Archive for October, 2006
October 31, 2006
Hallowe’en
What a day.
I have sold my old car (the 1997 Rover Mini Cooper, boo-hoo), and bought another car (a 2003 Toyota Yaris, hooray), arranged for insurance, tax, and parking, and am now about to collapse on the couch with dinner, my husband and The Omen. And, lots of chocolate. I bought a bagful, in case we got any trick-or-treaters, but so far we’ve only had two, so I’m obligated to eat what’s left, of course.
I meant to start planning my next book, but I’m exhausted. I also meant to post another deleted scene from Spirit Willing–this one on the scary side–but I figure everyone’s had enough of reading excerpts of my work for a few days.
I’m thrilled by how many people have taken up the first page challenge. There’s so much stuff to learn in what’s been posted. Thank you, everyone.
October 29, 2006
taking the challenge myself
Thank you to everyone who posted after my first page challenge–and keep on posting below if you’d like!
This challenge really helped me, because the major revision I had to do to this Modern Extra was to make the first few pages more dynamic. Inspired by what we’ve been talking about here, I looked at my first few paragraphs and decided that while I like them, they’re not the most effective way to begin.
Originally I started with the hero. I had a good reason for that–I had to introduce his situation, or else the mistaken-identity plot that was going to start in the first chapter wouldn’t make any sense. I also had to have a secondary character there, because the mechanics of the plot wouldn’t work without him.
And I do like this passage; I think it shows character, though possibly slightly more of the secondary character in the first couple of paragraphs. Here it is, and what I was trying to do with it:
“Jonny. Yo, Jonny.”
Jonny pushed his glasses up his nose and narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to concentrate on the HTML code on the laptop screen in front of him. Computer geek. In glasses. As a hero. Hooray!Thom’s voice wasn’t easy to ignore. It was loud, vibrant, and unabashedly Californian. Jonny typed in a line of code anyway.
“Jonathan Richard Cole Junior!” Jonny’s full name is very important in the rest of the book, though we don’t know that yet.Thom leaned across the first-class railway carriage table and waved his hand in Jonny’s face.
Jonny gave up and finally looked at his friend. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I was ignoring you. I gave you one condition for this trip when you kidnapped me, remember?”
“I didn’t kidnap you, dude!” Thom put on his fake-innocent grin. “I let you go get your computer and a toothbrush before I dragged you to the Penrith train station. And I only came up to get you in person because I know what you’re like when you’re writing a book.” A computer geek who writes books! Double yay!!
Jonny smiled, because it was nearly impossible to stay annoyed with Thom Erikson. The man was incredibly rich, incredibly generous, and he talked as if he had a surfboard permanently attached to his person. And he’d stayed close to Jonny, even when Jonny had left California to go back to England.
In a world full of transitions and disillusion, Jonny had learned to appreciate loyalty, even when the loyalty was also accompanied by unrelenting persistence.Something’s happened to him that makes him doubt the loyalty of people who are close to him; he’s disillusioned.
“You also agreed not to call me by my real name,” Jonny reminded him. “When I’m working with you I’m not Jonny Cole, I’m Jay Richard.” He’s hiding his real identity. Why?
***
Now, this is fine–it does what I want it to, and I like Jonny and Thom and their relationship. Problem is, that’s not where the greatest conflict is in this book. The greatest conflict is with the heroine. Therefore, I’ve inserted another scene to start the book. Here are the first few paragraphs:
***
I am absolutely fine, I am very good at my job, and you are never going to see me cry again.
It was Jane’s inner monologue, her mantra for the morning, so strong that she had to choose her words carefully to avoid speaking it out loud as she finished up her slide presentation and answered questions on behalf of her creative team.
Particularly because the person who was asking the most questions was Gary Kaplan, the senior account manager, who she had believed she was going to marry next June, and who had seen her crying five days before.
Well, there’s a problem. She’s split up with this guy she needs to work with. And she’s dealing with it by trying desperately to keep her dignity and her professionalism–both of which are vital to her self-esteem. And I have my theme established–Jane is pretending to be okay when she’s not, and in the next scene (which is the first one I posted), we learn that Jonny is pretending to be somebody else.
***
Hopefully this will work. What do you think?
October 27, 2006
first page challenge
I’ve been emailing a friend of mine, an aspiring romance writer, and we were talking about how to create character and conflict from the very first lines of your book. To show her what I meant, I took the first page of two of my books and added notes to show how I tried to portray from line one what these characters were like, and what their problems were.
I thought it might be kind of interesting, and could maybe help other people, so I’m posting them below.
BUT…here’s the challenge. I challenge any other writers reading this blog to do the same thing with their first few paragraphs–post them on your blog (or, if you don’t have one, in the comment section of mine, below), and comment on how you create character and conflict right away.
If you do post, please tell me, and if possible, leave a link in my comments section so we can all have a look at each other’s!
Here are mine:
“Okay let me get this straight. Tequila, then salt, then—” Marianne stood, container of salt poised over the cocktail shaker.
“No!” Warren hurled himself across the bar and grabbed her hand. “No salt in the margarita! You put it on the rim of the glass!” This woman is doing something she’s never done before, and making mistakes. She’s probably never had a margarita, which makes her pretty naïve–about drinking anyway. So why’s she in a bar?
Marianne’s hand, jogged by Warren, shook a dollop of rock salt into the container. She looked down into the aluminium cylinder, and an expression of wild regret passed over her face. She is bothered by making mistakes, out of proportion to the mistake that she has made. A problem here. Then she shook her head a little, and smiled.
“I think salty tequila could be good.” She raised the container to her lips, took the tiniest of sips, and grimaced. “Yeah, it’s a taste sensation.” However, she’s trying to change her gut reactions, and have a sense of humour about them. A trait that a reader can, hopefully, identify with.
He’d been sitting here so long his rear end was starting to go numb. This guy is a man who puts his goals above his personal comfort.
Nick shifted his weight, stretched his legs in their lightweight outdoor trousers, he’s an outdoorsman settled his back more comfortably against the tastefully neutral-coloured wall, and then he was motionless again. And patient. And in control of his body. I’ve tried to make him heroic in the first two sentences.
There was a clock on the wall down the corridor from him, near the creaky elevators. It ticked in the emptiness, a constant artificial monotony that dragged on Nick’s nerves. It wasn’t the noise that bothered him. He was used to noise: the constant rush of the ocean and the whirr of leaves and the bickering of birds. Those were timeless sounds. But this tick was a precise measurement of time passing. He is bothered by this setting; he belongs elsewhere. Every second ticking by was another second he had to wait for the mysterious Ms Drake and the answers he’d waited far too long for already. Mystery. Conflict. There is a problem here–he wants answers about something and he’s willing to put himself outside his comfort zone to get them.
***
Now post yours!
October 26, 2006
library and not quite sucking
Excellent fun at the Paddington Library tonight…hard to tell how many people were there because people kept on popping in and out (it was in the middle of a large open library) but they were all very nice and there were some good questions. My editor was there to help me field them too (and I was able to point her out as a media star as some people had seen her on the BBC4 Reader, I Married Him programmes).
She’d read my book (which I sent in on Monday–this woman is a marvel) and there are only minor revisions to be done. I am mega-relieved that she didn’t think it sucked. To tell the truth, although I thought it sucked as I wrote it, when I read it through I thought it sucked less…but my judgement is damn awful so I had no idea what to expect. She liked it, though.
(NOTE TO FRIENDS: This does not mean that when I say something sucks, it doesn’t. Because sometimes–often–it does. It just means that this time, it didn’t. Not as much as I thought it did, anyway. Just because this time the Crows of Doubt turned out to be benign cute widdle sparrows doesn’t mean that one day I won’t be attacked by big old evil ravens intent on pecking out my eyes.)
In other news, my belly is getting too big. It kept on peeking out from the bottom of my shirt. How embarrassing.
October 25, 2006
Paddington Library
Oh and tomorrow night (Thursday 26th Oct) I’ll be speaking at the Paddington library, near Bayswater, from 7 pm. Please do pop by if you’re in the area.
nursery
For the past couple of days, we’ve been sorting out the nursery. First, my husband had to move all of his stuff out to the shed. He’s been using the spare bedroom as a guitar workshop for the past five years.
Yesterday, we painted. Lovely, fresh, bright turquoise.
Today, we picked out carpeting and a cot. We’ve chosen one that will turn into a bed for a toddler/child, and it looks absolutely huge right now–far too big for a tiny baby, and it’s hard to believe that our child will, eventually, outgrow even that.
We glanced at the wide world of pushchairs and car seats, and turned away, shuddering at the information overload.
I can’t wait for the room to be finished.
In other news, Hotel Chocolat have opened a shop in Reading and they have just sent me a coupon for 10% off. Do you hear that noise? It’s my butt expanding at speed.
October 23, 2006
Jane, Jonny and Jay have left the building
Have sent book off. Spending day catching up on my post. I haven’t opened anything non-personal for about two weeks, and I haven’t sent anything, either. I have some crits to do, too.
Yesterday I downloaded some Cat Stevens songs. It made me mellow for the rest of the day. Nice.
And as it’s 2 pm, I guess I should go take a shower and get dressed.
October 22, 2006
work and baby cake
I went on maternity leave on Wednesday. It hasn’t really felt like it, because I’ve been working like crazy–I was at school until 10 on Wednesday finishing up stuff, spent most of Thursday preparing for a three-hour workshop I did on Friday at Farnborough Sixth Form College. And I’ve spent this weekend so far doing edits on the Modern Extra I finished last week, which (surprisingly) doesn’t suck as much as I thought it did.
The workshop on Friday went well; the students were lovely, responsive and happy to work and I enjoyed it. Hopefully one or two of them will pop by this blog and say hello…along with the one or two of my usual students who often come by to visit over half term.
Waves to students–if you post, please tell me who you are!
Anyway my sixth form English language class made me a baby cake on my last day and suprised me with it, singing “Happy Baby” to the tune of “Happy Birthday”. It was awesome.
October 19, 2006
Spirit Willing deleted piano scene
Am brain dead.
But I thought, while I’m brain dead, that I’d post a couple of deleted scenes from Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak. Just because.
This is one that went because my agent thought it was too cheesy. I like it. Then again, I like cheesy, far too much for my judgement to be trusted. It was from chapter ten. And I really did lie on a piano to research it, though I can’t sing that well.
Rosie, the fake psychic and professional liar, is playing a game of drinking Truth or Dare with Harry, a gorgeous journalist obsessed with the truth.
Harry walked me over to the grand piano in the centre of the room. He dropped my hand and I opened my mouth to protest but then his hands were at my waist again, lifting me up and setting me on the cover of the piano.
I giggled again. I was sitting on a grand piano, in a bar, in a hotel, in Milton Keynes, England.
I seemed to be a little bit drunk.
Harry sat down on the piano stool and opened the cover over the keys. He hit a key or two, experimentally, and then nodded, satisfied.
“I dare you to sing a song,” he said.
“Do you play the piano?” I asked.
“My parents made me take lessons from the age of eight.” He played several quick, jazzy chords. “I can play Mozart, Chopin, and most of the Monkees’ songs. So what are you going to sing?”
Why was I not surprised that Harry Blake, the well bred, had taken piano lessons as a child? Briefly, I wondered what my parents would have said if I’d asked for piano lessons at age eight.
Get a job, probably.
“‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ by The Ramones?” I suggested.
Harry’s long fingers danced over the keys, feeling out the Ramones tune briefly. “I think that song needs some electric guitars, not a grand piano.”
I watched his hands. Had I always found a man who could play the piano sexy?
I couldn’t remember any other occasions. In fact, I couldn’t remember watching a male play the piano since junior high school when geeky Donnie Deconzo used to play the intro to “Axel F” from Beverly Hills Cop whenever he got near a keyboard.
But Harry’s hands were so dextrous. I leaned over towards him, so I could see them more clearly.
“What are you going to sing, then?” he asked, still strumming out a vague, jazzy, improvised melody.
“You decide,” I said, mesmerised by the movement of his fingers. “It’s your dare.”
Harry looked up from the keys and met my eyes. Slowly, he smiled.
He stopped his melody and picked out another. Immediately I knew the tune, and the first line, and why he’d chosen it.
“‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,’” I said, but what I was thinking of were the first words of the lyrics. About someone being too good to be true.
Sneaky so-and-so.
“Do you know it?” Harry asked, filling in more of the chords as he continued with the melody.
“I know it. Do you want the Andy Williams version?”
“I don’t think the Ramones do a version,” he replied.
I crossed my legs and leaned back on one hand in “lounge-singer vamp” style. “I’m ready whenever you are,” I said.
He immediately segued into an introduction. Watching him, addressing every word to him, I sang.
I’d trained my voice, though for rather a different purpose, and when I began singing, I heard the room go quiet around me.
And Harry’s eyes were on me. Blue, steady, keen, smiling. I looked back and told him I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
I told him touching him would be heaven.
I saw him moistening his lips with his tongue when I sang how much I wanted to hold him.
His eyes told me that for once, he believed me. And then some.
Oh, this was fun. And sexy as hell, I thought, and then as I finished the first verse, I realised suddenly that I had no idea what the second verse was.
I paused, and Harry filled in with an improvised chord progression. “You okay?” he asked.
I had it. I gave him what felt like a catlike smile. “I’m great. Ready when you are.”
“You can really sing,” he commented.
“All that time in the shower must’ve paid off,” I said, and waited for him to work through his improvised bridge.
On my cue, I began singing again:
“You’re like a dream, Harry Blake,
Am I asleep, or awake?”
I saw his eyebrows raise themselves in surprise and amusement when he realised that I was making up the words. I reached forward and twirled a lock of his silky, wild hair around my finger as I sang.
“You have the funkiest hair,
C’mon and dare me a dare.
I don’t need E.S.P.
To know you want to touch me.”
And then I was telling him again how he was too good to be true.
And he was. Too honest, too principled, too well-bred for me to even think about getting tangled up with.
But I still couldn’t keep my eyes off him.
I shimmied on the piano to the build-up to the chorus, and then sang it out to the room and to Harry Blake. Loud, dramatic, throaty and full of all the desire I felt sitting on this piano feeling Harry touching the keys and sending musical vibrations through my body.
The next verse was a repeat of the first, and I lay on the piano to sing it. My belly and chest pressed against the cool glossy surface of the instrument. I could feel every note against my skin. I propped myself up on my elbows, my face only a few inches from Harry’s, and sang the verse and the chorus, my voice getting softer, huskier, and more intimate with every line. I slowed down the pace, a caress of a chorus instead of a flourish, and Harry followed me. Or maybe I followed Harry.
All I knew was that we were together, note for note, beat for beat.
We finished the song with a whisper and a tickling of keys. There was applause, but I barely heard it. I was caught up in Harry’s blue eyes, and couldn’t look away.
The last echo of the music died off. It felt very quiet, and Harry felt very close.
“Truth or dare?” I murmured.
October 15, 2006
done
Done, done, done.
This book is possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever written. But it is done.
I’m taking a couple of days off writing and then I’ll do edits on Thursday.
October 14, 2006
last chapter…
…and I wrote 1000 words this morning without the slightest strain. If I can finish up this draft by tomorrow evening, I will be able to go to London guilt-free on Monday evening to have dinner with friends.
I am having a domestic day. Lots of laundry, whole wheat bread in the bread machine. I made a trip to a farm shop and bought a big bag of local apples, and also some vegetables and cheese and organic eggs and butter, because I intend to make a quiche this afternoon. I can’t remember the last time I made pastry. But I have a craving for simple, homemade, slightly luxurious food. A reward for getting so close to the end of the book.
October 13, 2006
must finish book
I’ve been so distracted by Guy naked that I haven’t been able to think of a thing to post.
Trying to finish this book as soon as possible–by Monday if I can. It’s not the easiest thing when I don’t know exactly how it will end. Wine really helps at this point, but that’s out of the question. It would also help if my husband didn’t keep on coming into the room telling me about 9/11 conspiracy theories that he’s seen on TV. I really don’t need to know about that stuff right now when I’m trying to write a book and grow a baby. On the other hand, I suppose it’s sweet that he’s sharing.
