Nadia Lee :: Paranormal Romance Writer

status: I feel awesome today! Weather’s finally cooling down some. W00t!

Last night Hero Material and I went out. I was feeling restless because I was stuck on WIP. I had the basic story arc for my h/H, but I had no idea what was going on with my villain. After weeks of tinkering with the story, I was getting mighty frustrated.

So as we were sitting at a bar, I kept thinking about my story and suddenly blurted out, “Do you think you can salt human heads? You know, to preserve them for several years so you can give them to someone as presents?”

Hero Material looked totally grossed out. The piece of chicken between his chopsticks stopped moving toward his mouth, and he stared at me with a what-the-heck-are-you-talking-about expression on his face.

Oh that poor man.

But that little thing — salted human heads — got me thinking about other possibilities that I hadn’t considered. Some members of Romance Divas gave me some pointers on how to preserve human heads as well. Special thanks to Kim Knox and Ayla for fabulous suggestions.

P.S. I’m glad nobody at the bar spoke English. Otherwise somebody might have called the police.

status: I’m still jet-lagged and having a very nasty reaction to Oil of Olay Quench soap. This makes me sad since the soap does make my skin soft, but my arms and legs aren’t happy.

I just had an epiphany about my WIP as I was fast-drafting. Some part of me knew I had all the right events in the draft so far, but another part of me knew something was totally messed up. I just didn’t know exactly what.

Well, as I was working through another scene and another stilted and awkward interaction between my h/H, I realized that I had the dynamics between h/H all wrong. No wonder their romance is going nowhere more than eighty pages into the story.

Now I have to go back and toss out most of the story. Though it’s going to be a lot of work to rewrite it, I’m totally excited now. Plus, I’m only on my first draft. Better now than later.

I :wub: my Muse.

Since August 16, I’ve written over sixty pages. That’s a good thing. Today was hard particularly because I was tired — sleep-deprived from cat allergy, traveling, packing, etc. — and the part I was working on felt wrong and I had to stop to think it over. The blocked scene is entirely from the hero’s POV, but I’m still not getting any sense of his voice or character yet. Another thing is that I’m waffling between 1st person present POV and 3nd person past POV. I’m hoping to figure it out before I finish this draft.

I’m leaving the States tomorrow, bright and early, and I plan to work on the project on my flight to Japan. Can’t wait to see everyone in Japan again, including my hamsters!

I’m still struggling with the ninth chapter from All the King’s Women. Nothing’s happening!!!!! My h/H brood, brood, brood, eat, brood, brood, brood, brood. I want to delete the entire chapter or just pretend that everything’s fine in it, but I know better. Ch. 9 shows the aftermath of my h/H’s first love scene. I can do better than having my h/H brood.

Another thing I noticed as I revised — I used different spellings for the same thing. *sigh* Usually they’re for words that do not exist in ours. So I made a vocab list in Excel and sorted it alphabetically. I haven’t realized this until I put them on the paper (or on my trusty computer screen) but I have fifty-five world-specific terms.

I finished reading Butcher’s Small Favor. Very very good, although the middle part felt a bit slow. Also read Cole’s Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night and Rich’s Free-Range Chickens.

On my own writing front — I figured out what’s been bugging me about the second quarter of the book. There are two sex scenes, and they’re so…dry.

What I mean is that the characters are doing this and that, but very little emotions are coming through. My characters have a lot of history together, so the scenes rang false when I reread them for the sheer lack of feelings from both of them. A lot of missed opportunities.

I also decided to add a couple of short scenes to advance the main subplot (the court intrigue part). They’re all new and feature secondary characters. I think they’ll add a bit more to the subplot because currently the book’s about 85% romance.

After dinner I spent about ten minutes jotting down notes on my next project — a futuristic paranormal romance. I can’t decide if I want to write it in 1st person or not. The heroine is snarky and slightly eccentric, but I think the snarky 1st person narrator is a bit of a cliché now. I wonder if her voice can come through just as clearly in 3rd person.

Hmmm.

Jennifer alerted me to WIP Wednesday, and I figured, why not?

All the King’s Women’s still unfinished. I’m working on the revision. It’s taking so much more time than I expected. Probably because I was stooopid and gave myself less than one month to wrap up the revision (don’t do this!).

The 1st draft came out strong, and it has all the plot elements, etc. I need. The thing I need to do now is focusing on smoothing things out, adding key elements such as body language, vocal cues, world-building details, etc. without boring readers. So sometimes it takes me days to go through a chapter and make all the changes on the hard copy, then implement them on my soft copy. When I do the latter, I go over my notes again and make sure they still make sense. (Sometimes I think of something even better than my original notes. )

Agent hasn’t seen any of the drafts. I haven’t sent her anything except my old synopsis. I want to make the manuscript as clean as possible before I send it to her, mostly because I feel very embarrassed when people read my early drafts. But another reason is that I don’t want her to feel “burned out” from reading one too many drafts. I get fatigued when I read multiple versions of the same story. I noticed this when I was in a crit group, and this was one of the reasons why I told people I don’t read 1st drafts. I’m assuming that other people feel the same way, and if I’m wrong to assume so, er…do let me know. LOL.

mood: optimistic about the future
currently working on: All the King’s Women outline; I have it almost figured out…!
currently reading: Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs

2008 was long and difficult yet surprisingly interesting and rewarding as well.

On the writing front, the year started off with selling a book to Samhain so that’s always fantastic. But the biggest accomplishment is of course signing with an agent. I also left a critique group, but I think in a way it was inevitable. I do miss many of the writers I met there. Oh, and I have a new pretty website.

On to the financial matters — my mom lost a ton of money thank to subprime. I wish she’d listened to me when I asked her to sit tight for another year before investing in the funds she was interested in. When you hear about banks raking in record profit from issuing more and more subprime loans, which are by nature very risky, you know there’s something fishy going on, and that it’s going to fall when weaker real estate markets start to lose their value one by one. I started the year with a ton of debt, but my venture investment paid off right before Christmas, so I’m starting the year with no debt (except the mortgage I have on my house) and some extra cash.

Talk about strange since I never expected to get any payment from the investment, given what’s going on in the market.

My writing goals for 2009 are:

1. Complete two manuscripts. I think I figured out what’s wrong with All the King’s Women and Nine. W00t!
2. Read 52 books. Fiction, non-fiction, it doesn’t matter. I just need to read to get more ideas and to recharge. I noticed that I didn’t read all that much during the latter half of 2008, and it really affected my creativity.
3. Take time off! I’m absolutely terrible at taking time off and relaxing. I always feel like I have to work or else. Of course this is unsustainable, and I do burn out and can’t write for a month or two. Very unproductive. So I’m forcing myself to take two days a week off, along with major holidays, etc. Oh, I’m also making myself go to the gym three times a week at least.
4. Read 2 how-to books (this does not count toward my goal #2) or take two online classes. I already signed up for a January class on how to not sabotage myself. I’m also eying another class on line edits because I think I can benefit from it.
5. Write 2 blog posts a month. I’m terrible at blogging because I just forget at times. So I resolve to do better this year.
6. Stop looking for and/or seek crit partners / groups. It’s really not that I think I’m too good for feedback, but it takes a lot of time and energy to find a good crit group, and I’ve decided (after a long and careful consideration) that ROI would be better if I stick with the beta readers I have right now and spend the time I would’ve used to find good crit groups / partners on reading and taking classes. (BTW — this doesn’t mean I don’t want any CPs or anything if one happens to come my way, but I just won’t be actively looking for them either.)
7. Evaluate and identify all not-helpful-anymore loops, groups, etc. Resign from them by Jan 31. This is a must since I decided that I don’t have time for them. I stayed with most of them because you “have to network” but I had to wonder networking isn’t about being in a group that sucks up all your time but gives very little in return. I should know better (or else my management consulting professor would send me a stern note saying she taught me better than this).

How about everyone else? How was your 2008 and what are your goals for 2009?