What Season Describes Your Relationship with Your WIP?

I belong to a fabulously supportive Facebook group, Chick Lit Goddesses. Conceived of, developed by, and guided by the wonderful author, Isabella Louise Anderson. She poses questions periodically and one from last December caught my fancy as a potential blog post.

I did not respond to her and the other Goddesses at that time, but, late but not forgotten, Isabella, here’s my answer.

What season describes your relationship with your current WIP?

 

Since this is my romance and relationships focus blog, I will talk about my Angelica French works. Yes, more than one.

I published “Why Not Ask?” in an anthology with six other authors last December. So when Isabella posed the question, I thought to myself, that short story is late fall. I had gathered in the crop (the finished short story) and stored it for future use (reading in the anthology). Check. That was pretty easy to identify.

The second WIP is for maintaining my general membership status in Romance Writers of America using their new rules. I must produce a novel of at least 20,000 words by year’s end. I document that by posting a word count each month and must upload the completed document by year’s end. I am working on a dino porn anthology I will indie publish unless my Sizzler Editions editor accepts it for a novella length book.

It is pretty obvious that I am in early spring with that manuscript. I am sowing the seeds (developing

ideas for each segment), and watering and weeding them as they grow (line and content edits). Like any farmer, I hope the sun keeps shining (inspiration and commitment) so the seedlings grow into a finished crop (book).

Now to the toughie. Manuscript number three.

What season is Sex for Sale, the sequel to Streetwalker, in? I, as Angelica, have been working on that sequel for too long now. I seem to be stuck as I regard the garden where I planted it.

The seeds for Sex for Sale were planted and tended right after Streetwalker was accepted for publication, but then I walked away (to tend other books) and left the planted crop one-third done and untended.

Weeds took over and killed some of the seedlings. Left unwatered, other seedlings died. Some seedlings survived and sprang up but they seemed to be from another plant, a volunteer, as we say in gardening.

Winter snow covers it all now, and I can either shovel off the drifts and try to grow the story in this weather or wait until spring. Then I can dig up the garden. Separate the viable plants and discard the others. And start the growing season again.

I am in a fallow season with Sex for Sale. My editor keeps wanting me to send the manuscript, but it’s stunted. I think the biggest problem is I am trying to make the garden produce more than it is capable of.

The “Sex Sells” series was conceived of, from the beginning, as a trilogy. I have come to see it is more likely a two-book series. When I stop trying to stretch Carrie and Harlan’s story into a thin three-book package and instead develop a full two books, it will come together. Spring is coming again for Sex for Sale.

The Case for Eclectic

Recently, a FaceBook group I belong to, Chick Lit Goddesses, asked us to use one word to describe our writing style. There were wonderful answers: “quirky”, “snappy”, “clean” (!), “sassy”, “true”, and so on.

I didn’t know what to write.

So, I “walked away” from the FB question and did other stuff. Meanwhile, the question of what one word describes my writing kept percolating in my brain. I just had to wait for it to be brewed.

I went back later and typed in my word, hit the return, and sent it out to my group trepiditiously (Is that a word??? Who cares. I am a neologist.).

My word? “Eclectic”. I even got one Like from someone.

So why eclectic? Though that does help explain why I couldn’t think of a word--I write in so many styles the tone and impact I want to create changes with the genre.

Some writing critique group partners have urged me to not write in so many genres. If I stuck with one, they argue, I might be able to get really good with it instead of being only okay in a half dozen. I kinda do get it, but the stories bang at my head, demanding to be written and written in a specific way.

So I write historical fiction, comedic plays, short stories, culinary mysteries, erotica, paranormal romcom, and women’s fiction. Eclectic, yes?

The good news about eclectic is you may never get proficient in one genre, but you for sure never get bored or writer’s block. There’s always another piece waiting if one story line won’t play nicely.

So do I write “Romance”, well, yeah. But I don’t know that I set out to do it. The story dictates how much relationship stuff is included. It’s a secondary story line in Mission Impastable, my culinary mystery, but in Streetwalker (erotica) and Lucinda, historical fiction, the romance/sex/love predominate.

How do you describe YOUR writing style or the style of your favorite novelist? Leave a comment below and let’s chat about it.