I write action, I write sad stuff, I write murderous things, I admit I have never written a happy ending. I really, really want to write a happy ending, heck, even an almost working toward being a happy ending. Oozing with love all around.
Yesterday an idea came to me. Something I haven't read or heard about in a romance novel. I want to write this, I want to address this "what if". I will set aside the other stories I'm working on, except His and Miss and start on the unnamed romance with the happy ending.
The best part about this is I have so few preconceptions about romance novels that it could turn out to be something really strange or wonderful. The only thing I know about romance novels is that I like the historicals and I like them to be hundred of pages. Think of Diana Gabaldon type, if she can even be considered a romance writer. I hate labels on people, so I think what I want to write is a long, happy ending story set in the past. With lots of people. A question in my mind is can I keep them all straight and in action. Like War and Peace...holy pete sake. How long did it take you to read that tome? Okay, I'll go with 150,000 words.
Wait till the writing partner hears what I have up my sleeve. LOL...
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
It was a Dark and Stormy Night
Brian starts every writing session with "It was a Dark and Stormy Night". Goober me, every session types in "It was a Dark and Stormy Night." He laughs and we move on to work.
Seriously, after a dozen times of this I am considering how abundantly the sense of humor abounds in his bod, because I've stopped deleting the phrase. It will be he who must edit them out. I don't think he knows the "find" feature in Word. When I am bored with that phrase I will revert to my personal favorite, the "midnight dreary" lines.
If we stopped screwing around, we could have had this book in print already.
Seriously, after a dozen times of this I am considering how abundantly the sense of humor abounds in his bod, because I've stopped deleting the phrase. It will be he who must edit them out. I don't think he knows the "find" feature in Word. When I am bored with that phrase I will revert to my personal favorite, the "midnight dreary" lines.
If we stopped screwing around, we could have had this book in print already.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The Morning After
Here is a web site for one of the places in the book. http://www.oldtownauburnca.com
Thought you might like a peek at gold country.
What do you do after finishing books you have been working on a year?
1. You get to immediately move on to the next book. I'm writing the action chapter in the spy story today, I get to write the fun-nest stuff. I have to get this awful man off a mountain with a bunch of stolen missles. I get to move him from outside Las Vegas into Arizona. The goal is Tucson but I may not get him all that way today. I promised that I would not hurt him or kill him off, since he is a despicable rotter he deserves it but he is not "my" character so I can't. However, he is holding one of "my" characters hostage so I can't hurt him but I can make his life a miserble hell for the trip. I will, I will.
2. Find an apartment. We decided to move as soon as the third book was finished..it is, we are.
3. Figure out what is for dinner.
4. Put new guts in the broken toilet in my bathroom. Ah, the glamourous life of an author.
5. Begin printing Ms. Got Rocks so Brian can read it, he doesn't do reading entire manuscripts from a monitor. He has never read this book . He had read short parts and listened to me yammer about it, but this is the first reading for him, red pencil in hand.
6. Arrrgh, start writing the synopsis, outline and whatever those two paragraph blurbs are that go into the query letter. This is harder for me than writing a 90,000 word adventure story.
7. Cross my heart, next ms. I start from scratch, I'm going to write the synopsis as I write daily, there must be some way to organize this porton of the process to make it less onerous.
8. Buy a little present for moi, for finishing it. This is the third full length book, plus one screenplay that I have completed.
9. This may be the impossible dream, but I would like a photo of Holly and Byein, the models for the dogs Lovie and Phoebe in the book. Holly will sit for a photo, but Bye never sits,ever. So this a new goal.
Thought you might like a peek at gold country.
What do you do after finishing books you have been working on a year?
1. You get to immediately move on to the next book. I'm writing the action chapter in the spy story today, I get to write the fun-nest stuff. I have to get this awful man off a mountain with a bunch of stolen missles. I get to move him from outside Las Vegas into Arizona. The goal is Tucson but I may not get him all that way today. I promised that I would not hurt him or kill him off, since he is a despicable rotter he deserves it but he is not "my" character so I can't. However, he is holding one of "my" characters hostage so I can't hurt him but I can make his life a miserble hell for the trip. I will, I will.
2. Find an apartment. We decided to move as soon as the third book was finished..it is, we are.
3. Figure out what is for dinner.
4. Put new guts in the broken toilet in my bathroom. Ah, the glamourous life of an author.
5. Begin printing Ms. Got Rocks so Brian can read it, he doesn't do reading entire manuscripts from a monitor. He has never read this book . He had read short parts and listened to me yammer about it, but this is the first reading for him, red pencil in hand.
6. Arrrgh, start writing the synopsis, outline and whatever those two paragraph blurbs are that go into the query letter. This is harder for me than writing a 90,000 word adventure story.
7. Cross my heart, next ms. I start from scratch, I'm going to write the synopsis as I write daily, there must be some way to organize this porton of the process to make it less onerous.
8. Buy a little present for moi, for finishing it. This is the third full length book, plus one screenplay that I have completed.
9. This may be the impossible dream, but I would like a photo of Holly and Byein, the models for the dogs Lovie and Phoebe in the book. Holly will sit for a photo, but Bye never sits,ever. So this a new goal.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Pages are Passing Through
One hundred twenty pages edited, rewritten, or kissed goodbye in the past two days. Rocky the heroine is Rocking On, and I think I will have the rewrite and edit done by Monday. Writing partner Brian and I worked for a short time last night on Hit and Miss the spy adventure story that has just been sitting on the top of the mountains between Las Vegas and somewhere for about a year, sitting in a bookish way on the computer. We are determined to get this book back on track. Brian wants to write and he can write, but the kind of 60 hour a week outside job he has wears him out and he has no energy to sit at the computer after work. We now have a deal he tells the story, I type the story. I get to jump in with ideas if I want but my function is my ability to take diction on the fly. We did two pages last night, doesn't seem like a lot, but two pages is better than no pages. I'm glad to be doing some new writing. My cyclopian eye was crossing yesterday from all the editing. Back to it, just do it.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The Fish are Jumpin' and the Weather is Fine
I suppose I need to pay royalties to "Porgy and Bess", I'll send them some of this 85F weather that started yesterday. Dude, no kidding.
I have no idea what the fish are doing at Lake Mead, but this fishie is working up a storm and writing as much as I can. As I can considering that 85F with all the windows open is perfect,poifect reading weather. I kicked back all afternoon yesterday and read a memoir by Carol Drinkwater about growing olives in the south of France. I really enjoyed it, not just for the French aspects and that she played Helen in All Creatures Great and Small TV series. I enjoyed the parts about restoring an old house and rejuvenating an old olive grove and how olive oil is crushed. I was amazed that olive oil soap is made from the fourth or fifth crushing of the olive mash in that particuliar Cote d' Azur area. In the USA among handmade soapmakers (of which I am one)usually exta virgin and virgin oil is the way to go. Very interesting I read the whole book in one sitting. Thank you Ms. Drinkwater, I enjoyed it. I grew up with olive trees, we only had 20-25 and they were just coming into prime being around 80-100 years old, a company used to come and harvest them for my mother. They were cured for black olives.
Anyway, enough olive culture, my book will be finished this week. My older sister got married yesterday in Maui..best wishes to Mary and Richard Sites.
Write on
I have no idea what the fish are doing at Lake Mead, but this fishie is working up a storm and writing as much as I can. As I can considering that 85F with all the windows open is perfect,poifect reading weather. I kicked back all afternoon yesterday and read a memoir by Carol Drinkwater about growing olives in the south of France. I really enjoyed it, not just for the French aspects and that she played Helen in All Creatures Great and Small TV series. I enjoyed the parts about restoring an old house and rejuvenating an old olive grove and how olive oil is crushed. I was amazed that olive oil soap is made from the fourth or fifth crushing of the olive mash in that particuliar Cote d' Azur area. In the USA among handmade soapmakers (of which I am one)usually exta virgin and virgin oil is the way to go. Very interesting I read the whole book in one sitting. Thank you Ms. Drinkwater, I enjoyed it. I grew up with olive trees, we only had 20-25 and they were just coming into prime being around 80-100 years old, a company used to come and harvest them for my mother. They were cured for black olives.
Anyway, enough olive culture, my book will be finished this week. My older sister got married yesterday in Maui..best wishes to Mary and Richard Sites.
Write on
Thursday, March 08, 2007
New Words.
Finally, I'm getting to write new words. I have reached the point in the re-invented manuscript that the jigsaw puzzle is taking shape. One minor exception I discovered last night. This is funny enough to be just plain stupid. I have 75 pages of the heroine doing all kinds of stuff and I have never described her. Slight error, repairable but I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO LOOK AT THOSE PAGES AGAIN. Rocky could be a tiny weensy green and purple person eating aquatic plant for all the description she has written about her.
I will take care of that this morning and then off and running again on new stuff.
Today is will be 78F in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have the windows open and the birds are cooing and chirping, and even the morning commute smog is tolerable.
I will take care of that this morning and then off and running again on new stuff.
Today is will be 78F in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have the windows open and the birds are cooing and chirping, and even the morning commute smog is tolerable.
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