August 15, 2008

Pictures!

I know that we writers go on and on about the RWA conference. And I know that it’s been over for 2 weeks, but I haven’t shared my pictures with you. For those of you who haven’t ever been or who’ve wondered what it’s like. Here’s a peek.

USF and I took a day out of the conference to see San Francisco.

Here we are on Twin Peaks. See how foggy SF is?

We also went to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was cold. Burr!

I’m not winking. The sun was in my eyes.

We did some other stuff too. Went to Alcatraz, ate lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf, took pictures of the sea lions. But you don’t really want to see pictures of sea gulls on Alcatraz, do you? You want to see what the Rita Awards are all about.

USF and I are all dressed up and hopeful. The stage is behind us.

Then the awards began with a funny video starring the Rita statuette, Suzanne Brockmann and classic San Fran movies. It was a lot of fun. The Golden Heart awards for unpublished authors are first, and all the winners were so eloquent and composed. Then the Ritas began. Before long, my category was up.

Then the slide for Blackthorne’s Bride.

Finally, the winner!

No, that’s not me. It’s Julia Quinn. She gave a lovely acceptance speech. That’s her editor behind her.

So those are the highlights. If you couldn’t be at the awards, maybe you got a taste of what we all get so excited about.

July 22, 2008

Stick-with-it-ness

As an aspiring writer, I wanted to give up on my dream of being published about a hundred times. People close to me even encouraged me to give up. But each time I was really serious about calling it quits, something would happen to encourage me. I’d final in a contest or get a note of encouragement from an agent or hear something really motivational in a workshop.

I stuck with it for four years and realized my dream.

Of course, I didn’t know that I’d realize my dream in four years. I can’t see the future any more than any of you, and for all I knew, four years could have been ten or fifteen or never.

But I would have never known that I could realize my dream if I hadn’t stuck with it.

If any of you are feeling like giving up, let me give you some stick-with-it-ness tips:

1) Set achievable goals. Plan to write 3 days a week or 5 pages a day. Maybe you want to find a critique partner or submit to 2 agents a month. When you achieve your goals, you’ll feel like you’re making progress.

2) Celebrate small victories. If you write 5 pages a day for a week, treat yourself to a movie or your favorite snack or a day off.

3) Focus on what you can and are doing, not what you can’t control. You cannot control whether your dream agent takes you on as a client. You cannot control whether your book finals in a contest or whether you sell by the end of the year. You can control your book, your characters, and your writing schedule. Feel good about that.

4) Keep moving forward. If you get a rejection or you realize that a book you’ve spent 6 months on just is not salvageable (happened to me and not very long ago), don’t give up. Write another book. Query another agent. Published writers are persistent.

5) Get some support. I’m lucky to have a husband who really takes an interest in my career. He cares about how many pages I write a day and whether or not I need a sub-plot. Maybe your DH isn’t as supportive. Maybe no one in your family gets why your dream is so important to you. Find a writing group and friends who do. When you don’t have to rely solely on family for support, you take the pressure off them and you.

Good luck!

July 8, 2008

Writing and the Unconscious

I’m doing something different with the new book I’m writing. Usually I’m a nose to the grindstone kind of writer. I start writing and do my 10 pages a day without coming up for air. This time I made a conscious decision to come up for air.

And not just to breathe but also to evaluate.

I don’t really like to think about something when I’m in the middle of it. I just want to get it done. I want to try my idea out and see if it works. I guess this is why I’m a pantser. I don’t think about how this plot element will work or if the conflict is strong enough. I write it it. I’ll make it work when I have something to work with.

That’s my process. I know it’s not the way everyone works. It’s not the way everyone should work.

But I decided to make a change to my process this time around. I’m about 150 pages into my new book, and I decided now was as good a time as any to evaluate where I am. I printed everything out and started reading and revising. The thing I’m finding so helpful in doing this is that by about page 75 or 80, I’ve forgotten a lot of the groundwork I laid in the first 20-30 pages. The plot starts to take over, and the characterization and internal conflict gets put aside.

But as I re-read the first few chapters of the book, I saw that I gave myself a lot to work with character and internal plot-wise. One example is that I have my heroine wearing spectacles. Later in the book she has to take them off to disguise herself. I never came back and made any issue about those spectacles. Can she see without them? Is this a problem for her? What an opportunity for a conflict or a funny scene, and I wasn’t making use of it because I’d forgotten she wore spectacles at the beginning of the book!

I’ve got to pay more attention to those interesting characterization tidbits my unconscious gives me. A good writer works all of that in seamlessly.

So back to the revising—for one more day at least. I can’t let that grindstone get too much rest.

April 15, 2008

Sophie Jordan Blogs on a Day in the Life

Hi, everyone! Glad to be back this Tuesday morning before I head out for the Romantic Times Convention in Pittsburgh.

As entertained as I was reading everyone else’s “day in the life”, I thought I would keep with the theme and add my own entry of “A Day in The Life of Sophie Jordan (Sharie Kohler)”. Of course, as a full time writer/mom, my days vary. However, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with my daughter at preschool, run fairly steady.

So here’s a “tame” M/W/F for me:

7:00am: Like clock work, I hear the baby through the monitor and I’m up …

7:00-7:30: I change the baby’s diaper, feed him his bottle, then breakfast (he’s eating food now) while DH showers. Finished with that, I deposit the baby in his ultra saucer.

7:30: I wake up the “newbie” five-year-old. Even though she had a full night’s sleep, this is a major feat. Five minutes of hugs, kisses, back rubs/scratching accompanied with an overly cheerful pep-talk about the day ahead of her. Then, finally, Mommy gets tough and threatens to dump a glass of water over her head. The threat does the trick and she’s up.

7:35: After much negotiating, breakfast is delivered to one groggy five-year-old. She’s so not a morning person – just like her Mommy.

7:40: I move into the bedroom (passing DH on the way) and dress for the gym. DH packs a lunch for the five-year-old, urging her to eat faster.

7:50: I check on everyone’s progress in the kitchen before moving into the five-year-old’s bedroom and selecting her day’s outfit.

7:55: Back in the kitchen, I join DH in urging the daughter to eat her food – stop playing with it! – drink your milk, get your hair out of your bowl, etc … This is usually when I grab a quick bite, too.

8:05: We move the daughter out of the kitchen and onto teeth, hair, clothes, shoes.

8:25-8:30: I pack up daughter’s lunch and bag and put baby in carrier. DH takes both and heads to preschool.

8:40: I leave for gym.

9:00: Run 1-2 miles on treadmill.

9:30: Do Lift class. Usually cp and Young Adult author Tera Lynn Childs joins me.

10:30: Class ends. Chat with TCL for a few minutes and leave gym.

10:45: Starbucks stop for me and DH.

11:00: Arrive home, take DH his coffee while he’s on a business call in the office. Check email, write (currently I’m working on copy edits for SURRENDER TO ME, a new book proposal, and an untitled historical due this July).

11:15-11:30: Baby wakes! Change diaper and give him bottle.

12:00: Eat lunch with baby and DH (if he’s not on a call).

12:30: Drag saucer into bathroom, put baby in it and take a shower.

1:00: Play with baby. Work on laundry. Write if I can grab a moment or two. Check email again.

2:00: Change diaper and load up baby in carrier to pick up daughter.

2:30: Unload baby into stroller and go inside school to pick up daughter at her classroom.

2:50: Time for quick errands (ie, gas, store or post office)

3:30: Arrive home. Change diaper, give baby a bottle and put down for nap.

4:00: Leave with daughter for her lesson (gymnastics, swimming … it’s always something). Usually I leave baby sleeping and signal the DH (if he’s on a call) that he needs to listen for the little guy.

5:30: Arrive home. Usually DH has dinner going.

6:00-6:30: Family eats dinner. I eat a bite, baby eats a bite, I eat a bite, baby eats a bite …

7:00: DH and I double team the kids. One bathes the five-year old and readies her for bed. The other gives the baby his bedtime bottle and changes him for bed.

7:30-8:00: Baby goes to bed.

8:00: Five-year gets book and tucked into bed.

8:15: Double-team on the dishes.

8:30: I may need to make baby food. If not, I work on laundry and watch a little television with the DH.

9:30: Write. And mother calls around now to ask why I haven’t called today.

12:00-1:00 AM: Put away the alphasmart or laptop.

Then I lie in bed, thinking about all I didn’t get done before I finally fall asleep.

And that’s a standard Monday – I’m lucky to have a DH not afraid to pull his load. This mother of two and full-time writer gig would get a bit hairy otherwise. It’s very cool for us both to work from home. Honestly, I love it. And believe it or not, we don’t get on each other’s nerves. Anymore than before, at least! LOL! Seriously, it has made us closer and strengthened our marriage. When I have to speak to a group, do a bookclub, go to a writers meeting, etc., we can always work it in with our flexible schedules. Of course, DH travels about one week out of every five or six. Er, not too fun to have him gone! I truly feel like a single mom that week. If something comes up I beg help from my mother-in-law or TLC.

Thanks for stopping by. Look for a website update soon and learn all about my August release, SURRENDER TO ME, whose final copy edits are going out the door today! YAY!

Hugs,
Sophie/Sharie

April 14, 2008

In My Shoes

I’ve really enjoyed reading about everyone’s day in the last few blogs, and I guess now it’s my turn. Since I have a day job, my schedule is a little bit different.

4:20 a.m. The alarm goes off. Feed the cats, empty the litter box, turn on the computer.

4:45 a.m. Finish reading last 2 or 3 pages written and start on the next page (or the end of the last page). Notice there’s no email checking in here. I’m not allowed to check email until after I’ve met my page goal. On weekdays, that’s 5 pages.

5:30 a.m. Start getting worried that I’m not going to be done with the 5 pages in time.

5:45 a.m. Ultimate Sportsfan’s alarm goes off. Type furiously. I know he’ll hit snooze.

5:50 Save the five pages, email them to myself, and check email.

6:00 a.m. Change into my running clothes. Try to convince USF to get up and run with me. Am successful about half of the time.

6:05 a.m. Run 2 miles.

6:40 a.m. Get in the shower.

7:20 a.m. Eat breakfast, make lunches, and head out the door.

7:40 a.m. Pull into the parking lot.

7:50 a.m. Sign in and head to class (I’m a teacher).

8:00 a.m. Drink coffee and try to wake up. Meet with parents or administrators. Lesson plans and grading.

9:30 a.m. Teach

11:55 a.m.-12:05 p.m. Check emails.

12:05-12:25 p.m. Gulp down lunch.

3:30 p.m. Head home unless I have tutorials.

3:45 p.m. Revise the chapter I have on my schedule. If I’m on chapter twenty, I’m probably revising somewhere back in chapter fourteen or fifteen.

5:00 p.m. Pick USF up from work (like Robyn, we only have one car). Go work out if we’re not too tired.

7:00 p.m. Eat dinner and read a book or back to the computer for more revising or to write a blog or answer emails.

10:30 p.m. Collapse in bed.

P.S. Sophie Jordan will be blogging with us tomorrow, instead of today, as scheduled.

April 9, 2008

A day in the life

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a full-time writer? Well, I certainly can’t speak for all the authors out there, we all have different lives, different responsibilities and schedules. But I thought I’d give you a peek into an average day for me.

I wake up to the sound of birds chirping and the smell of breakfast cooking. After a rigorous workout with my personal trainer, I shower and dress in my silk leisure suit. My assistant checks my emails and takes care of the ones that don’t need my personal assistant and formulates my new promotion plan. I sit at my computer and the characters immediately come alive and I quickly whip out 15 brilliant and perfectly crafted pages. Since I finished early I call my masseuse and then have a little nap. I wake up in time to see my lovely husband walk through the door with flowers again and announce we’ll be dining at a new 5-star restaurant. Anyone sick yet? Yeah, me too, okay so here’s how it really goes…

7:00 alarm clock goes off, The Professor hits snooze
7:30 after 30 minutes of snoozing, I get up, drag my laptop onto the bed and check email
7:45 begin bugging The Professor to get out of bed
8:15 no really, GET OUT OF BED!
9:00-9:30 somewhere in here either The Professor leaves or I take him to work (we only have 1 car)
9:45 talk to my mom on the phone
10:00 eat breakfast and decide to put dinner in the crockpot
10:30 check email and respond accordingly
10:45 open current book document and scroll down to the last written page
11:00 look at plot chart, what was I thinking? There’s nothing going on in this book
11:02 send panicky email to critique partner about how this is the worst book ever and I can’t imagine how I’ll ever pull it all together
11:15 write a couple of pages, get stuck looking for the right word, spend 15 minutes on-line looking for the right one. Go back to the pages, yep, still crap
11:45 check email, critique partner assures me that I always think the book I’m working on is terrible and I’ll be able to fix everything later, send her a threatening response that if she’s wrong, I’m giving her a nasty dedication

11:50 look at plot chart for inspiration and see that the next scene looks more interesting (it’s an almost love-scene), make a note in the manuscript to finish/fix the current scene and move onto the more interesting one - write 9 pages
12:45 lunch break, eat something wildly healthy and watch the food network
2:00 check email, email from my editor’s assistant and they need a picture for the back cover, peruse current promo pics and email friends to see which one they like best
2:15 critique partner calls with a plotting crisis of her own and I’m brilliant and very helpful in solving all her problems, we then brainstorm issue with the problem scene from earlier today. Decide I need to research for some sort of large event to set the scene in.
3:45 hang up - yes we talk a long time, but hey we’re wordy and I had to say hi to her 2.5 year old which you know takes a while sometimes, but now it’s time to go get The Professor
4:30 check email and get ready for our afternoon walk
5:30 walk
6:30 finish dinner up and eat
7:30 check email again (frankly I think I check email really like every 2 minutes, but I didn’t want to look like a total loser)
7:45 start research needed to fix scene, make notes for tomorrow when I’ll do it all over again.

You know some days are like this and some are great writing days where everything goes wonderfully and I’m done writing all my pages in like 2 hours. And some days its painful and brutal and I barely get a page done before I just throw in the towel and hope the next day is better. Then there are those days when I have a doctor’s appointment that lasts forever and have to go grocery shopping and to the bank and by the time I get home I barely have any time left. But I get some work done everyday. I try to do weekly page goals rather than daily to afford for the crazy schedule my life sometimes has so that I can deal with the 3 page days when I have a 15 page day. It all evens out.

So how about you, how do you spend your days?

February 19, 2008

Limmerance

I learned a new word this weekend. Limmerance. I looked it up in dictionary.com and it wasn’t even in there yet.

USF and I attended a couples’ retreat this weekend, with the objective of reconnecting and setting aside time to talk about and work on our marriage. I’ve always read that successful marriages take time and effort, so I’m a strong believer in taking a weekend every few years and remembering why you fell in love and what your shared vision for the future holds.

As part of our retreat, a couple who specializes in marriage counseling worked with our group on stages of marriage. The initial stage is limmerance, which means, roughly, the early state of being in love.

Limmerance is that time when two people are falling in love. You know, when you can talk for hours and it seems like minutes, when you physically hurt being away from one another, when all you can think about is the other person.

The psychologists described it as a type of psychosis. They were joking of course, but there’s a kernel of truth in that observation. Who could sustain a lifetime of floating around being completely absorbed by another person?

And yet, everyone who’s ever experienced that feeling yearns to recapture it. I think that’s the reason romance novels are so popular. Romance novels focus on that period of limmerance.

I think writing about love helps me to remember those initial feelings of limmerance and to look for ways to bring them to the surface again. Our weekend away is one product of that priority.

What about you? How do you reconnect with your loved one?

November 15, 2007

Writers Write

For the last six months or so I have been ‘an author’. For the last two weeks, I’ve been ‘a writer’.

So what’s the difference?

Well, an author has all this outside stuff to do. Sometimes I think I get all caught up in that outside stuff, like managing my MySpace page and writing blogs and posting responses to message boards and traveling to conferences. The websites, the amazon numbers, the group sites… all ‘author’ territory.

What does a writer do? They write. That’s it. They write. Butt in chair, staring at the blinking cursor, working scene by scene… WRITING. That’s the hard stuff, the tough stuff and honestly, it’s the good stuff. When the ‘author’ work gets hard and frustrating and painful and disappointing, when I go into the writing, that’s good. It’s safe. It’s pure pleasure.

Sometimes, though, I see aspiring authors getting all caught up in ‘author’. They want the recognition, the website, the pen name, the whatever. And they forget about the writing. So here’s my writing advice for the week. I rarely give it here, but what can you do.

You can’t get to author without writer.

If you don’t do the work, if you don’t sit in the chair, if you don’t sweat and grow and learn your craft, it won’t matter if you built a website or picked a pen name or have your review sites all lined up. It won’t matter.

And besides, when you’re knee deep in reviews and conference flights… you’ll want that safe place that writing provides. So make it. Nurture it every day if you’re a writer. Give it your whole heart. And it will give you so much in return.

September 16, 2007

Ever Wonder What It’s Like to Be An Author?

Have you seen this? Quills, can you relate?

September 12, 2007

Good advice

Not too long ago I was watching the season finale to The Next Food Network Star (one of my summer indulgences) and I was struck by something that Bobby Flay said. He told the contestants, “if you’re not nervous about your passion, you’re not passionate about it.” Think about that as that statement implies so much. Some might argue that if you get nervous about something, then you’re not meant to do it and I would say that that’s totally true when it comes to jumping out of a plane, but I’m sure there are plenty of skydivers out there who would argue with me. When it comes to your passion though, I think nerves are healthy and even crucial to some degree. For me, my passion is my writing. I love it. Okay if my critique partner heard me say that, she’d totally laugh since I mostly complain about my writing, but in reality as much as I complain, I wouldn’t want to do any other profession. I am passionate about writing. And I’ll be honest, it makes me crazy nervous. It scares the pants off me some days. The business aspect is terrifying on its own, but the craft itself is nerve-inducing. How can I take the perfect story that’s in my mind and do it justice on paper? Do I remember how to write a book since the last time? What if they find out I’m a fraud? What if no one likes my stories? Writing makes me nervous. But it only makes me nervous because I truly love it. If I didn’t feel the passion I do for it, then I wouldn’t care how things turned out, it wouldn’t matter if I wrote a great book with characters that readers relate to.

So what do you think? Do you think Bobby Flay is right? And what are you passionate about? I’ll pick three random comments and give the winners an autographed copy of my latest release, Tempted At Every Turn.