TGIF

I'm not going to attempt to keep count of the days I'll have to wait until I hear about my proposals. Makes for really tedious titles.

But I can say that I just received my editor's reaction to a brief summary of the next historical I want to write. She's Not Happy. Apparently history and my world-building and my characters' personalities are getting in the way of her fantasy of what ought to be happening.

So never believe this job gets easier. I now have to go back and rewrite the summary to show her it will "sparkle" and be "magical" and my hero will be really swashbucklingly alpha, even if he's lost his mind. "G" I could write a book faster than I could write a summary.

And then I went outside and planted daffodils. Every once in a while I deserve a little pleasure out of this thankless job.

Proposal Day #10-11

I'm not entirely certain what I did yesterday besides shake my fist at the heavens and curse the utility company. By the time my dh came home and righted the settings so I could get back on-line, I had a few hundred unanswered messages and the other blog to answer, so I didn't make it back here. I know I printed out one proposal and scribbled all over it, even after all the editing I'd already done. Words look different on paper. Isn't that weird?

So today I printed out the second and scribbled some more. Typed in edits, and hallelujah, happy dance! I mailed them at noon. On a Good Day. Before Mercury goes retrograde.

Nina asked about the final "polishing" of the proposals. I wish I could say precisely, but nothing I do is precise. And I suspect this is different for every writer and every manuscript. After I have the idea on the page, I have to go back and color in details, not just setting but emotion, thoughts, background material. And then I try to look at the pages from a reader's POV. Is the hero hunky? Are the heroine's good and bad traits coming through? What little "extra" would make the world really pop? These are all things that I might layer in later as I finish the book, but with a proposal, I don't have that leisure. In the case of one of these proposals, I realized that I had set it all up for the hero to be a safety nut, given him all the reasons and even the career for it, but my conscious mind hadn't caught up with my unconscious. So in that final polish, I added little quirks--checking seatbelts, driving a "safe" vehicle, worrying over the crash statistics of an airline his daughter might be taking.

Now the real waiting begins...

Proposal Day #9

I'm in hunkering down mode now. I have characters. I have a story. I even have some reasonably polished prose. And two proposals, miraculously enough. But I'm not quite there yet. I need a final push, the extra layer that not only makes the pages shine but makes the reader want more. This is the tough step, the one I would much rather ignore. It's incredibly painful to realize that the story that is so clear inside my head isn't coming through in high-definition for readers.

I needed to dust some cobwebs out of my head before I got started this morning, so I pulled out some of my favorites from my keeper shelves to study how they kickstart the story and layer in their characters. And then I read a few excerpts on Amazon to see what's new out there that I might be missing. My favorites from the keeper shelf stick in my mind best--a quiet dilemma, an interesting character, a family or setting or situation that holds my interest. Obviously, both me and my shelf are outdated. Looks like these new books are about tattoos and leather and bonding and kickass heroines. Oh well.

So I spent the day adding layers to my heroes, digging into their psyches, bringing their situations more clearly to the forefront. Or maybe I spent the day procrastinating. Heck if I know the difference at this point.

Proposal Day #8

Almost forgot to jot my daily note. I think I'm on writing Day #8 for the contemporary proposal. I re-read and edited some more after reviewing my reader's notes. I'm not satisfied with the summary, and I need to dig just a little deeper into my hero. Pondering time required. Does that come under the countdown?

Also dragged out the paranormal proposal again. Switched a couple of chapters around. Edited. Again, the hero is just too cardboard. And the summary slurps toxic waste.

So I wrote my wordwenches blog instead. And now I have ear worms....