To all my lovely published authors out there, how many times did you actually commit to being a romance writer before it actually happened for you? It probably happened more than once. It probably happened more than 100 times.  This is something that baby authors, no matter what the genre, come to realize a few weeks into a serious pursuit of a career. It is in fact so completely obvious that I am shocked I didn’t think of it before. Not only does completing a novel require actual work, it also requires recommitment every day.

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I don’t really feel all that much like putting on my author’s cap. I’d rather be a counselor, chef, or wellness expert that day. Some days I want to be a sloth. Sloths have it good. When it’s a sloth kind of day, I still have deadlines to meet and a workout to get in. On those days I evoke the Sloth Rule.

The Sloth Rule is “Get up and do it before your mind knows what’s going on.” This applies to writing, exercising and even choosing the right foods to eat. It sort of saves me when ice cream for breakfast sounds like a good idea. Choosing every day to keep moving forward before your brain knows what the hell is happening is essential.  Sometimes that means putting the exercise DVD in the player before I go to bed so I don’t stumble around for it, and putting my shoes and weights by the door so they don’t hide from me under the bed. I set two alarms. I put a reminder in my phone that by noon I should be blogging for the week if I have not already done it. I make my lunch before I go to bed so that I don’t ask myself at 3pm, “What do I feel like eating?” That answer will always be red velvet cake. It’s less than nutritional.

How can it be that living your dream, eating a beautiful meal, or moving your body in an invigorating way FEEL like it’s infringing on your fun? What was once simply a fun hobby, a beautiful and tasty simple salad, or just a walk on the beach is now at best a job you treat with the same casual distance as your regular 9 to 5 and at worst it is the MAMMOTH CHORE OF THE YEAR. Our brains are tricky like that. I have to open up the computer and start reading edits before I consider whether or not I want to. No one wants to edit their book. Ha. But I DO want a beautiful finished product. I want a healthy body, I want that Victorian overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge or that condo on The Embarcadero and I want to look good IN IT, so I better get crackin’ before my brain decides it wants to watch that Dog the Bounty Hunter marathon. Tomorrow morning I will have to get up and decide over again.

Until Next Time,

~V

Ya’ll. This is supposed to be a blog about uncovering the path to publication. Most of the time it will be, I promise. But occasionally something fabulous comes along and I just have to share my enthusiasm with you!  Revenge.

Revenge is the hottest new television show on ABC primetime. In addition to it being cast with hot young Hollywood, it is like the BEST.ROMANCE.NOVEL.EVER. I promise. It has all the elements—a strong heroine played by Emily Van Camp, a hottie hero played by Joshua Bowman and an equally hot and rugged competitor for her affections played by Nick Weschel. Why am I waxing poetic about this show on my blog? Because after a long hiatus (six weeks?!) it is finally BACK on my television. I get to gleefully slide back into the murder, intrigue and love triangles of the rich and famous residents of the fictional corner of Hamptons these characters inhabit.

Everything I love about romance novels also makes me love Revenge and if you’re a fan of the romance genre but haven’t given this show a try you totally should! There’s a murder mystery, mistaken identity, money, sex, glamorous dinner parties, and golden retrievers! Wouldn’t you pick up that book in the romance section of your local Barnes & Noble?

Why else is Revenge important? Well, believe it or not, I believe it could actually help the romance industry. The success the show has received while competing with reality shows and crime procedurals tells me that the television viewing audience (specifically the Female 18-34 demographic) is craving more material like it. Don’t get me wrong—like in anything, the material has to be GOOD—but Revenge is about little more than a central female character trying to figure out who she is, and who she is in love with. If that’s not your standard contemporary romance I don’t know what is.

Ok—you get it—watch Revenge and enjoy the eye candy. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Until Next Time,

~V

Gentle Readers,

As you (hopefully!) noticed, I took a break from my blog for a couple of weeks. Some things in my life changed and I found myself with more unintentional time to write. To say it was a blessing in disguise is the understatement of the year. This reshuffling of the deck reset my priorities and in order to have some serious reflection and get away from the craziness of LA I decided to take to the woods!  If you know me, you know that my idea of camping is a nice Hilton with a few of the woods from ten floors up.  I decided to get a little closer to redwoods though and flew up to San Francisco to spend a few days staring up at trees and listening to the rain fall.

Tucked away in a cabin in Santa Cruz (fully equipped with internet and cable of course) having girl talk, playing board games, drinking mimosas and occasionally thinking about my manuscript, I contemplated running away from life forever. (As we “glamped” that’s glamour-camping to you), I thought about turning my life upside down even more. Maybe I could just get a simple job in the small town of Santa Cruz (well, small compared to Los Angeles) and live in a cabin in the woods and disappear from responsibility. Huzzah! I’d found it. I would continue drinking wine, eating amazing pasta and baking cookies and just never bother with this whole writing thing. Crisis averted!

When I finished with a day or two of indulgent navel gazing and comfort food consuming, I got my second wind after spending an invigorating day walking around metropolitan San Francisco. I was inspired for an entirely new novel as we drove over bridges and coast lines and ate in diners with ocean views and drove down the most crooked street in the world.

What did I learn from this weekend away? Well, first I realized I needed to get back to Los Angeles and keep working on this manuscript if I have any hope of getting my query letter and first three chapters ready for my mentor’s review by tax day. Gotta love a deadline. Then I realized that what I love about San Francisco is being nature adjacent. I can see the trees and hear the rain from the safety of my cabin without putting stakes into the ground and freezing to death. It was kind of a big realization.

Before a recent turn of events, I thought there was only one road towards my becoming a published romance author. I thought I had figured that plan out, and then someone who wasn’t necessarily in on that plan came in and threw me for a loop. I thought that my easy route was gone, but now I can see that it has simply changed—evolved—into an equally exciting and fun journey—with perhaps more twists and turns than I could have imagined even for a heroine in one of my stories.  So now I’m back in LA, back to blogging and longing for the next stop on this path—THE QUERY LETTER!

Until next time,

~V

What does romance writing mean to you? I was asked this question by my friend and aspiring talk show host, Caroline Donahue. Surprisingly, I had not really given much thought to what is meaningful to me from the writer’s perspective. I knew what romance meant to me as a reader—I had been lost in so many stories, inspired, entertained, and even angered, by stories that I have read over the years. Whether a book made me cry, throw it across the room, or jump for joy, as a reader I have always loved and appreciated books and found the written word supremely meaningful;  but what about from the writer’s perspective?

In my interview with Caroline (which you can download for free from iTunes at the link below), we discussed the meaning in writing about love and romance.  Love is just about the most exciting, tragic, fun, terrifying, and at times hilarious experience a person can go through. Reflecting those journeys on the page is a rare gift and making readers identify and enjoy a character’s journey is a special and unique responsibility in my opinion.

This time in my life has brought that responsibility into stark relief. Right now I find myself with nothing but ample time on my hands to edit my work, write a query letter, and start the submission process in order to earn my PRO status in LARA (the Los Angeles chapter of Romance Writers of America). More than ever I am reading and writing and consulting the best and most successful writers in the business to carve out my career and they all say the same thing—they do it because they love it and because people love to read about romance. It’s one of the few genres of publishing that is not hurting but actually thriving. When people are willing to spend money on a kindle download or a paperback even in the face of not being able to afford car payments and mortgages that tells me that no matter what, we will always need a little love in the afternoon. As authors it is our responsibility to create those worlds, stories, and characters. I’d say that’s pretty meaningful work, indeed.

To hear my interview with Caroline Donahue on her show Living the Question, download episode 7 for free at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/live-the-questions/id512111692

So today is kind of an exciting day. Not too long ago I got the news that I was selected to receive a mentor in my romance writing career through Los Angeles Romance Authors or LARA, the LA chapter of RWA. This is super exciting because, well, not everyone finds a mentor their first time applying to the mentorship program. You have to be far enough along in your career that you have some work to show your mentor, but not so far along as to not merit a mentor.  This bodes very well for me.

As you can probably tell if you have been reading this blog or if you know me well, I am a great student. If I have the motivation of a teacher, group, or grade, you can always count on me to do my best work. As an individual though, the story is never as good on the page as it is in my head. Since no one knows I thought of it anyway, who will care if I do not write it? Having a mentor will help me get out of this mindset because no matter what, I do not want the relationship to be a waste of time. Translation: even if the work is crap, work shall be turned in; and no work turned in can be crap. Get it? I think this is going to be fun.

Though I am thrilled to be working with a mentor, I will not be sharing the nitty gritty details of that relationship as it should be kept confidential. I will share the broad strokes whenever I learn something that could be helpful to all authors and I am quite sure with my mentor that will be often.

Who are the other writing mentors in your life? I have an official one, but I have many others that are cheering me on from the sidelines. When thinking of writing in terms of a career, it is important to not only have someone to guide you through the submission process, but also to guide you through business decisions, and what I like to call “sparkle” decisions. More on that later but in short, we need to sparkle on the page and whenever we go in the room and that has everything to do with what we are wearing as well as how we are feeling on the inside, and of course what ends up on the page.

Think about who your mentors are in your writing life. If you do not have any, get some! They are imperative to the process. Maybe you will not find someone to specifically guide your career to publication but you can learn and garner inspiration from everyone around you if you simply look for it.

Until Next Time,

~V

Gentle readers, are you “getting IT in?” Apparently this is fitness lingo that those of us who are absorbed into that world use on a regular basis. Trainers and gym rats alike toss this phrase back and forth to encourage each other over Facebook posts, text messages and in every day conversation. The first time that my fitness coach said this to me the other day via text message, I screwed up my face in question and replied, “Getting what in?”  Of course she was asking whether or not I had done my daily workout. I had not, and somewhere in the depths of her all-knowing “trainer-ness,” she knew it. I mentally prepared myself to work out that evening because I did not want the day to go by without getting in that time to work on my body.

The same can be said of writing. Showing up to the page is a big part of this “getting published” thing. Funny how if you do not write there are no words to edit, submit, or publish? I have written more than one post on showing up to the page. That is because essentially it is more important than anything—including the quality of your words. That may be a radical statement, and some writers might disagree with me vehemently, but we only need read certain series by certain authors about certain supernatural beings to know that quality is not often the deciding factor in whether or not something gets published. You have to write something for it to even stand a chance.

This month I am trying to not only get in the work out, but also get in the writing. Last time I wrote about making the hard decisions to do what it takes to carve out the time for writing. Showing up to the page exhausted is just as ineffective as showing up to exercise for an hour and a half when you are already falling asleep. All things work together, friends. At the end of this month I have a goal to complete my first submission packet and get the first chapter of my manuscript pristinely edited so I can begin to enter some contests.

I will be sharing the process with you so you can start judging whether or not the contest arena is for you. Advice I have received from other writers is that if you do not win it is no different than not entering in the first place. But if you DO win, then HEY! In the mean time, let us all “GET IT IN!”

Until Next Time,
~V

So I love romantic comedies. One of my favorites is Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces. It was on this morning as I was stumbling out of bed and making myself presentable while guzzling a giant energy drink before driving an hour to work. Of course I thought I was just enjoying a lovely story of two people falling in love, but I was struck by Streisand’s character Rose. As the ultimate anti-heroine, Rose was everything Jeff Bridges’ Gregory did not want in a woman. After realizing their relationship would be sexless because Gregory simply was not attracted to her, Rose set about totally revamping her life. She got a makeover, changed her diet, and began to eat healthy foods.

What struck me most about this sequence in the film was not that Rose was trying to get Gregory back, but rather, she had recognized all the ways in her life in which she was not doing her best. Where had she let herself go and stopped trying because she decided she was not worth the effort? Immediately, this made me think of my writing career.  Like Rose, had I just accepted certain things about my life and writing schedule? I used to say to myself, “I only have time to write on the weekends,” or “I only have time to write when my bosses are out of town,” or “I only have time to write when I am on vacation.” I already know that is not true because I successfully completed NaNo WriMo this past November, and years ago I wrote consistently, almost five pages every day. Life has changed a lot since those days. So what is the lesson in this when it comes to writing? Like Rose, I have to take a long hard look at my schedule. Am I really doing everything I can to put my writing first in my life? I decided before writing this post to make a list of the things I can definitely do to make my writing a priority.

1.)    Go to bed earlier. This one is especially hard because I love staying up late to watch things like Revenge and Project Runway. I mean, don’t we all? But see there’s this thing they invented called DVR and the internet.

2.)    Wake up earlier. I am always tired in the morning and that is probably because I watched three back to back episodes of Top Chef and capped it off with an episode or two of Hoarders and Intervention. But you see I do not have time for all the things….

3.)    Exercise. I feel better when I do, let’s just face it. I might not feel better DURING the exercise but I feel accomplished rather than sluggish at my desk. My work performance is better and I leave work feeling better about myself and don’t need as much time to decompress from the stress of work and commuting. Funny how that works.

4.)    Write. That is probably the most important thing, eh? If I wait for the muse or only write the exciting scenes and avoid editing (ahem, NaNo who?), then I will only pick up that manuscript once a month.

We need to take a page out of Rose’s book. After all, not only does she transform herself, but she does not compromise or play small when Gregory does not react positively to our changes. Our bosses, partners and children may not like our lifestyle changes but if we want to write—we have to, you know, DO IT.

Until Next Time,

~V

Write ALL the words? That is the kind of mood I have been in lately. The amount of editing and rewriting and chopping and deleting that is necessary to make my manuscript ready for the national conference in Anaheim (RWA) is making me seriously depressed. I am not depressed because I do not have a good story. On the contrary, everyone I have let get near the thing seems to think that the story is worthy and with some work is publishable. So that is a step in the right direction. Still, the level of work brings about sudden urges to finish knitting that baby blanket for my friend or clearing off the DVR by watching those saved up episodes of Hoarders.

What do you do when you hit a writing block? Ideas for new stories are coming fresh and furious. I need only look out the window for my mind to conjure up ideas about new romances. Yet the road from great idea to fully finished novel is a long and winding one. Sometimes the answer is to keep plugging away at it (actually that is ALWAYS the answer) but beyond that you also have to recharge the batteries. Step away from the screen for a moment and do something that restores you and reinvigorates you. Just stop thinking about it for a while and let it come back to you.

How long should you go on hiatus? I would love to give myself (and therefore all of you) permission to run away from your manuscripts for the next week and go an adventure to Disneyland or something. I cannot do that but I can give us all permission to do something else for ten minutes. I am going to put on some Fleetwood Mac and dance around my room and pretend that I can sing like Stevie and play guitar like Lindsey. Then I will be back and I promise to let my hero and heroine get out of that room that is quickly filling with water.

Until next time,

~V

How do you see yourself? Do you have an image of who you are as a parent, spouse or employee? Today I want to talk to you about creating that vision for your writing career. Before this year it was not something I had ever thoughtfully considered. I was just someone with an admin career that was interested in writing romantic stories and reading them in my imaginary spare time.

But this year I decided to get serious. Not only was it important to have a vision for the stories I wrote, to know where the characters were going, but also I needed to have a vision for my career and how I would achieve those goals. What do writers look like? Is there a uniform? We have the unique circumstance as writers to devote ourselves to the practice Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 but that is not often when the muse strikes. We can be disciplined enough to write regularly, but we are not confined to certain hours or locations or clothing. But plotting this course is as important as plotting a novel.

My friend and future guest blogger for this site is Christine Rose Elle, who you can learn more about at her website of the same name. Meeting her last year helped me to realize that not only do I need to come up with a regimen for writing but a regimen for me. Christine asked me to come up with my Author Image Vision. The Author’s Image Vision considers all factors of the writer’s life. What will my fully realized author persona dress like? I used Pinterest to search for some cool expensive outfits that I will wear when I am published and making a living with my work. What time of day will I rise and when will I write?  I love to sleep in and when I do not have an alarm to answer to, I will sleep two hours later than I currently do. I cannot wait.

What other parts of my life will I develop in order to advance and enrich the writer’s life? Diet, exercise, and relationships are also important. If we do not feel well how can we create? Have you ever tried to write the next great romance while you are breaking up with someone? Or on a diet and starving? Or simply sleep deprived and over worked?

Sleep is important to me. Yoga and meditation are important to me. Chocolate and cupcakes are extremely important to me. I write better when all these things are in my life. When I pick up my clothes and hang them up, or de-clutter my writing space and throw away the piles of mail, I am actually manifesting that which I want in my future writing life. I achieve it in the future by doing it now—today, and every day.

Share in the comments anything you would like about your Author Vision. Be specific. Do you do book signings? Do you lecture on romance at RWA conferences? Do you write from a cozy brownstone in New York? Visualization is so important. Perhaps you have already achieved some of your author visions.  If you have, share that with us too!

Until next time,

~V

I’m going to tell you a secret. I have a really messy closet. That mess extends to the floor outside my closet and on Thursdays, it extends past my writing desk and all the way into the hamper in the bathroom. This messy living sometimes seeps over into very messy writing. I am an instant gratification kind of girl and this inevitably leads to rushed writing that requires a lot of editing.  Why am I baring my soul and admitting such a thing to you? Well for one, I believe when we admit to having crazy writing habits and writing environments it frees up the newbies among us to realize there is no magic secret to getting that manuscript finished and you can do it in almost ANY environment with any kind of schedule. But I digress.

Earlier this month I was in a rut. Bored with my manuscript and overwhelmed with the changes I knew it needed to be submission ready, I needed something new and creative to stimulate me. I decided to take on the challenge of de-cluttering my closet. I needed to get that pair of baggy jeans off my key board in order to meet the daily word count challenge I set; needed that pile of fresh but wrinkled towels to move their way off of my monitor so I could see those notes from my editor. What was different about this challenge was that I did it with my Career Success Group (more on them in the future).  We challenged ourselves to do a cleaning sprint, much like the writing sprints we have all heard about in NaNo WriMo. For two uninterrupted hours, at the exact same time on the same date, the four of us took to our closets and made a pile of clothing to donate and a pile of clothing to throw away. If it has a hole, tear, or stain, it is time to say goodbye.

In two short hours my closet went from being so stuffed I could not close the door, to having absolutely NOTHING on the floor except a set of hand weights. I breathed deeply. I threw away four bags and donated one. I had no idea how much was clogging up my environment. So how does this relate to writing?

When we are editing a manuscript it can be hard to rid ourselves of favorite passages or scenes. No matter how much we love them we cannot make them fit into the story. So we linger in the stage of trying to figure out how to make them work instead of just hitting that delete button and moving on. I am a great offender of this. My words are like gems—precious, rare and expensive! My time is precious so when I finish a page it is difficult to find any reason to delete that hour of work—even if it does not benefit the story.

Also, consider this—after I donated that pile of clothes and removed them from my environment, I had more room in my closet to go shopping.  Once that page of word-clutter (so I made up a word) is gone, it opens up the creative juices to let new scenes and ideas come shining through.  You may even be motivated to put a toe into new waters and write for another organization—like the LARA newsletter!

So here is my challenge to you! Take a moment to throw away that six month old pile of mail on your writing desk. Toss out the old pens that you love but have long since run out of ink and are chewed to the point of pain. Most importantly, if a passage is not working DELETE IT and move on. Trust that new and better words, the right words for your manuscript, will come.

Until next time,

~V