Shamelessly Stolen from Tate Hallaway's Blog

What do you find _______ about writing?

Hardest? Editing stuff that spans a seven-year period in my life. OMG. What insanity. The most depressing part is that for the most part, it isn't the earliest writing that sucks the worst.....

Easiest? Dialogue. As long as one character is working off the other, it just keeps on flowing. My favorites are arguments.

Most fun? Hearing little snippets of conversation in my head all the time.

Most Tedious? Trying discipline myself to ACTUALLY FIND A REGULAR TIME to sit down and write.

Coolest? Having people tell me they remember certain scenes I wrote, vividly. Even things of mine they read ten years ago.

Least cool? Knowing there's a book out there with my name on it that I don't like very much. *sigh*

Best? When you feel like you could go on and on and the words come easily.

Worst? When you can't even force a coherent sentence. For a good three months.

-Mel

Inundation

It seems my best option is to keep shopping Once Bitten while getting the dreaded holy mess Thieves fit for shopping as well. I'll just have to swamp them all with books and books and books out of my arsenal. Now, if I only had books and books and books fit to print. I'm only 25. I didn't hit my stride until last year. I was still hung up in the whole "but I just don't feel like writing" trap. This is total boloney. Professional writing Step 1: Take that whiney little child who doesn't FEEL like writing out back and beat the snot out of him. This is a job like any other. I don't FEEL like teaching sometimes either. But I do it. And eventually, your imagination gets the memo that we aren't just writing when we feel like it anymore, and you write better, faster. My God, if I still waited until I FELT like writing...

Speaking of whiney children, I also have to kick Anxiety's butt up and down the emotional plane, because I really have a lot of trepidation about trying to edit Thieves. And that's not going to help the process.

-Mel

Rejection Six

Well, that's the first time I got rejected on a pre-query. Lois Winston at Ashley Grayson says I missed the boat on vampire lit, that chick lit itself is a hard sell right now, and that I should either shelve Once Bitten and wait a while, work on something else, or I'd need to turn my vampires into shapeshifters or witches.

My vampires are, I guess, in the technical sense, witches. But they're still vampires, so I think that would just be arguing semantics.

It's a good book. It's a really good book. I don't want it to die in a drawer.

-Mel

Written Into a Corner

Long time, no write, I know. And that's been precisely the problem. I haven't worked on Two Evils in two months. I haven't worked on anything in two months. I figured out the historical fiction thing I was working on was SOOOO not me, and that Thieves was still, indeed, to clusterfucked up beyond repair.

So, I went back to Two Evils, because when I was reading it, I remembered the true enjoyment I get from writing about Evie, and how much I like her wit and sarcasm. I was trying to think of exactly why I stopped. Part of it is that I still haven't sold Once Bitten, not to an agent, not to a publisher, nada. So I decided to try and think of something that might be more marketable, and as Lyda always said, writing for the market instead of writing for enjoyment is the KISS OF DEATH.

I think the biggest problem, however, is that I HAVE WRITTEN MYSELF INTO A CORNER. I don't know how to move forward from where I am, honestly. Oh, I have a pretty good idea of what comes next, but I have literally created an impossible situation impeding the journey from here to there. It's frustrating as all hell.

Maybe I'll whine at my writing pals and ask for advice. I've been thinking on it for two months now and STILL don't know how to move on.

Despite this, I have written a new section for the book that I think rehashes two arguments that have already happened in the book, but hey, I worked on the thing and you edit when you're done. Forward motion is key. Kicking the inner critic's ass, however, has proven challenging.

Bad inner critic, no soup for you!

-Mel

Methinks the Story Doth Protest Too Much: When Fiction Immitates Reality

All writers give something of themself to their characters to help them relate to them better. Even the villains get some understandable foible, flaw, or obsession that the writer him or herself has experienced.

That said, it gets a little creepy when your own personal internal and external conflicts start seeping into your work. When things get a little too autobiographical for fluffy vampire fiction (not that I'd call Once Bitten "fluffy"). Case in point, I while was writing Two Evils, I had Evie nearly get stabbed at the Sinventura in Antigua, Guatemala. I barely remembered the scene until I was reading it to my mother, and suddenly went "oh crap..." At an earlier point, Evie was having an internal war about being a wuss for crying, and my mom smacked my arm. When I asked her about it, she said, "That's you!" She's never really approved of my "tough it out, you weenie" attitude toward my own instances of tears. I was just surprised she saw me in that scene, really actually floored. That always gets you to thinking about all the other places in any number of stories you've written where the you shines through. It sort of feels like walking out on stage only to find out your fly's open. It's like, oh crap, they can see my panties, while at the same time, you're also thinking, well, at least they know I don't wear grannie panties. Bizarre bizarre.

Some stories of mine have been prophetic. Characters and situations that flitted through my mind for a series of scenes suddenly sprang to life in my real life. Things I could never have predicted. Lyda once talked about how she had the Medusa bomb take out a couple of cities in her Archangel Protocol series, including New York, and then a year or two later, bam, 9/11. I can't claim anything quite so disturbing, but when you're arguing with a family member and can suddenly remember this situation having been argued almost exactly the same way with almost exactly the same results in one of your novels, it makes you a little leery. Writing can be a scary thing, like reading the Tarot cards. There are some things you know that you don't want to know and damned if they don't come tumbling out onto the written page to stare you in the face.

I just have to wonder at the irony, that so much of writing happens privately and behind closed doors, yet in the end, you end up being more exposed than in any of the other arts.

-Mel

8 Random Things About Me

I actually saw this on Myspace once.

1. I'm the first person in my family to decide to take Spanish instead of German.

2. I'm going to be 30 when my youngest sibling enters kindergarten.

3. I am a chronic overdrafter.

4. I prefer stick shift to automatic and like to drive like I'm at the Grand Prix.

5. I actually do belong to a dance troup.

6. I'm allergic to some metals and plastics.

7. I've found three errors in the one book I've published (you think I'm going to tell you what they are? Fat chance!).

8. I'm a closet fan of sappy, badly done Hallmark fairytale movies.

-Mel

Writing and ADD

I am now convinced that I suffer from the writers' version of ADD - I just don't want to spend a long time on any one project, and if something isn't blowing up or dying or making whoopee, I get bored in the middle of writing it.

I'm still working on the Victorian thing. My pen ran out of ink. Anyone ever try to find a purple pen in Guatemala?

-Mel