Once more, I’ve changed the layout of my website. I’ve yet to decide on a theme that is simple and modern and helps define me as a writer. So here’s the latest attempt at a sleek, simple design.
Would love comments and feedback. www.jessicascott.net.
Let me know what you think!
Jess
If there was ever any doubt that the Austin Romance Writers of America kick butt, let that doubt be crushed here and now! We had no less than 4 Rita and Golden Heart finalists this year.
For the Rita, Julia London and Sherry Thomas were finalists. For the Golden Heart Jenna Stuart and Katie Graykowski finaled.
If you’re a novelist and want to learn from the best, stop by one of our meetings. Seriously. You won’t be disappointed. Great folks mix with great talent at ARWA!
There are hundreds of blog posts out there that talk about how a story begins and probably just as many methods for building the world known as your novel. I have a brilliant critique partner who plots down to the minute detail. My other brilliant CP loosely outlines. Both end up with awesome final products.
For me, I can’t plot. I usually get a scene in my head that builds and builds but I can’t even write it down unless I have a name. Until my characters have a name, I don’t have a story. Names, to me, are important. They tell you about your character, where they’re from, who they are. In my mind, names are the most difficult thing to change.
When I start to have an idea about a new story, I start hunting for names. Odd names, normal names but the name is ultimately where I begin. It’s how my characters become people and makes me have to finish the story and not leave my characters in limbo.
After the War, the very first novel I’d ever written is a finalist in the 2009 SARA Merritt Contest. This book is special to me because it’s the one that just won’t quit. I spent a YEAR rewriting it. It’s gone through at least 6 generations of either complete rewrite or major revisions. I finally reached a point where I was ready to start on something else and now it keeps coming back. The book that I could not give up on now won’t give up on me!
Passing along congrats to other Merritt Finalists as well. Best of luck to all the winners!
I learn something new every day. A few days ago, I learned about something I’d always known but had never really understood before. The deus ex machina (the god in the machine) is a plot point that comes out of nowhere to save the hero/heroine and is basically understood to be the will of the fictional gods.
What does that mean to me, the budding novelist? It means that if there is a miraculous financial solution to a character’s problem in the last chapter of a book, there had better have been some hints to it earlier.
I read a quote, and if anyone knows the source, please tell me so I can properly link to it, that if there’s a gun in the first act, there had better be one in the last. To sum it up, don’t surprise your readers with something that is completely not foreshadowed earlier. Otherwise, they feel cheated.
And cheated readers are not anxious to read your next novel…
Some people hate editing/revising their work. I actually like it. Not that I don’t reach a point where I’m sick of it, but I really enjoy editing and revising. However, I have to admit to panicking just a hare when I looked at my word count after a morning of heavy revisions and saw that I’d chopped off 12,000 words!
My heart stuck in my throat, just a little. But its okay. If I could cut them without panicking, then they weren’t that critical to the rest of the story, right? But I need to dig back in and get after it. Time, after all, is of the essence!
So there’s this thing called the NCO Creed. Every NCO learns it from the earliest days of their careers and most NCO’s try to outline what it calls for. There is one line that states: I will take initiative in the absence of orders.
Apparently, that doesn’t not apply to officers. And, fully understanding that I’m being cryptic here, that’s all I’m really going to say on the matter.
However, I have some awesome news to report. My new platoon kicks ass! You know, when I was enlisted, I used to think that when officers said they were excited to be somewhere that they were full of it. Well, I can now say I really am excited to be part of my platoon.
Here’s the short version. Professional development has been sorely lacking and so one of the things I instituted was a reading/writing/public speaking program. Needless to say, some of the guys were not happy about getting outside their comfort zone so we called a platoon meeting to let them air their grievances. These guys impressed the hell out of me. They stated what they didn’t like, for instance the Chief of Staff of the Army’s reading list was a little too advanced for most of their levels but could we use a different reading list. Absolutely.
My guys offered up creative suggestions to still meet the intent and the best part is they bought in on the entire project, once they explained what they wanted to do. Now there are a few that still don’t want to do it, and that’s fine. BUT, the majority of the platoon is on board and willing to give it a go.
How awesome is that! My platoon rocks!
So here’s a basic philosophy of mine regarding briefing the boss bad news. Bad news does not get better with age. If your boss finds out something from a source other than you, you end up looking like an ass. More than likely, if you’re trying to hide a problem, the boss is really going to have kittens when he does finally figure it out.
The best course of action when dealing with bad news is figure out what’s going on, come up with a plan, and brief the boss on courses of action that will get the problem solved. Waiting until it’s a crisis isn’t proper management.
I’d love to hear other thoughts on how to manage and break bad news and different points of view. Always up to learning something new.
Later!
Every so often, when I’m avoiding working on my current WIP, I surf writing industry blogs. A particularly good one is Nathan Bransford, an agent for Curtis Brown. He recently had a post regarding how to be a happy writer and I thought it was so good, I posted it here. Considering I’ve violated some of these principles, but endeavor to do better in the future, I thought I’d pass it along.
Enjoy!
http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2009/03/ten-commandments-for-happy-writer.html
We’re in the midst of one of the worst sandstorms yet. Almost complete brown out.
Anyway that’s not the point. This is: if you’ve ever traveled somewhere other than the states, you understand the importance of good shampoo. Not just good but the right kind for your hair.
I’ve been using the wrong shampoo fir a little over a month and let’s just say that won’t happen again. Used the right stuff today and I feel like a new woman. Really.
And please forgive me for not remembering, but whoever sent that Volcano Holiday Blend coffee,that is the best coffee I’ve had since I’ve been here. Thank you!
Those of you who’ve been following the running commentary on my books may know I have a dirty little secret. I can’t let go. If I’ve taken the time to write it, I’m going to edit and revise until it’s right.
The first book I ever wrote has undergone at least 5 rewrites from the first draft and is currently set aside, waiting patiently for me to return to it. Which I will. However, book 2 has currently finished round 3 of revisions, which is a major improvement when you consider that it happened inside of 3 months, rather than the year it took for the first one. Since writing that second book, I’ve finished a total of 6 novels and am working on#7.
What have I learned through all this? The first words will very rarely be the last and there is nothing wrong with that. I read somewhere (and I don’t know that this is true) that Nora Roberts goes through 3-4 drafts of a novel before submitting it and she’s one of the best.
I’ve had to learn one key lesson: kill your darlings. I wrote a scene over a year ago that I LOVED. Nailed the emotion, the depth, the pain. Loved the ending. My CP read it and said, the end of this can go.
And you know what? She was right. It was stronger with her suggestions. Much stronger. Just because you love something, don’t be afraid to change it or, if it won’t submit, cut it. Ruthlessly.
So what does this mean if I’m willing to edit something continually and that means cutting and replacing whole sections but I won’t just cut an entire book? The characters. I can’t just force my characters into a box and never see them again. They had a story to be told and I’ll keep working at it until I get it right.
Keep at it. Don’t give up. Set your work aside and gain some distance on it. And keep editing!
Oh, look 2 posts in 1 day.
You’ll notice the new name at the top. Yeah, decided to go with the pen name. Not hiding the real me, just figured I’d get the pen name out there so people didn’t get confused when Jess Dawson disappeared 
Oh, I’m on Twitter, now, too, thanks to a fabulous class by ARWA’s Sique. Tweets will be on my homepage, unfortunately, not here, as wordpress doesn’t play well with Twitter (and if I’m wrong, someone please tell me how to fix it!)
Thanks Sique!
Fly Tennis.
Anyone who has ever spent a summer in Maine understands about insane blackflies. They’re everywhere and there is no stopping them. Imagine that times ten, and you’ve got an idea what the flies are like in Mosul. Not only are they little suicide bombers determined to drive you mad with their incessant buzzing, they are also big enough to carry away a Chihuahua.
Enter the great American pass time: fly tennis. The ingenious folks who live in this part of the world have electrified tennis rackets that light up like a doggone fireworks show when you zap a gnat. I can’t imagine what zapping a horse fly (or are they camel flies over here?) is going to be like. It might crash the already fragile power grid.
So that’s what’s new and exciting from Mosul.
So it’s been a year and some change since I decided that I was going to try and sell my books. I immediately wrote the end and fired that first query letter (garbage) off to agents everywhere, convinced they would grab my book and I would be on my way.
Ah, delusions of grandeur. Anyone who hasn’t started on this journey, let me tell you, you better have thick skin. Rejection is painful and often and sometimes, it really hurts. We won’t discuss how many queries I’ve sent out as that would clue the world into how many rejections I’ve gotten. Someday when I’m published, I’ll write an article about getting published the hard way. The way I’ve done it.
First, I never listen. I have 2 fabulous critique partners who both said, mmm, not yet. Don’t query yet its not quite there. Of course I queried. Of course I was rejected. I’m not one of those writers who search every query looking for why oh why didn’t they love it. I can honestly look back at my first round or six of queries and say, yeah, I needed to get rejected.
And that’s okay because the rejections eventually stopped being form letters and started coming with comments. Something like, you’re really on to something, or your work is timely and compelling. So with a few well received comments, I went back to the drawing board (or the blank Scrivening, as it were) and kept going.
I recently sent my newest query letter to an amazing author who shall remain nameless and she was over the moon about it. Her excitement on my pitch for The Last Sunrise has me pretty excited and as it waits in the queue for its round of editing/revisions, I’m feeling encouraged. I told my husband at chow that this year, I was going to do it. I was going to get an offer this year and I was going to call my dream agent and say, I have an offer, can we work together?
Hey, a girl’s got to dream right? Because I want to build my writing career over the next 8 years, so that when retirement strikes, I can tell the Army that its been a fun ride and can settle down to write full time and be a stay at home mom (those of you that know me, don’t laugh, it could happen and Wolf, you’re not getting any masterful secrets here:).
No matter what people tell you, writing is hard work. The first words you put on a page will not be the words you end up selling, I can almost promise you that. Its a very rare person that sells their first book. Writing involves editing, revising, rereading, editing some more and finally, when you get it just how you like it, you have to kill your darlings to meet a page limit.
But I honestly don’t know what I did with myself before I started writing. I love it. I love that thrill of a new idea that sparks a novel and the race to the finish as I type the end. I finally found something else that fits me as good as the army.
The written word.
Now let’s see if I can find an editor to agree:)
Hi Y’all
Quiet day today. Guest Blogging over at Lisa Pietsch’s blog, a fellow RomVet writer. Check out her website, as well: http://www.LisaPietsch.com
Jess
I’ve been doing my family’s taxes for several years now and never before have I been so afraid of being audited. I asked Turbo Tax to review my taxes 2 (and paid for it each time) just to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I’m glad I paid for the service (might have been a good idea to sit down with a CPA but hey, Iraq, people).
Anyway, I’ve learned a lot on my never ending journey otherwise known as this years taxes. I’ve learned that I’m not, actually, making it up. I kept receipts for EVERYTHING and all I have to say is thank goodness for emailed receipts or I’d just quit and not even bother. But all of the writing deductions are legit, even if the deductions are significantly more than I made last year writing. (Here was my biggest surprise, I did actually bring in money. Teeny tiny amount, but money did indeed come in).
I’ve posted a couple of links for writers below but the bottom line is this: If you are actively seeking publication, you are in business. As such, you will have business expenses. Don’t write off that trip to Mexico, however, unless you can prove you were there researching the mating habits of dolphins off the west coast for the great american novel but you can write off trips to Austin to meet with your favorite local writer’s group (Austin RWA ROCKS).
All in all, be honest and be detailed and you’ll be okay. Of course, I say this having spent the better part of 5 days now, screwing around with these things and I’m still not done (so much for record keeping) BUT after a sleepless night, I can honestly say, my expenses are legit.
here’s hoping the IRS agrees.
Links below provide insightful information but if you have any doubts, find a tax professional who specializes in writer’s and performing artist’s needs.
Good luck!
http://www.go-publish-yourself.com/articles/writing-related/thibodeauxp.php
http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/tax_aspects.html
http://www.artstaxinfo.com/writers.shtml
I’ve always been touched by Taps, the single bugler alone in the distance at military funerals. Standing at the airfield a few nights ago, I had a profound realization. The US Flag.
Now as a soldier you would think the flag would have always been something I’ve been proud of and I have been. But now its personal. Not because I was great friends with the soldiers we’ve lost so far. But because we’ve lost soldiers. People I’ve known and at the very least respected for serving their country during a time of war when most people won’t.
So when the coffin, bearing the US Flag was carried onto that C-17, it dawned on me. People who burn the flag are entitled to their Free Speech rights. But what about free speech tells people to be so virulently offensive? Has anyone who’s ever lit a match beneath the Red White and Blue thought about the men and women who have died to give them that right? Do they care?
Having stood and saluted that flag, knowing another soldier was on their final flight touched me in a way that I can’t fully explain. As a soldier, I might have to defend someone’s right to burn a flag. That doesn’t mean I won’t lose my damn mind if I ever see it in person.
Well, another book down. Don’t get excited, Spiral Out was half finished and needed editing and about 45K words in order to be put in the waiting to be edited pile. So that’s the exciting news on the writing front.
In other news, all the school supplies have gone down to the company that’s pushing them out to Iraqi kids. So for everyone who has contributed, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Its hard, sometimes to have a lot of compassion for people over here, but at the end of the day, if we really want to win this war, we have to start with the children. So again, you have my thanks and the knowledge that you’ve been part of something larger than yourself.
Thank you.
Scrivener was the writing software that I lusted for before I even knew how to spell revisions. Okay, not really, but I wrote my first three books in Word, which was adequate but somewhat challenging when it came to rearranging huge chunks of text and major revisions (which on my first book, there were about 6 before it reached the version its in now).
Five books later, and Scrivener is still a writer’s best friend. I don’t claim to know all of the features and getting used to writing in sections was a paradigm shift for me, but for the better. And the coolest feature, I just discovered today. I can now color code my notes on the side bar based on who’s POV it’s in, which is a super cool feature I’ve been dying for.
Scrivener also has the note card feature, which allows you to outline on note cards and view them like a story board. Then the notecards transform into text segments for when you start writing. If you’re an outliner (which I am not) this is a great feature. The other cool feature is the Edit Scrivenings, which combines all the segments into one, so you get the continuity I used to have in Word. It tracks your word count per session, which is awesome for the daily writing challenge from the Austin RWA.
If you’re serious about writing, Scrivener is the way to go. I tried several other programs and was not impressed. Scrivener is a perfect fit.
Alas, it only works on a MAC, so unfortunately PC users will have to shift gears to another program. But Literature and Latte offers recommendations for PC users, so all is not lost.
So that’s my writing nugget for today. I’m almost done with a book I’d started during LAST March’s writing challenge and had set aside for revisions on that darn first book…which is still clinging to life, despite my efforts to put it under the bed…
Scrivener was the writing software that I lusted for before I even knew how to spell revisions. Okay, not really, but I wrote my first three books in Word, which was adequate but somewhat challenging when it came to rearranging huge chunks of text and major revisions (which on my first book, there were about 6 before it reached the version its in now).
Five books later, and Scrivener is still a writer’s best friend. I don’t claim to know all of the features and getting used to writing in sections was a paradigm shift for me, but for the better. And the coolest feature, I just discovered today. I can now color code my notes on the side bar based on who’s POV its in, which is a super cool feature I’ve been dying for.
Scrivener also has the note card feature, which allows you to outline on note cards and view them like a story board. Then the notecards transform into text segments for when you start writing. If you’re an outliner (which I am not) this is a great feature. The other cool feature is the Edit Scrivenings, which combines all the segments into one, so you get the continuity I used to have in Word. It tracks your word count per session, which is awesome for the daily writing challenge from the Austin RWA.
If you’re serious about writing, Scrivener is the way to go. I tried several other programs and was not impressed. Scrivener is a perfect fit.
Alas, it only works on a MAC, so unfortunately PC users will have to shift gears to another program. But Literature and Latte offers recommendations for PC users, so all is not lost.
So that’s my writing nugget for today. I’m almost done with a book I’d started during LAST March’s writing challenge and had set aside for revisions on that darn first book…which is still clinging to life, despite my efforts to put it under the bed…
