Nationals is (sadly) over and it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get back to writing. I’m in the throes of revising my third manuscript so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to approach revisions.

Here’s what I see as the first rule of revision: You can’t revise something if you don’t know what to revise (and I’m not talking line edits here!).

Somewhere, somehow, you need to get a fresh perspective on your manuscript. Critique partners can obviously provide that perspective. But today I want to talk about other methods for re-envisioning your project. I’ll propose one…and I hope that today’s readers will chime in with their own methods so that we all leave today’s blog with a rich set of possible techniques to try.

To develop an effective revising strategy, I started out by assessing my strengths as well as the challenges I face as a writer.

1. My writing happens in small chunks because I work full time and have a family. Writing in 20-minute blocks of time can lead to gaps between my scenes. Each scene itself is fine, but the connections between one scene and another (where, say, a character might reflect on what happened in a preceding scene that wasn’t in his/her POV) just aren’t there.

2. As a writer, plotting is my strength, so it needs less attention in my revisions.  Character development and emotion, plus building sexual tension, are my weak spots.

Once I knew what my weak spots were, I developed a chart to help me re-envision my book and help push me to address those areas. I build the chart scene by scene as I revise (I would find filling it out all at once overwhelming, so for me it’s better to approach the chart one scene at a time!). I’ll read over a scene and then fill in a column that explains how the action of that scene affects the characters emotionally or in terms of their development (character arc). I have another column on sexual tension, and a final column on the overall romance arc.

If I see a gap in one or more of the columns (umm…which is always. I don’t think I’ve ever written a scene from scratch with all those elements), I go back into the scene and think about how and where I might integrate those elements. I make those revisions before moving on to the next scene. Scene by scene, chapter by chapter, I build the chart and it shows me the places that need revision. I’ve been amazed at the difference it’s made to my writing.

I also use the chart to remind me of what happened in the preceding scene so that I can build connections into the new scene: it reminds me to have characters comment on things that happened before, or have the new POV character reflect on that past action and how it impacts them emotionally (see? I’m really, really trying to get better with character emotions).

That’s my secret to revisions. What’s yours? Share, please! Or, alternately, what columns would you put in a revision chart (which areas in your writing tend to need the most revision?), if you were to develop one?

RWA’s 2012 National Conference will be taking place in sunny, beautiful Anaheim, California starting…TOMORROW!!

Who’s going? Who’s not? That’s what we want to know today.

And if you are going, what should you include in that carry-on suitcase (because really, who wants to pay the extra bucks required by most airlines for checking in bags these days?)?

Sadly, I’m one of the folks staying behind this year, but I’ll be watching for updates from our fabulous Rubies who will be taking the time out from their hectic days in Anaheim to post pics, celebrity sightings, and conference buzz.

Whether you’re going or not, though, you can chip in with advice for what folks should be bringing to Anaheim this year:

Here’s the start of a packing list for both this year’s GH and RITA finalists, as well as the rest of the crowd!

• Shoes. Yes, you’ll want an elegant pair for Awards night. But mostly, what you’re going to want is comfort. You’re going to be on your feet, walking long distances down hotel corridors (not to mention Disneyland!), so be kind to yourself and your feet and pack shoes you can walk in all day without weeping or needing bandaids.
• Bring the bandaids anyway. Have them stuffed in your purse. Because while you will have listened to our Ruby advice and worn comfortable shoes, that woman streaming tears in the bathroom did not and you can both offer help and make a new friend.
• Tylenol, Aspirin, Ibuprofrin. Bring the painkiller of your choice. I’m not saying that you’re going to be staying out late. I’m not saying that you might, occasionally, imbibe perhaps just a wee bit too much. I’m just saying that it’s always wise to have backup.
• Sunscreen. It’s California in July, folks. While you might spend most of your days in the hotel, it’s possible that you might venture out of the conference site at some point. Come prepared, so that your nose isn’t competing with the red of your dress come Awards ceremony night.
• Layers. You never can tell at conferences. Sometimes the temperature is perfect and that lovely skirt and top with the gorgeous-yet-comfortable shoes keep you happy all day, whether you’re in your hotel room, the lobby, or eating lunch in the biggest ballroom you’ve seen in your life. Other times, you freeze. Other times, you roast. Be prepared for all three by wearing layers.
• Badge bling. When you check in at registration, you’ll receive your badge. Add to it all your bling: you might have a chapter pin, a GH pin (or more than one!), a Ruby Sister pin, or other badges of honor. Don’t forget them at home!
• Camera. You’ll be hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones. You’re going to want pictures to remember it all later. A good friend of mine started taking pictures at social events several years ago–a completely new idea to me, since the only pictures I ever take are of my kid–and I’ve actually found myself returning to that friend’s pictures (conveniently posted on FB) for memories of those events. Don’t be me. Take pictures of more than your children. You can post them later to your FB page, blog, website, or just email them to friends.

For this year’s talented and lucky GH and RITA finalists:

• The dress. You know, the one you’ve spent months agonizing over. The one that’s just the right color and makes you feel absolutely smashing when you wear it.
• Undergarment essentials. The secret to a great-looking dress is often what goes under it, so don’t forget to pack your spanx or whatever else makes that dress looks fabulous when you slip it on!
• Shoes that look fabulous and that you can walk up and down stage stairs in without killing yourself.
• The speech: Believe in yourself. Write on a handy note card that will fit into your clutch purse (or palm of your hand), the speech you’ll give when you win. ‘Cause, really, when they call you, your mind is going to go blank from the sheer overload of joy at the thought of getting that beautiful Golden Heart necklace or RITA statuette.  So believe in yourself, write, the speech, and bring it. (Don’t forget the clutch to slip it in).

Them’s the basics…or at least what I could remember from my last time at Nationals. What did I forget? What else should be on your Nationals packing list?

Or are you staying home and weeping…er, writing, like me?

“But wait,” you protest. “It’s January 2^nd. New Year’s Resolutions needed to be made January 1^st!”

Wrong. If you’re serious about the resolution, it doesn’t matter when you make it. New Year’s is a useful time, because with the end of the old year and the start of the new, we take time for self-reflection and goal setting. But before we begin, it might be useful to remind everyone that a resolution is a personal goal that relies only upon you for success. You can’t make a resolution to get published in 2012, because getting published (at least by a traditional publishing house) does not rely only upon you for success. You can, however, resolve to finish that book you’ve been working on for a while…or send out one query letter per week…or write daily…or take that craft workshop on plotting. Find a resolution that is fully in your control.

Got your resolution in mind? Ok, to enhance your chances of succeeding with it, I’ve got three tips:

Tip 1. Make your resolution public.  Quirkology (a website on “the curious science of everyday lives”) conducted a study in 2007 that concluded that “Women were more successful when they told their friends and family about their resolution, or were encouraged to be especially resilient and not to give up because they had reverted to the old habits (e.g., if dieting, treating a chocolate binge as a temporary setback rather than as failure).” (to see the full article, go to http://www.quirkology.com/UK/Experiment_resolution.shtml)

Translation: Tell people about your resolution. Lots of people. Post it here, for the Rubies. Tell your critique partners. Make it public and ask people to check in with you.

Tip 2. Make the goal a real one by setting up a calendar or by outlining specific steps you plan to follow.  For instance, this year my goal is to make writing a more regular part of my weekly life. But I’m less likely to succeed if I just say, “I want to make writing a more regular part of my weekly life.”  Instead, I need to set a specific, calendar-related goal for myself, such as, “I’m going to write at least three times a week, for a minimum of 10 minutes” (with the hope that once my butt is in the chair and my fingers are on the keyboard, I’ll stay longer than 10 minutes most nights). Or, better, I could say, “I’m going to write on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, plus Saturdays while my daughter is at gymnastics.”

If your goal is craft-oriented, don’t just say, “I want to work on developing deeper emotions in my characters.” Instead, do some research. Is there a craft workshop online or offered by your RWA chapter that you could enroll in? Or a book on character emotion that you could borrow from the library and use as a guide? Can you create a chart where you go through your book, scene by scene, and record whether you’ve delved into character emotions? What tool will work for you? What concrete plans can you make to nudge you forward?

Tip 3. Make the activity a habit. A resolution is usually a long-term project that can only succeed if it becomes a habit. Last year, I had a craft-oriented goal of incorporating more emotions into my characters–and succeeded because I got in the habit of stopping myself at the end of each scene to ask whether I had really explored both of the main characters’ emotional reactions to the action of the scene. If the answer was “no,” then I went back into the scene. Habits–good habits–are powerful.

For this year’s process goal, I’m in luck: the Ruby Winter Writing Festival is just around the corner. During last winter’s Ruby festival, I wrote more in the winter months than I have ever written during the school year. What I found out during the festival was that incorporating writing into my regular weekly schedule was largely a question of habit: once I started doing it–and was holding myself publically accountable by giving weekly reports to the Rubies–I found time I had never before succeeded in finding. Of course, last year, I didn’t stick with it beyond the festival. This year, my life circumstances have changed enough to make me think I’ve got a real shot at writing three times a week through most of the year.  That’s my resolution and I’m making it public to all of you!

So…It’s time to make your resolution public. Share with the Rubies your writing resolution for 2012, whether it’s craft or process-related!

I’ll start this conversation with my own “aha” moments this year. I think my biggest progress as a writer in 2011 centered on learning how to write–or, perhaps more accurately, learning how not to write–the black moment. I’m working on my third manuscript right now and with this book, as with the two preceding ones, I struggled with the ending. Really struggled. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve plotted new possible endings to my WIP. At my last writer’s retreat in August, I was hoping finally to finish a strong draft of the book–those pivotal last 75 pages–but got derailed, yet again, by a black moment that just wasn’t working. I thus spent most of that weekend re-plotting (again!) the ending.

I’m still not certain that I’ve nailed black moments, but I’m definitely getting closer. Here are two lessons I’ve learned about the black moment this year:

Lesson One:  To borrow the language of one of my critique partners, the black moment comes when the hero and heroine reach an impasse; they stand on either side of an abyss and there’s no bridge, no hoping of crossing over to the other side (I found–and still find–this visual image helpful. Hopefully you will too).

In all three manuscripts that I’ve written, the heroine runs away from the hero at the end of the book (at least in early drafts). My critique partners called me on that pattern and said, “If they’re running away from each other, they don’t get the chance to articulate the different sides of the abyss that they’re standing on–and that’s a problem. They need to see the abyss and talk about it so that the impasse is really, really clear to everyone, from the characters to the readers.”

Ok, first lesson learned: less running away, more articulation of the different sides of the abyss dividing them.

Lesson Two: The hero and heroine have to believe in each other. What do I mean by that? In my first book, the heroine ran away because the hero was affianced to someone else and she refused to stay under those circumstances. (Yes, I actually kept this heroine as running away–but she only ran away after both she and the hero had a terrible, hugely emotional conversation that made visible the abyss between them). But her running away actually showed her belief in (and acceptance of) his decision to stay with the fiancé and marry her instead of the heroine: it was an arranged marriage that he’d had no say in, and breaking the engagement would have reignited a terrible, longstanding feud with the fiance’s family. To break the engagement would have destroyed the hero’s family, his village, and seriously damaged another village; getting married to this fiancé–not the heroine–was the right decision for him to make. It was the heroine’s respect for that decision that made her decide to leave (she knew her presence there would threaten the upcoming marriage).

In my current manuscript, on the other hand, one of the (many, many) early versions of my black moment has the heroine not trusting the progress the hero has made in handling his PTSD. She thus runs away (that darn running away thing again) so that she can handle a situation that she doesn’t think he can cope with yet. Given that his journey throughout the book has been learning to cope with his PTSD enough to feel that he can once again lead and protect others, her leaving to “handle” this problem for him is a HUGE betrayal…and a deal-breaker for their eventual HEA. That ending ended up in the “trash” folder.

Second lesson learned: the hero and heroine have to understand each other and not undercut or show a lack of belief or trust in the beloved.

I know I’ll continue to struggle with black moments, but I do feel like I made huge progress on them this year–that I have some tools that I can now use to diagnose future ailing black moments.

What craft lessons have you learned this year, as you look back and think about your progress? Or, if you feel like sharing craft advice, do you have any words of wisdom or resources that you’d suggest to help me in my ongoing struggle with black moments?

Ruby Release Spotlight: Liz Talley and A Little Texas

Ruby Sister Liz Talley has been insanely busy at the keyboard this past year, pouring her time and energy into not one, not two, but three Harlequin Superromances focused on the small town of Oak Stand, TX and its inhabitants. And she has two more still to come!

Today is the release day for the third book, A Little Texas, so to celebrate I wanted to interview Liz. Okay, I confess I wanted to interview Bubba, but Rita already scooped that interview back in December (see http://www.rubyslipperedsisterhood.com/ruby-release-spotlight-liz-talley-and-the-way-to-texas-2/) Sigh. Hey, I grew up in Texas. I love big guys with legs like tree trunks. What can I say?  But I did have a number of questions for Liz–about her, about her books, and about what drives her writing–so read on!

You’ve lived in North Louisiana most of your life and you set this series in Texas. What is it about the South that you want to capture in your writing?

I live extremely close to the Texas state line (about 30 minutes, if that) so I’m very familiar with East Texas.  I don’t think I was so much concerned with making my books Southern-focused as I was small town-focused. But that being said, it is set in the rural South so there is definite world building. Anyone who has visited a honkytonk or local bar on a Texas highway knows that it’s much different than swilling martinis in a Manhattan bar. Waaaaay different. So my story has Bubbas, loudmouths with big hair, Southern belles who will smile at you and then cheerfully stab you in the back, and Texas-sized personality.

You’ve built a whole world–or rather, a whole town–in your series. Can you talk about your process in building that world? Did you draw up a map of the town? How do you keep track of all the characters, shops, and town history?

I have pictures in my head. I know where most things are. Much of it comes from my childhood – a sort of combination of my hometown of Minden and a smaller town near there, Homer. I purposely used brick streets, a town square and businesses that one would still find in my hometown today.

As you were exploring your Texas series, did you have any surprising finds that ended up in the book? Any unexpected twists?

I’m an organic writer so often things occur to me as I get to them. And by organic, I mean lazy. LOL. I plot a story and use it as a guide, but I also feel free to change what I need. I have to say that Bubba surprised me with his depth of emotion. It surprised me that Kate had a father who dissed her. I didn’t know that Carly Patterson (who was a mean girl in the opening of Vegas Two-Step) would pop back up again. I also didn’t know that Brent Hamilton would end up a hero. Yeah, I’m a nut. My characters talk to me, and I say, “Oh, reeeally?” and then I toss that in there. That’s how Oak Stand gets torn up in my May 2011 book A Taste of Texas. April in the South means…tornadoes.

Tell us about Kate, the heroine of A Little Texas.

She’s awesome. Tough, smart-mouthed and beautiful. Edgy and totally into herself, but a good friend to have. But it’s her story that grips me. She was hurt by someone when she was but a child. And it molded her into what she is. This story is her story. Sure, Rick is yummy and has had his own hard knocks in life, but he’s more her guide, her solid rock, her protector. This story is about Kate learning to forgive. She has to pull all the hurt, anger and hate from her heart so she can blossom and learn how to love. To me, it’s a beautiful story. I re-read it when I got my copies, and I still feel the same way. This book is the kind of book I always want to write – a raw, poignant story of discovery.

A number of us who have read your stories are now Bubba fans. Can you give us a hint of what’s in store for him in this book?

Well, unfortunately, this book was packed with such emotion that he only appears in one scene. I hated that he wasn’t an integral part, but there wasn’t much room. Kate has to go through tremendous growth, coming to terms with her father, stepmother and dead brother, not to mention a town that she hates…or thinks she hates. But Bubba appears in every book and will get a love interest in A Taste of Texas in my heroine’s slightly Goth, highly organized assistant, Meg. Meg gets a little miffed when he slaps her on the butt, but warms up to him enough to go fishing with him.

Whoo-hoo! It sounds like Meg is going to be a great match for Bubba. I can’t wait! And what’s next for you?

I’m currently working on the fifth and final Oak Stand book. It doesn’t have a title yet, but involves Rayne’s (heroine in my fourth book) younger sister who happens to be an actress on a vampire soap opera. Summer is highly dramatic and thinks she’s still in love with an older man who dumped her. Sparks fly when she gets arrested by the sexy new police chief for handcuffing herself to a flagpole during a protest in front of the Howard County library, and Summer starts to doubt how sincere her love is for her former lover, especially with the way Adam Bent makes her feel. Every day they surprise me with something new…today I learned that Adam is hiding the videotape that shows him kissing Summer while she’s in lockdown…and the tape is about to go missing!

After I get this one in to my editor, I’ll start research for a new series I’m planning about a Louisiana family who eventually discovers the sister they thought dead is very much alive. Should be fun!

Ok, one last question…and this one is about you. We all know that settings can reveal important details about our characters, but they can also reveal a great deal about us. So…in which of the following drinking establishments would you most prefer to spend some time this week–and why?

___A mom-and-pop diner with slightly sticky counters and great coffee

___Afternoon tea (with scones and clotted cream) at a local “Anglophile”

antique shop

___The coffee shop nestled in your nearest bookstore

___Your own home: snuggling into your favorite chair with a great book

and …[name your go-to beverage]

___The neighborhood pub or brewery

_X_A swank bar where you would be wearing your highest heels and

drinking [name your beverage of choice here]

___A wine-tasting bar that serves hors d’oeuvres to cleanse your palate

___[Fill in with a place/beverage that I’ve missed]

Probably some place swanky wearing a kickass pair of shoes and drinking a lemon drop martini. And that’s because I don’t get that much. I spend a good deal of time with my squabbling kids at football games and baseball fields. I love the opportunity to get gussied up and go out someplace fancy. A true luxury.

Liz will be available today to answer questions about writing about small-town life, her writing process, and A Little Texas–or Bubba–throughout the day. Please join us!

You can learn more about Liz’s Oak Stand, Texas books at her website: http://www.liztalleybooks.com/index.php

So what now?!

The key to revising is locked in the word itself: re-visions. You need to see your manuscript–the pieces of it, from scenes, to chapters, to character arcs–in a new way. Many writers call upon critique partners at this stage. But today I’m going to write about a different tool for gaining a fresh look at your manuscript: a revision chart that I devised when I was working on my second manuscript. It proved to be incredibly helpful for me and I hope it will for you, too.

THE ADVANTAGES TO CHARTING:

The chart does two things for me.

1. While my individual scenes might be strong, the overall progress of the story from scene to scene may be choppy: Did I really set up the heroine’s internal growth so that when she makes that key decision in Chapter 10–a decision she would never have made in Chapter 1–my readers believe she’s genuinely changed and that this is the decision she’d truly make at this moment in time? The chart helps me trace the progress of the external plot, character arcs, romance arcs, sexual tension, etc.
2. It targets my weak spots (more about those later). The chart makes me look at every scene in the book, one at a time, and asks me whether I’ve skimped on fleshing out the elements of the story that I find hardest to write.

THE GOLDEN RULE: CUSTOMIZE!

Before I unveil the chart itself, there is one golden rule for the use of such spreadsheets and charts: Customize, customize, customize. I developed the chart below because it made me face the weak spots in my writing. If you’ve reached the revising stage and want to try this type of tool, don’t just cut and paste my chart into your word processing program and start typing. Spend some time thinking about your own strengths and weaknesses as a writer–and tweak or completely revise the chart to suit your writing needs.

THE ANCHOR COLUMN:

My strengths are plotting and external action. Since I tend to think of my stories in terms of external plot, I anchor the chart with a column on the left that reminds me of where I am in the story’s action. This column is always easy for me to fill out (although to make it more challenging, I later made myself go back and rework it so that I was articulating the characters’ external goals for the scene). One of my critique partners is a character driven writer. For her, the anchor column is what’s happening in her characters’ internal journeys. She finds that column easy to fill. I would prefer a trip to the dentist.

POV COLUMN:

I found it useful to track POV on the chart–and when I first started using it, I was sometimes surprised to find that I had multiple scenes in a row in the heroine’s POV, with no sense of what was going on with the hero. And that’s the point of the chart: it makes you look at your scenes in a new way. I went back to those scenes and shifted several of them into the hero’s POV–which gave the reader (and me) much better insight into the hero’s internal journey at those stages of the story.

COLUMNS ON WEAK SPOTS:

My weak spots center on the characters: What emotional impact does the external plot have on them? How are these characters growing together or apart (the romance arc)? Another weak spot for me is sexual tension. I devote the majority of the columns to these questions, because these are the places I’ve probably skimped on in the writing.

Below is a sample of my re-vision chart from my last manuscript. You’ll see that there are blank spots–I’ll point out them out when I analyze the chart below. To understand this snippet from my chart, here are the basics of the story: The setting is twelfth century England. The heroine (Philippa) was raised as a boy and then a knight. She’s lived her entire life as a man. When her identity as a woman is discovered, she has to learn to be a woman–and isn’t at all happy about it. The hero (Guy) has been charged by the king with putting his newly inherited estate in order AND with making Philippa into a lady–and there’s a deadline with dire consequences for his family and estate if he fails.

When I’m ready to revise a scene, I read it and then try to fill in the columns on the chart. If I find that there are blank spots–and above there ended up being several–then I think about what changes need to be made to the scene to incorporate those missing elements. In the columns above, I can see that this scene does a good job of tracing the emotional impact of Guy’s conversation with his sister Anne over the betrothal he wants to arrange for her (yay me!).

But the sexual tension is incomplete (you were wondering when I’d explain Philippa’s tied legs, weren’t you?). In an earlier scene, Guy had tied Philippa’s ankles in order to shorten her stride as she walks–she still moves like a man, even though she’s wearing a gown. In this scene, she’s actually starting to move like a woman, so he takes off the bindings (thus showing progress on her journey toward becoming a lady–at least in terms of the external trappings of ladyhood). The scene shows his reaction to touching Philippa’s ankles and legs, but not her reaction to his touch. That’s a revision that needs to be made.

While the “External Plot” column presents the action of the scene in terms of Guy’s goals–over dinner, he’s going to talk to his sister Anne about setting up a betrothal for her–the scene doesn’t yet convey a clear sense of Philippa’s goals. That needs to be revised. What’s her goal during this dinner conversation and how will that reshape the scene?

The romance arc is also incomplete: Philippa has been feeling increasingly attracted to Guy, so she’s frustrated (and thus given a reason to pull away from him) by how he’s treating his sister and what that treatment means about his view of women. But I don’t have anything in the scene that makes clear where Guy is in the push-pull of the romance arc. I would need to go back and layer that in.

And, finally, once this scene and the others next to it have been revised, the next way to use the chart is to double-check the overall progress between the scenes: I can look at just the “Romance Arc” column to see if the steps in the romance journey are happening at the right pace from scene to scene throughout the book.

FINAL TIP: Don’t try to fill out the whole chart at once (OMG that would be daunting!). Instead, fill in one scene at a time and use the chart as a prompt to make your revisions of that scene. You have to revise the whole book anyway, right? Filling out the chart only takes a few minutes–and it gives you a tool for re-visioning the scene’s strengths and weaknesses, so that you know whether changes need to be made and what they are.

What columns would go on your chart? What would your “anchor” column be? What are some of the other columns that you would use to check your weak spots? And, just for fun, when do you write the words, “The End”?

What little spare time I had was saved for my writing. I don’t regret that choice–I think there are moments when we all need to choose what our priorities will be and it can’t always include volunteer work. Some women have trouble saying “no.” I’m not one of them. I said “no” repeatedly.

Nevertheless, this year I was on sabbatical and for the first time in more than a decade, I knew I was going to have some spare time. So I volunteered to judge in three contests. And when one of my critique partners, who was in charge of organizing the Washington Romance Writer’s annual chapter retreat in 2010, asked if I would help, I said “yes.” More than that, I told her she could assign me to whatever task she needed. With a gleam in her eye, she said, “Great! Why don’t you serve as the VIP liaison?”

I’m a classic “Type A” personality. I’m good with details, organized, and efficient. That made me good at sending out letters detailing our chapter’s financial commitments to its guests, ensuring that anyone with food allergies was taken care of, figuring out the A/V needs of the guest speakers, and then coordinating travel arrangements to and from the retreat for seventeen guest. Later, I found out that the work I did for that retreat had been done by three people in years past. I definitely put some time in.

And I’ll be doing it again next year. Yup, that’s right. My sabbatical year will be over (hear the sound of my weeping?), I’ll be just as busy as I was in preceding years, but I’m going to do it all again–although I’ll be splitting the work with one other person, this time. The benefits to that volunteer work were enormous–enough to make it well worth doing again, even though it means something else will have to give come next April.

The most obvious benefit to my particular volunteer position was getting to chat via email and then in person with editors, agents, and nationally-acclaimed writers.

But the more important benefit was one that I didn’t discover until I was actually at the retreat. I’m shy. Not deathly-afraid-of-meeting-new-people, but shy enough that after almost ten years with my chapter, I only knew a small handful of people. But I couldn’t be shy at this retreat. It was my job to reach out to our seventeen guests, to make certain they had everything they needed, and to make sure they felt welcome and at ease. I made the conscious decision to speak with every single one of our seventeen guests. At other retreats, I had been tongue-tied when an editor or agent sat at my table during a meal. This year? I don’t think a meal went by when I wasn’t sitting next to an editor or agent and doing my best to make them feel comfortable.

Volunteering pushed me to put on my “hostess” persona. And since I was in “hostess” mode, I not only met our seventeen VIPs, but I also reached out to retreat first-timers AND folks I’d been seeing around for years, but never really met or talked to. I walked into that retreat only knowing about six people. I walked out knowing WAY more than that. I would have had fun at the retreat without volunteering. But volunteering made the retreat much more than fun–it was phenomenal.

The other volunteer work that I took on this year was judging in three contests. As a judge, I put a lot of effort into the comments I give, so this was a big time commitment for me. One of the main benefits of judging is that you get to see a lot of first chapters (or first fifty pages). It’s a bit like sitting in an editor’s seat: once you’ve seen a lot of entries, you start to see patterns. You start to see what works well and what doesn’t. I left my judging with ideas about how to go back and strengthen my own writing.

Have you tried volunteering with your local RWA chapter? Or are you at a point where you don’t have the time, if you’re going to keep writing? Is saying “no” easy or hard for you? And what are some of the benefits you’ve found to volunteering for your local chapter or RWA? For those of you heading to Nationals, will you be volunteering there?

I’ll start off the Free-For-All with my own burning questions: I’ve been thinking about scenes recently and think I need to do some work to find more effective shapes for my scenes. For instance, I often find myself changing setting within a scene (it starts out in one location and moves to another). I worry, though, that the movement is diluting the scene (and I’m not talking about a “travel” scene–as far as I’m concerned, being in a carriage or riding a horse is one, consistent setting). I’m talking about starting in a merchant’s shop (I write medievals), then walking through the marketplace to get home, and then ending the scene back at a house.

What do you think? Can setting-hopping work in a scene? Any tips for how you think about setting up your scenes?

The first time I did it, I didn’t figure out where the book was until dinner time (and damn it, I wanted to get back to that story!). The second time (and, oh yes, there was a second time), I knew where to look.

So I’m a little absentminded at times. Or, as I prefer to think of it, really focused. Once I’ve got something in my head, something that really excites me, it pushes everything else out (kind of like the spellbook that pushes out all the other spells from Wizzard Rincewind’s head, for those of you who are Terry Pratchett fans).

A few weeks ago, that tendency to focus everything else out of my head got a little embarrassing. It started with working from home. For the past six months, I’ve been in the very fortunate position of being able to work from my home office. That’s saved me two hours of commuting time a day–and given me a lot more time for my writing. Whoo-hoo!

It was evening time. I was just finishing giving my daughter a bath when there was a knock at the front door. I waited for my husband to get it. He didn’t. My daughter asked if it was my book club (I had just told her they would be coming to our house the next day). I said no, that would be tomorrow night. A second knock came. Irritated (hey, I’m giving the kid a bath! get the freakin’ front door, hubby!), I dashed down the stairs, leaving my daughter wrapped in a towel at the top.

I opened the door. It was the ladies from my book club! As I stared at them, all I could say was, “But it’s Wednesday!”

Obviously, I was wrong about that. It was Thursday night. Book club night. And it was my turn to hostess–you know, desserts, coffee, snacks.

Most of them had carpooled, to avoid awkward parking on snow-covered streets, so eight women stood on my doorstep. Two more were due any minute.

I was completely, absolutely floored. It took me until two-and-a-half hours later, when everyone had left, to finally figure out how I’d gotten the days of the week mixed up. Monday had been a federal holiday and my family had been home. That meant my work week started on Tuesday…but I spent the day thinking it was Monday. I continued a day behind all week. I was so focused on my work and my writing that I literally blocked everything else out…including the calendar.
The good news is that I had the supplies all prepared (in addition to being absentmind . . . er, focused, I’m also a type-A personality. I’m usually WAY overprepared for such events!). Sweets aren’t my forte in the kitchen, so I’d gone with frozen desserts instead of trying something from scratch (thank goodness!). I also had several cheeses and crackers already bought and waiting. Everyone settled into the living room to laugh at my mistake and chat, while my daughter kept them entertained (every single person in my book club, other than me, is a grandmother, and they pretty much all adore kids). Two of the women helped in the kitchen with unwrapping the cheeses and frozen desserts. One dessert was supposed to thaw for an hour (oh well!). The other was actually a bite-size chocolate/ice cream treat and thus appropriately frozen. I made coffee and set out cups and plates. Hubby brought all the chairs to the office and set that up (he was now my prince).

And thank goodness I had actually done the dishes already that night (I can’t tell you how rarely THAT happens). Plus I’d taken out all of the recycling that afternoon (a huge, huge pile in the dining room and kitchen), so everything except the living room (aka my daughter’s play room) was actually fairly clean and tidy. Hey, with ten grandmas present, I would have been truly ashamed if there had still been newspapers, empty milk cartons, and dirty dishes everywhere.
Ok, enough of my adventures in being absentmind. . . er, focused on my work and writing.

We all have days when getting into the writing is a painful, root canal kind of experience. But what about the good days? Have you ever been so focused on your writing that you’ve forgotten to do something? Burned dinner? Had to leave the shower to jot that idea down NOW? Or is the toothpulling stage (yeah, I have a fear of dentists) so big right now that you can’t remember what it’s like to be in the “focused” zone?

What is a writing retreat? It’s a block of time set aside where a small group of writers get together to WRITE. You can run a retreat with as few as two people (you and one other person), or as many as four or five. A writer’s retreat does two things:

1. It carves out a space and time to be dedicated purely to writing.
2. It gives you access to a group of fellow writers who can lend a helping hand when you get stuck.

Caveat: Retreats Aren’t For Everyone

If you have a great space for writing at home and have the discipline to ignore things like dirty laundry, dishes, kids asking you to play, email, and computer games on your own, then a writing retreat might not be helpful for you (although a brainstorming retreat might be…but that’s a slightly different animal). Other people are genuinely solitary writers, who prefer to work through whatever problems they’re encountering on their own. Think about your personality type and your needs before you decide to organize a retreat.

HOW TO and ADVICE:

1. How long should the retreat be? I strongly recommend Friday through Monday, if you can carve out the time. Why four days? See #2 and #3, “Psychology of the Retreat”!

1. Psychology of the Retreat: Friday Afternoon and Saturday: We spend Friday morning driving to the retreat, so the writing doesn’t start until Friday afternoon. That day and the next are hard mentally. If it’s been a while since you looked at your manuscript, you have to find a way to get back into it.  If you’ve been writing in small chunks (and hey, that’s most of us), then the intensive time of the retreat is the perfect place to tackle some of the big problems you may have identified (saggy middle? weak black moment? a hero whose internal journey isn’t clear?). Plus, the retreat itself provides some pressure–you’re investing some serious time, as well as about $250-$300 (food and lodging) into this weekend, and you need to make real progress.

So brace yourself. If you follow the Friday to Monday schedule, Friday afternoon is tough. Face it, deal with it, and push through. Saturday is hard, too, because it’s all day. There’s no running away from whatever plot or character problems are staring you in the face. There’s no email to check (try to get a place without internet access!), no laundry to use as an excuse. You’re there to write. Is it Nirvana? Yes. But it’s also hard.

1. Psychology of the Retreat: Sunday and Monday Morning. Sunday is about joy. You want your muse? You’re likely to find her on Sunday. This is the day when most of us have turned the corner, when we’ve faced our writing demons and have found a way to move forward. And, if you don’t have to leave until noon-ish Monday (this is why the Monday departure can be really helpful), you have all day on Sunday to luxuriate in the presence of that muse and write like a freight train that nothing and no one is going to stop. Whoo-hoo!

1. The Place: Decide with your retreat partner(s) what type of location you want. Urban? Rural? Something in between? I didn’t want to get into a car once I arrived at the retreat. I like walking, so I wanted to be able to walk to restaurants for dinner.  We also wanted to keep costs down, so going with a more rural setting definitely saved money.

1. Accommodations and the Price Tag: We considered a hotel, but wanted more “public” space since we were going to spend almost all of our waking time writing. We definitely wanted a kitchen so that we could save on costs and writing time by eating breakfast and lunch in. I went online and found a cottage rental service. For our first retreat, we rented a small apartment. For the second retreat, because we had more people, we rented a whole house. Because we chose a small town in West Virginia, accommodation costs were quite low (between $150-$190 per person).

1. Food: I strongly recommend dinners out, both to get you out of the house and to reward yourself for a hard day’s work. Especially on Friday and Saturday, dinner out can be a huge incentive, a concrete reward whose lure and promise can help get you through the day. The Sunday night dinner, on the other hand, is a celebration of how far you’ve come!

Goal Setting:

Before you go on a retreat, think about what you need and what you hope to accomplish. Some years, my work and family schedules are so crazy that every minute of writing time is precious. Other years, things are fairly calm at work and I’m able to get a lot of writing done at home, so the retreat becomes an opportunity to tap into the collective wisdom represented by my fellow retreat members. Everyone will come to the retreat with different writing needs. Communicate those needs before the retreat.

“I need help!” Etiquette:

Part of the purpose of the retreat is to serve as a resource for one another. At the same time, you need to respect your fellow retreat members’ writing needs. So save the large group brainstorming sessions for the carpool to and from the retreat, as well as mealtimes (Tip: don’t waste those two hours of driving time! Use the drive to get everyone to identify what you’ll be working on and to start thinking through what challenges you’ll face). Between mealtimes, if you need help, go for a one-on-one session. Other tips?

• Always check to see if the person is at a good stopping point
• Be clear about how much time you need (15 minutes? An hour?)
• Go somewhere (porch, basement, bedroom, nearby park) where you won’t disturb the others
• Reciprocate
• Respect people’s peak writing times. I write best in the morning and probably won’t want to give up that time for a brainstorming session. But in the afternoon or after dinner? I’m your gal.

Have you done a writing retreat? Are you considering one? What obstacles might you face in putting one together? What kinds of questions might you ask of your retreat partners before the retreat to help ensure everyone gets what they need?