Jessica Scott

Last week, Roxanne St. Claire had a fantastic post over on Murder She Writes about her muse, or lack thereof. Her position is that the muse isn’t real but a kick in the pants friend to lean on is what most authors depend on.
I agree.

Mostly.

I have a muse. It’s not something that’s separate from me or a being all its own that shimmers around my brain and tells me what to write. But I most definitely have a muse. Mine has been decidedly crankly lately. Last week, I posted about needing to refill my well. My inspiration seemed to have run out on my military romances for a minute. I honest to God tried all of my tricks for getting back into my story after the revisions for my agent.  I was stuck. I simply ran out of I give a damn for that particular book (not the one I sent to my agent, the other one)

When it got right down to it, I’d pulled a whole lot of military angst out of my well over the last few months. I rewrote After the War, completely, from scratch. I rewrote Burning Out, compleletly, from scratch. Both projects were easily enough rewritten because I opted to keep nothing from the previous incarnations except the characters and even most of those were gone or revamped. I started writing Derrick’s story, which I posted the opening pages on my blog. That was dark and deep and I know exactly where it’s going but I just can’t seem to get into his head right now.

I feel guilty on those days that I’m not writing but I really had nothing to give. So you know what?

I put them away. I set aside the military stuff for a time. I figured my agent has a solid copy now on the first book and my CP has the second book. Book three can go on the shelf for a little while until I get refilled. In the mean time, my paranormal has been talking to me.
Actually, it’s been whispering to me out of the darkness, which makes for a seriously creepy walk to the showers at midnight in the pitch black that is the Mosul night. But its been occupying my thoughts and so I started rereading. Opened the word document so that I can comment like I was CPing someone else’s work. And yeah, it needs  ton of work. But the cool part is that I’ve brainstormed what happens in the next two books, which makes the first book easier to reform into something somewhat coherent.

The very best part, though, that made my muse incredibly happy was finding new music. It’s dark and deep and EXACTLY what I need to be listening to in order to write this paranormal.
My muse is not a separate thing but it is tied into certain habits and the one habit guaranteed to make me and my muse deliriously happy enough to crank out serious revisions is good tunes. Tunes that I can’t get out of my head are the perfect thing for me to write to. I don’t know why but there is a direct correlation to my having music stuck in my head and my level of productivity. NOT creativity, because that comes with the productivity. But when I get something stuck in my head, it’s a good sign that I’ve got some serious word counts coming.

Thank you Signs of Betrayal for a rocking good album and for kick starting my muse!

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You’ve heard of this before. LTC Grossman mentions it in the groundbreaking books On Killing and On Combat. He states flat out that you can go back to the well as much as you need to but if you don’t take care of yourself, when you need it, the well will be dry. You’ll have nothing to pull from when the poo and the fan have made babies and your in a bad spot. It’s critical for our soldiers to get enough rest, to eat well and stay hydrated.

 Spiritual fitness comes into this as well and that means taking a break from it all and being able to reset and recharge. R&R from Iraq is mandatory for ALL personnel, including the generals who make major decisions on US operations around the globe. It needs to be. For we as soldiers have a tendency to keep going until we collapse, crash for a few then get back up and get back after it. If R&R was not mandatory, you’d see people willingly staying in theater for the entire year, working themselves to exhaustion every night. Eventually, they would break.

While the seriousness of the situation is not the same for me as writer, I’m feeling the effects right now of not wanting to write. Not even not wanting to. Can’t. Have tried. I’m completely and utterly sucked dry right now. I’ve got 3 books half written, well over the 60K mark. I’m trying to edit a fourth. And I have nothing left to pull from. I haven’t really written in days now. DAYS. The only time this year that I haven’t written was when I was on R&R or otherwise completely overcome by the day job.

Right now, I’ve got nothing. I’m wrung out. And I’m not even published yet.

I have to refill my well. I don’t know how much time it will take for that to happen. I don’t know how long the funk will last. But I’m reading. I’m thinking about the projects I need to finish so that they’re at least ready for when my agent asks for them. But I’m not writing. I’m exercising. Part of the problem is that I’ve been either sick or hurt for the last three weeks. It’s very frustrating for me. I spent half a week on pain meds and actually ended up laid up in bed (trust me: that NEVER happens, until it does). I still wrote then.

But now, I’m simply exercising and reading. I’m lifting weights and doing cardio. I’m not taking breaks from working out b/c I’ve been on a break and my body and my mind were suffering for it. I’m reading everything. I’m reading Roxanne St Claire b/c she’s a master at sexual tension and suspense. I’m reading Allison Brennan because I love her style. I’m reading Laura Kinsale because her emotional hits are the best out there. I’m reading Sherry Thomas and Laura Griffin. I’m going through about a book a day because all I’m doing is reading. I’m taking notes and marking pages where I can learn.

But mostly, I’m simply reading for enjoyment. Since 2007, I’ve written almost every day. When it was hard, my writing goal was 1000 words a day. Now, I shoot for 2000 because I know I can do it and because I have to do it. Since 2007, I’ve written 6 books, and that does not include complete rewrites of 3 or the 3 that I’ve started and put on the back burner.

All while being unpublished. I wrote and rewrote and crammed as much learning as I possibly could into every minute I had to myself because I want to be published. I want to write for a living. I want this and I want this badly so that in 8 years, I can join the ranks of the full time writers.

It’s worth the sacrifice but I’ve learned a valuable lesson. I need to take breaks.

Sometimes, I need to curl up on the couch and just watch a movie. Sometimes, I need to get a good nights sleep and go for a walk without trying to figure out my next plot points.

Sometimes, I just need to refill the well before it runs completely dry.

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My daughter turns 5 today. I wasn’t going to write about it because I’m taking it harder than I thought I was going to. You see, in order to be in Iraq and essentially give up on being a parent for a year, I’ve had to compartmentalize. I take all of my mommy stuff, my emotions, my thinking about my kids, anything at all that reminds me how bad it sucks to be in Iraq and miss everything like my kid’s first day at school, birthdays and every other milestone (though I’ve got to say, I’m glad my mom is dealing with my youngest’s potty training issues, thanks mom!) and put it all in a mommy box. I turn off the feelings and put them away. I don’t think about it. I stay busy. I try not to talk about my family with anyone other than my husband because at the end of the day, I just don’t want to talk about it.

But my mommy box has cracked open several times this year with mixed results. My fun little panic attack episode back when the swine flu first broke and I had just read The Shack was one example (seriously, reading about a guy who’s kid is murdered? Not good reading material for a mom who’s separated from her kids by oceans and deserts but that’s another post). Another was my daughter’s first day of school. I bawled like a baby and was pretty down the next day, too. All until I was able to move my mind to something else and put the lid back on my mommy box.

For those of you who’ve never left your families behind, you might be wondering how I can do it. It’s not a matter of how, it’s a matter of necessity. I have to stay busy or the sadness will eat away at me. When I talk to the kids, I try to make them laugh (I’m not very good at it but I try).

My oldest told me the other day on the phone that she wanted to be an author like me. I asked her if she wanted to write stories with me when I get home. We started talking about her story where a kitteh and a unicorn (I just typed uniform instead, think my fingers have muscle memory, much?) were playing tag. When I said the winner didn’t have to take a nap, she thought it was the funniest thing in the whole world. It felt good to have something to share, even with the distance and the space between us.

My mom sent me a bunch of her art work from school. On one of them was a note from her teacher. It said “I like how you put your name on your piece- that’s what writers do”. So not only does my kiddo want to be a writer (and I have to say, the secret part of me is thrilled that my kid looks up to me) but she’s got the courage to tell people she’s going to be a writer.

I hid my writing for the most part until I joined the Austin RWA. I still tend not to tell folks that I’m seeking publication. But my five year old has the courage to announce it to the world both that her mommy is a writer and that she wants to be like her mommy.

And that, folks, is worth any sacrifice.

Happy Birthday, baby. Mommy and Daddy will be home soon.

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I live with a procrastinator. When he was enrolled in his college courses, my darling husband would wait until the night before a paper was due, then expect me to sit up all night and help him write it, knowing I had to be up at the ass crack of dawn with the kids.

I love my husband but half way through his BS in Business, I started planning his time for his papers. It drove me absolutely insane that he could never seem to start these things prior to the night before. All my nagging in the world, setting outlook reminders and calendar dates accomplished nothing, except the invariably sleepless night working on his papers.

I do not suffer from procrastination. A soldier that works with me pointed out that I don’t take breaks. I go from one target to the next without stopping to take a breath. So its no wonder that I’m sitting over here in Iraq, knowing I’ve got to finish rewriting a book before I can say, yes, the first draft is actually finished now and instead, reading a magazine. My lack of recharging or taking a breath is catching up with me.

I have the opposite problem than many writers do but that’s not a good thing. Just because I dive into revisions and rip out an entire book in a week doesn’t mean I’m good at it. I’m sure I’ve driven my agent insane with the lack of thoroughness on my part and I’m working on skills to improve.

But what about the writer who is constantly behind deadlines or struggling to meet deadlines? Psychology Today has a great article entitled Escape Artists by Steven Kotler that talks about coping mechanisms for beating the dreaded P word.

1: “Counteract the irrationality of human nature”. Concrete rewards now are better and easier to grasp than future ones. So Mr Kotler suggests looking forward with concrete, vivid visualizations of the future reward. Make it seem more real to you than whatever it is that’s luring you away. Imaging how good you’ll feel to have that deadline met. Really visualize it, then start working toward it.

2. “Short Term Gain, Long Term Pain”. I struggle with this daily. I want ice cream. I want to be thin. The two are mutually exclusive yet, almost invariably I choose the short term goal. I must visualize the long term goal and reward and take steps to achieve it. In other words, put the cookie down. For writers, pick the pen up (or in my case, open up Scrivener!). Steps toward the goal are better than standing in one place.

3.  “Reduce Uncertainty”. How many times have you sat down to write only to realize that you’ve lost an hour of your precious time on Facebook and Twitter? Guilty as charged. Turn the internet off. Don’t check your email. Lock yourself in the bedroom so you don’t have to see the dirty dishes  but take steps to focus on the task at hand and do them.

4.  “Willpower.” Yeah, right. If only this were that easy. But willpower is like a muscle, according to Mr Kotler and in order for it to get stronger, one must practice. So sit down at your computer for an hour and write. Turn off the internet for One Hour. Focus. Remove the distractions. Soon, you’ll find yourself wondering where the time has gone when you’ve made it a daily part of your routine and your willpower will be stronger than ever.

I suck at will power and distractions. I deliberately write at work where I can’t access Twitter or many of the blogs that I enjoy reading. I get more done so that when I get to the CHU, I have built time in to screw off on the interweb (LOLcats is one my biggest time sucks). But when I get home and haven’t hit my word count for the day? It’s that much more frustrating and takes longer because the distractions are endless and alluring.
The bottom line is find something that works for you but recognizing that you have a challenge is the first part of solving the problem.

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I read a fascinating article today in Psychology Today regarding perceptions of self. This article, entitled Mixed Signals by Sam Gosling pointed out that there were four categories of how we see ourselves.

“Bright Spots are things known by you and by others” like political affiliation and whether your introverted or extroverted.

“Dark Spots are known neither by you nor other”. These things are deeply subconscious influences that provide unknown sources of motivations and behaviors.

“Personal spots are known only by you” such as how you feel about your job – no really feel – or personal phobias.

“Blind Spots are things known only by others”. These are the signals you send out in the world and have no idea that this is how other see you.

This article was absolutely intriguing on two levels for me, both as leader and as a writer. As a leader, the army teaches me that I must know myself. As a writer, I must know my characters. But according to Mr Gosling, there’s no way that I can truly know either one. On the one hand, it might be easier for me to know my characters b/c I’m creating them but is it truly easy for me to write a heroine who sees the hero as a flatulent douche bag when he sees himself as a sensitive lover? One way to use this information is to look at how your heroine does see the hero and vice versa. Many of the opening conflicts in romance novels start out because of miscommunication in exactly how the hero and heroine see the other person. Once they discover the true nature – the ‘personal spots’ as it were of the other person, then room for true love takes off.

This is a little too easy for me though because in real life, it is nearly impossible for people to look at the negative aspects of themselves. So if you’re going to write realistic characters, you have to find a way around the self delusion that a person maintains around them. For instance, there is a key leader in my company who honestly thinks he’s the best NCO in the company and that he’s looked up to and admired. He’s completely self deluded because the soldiers hate him, don’t respect him and think he’s a flatulence filled douche bag.

Why the disconnect? Because of the lies we tell ourselves. In my case, when my commander sat me down and told me that I was unapproachable, cold, not nice and too aggressive, I wasn’t surprised at all. For me, that was a sign that at least I wasn’t feeding myself a load of bullshit that I was some nice and kind mommy figure (even though I have those tendencies, they are the dominate ones that people notice until they get to know me). He seemed surprised, though, that I was not surprised by his assessment of me.

In writing, I struggle with having my characters NOT having the same lack of self delusion. Right now, I’ve got a character who honestly believes he needs to be deployed because that’s his entire purpose in life. He doesn’t realize that he’s staying deployed out of a deep seated guilt for what happened to him and his wife doesn’t know the reasons, either. Hence, their marriage is struggling. The major turning point in the story is going to be when he realizes how deep the level of self delusion has really been and the consequences his self delusion has had, both on him as a soldier and as a husband.

Mr Gosling offers tools to help people look at how the world sees themselves. There are apps on Facebook called the Honesty Box and the YouJust Get Me app, both of which are designed to help people see themselves how others see them. While you may never understand your dark spots, you may get a glimpse at the blind spots in your life.

As a writer, when you’re developing your characters, draw a box and label it with the four categories. See if you can fill them out. You may get key insights into your characters before you get 200 pages into a manuscript and realize you have no idea what your character’s motivation is.

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When I say military romance what do you think? I think a romance with military or former military characters. Apparently, when I say military romance, agents and editors are thinking something else. They’re thinking romantic suspense. Recently, I had a fantastic conversation with a fantastic Romantic suspense author about where my book fits in the market. When she read it, she was reading it like it was a romantic suspense but when I explained that it’s straight romance, she said it changed the way she looked at it.

What does this have to do with anything? It’s got to do with knowing where you fit. Which I apparently failed to do prior to sending my stuff out to the broader writing world

When I was pitching my books to agents, I was pitching with something to the effect of Suzanne Brockmann has written blah blah blah. So what I was doing was gearing agents up for reading this like it was a Suzanne Brockmann when in fact I write nothing like Suzanne Brockmann.

I don’t write R/S. In fact, I suck at it. Which means that when agents were looking at my stuff, they were expecting to see Suz and instead they saw what I was putting out there: straight romance.

It’s no wonder I was soundly rejected. So the lesson here is do your market research. What I discovered in my conversation with Roxanne was that there really isn’t a whole lot out there like my stuff, which can be really good, but if I use a pitch saying that I’m like so and so, I better make sure I’m sending the right message. Otherwise, it’s really bad.

So learn from this. Figure out where you fit in the market and be able to articulate that. Otherwise, you might be like me, banging my head against the wall.

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Until you’ve lived in the desert, you can’t really appreciate the little things. Last night, I was lying in bed and there was a rumbling in the distance. Rumblings over here in Iraq is usually a bad thing but I laid there and listened. Then the sweetest sound filled the little metal connex that is my living quarters. Rain started tapping on the roof, first a few drops and then a downpour. It only lasted a few minutes but the sound, the beautiful sound of rain hitting the roof was pure heaven. This morning when I walked outside, there was moisture in the air. The smell was instantly reminiscent of any morning back in the states after a night time deluge. The ground was wet, the air cool and crisp like fall. For a moment, I simply stood and breathed in the smell of something other than dirty, dusty air. Too often, we as writers get bogged down in describing a scene. For me, most of my readers will have never been to Fort Hood, so I find myself describing things and places that I take for granted. I get lost in the detail and on the reread, my CP always asks me: what’s important here. What does my reader need to know to anchor her in the scene. So just like this morning, when the smell of the rain was what I focused on, when I’m writing, I try to focus on the highlights. What’s the overwhelming sensation you’ll have in a bakery? Homemade scents. What about a flower shop? Bursts of color. When you’re describing a scene, don’t tell me about the shrubs unless it’s part of a bigger picture. Give me enough detail to anchor me there but not too much that I’d be skipping ahead to find out what happens next. But what was unique about the homemade scents in a bakery? Nothing. The reader expects it. What if you focused on the sounds of cooking? The clanging of pans from the back? Something different, right? Learn to describe the smell of the rain. The sound of it. Your reader expects you to tell her it’s wet. Find something different, something unexpected about the setting that makes your world yours and sets you apart from the other writers on the shelf to the left and right of it.

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Recently on an agent Rachel Gardiner’s blog, she posted a comment about an agent/writer relation that went south. The comments were especially interesting but here’s what I did not see from the point of the view of the writers and this ultimately why my agent is right.

A lot of comments sided with the writer, who was frustrated by a lack of progress on the submission front b/c the agent had asked for a lot of revisions multiple times. What I did not see (and I only read through about 23 Comments) was anyone telling the writer to take a deep breath and step back from their own work.  I read on posts all the time that so and so thinks this is brilliant but you know what? They were being nice. It wasn’t brilliant, it was crap but writers (trust me on this one, I know) are a sensitive lot of folks and telling someone their baby is ugly is really hard to do.

As a writer, the biggest challenge I have is slowing down enough to be able to see the flaws in my own projects. I work fast, which is not necessarily a good thing as there are many times when what I meant to come out from my fingers isn’t quite what my brain had in mind. So when my agent emailed me and said this book needs a little more tweaking, yeah I panicked. I have this deep-seated fear that she’s going to tell me to come back in a year or so after I learn to write.

But she hasn’t. Instead she’s spent time and effort on helping me make my book better, because you know what? Had I thrown a temper tantrum and whined about how it needs to go out now, it’s perfect, A, the book would have been rejected and B, my agent probably would have told me to pound sand. She knows the business, I don’t, hence the whole agent relationship. But what’s more is that my agent is known for having a fantastic editorial eye and that more than anything else is worth its weight in gold to me. I might have sent her a project that was 70 percent ready (honestly, I’d thought at the time it was more than that but again, writer has trouble with perspective) but right now, it’s a heck of a lot closer than it was the first time.

My agent is right, ultimately; in what she suggests for changes and in how she’s guiding my career. You don’t get a second chance at submissions (another painful lesson I learned) so when my agent says it needs more, I’m willing to dive back in and make it more.

If I could do it on my own, I wouldn’t need an agent and neither would you. So writers, if you feel yourself getting frustrated, take a deep breath. Sit back and honestly look at your stuff. If you really feel like your agent is jerking you around, then maybe its time for a move. But I’m willing to bet that if you take another look, slowly in my case, you’ll see room for improvement.

And that, my friends, is why my agent is right.

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I have a cycle of writing. Not a process like other authors talk about. Mine’s a cycle. I go through bursts of being able to knock out three, four even five thousand words in a very short amount of time during a day. It feels great to look back over my word count log and see the progress I make. Then there are other days when I’m absolutely stuck and can’t get to the next sentence let alone move the story forward. For me, these days are beyond frustrating because I know I’m capable of so much more. It’s irritating because as much as I have to write 2000 words per day to accomplish my daily target, on these days, I’m lucky to scratch out a thousand. These days usually only last a day or so. But lately, I’ve been stuck. I’m sure it’s not a lack of motivation, as I’m pretty damned excited that my agent has got me on the submissions schedule for this month. If anything should be motivating at this point, that should be (course, you’re talking about the girl who still gets goosebumps when she thinks she even HAS an agent but that’s another story). So what gives? I think, more than anything, I’m tired. At the end of the night, I’ve been going for 12-15 hours. I’m simply tired. I have to make time for physical activity, as my weight is a nearly constant challenge. I find myself frustrated that I can barely knock out 2000 words when in days past I was able to write so much more. This is a reality that I will simply have to accept: I have a real job and real responsibilities, I can’t sit and write 50 pages in a day until after I retire. So fatigue is part of it. Another part of it is that I’m just in that slump that I have in every project. Right about the 50,000 word mark, I usually hit a what the heck happens next slump that I struggle through. In this case, this slump happened to coincide with regular fatigue, exacerbating the problem. Inevitably, I’ll pull out of it. I’ll get a burst of energy or a spark of renewed vigor and my work pace will take off again. So I won’t panic about the writer’s block until I go weeks and weeks without writing. Then it will be time for a major reassessment. For now, I think it’s time for a nap.

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10. She’s a people person.

9. Her children must be so well polite and well mannered.

8. You have to guess what she’s thinking.

7. Her body language is confused, I can’t tell if she’s angry or happy.

6. She’s so cute and flirty.

5. She really doesn’t get her point across well.

4. She’s too much of a girly girl to be in the army.

3. She doesn’t tell me when I’m screwing up, she’s kind of vague and indirect.

2. She’s so polite, she never swears or loses her temper.

1. She’s so nice.

That is all…

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As a mom, nothing pushes my freak out button faster than a cry baby. I don’t know what it is but a crying baby triggers my mom reflex to where I need to pick it up and try to sooth it. This is a gut reaction that is seriously intense for me. Today at the gym, there was some movie on about a concentration camp in WWII. There was a baby that people were trying to hide from the guards. I was nearly in tears before I asked the gym personnel to change the channel.

Why such a strong reaction to a movie?

I think in part, it has to do with being away from my own kids. Knowing that there are times when my daughters are upset and I’m thousands of miles away is incredibly frustrating. It’s hard not being able to hold my kids. So there was that. Combine that emotion with the emotion of being unable to protect my kids which was triggered by the movie and we’ve got a recipe for a strong emotional reaction.

What’s this got to do with writing?

As a writer, I want to inspire strong reactions in my readers. I want them to care deeply about my characters to the point that when they laugh, my reader laughs. When my characters are hurting, I want my reader to hurt. So as a writer, this reaction I had intrigued me. Being able to analyze where the emotions came from will enable me in the future to pull from that emotional base and put it on paper. It might be in a future book, but knowing where my emotions came from will help me in the future.

If I’ve inspired a strong reaction in my reader, I will have connected with them in a way that all writers dream of. How often have you read a book that you just don’t care about the characters. Finding a way to connect deeply with your readers is a challenge for every writer because if the reader doesn’t care, they are less likely to pick up your next book or worse, not finish the current book.

So the next time you have a strong reaction to something, sit back and try to figure out why. The answers might surprise you and it’s something you can put in your writers’ ruck sack for future use.

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So here’s something I bet you’ll never see coming. There are people over here that I can’t stand. In my previous position, I had two key leaders, both females who were unable to perform their duties. One of those individuals told anyone who would listen that I simply didn’t like her and that I was targeting her and ‘being mean’. Yes those words were used (we’re in the ARMY people, but that’s another discussion).

Anyway, both of said individuals retained their jobs, despite their complete incompetence and despite the fact that their failure to perform negatively impacted an entire brigade’s ability to communicate. When I look at the situation, I see two soldiers who failed to perform. What my seniors see is that they’ve got a female being mean to two other females.

Are you kidding me? I wish.

How on earth does this relate to writing? It’s actually exceptionally applicable because guess who gets blamed for all most all wrongs in a romance novel? If you said the heroine, you’d be right on the money. So here’s my issue: If as a female officer, I am harder on other female soldiers, regardless of rank, does that impact how I view female characters in movies? Absolutely. The other interesting fact is that when women critique other people’s writing, they are harder on women than they are on male authors.

So what do we do about it? In real life, should we be ‘nicer’ to other women simply because our male counterparts refuse to hold them to the same standard that they hold men to? Should we cut our heroine’s some slack because maybe we can’t really say how we’d react in the same situation or maybe because she does something we completely wouldn’t do in the same situation?

I think it should be a little bit of both. Maybe, in real life, we should spend more time developing our fellow women. In both instances, I attempted to but then became over come by events. Not an excuse, a fact. Then both people stopped working for me, limiting my influence even further. A wonderful example of women supporting and mentoring others is my home RWA chapter in Austin. All one has to do is post a question and folks will be jumping up with the answer and trying to help. There are wonderful mentors in the group, all willing to offer advice from how they got through a similar situation.

In writing, all I can do is identify what drives my heroine and have her act true to her character. With any kind of luck, I’ll have portrayed the emotional stakes correctly so my readers will understand where she’s coming from.

The real world is always more difficult to get right than fiction. In fiction, I control what my characters do. But if I take too much control, I risk mixing up my heroine’s motivation and that, more than anything, will have readers throwing books at the walls

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I’m guest blogging today over at Unleash Your Story, a charity raising money for Cystic Fibrosis research. Please stop by and support a great cause.

http://unleashyourstory.com/2009/09/03/writing-through/

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