GENREALITY

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last week I talked about the choices we make and the path we each choose, and I wanted to touch on that again… but in a different way.

When I first decided to pursue a writing career I went at it with everything in me. I was super focussed, determined and very lucky. I happened to be writing erotic before the genre really cycled in as popular. Therefor when I heard New York publishers were looking to start erotic lines I was in the right genre at the right time and things moved fast for me. 2 years after I decided to try to make a career out of writing I quit my full-time job to write full-time because I had contracts for novels lined up, and I couldn’t spare the time to work. I wrote 9 novels (and half a dozen short stories) over the next 2 years, and I was well on my way. Then I pulled back on the writing, and went back to work part-time.

If y’all want to know why I pulled back, I’ll blog about it another time for you, but right now I want to talk about my other job, and how it’s helped my career choices, and writing itself.

What I did full time before I started writing is the same thing I went back to – bartending and waitressing. I’m a 40 year old waitress, and I love it. (Okay, there are times I hate it too, but that’s life.)

What I’m loving about it right now is that I feel I’m actually helping some younger people find their own path in life. You see, I’m forty years old, and I work with a bunch of twentysomethings. Most of them in University and waiting tables to pay their way. Not only does working with them keep me young, but it also helps me with characterization in my stories. The funny thing is that I’ve recently realized that we help each other because they’re getting as much out of our talks about what’s going on in their lives, and life in general, as I am. It shocked me a couple weeks ago when one of the girls I haven’t shared a shift with in a while told me she missed me because I always made her think with my advice. I thought “Advice? I’ve been giving advice?”

Then another girl came up and explained how I’d inspired her to follow her dream of being a singer. She’d tried out for Canadian Idol three times. The first two times she almost made it to Toronto Week, so on the third she’d fully anticipated making it only to have the judges comment on her eyebrows and say some not encouraging things. So she gave up the dream.
That made me sad because she was so passionate about singing, and I think if you’re passionate about something you should follow through on it. We talked a bit about how I got into writing ( how I have no education geared toward it, and it was basically all drive and desire that got me where I was) and I encouraged her. A couple days later she told me she was going for it- and she is. On Sunday night I went to a small private concert she did simply so it could be recorded for a demo/audition reel and I just have to say WOW!! This girl can sing.

I know that singing is a lot like writing in that theres so much more to building a career than talent, but just seeing the light in her eyes, the spring in her step, and the overall glow she had going on made my heart swell. She’s chasing her dream, and knowing that I helped her get back up after her confidence had taken a hit made me take a good hard look at some of my own recent choices. I really think I’ll keep working the night job for as long as I’m physically able because I love being part of so many people’s lives. Not only do they help me keep my characters real, they inspire me to practice what I preach. You’re never too old to chase a dream.

Do you have a dream? A goal you want to accomplish? Or maybe you helped someone else on their path? If so, share it in the comments for a chance to win a $20 Amazon Gift Certificate. If you don’t have anything to share, just say hi, and you’ll be entered. I’ll post the winner tomorrow, on Sundays News Post.

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I’m about 18,000 words into writing a new novel (the ninth Kitty novel, for those keeping score).  After all the revising and copyediting and tedious post-production work I’ve been doing for the last two months, it’s so great to be delving into a new project.  This is about my favorite part of the whole process.  I can keep throwing ideas into the stew to see what happens to them.  I haven’t yet arrived at the “this book is kicking my ass” stage, when I have to start trying to tie those ideas together.  (That’ll come at about 35,000 words.)  I’m meeting new characters, setting a new stage, finding that new direction that will set this book apart from all the others.  I’m researching — not for details, but for ideas.  What would happen if I included this idea?  This bit of folklore?  Could I use that later?  Would it complicate the plot?  Yeah?  Awesome!  I’m making lists, drawing maps, writing my outline, trying out choice bits of dialog.  I don’t have to worry yet about where it’s all going — I’m gunning the engine, the car is picking up speed on a downhill slope, the wind is in my hair, and it’s exciting.

You know what’s really encouraging?  I’ve been writing full-time for three years.  Four, if you don’t count the year of sporadic temping I did as a transition.  The book I’m writing now will be my eleventh published novel, if all goes as planned.  The sixteenth novel I’ve written total.  And I’m still so excited.  I still love this.  I still wake up some days amazed that I get to do this.

Now, stay tuned until next month, when I write a post complaining about the “this book is kicking my ass” stage.  Or the month after that, when I write a post complaining about deadlines.

But until then:  Onward ho!

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This will be a brief topic for me, because to be honest, I don’t deal with rejection very well. I know in my head that it’s just business, but my heart is on that page. While I know I should wear my big girl panties and suck it up, I take it all personally.

That said, I have found some tricks to get me through the rough times. As soon as I’m done with one project, I move on to the next. If I keep my momentum moving forward and always on the next thing, it’s easier to say, “whatever,” when those rejections come in.

When they do come in, I give myself one day to be bummed. I can cry, eat chocolate, whine to my friends and then I have to shove all those crappy feelings up on a shelf and be done with it. Honestly, it isn’t easy, but it’s necessary in my world, which moves like a speeding bullet. I don’t really have a lot of time to be miserable, there’s so much to do. (Smile)

My friends and I came up with a fun thing. We have a beautiful hat and in it we’ve placed slips of paper. When you get a rejection you have to pick a piece of paper. They say everything from go and buy and new pair of shoes to rent Pride and Prejudice (Your version of choice.) It’s a positive way of looking at what really is “just business.” We go to dinner once a week and if you have something sucky to deal with, you get to pull a fun thing from the hat. Some weeks you get to pull more than one. We all laugh and it takes the sting out of it. We actually haven’t done that in a while. It’s time to find the hat again.

Whatever happens, don’t let it get you down. This business is subjective, so just keep moving on to the next thing. And remember it is a business. One agent/editor may not like your work, but there may be six others who do.

I’ll give you a good example. Before I had an agent, I had a chance to meet with an editor at a conference. She was interested in my work and asked to see it. She rejected me. A year later, with the help of my agent, I sold to another editor at the same house. That editor didn’t want to change a single thing with the book except the title.

Flash forward two years. That original editor who had rejected me became my editor when mine left to become an agent. When we first chatted she said, at the time I sent in my manuscript that sort of thing wasn’t selling in the marketplace. I never said anything, but always wanted to. The same time I sent mine in was about the time Mary Janice Davidson and Charlaine Harris hit big, but I never did.

The truth is, you don’t know why someone is going to pick something up. That first editor was nine months pregnant and liked that I made her laugh on the second page. She got me. Some day, someone will get you.

But you have to persevere and keep moving forward. Always.

Tell me what you do to get past those evil rejections?

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Last week I talked about the nerves that come with having a new release. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely problem to have. But I can tell you they don’t subside any time soon. It helps that I’m so busy with promotion for the book that I don’t have that much time to be nervous these days. I do the majority of my promotion online using blogs, Twitter and Facebook, but I also try to do at least one book signing my hometown.

I can’t remember which publicist told me this years ago, but she said one book signing in each city was the best way to target your audience. She is right. When you have multiple signings in a city, it becomes less of an event. And that’s what a book signing should be, an event.

Otherwise you spend a good portion of your time begging people to take a bookmark and giving directions to the bathroom. Before authors are published they have dreams of lines that go around the building filled with fans waiting for a scribble on some paper. That does happen for some folk, but it’s not the norm. I think one of the biggest lines I’ve ever seen was for cooking maven Paula Deen. The book seller had asked my friend and I to come to the signing because she was worried no one would show up. When we arrived, the line was all the way out the door and around a good portion of the mall outside.

Most of the big NYT’s folks can pull in a crowd, but for the majority of authors that isn’t a case. That’s why you need to make your signings special.

In your hometown make it a big party. Have a tea or dinner before or after the signing and make it personal. (People can pay for their own food, the cool part is that they get to hang out with you.) Have fun giveaways and make sure you do invites where people should RSVP. Expect about a fourth of the people you invite to show up.

If you’re traveling to another city– do yourself a favor and make friends before hand. See if you can do a multi-author signing with some of the writer folks who are well-known in that town. Ask your fans to host some kind of event or tie it into a convention/writer’s workshop/class and use your books as examples so people will have to buy them in order to know what the hell you are talking about.

There are tons of ways to make your book signings special. I’d like to hear some suggestions from you guys. Any ideas?

Oh, and my book signing for Take Me if You Dare is Saturday, Feb. 6, from 2-4 p.m. at the Hurst, Texas Barnes & Noble.

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Being a writer means that some part of the brain is always at work. Stories take shape in the unconscious mind, storehouse of memories and ideas and sensations and emotions and patterns and insights. This means it takes more effort to actually take time off and recharge that brain consciously so that the unconscious always has lots of raw material to work with.

So what does a writer do on a weekend? Probably, writes. Writing is just not a 9-5, M-F kind of gig. I even get business emails on weekends I have to respond to. And I honestly can’t remember the last time I went through a major holiday or long weekend without edits or something to proofread or something I had to just stay with, even if it was only to write 100 words, so the story would stay fresh in my head.

But writing and proofing and researching and revising can’t be done 24/7, either, so when the writing is put away, it’s time to go get immersed in sounds and sights and sensations, emotions, experiences. Hang out with friends and family. Cook a meal. Go to a museum and look at art. Study the lines of sculpture. Wander a fabric shop and touch the different textures; feel the difference between denim, linen, fleece, velvet. Look at the range of colors; not just blue but indigo and turquoise and sky blue and navy.

Wander through a store and really look at clothing. Have all your characters started to sound generic in their dress? Examine something different. Try to find an outfit your character would need for a given scene.

Go to an art store. Look at all the different paints and charcoals, all the pastels, all the papers. Buy some to play with.

Get your camera out and shoot whatever catches your eye. Take a close-up, then a wide angle view. Write about the difference in what you can see from just changing perspective in the same scene, a little five minute exercise.

Read. It doesn’t matter if it’s history or poetry or science or astronomy or astrology or a mystery or science fiction or fantasy or a book written for middle grade children. Read. Watch a movie and see how visual information is conveyed. Listen to the way music creates mood and heightens drama.

Take a nap. Sit under a tree. Look up at clouds in the sky. Sit in a chair and do absolutely nothing but breathe. Listen to music. Really look at a blade of grass, a leaf, a flower.

All of these details and images go into the unconscious to be drawn on the next time we describe a setting, bring a scene to life in words. How a writer spends a weekend determines how the writing goes when official work time rolls around again. It’s easy to say that writing consists of butt in the chair, fingers on the keyboard, but the raw material of fiction requires getting out of that chair and touching something else to gather in.

Charlene Teglia is the author of multiple romances for multiple publishers. Her most recent title, Claimed by the Wolf (St. Martin’s, Dec. 09) is in stores now.

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