There Is Life Outside Your Apartment, AKA, Joining My Local RWA

Confession time: I live in my head. A lot. And more often than not, living in my head also means living in my house. All the time. I mean, I occasionally have to leave to find food and shoes and stuff. But other than that? Helllloooooo, couch.

So it was a big stretch for me to actually haul my lame ass down to my local RWA chapter meeting this past weekend. I'd been considering trying to go for months, but there'd always been some reason not to. An out-of-town wedding. A D&D game I couldn't get out of. A severe case of home-body-itis. But this month, I decided. It was time.

And of course, now I wish I'd done it earlier. What a bunch of lovely people. People who don't blink an eye at a gift bag with a vibrator in it. People who order mimosas for any reason at all. People who write romance and like talking books and word counts and craft. People who were even willing to talk to me, a total stranger with a crippling case of shyness around strangers.

Anyway, the meeting was a big success. I made some new acquaintances, got an awesome new plot bunny, and had fun. Best of all, I got some motivation. There's something about being around other people all working on the same goal you are, kwim?

So I paid my $15, and am now on my way to becoming an honest-to-goodness member of CarolinaRomance Writers.

And yes, this means I will have to leave my house at least once a month from now on.

Mini Writer's Retreat

I had that most rare and lovely of experiences this week: my husband left town. For four days.

Four blissful, productive days.

Now, I'm not saying I don't love my husband or that I didn't miss him. But as a work-from-home, childless person, having all that free time with no interruptions, no cleaning, no cooking… it was amazing.

I dubbed it my writer's retreat, and at the outset of it, I decided I was going to write 10k words while he was gone.

…

…

**crickets**

Of course, that didn't happen. But what did happen is I wrote when I had words in my head. I read. I watched a couple movies. I slept at weird hours. I took time to get my head in what I was doing.

You know. I retreated.

It was definitely what I needed. He comes home today, and I am soooo ready to see him, but I really enjoyed my time by myself to just be.

What would you do if you had four days to yourself?
 -Jeanette.

PS – In other news, Unacceptable Risk received its first review today! Bitten by Paranormal Romance gave it FIVE HOWLS!!!! I might be howling myself…

Indiana Jones and the Words on the Page

One of my favorite movies growing up was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was funny and full of action and romance and … just a touch of the morbid. Maybe it was a bit of prescience about the emo chick I would turn into when I got older, but one of the many scenes that stuck with me from the movie was when the Knight Templar in the cave talked about the burden of drinking from the Grail every day, and how sometimes, even though it was the only thing keeping him alive, he just didn’t have the will to do it.

Because, you know, drinking the magical elixir of life is hard. Or something.

Except it kind of is, if you're alone in a cave for hundreds of years.

It's super melodramatic, but I feel that way about mundane things all the time. I love my job. I love my life. Writing and talking to people online and editing and reading are what keep me alive. And yet some days… I just don't have the will to do any of them. 

Like I said. Emo chick.

This happens more in the fall than any other time of year. Something about the days getting shorter and temperatures getting cooler. It's always made me want to crawl into a cave and hibernate for hundred of years. Most days I beat the emo down and get to work and I always feel better because I did. And some other days, I look at that life-giving cup and I just say… Nah. Not today.

The Lamentations of a Romance-Writing Feminist

I recently did an interview with The Mamafesto for a project called "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like," wherein a bunch of normal people talk about what feminism means to them. One of the major themes in my interview – and something I've been thinking about a lot of late – is the vague cognitive dissonance that comes with writing/enjoying romance novels and considering myself a feminist.

Romance novels have gotten a bad rap for ages, and I don't think that will ever change, even if the genre has come a long way since the bodice-rippers of old. Like many forms of entertainment enjoyed primarily by women, they're derided by men and by "serious" women alike, and sometimes with good reason. Alpha heroes and damsels in distress are still common tropes, and happily ever after always means getting the guy, not the doctorate. It's telling that the erotic romance genre has taken off by leaps and bounds since the advent of eReaders, since we can now read our steamy novels without having to show anyone the cover.

So what’s a feminist to do with all that shame?

Personally, I try not to be ashamed in the first place, but it's a tall order considering so much of that attitude is deeply sewn into us for our whole lives. I have a science background, and the idea of confessing that I write smutty romance novels to the guys I used to do physics experiments with gives me the shakes. Ditto for the ladies I took all those women's studies classes with back in college.

But the thing is, as feminists who choose not work outside of the home have been saying for decades, the essence of feminism is about giving women choices, not taking them away. So I do my best to own my choice and the choices of so many women (and even some men) who enjoy these types of stories. I try not to dissemble or blush when I admit to what I do.

And I try to do my small part to make sure the genre is something I can be proud of. I try to write women who care about more than just their love-lives and I try to pack as much literary merit into those sex scenes as I can.

So what do you think? Is reading and writing romance compatible with feminism? And if not, then how can we make it more so?

Purgatory Is An Unedited Manuscript

Anyone who follows my ranting and moaning on Twitter knows that I've spent the better part of a week now looking at edits for Unacceptable Risk, ignoring edits for Unacceptable Risk, procrastinating in order to avoid looking at edits for Unacceptable Risk, and occasionally, in rare fits of productivity actually working on edits for Unacceptable Risk.

(Unacceptable Risk being the new m/f cyberpunk romance I contracted with Samhain Publishing, coming to an eReader near you this winter!)

A lot of this hand-wringing has involved going through little stylistic issues. Do I really need the 'that' in that sentence? Is a 'dangling modifier' really just an opportunity for a TWSS joke? Could I start any more sentences with conjunctions?

Some of it is content. My editor wanted to see some adjustments to one of the character arcs, and while I completely agree with her analysis and suggestions, actually making the changes has given me heart palpitations. Will the new stuff suck? Will it stick out like a sore thumb? Am I overthinking everything?

And some of it ... some of it is just plain sitting there shaking my head at myself. Everything that seemed brilliant six months ago is a lot easier to look at now with a healthy dose of bitchbrow. I still love the story, but did I really not notice that I started six sentences in a row with the same basic phrasing? Did I not see that I used the word 'back' five times in two paragraphs?

Seriously.

Anyway, the good news is that I'm mostly done. I still need to take one last pass through to make sure the edits flow and I haven't made too many new problems while trying to solve old ones.

But I will be so, so, so excited to leave the purgatory of editing to return to the welcome, familiar hell of writing from scratch.

Writing as a Love Affair

When I first started writing seriously, it was like the excitement of first love. I wanted to write all the time. I would writing in my head while watching TV, while hanging out with friends, while working, while driving. It was urgent. Necessary. I didn't know shit about what I was doing, I had to get those words out.

Then writing and I started to get to know each other. I'd done a lot of the obvious plots. I'd figured out how commas and dialog tags worked and started paying attention to my grammar. Instead of being obsessed with the very idea of writing, I was starting to see my writing's little irksome habits. The socks it left strewn around my living room. The way it preferred watching hockey over romantic comedies.

Then I started editing for other people, and it was like going out on double-dates. Usually, I'd come home to my words and love them all the more. But sometimes I'd see the flaws in others' work and then look at my own and be searching for those same flaws.

Slowly, over time, I got comfortable. I started to realize my words were not the only words. That my words might suck.

That level of familiarity has come and gone over the past year, but in the last month or so, I've committed to being a SERIOUS WRITER. And it's been sort of like getting engaged. I feel secure. But I also feel stuck. Bored. Wondering what else is out there. The words have come more slowly, and I second-guess every one.

Like any good relationship, I think my words and I will sort it out. But for right now, we're each sitting in opposite corners of the room not-staring at each other.

And all I can do is hope and pray that it figures out what it should be apologizing for, and soon. Because I'm really, really, really looking forward to the make-up sex.

What The Writer Needs To Write / What the Reader Needs To Read

The writer needs to write to tell the story. The reader needs to read in order to enjoy it.

Sadly, they don't always need the same words.

The biggest breakthrough I've made as an editor has been realizing that that's okay.

Personally, I'm the kind of writer that processes things through the physical act of writing. I learn about my characters by writing them. I figure out my plot by writing it. But just because I needed to write something in order to grasp it doesn't mean the reader needs to read it.

The biggest consequence of this epiphany has been that I've been letting a lot more of my words hit the cutting room floor. Yes, I needed to write all of that backstory in order to make it come alive in later chapters. But if I leave it where I wrote it, it slows my story down and bores the reader with too much information.

Words that I edited out aren't wasted. They're just not necessary for the reader to ever read. And that doesn't make it any less essential for me to have written them.