I just finished my third workshop with the fabulous CJ Redwine. She’s a great instructor BTW. I highly recommend. Anyhow, I had an hour to chat with her last night and she asked some amazing questions, really got me to dig into my book, flesh things out. This is what I learned.
I may have written a paranormal romance, but I am no para rom writer. Nope. Listen to the ‘p’ pop on that one. Para may be the big seller these days, and I will write just about anything because its what I do, but there are some things that I should skip. This is one of them. I have about 80,000 words down and the manuscript is complete. I figured another 5-10K will come from revisions and editing to round my plots and shape my arcs, and so I took CJ’s workshop.
Unfortunately, I wrote 80,000 words of b-o-r-i-n-g. My “love” scenes are lame-o, and I’m just out of my element all the way around. As it turns out, this is one of those manuscripts to chuck. Stick a fork in it. You understand.
CJ was concerned that she may have upset me. Nah. I like to write. I will mark it up as lesson learned. If ever they stopped publishing all genres aside from para rom, I would just write for a family collection. I would still write, but I can’t swing the demon/human/ghosty/sexiness. I fail.
About the death of this manuscript: I don’t mind writing it off (pun! pun!). But now I have a new problem.
In October I have a pitch session scheduled with the lovely and talented Cori Deyoe from Three Seas Lit. She has written a couple of romances and 3 Seas agents lots of them, and plenty of para rom. This is why I drug mine from the drawer to revise. Now that I see there is no hope to make it viable, and I have no desire to do this, I am empty handed.
I have to have a summary of what I’m pitching in to Cori by September 15, 2010 and I am staring at a big empty Word page. Can we all say “Uh-oh” together? On the one hand, I have an agent for one of my works, and I almost have one for the YA I wrote (still waiting to hear back from her “reader” for the thumbs up to sign me), but I have this pitch session too. It’s an incredible opportunity and experience and I will do my best to not look like a doofus. So, going in with nothing is not an option.
Now, I have about 3 weeks to write something that she would be interested in. I need enough that I can talk about it intelligently and then I can always polish, edit, etc. later, but I want to put my best foot forward and learn all that I can from this conference.
So, now, I need an idea, and about 300 pages in about a month? No problem. (OK yes, super-major-problem).
But
Nothing is impossible.
Just keep writing.
I’ll keep you posted.
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That’s a great attitude you have about your para-rom MS. It’s wonderful that you love writing enough to be able to take something that’s not working and turn it into a positive lesson. That’s something I hope all writers can do.
Maybe you can turn your para rom into something else that would work? I think if I tried to write a para rom it would turn into an urban fantasy or an action novel. Maybe take a subplot and develop it into the main plot?
I agree and thank you both! I try to find the writing lessons anywhere I can LOL! As far as changing it into something else, by way of developing a subplot…I have thought about that very seriously. I am a YA addict, and was thinking that I may be able to shave a few years from the heroine and removed my awkward love scenes, or at least sweeten them up. We shall see
I am such a pantser that I rarely know what I’m writing until I writing it. I’ll keep you posted!