Happy to pick up the Blog Hop baton from one of my writing besties, Kimberly S. Belle, who shared her process last week here. Pay special attention to what she has to say. Her debut release Last Breath is gonna know some socks off! So this is me answering the questions those lovely writers before me have already “hopped.”
What are you currently writing?
Right now I’m writing book 3 of my Bennett’s trilogy, BE MINE FOREVER. I would tell you guys more about it, but it would spoil too much for the first 2 books. Sad, right? You have to buy them. 🙂 I just turned in copy edits for book 1, WHEN YOU ARE MINE. And I am waiting on final edits from my editor on book 2, LOVING YOU ALWAYS. I’m also in final draft on a new adult about two crazy foster kids who, you guessed it, fall in love. It has some distinguishing twists and turns, which I also would prefer to keep close. 🙂
Can I be completely honest with you, dear reader? Just twixt us girls, I’m kinda nervous about how folks will respond to WHEN YOU ARE MINE. You’re either gonna love it, or hate it. I don’t anticipate much middle ground. Though some could surprise me and be completely indifferent. I think I’d prefer hate over that. 🙂
What makes your work different?
Interesting question. Before my book was picked up by my publisher Grand Central/Forever Romance, I had a published writer who was critiquing my story say she just didn’t know any publisher who would actually buy my book. She wasn’t being mean or malicious. She was, in her mind, being mercifully honest, and I completely understood what she meant. She had suggestions for how I could change the book to make it “fit” better. Needless to say, I took none of those suggestions, though I respected her opinion. I had entered the book in several contests, and invariably I would have a 98 from one judge and a 68 from another. Usually some fence dweller who had no idea what to do with my book would land squarely in between with maybe an 82 or something. The lower half judges always had the same thing to say. “This is not a romance.” “You are breaking too many rules.” “Not sure where you could place this.” “Your heroine is not heroic.” That is where I disagree. I think it’s really heroic to acknowledge your screw ups to the people you hurt and try to right terrible wrongs. And in the process, to transform into a better person. Rescue YOURSELF! Save YOURSELF from the circuitous cycle of past mistakes and destructive patterns. That is heroic. That is what my characters do, and apparently the way they do it is a little different.
Why do you write what you do?
I write love stories. Unabashedly. Unapologetically. I love watching characters fall in love. And I love tormenting them a lil’ bit, but they get their happily ever after…eventually! I enjoy seeing imperfect characters find their perfect match. The less judgmental I became in real life, the more I allowed characters in my stories to mess up royally. I am bored by Clorox characters; those folks so squeaky clean and predictable I could interchange them with a dozen others from a dozen other stories I read. Give me someone who messes everything up, has to pick up all the pieces, ask for forgiveness and make things right. And grow in the process. I love to see that in real life, and it infiltrates my fiction.
What is your writing process?
I am pretty new to this, actually. I didn’t really have time to develop a “process” since WHEN YOU ARE MINE/LOVING YOU ALWAYS was my first novel, (originally one behemoth novel that my pub split into two) and I just kind of wrote it the way I’d told stories before it was “my job.” When I was a little girl, I acted out scenes with a mop. I would twirl mop girl around dramatically and watch her “hair” swing out behind her while she expressed varying degrees of anger, indignation, love…you know. Drama. I still do that in a way. I know it sounds backward, but I act most of my scenes out – at least the pivotal ones – before I write any of it down. Not read it aloud to hear the cadence and to make sure it sounds natural, but act it out before I write. I say “Okay, they’re having a fight. Go!” And I just start the dialogue how two people would fight or flirt or do whatever that scene calls for, knowing the key issues they’d be addressing in those moments. I do it a few times, refining it with each pass. Then I may capture an audio recording of it, or just go ahead and pen most of what I just did. It becomes so real to me and really puts me in touch with that character. I was telling Kimberly Belle that when I’m acting out an intense scene, my heart starts racing, I cry, and hiccup, my voice breaks. I make note of all my body’s responses. Those become the characters’ anchoring visceral reactions when I put everything down on paper. I love how close it puts me in the character’s POV, even though I usually write in third person. It eliminates some of the distance intrinsically imposed by the third perspective. And I find myself inhabiting their skin, up against their bones as I write.
I’m kind of a hybrid of a pantser and a plotter/planner. I plot in my head for a long time. Like…months. And by plotting I really just mean getting to know my characters. I dream about them. Wake up thinking about them. Meditate on them in a way. On their pasts, their hobbies, their quirks. Their weaknesses and strengths. This process comes first for me so that I know which situations will strain them the most. What kind of counterpoint character will create the best tension. And I take notes on my phone constantly. Create playlists, and listen to those songs over and over. Pull images on Pinterest. Capture words and phrases along the way that will be uniquely perfect for that story. And then I feel my hands firmly around the story and the people in it. By then, even though I haven’t written an outline, I know how the story starts, the major turning points and how it ends. Even have certain scenes acted out and recorded with dialogue. From there, things pick up and it’s like fitting these big chunks of puzzle pieces together. I’ll do a loose synopsis to keep me on track, and the actual writing of the book – sitting in front of laptop and grinding that bad boy out – will take about two months. Before CPs or betas read it, of course. That’s what worked before. Let’s hope it keeps working! 🙂
Next up is a great friend of mine, Eliza Freed! She’ll share her process next Monday. Thanks for reading today!