Bad News/Good News

Those of you who are my Facebook friends will already know this, but last week I had some bad news and some good news. 

The bad news was that after a lot of work and three rounds of revisions, I got the final verdict from Mills and Boon on The Welsh King’s Spy—in the end although they liked my voice and thought I had potential, the story wasn’t quite what they were looking for.  The really bad news was that I’d just put on mascara and my first lesson was due to start in ten minutes when I read the email, so instead of crying and sulking, which always makes me feel better, I had to smile and explain circular geometry. I wouldn’t recommend that as a remedy for dashed hopes—I think my poor student is now terminally confused.

The good news was that the editor went on to say that although TWKS wasn’t right, she’d like to continue working with me on my next story. I’m really excited about that because she wouldn’t go to all that work and trouble unless she thought my voice was a good fit for Harlequin Historical. So now (after being wiped out for a few days by a cold caught from my maths student) I’m working on some characters and plots for a few scenarios set in the Twelfth Century. Hopefully I can come up with something that shows promise. Wish me luck!

What next?

Following on from my last post, I'm pleased to say that the editing was far easier than it's been on previous projects. I think it helped to have a deadline - I was entering it into the Harper Impulse Winter Wonderland competition, so it had to be finished by last Wednesday. I finished it and entered it with a day to spare and now it's the agonising wait!

This was the first novella I've written - it ended up at 30k words - and I found it a lot of fun to write. It forced me to focus on the relationship between my hero and heroine and their emotional journey, which was something I found hard to sustain in the last full-length (75k) novel I wrote. I feel much more confident with that now. It's also encouraging to see the finished story take shape so much faster than when I'm writing a full-length novel. I'm not into delayed gratification ...

I've pretty much decided to write another novella next. I had loads of ideas as I was writing my last one and most of them seemed more suitable for that length. For the next few weeks I'm going to work on creating some characters and then plot out their stories. I can't wait to get stuck in!

Aids to creativity

Following advice from someone in my writers' group, I've been working on identifying things that put me in a more creative frame of mind. Here's the list I've come up with so far:

Hawkstone Follies - always an inspirational place for a walk

1. Walking. I've found that if I'm stuck with my writing, there's nothing like a good walk to sort things out. There's something about walking that sends my thoughts zipping along pathways that hadn't occurred to me before. I don't consciously think of my plot or characters, but I'll often get struck by a thought that gives me the key to how my characters are behaving, or reveals a plot twist that makes the story. 
2. Cycling. As for walking, but I also use it more consciously for fresh inspiration. I'm very lucky to live in Shropshire - one of the most beautiful counties in England (not that I'm biased!) It's predominately rural and filled with historical remains: stone circles, hill forts, Roman ruins, castles and priories...all the way to the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. I don't have to go far to see any of these, and on my bike I get the time to take in the atmosphere of the place and think what the place would look like in Roman times or the twelfth century, how the land would shape the people who lived there. If I've already got characters sketched out, I try to picture them there and look at the place through their eyes. It really helps me to get to know my characters better.
3. Music. There's something about music that switches on that part of my brain marked 'inspiration'. It puts me in a more receptive frame of mind and whatever I listen to - from classical to rock - always gives me fresh ideas. I have to be careful, though - I once wrote what I thought was a real tear-jerker of a scene, only to find when I read it through that all the emotion had come from the music I was listening to at the time. Without the music, the scene was dead. Until someone invents a way to add incidental music to books, I now plan with music on, but write with it off.
4. Cross-stitch. Maybe not one for everyone, this, but I find that concentrating on cross-stitch helps focus the part of my mind that's worrying about the everyday niggles, and frees the rest to go walkabout. I've come up with some great ideas, while working on a birth sampler for my niece. Who's now three...

My trusty steed, about to carry me over the Severn at Coalport. How easy was it to cross the Severn in earlier centuries?

So that's my list. I'd love to know what other people do to find their inspiration.

Plotting

I feel like I should be rubbing my hands, going, "Bwa ha ha ha ha!" at regular intervals when I say that I'm plotting. And in many ways, planning a romance is a bit like being an evil mastermind. I take two lovely characters, ask myself what's the worst possible thing I could do to them, then go ahead and do it. And like an evil mastermind, I have enormous fun watching them suffer :)

Anyway. Progress report: I've got a feel for my hero and heroine now. It took me a long time to get to grips with my hero. Then a single phrase jumped into my head while I was out on a walk and it immediately showed me his internal conflicts and the turning point of the story. I even managed to write it down before I forgot!

I finished the outline today. Now it's time to start the first draft. I'm setting myself a low target of 800 words per day, because I've got other writing projects I'm working on at the same time. With a target of 70 000 words, that brings me to the end of October. It seems like ages away, but I bet it speeds past.