This week I’m deep in preparation for the Historical Novel Society Conference, which takes place June 21-23 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Besides preparing for the panel I’m moderating on literary versus genre historical fiction, I’ve a Victorian tea gown to alter for the costume pageant (I’ve lost weight since I last wore it), novels to finish beta reading/reviewing for author friends, and even an amber necklace to restring. So, a busy time! Yet, I’ve managed to keep moving forward on the Next Novel, even if it’s only 500 words a day with an hour here and there.

So far, I’ve clocked in nearly 30,000 words of a rough first draft, along with another 20,000 words of character and plot notes. Below is my novel bible so far. As you can see, it’s already quite overstuffed.

I know I’ve been deliberately withholding information about the Next Novel. The truth is it’s too early—too nascent—to share much without feeling intensely vulnerable. That written, I will reveal I do have a title for it, which I think rocks. I’ll also confess that the Next Novel is set four decades earlier than THE LILY MAID, during the mid-nineteenth century. Much of it is written from the point of view of my male protagonist—the first time I’ve done so. On top of this, he’s a photographer specializing in post-mortem portraits, a particularly perculiarly Victorian obsession.

So, mid-Victorian setting+ male point of view + death photography = new things to master.

Even with these new creative challenges, I’ve found my second time writing a novel a far less mysterious proposition than when I first set out to write THE LILY MAID way back when. Since then, I’ve grown much more patient with the process. I understand my first draft is only that—a draft to be shaped as needed as my book develops. I know it will take time for me to know my characters—that they’ll only reveal themselves through process and perseverance. I’ve also spent considerable hours—heck, years—attempting to master the craft of fiction writing. I’ve taken workshops, read books, studied, beta read, and beyond.

All of this makes my experience of writing the Next Novel far less fraught with fear than THE LILY MAID. However, my second time experience led me to wonder whether it was similiar for other authors: Were their second novels easier to write? Harder? Or just different?

To find out, I asked these questions to several authors I know via the Historical Novel Society. To my delight, they were generously forthcoming with their responses.

Donna Russo Morin, author of THE KING’S AGENT: “There is a change with the second, that mental shift between ‘I want to be an author, and I am an author.’ For me, it gave me the courage to take some risks, to take my plot places I may have watered down with the first. There was a confidence that gave my pen greater power.”

Susanne Dunlap, author of THE ACADEMIE: “My second novel ended up being much harder than my first. I think mostly because I was writing to a one-page proposal that my publisher accepted. I kept trying to make the premise work, and it simply wouldn’t. I knew it was crap. Then I finally decided I had to break free of what I told them I would write and just do what worked. I set the novel a year earlier, during the cholera epidemic in Paris, and everything just fell together. It was a lesson for me: write what gets you going, don’t try to write to a brief!”

Anne Easter Smith, author of ROYAL MISTRESS: My first novel was written in stolen moments while holding down three part-time jobs, moving three times to different states and having not a clue how to structure a book. I just wanted to tell Richard III’s real story, and if my husband and children ended up reading it, I would have been thrilled. It was 960 pages long when I came to its end and I was exhilarated that for once in my life I actually finished a project. So when astonishingly, someone wanted to publish it, I found myself facing a two-book deal that was not expected at all. I had no intention of ever writing another book once Richard was down on paper. So the second novel was a bit of a chore–for me the difference between writing your passion and writing as work. However, chore or not, my second protagonist, Margaret of York, ended up one of my favorites through this whole series. The difference between no deadline for the first (took me seven years), and an 18-month deadline for the second.”

Lynn Cullen, author of MRS. POE: “I have come to the conclusion that it never gets easier to start a novel, be it first or fourteenth. The blank page still holds its terror. I think the main difference is that while there is terror, there is not panic. You know that somehow, from some magical place, words will come. I find, too, that books are like your own children in that you love them all equally. It seems impossible when you have that first story/child that you could never love the second as much, but you do. You love each one for what makes them unique. The last thing I have to say is that I am no more organized about writing now than I was for the first novel. I like to tell myself my messiness is part of the creative process. I don’t completely buy that but it sounds good.”

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And there you have it: four multi-published authors on their second time writing a novel. I’m so grateful to Donna, Anne, Susanne, and Lynn for sharing their experiences! Though I’ve listed only their latest novels here, I hope you’ll take a moment to learn about their previous ones—they’re all fabulous.

After school reading-and-snack date. Photographed at our favorite local cafe.

Maass began the workshop by pointing out a trend he’s noticed in publishing: that most mega-bestselling books are often categorized as literary fiction. While these novels often borrow conventions from genre fiction—for example, THE PARIS WIFE and WATER FOR ELEPHANTS possess historical settings—they deliver a great story combined with beautiful writing and emotional resonance. They find this sweet spot to create novels that stick in our minds. This surprising fact goes against the commonly held belief that only commercially-oriented novels sell well. Accordingly, Maass contends that writing 21st century fiction is about authors breaking free of genre restrictions to use an array of techniques. This enables them to create what he calls “high impact storytelling.”

Three points from Maass’s Writing 21st Century Fiction workshop:

• Authors should draw on their infinite well of experiences that nobody else possesses to inform the inner lives of their characters. To illustrate his point, Maass directed us to find our greatest fear, the thing we couldn’t speak of, and find a place to incorporate it into your story. (I think of this as akin to method acting for novelists.)
• Another exercise: imagine putting a piece of duct tape over a character’s mouth. Make him physically express his emotions. This forces the writer to externalize what’s happening, instead of relying on stock dialogue.
• Ever wonder how to write descriptions people don’t skip reading? Maass’s answer: point of view expression. When you write a description using point of view expression, you show how a setting is perceived by the character, rather than how it looks objectively to the author. In this way, description can be used to reveal character, thus powering up your story. It’s all about how how things are perceived. For example, a character will notice different details in a room where they’ve fallen in love than a room where their hopes were thwarted. Maass says, “Point of view is always apparent in the questions which are raised in a novel, even in description. It’s the difference between active and flat description.”

And that was just the beginning. As you can probably tell, it was a heady, exciting afternoon—I left the workshop with over 6,000 words of notes and a head-full of ideas to incorporate into my Next Novel. I can’t wait!

Want to know more? You can read my description of my previous writing workshop with Donald Maass here.

Such as this.

Which I found planted oh-so-matter-of-factly several blocks from my house during my daily walk.

Yes, the box is what it looks to be: a free lending library placed smack-dab in the middle of Brooklyn. It’s hosted by my neighbor Jennifer Wilenta and her family.

Upon closer examination, I discovered the library box contained mostly picture books for children and several novels. Once I returned home, I followed the url listed on the box, which lead me to this. Turns out that Little Free Library is an organization that sponsors community-based libraries to bring literature to the streets. Best of all, their website offers instructions on how to steward a free lending library of your own: everything from building plans to registration materials. Here’s a New York Times article about them.

While I love my local public library, I adore the grassroots intimacy of this. A little library box is something an individual would easily do on their own without dealing with large organizations or bureaucracies. All it would take is a weekend and some books to share.

Imagine if there was a library box on every block, each filled with their owner’s personal book favorites and recommendations. What a way to transform a community one book at a time!

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 *With a tip of the hat to Whistler, who named his paintings similarly. Photographed in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn on a rainy day. 

As I mentioned last week, I recently took a half-day novel writing workshop with Donald Maass at the Backspace Writers Conference. The workshop was based on his new book on 21st century fiction writing techniques; it definitely left me excited to continue working on the Next Novel. However, the morning session was a three hour talk by bestselling science fiction/thriller author Jonathan Maberry on various aspects of writing novels—everything from researching fight scenes to making a living as an author.

Maberry’s advice had something for everyone. How do you write about the first time a character is involved in a fist fight? Maberry’s insight: first fights are lost because of psychological shock. Want to know how to cross genres as an author? Try writing a young adult (or YA) novel instead of an adult novel. You’ll have the advantage of being more easily discovered: YA novels are usually shelved together in a bookstore, instead of by genre. I especially appreciated Maberry’s acknowledgement of the financial implications of pursuing a career as a novelist. Unlike nonfiction authors, who usually receive a book advance based on sample chapters and a proposal, novelists are paid after the book is completed and sold—a process that can take years, if at all. This can make writing fiction seem an especially precarious venture.

To circumvent discouragement, Maberry offered one suggestion I particularly liked: to encourage yourself to work on your novel every day, set a low minimum word count goal you can’t possibly not make unless you actively try to. Say, 250 words or 500 words. (250 words is approximately the word count of one double-spaced typed page.) When you make your daily minimum word count, you put a dollar, or whatever financial value you want to set, into a jar.

Once you finish your first draft or another goal (I like the goal of completing a month of writing, so it’s more accessible), the accumulated money in the jar must be spent on something pleasurable to you—no  responsibilities. A new book, a meal out, a facial. Whatever floats your boat. However, if you miss a day’s writing, you have to withdraw a week’s “wages” from the jar, which must be used to pay bills or similar.

The concept is to train your subconscious to associate receiving money for your writing, since it can take so long to write a novel and sell it. To reward the process rather than the result.

Easy, right? But clever. I think I may try this myself for the Next Novel.

As for the Donald Maass workshop, I’ll aim to post my notes from it for my next Publishing Monday post.

My excerpt is from THE LILY MAID and takes place in late 1888. In it, my protagonist Elizabeth re-encounters the artist who’d invited her to pose for his painting of The Lady of Shalott after a long absence:

One afternoon when the heavy rain precluded any chance of a walk and pummeled the last of the chrysanthemums into dropping their spiky, ruddy petals from the window box onto the sidewalk, St. John Dulac reappeared in my life.

 

My mouth dropped when I opened my front door; just as before, he’d sent no note. Dulac looked exceptionally elegant, his public persona a sharp contrast to his more informal studio attire. He wore an expensive-looking sage green sack coat with a yellow iris tucked into his lapel. Under his arm was a black leather portfolio embossed with his monogram; I wondered if he’d been out to meet with a collector now that he was painting again. He looked rested though perhaps more gaunt.

Now that I’m back in the studio after a brief break, I’ve been wondering if are there rules for embarking on a new book or creative project—a subject brought to mind after a writer on Facebook mentioned his set of rules. After mulling a bit, I realized that I do some. Though my rules no doubt differ from others, they’ve proven fairly consistent over time.

Rule 1: I shouldn’t be bored. I should be able to fall in love with the book completely and desperately. Both of these qualities are essential since I may be spending years living with it. (Though DOOMED QUEENS took me just over a year to create, THE LOVER’S PATH entailed almost a decade of on-and-off work. That’s a hefty chunk of time.)

Rule 2:  The process of creating the book, or its subject matter, should scare me a little. Or a lot. I look upon the presence of fear as a sign that I’m growing as an artist. Sometimes my fear may be in an “oh my god this project is going to challenge me. I’m not sure if my skills are up to it.” (I definitely felt this way when I began writing THE LILY MAID. Thank goodness for National Novel Writing Month, which pushed me beyond my initial “I don’t know how to write a novel” resistance.) Or my fear might be due to the subject matter. For example, when I first thought of the concept for DOOMED QUEENS, it scared me to death: a humorous book about how royal women were disempowered throughout history? Who would want to read this? Would people be offended? Fortunately, my literary agent pushed me to embrace the darkness amid the light. Voila, DOOMED QUEENS was born and went on to became one of my most critically praised books.

Rule 3: Finally, I need to have fun while working. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?

So, my creative rules for choosing to work on a book come down to:

• no boredom
• love
• embracing the fear
• having fun

That’s my formula. However, I haven’t included my biggest rule of all: to produce the best publication I possibly can, using all of the artistic knowledge and skills I possess.

What about you? Do you have any rules for choosing your creative projects?

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Above photograph: Craft project by Thea for her clubhouse. 

Photographed at the restaurant at Kinokuniya Bookstore in Manhattan—one of my favorite browsing stores in the world.

My studio chalkboard wall is blank again, which means it is time for a new season with new projects and new goals. Though I have a “to do” list ready to be posted there, I’m savoring this rare moment of in-betweenness (is that even a word?) before it all begins anew.

Things on my upcoming list include:

• Take a class on making mourning jewelry at the Morbid Anatomy library. Research for the Next Novel and all that.
• Finish up my novel bible for the Next Novel. Moving forward on the 25,000 words I’ve written so far of it.
• Write blog posts about what I’ve been up to these past few weeks. Besides traveling to Washington DC to view the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the National Gallery, I’ve taken a Donald Maass fiction writing workshop, sat in on a talk by author Jonathan Maberry, had lunch with author Sandra Gulland and Diane Saarinen of the Saima Agency, as well as dinner with historical author Heather Webb after attending M. J. Rose’s booksigning for SEDUCTION in New York. Busy time!
• Prepare for the next month’s Historical Novel Society conference, where I’ll be moderating a panel on literary versus genre historical fiction.
• Complete the design for three clients’ almost-done websites.
• Also on the design front: I plan to launch into the enhanced e-book for my illustrated book THE LOVER’S PATH. Interactive maps, letters, and more, all wrapped in sumptuously romantic Venetian mystery.

And that’s just the start of my list. What about you? What are your intentions for this summer?

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