Moonlight Madness

It’s no secret that I hate the working title on Bree and Mike’s story, “To Catch a Wife.” I blogged about it way back in May.

Last night, inspiration struck as I drove to the grocery store. I thought I’d found a perfect replacement: “Virgin and the Tramp.” A play on “Lady and the Tramp” … a description of the heroine and hero … perfect, right?

Not so much, apparently. When I posted the suggestion in my Facebook status, it was almost universally panned. One of my friends, someone I went to high school with, said it sounded like two lesbians. I have nothing against gay romances …. however, I did not write one, so I don’t want the title to make it sound like that’s what it is. I was thinking of Mike as the tramp (at least in everyone else’s mind. He works hard to maintain that image!)

Another of my friends said she’d pick up a book with the first title, but not the second.

So “Virgin and the Tramp” doesn’t play well in the Heartland.

Knowing that, I went back to the drawing board … again. “To Catch a Wife” was a decent title for the original draft of the book, in which Mike spent a good portion trying to convince Bree he wanted to marry her (because he thinks she’s pregnant, which she’s not). That still happens, but the book’s focus has shifted a bit, focusing more on Mike’s journey from pseudo-playboy who uses his bad-boy image to push away girls he doesn’t think he deserves to guy who knows he not only deserves but needs the love of a good woman.

Again, I started toying with the words I’ve been kicking around for months: mirror, image, playboy, virgin (because the heroine is one). I’d been down this road many times before and came up dry. However, the thought crossed my mind that Mike moonlights as a stripper — and a new perfect title was born: “Moonlight Madness.”

At first, I thought, “No way.” But it quickly grew on me. I walked through the parking lot to my car thinking, “That’s not bad.”

I think I even said it aloud: “That’s pretty good, actually.”

Why? Well, Breanne has harbored a crush on Mike, a coworker, since she started working at the paper … but she’s resigned herself to being just friends. As the story opens, she and her roomates are at a bachelorette party at the local strip club. She’s enjoying the show despite herself — until she discovers Mike’s the masked man shaking his junk at her.

Madness sets in and she can’t stop fantasizing about Mike. (She’s only a virgin, not dead!) When they get snowed in on assignment with one hotel room between them, she gets drunk and screws up the courage to give him her virginity (even though she knows it’s a bad idea). Mike, who’s sworn never to get involved with another virgin, doesn’t handle it well when he discovers he’s just taken it … and they spend weeks not speaking until Mike, who has a bad habit of eavesdropping, overhears what he thinks is Bree telling her former roommates (both of whom are now married) she’s pregnant. (She’s not.) Guiltily, he flashes back to that drunken night … yep. No condom. That’s what three hours of foreplay and a six-pack’ll do to a guy. But despite the image he goes to great lengths to create, he has old-fashioned values. So he sets out to seduce Bree back into his life. (Thus the original “To Catch a Wife” title.)

Dirty little secret

Every few months, it wallops me upside the head.

What is it, you ask? Nothing good, that’s for sure. It’s the fear that, even after years of writing — and getting a degree in journalism, I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

The familiar foe hit me again this weekend. My local RWA chapter, NARWA, hosted Erin Quinn for morning and afternoon workshops.

After lunch, she talked about creating a setting so strong that it’s really a character. (Think the storms in “Wizard of Oz” or the jungle in “Jurassic Park,” she said.)

The comment that stuck with me most was this: “If at the end of the scene, you could pluck the players and dialog out and plant them anywhere else without some major work, you haven’t done your job.”

Uh-oh. If that’s true, I’m in trouble. Many of my characters’ conversations — witty, laugh-packed chats — take place in restaurants or other standard “date” places … generic, could-be-anywhere places.

I think this is where my training in journalism serves me ill. When you’re writing a news story, you relay quotes and  facts … not take note of how birds flitted past overhead while your source was speaking, or how his eyes were the exact same shade of periwinkle as his sweater.

Heck … a journalist probably wouldn’t even use “periwinkle.” Don’t use a $10 word when a 10-cent one (blue) gets the point across just as well.

As a result, my prose is relatively straightforward. “He laughed.” “She wrinkled her nose.” “He bolted upright so fast he nearly fell out of his hammock.”

You get the idea.

My GH entries may need more help than I think. Good thing I still have some time to make ’em shine.

I did it

It’s not Monday, but I finally got around to doing what I said I would: I submitted two queries on “Beauty and the Ballplayer.”

Now, I wait … and continue to work on perfecting the GH entries … and write some more on Bethany & Cody’s story.

For some reason, I’m finding it hard to focus just on the Golden Heart entries. Seems that, this year, I don’t have nearly as much work to do. Last year, I had to do some substantial editing and rewriting on Brad & Erin’s tale.

This time around, I have decent synopses written for both my entries, and the entries themselves are in pretty good shape.

Or maybe I’m just getting too cocky … 😉

Silly stumbling block

One of the goals I set out at our July NARWA meeting was to send at least two queries on “Beauty and the Ballplayer.”

Well, it’s still not done, even though the meeting is a week away. What’s stopping me?

It’s ridiculous, really. I keep telling myself (rather stupidly) that if I submit a query now, and they like it (really LIKE it), I won’t be eligible for the Golden Heart.

See? I told you it was ridiculous.

Really. What would be better in the long run? Becoming a published author or entering the Golden Heart again (and potentially not winning a darn thing)?

So first thing Monday morning, I’m sending out those two queries — one directly to Harlequin, since it’s a category novel, and one to an agent who represents such things. (I just need to check my list to see which ones do.)

What inspires me?

You often hear writers say their story ideas come from the strangest places.

I’m not so sure that’s true. Ideas are all around us … all we have to do is open our eyes (and ears) to the possibilities.

The initial idea for “Blind Date Bride” came from a news story I heard on the radio back when I still lived in Logansport, Indiana. I first wrote its opening scene as a one-act play. I’m not sure if it ever got produced by the Logansport theater company, because I moved away before the one-act festival.

But once the idea lodged itself in my brain, the story was too good to ignore. I fleshed it out beyond the church basement, where the hero and heroine argue with their respective friends (who entered them in a wedding contest even though neither of them were in the market for a spouse ‚ even a temporary one). I put them (reluctantly) in the same apartment for 90 days, fully expecting some hairy situations to come up. I gave them pasts and a future (together).

My current WIP, “Trouble in Paradise?”, features the best friends from Kari & Damien’s story. They actually started dating at Kari & Damien’s fake wedding — and got more action on the wedding night than our hapless bride and groom. When one of the first people to read “Blind Date Bride” said, “Bethany and Cody should have their own story”, my imagination was off and running.

My first manuscript, “Operation Snag Mike Brad,” was inspired by my crush on a coworker (who became the basis for pseudo-playboy Mike James). Cassie & Dustin’s and Bree & Mike’s stories grew from that first MS, though they’ve both taken on lives of their own beyond the original story (at least I hope they have).

“Operation Snag Mike Brad” also inspired the story I plan to write for this year’s NaNoWriMo. It’s the story of Brad’s brother, Kenny, who turns up at Erin’s first Kingston family dinner with a fake fiancee in tow. (The fake-out’s his desperate attempt to get his matchmaking Ma off his back.)

I honestly can’t remember where the ideas for Meg & Matt’s or Drew & Lainy’s stories came from. (The character of Drew is loosely based on another guy I once worked with, so he probably gave me a germ of inspiration.) His story is set in a fictional high school on the other side of the (also fictional) major town in my first three manuscripts. Meg & Matt’s story is the only one set where I live now, Arizona.

On the drive through New Mexico while I was on my summer vacation I had an idea from a road sign, compounded by something I saw on the side of the road a few miles later. It’s still a nebulous, unformed idea, but I jotted it down. Maybe it’ll develop into something more … and maybe not. But at least it’s a possibility.

Heck, I even had an idea when I heard Gary Coleman had died. I haven’t done a lot of development on it, either … but it kind of fits with my other TV-related stories.

OK … that’s a little weird. Maybe story ideas DO come from the strangest places, after all.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve gotten a story idea?

Weekend update

Unlike the crew from “Saturday Night Live,” I don’t have a lot to report: I’ve been reading/editing most of the weekend.

That means I’ve done no new writing … and I’m waffling about entering a third MS into the Golden Heart. A couple of nights ago, I started to wonder if I should enter Bree & Mike’s story. (I reread it, and I still think it’s pretty good. I LOVE Mike James. Visually, he’s beautiful and he’s interesting on the page — sordid past he keeps to himself, potentially questionable morals.)

Right now I’m leaning toward not, though. It’d be in the same category with Meg & Matt, the story I think is stronger … It had better be, since I’ve been honing my craft between the two. Of course, a lot of what I really like about Bree & Mike’s story is the stuff I went back and added in this spring, when I was expanding it to the proper length. (It started out at about 38,000 words.)

Besides, I’d have to write a synopsis AND come up with a better title. The frontrunner, thanks to my Facebook clan, is “She’s Snow Virgin” … but I don’t think even that works. (Better than “To Catch a Wife,” though, which is what I’ve been calling it.)

Does SNL even do “Weekend Update” anymore? Working most Saturday nights, I haven’t had a chance to watch in years.

On editing

I wrote this post for the Editor’s Note in the Sept./Oct. issue of the NARWA newsletter, High Country Highlights.  However, I liked it too much not to share it here on the blog, too.

Since I’m trying to get in edit-mode for the Golden Heart, the subject is dear to me right now. Here goes:

When it comes to progress on my writing, July and August have pretty much been a wash for me.

A vacation from the day job ended up being a break from writing, too. This happened despite the fact that I toted a big binder full of “Blind Date Bride” with me.

It never even left the (very heavy) suitcase. And the few times I found myself with computer time, I spent it catching up on my blog reading (and writing) … and, of course, Twitter.

How did the world ever get along without new tweets to read every few minutes?

At the risk of sounding like a fogey, I’ll say we were all probably a lot less distracted.

But change is good, so we all need to embrace the technology of the future. Right?

Right.

I’ve recently discovered that I don’t like change all that much. Oh, I suppose I should have realized this about myself years ago, when I balked every time the school cafeteria tried to serve me waffles and sausage for lunch … or when the thought of changing the way we do something at work makes me grumble both loudly and repeatedly.

Well, I finally got it: Given a choice, I prefer things to stay the way they are. Even when things aren’t quite perfect, I’d rather not alter them. Better the devil you know …

I suspect my aversion to change is also why I have trouble editing my writing.
Of course I know there’s room for improvement, because there’s always room for improvement.

But where I have no trouble thinking of ways to change someone else’s prose, I often come up empty when I try to improve my own. Sure, I might tweak a word here and there, but I rarely do a complete overhaul.

I like to think it’s because I spend enough time crafting sentences the first time that they already sing.

In reality, I’m probably just being a little lazy and a lot resistant to change.

I’ll say it again, mostly to convince myself: Change is good.

As I delve into preparing for the 2011 Golden Heart contest, I’m going to keep that in mind.

Do you have any fail-safe, foolproof editing tips to share?

Handy tool

In preparing “Beauty and the Ballplayer” to send to the friends who’ve volunteered to read it, I found something handy to share. It’s a free service that converts Word documents into pdf files.

Nice, eh? And so much easier than the way I thought I’d have to do it … laying it out in an InDesign file (all 205 pages of it!) and then converting from there.

For better or worse, it’s in the hands of three volunteers. I can’t wait to see what they think of it.

Putting it out there

I know my writer friends are busy — some of them getting ready for the same contest I plan to enter. As such, they’re probably too busy to read anything of mine. (And they could well be my competition!)

With that thought in mind, I posted on Facebook that I was looking for friends to give me feedback on “Beauty and the Ballplayer.”

That was at about 1 a.m., and I had no idea what to expect in the way of responses … So imagine my surprise when I checked my page this morning and had not one, not two but FIVE takers.

How exciting! Now I’m waiting for them to e-mail me so I can send them an e-copy of the story.

This is the tale I got a little feedback on from NARWA members at our July meeting. (That was the day we read through the first three pages of several stores submitted by members. It was anonymous, but we really didn’t have much trouble guessing whose was whose … I think we all confessed to writing our stories in the car on the way home. Ah, carpools!)

Still, I’m eager to see what other people think of it. Hopefully they’ll be able to point out any plot holes big enough to drive a truck through … Although I don’t think there are any of those.

My ambitions are showing

Now that the 2010 Golden Heart winners have been announced (none of them NARWAns, alas), it’s time to start gearing up for the 2011 competition.

That is exactly what I’m planning to do. My request for judges arrived in my e-mail inbox a few days ago, and I think I’ll do it this year … if I can figure out what category to volunteer to judge.

Since I want to enter in TWO categories myself this year, it makes judging a bit more problematic.

You read that correctly: I want to enter “Blind Date Bride” in single title contemporary and “Beauty and the Ballplayer” in series contemporary.

Am I crazy? Perhaps. But I prefer to think of it as exposing my ambition. If I enter two different MS in two separate categories, I have twice the chance of finaling, right? 😉

Of course, this means poor Bethany and Cody will have to take a back seat — perhaps even before they make it to the doggone island — while I start editing my entries.

I plan to devote the month of September to one of them and October to the other. That gives me plenty of time to prepare both entries before the start of NaNoWriMo on Nov. 1.

Hmm … did I mention my ambitions are showing? Maybe I should go find something to cover myself … 😉