Terms of Endearment: Mummy/Daddy Issues #amwriting #scifi #romance

One of the issues I run into occasionally is that, as a British writer who has taken to writing in US English (it was a requirement of my first publisher, and since at the time I expected all my work to be released through them - oh, the naivety! - I stuck with it) I quite often get little notes from my editor of  'too British' or 'non-US term'. It's not just the lack of 'u's in words (though I have my dictionary set for US so that's a rare occurrence). It's everyday stuff like the US call chips fries and crisps chips, fringe is bangs and curtains are drapes, petrol is gas and weights are in pounds as opposed to stone or, for someone like me from a science background, grams and kilograms. Sigh.

With my recent revisions on book three for Keir, I ran into a question of what is the most common US term for 'father'. I know that mummy/mum here is mommy/mom in the US, so I assumed that 'daddy' was an entirely British thing. I'd picked up Rogue One on Blu-ray the previous week, where Jyn calls her dad 'papa'. In the previous SW films, 'mother' and 'father' were used, terms I find rather formal, and in the case of one of my characters, she uses 'mother' in a rather derogatory sense since they don't get on. Her half sibling uses the formal titles because that's how his own father talks. So what would she call her father, if the formal version is intended as an insult but she's a real daddy's girl?

The answer, according to willing US volunteers on Facebook, is...daddy. The term I'd assumed entirely British ownership of is, in fact, also popular in the US (though not everywhere or in every case). This shouldn't seem so weird, but it does. When you get used to the idea that certain common terms here are different words even in an English speaking country, you kind of expect it to apply to everything. Or maybe that's just me...

Anyway, it's answered my issue of daddy/father/pop/papa (which incidentally is going to also save me a whole lot of find and replace since I used the British term in the first place) but made for a rather fun topic, especially when it comes with interesting personal and/or regional twists. By permission, I'm going to copy and paste some comments from the discussion here, or you can join in with your thoughts either in the comments below or on the FB post HERE.

Cali C Hicks: Daddy usually. Girls are more likely to call their father "Daddy" into adulthood, especially if she is a daddy's girl. Boys tend to opt for the more mature "Dad" by the time they're teens or tweens. Of course, there are exceptions. Neither my husband nor I liked being called "Mommy" or "Daddy" so we have been "Mama" and "Papa" to our kids. Papa is usually a term for a grandfather, as is "Pop-Pop." Grandparent names tend to vary by region.

Pippa Jay: Perfect (and yes, same here when they hit teens. Older boy calls us Mum and Dad in public/in front of guests).

Cali C Hicks: Mum is definitely British. It's most definitely "Mom" in the US.

Pippa Jay: Yeah, that one I knew. I guess knowing that was different I kind of expect dad to be the same (also watching Rogue One and she's using papa).

Cali C Hicks: Papa is an archaic form of address and not in use as much these days for the father. It's my husband's family tradition that the father be called "Papa." He refers to his father as "Pop." And likewise, it's my family tradition that mothers be called "Mama" rather than Mom or Mommy. I think that's more of a Southern thing.

Cali C Hicks: And in BLS, Blade's son calls him "Papa."

Chris Hayes: Here in south Louisiana in my family it's Mama and Daddy until we get embarrassed by the infantilism and switch to Mom and Dad. The age when that happens varies. Tends to be earlier for boys than girls, I've observed. I still occasionally use the infantile form and I'm 53. : )

Laurie Green: Yes, I grew up with Daddy and Dad, too. Some of my friends from European-American cultures used Papa.

Status Update
I appear to have got my mojo back, or at least some of it. Edits have been progressing well as part of Camp NaNoWriMo, as has revision on book three for Keir. I've also been adding to a short story I thought was done, but on a re-read as preparing for edits, I felt it was missing something. As part of my apparent revival, I've even gone to the lengths of booking slots with my editor for 2nd round edits on the two novellas and a story analysis on Keir's Shadow. So now I have DEADLINES! Eep! I've even been reading, though sadly for my towering TBR pile, it's another book I bought recently rather than an outstanding one. Oh well. At least I'm reading?
My Tumblr blog where I post all my cosplay is about to undergo an overhaul and rename, but I'm keeping that under wraps for now. The Tauriel cosplay is almost complete and details will be posted once the transformation is complete.
I've had a fabulous spring break with my family - perhaps a big part of why my writing mojo is back - including a visit to Cressing Temple History Fair and the Anglo-Saxon burial site of Sutton Hoo (not far from Rendlesham Forest and the UFO trail). We even came home with a sword!

Anglo-Saxon fashion

Vikings went on to use Anglo-Saxon ship design for their legendary longboats

The famous Sutton Hoo mask

Viking warriors

Anglo-Saxon

slug armour

Pre-loved replica sword, bought for cosplay

Chook Update
Spring break has been absolutely glorious, and my girls have had long hours roaming the garden. Excuse the view - when foraging, it tends to be very heads down, tails up. :P Plus random spring flower.

It's All About What Works For You #amwriting

This is the first year since I wrote Keir that I haven't done a single NaNoWriMo. Not even Camp earlier in the year. And the really weird and worrying thing is, this is the first time I've seen others posting about their word count and I've merely shrugged rather than wish I'd joined in.

I know I'm burnt out. I've felt that for some time. The actual publishing side of being an author has virtually killed off my passion for writing, and I've given myself permission to not write and to not feel guilty about it right now. I hadn't written for almost 20 years when I sat down and started on Keir, so I know one day I'll come back to it.

But since Greta and Donna have talked about their writing processes and NaNoWriMo, I wanted to share my thoughts, especially as I see far too many writers who don't make the 50K in November getting depressed about it. Declaring themselves failures.

You. Are. NOT. A. Failure.

Did you get words down? Then you're a champ. A writer is someone who puts their butt in the chair and puts down words. It doesn't matter how many. It doesn't matter if they're crud. You've got them down, and they can be worked on, improved, polished up until they shine. That's how any author does it.

Confession time: I have never hit 50K. I've won a couple of Camp NaNoWriMos where you can set your own word count and I've used it to finish off shorts, or even to do edits on a novel, but never 50K straight. Even when the muse it in full flow, I'm normally burned out by 30K even on a good run. The two NaNo novellas I have published are both in the mid 40K range at complete, but didn't hit that count during the event. They're still complete and published works at the end of the day.

NaNoWriMo is definitely not for everyone, and you definitely shouldn't feel a failure for not hitting 50K. I think it's worth trying, but not using it as the measuring stick for your writing success. In general I've used Camp NaNo for finishing off projects/editing, and the main NaNo event too kickstart a project or clear my head of one that wouldn't leave me alone (my adorable zombie story, Restless In Peaceville, for example. Muse wanted to do it, I didn't think I could or should but she wouldn't shut up until it was done. That was some NaNo! O.o ). I didn't hit 50K but I achieved my own personal goals - things finished or off my mind, lol. My personal writing method is chaotic (and will probably make my two co-bloggers shudder). Not only am I a 'throw the words down and move on' writer, but I don't even write linearly! Bwahahaa!

I have tried plotting, but it doesn't work for me. I put down a few key scenes (they might be beginning and end and a few in between, but not necessarily), then fill the gaps. If I don't have a deadline, I might well do some editing/re-reading between writing sessions, but not during NaNo. Once the first draft is done, my next step is a brutal 'slash and burn' revision where I ruthlessly delete out the crud and weak words and repetitions, and rewrite the rest. After that, it's less destructive. :-P

But the key two points about this post and Greta's and Donna's are:
1. It's what works for you. It doesn't matter a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys what any other author does. It's no good at all forcing yourself to plot because so and so does and they're super popular for example (though I advocate for any author, new or experienced, to maybe try things they haven't before). When I first started out and saw lots of authors talking about plotting, I felt such a failure. I tried to force myself into it. It didn't work out and actually killed my enthusiasm for a story so much that I still haven't gone back to it. I've now come to the conclusion that I do my own kind of basic plotting by throwing down those few keys scenes and building around them, but that's as close as I get.
2. What matters next is what you do with that story after putting down the first words and before submitting to agents/publishers or publishing yourself. There is no one way it must be done but you do need to revise, self edit, spell check, and put it through an editor before release (yes, I've seen authors insist they don't need an editor because they self edit. I disagree. I want my book to be the absolute best it can and I never put anything out without it going through an editor. I've seen too many books where it looks like even basic spell check hasn't been used. I know editing costs, but if you can't at least get someone to proofread for you, prepare for complaints).
For me the process is those key scenes, filling in the gaps, a 'slash and burn' revision (I know that sounds awful), probably a couple more revisions before beta readers (then revising based on feedback), before a spell check and off to my editor. Depending on how it goes, there are generally at least three passes on developmental edits, followed by a line edit. Then it goes to my proofreader (who is also an editor, so she'll pick up on other details). It takes time and money, but I'm not doing it any other way.
The fastest I've got from first words to submission is four months - exceptional, and only because I wrote it for NaNoWriMo, subbed a sample during a call for NaNo novels at the time and got a request for a full. Normally I'll spend about two years on a piece from first words to submission/sending to my editor, even on a short story. It all depends.
Right now I'm doing the slash and burn revision on Keir's Shadow (Book Three of Redemption) because I wrote it some four years ago and have learned heaps about writing since then (especial about plot, romance, and character motivation, oh my!). There's also changes that need making because of the transformations books one and two have gone through. A large chunk of book three - 30K words - were written in one crazy day that left me I'll for about a week after because the words didn't stop coming. Just another example of how chaotic my writing methods are.
Conclusion: everyone is different. The five of us who blog here all have different methods, but we're all published authors so clearly our very individual writing processes have worked for us. Experiment and find what works best for you, but don't be afraid to try something new or even something old again at a future date. Just don't get bogged down in all the articles that say 'it must be done this way and no other'.
And don't get down about not hitting 50K for NaNoWriMo. It isn't the be all and end all. Oh, and while hitting 50K in November doesn't matter and as I repeatedly tell my eldest who is forever starting new stories - finishing is important. You can't publish an unfinished book.

Status Update
As mentioned above, despite my current disenchantment with writing, I am working on Keir's Shadow. Right now it's a bit like putting sticky plasters over the hole in the Titanic, but progress nonetheless. I promised the book for 2017, so I have a year - six months for me to fix it, then six months for Danielle Fine to kick my butt help me polish it. :-P I have always loved book three and there are some gems in the dirt, but there's an awful lot of dirt to shovel first.

Happenings
Today is absolutely the last day of the iBooks SFR Sale Event! Click HERE to be transported to 21 out of this world romances.

It's also your last chance to pick up my two scifi heroes at a discount before I start putting the prices back up - time travel romance with Keir ($1.99 instead of $4.99), and scifi adventure with Gethyon ($0.99 instead of $3.99).
 

A Science Fiction Romance Novel
Goodreads | Webpage
Available from...
iBooks | Nook | Kobo
Amazon | ARe | Smashwords

Gethyon

A Scifi Adventure Novel

Goodreads | Webpage

Amazon | Omnilit

B&N | Kobo | iBooks

Smashwords

No chook pics this week - the girls are fine despite the cold but I was indoors all last week nursing a cold - but here's some of my monsters enjoying some home fireworks and sparklers for Bonfire Night.

KEEP UP WORD COUNT, NANOWRIMO OR NO

Take a certain Disney fish's advice: just keep swimming

Okay, since it’s November and Greta has broken the ice, let’s talk about word count, that bane of any author’s existence. 

Except maybe Stephen King’s or writers in his class. King writes eight hours a day, every day of the year except the Fourth of July and his birthday. His word count must be phenomenal. After all, his books regularly top 1000 pages and he comes out with at least one a year. Before he was hit by a car while walking along a Maine highway, he wrote so prolifically he had to use pseudonyms to keep from flooding the market. He’s slowed down a bit since then. Every month is National Novel Writing Month for him. I assume it’s the same for Nora Roberts, J.R. Ward and others in the top tier of bestsellers.

I’ve never done NaNoWriMo. I’m a slow writer in the best of times, primarily because I do what Greta does. I edit the previous day’s work before I start the new day’s writing. It helps me get back in the groove every day, and it leaves the work in much better shape when I reach The End. It’s as if I’ve gone through a couple of drafts already. (I’m a plotter, too, so the system makes sense for me.)

The idea of just getting it down and fixing it later is fine in theory, but horrifies me at some deep level. It’s the editor in me, I suppose. The only way I can still that inner critical voice is to throw it a bone on a regular basis. Then I can move on.

My system works for me as long as I can set aside enough writing time. That’s where daily life can interfere to the point at which the work in progress stalls out. I’ve discovered it’s not just a matter of telling myself I’m going to knuckle down and write for two hours (or four, or one) every day. I have to be realistic about when I can be productive and when I will be easily distracted, when my environment is conducive to work and when it allows only for interruption.

I recently decided I had to start getting up early in the morning to write again. That means, even though I don’t have a day job and I no longer teach martial arts, I’m up most mornings at 5:30 a.m. so I can write for an uninterrupted two hours. I make a smoothie the night before, get a quick cup of coffee and start in. I don’t check email, I don’t look at Facebook. I just write for at least two hours straight.That way I avoid the demands of email requests (promotion campaigns and so on), phone calls and other interruptions later in the day. If I’m really rolling that means 1000 words of progress everyday, not just some days when “things work out.”  

Many of you who read this blog are professional writers. You know about deadlines and goals and pressure from editors and publishers. But for those of you who may still be waiting for The Call, or who may just have published their first book and are wondering where to find the motivation to write that next one, understand that being an author demands a special kind of self-discipline. You don’t have a boss or a professor or your mom pushing you to do the work. You only have yourself. The better you are at cracking your own whip, the more this will work for you.

Sometimes you’ll have to keep at it without any kind of encouragement. It was several years before I found my wonderful agent Michelle, and several more years after that before we finally published my first novel, Unchained Memory. In the meantime, I’d had time to complete a second and almost finish a third novel in the Interstellar Rescue series. From a marketing point of view, that was great. The books came out one after the other.

Now I’m halfway through Number Four in the series. I can only say I’m glad I had the head start! And my advice—to myself and to others? Just keep writing.

No matter how you have to do it.

Cheers, Donna

This week I be like... #amwriting #amediting

...although not with my writing. I'm pleased to announce I've already 'won' Camp NaNoWriMo with edits on my 50K June project, and I'm now adding in some scenes suggested by my editor. Reunion is still untouched since it came back after a major revision, but that was deliberate.

No, the empty brain refers to blog posts. I started two others before getting to this one, and quit both after deciding they were just too BORING! Problem is, I haven't come up with anything else either.

So I'm going to share a scene from Reunion that may end up on the cutting room floor, then finish with a status and chook update. Enjoy!

The sea called to him. It hissed and whispered over the sound of Quin’s breathing, over his own heart beating a rhythm in his head. Moonlight clothed the hut’s interior in silver light, fiercely bright. He lay on his back and stared at the ghostly outlines of the furniture.
Quin slept curled in a huddle, her back to him. For a fleeting instant, he considered waking her, but decided against it. This was something he wanted to do alone.
He slipped from the bed and reclaimed his sarong, knotting it around his waist. The chill sea breeze stroked his skin, and he shivered at its touch. With a last glance at Quin, he pushed aside the canvas covering of the hut door and stepped outside.
The beach lay empty, a dark, glistening ribbon scattered with weed and shells abandoned by the withdrawing tide. Silver tipped the edges of the black waves beyond. No sounds came from any of the other huts, but a few lone lanterns glowed along the walkways joining them, and on the docks close to S’rano’s ship. The sea’s whisper rose above the rustling of the trees behind the village. The white disc of the moon glared down at him. He stared up at it for an instant, following the pattern of craters and scars on its surface. Metraxi’s single satellite looked lonely compared to the double moons he had known on Salusan.
His gaze returned to the sea. The waves beckoned him, teasing as they swept in and out. Just a few days earlier, he had given into their embrace and tried to drown himself. Could he step back into the water? Did he dare?
His heart raced, his mouth gone dry. The sea lapped at his toes, and he staggered back, the cold shock shooting through every nerve. It set him gasping, squeezed his throat as if he were drowning all over again. His knees shook.
I cannot go back into the water. 

Status Update
A new shiny thing! Well, not for me exactly. I entered the cover for When Dark Falls into the EPIC Ariana Award Contest, and it won! Kudos to my artist Victoria Miller. Isn't it pretty?! (And as close as I've got to winning an EPIC other than being a finalist in 2015 for science fiction with Gethyon).

But wait! I did get a shiny. My Star Performer medal from the SFR Brigade, along with my Certificate of Appreciation arrived in a big box from the US (along with a secret project). I'd have dressed up for the occasion but I HATE taking selfies. Lol. Maybe I should have posted my speech?

I've 'won' Camp NaNoWriMo with editing my June project, and I'm now adding in scenes suggested by my editor. Reunion awaits second round edits. Revived is ready for edits but I've no idea when I can afford to do that one, while my winter SFR (which I'm now convinced probably isn't a SFR but a SF mystery) still needs finishing. I've also been working on book three for Keir.

The Redemption series (Keir and Keir's Fall) finally got a series page on Amazon. Yay!

Chook Update
The new girls have finally settled in and we're getting eggs. Both Pitch and Spaghetti are definitely laying, but we're not sure if any of the others are. They're slacking!

Left: Fizzgig, Back: Pitch, Right: Spaghetti

Pitch

Small but perfectly formed!

See you next week!

A Problem with Pantsing #amwriting #scifi #romance

Green Chaos by Piotr Siedlecki

For those unfamiliar with the term, pantsing refers to the art of writing without an outline ie rather than plot out the structure and events of a story, you just sit down and write, going wherever the muse takes you. In my case the process is even more chaotic because I don't write linearly either. Quite often a story begins with a handful of random scenes that may or may not include the opening and closing acts. Some may not even make the final version. In a bizarre way, I suppose that could be considered a form of plotting since I lay down the bare bones first, but I'd probably deny it to my dying breath.

I have tried plotting. My problem seems to be that a) I don't know where the story is going until I actually start writing, b) I get bored quickly so I need to have all the shiny stuff written down fast so I can then get down to the harder task of filling in the gaps to make a coherent story. The two times I've tried plotting I not only veered well away from the outline within a few thousand words but also found myself trying to write two very different stories within the guidelines. The second attempt killed all my interest and enthusiasm for the story, and it never got written.

So plotting hasn't worked for me. I no longer feel a failure because of it (seriously, too many people out there are willing to tell you you're doing it all wrong. Try things but in the end go with what works for you. It may change over time - I'm not saying I'll never try plotting ever again - but your writing and methods aren't set in stone or dictated by others. Don't think yourself a failure because one system didn't work out for you).

But pantsing does come with its drawbacks. When I first completed the draft for Keir's Fall, it was a MESS. The timeline was all over the place, it was full of writerly sins like headhopping (some people don't consider that a bad thing but it personally drives me a bit nuts to read it), way too many POVs, plot holes, overly done purple prose...the list goes on. It was very early in my publishing career! But the chaotic timeline was the worst of it. After hours moving chunks around trying to fix it, I still wasn't getting anywhere. So I had to print it off, cut it up, rearrange it all on my living room floor, then literally stick it back together in the right order (I think a lot of authors like Scrivener for that reason, but I've tried a similar piece of software and couldn't get to grips with it). Once I had it all sticky taped back together, I could see where each scene needed to go and rearranged my Word doc accordingly.

That wasn't the end of it. After going through professional edits for Keir and learning oh so much, I went back and stripped a secondary storyline from Keir's Fall to cut down the other POVs before working with my editor to fix the other faults. It's taken three years since book one's original release to finally put out book two, but it's done.

Do you think I learned my lesson? *Yoda laugh* It would seem not. Sometime this year I hope to release a collection of short stories--new and old titles--and take down the separate shorts (because they just don't sell, and I'm ticked off at Amazon because they only pay 35% royalties on them. They have to be priced $2.99 and above to earn 70%, and while I've seen publishers charge that for a short, I just can't justify it. The collection will be priced less than all the individual shorts to compensate for the older titles and to give everyone a fairer deal). One of the new titles is a winter SFR, started after Hallow's Eve to give me a collection of holiday themed shorts. Right now, that short is heading into novella territory, and is in as similar a mess as Keir's Fall once was. Each scene is a countdown, so specific things need to happen in order, building up facts and occurrences until the final act. Of course, I've got them a bit mixed up. Ooops? This is where writing random scenes doesn't work so well. But rather than the physical cut and paste job, I've decided to work backwards through the story instead (yeah, I'd written the final scene already). Hopefully I won't have to do anything quite so drastic as with Keir's Fall...though the scissors and sticky tape are close at hand...

Happenings
So sad to hear of the death of Alan Rickman last Thursday. I posted a short tribute on my blog HERE, but right now I still can't face saying it out loud.

Status Update
I have good and bad news, depending which way you look at it. Sadly my hot SFR short Quickshot is now homeless after the anthology I sent it to failed to reach the required number of submissions. Sigh. This is my fifth anthology submission that hasn't made it. Three didn't get enough submissions. One was pulled after authors withdrew due to a horrible contract. Only one was purely rejected. I don't think I'm willing to write for and submit to another after that number of fails because I could be working on bigger things in my Travellers Universe instead. I self pubbed two of the shorts myself, but considering cover art costs are the same as for a novel yet the small price tag on a short story means it takes longer for the short to make a return, they aren't a reasonable use of my still small budget. In the case of Quickshot, I have the advantage that it's already been professionally edited. But the cover would be a complex ask. >_<

At the time of writing, Reunion at Kasha-Asor is awaiting my attention for second round edits, while my June novel is having to have first edits redone due to the theft of my editor's laptop. Grr. Some people! I've finished my final tweaks for Revived, my Rebecca finalist and my second title in the shared Venus Ascendant universe, so as soon as I have the budget for edits and my editor has space, that'll be going off for first round, hopefully for release some time this year. I'm also hoping to complete my winter SFR in the next few days. Weeks. Um, some point in 2016...

Back to it!