Pearls from Cathy Maxwell

Avon Historical and New York Times Bestselling author Cathy Maxwell stopped at the Parma Snow branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library the other night for a chat. She's been writing for over twenty years and has a new release just out, Lyon's Bride (see gorgeous cover below).

The beauty of hearing an expert speak is that it makes you see things in a unique way--a way that comes from years of experience. I often feel I have a myopic view of things and long to be able to pull back and see the big picture.

Here is what she said that had a great impact on me:

A romance is the tale of a relationship but also of a commitment. We read to see if this couple has what it takes to commit to one another for life.

I love that! It's a beautiful perspective on why we read--and write--romance.

A romance begins with a woman who doesn't like the status quo and has decided to take a risk.

What a great way to describe the Call to Adventure!

Someone asked her about sex scenes in books. Cathy said that for a female, sex is the ultimate act of commitment. If the reader doesn't sense that commitment, the scene will fall flat or appear gratuitous.

Writing a novel is like working with a lump of clay. A good book is in the rewrites.

I am currently working from a fast draft and tortuously trying to turn it into a real story and finding it agonizing. I know it will need more drafting--but how much more? How much more time, how many more drafts? When does it turn from the lump of clay into something bigger than itself, a real story?   Will I ever get it right? 

(So, as you can see, I'm having some stress here.) So I asked Cathy, do you write faster now than you used to?  How many hours a day do you write?

Her answer was, it never gets easier. Some books write themselves easier than others and she has no idea why. But she did say, you're always best when you push yourself. You always have to keep challenging yourself to be better.

Cathy said the second book in her new series (the Chatten curse series) that is coming out in the fall (Harry's story) may be her favorite hero ever. I can't wait to read this series.

Cathy's also got a story in an anthology coming out on May 28th (just in time for Memorial Day) by Avon Impulse called For Love and Honor. The authors were given a one-word prompt:  Soldier. Her story is the Regency version. Lynne Hinton and Candis Terry tell contemporary tales.

I'm so glad I had the opportunity to listen (and be energized by) the words--and wisdom--of a true expert.


                                                              

Jennifer Probst: Success is Not an Accident

I read on the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood blog last week that author Jennifer Probst became the first author for Entangled Publishing to hit the NYT Bestseller List with her book The Marriage Bargain (see post here).
That pretty much made me download it instantly. I found it to be sparkly, tightly written, and a don't-you-dare-put-me-down kind of read. I loved it!

So today I found myself googling this author and her NYT success, and I found this post at The Moody Muses. Jennifer talks about a blogpost she read on Kristen Lamb's blog about Quitting. It's a very inspirational post about when to turn your focus elsewhere, to focus on your goals and change them when something isn't working.  Jennifer also shows herself to be a very savvy busnesswoman.

Both of these posts are about focus and having a plan--a business plan as well as a writing plan. Read them and be inspired as I was!

                                         [ A cloudy day but who notices when these are so bright?]

Good News--Contest Finals

My manuscript The Spy Who Loved Me finaled in the San Antonio Romance Author's Merritt Contest and the Connecticut Romance Writers' The Write Stuff Contest. 

Nice to have good news!

River Thames at Night, FreeFoto.com
(http://www.freefoto.com/images/31/26/31_26_14_prev.jpg)

An Entry That Sparkles

Recently, I've judged a few contests and I've finaled in a few.  And I have until Sunday to revise an entry any way I want before I turn it in again for the final judging.

All this leads me to think and think hard--what exactly makes a great entry?


As I ran down the list of this week's talented Golden Heart winners, I saw some finalists who had finaled previously.  What precisely do these talented folks know??? Is there an elusive secret that makes a person final again and again?  If anyone knows what it is, please don't hesitate to come forth and tell me!!!  Bottle it and I'll pay!!!

So anyway, all bitterness aside (I'm over it, I really am :), I decided to compile a list to help me revise my entry and focus on making it the best I can.

MIRANDA'S LIST:  ****WHAT MAKES A CONTEST ENTRY SPARKLE**** 

• Vivid, larger-than-life characters.  Characters with personality.  Sympathetic, believable, realistic and yet...more.  ***Something,*** whatever that might be (that secret spice) that pulls them out of being ho-hum ordinary.  Something that makes you care immediately what happens to them when point #2 happens. So call this high concept, call it the hook, call it that extra special unique twist on the ordinary, whatever you call it, it makes you say, Oh! I want to read that!  This is not a hum-drum victim, this is not a sit-back-and-watch-things-happen-to-me heroine, this is an active, goal-directed character who is going to fight back (maybe not in the right way) when things go wrong.

• Their world as they know it turns upside down.  In the first chapter.  And we don't need to know every reason why, yet, either.  But we care.  Save the info dumps for your own notes.  Take them out, all out, and leave in all the action and dialogue you can.

• An unusual, vivid setting.  A place you as a reader want to visit.  Even if it's grandma's kitchen--you want to be there.  There is something new and different about it--a new world to explore.  Yes, I said a new world.  That's for anybody who thinks paranormal is the only genre with world building.

• Every voice is distinct and you can actually hear each character talk in your head.  An author who is able to do this has done her/his homework about their characters.  They've given them traits that come out every time they open their mouths to speak.

• The dialogue sparkles.  That doesn't mean it has to be full of one-liners.  But it's so real you can hear it in your head.

• The author has a strong voice.  I understand this when I see it but I don't know if I have it in my own writing.  Can voce be inhibited and written out of your work the more you rework things?  Can it be inhibited by perfectionism, by trying to get things exactly right?  If you write your first draft fast, do you get more "voice" into it?  Or does this get honed in your final drafts?  I can't answer this.

• The language is colorful and surprising.  I'm going to show not tell by using a few examples from  Lisa Kleypas's new release, Rainshadow Road.  She is an absolute master at this.

         Here she is describing a little girl:
         "She weighed no more than a dandelion fluff, her small arms loosely wrapped around his           
         forehead."  (p. 96)

         The idea of relating the weight of a dandelion fluff to a little girl is so brilliant, and the small arms  
         wrapped around this big man's head--for anyone who has ever seen a little girl riding high on
          someone's shoulders, it's just perfect. 

          More unexpected metaphors:

          "The scene scattered like an overturned display of greeting cards."  (page 141)

         "Lucy had not been able to identify the nagging feeling that had drawn her insdes as tight as
          violin strings."  (page 5)

          And here is a description of an inanimate object, a house:  "Even in its ruined condition, the house 
          possessed winsome charm.  Unknown stories lingered in abandoned corners and rickety
          staircases.  Memories had seeped into its walls."  (page 35)

          Memories don't usually seep, but in this case it is just the perfect unusual metaphor. 

          Good authors know how to mold language in unique ways that surprise the reader. 

• Lastly, what's not in a sparkling entry?  Backstory, lots of introspection, little action, dull and commonplace characters who do dull and commonplace things.  We are in the entertainment industry.  I think that's important to keep in mind as you write the story of your heart.  It's not all about you and what you feel compelled to put on the page--it's about your audience. 

           Okay, I'm goin' back to the drawing board!  Wish me luck.

Finalist Chicago Fire and Ice!

I just found out my early Victorian romance The Spy Who Loved Me is a finalist in the Historical category of the Chicago North Fire and Ice Contest.  Yippee!!

Fortitude.  Resilience.  Rebirth.

                  Oh, and this picture is from my garden.  There is something alive under there after all!!

Writing Inspiration for the Day

You didn't really want to hear me talk about the trials and travails of teaching my first online workshop, did you? This is more fun!

A Writer and His Editor: Fitzgerald and Perkins

Yes, I am actually going to write about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor, Maxwell Perkins!

(No, this is not a topic related to Regency or Victorian England!)

But I came across this remarkable book that illustrates this amazing relationship.  The letters exchanged between the two show so clearly the universal dreams and aspirations, doubts, and fears of writers everywhere.  You will recognize them in these brief passages that follow!  Perkins was friend, mentor, and most remarkably of all, full and true believer in Fitzgerald's genius.  



Celestial Eyes, the iconic cover painting of The Great Gatsby by Francis Cugat



The book I discovered, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 219:  F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, I found quite by accident.  While hibernating one Saturday in a study room at our local unviersity library. I discovered this book tucked between the legs of my study table and the wall.

The book is remarkable in that it traces the development of Gatsby as a book (revisions, rewritings, etc.) and charts its rise to great noveldom.  Fitzgerald's struggles with alcoholism undermined his literary genius in that it hid the fact that he revised painstakingly and did layers of drafts.

Fitzgerald died young at age 44, and never lived to see his true literary success.  While he published and lived off of the money he made from writing short stories, Gatsby did not sell well.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1932, Carl Van Vechten photographer, public domain (www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/079_vanv.html)

Perkins, who discovered the likes of Hemmingway and Thomas Wolfe, was far more than an editor to Fitzgerald--he was a mentor and a father figure. 

Maxwell Perkins, 1942.  From Library of Congress, no copyright restrictions www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94507177/ 

So take a look at these exerpts.  (I hope I don't ruin them with my comments.  But I was struck by how Fitzgerald's struggles embodied those of any writer.) 

Fitzgerald (July, 1924):  "I want to write something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned."

(Ah, the lofty goals of artistic aspiration...we can all relate.)

Sept., 1924:
"Now for a promise--the novel will absolutely and definitively be mailed to you before the first of October.  I've had to rewrite practically half of it--at present it's stored away for a week so I can take a last look at it and see what I've left out--there's some intangible sequence lacking somewhere in the middle and a break in interest that invariable means the failure of a book.  It is like nothing I've ever read before." 

(See--even F. Scott had to deal with sagging middles and brain fatigue from re-reding his ms over too many times!)

And here is Perkins replying in November, 1924:

"The general brilliant quality of the book makes me ashamed to make even thse criticisms.  The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the expression you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary.  The manuscript is full of phrases which make a scene blaze with life.  If one enjoyed a rapid railroad journey I would compare the number and vividness of pictures your living words suggest, to the living scenes disclosed in that way.  It seems in reading a much shorter book than it is, but it carries the mind through a series of experiences that one would think would require a book of three times its length."

"...You once told me you were not a natural writer--my God:  you have plainly mastered the craft, of course, but you needed far more than craftmanship for this."   

(This is a dream relationship.  Perkins clearly saw and understood Fitzgerald's genius.) 

So inspiring!



For a fascinating discussion of Cugat's artwork for the 1925 cover of The Great Gatsby, see Charles Scribner III's essay at http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/essays/eyes/eyes.html