Where do you get your ideas?

Where do you get your ideas? That's a question that is often asked of writers. As I prepare to begin Book Three, I thought I'd share my process.

I've been wracking my brains for a few months for the next great idea but everything seemed stale and lifeless until a couple of days ago when # 1 Reader mentioned the word cult.

That's all. Just that one word. Cult.

My brain perked up but I didn't have time to think consciously about the concept, and it wasn't until yesterday that things began to gel. This is how it happened. Honestly.

I was driving along thinking about nothing when out of the blue, Signy Shepherd appeared in the passenger seat. I barely had a chance to register that shocking fact when she started talking.

Signy: Hey, writer girl.

Me: Who---?

Signy: Calm down. It's only me. Signy.

Me: What the---?

Signy: (cranking her eyes to heaven) Are you deliberately trying to piss me off?

Me: (with my usual flair for witty dialogue) Eh?

Signy: Get a grip, lady. I have a job for you.

Me: What are you talking about?

Signy: (peering closely at me) Are you really the writer? Cause, I have to say that slack jaw is making me nervous.

Me: (eyes darting) No....I mean yes. I'm the writer.

Signy: Well, start acting like one for God's sake, and pay attention. Something's happened and I need your help.

Me: My what?

Signy: Seriously? You've done this a couple of times now, what aren't you getting?

Me:  (finally twigging to the glint of amused excitement in her eyes) Oh, you mean you want me to write something?

Signy: Give the girl a pink balloon.

Me: (thinking about what on earth a pink balloon has to do with anything) Eh?

Signy: Never mind, just listen up.

Me: Yes Ma'am.

Signy: What do you know about cults?

Me: Um. Jim Jones. Koolaid?

Signy: (shaking her head) Looks like you have some work to do.

Me: Work?

Signy: God, you're annoying. Look, there's this girl. She's being held captive in the wilds of Eastern Ontario. The cult leader is a real piece of work, a manipulative psychopath. No way she can get out on her own and the cops can't help. 

Me: (smiling broadly) Trapped inside a cult, eh? Sounds cool.

Signy: (frowning) I'm not sure the word cool is the right choice.

Me: I didn't mean to suggest-----

Signy:  Look. I can't imagine how or why the average Joe gets drawn in by these charismatic creeps, so you need to get cracking. I'm going to need a lot of intel before I infiltrate the place.

Me: Hold on. You're going undercover?

Signy: Of course. How else will I be able to rescue the girl?

Me: But a place like that would be remote, off-grid. There would be no one around for miles. God only knows what kind of crazy stuff you'd have to face.

Signy: (smacking the dashboard with her palm) That's why I need your help. I need you to find out everything you can about the compound, the freak who runs the group, and anything else you think might be important. (she leans in) And, you have to hurry. I don't know how much time she has left.

Me: (eyes on the road ahead) I can do that. It sounds awesome.

Signy: (smiling at me, her blue eyes flashing) Come on. You don't remember the hipster doofus word for awesome?

Me: Um. I'll ask my daughter.

Signy: (sighing) I won't lie. A younger writer would have been easier to work with, but I'm stuck with you, so get moving on that research, okay? We're running out of time.

Me: You bet. I'm on it. I won't let you down.

Signy: I'm not worried, writer girl. I'm gonna be on your case night and day until we get this situation resolved.

Me: Awesome.

Signy: God, this is going to be a long trip. Quit talking and drive, okay?

Me: (gripping the wheel) Yes, Ma'am. 


AND THAT...is how I get my ideas.

p.s. Hipster doofus word for awesome is SICK. Try and remember that.

What Next?

For me, February 14, 2014 was not just another day of hearts and candy. This year, Valentine's day was the submission date set by Simon and Schuster, Canada, for my second novel.

On February 14, after consuming copious amounts of chocolate, I held my breath and sent the (hopefully) final version of Dark Territory off to Alison Clarke.

Alison had already read a previous draft and provided me with excellent editorial suggestions as well as some confidence building feedback. She liked it! Phew.

I also sent a copy off to Anne McDermid, my agent, who got back to me within a couple of days to say that she had loved the book, and was looking forward to beginning the process of selling the series. Double Phew!

Meanwhile, my youngest daughter was married in a fairy tale wedding, and we sold our current house and bought a new one. Not to mention our wonderful dog, Sophie, who, having just recovered from knee surgery was forced to go under the knife again when her hip gave out. Stress anyone?

Finally, however, the dust has settled, and I can breathe again. It was an exciting ride but now I am ready to start moving forward again.

What next? Supposedly, I will soon receive advance reading copies of my first novel, Blown Red, although to be perfectly honest, I never count chickens until they are hatched.  But, if I am very lucky and everything goes according to plan, then I expect I will have some major work to do over the next many months in preparation of the publication date. I just read a cautionary tale of an author who neglected his self-promotion duties and paid the ultimate price. Few sales....disinterested publisher. As much as I loathe self-promotion, I know I will have to bite the bullet and get cracking - starting with website development and a regular blogging schedule. At least it will be fun to step out of my comfort zone and learn something new.

Book Three is calling me, as well. I only have a two book contract with S and S so my urge to start plotting the third in the Signy Shepherd series has nothing to do with contractual obligations. Rather, the characters are demanding to be heard. Signy wants to know what is going to happen with Ben Tran. Will he be 'the one' or will their relationship fumble along the way? 

Grace wants to know if she is going to recover from her PTSD, whether she and Kim will work things out, and whether she will ever make it back onto the Line.

The Tracker wants to know who killed his mother and stole him away from his sister. He is dying to know whether he and Signy will be able to work together to solve that terrible puzzle, or whether Signy will continue to shut him out of her life.

And, of course, somewhere out there, a young woman is in desperate need of help from the Line. Will Signy get to her in time?

On a totally different note, my DBT skills partner and I, are also ready to get back on track with our online counselling idea. We will be ramping up our efforts on that front over the coming months.
 
I'm looking forward to the brain-rattling challenges of the upcoming year, as well as the inevitable setbacks. Whatever the final outcome of my various projects, I am already thrilled. It isn't the end result that interests me, it is the journey along the way, and 2014  promises to be a whirlwind.

What could be better?

MOB shopping with The Princess Bride

A few years ago, a friend of mine was worried about not being able to find the perfect mother of the bride dress.  I pooed-pooed her concerns. She is a pixie little thing. She looks great in everything.

Flash forward a few years. It is now my turn to hit the shops for the dreaded MOB dress, and I think I finally understand my friend's concerns. It isn't so much that you want to look perfect, you just don't want to ruin your beautiful daughter's bridal photos.

I despise shopping at the best of times, so I was not looking forward to spending a day at Bridal shops with The Princess Bride.

She had already nixed a pretty dress that I'd found at a consignment store earlier in the week.

According to The Princess Bride, this dress should be called: The Velveteen Rabbit plays the Mandolin at the Tudor Court.

Her words - exactly.

 












Fine. My taste in dresses could be suspect. I buy a new dress about once every twenty years. Perhaps, I am out of date.

Off to the bridal shops we went, full of high hopes.

Have you seen the dresses for mothers in these places? After trying on dress after dress, the only thing I could think of was Carole Burnett wearing those curtains in her Scarlet O'Hara spoof. If the dress doesn't make you look a hundred years old, it really does look like it has been constructed from heavy taffeta curtains.

I can't begin to describe how thrilling it is to try on dress after dress that make you look like an art deco nightmare.


All while The Princess Bride chuckles it up.


.....hilarious.....


(p.s. this lovely creation was priced at $600)







We said adios to the bridal shops, and headed off to Yorkdale to hit some of the trendier women's shops.

And there we found 'The Dress' according to the bride. She LOVED it.

Me? Not so much.

I could not sit down in it...at all. (It's only one night, Mom...you don''t have to sit down)

Not only was the skirt part too tight (I think it was constructed of Spanx material) but the heavy bodice had no give. Every time I tried to sit down, the bodice rode up, coming to rest somewhere between my nose and my eyes.

What do you think?


(p.s. those aren't my boobs - the womanly flesh that usually settles south of my waist apparently had to find somewhere to go once I squeezed into the tight skirt)














Needless to say, I put my foot down.... gently. My feet were killing me. I'd brought a pair of high heels in order to get a sense of what the dresses would look like with the proper shoes, and nearing the end of the day I could barely walk.

Off we went to the more sedate, Laura.

And, with time running out, we SETTLED on the right dress.

It's black. That's good right? Covers a multitude of problem areas.

It fits, sort of.

The bodice is kind of okay, I guess.

I can wear my hair up. That will be nice. I've always wanted to wear a black bow in my hair.

The Princess Bride said she liked it.









When I got home and modeled the new, and moderately expensive gown, The Father of the Bride exclaimed, "Why aren't you going to wear the first one you bought. I LOVE that one. You look gorgeous in that one."

"Don't I look good in this one?" I ask

He smiles, weakly then says, "It's very nice."

Very nice....

Super. 

Never Give Up

Never give up, because that it just the place and time that the tide will turn. Harriet Beacher Stowe.

Turns out Harriet was a smart woman.

As you may recall from my last post I was having a bit of a panic attack having decided that my second book was a disaster and that I might need to start from scratch. In my post I outlined the steps I took to ward off that panic and come at the problem from a more rational and effective position. http://dumpygrace.blogspot.ca/2013/10/do-not-panic.html

I mentioned that things were improving but I thought you might like to know how I fared.

I am thrilled to report that my efforts paid off. It took a good forty eight hours or so of focussed analysis to determine what was wrong and how to fix it. I had a few false starts but have settled on the fix that works.

1) Knowing that my villains were not in the least bit menacing, I did a complete 180 and decided to go with a more classic scenario. Very bad guy and his victimized wife. So far, so good. Both of them are much easier to bring to life and the story crackles because of it.

2) I was spending too much time on secondary characters and not enough with my protagonist, Signy Shepherd. Once I recognized that fact, it was a very easy fix.

And that's about it. Weird, huh? All that angst, and it came down to a couple of relatively easy solutions.

I'm now half way through my rough plot revisions and I THINK the story is moving along smoothly and the characters are popping from the page. I will have to write a couple of more action scenes and delete a couple of extraneous character driven scenes but all that is very doable.

Lesson Learned Harriet! The tide has turned and with any luck, it will be smooth sailing from now on.

                        CHEERS!

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/never_give_up.html#W46OWMIpcaESUB6Z.99

DO NOT PANIC!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was excited to begin the second draft of my second novel. I found myself a comfy spot, and cleared the decks for a couple of days of reading. I'd never read the entire thing in one go
and had no idea how it all worked as a whole.

                DO















Within a few hours I knew that the great plot device I thought would work so well had failed miserably.
The villains were boring and the story line was choppy and uninteresting.

                           
                 NOT













I spent a day in abject panic, unable to think. The pressure was intense. This book has been SOLD and is supposed to be good. How could I fix such an monumental disaster in time for the due date only four months away?

               PANIC!!!!











I am happy to report that I have found a way to tweak the villains and will not have to start from scratch as I originally feared. Indeed, I am quite pleased with the way they are turning out, and the story is much richer as a result. The new scenes that I must write are flying from my fingertips which usually means something good is happening.

Here are a few things I did to stave off panic and get back on track:

1. Do Not Panic. Realizing that panic would get me nowhere, I decided to take a breath and think rationally. Whatever happened it would not be the end of the world. Indeed, it might even be fun to meet this challenge head on and overcome it.
2. Breathe
3. Walk. I took several walks and allowed my mind to settle. Eventually, ideas began to flow again.
4. Dream. Every once in awhile if I have a problem, I will let my unconscious mind take over the problem and if I'm lucky, I'll wake in the morning with an innovative answer. That worked this time.
5. Friends. This is a huge one! Thanks to my wonderful writing friend, Phyllis Diller Stewart and my number one reader. Both offered words of support and tons of great ideas!
6. Don't be afraid to admit a mistake. There is no embarrassment in screwing up. I am a relatively new writer. This is only my second book. This kind of thing is bound to happen and it is how I respond to my mistakes that will make the difference. I choose to learn from my errors and improve because of them.
7. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. I think this point is particularly important, especially for a storyteller. As writers we are incapable of seeing things in a bland and boring way - if something happens, it happens big!  In my case - the villains didn't work and I built that into a massive problem that ruined everything about the book. But, that was a gross exaggeration. Set aside the urge to tell yourself dramatic stories and try to see the situation for what it is -  a problem that can be fixed..
8. Apply Bum Glue. There is only one way to fix the problem and that is to SIT DOWN and fix it. No distractions. 
9. Read something similar. This was very helpful. I picked up a novel by Thomas Perry. He writes a thriller series with Jane Whitefield as the main character, a woman who helps people disappear. I wanted to find out what about his plotting, etc made his story work. I was relieved and surprised to find that in actual fact his writing wasn't all that better than mine. His characters are pretty one dimensional, the villains are cartoonish, the dialogue has a LOT of 'let me tell you this bob' and there are plot holes wide enough to drive a truck through. And still...I kind of like Jane. This exercise gave me hope.
10. Remember that this is supposed to be fun.  As soon as the words began to flow again, and I realized that the story was back on track, the relief was thrilling. And the writing was fun again. 

                                                                        PHEW!

How I Peed on my Theme

I'll bet you'd never guess that a discussion on theme would begin in the bathroom, but that is exactly what happened.

I had just finished taking sheets down from the line and thought the time was right to pay a visit to the bathroom. I was sitting there minding my own business when I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye at exactly the same instant that I felt something...weird....on the inside of my knee.

I looked down.

And, shot off the toilet and into the living room, trailing toilet paper and screams behind me like party streamers.

An insect about the size and girth of a baby carrot was crawling up my inner thigh. Unfortunately, the foul creature, a pine beetle of some kind judging by its enormous mandibles and waving antennae, did not sport the cheerful orange hue of a baby carrot - instead it was a dull grey, splattered here and there with a moldy white crust that was probably a pathogenic fungus, no doubt deadly to humans.

Not worried about modesty at that moment and desperate to get the freakish baby carrot off of me, I raced outside, pants down around my knees and picked up the monster (surprisingly hefty inside my palm...shudder) and tossed it off the porch. As I hiked up my clothes, I watched it crawl away, seemingly unconcerned about its abrupt change of venue.

All of which got me thinking about FEAR.

And fear got me thinking about the theme of my second novel.

Every one of the major characters in my second novel has a desperate Fear of Being Rejected.

As I start the huge task of paring down the first draft into a taught thrill ride, I know it is essential that I keep this theme front and centre in my mind.

Every character is terrified of being left behind, turned down, laughed at, humiliated. Each of them reacts to this fear in a very different way, and it sets them each on a course of action that makes their situation so much worse.

I think I've captured those essentials in the first draft, but in the second draft I have to make sure that I've SHOWN it.

For example. Grace has PTSD and her resultant fear of being rejected  is driving her into a downward spiral. My challenge is to show her symptoms, her emotional and behavioural responses, and the reactions of others, without ever saying PTSD out loud. Not to mention, that it all must be shown in a way that adds to the thrill factor of the story. This isn't a high brow literary tale, after all, but an intense three day nightmare that Grace may not survive.

Okay - no problem. Seems doable.

Oh ya, but did I mention that this same filter must be applied to each and every character, and every aspect of the plot?

FEAR. FEAR. FEAR.

Am I showing how each character reacts when their fear of being rejected is pushed to the limit? Does their response make their life terribly worse in a heart stopping fashion? Does their attempt to rectify the situation make things even more dire? And, how in God's name will they pull their bacon out of the fire at the last second? Or, will they?

FEAR of Rejection.

There is no way to avoid the THEME.  It clings to your tender flesh. A big black baby carrot, hairy and gross, spindly legs tipped with velcro claws that won't let go. And as much as you wish you could ignore it, and just let the story go where it will - you cannot.

You must gird your loins, crack open that mold-infested exoskeleton and reveal the juicy theme that pulses inside. Then scoop up that bloody gore and smear it liberally throughout your story.

One image too many, methinks?

Not to worry, I'll address that in the second draft.

ANYWAY - In my favour - MY fear of the second book being rejected will likely help as I plow my way through the second draft. I will have no problem showing the sweaty-palmed, compulsive terror-induced eating, heart thumping, vomity taste in the back of the throat that comes with a fear of rejection.



yay...lucky me. Here's hoping the whole thing doesn't end up in the crapper.