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All About Vivi Andrews
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Vivi's Fun Facts
Ruby Nickname:Arctic Ruby Hometown: Anchorage, Alaska Age: 30 GH Year(s) 2009 Completed Manuscript(s) Twenty-ish. Genre(s): Contemporary & Paranormal Romance Started Writing: 1993 Day Job: Writing full time (since 4/2009) For Fun: READING. Travel, swimming, watching movies, dancing, hiking, skiing, and a recent addiction to Wii Sports. |
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The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood
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Blog Posts from Vivi
The Internist: Letting Your Reader Inside Your ProtagonistPosted by Vivi Andrews Apr 9 2012, 12:01 am in characterization, craft, POV A few years ago, my dad wrote a non-fiction manuscript (all about science and politics and the manipulation of data and public perception) and asked me if I would take a look at it. It was a fascinating read and my reaction was largely positive, but his reaction to my feedback was more or less “Well, crap, you called me out on all the places I was cutting corners. I have work to do.” There are a lot of different ways we can be lazy writers. We can fail to get our butts into the chair to write the book in the first place. We can try to take short-cuts and cut-corners, looking for the writing equivalent of the easy way out when it comes to the hard parts of our manuscript. Or we can fail to put our butts back into the chair and do the work necessary to fix our POS first draft when we’ve realized our short cuts aren’t going to fly. Don’t be a lazy writer. As has become a Ruby mantra: WRITE FEROCIOUSLY. And revise ferociously too. Decimate those short cuts. Obviously fiction short cuts and non-fiction short cuts look different. Today I want to talk about what I find to be some of the most common cut corners when it comes to romance manuscripts – glossing-over-the-good-stuff writing. Shallow POV & generic characterization. That skating-over-the-surface style – which can be expedient in a first draft when you have plots to figure out – can be downright lazy in a final work. (And I’m not just pointing fingers here, I’m just as guilty of lazy writing as the next scribbler. But if we are aware of the areas we short-shrifted the reader, we are better able to add an extra level of shine to our finished works.) Here are some tips to take your reader deeper: (as always, these are just my opinions, your mileage may vary)
Whether we employ these techniques to bring a reader deeper or look for other ways to strengthen our writing, we can’t be lazy. We can’t gloss over and take shortcuts. Our readers will know. So get out there, butts in chairs, and revise ferociously. What are some cut corners and short cuts you find in manuscripts? How do you overcome them? Make It RomanticPosted by Vivi Andrews Feb 9 2012, 12:01 am I have a confession to make. I’m addicted to The Bachelor. (And I blame Lincee Ray who sucked me in with her hilarious episode recaps.) Every Monday my DVR fills up with two hours of this jaw-droppingly bizarre social-experiment approach to falling in love. There’s always the villain, the good-girl everyone loves but you know [...] Ruby Debut Release: Heiress Without a Cause by Sara RamseyPosted by Vivi Andrews Jan 23 2012, 12:01 am in author interview, debut, historical romance, Regency, Ruby Release, Sara Ramsey Today I’m thrilled and privileged to host our very own Sara Ramsey as we discuss her inaugural release, the fun and fabulous regency romance Heiress Without a Cause. After winning the Golden Heart in 2009 and being named a finalist again in 2011 (with the first two books she wrote, but lets all pretend we [...] Taglines and Brands: Defining YourselfPosted by Vivi Andrews Jan 12 2012, 1:01 am A reviewer or a commenter on a popular blog compares the new release from Amazing Best-seller X to one of your books. A lady waiting to pay for her tomatoes in the grocery store overhears two readers gushing about your awesomeness at the checkstand. You meet Big Editor Z at a conference and hand her [...] The Ruby Prophecy, 2012 EditionPosted by Vivi Andrews Jan 5 2012, 12:01 am About a year ago, in a playful prognosticating frenzy, we had a blog post predicting the wild and wonderful things 2011 would hold. Well, the year is behind us and while our more far out predictions (Mariners-Nationals World Series, anyone?) didn’t come to pass, we did actually hit pay-dirt with a few of our prophecies…(Check [...]
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books from Vivi
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Vivi Andrews was born and raised in Alaska, and still lives in the Last Frontier when she isn’t bouncing around the globe. After graduating from Northwestern University, Vivi tested out a variety of careers—from the movie industry to accounting—but kept coming back to her first two loves, writing and travel. She lived in nine cities—on two continents and one tropical island—while pursuing her dream of writing romance professionally.
