Write What You Know

By Dawn Marie Hamilton

Write what you know. How many times have you heard that bit of advice?

I write Scottish inspired fantasy and paranormal romance. Knowledge of Scottish history is easily acquired by reading. Time travel, magic, fae creatures and shapeshifting vampires—not exactly subjects learned during a lengthy corporate career. Research helps, but imagination plays a larger role in creating fantasy and paranormal elements.

How do you persuade readers to suspend long-held beliefs and accept the fantastical?

It's all in the worldbuilding…and the details. The details are where real life is inserted.

Having been a County Cooperative Extension master gardener, I know a wee bit about gardening. Gardens are where magic happens in our busy world of today. So I incorporate gardens into my stories. Sometimes in a large way, where the characters are gardeners. Other times in a small way by incorporating gardens into the setting.

At the cottage, Laurie offered them a nightcap, pouring each a glass of port. They wandered into the garden to enjoy the beautiful evening.

"Do you feel the magic in the air?" Caitrina asked.

Douglas peered at the moonlit sky and chuckled. "Aye, lass. Strong magic."

An uneasy sensation crept through Laurie as she glanced around.

Caitrina grasped her hand. "Come. I want to show you the foxglove we planted. They flowered."

Walking with Caitrina to the back gate, Laurie sensed something strange. She frowned when she smelled a familiar exotic fragrance on Caitrina. "What the hell?"

A tinkling sound confirmed her fear.

The gate swung open.

He [her dream lover] stood just beyond the garden gate.

Her pulse raced. Yanking her hand away from Caitrina, she stepped back in panic.

Caitrina pushed her forward through the gate. Terror forced the air from Laurie's lungs.

Nothing held her back, no barrier. She fell forward over a precipice into a swirling fog, down...down...down through a tunnel. The walls spun and she plunged downward, faster and faster, toward a blinding, bright light that continued to move out of reach.

Sucked through an opening into the white brilliance, she choked on the scream in her throat, cringing against the intense noise assaulting her ears.

She spun, or everything around her was spinning, she wasn't sure which. Her sensitized skin tingled as if touched by an electric charge. Then, the bright, white light exploded into a million fragments of brilliant color, a dazzling kaleidoscope, and she was falling again.

Down...down...down, the speed of her descent increased. Water flowed below her, a stream. She plummeted toward it. Bracing herself, she thought she'd crash into the rushing water, only to propel across it. She hit the ground hard and saw nothing more. 

…excerpt from Just Beyond the Garden Gate, an unedited Garden Gate manuscript.

Working through the writing doldrums

Lately it has been hard to get to work on my writing. Some of that is a matter of it being summer and feeling lazy. Some has been that sense of depression all writers get from time to time, that no one really cares about their work and it isn't going to sell anyway, or if it does find a publisher, no one will buy it, so why bother... and so on.

I'm pretty sure everyone reading this has felt this way from time to time. Oddly enough knowing that almost everyone goes through the same feelings doesn't really help that much. In most cases it is an irrational reaction and by definition that makes it hard to get rid of. But we have to get rid of it as soon as possible.

We can't let the doldrums bog us down and keep us from writing. If you need a break, take one, but remember it is just that, a break, and not a matter of quitting writing. 

I will get this latest WIP finished and sent off to my editor, and I will put together an outline for a new project for NaNoWriMo before the end of October. These are my goals for the next six weeks.

It will be done, one way or another.

What do other people do to drive themselves back to writing?

News Over A Holiday

Hi!
Hope everyone in the U.S.A. has fantastic plans for the July 4th holiday tomorrow and for those who live in other countries--have a great week ahead!

Like many writers, I work two paid jobs, one as an Enterprise Admin on a computer network and another as a writer. I won't even mention all the unpaid jobs we are all working. So this week, I'm taking the entire week off from my day job and hoping to catch up on some writing-related tasks.

My latest historical mystery, A Rose Before Dying, just came out (yippee!) and I was thrilled with the initial sales which far exceeded my puny expectations. I just hope the trend continues. However, like most writers, there's barely enough time to catch my breath between projects. Especially since most of my projects overlap. This week, alone, I'm hoping to either finish or get near to finishing the first draft for a Christmas season novella, and I've got to dive into revisions for a paranormal romance for my publisher, The Wild Rose Press, with the hopes they will like the revised version enough to accept it.

Time management is always such a problem for writers, particularly when many are working two (or more jobs). There's the ideal of what you should be doing, i.e.

• Always be writing a new manuscript
• Have another manuscript you're editing/almost ready to submit
• Have a third manuscript (or more) floating around at publishers/agents (pick your poison)

That's a rough row to hoe. In fact, I've rarely been able to manage it, since it takes me about two years to write a book and edit it sufficiently to submit anywhere. I find that some years, I'm doing nothing but writing, followed by a year (or more) when I'm trying to edit what I've written to get it in sufficient shape to get it critiqued and then submitted...somewhere. This has led to a herky-jerky writing career with huge gaps between book releases. Very unsatisfying.

But what can you really do about it? Considering I have (at most) 4 hours a night to do all my writing, editing, critiquing (for my crit groups), promotion, and submissions, that's not an easy answer. While 4 hours sounds like a lot...it's not. Generally, what with dinner and other necessary activities, it ends up being more like 2 hours.

Time Management
What I'm trying to do to conquer the beast:

• Promotion - don't do promotion in the evenings, do it at odd times, instead. When I get up in the morning, lunchtime, etc.
• Writing - 1 hour per weekday, all other tasks not withstanding, weekends as possible (I do need some down time considering I have two high-pressure jobs and occasionally, my mind just blanks out on me if I don't)
• Critting - 1 hr, 2 days per week, (more if I'm bored or have time)
• Editing - as demanded by publishers, or 1 hour per day

As you can see, that's going to add up to more than the available hours, and it is difficult to switch gears between editing and writing my own stuff, but oddly, not critting and writing. So there are some psychological issues there (which may just be my own stodgy brain).

However, we shall see if I really can keep riding this time management beast to the finish line, or if I wind up with my usual: year of furious writing/year of insane editing schedule.

How do you manage your time? How rigid are you about making yourself meet self-imposed time slots?

Writing Alive!

I’m sitting on an airplane writing a blog after putting aside a novel about a writer obsessed with writing (John Irving’s LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER). Once I’ve composed this entry, I’ll return to revising my last novel. The snippets I write for Facebook, Twitter and general e-mail add up to a lot of words per month; the character and plot profile I’ve created for my newest novel is already thirteen pages long.

I look at the computers and e-readers in the hands of my seatmates and I see the truth. Writing isn't dying. It might exist in new formats, but it’s still very much alive in our work and in our hearts.

Truth be told, the unwritten protocols of social networking are boosting writing output instead of killing it. “Netiquette” cautions us to show in writing that we care about each other first..to carefully establish by-the-word relationships, before we sell our ideas and our products. We ‘approve’ our followers and control our ‘likers’ so we’re comfortable writing to an ever-growing circle of friends and acquaintances. We're a gigantic group of international Pen Pals who get to talk to each other in real time.

No, I’m not worried about the death of writing. My biggest concern with all the composing going on is whether I can beat out the crowd and create an original phrase or two. I better hurry up and write…or all the fresh wordings will be taken!