Today I’m looking at my writing process. Every writer does it differently. The truth is the writing process is as unique to the author as his or her voice. Which is why all those fantastic writing classes we take end up having to be filtered through the sieve of our own making so we can save what will work and toss out the rest.

In the last few weeks between finishing writing The Slayer, the second steampunk book for Zebra and starting (and hopefully finishing soon) Shadowlander, the  novella kicking off my Shadow Sisters series for Entangled Publishing, I’ve found I’ve got a weird writing process quirk. It doesn’t have to do with character development (although I do some strange stuff for that, too.). It doesn’t have to do with creating massive maps of my imaginary worlds. It actually has to do with the business part of my writing brain.

Apparently, part of my writing process is to go on a job hunt in the middle of the book. I don’t know if it’s some psychological release valve, helping me cope with the momentary insanity of how-will-I-ever-finish-this-book, or more of a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that I should be doing more than I am to support the household bottom line. Either way it’s a massive time suck.

I send out applications. I troll websites. I actually go on interviews and I’ve taken jobs. But they aren’t career builders. They are the day jobs that I can work around the kids’ schedules. Because, really, it isn’t bad enough that mom spends a huge chunk of her time glommed onto the computer cavorting with imaginary people in imaginary worlds rather than playing another round of Uno or folding the laundry that’s piled up on the couch.

Now I’ll be painfully honest and say while it’s been the most amazing year to have four books out on the shelves, it hasn’t been the most profitable. Writers don’t make nearly what you think they do. In fact right now I’d make more substitute teaching six days a month. I’m hoping that’ll start to turn around as my first royalty statements come in, but I’m not going to count those fluffy little chicks until they start laying some nest eggs in my bank account.

I sometimes wish writing were just for the sake of art. It’s not. This is a full time job, mixed with a half-time volunteering position, mixed with a whole lot of crazy. I write because I have to find some way of relieving all this stuff that flutters through my brain. I write because I love ideas and research and characters. I write because I hope that someday I’ll be able to tell my husband, hey, yeah, I really was our retirement plan like you said and didn’t it all work out great.

*sigh* For now it’s just part of the process. It’s how I get the book written. It’s how I cope with thinking I should be doing more. Making more to help out in these tough economic times. Even though I must say getting certified to be a paralegal looks like it might be fun. I considered going into law when I was younger. Or maybe I should try teaching as an adjunct rather than a substitute. I love being in the classroom. I gain a lot from working with others and some days miss it intensely. Humm. Choices. Choices.

Writers should learn from every book they write. Even if it’s a little something about themselves.

It all started when my oldest was in half-day kindergarten. Being a writer, I also happen to be a HUGE reader. Thankfully my children enjoyed being read to, because really in this household they wouldn’t have had a choice anyway. I LOVE to read out loud. And like my mother before me, I use different voices for each of the characters. It’s fun!

But I digress.

Since I virtually knew no one in the little Washington town we’d moved to from Arizona, and I worked from home (which meant my social interactions with real, live people were limited to the phone most days), I volunteered in my child’s class. At one point I offered to start a reading club. We’d meet in the afternoon on Fridays, have snacks, and read Harry Potter and the Sorcer’s Stone. I wrote up flyers. I handed them out.

Only three moms came.

I read out loud to the children. They each had a notebook where they could draw a picture about their favorite part of the chapter and we’d talk about what we read afterwards. They had snacks. They played. The mommies had tea. It was fantastic. And it gave me a group of friends I didn’t have before. Moms like me, who had kindergarteners who enjoyed books and enjoyed tea and were fun to be with. On the last day of school, we took the children as a group to go see the first Harry Potter movie. Some of them dressed up, so I did too, complete with my burgundy velvet cape and black pointed witch’s hat, because really, how many times as an adult to you get to dress up besides maybe Halloween or a steampunk event?

Out of that year of reading Harry Potter, grew some deep friendships. It was also the start of weekly tea for the moms, which we still do all these years later, even though some of my original friends from that reading club have moved to other states or taken up day-jobs that keep them busy all week. (Seriously half the writing I do would not be accomplished without the support of my non-writer tea friends who help keep me sane and smiling.)

Harry Potter gave me a means to connect not only with my children and their friends, and their parents, but also to make new friends of my own. So, thank you, J.K. Rowling for your magical imagination and fantastic stories. Thank you for giving me, and millions like me, not only entertaining stories, but new friends.

Oh, yes, dear reader. It’s true! And it’s the fodder for a steampunk imagination like mine run rampant.

In his new book, Gangs of London, author Brian McDonald reveals details of one all-female gang, who rule the underworld of London for nearly two centuries. The Forty Elephants–or Forty Theives–was a well-run collective of cells who opperated across London and in other cities as well, headed by a formidable “queen”, which was responsible for most of the largest shoplifiting syndicate ever seen in London between the years of 1870 to 1950. Police records indicate that the gang, which was first mentioned in newspapers in 1873, had in fact been in operation even longer, since the late 1700s.

The ladies of the syndicate dressed in specially tailored clothing, coats, cummerbunds, muffs, skirts, bloomers and hats, sewn with hidden pockets. They raided the West End shops of London, pocketing, literally, goods worth thousands of pounds from diamond rings, to ranksacking employer’s homes after providing false references, to blackmailing the men they seduced.

“The girls benefited from the prudish attitudes of the time by taking shelter behind the privacy afforded to women in large stores, ” McDonald said. While the women rarely wore what the stole, choosing instead to fence it through a series of contacts in north and south London, they did use their ill-gotten gains to dress in legitimate high fashion, which they used as a coverup for their dealings. “…they threw the liveliest of parties and spent lavishly at pubs, clubs and restaurants,” he said. “Their lifestyles were in pursuit of those of glamourous movie stars, combined with the decadent living of 1920s aristocratic flapper soceity. They read of the outrageous behaviour of the rich, bring young things and wanted to emulate them.”

The gang guarded their territory fiercely, demanding percentages from others caught stealing from the stores in their turf. If the money wasn’t paid, they showed no mercy, arranging beatings and even kidnappings until it was paid up. If caught, they knew they could be sentenced to between three to 12 months’ hard labor, or three years in prison.

McDonald came upong these fascinating women while scouring the official birth and death redords, marriage indexes, newspaper archievs and out-of-print books in the British Library. An example of one such individual was Annie Diamond, born in 1896 in Soutwark, who became queen of the gang when she was but 20 years old. Thanks to a fist studded with diamond rings and a killer punch to back it up, she earned her name of Diamond Annie. With military precision, she could mount simultaenous operations in a series of shops across the city and the police called her “the cleverist of thieves.”

“Many a husband lounged at home while his missus was out at work, and many an old lag was propped by by his tireless shoplifting spouse. Some of these terrors were as tough as the men they worked for and protected,” McDonald added.

How could you not be intrigued by ladies who buck the system with such panache?

OK, so I’m starting a new book. (Well, let’s be truly honest, I’ve got three of them going right now.) The point is this new book is a little more difficult for me to start than most I’ve worked on.

And it’s because of the characters.

It’s one thing when they step on stage and demand a staring role in your head and start spouting of dialog faster than you can type it. It’s another thing when you’ve got an alpha male who’s a lost soul and wants to be left the hell alone…by everyone…including me.

Trying to get him to open up enough that I can figure him and out write him down is like trying to ply a vegetarian with a steak. It isn’t working. Not interested is not interested.

So as a writer, what am I supposed to do? Well, I’m going to fall back on the good only journalism interview and hope he gives more than one word answers (which I’m not counting on.) If that fails I might interview the secondary characters around him and see if I can dig up some dirt.

And if that fails…well then I’m going to start the story with the heroine and he’ll get dragged into it at some point.

*sigh* And my husband wonders why I can’t remember to pick up drywall screws…I have way too much in my head.

But I’ve found that dwelling on the negative doesn’t help your career. Far more positive and powerful is a thankful heart.

It comes from the idea of what you focus on is what you draw to you.

So I’m thankful for my contracts with Harlequin, that my writing is going to be in books in the hands of readers in 2011 (I know it seems like a long time but in the publishing world it’s not.)

I’m thankful for both my writing and non-writing friends who keep me sane in different ways – the writers because they understand how crazy a business publishing really is, and the non-writers because they don’t care about the business at all.

I’m thankful for the chance to be able to write the stories out of my head – because really, my therapy bills would be astronomical if I had to pay to talk them all out.

I’m thankful that there are readers out there who love romance. Thank you for reading what we write!

I’m thankful that my computer has kept up this far with me and continues to chug along.
I’m thankful for my husband and my kids who encourage me and make me want to be a better writer.

I’m thankful for RWA and the published members who’ve offered support and education over the years that helped me get to where I am.

And of course I’m thankful for you. Because I may not know exactly who you are at this moment, but you are still reading this. And that makes me smile.

May your holidays be full of love, light, and joy.

Cheers,
Theresa

But really, how do you know? For me there have been points of clarity mixed with occasional thwacks upside the head to remind me. The first big point of clarity came in high school when I knew writing for the newspaper and getting nonfiction published in a national magazine wasn’t enough. I didn’t want just a byline, I wanted to create stories that were something no one else could do, that were out of my own creativity rather than reporting.

The second point of clarity came when I started a Writer’s Digest course and got my first smackdown from a wise teacher who told me my first novel had way too many plots going at once and I needed to pare it down to one single story to focus on. I was crushed, but she was right.

The third point of clarity came when my mother passed away at 52 from breast cancer. She was an inspiration, a person who really made everyone around her strive to live their dreams, and a natural storyteller. But she also taught be something I’ll never forget – if you don’t tell the stories, they stayed locked inside. No one can share them but you. If you leave this world without sharing those stories, those stories leave with you, never to be read. I can’t go there. Frankly there’s barely enough room in my head for what has to be there day in and day out, let alone to store a bunch of stories that’ll never be told. I’ve got to clean it out by getting those stories down on paper.

My fourth point of clarity came with the American Title contest, when I was cut after making it through a few rounds. Boy did I think about quitting. I already had a successful public relations agency, why did I need the grief? I was going to purge my office of writing. Yeah, right. That lasted half an hour. Then I realized I was still going to have stories in my head. I was still going to have to find some way of releasing them to keep myself sane and happy. Writing was cheaper than therapy, and it also meant I got to keep my non-writer friends who wouldn’t be bombarded by yet another untold tale of mine.

The latest thwack upside the head to remind me what I am came just last school year in a high school chemistry class. I know you’re likely wondering what the heck I was doing there. I was substituting. I do that too. I realized that as much as like teaching, I really, really am a writer. It’s telling the story that gets me going, especially when you can see how the story is unfolding for each individual. It’s that chemistry between writer and reader that makes writing addictive. Writers crave readers. We’re not shy about that.

So how do you know if you are meant to be a writer? Really the litmus test is easier than you think (and pardon me if it begins to sound a bit like you might be a redneck . . .)

If you occasionally hear voices in your head, that aren’t your own. And they’re arguing over something, you might be a writer.

If bits of paper seem to find there way into everything you own, because you’ve got ideas you’ll jot down on any old scrap you can find when it hits, you might be a writer.

If your bookshelves are nearly busting out and have overflowed on to various surfaces in your home because you are easily fascinated by all manner of ideas and have to know more, you might be a writer. (maybe you just don’t know it yet.)

If the smell of books is kind of addictive to you, you might be a writer.

If you’d rather sit on your butt and type for three hours a day or more, because you have to, rather than because you want to, even though there are dust rhinos cavorting in your dining room and under your furniture, you might be a writer.

If you look at a billboard, magazine ad or other such thing, and immediately think what that person might be like, and starting spinning ideas around of who they are, what they want and what might happen if they…., well, you know I’m going to tell you, you might be a writer.

If you’ve got pages already written, on a book that will never be seen by human eyes, you my friend, might be a writer.

And, if the idea of not writing another day in your life leaves you thinking, what the heck would I do, then you might be a writer.

Now if you’re a writer, and you’ve only just discovered this amazing fact, let me share with you three bits of advice that I’ve consistently heard from every New York Times Bestseller I’ve ever had the fortune to strike up a conversation with (which is quite a few).

1. Finish the book. No one will buy a book until you’ve written it. So starting a book is important, yes, but finishing it is a necessity.

2. Perseverance makes the difference between published and unpublished.

3. Start writing the next book. Careers in publishing are usually built on one book after another, after another. If you’ve got one book it you, chances are you’ve got another too. So keep writing!

Normally I don’t talk about pr stuff on my author website. But something has crossed a huge line. And that something is RWA.

So pardon me as I put on my publicist’s hat for a moment and climb up on to the soapbox. Speaking from professional experience in corporate environments, it doesn’t matter what your company or organization are doing behind the scenes. That’s not how you are perceived. What people see out front, what your “image” is in public, is how people in the general public think of you.

 Right now RWA has an image problem. They are perceived by a big chunk of their publics (one being their membership, another being editors in the industry) that they are not supportive of e-publishing and falling behind current tech trends in the industry. Doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t as a matter of course, or if they are working on it. The perception is still there and actively becoming worse, which in turn lowers the perceived value of membership in the organization. This is a huge problem. This is how companies and organizations slide down hill and start to dissolve.

I’ve been a member of RWA since 1993, worked as a chapter president and board member for many years, worked on task forces for the national board and generally been around long enough to see a lot of hoo-haw come and go in the organization from year to year. The difference is, this is serious. This could cleave the organization in half and leave it a shadow of its former self.  I’ve seen it happen often enough in chapters to know the signs, only this is a tsunami compared to the waves I’ve experienced.

 If RWA wants to pull out of this perception model, then they need to address this in a major way, publicly. I’m talking have the president write an article in RT Bookreviews or Publisher’s Weekly or Writer’s Digest, or even all three! A blog tour, twitter posts, a multitude of things that reaches out to a vast majority of their publics and reforms their perception.

 RWA’s mission is education and advocation, not regulation. You can say it all you want, but you need to have the actions, the perception, to back it up to make your members and the industry believe it.

 How do you turn it around? The same way Tylenol did when people died from cyanide in their products and had to rebuild consumer trust.

Stop being defensive is step one – that’s reactive instead of proactive and gets you no where in reforming your perception.

Step two, start telling exactly what you are doing to remedy the situation – actions behind the scenes mean nothing to your perception. Be public about how you are approaching the issue and update your publics often. 

Step three, involve your publics so they see and feel part of the change – start an official survey, do an open call for a task force involving major players like Angela James, Deidre Knight and others who are experienced in the e-publishing portion of the industry and can get well-informed opinions and insights into what the big issues are and how to address them.

Create an e-column in the RWR that on a monthly basis addresses something of concern to educate members on what to look for in clauses, contracts, promotion, marketing, publisher support, etc. for this segment of their book sales.

If you happen to be on twitter, start posting at #RWAchange so we know you’re actually alive and concerned rather than hiding under a rock fuming about all those authors who don’t see all the hard work you’ve done.

We know you work hard. We want to trust you. We want to feel like the organization we love is going to survive surgery to fix this problem. Give your membership some hope and information and they will rally to you.

That’s all I’m saying.

Climbing off the soapbox now to return to my keyboard and work-in-process. If you want to leave a comment, please, feel free. If you want to become part of the process go to RWAChange

But why is it that some people are this amazing bust out phenomenon and other people, are well, just plugging along?

I may not know everything, but what I have learned is this: becoming great is a marriage of many levels. It’s a marriage of mind meets efforts. It’s a marriage of desire meets inspiration. And it’s a marriage of determination meets dreams.

The Right Dream
Part of the reason people fail to become great is because they’re chasing the wrong dream. It’s not that their dream isn’t worthy. It is. But it maybe that the person is chasing something that really isn’t in his or her own personal best interest. It’s not what he or she was specifically made for. In other words, it’s not their life work calling. They want that dream because they want the money. But maybe the real reason they want the money is because they want other people to appreciate or look up to them. Or maybe they want security. They may want the dream because they’ve been told by the parents, or friends, or society that they should want it. They may be holing on to a misplaced dream because they are scared to try their real life’s work and fail.

Finding out what the REAL thing you want is the start to finding out what your life’s work is meant to be. Want to know the shortcut? Ask yourself what you’d be doing if you had all the money, time and resources at hand to do anything you wished. What did you dream of being when you were between nine and twelve years old? What would you get up every morning and do just for the sheer love of doing it?

That’s the direction of your true life’s work.

And don’t give me, but I don’t have the education/experience/contacts/financing/whatever. If you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way. “It’s not what you have but what you do with what you have that will determine your success or failure. Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist said that the story of the human race is the story of people selling themselves short. He said people have a tendency to settle for far less from life than they are truly capable of.” ~ Brian Tracy

The Right Model
Once you discover your true life’s work, find the people who are the best at it in the world. Look at what they do. Analyze how they do it. Copy them instead of reinventing the wheel. Because, your wheel will look different anyway once it’s complete, but you might as well take the short cut in understanding the physics and mechanics of it by looking at something that works.

The Right Ethic
Now you work. I mean seriously work.

“I will NOT be outworked. Period… You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things:  Either you’re getting off first, or I’m gonna die. It’s really that simple.”

~Will Smith, on his work ethic

“If you want to reach the stars in your career, you have to become excellent at what you do. You have to pay any price, go any distance, spend any amount of time necessary to “be the best.” Extraordinary rewards only go for extraordinary performance; average rewards for average performance; below average rewards, insecurity and failure for below average performance. And here’s a vital key, you are being paid today exactly what you’re worth – no more, no less. If you want to earn more, you must increase your worth, your value to others.” ~ Brian Tracy

The Right Attitude
Which, from the platitudes of Dr. Phil, we all now know that if you don’t first value yourself, then you can’t expect others to value you. You have to believe that you are worth investing the time, energy and money into yourself to chase that dream.

So what’s that all mean? It means that today, right now, you can choose to become great. Even the biggest star in Hollywood, the richest man on earth, the best surgeon in the world, the smartest scientist alive, the most-well-known writer in the world started at the beginning. They did it, which means it can be done. There are no limits, except those you impose on yourself.

Start simply: First, set high standards for yourself. Don’t just accept that what you are currently doing is your best. You can do more. You can be more. You can be great.

Second, select one key skill area that is important in your job or personal life and resolve to become the best in that area. Just one thing. Maybe your the person who’s most on time. Maybe you spell everything correctly. Maybe you’re the most creative person at your job. Whatever it is, determine that you are going to focus and become the best at that one thing. Then, when you are pick another thing. I guarantee you’ll be better off than you are now.

What it takes to become great are two simple ingredients: You and your determination to succeed.

Not all writers parade around in bunny slippers, dashing off a book in a weekend between watching reruns of Supernatural. And writers usually don’t make an astounding amount of money. Not even those that hit the golden hallowed ground of New York Times Bestseller.

See what I mean – a first-hand account with actual royalty statement, compliments of Lynn Viehl at GenReality. Out of a $50k advance (only two-thirds you get before the book comes out, 15% percent of which goes to pay the agent) she netted less than half. Of the $40k+ royalty for a top 20 NYT bestselling book. She got zero in her paycheck (because she has to pay back the advance).

Writers don’t write for the money. Most of us write to keep our sanity, because we really do have other people’s voices (our characters) talking incessantly in our heads.

So how long, exactly do you need to work at this before you start making anything at all? It depends. That’s the straight up truth.

Read this and you’ll understand: How do You Know When to Quit over at Murderati.  You stop when you can’t go anymore, and for most writers, the process is far more invovled that the end result you see on a bookstore shelf.  We spend months, sometimes years, of our lives on stuff you read in a week or less. 

The truth about writing is this, and I’m only telling you because I know a lot of people want to write the Great American Novel someday: Writing is a lot of work. Hard work. The majority of time you are rejected. Persistence is key. Talent is important. Learning and improving your craft a constant given. But timing, opportunity, just like the singer Susan Boyle in the link you’ll find in the Murderati link, that is the critical element that makes it all come together.

The truth is if you pick up pen and put it to paper or type on your keyboard and create a story or an article, you are in fact a writer. But here’s the thing: if you want to get paid for that writing, you have to write what you can sell.

Case in point – as much as I love my dark fae stories, they are going to have to wait. Why? Because I’ve been asked to send in more vampire story proposals. It’s more likely those stories will sell, since that is what is being requested. Is it a guarantee? Absolutlely not.  But as much as you love writing “the book inside you” or “the book of your heart” a working writer writes with the guideline of writing to sell. If there’s an opportunity in a market, then you see what you can do about it.

I’m not saying that writers should blindly follow trends. You have to write what you are able to write (for example don’t ditch the historical and write an erotic romance if you really feel that it is totally unlike you). At the same time you have to be willing to stretch yourself. For a long time (from about the mid 90s until two years ago) historical writers were faced with a downturn in the market for historical romances. Many of them started writing contemporary romances or paranormals or even romantic suspense. Some of them have recently begun writing historicals again.

Being flexible doesn’t mean that you’re selling out. It means that no matter where your readers might be, you’re going to work to reach them.

So how to you decide what to write? Start with what moves you as a reader. What stories capture your imagination most? What do you like to read most? Do you have an idea that you can see fitting into the current market – in other words, if you went into a bookstore would you be able to figure out where it would be stocked on the shelf?

Start there. Then do your homework. Pick up those books you love and find out who the publisher is. Find out who agents that author (the Internet is amazing for this, but you can usually find clues in the dedication or thank you section in the beginning of a book too.)

Then sit down and write the book, the whole book, not just a few chapters. If you don’t have a critique group, then consider joining a writer’s group. There’s one out there for just about everything, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Thriller Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Google and you’ll find something close to you. Go to a meeting and start asking questions. You might be amazed what you learn.

And last, even if the book isn’t selling right now, don’t be afraid to put it aside. It might sell another time. For if there is one thing that is consistent about publishing, it is that everything changes.

Go forth and write!