She interrupts me. I interrupt her. Elle A. Muse is unfortunately not amused…
Warning: Could get graphic!
Why, Cindy, why?
I talked about Southland yesterday, the new cop show on Thursday nights that’s replaced ER in the NBC line-up. Recently, someone mentioned to me that the problem with shows like Southland and ER is that they don’t show the boring parts, which could lead viewers to believe that cops and emergency room personnel spend their workdays consumed by adrenaline rushes. That these jobs are in fact 90% humdrum and 10% exciting, and those low points should be shown. Not just in the characters’ off-hours, but during their workdays as well.
This got me to thinking about the boring parts in fiction. One of the primary “rules” (okay, okay, guidelines) for writing novels is to leave out the boring parts (or strive to—I guess it’s a matter of perception). Readers’ eyes glaze over the boring parts, and when readers eyes glaze over, books get put down. We don’t want readers to fall asleep reading our books, so we skip writing the boring parts. Instead of “showing” (writing) the character eating, bathing, getting dressed, having a going-nowhere conversation with the grocery store bagger (hi, how are you, weather’s fine, don’t put the eggs on the bottom of my shopping cart. While you’re at it, don’t put my bread on the bottom, either. Are you listening? DON’T. PUT. EGGS. OR. BREAD. IN BOTTOMOFBLEEPINGCART and stackthreecasesofCoke on top. Never-freaking-ever. All right????)
Um, sorry.
You get what I’m saying, though? Unless the conversation furthers the story somehow (like sets the reader up for the possibilty that the bagger might wake up the next morning six feet under with cart wheels all over his face—and no one’s left him a little bell to ring to alert the gravediggers that he’s still alive either, heh heh), it doesn’t belong in the book. It’s boring.
Think of the movies that have put you to sleep. Likely, they’re packed with boring parts, too. The same holds true for TV. Showing the boring parts might be more realistic, but would viewers tune in? I think not.
(Quick quiz, how many people reading this are still awake?)
I participated in an interview recently along with 12 other romance writers including Allison Brennan, Rebecca York, and Kasey Michaels. The interview, Romancing the Genres, is now on-line at WOW! Women on Writing.
Please check it out if you get a chance. Penny makes a quick appearance. 😉
Thank you to Beth Daniels for inviting me to participate!
The writing hasn’t gone well this week. At first I thought I’d just hit a road block in my WIP. You know those days. Draft a scene, toss it out. Draft another. It sucks, too. Go to sleep. Wake up. Toss out second attempt and prepare to resuscitate the first.
That’s pretty much been my week. Mid-day Wednesday, I finally realized why. Turns out I’m sick. I’ve been in a writing frump ever since.
What’s a writing frump, you ask? It’s when your writing feels like a bedraggled housecoat. No matter how many times you wash it, even iron it, it’s still soiled and smelly and all-around mucky. You just want to MOVE PAST THIS PART. But it’s hard to move past the frumpy part when the frumpiness is caused by…well, you. Your crummy illness.
The good news is, I have an excuse. My writing sucks because I’m sick. I can’t be sick forever. I mean, it’s not like I’ve contracted the plague or anything, so I’m guessing I’ll feel better next week. And the writing better reflect that—or else! I will go nutsoid on my muse.
The super blagh part about all this is that I was making good progress toward Finishing the Damn Book. Now I’ve lost a week.
Ah, well. No looking back. It’s counter-productive. I’ll spend the weekend catching up on promo stuff and fulfilling other biz-of-writing commitments. And making sure I get better. Even if I have to lie on the couch in front of a blazing fire for hours while My Liege and Eldest Son attend to my every whim. Yes, even then.
How did your writing go this week?
It’s that time of the week again. What are you up to? In your writing life? Non-writing life? Sloth life? Snowflake life?
I’m judging the last of my RITA panel. I saved the biggest book for last, and now I’m glad I did. I still have lots of time to finish reading and report my scores.
I’ve really enjoyed judging the RITA for the first time this year. However, next year, I think I’ll ask for different categories. Not that I don’t appreciate the categories I received this year. But I received 8 entries in one category and only 1 in a second. I’d rather judge more of a mix-up, and I think I can solve that issue by requesting different categories next year.
How about you? Are you judging RITA or the Golden Heart? How’s it going?
In other news, I just created a new group at Facebook called Muse Interrupted Guest Bloggers. The sole purpose of this group is so I can easily send email notifications to members who wish to receive them (read that, if you’re a member, you DO wish to receive them, otherwise there’s no point in joining) regarding my guest bloggers and book give-aways. I sent out the first notification on Sunday for Susan Gable’s blog yesterday. The next notification will go out a day or two before Natale Stenzel’s blog occurring February 25th. If you’re a member of Facebook and would like to sign up for the group, here’s a link. If that doesn’t work, just log in to Facebook and search for Muse Interrupted Guest Bloggers. It’ll come up.
Writing wise, I hit a bit of a block last week (horrors!). I had this wonderful love scene already fast-drafted set in a dark room. However, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how hard I tried, once I reached that very lumpy portion of the book, the scene no longer fit. I thought it would work, but after a lot of research, re-plotting and re-plotting, and soul searching, I realized it just didn’t work. And that’s okay. That’s one of the dangers of writing scenes out of order. When you get to revising them, you might not need them anymore! Or, in the case of this scene, it no longer made sense that my characters would make love in this setting at this time.
Once I plucked the scene out of the file and tucked it away for safekeeping in a Book Fragments file, my mind opened up and I suddenly realized another fast-drafted scene I thought was coming much later needed to fit in now. So I’m working on that scene, and the wonderful dark room love scene will have to wait for another book…maybe one of Penny’s stories. Oh, my hero and heroine still have some fun awaiting them, so all my research hasn’t gone to waste. It’s just taken on a different life.
Submissions for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award are running right now, February 2 – 8, 2009. Only three more days to enter, if you’re up for it. Entry details found here.
Entry requirements include:
- The full/complete version of your manuscript (the “Manuscript”), which must be between 50,000 and 150,000 words;
- Up to the first 5,000 words, but no less than 3,000 words, of text of that manuscript, excluding any table of contents, foreword, and acknowledgments (the “Excerpt”);
- A pitch statement (cover letter/summary) of up to 300 word (the “Pitch”)
- Other registration information as asked for on the entry page (such as name, contact information, book title), and
- An author photo (if desired), which must be in .jpg format (at least 72 dpi and 500×468 pixels)
That’s from the site. I don’t make this stuff up!
You have to register before you can enter, so if this is the first you’ve heard of the contest, get at ‘er.
Also from the site:
We’re excited to announce that mega-bestselling authors Sue Monk Kidd and Sue Grafton will lead this year’s expert panel, kicking off the Breakthrough Novel Award finalist round with their reviews of the top three manuscripts. A-list literary agent Barney Karpfinger and Penguin Press Editor-in-Chief Eamon Dolan will also join them to provide careful critiques of the finalists’ novels.
Last year my buddy, Maureen McGowan, made it into the quarter finals (or was it further, Maureen? I looked for a search box on your blog, but couldn’t find one). (By the way, thanks for doing away with that um, particular widget we spoke about).