Romantic Rush

I just finished the first true romantic scene in my current WIP, and my heart was beating so fast as I got so caught up in it! Truly, that's one of my favorite scenes to write. I can just imagine it all in my head, and it just flows onto the page. What a great night!

My husband even helped out with the baby a lot more than usual today so that I could write uninterrupted (at least, most of the time). That helped a lot...as there is nothing worse than having to stop your writing genius in the middle of some good stuff! :)

So...kudos to me...and to my newly revised word count. Off to bed...much later than I should be for a Saturday night...

I Write Corrected

I just finished Fatal Deduction by Gayle Roper that definitely included elements of bipolar disorder and gambling addictions. Both disorders made up subplots in the story, as the hero's ex-wife had bipolar disorder (and from the indications in the novel, she was a rapid-cycler) and the heroine's sister was involved with a loan shark who made his money feeding off others' gambling addictions.

I just picked up Sharon Hinck's Stepping Into Sunlight, which looks like it will include some elements of mental disturbance. The heroine witnesses a horrific crime, which likely will result in post-traumatic stress or some other depression or anxiety disorder, that renders her wanting to hide away in her home and not take care of everyday affairs. The twist in Hinck's story seems to be how the heroine plans to overcome this...by doing one good thing for someone else every day. So I'm eager to start in on her book, as it likely will help me with my own current WIP.

Reworked Paragraph Summary

Okay. After some "complaints" from family and friends about the run-on nature of the sentences, I've reworked the paragraph. I don't suppose it will kill me to break the 5-sentence rule and have TWO sentences of set-up. So here is the revised paragraph:

Social worker Kathy Burgess was stripped of her self-confidence, trust in men and faith in a kind God when she was raped two years ago, resulting in her diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. She moves to California to start her life over and returns to the career field she had unwillingly left in Alabama. Kathy overestimates how far along in her recovery she is when she suffers a crippling flashback of her rape that raises doubts of her competency from handsome attorney Joshua Brandon, whose client is on Kathy's caseload. As Kathy seeks to prove herself to Joshua and her supervisor, her jilting fiancé unexpectedly returns on scene, throwing Kathy's emotions into a tailspin. Just as she thinks she's got a handle on the matters of the heart, her mind's biggest fear of being attacked again almost becomes a reality. Will Kathy sink further into her mental disorder or rise above it with a Strength other than her own?

Author Mary DeMuth will be critiquing this paragraph on her blog, So You Want To Be Published, on March 6th. Stay tuned, as I will reproduce her critique here.

On another note, agent Janet Grant with Books and Such Literary Agency responded to one of my questions I posted on the Books and Such blog. Check it out.

Paragraph Summation

The next step in the Snowflake Method (mentioned in previous post; method developed by Randy Ingermanson) is to take another hour (or more) to develop a paragraph summation that describes the book's setup, major disasters and ending of the novel. Ideally the paragraph should have about five sentences. One sentence gives the backdrop/setup, a sentence for each disaster, and one sentence to tell the ending of the novel. Randy wrote that if this sounds suspiciously like "back-cover copy," that's because it is.

So, I'll get to work.

After being raped two years ago stripped social worker Kathy Burgess of her self-confidence, trust in men and faith in a kind God, she moves across country to start her life over, returning to the career field she had unwillingly left due to her post-traumatic stress disorder. Kathy overestimates how far along in her recovery she is when she suffers a crippling rape flashback that raises doubts of her capabilities from handsome attorney Joshua Brandon, who has a client on Kathy's caseload. As Kathy seeks to prove herself to Joshua and her supervisor, her jilting fiancé unexpectedly returns to the scene, throwing Kathy's emotions into a tailspin. Just as she thinks she's got a handle on the matters of the heart, her mind's biggest fear of being attacked again almost becomes a reality. Will Kathy sink further into her mental disorder or rise above it with a Strength other than her own?

One-Sentence Summation

Randy Ingermanson is called "the Snowflake Guy" for a reason. He wrote an article called "The Snowflake Method" that you can view here. The very first step in his method is to take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of my novel. When I started working on this post (several hours ago), I wrote that this probably wouldn't take an hour...but boy was I wrong! This is actually very difficult!

Randy says this sentence will serve me forever as my 10-second selling tool. He says to go for short (15 words or less) and to include no character names. He also says to go to the NYT Bestseller lists to see their examples (although many of the one-liners I read there made me not want to read the book, and they were way over 15 words!).

So, I've done all of the above and these are what I have to show for it:

--An emotionally-wounded social worker battles her mental disorder while learning to trust again. (14 words)

--A social worker battles her mental disorder and past emotional wounds while learning to trust again. (16 words)

An emotionally-scarred social worker battles her mental disorder, reopened wounds from her past and uncertain growing feelings for an attorney who holds her future in his hand. (28 words)

--A social worker fights past wounds, including a mental disorder and fickle fiancé, while her unexpected attraction for an attorney may give her reason to trust again. (27 words)

A social worker battles her mental disorder and wounds from a fickle fiancé while facing her biggest fear of trusting again.

--A victim of rape, a social worker battles her mental disorder while her unexpected attraction toward an attorney may give her reason to trust again. (25
words)

A rape survivor battles her mental disorder while her unexpected attraction toward an attorney may give her reason to trust again, her biggest fear. (24 words)

A rape survivor battles her subsequent mental disorder as well as her unexpected attraction toward an attorney who represents a spiritual and emotional threat to her carefully ordered life.

OKAY! WOW. I could go on forever and ever rearranging a few words to look different, but I'll stop now because I need to go to bed. Might revisit this tomorrow after sleeping on it. Whew!

Blogosphere

Okay. I started this blog just this year, obviously, but I have come to the realization that blogging is where it's at. Everyone is doing it. I should have been doing it a long time. Not necessarily starting my own, as I'm fond of facebook and really use that as my social connecting tool. But I should have been reading blogs. Literary agents, authors, editors...they are all blogging! Giving untold amounts of useful information away...FREE.

So now I'm following several blogs and really look forward to checking out them out daily. I would highly recommend to other unpubbed authors to do this!!

Story v. Novel

I had a friend tell me the other day that watching some old movies would help me write my "stories." I know that she meant this to be a helpful comment, and I'm certainly not upset with her, as she's probably right. The oldie, but goodie, movies of, say, the 40s, have long-since been forgotten.

I got to thinking, though, about calling what I do in my spare time writing "stories." I've said this many times, and haven't thought much about it. But if I'm really serious about getting published eventually, then perhaps I ought to change my terminology.

"Stories" implies a lackadaisical attitude, doesn't it? Like, I just fiddle with writing. But to say that I'm writing a "novel" or "manuscript" implies a serious commitment to my writing, even if it is part-time.

So from this day on, I'm going to make a concerted effort not to call what I do "writing stories." I'm a novelist and I write books! :)