“Here’s Looking At You, Kid.”

How many of you sit down at your computer to write a new book thinking that it will be a great story? Excitement powers your fingers on the keys and everything is great…until it’s not. Ideas start to sputter, finally ending in a whimpering mess and you have no clue where to go next. You wonder if you have any talent at all.

Storylines are difficult to create and even more difficult to maintain throughout the course of events unfolding on your pages. Why can’t you write a great novel? Why can’t you create a classic like Casablanca?

It had everything. Mystery, intrigue, conflict, romance, tortured souls and redemption- they are all in the movie. It’s no wonder that it took so many awards and has remained a favorite for the last 70 years. This amazing story, made into a movie, didn’t quite start out as the gem we see on our screens. In fact, it wasn’t even a complete script while they were filming!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see Casablanca at the movie theatre. It was terrific! Not only was it great to see a brilliant film on the big screen, like it was meant to be seen, but I got to go with Will Graham and Melissa Ohnoutka (fellow writers and guests on Muse Tracks). It felt absolutely decadent to shirk our responsibilities in the middle of a work week and enter into the magical world of Morocco during World War II.

The movie was adapted from a screenplay called Everybody Comes To Rick’s. It was shot on a shoestring budget and the lead male was best known for playing tough mob guys, not romantic leads. They had the essence of a story but when filming began, no one knew where the story was going nor did they know how it would end. (Hmmm-sounds like me while I’m writing my books.) In fact, Ingrid Bergman complained quite loudly because she didn’t even know who she was really supposed to be in love with and that made her job more difficult.

The writers, Julius and Philip Epstein along with Howard Koch, wrote and re-wrote the story almost every day. The actors had no time to learn their lines prior to shooting because it literally changed with every hour. To keep themselves on tract, they would review the film shot the day before otherwise they found themselves following wrong plot turns.

Did they know they were filming a grand classic? No.

Did they know that the writing would be quoted and misquoted for the next seventy years? No.

Did they know they had a great idea that deserved hard work and a million rewrites? 

Writers don’t often sit down and create a masterpiece on the first take. I guarantee all the greats from Ernest Hemingway to Shakespeare threw away their fair share of wadded up paper and broke a quill or two out of frustration. I’ll bet some of them thought their best known works were nothing more than drivel slopped down on paper. Being a writer inherently means being plagued by doubt. Will anyone like what I’m writing? Does it make sense? Is it even a story? Trust me when I say I’ve asked every question that has run through your head and probably even a few more you haven’t thought of yet! The real question is whether you let it stop you from writing.

If something as wonderful as Casablanca was created through sheer resolve, then we should all have the determination to push through the road blocks- self created and others- to finish our own masterpieces. They may not all become classics made into film, but that doesn’t negate their worth and the satisfaction of doing something everyone wishes they could. Do you have that courage? What will you write today?

Fun Facts About Casablanca:

Nobody ever says, “Play it again, Sam.”

There were no “letters of transit” used during the war and there were never any uniformed German soldiers in Casablanca.

It is never revealed why Rick couldn’t return to America because the writers never could come up with a good reason so they left it as a mystery.

The twin brothers who wrote this are the only pair of twins to ever win an Oscar.

Dooley Wilson who played Sam, the piano player and Rick’s confidante, couldn’t play the piano in real life.

There really is a Rick’s Café in Casablanca today. It was opened by an American diplomat and the piano player plays As Time Goes By every night. The musician’s name is Isam. (Pronounced I Sam) Now that’s something you couldn’t make up!

 

 

Hump Day Kick Start

Song of the Day: This is Gonna Hurt by Sixx A.M.

Something tells me a few mouths just dropped open.

All right, kiddies. Tell me about this one. Who is he? He’s wet, and he’s obviously hot.  You know…because of the steam. Rivulets of water are still streaming down his body. What was he doing to get all soaked and vaporous?

What genre would you write him in? Is he a paranormal demon hunter? How about a romantic suspense homicide detective or Navy Seal? Sci-fi, thirller, time-travel?  Maybe he’s bad, bad boy. Did you notice the pretty impressive tat on his arm?

Love to hear your thoughts.

Edits, Drama, and the Murder of an Epilogue

Song of the Day: Rolling in the Deep by Adele

Edits. Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

I think most of us have heard of revision hell. Conversely, we all know that someone who so rock, their editors have nothing to refine. So when my time came to be professionally edited, I had no idea what to expect.

The past few weeks I’ve been working on rounds of edits with my editor (I never get tired of saying that – my editor). Denise is fan – flipping – tabulous. And thus far, I’ve enjoyed the editing experience.

I look pretty good as a brunette.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not strolling through a field of poppies, barefoot and fancy free. I’m not one of those authors who so rock. No, I completely short circuit over doing revisions on a deadline and I’m convinced that Murphy’s Law requires that life heads into upheaval at the same time. Let’s face it, 14 days or less for revisions translates to 14 hours or less for this mom of a rambunctious toddler and ever-dramatic preteen.

I'm not being overly dramatic, am I?

Add in the momentary lapse of sanity with shameless sobbing, fist-pumping, and foot-stomping when I had to delete my entire epilogue. My epilogue that ties everything in a neat, pretty bow. My epilogue that hints to what’s to come in the next book. My epilogue that so rocked! Noooooooooo…

Other than that, I’ve been lucky, or maybe I just fake it well. My edits overall have been rather painless.

Action, adventure, romance. Check

Good grammar. Check.

No plot holes. Check.

Flowing sentence structure and pleasing cadence. Check.

Clear logistics. Check.

Drool-worthy libertine pirate with insatiable appetite. Check.

Tee Hee

My editor (giggle, snort, giggle) encouraged me to dive deeper into character motivation and helped pull the ropes tighter in my writing. Together, we spit-shined my novel squeaky clean. God love her, she found my amorous scenes hot and well written, and even asked that I add another. Gladly. Can’t have too much lovin’ to make your toes curl.

That woman’s got an eagle eye, too, picking out repetitive verbiage and phrases. Apparently, I have an affinity for certain words. They magically appear over and over in my book, this despite that I am usually very cautious about repetition. Still a few slipped past. Damn you CPs! *shakes fists*

Listen up, authors. She says she literally sees the following phrase, or variations

Even the dog is narrowing his eyes.

of, in every single manuscript that crosses her desk. She narrowed her eyes. Confession. I did this five times in the novel. Five! Everyone was narrowing their eyes. Ugh.

I’m not unique. Every author does this. We’re so wrapped up in conveying thoughts, emotions, and actions just right, we simply do not notice we’ve been repetitive. In an 80-100K book, it’s easy to overlook the same phrase or word.

Just when I thought we were finished, the copy editor sends it back. Writing historical fiction has its own challenge by way of proper words usage, terminology, and dialect. I have done extensive, exhaustive research on words, trying my best to avoid anachronistic terms. Imagine my surprise when the CE sent my novel back full of flagged words. *sigh* It’s times like these I wonder how I made it this far.

So how do we avoid these pitfalls? Get a good editor. Employ awesome critique partners. Besides that? Well, reading aloud works. Doing a ‘Find’ in Microsoft Word for any word you favor or think you’ve used more than once will help, as well. Do your research. And just be vigilant. No one is perfect. That’s why we have a team of peeps saving our asses.

Dear epilogue, you will be missed.

Now, please. A moment of silence for my dearly departed epilogue.

How about you? Do you have any favorite words that sneak into your manuscripts time and again? How about editing? How has the editing process worked for you? I’d love to hear from you.

Hump Day Kick Start

Song of the Day:  Cold by Evans Blue

Photo by Billy Corgans Chic

Hoo boy! We can certainly have fun with today’s prompt.

I’m thinking Tomb Raider meets Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon something or other.

Look at the way they are looking at each other. Smokin’! Who are these two?  Is he an informant? Is she undercover in a drug/turf war? What kind of ink is she going to get? A butterfly? Lucky charm? Tweety Bird? Maybe she’s having some type of secret message tattooed on her. Do you suppose he’s telling her how to ‘wax on, wax off’?

Love to hear your take.

Hump Day Kick Start

Song of the day: Say It by Evans Blue

Today, I was going to post a blog about the Lone Star Conference held over the weekend. But unfortunately, an unforseen circumstance prevented me from drafting up a post. No worries, all is fine. Sometime life happens, and it’s simply more important than blogging. *gasp*

But because I’m a pretty awesome chick, I’ve provided you with another installment of Hump Day Kick Start.

 

So, who do we have here? Pirate hat, dog tag, way too modern jeans, goin’ commando, tats, sudden urge to do laundry, these are tasty, er, wonderful visual treats for your muse. Tell me about him. Who is he and what’s on his mind.

Can’t wait to hear your take on today’s prompt.

Putting yourself out there by Candi Wall

 

 

OH! Super cool update! Laura Bradford confirmed she’ll be here for our November Agent Shop since

gremlins messed with our last run of e-mails and this Agent Shop was cancelled. She’s a stellar lady peeps!

“This is wonderful. I could feel everything your character was experiencing!”

“You’ve got a strong voice and the writing was sublime…”

Oh, yeah. You all know what I’m talking about. The big grin, the heart thumping that goes along with opening your e-mail, contest scores, comment section, twitter, or whatever venue you use to put your writing out there, and reading something like that!

It’s like CRACK!

More, more! Gimme more!

‘Course, the negative comments can be just as intense .

“You really should pick an author you like and try to emulate them.”

“Your characters felt cardboard to me, and your villain was nothing more than a cliché device to throw in some failed tension.”

Kill me now!

Okay, so it’s not that bad. As with everything, we have to take any and all comments with a grain or bucket of salt.

As writers, we’re going to come across every personality, like, dislike, good day, bad day, that our readers have. We’re going to be held high by a reader that just adored everything we put into words, and we’re going to be knocked so low, getting back up will be a Herculean task.

Color me a glutton…

But I’ll probably keep putting my work out there, through contests, groups, sharing sites and of course my Beta readers and Crit partners.

Wanna know why?

Simple. Feedback, friendship and the chance at winning!

And believe it or not, that’s the order of importance I take when I enter any contest. Feedback is gold.

As most of us do, I started this journey alone. Through contests, writing groups, and networking, I’ve found the most amazing people and am lucky to have them. I don’t believe for a moment that without them, I would be as far as I am today. And that in itself is enough reason for me to feel justified in encouraging any writer, at any stage of their craft, to get out there, take a chance, let others see what you write and learn what you can from what you get for feedback.

Soak it up like a sponge, retain what you need, and let the rest evaporate.

I took my first tentative steps into networking waters by joining Charlotte Dillon’s Romance Writers Community. Best choice I ever made. That’s where I met Jenn, Marie-Claude and John. I took a chance, they took a chance, and we found a solid foundation of friends to share our journey with. That friendship and professional connection remains today!

Marie-Claude stepped WAY out of her comfort zone and entered Dorchester’s American Title V contest and WON! But if you ask her, she met and remains friends with numerous other writers to this day, and that’s something even winning can’t compare with.

My first public contest was Dorchester’s Next Best Celler contest. It was hell. Pure and simple. Vote tarting sucks, that’s all there is to it. There was some back biting, some down voting, oh – it was tough, but again, out of the great, not-so-great, and sometimes questionable comments, I gained a group of ladies as my friends, all of whom will give it to me straight when I’m doing well, or writing crap.

‘Kinda makes you feel all mushy inside, don’t it?

Yeah, me too.

So I’m on to my next contest.

The Mills & Boon New Voices contest

I’ve met one stellar writer already, and I know she’ll be a friend way past this contest. I’ve read some great entries, left what I hope are seen as constructive comments and gained some as well. I’ve been down voted too, and it’s still early in the competition. but I’m looking forward to it just the same, because regardless of the outcome, I’m coming out of it a winner. Either with feedback, friends or (fingers crossed) a win.

New Voices is open to any writer who hasn’t been published. the deadline is Oct. 10th, so swing in and enter!

So, have any contest experiences you can share, good or bad? I’d love to hear about them.

DISCLAIMER: ALWAYS REMEMBER TO RESEARCH A CONTEST BEFORE ENTERING. THERE ARE SO MANY SCAMS OUT THERE. READ THE FINE PRINT CAREFULLY!

Hump Day Kick Start

Song of the Day:  Tonight, Tonight by Hot Chelle Rae

Photo by Vlsncdiana

Well now, this should be a fun prompt.

Who is this couple? Playboy playmate and her body guard? Co-stars? Reality TV participants? Country boy who just married a Vegas showgirl he’d hardly met?

Look at how they gaze at each other. What do you suppose is going on? Are they plotting a bank heist? Is she seducing him into killing her  husband? Is he a cop playing along to get the information he needs to bust up an underground bleaching hair products ring?

Have fun with this one. Let me hear from you.

K.I.S.S. – Another lesson learned by Candi Wall

I hope everyone is well and busy writing, editing, submitting, revising, celebrating… Whatever stage you’re at, we at Musetracks wish you the best.

Some of you may have noticed my absence, others may not.

I’ve had a bit of an uproar in my life recently, nothing too concerning, but enough to keep me from doing what I’d hoped to accomplish over the last few weeks. Big sigh. But what I’ve learned over these past few weeks is something that applies in our writing as well as our everyday lives.

K.I.S.S. a/k/a Keep It Simple Stupid

Simple right? Yeah, okay.

Life is nothing but curve balls, twists, turns, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men…

And so during this unexpected, unwanted hiatus, I tried to keep the irons I had in the fire going.

Job – Check

Family – Check

Chores – Check

School prep – Check

Appointments – Check

Sports – Check

Volunteer – Check

Sleep – Yeah, not so much

Write – Okay whatever

Eat right – Pah!

Exercise – LOL!

Read – Can I do that? Really?

Priorities TAKE OVER our lives!

Not a darn thing we can do about it, and most of us don’t even realize we’ve prioritized our lives until after we’re done with our must-be-done’s and are onto our want-to-do’s. We plug along at our lists and schedules on auto-pilot, rearranging as we go, finagling each unseen activity or issue we need to add into the mix. We do it automatically. Some do it well, some do it mediocre, some (like me lately) just scrape by.

Regardless of how we do it, we scrape it all down to the necessities to keep it as simple as possible.

And we as writers, have to apply this to our writing as well.

And of course we’re not talking about your plot, or revising, or submitting. We’re not even talking about writing. All these things are HARD. They’re supposed to be. Nothing good comes easy or simple, but what we give as our final product needs to be. Readers don’t want to, and won’t, read filler words or sentences. They want movement, purpose, drive and action/reaction. When considering K.I.S.S., taking out filler words, scene and dialog that doesn’t create forward motion in your story is a must!

Consider two sentences:

*Amber didn’t know where the directions on the note would take her, but she had to find out.

*Amber eyed the note carefully, each crudely scribbled word carving another layer of fear deep in her heart until she forced her eyes back to the road.

(I’m tired, so bear with me.)

Okay, now assuming you’ve set the stage for your character, which line screams K.I.S.S. and still maintains the same level of intensity? The second, right? Assuming your readers are already inside your characters head means you don’t have to tell them about her fear, they’re already there. The reader doesn’t need to be told that she ‘eyed the note carefully’, they’re already seeing her in their heads, glancing nervously between the note and the road.

Sure details and setting and emotion are important. But keeping our readers moving along, instead of stalling the pictures we’re painting in their mind’s eye with too many words, is our job. Now wasn’t that last sentence the perfect example of over-writing? Had I went with

K.I.S.S. it would have read something closer to: But keeping our readers moving along, instead of making them skim, is our job.

Share! What do you do to trash the unneeded filler words we always add in the first drafts?

BTW – Next week, I’ll have the awesome Saranna DeWylde here with her novel, The Real Housewives of Mount Olympus. (Click on her name and the link will take you to the Amazon page for her novel!) I got a chance to read this pre-pub stage and it’s a fast, sexy, ultra-fun read that will have you looking at the gods and goddesses in a new way.

She’ll be giving away a free e-copy to one lucky comment. But it gets better, she’ll give away a copy each time we get ten comments!

AGENT SHOP news? Did you see who’s going to be here in September (25th is pitch day)????

LAURA BRADFORD

Hump Day Kick Start

Song of the Day: Trade Yourself In by Shinedown

Your writing prompt this week. Oh, the possibilities.

Tell me about him. Who is he? The MacGyver type? A motorcycle mechanic? Pro Wrestler?

Where is he? Why the intense stare? Is he angry? Frustrated? Upset that he was interrupted during his Billy Blanks Tae Bo video workout?

Come on. I’d love to hear from you.

Hump Day Kick Start

Song of the Day: Overcome by Creed

I know what you are thinking. Don’t I have photos of men in clothes? Nah, what fun are those? Dang, I love the way the light hits his skin.

Our subject today looks to be concentrating. What, or who, do you suppose he’s looking at? What’s going through his mind? Where is he? Home? Hotel? Stakeout? Is that an appreciative smile, or is he calculating?