. I am thrilled to bits to say as of early July, I am finally back at it and hope to send off a (dare I say?) rocking new paranormal suspense proposal to my agent on Monday. Whether that proposal will make it past her desk is anyone’s guess, though I have all the proper digits in alignment that it will render a sale sooner or later. In the interim I am constantly aware that my publishing calendar remains sadly empty. I love fan mail, but these mails that come in eager to know about my next release have a way of bringing me down. I feel awful having to say, “I’d like to know that as well but the muse isn’t finding much play time these days.”

So lately I am thinking about those books that were written several years back, that never did sell, that are collecting dust and yet that I still love to this day. Two in particular come to mind. These stories made it to editors who did pass them on to others in the hopes of a sale. It never came to light, but that they made it that far suggests they have potential. Enough potential to pull them out of that dust pile and resurrect that old material? Try to send it off again? Or is the process of freshening up old material more tedious than that of writing new material? Has my voice changed too much to even try? One thing I won’t to do is put out old material simply to say I have something “new” on the shelves, but I do love these old manuscripts and I do feel they are worth sharing. As strong as newer stuff, that I don’t know.

It’s a fact that writing style and voice changes over time, hopefully becoming stronger. If you picked up a book by your favorite author and the writing wasn’t as strong as some material but the story still a solid one, would you feel disappointed? Would you rather wait a couple years for something new to release? And if you’re an author, have you done this or considered doing so? What was the response? Or what kept you from giving it a try? Dare I attempt to resurrect those tomes, or will it be a waste of time better spent working on new material?

~ jodi

My Way

Last week I finished the first draft of my category romance.  Hooray!  According to Stephen King's On Writing he advises to stash away the draft for six weeks, not to touch one word, a comma or anything else.  Since he's Stephen King, I'm following his advice and letting my mental batteries recharge.  Before I waited at least a couple of weeks but during that time, I  tweaked a scene or added one.  I never gave my eye to freshen for my work.  Not anymore, I'm a convert and it's wonderful.

My TBR pile is shrinking from a shaking beanstalk to a manageable size that won't collapse on top of me.  I'm catching up on my favorite TV shows I recorded.  It's like rediscovering the outside world.  The greatest part is feeling the surge of writing energy building.  For me, this humming starts beneath my muscles and in the depths of my core and spreads to the tips of my toes and fingers.  Slowly, this force builds until it vibrates through me. My skin tingles from it and never lets me rest.  My mind comes alive with scenes, characters, dialogue, and anything and everything to do with my new work.  It percolates until a moment when I have to sit down at my computer and let the energy transform into a novel.

Right now, the hum shakes through me.  Even as I'm writing this, my leg is jiggling from the restless power.  I'm still at the beginning stages where my characters are starting to form and breathe in life.  The story is thickening and soon I'll write it.

Once that's finished, I'll pull out my waiting work.  I'll blow of the figurative dust and bring out my pens and start my revisions while another work slumbers and the mind is refreshing and the eye is new so that draft can be tweaked, rewritten, polished and everything else. I like always having something to work on. My way propels me forward like a rolling stone and never lets my writing collect moss.

That's my process.  It works for me but I'm always searching for new ways that might improve it.  What's your process?  Do you have any advice to share?