Twelve Years of Writing

I’ve been writing for twelve years. I started, strangely, three months after being diagnosed with bipolar 2, which I hadn’t realized till today. I know I didn’t start writing as a coping mechanism or as character insertion (my first characters were not me) and I didn’t write about being bipolar. I think I started writing because being treated for bipolar helped me focus on continuous tasks instead of pouring all my energy on the whim of the moment.

I was not a good writer at first — I wrote each chapter as if they were separate episodes, like short stories strung together. I didn’t feel like I wrote an overarching plot. The novels (I use the term loosely) I wrote then I have had to revise several times such that only the characters are the same. I learned a lot from revising them.

Things I have learned over the past few years:

My first draft is not my novel. Over the years, the novels have needed less and less rewriting, but there are always things to fix in second and third (and fourth, and …) drafts.
Developmental editors are an important part of your writing toolbox. It is worth paying for them.
There are three ways to write a novel: Plotting, pantsing, and plantsing.
- Plotting: an organized outline at the beginning, and following the outline.
- Pantsing: writing it as one goes along, without the outline.
- Plantsing: writing with a rough outline but pantsing through the chapters.
- I am a plantser.
Scrivener is a great program for composing my work, especially plantsing.
- Scrivener arranges itself around a chapter format and a synopsis form that I use to guide my chapters. I use it like pantsing with training wheels.
- One can get templates for Scrivener novel-writing that incorporate plotting frameworks, such as Save the Cat and Romancing the Plot.
ProWritingAid was another investment I don’t regret — my grammar has improved in ways I hadn’t considered before. I have lessened my passive verb structure massively.
Writing is the easy and fun part. I still don’t think I have the hang of promotion (and this blog is part of my proof of that.)
My favorite novel is always the one I just finished.

The most important thing I learned? That I can write. The second? That there’s a whole lot of luck in being discovered, and luck hasn’t come to me quite yet.

I feel like I could have learned more in 12 years, and maybe I have, but these are the biggest things I can think of. I hope they’re helpful to someone!

Christmas in … May?

It’s already time for me to start planning my next Kringle novel. Why? It’s only May!

The Kringle novel I write for this year will be for Winter 2025, so it’s even more ahead of time. A year and a half for a novel?

The ideas start in May so I have a while to play around with them in my head while I work on other things. Plots often come up on car rides with my husband, and there are more of those in the summer season (which, in my academic calendar, starts about May 1).

There are so many tropes to play with in romance — two of my Kringle books so far have mystery elements, two are enemies to lovers, a couple are friends to lovers, one involves second love, but no boy next door, snowed in at an inn, billionaire, bad boy or mafia yet. (I don’t foresee doing the latter three, to be honest. I like cinnamon roll guys myself.)

Friday, on one of those car rides, we decided that the next novel would be another second love with a touch of snowed in at an inn, where a divorced woman goes for a lone Christmas retreat at a great lodge, only to meet a local bar owner who hasn’t met the right woman in town.

The actual writing doesn’t happen till the Christmas season, November 1st-to be exact. That’s the season for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. I won’t get it done then, but I will be well on my way. The benefit of this schedule is that I’m in the mood for Christmas, surrounded by the trappings of Christmas and immersed in Christmas carols, while I’m writing.

January through May is when I’m reworking the story, editing and refining. That needs to be done by October 1, which is publishing time. The cover gets finalized by the end of summer, and August is when I’m doing the mechanics of getting the novel uploaded onto the Kindle Direct Publishing site.

Other things are happening at the same time, of course. Teaching college from August – May, writing on other books and publishing them. I tend to keep busy, and I think it’s a blessing that I cannot be idle for too long. And that I love to write, and that there’s a Starbucks nearby.

My next Kringle-related activity is to go one more round through the 2024 novel, Kringle Through the Snow, which I actually wrote in January of this year because I thought I would never write another Kringle novel. But I can’t quit, because it’s now one of my Christmas rituals.

So Merry Christmas in May, and watch for Kringle Through the Snow on October 1!

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

View all responses

Christmas^* is my favorite holiday. It’s strange writing about Christmas in April, but then again, I have a Christmas tree still up in my parlor, and I turn the lights on now and then. And I just got done writing a Christmas romance. (It’s my sixth). No other holiday comes close to me.

Christmas lasts an entire season, and that’s one thing I love about it. I get to celebrate from post-Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. It comes when I need it, toward the end of a very busy Fall semester at the college. It livens things up against the leaden skies and frozen ground waiting for snow that doesn’t come till January.

Christmas also has traditions handed down from many cultures (mostly Western) to give it a rich color and flavor. Red and green, silver and gold, touched by Hanukkah blue and white (it is part of the season), ribbons and blown glass ornaments and Della Robbia wreaths (my mother had a particular fondness for them, as do I) and twinkly lights.

We have special Christmas foods from many cultures as well. Pfeffernuse (ginger cookies) and springerle (anise cookies) from Germany, Mexican wedding cakes/Russian tea cakes, sugar cut-out cookies, Christmas goose, plum pudding, KFC (in Japan) …

Christmas remains my favorite holiday, even though I’m too old for Santa. But given I write about a secret society of Santas, am I really too old?

^*I am talking about the secular parts of Christmas here. I am of a “spiritual but not religious” bent, best described by “omnist“. Or maybe “panentheist”. I’m not sure. My beliefs are very personal, and I don’t want them hijacked by the “one true religion” crowd.

“… surreal, but not very impressionistic …”

I wish I was better at poetry, lacking the impressionistic bent I need to write the type of poetry that is in fashion right now. I am too involved in telling stories in a more straightforward fashion, even when I am writing dreams:

Last night, I dreamed I was walking after dark, late at night, armed with a pair of scissors. Someone approached me and put his hands on me, and I flipped him over my shoulder and then held my scissors at his jugular^*. He apologized and ran away. I walked and walked till daylight, and I found myself at my old alma mater^** wearing a white blazer and a skirt too tight for me. I ran into a couple of colleagues from my current job as a professor, who were going to a lecture together at a conference. I didn’t get the impression that they wanted me there, and I felt self-conscious because of the clothing and my weight anyhow. I walked out of the conference, which was held in the student union where I went to college. I walked to where my office used to be when I was in graduate school, which ended up being the mailboxes in my former department here where I currently teach. The mailboxes were no longer there, but I walked down the hall to find where they were located back at my alma mater.

This is surreal, but not very impressionistic. I could make it impressionistic, but it would aggravate me. What is happening? What happens next? I love poetry, but I can’t make it happen. My poetry is too concrete.

^* By jugular, I meant where I think the jugular is. I’m really not sure where it is.

^** for non-English speakers, “alma mater” is a Latin phrase that we use to describe the school we graduated from, usually college.

Easing into Summer Professor/Writer Version

An end-of-semester status report:

All I have left to grade is final essay exams for my Personal Adjustment students.
I’ve successfully weaned myself off the lithium with apparently no difficulties. We shall see.
I am done with Kringle Through the Snow (Kringle Christmas romance); struggling with Carrying Light (Hidden in Plain Sight series; a novel about Barn Swallows’ Dance and societal collapse)
My summer will be spent supervising 10 interns (a smaller amount), putting together two new classes for fall, and writing. I foresee lots of Starbucks time. Starbucks will have to learn to love me.
Summer trips: A conference in San Francisco end of May, New York Hope (disaster training exercise for which I am moulage coordinator) at beginning of August, and hopefully a writing retreat here and there.
My writing/publishing goal list for summer: Finish Carrying Light; prepare Kringle Through the Snow for Oct. 1 release; prepare Reclaiming the Balance (Hidden in Plain Sight series) for Jan. 1st release; Set up my social media posts through December on Loomly.
My wish list: That amazing bit of happenstance that will propel my writing into notice, continued health for my family (one husband, four cats, extended folks), and inspired writing.

Writing Close to Home

In my romances, I sometimes write about ordinary people who perceive that something about them will get in the way of a happily ever after (or at least a happily for now). Secrets, personal failings, longings, parental disapproval. The couple overcome these and find room for love.

This latest book I wrote (it’s in the editing stage), Kringle through the Snow, has one character whose flaw is that she has bipolar 2, which is something I manage in my own life. She is scared that another hypomanic or depressive state is just around the corner and nobody else should be exposed to it.

This is one of the hazards of being bipolar — the stigma. Someone with complications like bipolar is certainly more daunting than people without, and some potential partners want uncomplicated situations. Some are just scared. It is possible to have bipolar disorder and go years before another attack because of diligent management; how is this different than having diabetes or another chronic disease?

I write to ask these questions. In my writing, I want people to confront their preconceived notions, because I think we are our own worst enemies. I think love, when it’s truly there, finds a way.

Flying By the Seat of My Pants

So I’m taking a few minutes to write on Carrying Light this morning, having gotten through some work-type work. I am writing a scene where the collective (not a commune but close) takes part in a story-telling circle. This involves passing a stick from person to person so that they further the story. My main character is going to introduce the solution of their problems as a theoretical but impossible possibility. But it could be possible if their local deity takes it on. But why would She take it on? What if the main character is an acolyte of hers and doesn’t know it? If anyone would be, she would be, as she’s been blessed by that deity. WHY DIDN’T I THINK ABOUT THAT SOONER?

Time for foreshadowing. Time to go back into the story and possibly rewrite whole sections? Time to totally wing the next two thirds of the book because I didn’t plan for this? AAAaaack!

Just kidding. It’s moments like this that remind me of why I write.

When I write, I get into a zone and the words flow out of my fingers. My characters sit over my shoulder and tell me where they are and what they’re thinking. They talk to each other while I write. Every now and then I need to take a break to set the next scene.

It’s an odd way to write, I think, because I’m not always aware of what I write until later. Thank goodness for editing, because without it, I don’t think my stuff would be coherent. Sometimes I find myself moving entire pieces of the book because I put them in the wrong place (it took me 20 minutes to do that today.)

Normally I’m a plantser, which means I’m someone who makes a rough outline and works within that. These last two books have required so much rearranging that I’m a pantser, hanging on by the seat of my pants. My characters are really coming out of nowhere: “Hey, let’s talk about the Garden and its Trees now!”

I wrote 4000 words yesterday (or was it 3500? Let me check — oops, it was 4500) so it was an immense day of pantsing. My characters had a lot to say, and I finished Kringle Through the Snow. Another day, and I’m writing Carrying Light. Let’s see where I go.

Me and My Romance

I am almost done with Kringle Through the Snow, which is the Kringle (Christmas romance) book I almost didn’t write. I thought I was done with the Kringle series (this makes six of them) until one of my Facebook friends told me I needed to write more. It took little arm-twisting, but I always wonder if the current book is the last.

I never thought I’d write romance. And, in fact, my romance is clean (only implied sex) and funny. It’s much more relationship based, although it promotes the Instalove trope, which means people getting attached quickly; I think because that’s always been my personal experience. There’s also several friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, and one age gap. (Two if you count the 100,000-year-old Su and the 6000-year-old Luke.)

Is romance realistic? It’s not supposed to be. It’s grounded in its society (whether that society be modern American, fantasy, science-fiction, etc) and fantastical in its romance elements. Some of the things that happen in romance would not or should not happen in real life (borderline stalkerish behavior, grooming, teacher-student romances) and some only happen in very defined and conscientious contexts in real life (S&M). Some things that happen in romance are just unrealistic. But romance is a type of fantasy — define the rules of the world and you can dream freely on the other parts.

To find my books, click here.

Announcement April 2, 2024

As I’m sure you figured out, I am not collaborating with Me-Me to write a book on Archetype cats as I announced yesterday. The truth is, she asked for an advance, and that’s not how the indie book marketplace works. So she will have to postpone her dream of publishing, and I will go back to my regularly scheduled work.