A list of resources I’ve found invaluable:
Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird – a great instructional manual and inspirational if you’re feeling stuck. Don’t stop with Bird by Bird, either. Read everything else she’s written because she’s a great, funny, painfully honest writer with the kind of voice that makes you want to soak up more, more, more.
Deb Dixon’s GMC: Goal, Motivation, Conflict - this book crystallizes what every genre fiction writer must know and understand at a really visceral level: how to structure both story and scene around GMC. Don’t buy it on amazon for some ridiculous price from a used book seller. Buy it here. Buy it now. I can’t emphasize this one enough. If you don’t get GMC into the very marrow of your bones, so it’s as automatic as walking or breathing, your book won’t work in a really important way.
Stephanie Bond is one of the most talented, generous women I’ve ever met. In addition to writing funny, fabulous books, she’s written a great series of articles on the business and craft of writing, all available through Amazon Shorts. Total purchase price for these is around $11, and it’s the best money you’ll spend on writing how-to stuff. Every time I hit a new success point in publishing I think, “What would Stephanie do?” and buy the appropriate short. She hasn’t led me wrong yet.
Julie Rowe, a freelance writer and author, wrote an article called “Your Core Story”, about how writers tend to revisit the same themes over and over again. With Julie’s permission I ran the article in my local chapter’s newsletter a couple of years ago and it’s stayed in the back of my mind ever since. I write acceptance stories. At the most basic level, my books are about characters finding love through acceptance, through finding the strength to be who they are. Big impact for me. Huge. The article doesn’t appear to be on her site, but if you contact Julie, you may be able to get permission to use it.
Romance Writers of America, a local RWA chapter, and critique groups. I joined my local chapter and my life hasn’t been the same since. I’m a better writer and a better person for knowing the women in my chapter. I can’t promise the same personal growth, but you’ll become a better writer if you find a supportive group of writers who can honestly critique your work. Let them do it. My second chapter meeting I asked, very timidly, if my current WIP, a category romance, should start with the cop hero learning his best friend had been shot, or if it should start when the hero goes undercover and interviews for a bartender job in the bar run by the heroine, who he suspects of colluding with a gang. I got an emphatic response in less than a minute – start when he walks into the bar! They were right. I had to rewrite the first 50 pages, but so what? FWIW, I drive 5 hours round trip to go to my local chapter meeting and I’ve missed 3 meetings in 2 years. You can’t put a price on what local chapters and critique groups can give you, or what you’ll get by giving back to them. Critiquing for other people is just as educational as getting your own work critiqued.
Contests and conferences. Choose contests with good reputations and/or final judges specific to what you’re writing. I, for example, am targeting a specific line at Harlequin, so before I was published I looked for contests final judged by one of the editors at that line. That’s a good way to make use of your contest dollars. The same thing applies to conferences. National is a huge, fantastic 4-day party, but also look for regional or local conferences with speakers, editors, agents, and publishers you want to meet. (Yes, you should know this.) Keep in mind that several publishers, such as Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, and The Wild Rose Press, all actively acquiring and eager to work with new authors, are NOT allowed to participate at RWA National but are often present at local/regional conferences, giving you a more diverse bang for your buck. And, as Stephanie Bond says (yes, there’s an Amazon Short for attending conferences), the bar/coffee shop is a great place to hang out and meet people. I went to National and through great computer karma scored an official appointment with the editor of the line I’m targeting. 10 minutes with her was great. Chatting with her in the lobby 3 other times was even better, and involved far less stress.
Revision. You can’t buy this, or make an appointment to meet this, or go to a conference and absorb this. You have to do it. The first job of a writer, as Anne Lamott says, is to write “crappy” rough drafts. This is okay. It’s expected. You don’t have to show them to anyone. But you do have to write them. Some people are lucky enough to write great first drafts. Don’t expect to be one of them. If you are, whoo hoo! If not, learn to love revising. I do. I love revisions with the same passion I love chocolate, chai lattes, and my husband (when he’s not leaving power tools on the kitchen counter for days at a time). Writing sucks, IMHO. Revising is actually kind of fun, in a perverse, run-up-Mount-Everest kind of way. And it’s how you learn. You learn something about perseverance and effort by getting the first words on the page. You learn about sentence structure, story/scene structure, word choice, pacing, momentum, rising and falling action, impact on the reader, and how much you want to be a writer through revision.
A story to illustrate this point. I sold my first book to Ellora’s Cave as a 30K word novella. What will be released is an 80K word single title. I retained maybe, MAYBE, 6K words of the original work. My editor, God love her, let me basically rewrite the thing from scratch over a four month timeperiod. It was the best learning experience I’ve had as a writer to date.
Read. Read in the line or subgenre you’re targeting/writing in, but read other stuff, too, romance or otherwise. You gotta read. Stephen King says so. Alison Kent says so. That’s good enough for me. I read tons of nonfiction and historicals, even though I’ll probably never write a historical. They’re longer, with really lush language and sweeping plots/story ideas. That’s good fodder for the muse. Find what fuels your muse and read it, or listen to it. Hearing books works language into your brain in a completely different way than reading does.
Use the Internet wisely. It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in online groups, blogs, classes, chat rooms, and websites. Decide how much time you can spend online and stick to that decision. As much as possible I spend my time at the computer writing or revising. I carve out time for marketing and promotion. If your first action at the computer is email, web boards, and chatting and you’re not getting your daily page goal, consider writing before you get sucked into cyberspace. I write at Starbucks alot because although I consider myself fairy tech savvy and actually made a living as a programmer, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to connect to the internet using their WiFi. No internet = words on the page = happy writer.
Classes. I’ve found classes with Laurie Schenby and Shelley Bradley to be very helpful. I use a worksheet from Shelley Bradley’s plotboard class, and several motivation/character development tricks from Laurie’s classes. Caveat: these are tools in the toolbox. They are not replacements for you typing words on the page. I wholeheartedly agree with Stephanie Tyler’s assessment that if you’re taking classes and reading books before you’ve finished a book of your own, you’re putting the cart before the horse. You need the experience of writing a book (or two or three if you’re me) to have something to apply the course material to. Otherwise, it’s theoretical.
All of this is JMHO. It worked for me. Do what works for you!
