What I Learned from my Sims 3 Writer

My daughter received Sims 3 for Christmas and as much as I tried to stay away, I couldn't help it. The new version has writer as a career. *rubs hands together in glee* So here are a few things I've learned from playing Sims 3. My character's name is Stella.

1. Playing Sims is a time suck. I knew this before, but dang, hours will pass without anything really happening as you watch your little character run around the screen doing nothing as well. Unfortunately, time suck means time not spent writing. Time not spent writing means that the books don't get done, which means nothing to turn in, which means no income. Hmmm...

2. Stella starts out with a rapidly decreasing needs bar. She has to go to the bathroom, make food, sleep, shower, have fun and talk to other people. Otherwise she gets really cranky. Lesson: Take time to be a human. We need all these things too.

3. Writing without breaks makes for a cranky Stella who won't continue write until you give her some fun. Fun includes reading a book, playing video games or hanging out with a friend. Lesson: We need to have fun once in a while. Maybe it doesn't have to be a four hour marathon of Sims 3, but 15 minutes of doing something else every couple of hours should help.

4. If Stella doesn't leave the house for a while, she goes stir crazy. Simply going out to the bookstore or library or anywhere there are other people for an hour is sufficient for her to remedy the situation. Lesson: Leave the house and clear your head every now and then. Being cooped up is bad for your mood. Even better go out with someone and chat about stuff before returning home to work.

5. If Stella doesn't write, she can't pay her bills and has to get a job or her stuff will be repossessed. Lesson: If this is your career, you can't sit and play all day and expect to be paid. You must work on your book and finish it to reap the rewards of royalties.

6. Stella is loaded. She brings in 100,000 simoleons every week from over 20 books. But she's had no time to develop relationships. Granted there was that one guy, but the jerk ended up being in a relationship. Jerk. Lesson: It would be wonderful to earn tons of money from book sales, but without my family what would it matter. Keeping up relationships is more important than writing. At least to me.

7. Stella is loaded because she finished over 20 books. Lesson: Watching a Sim type is not the same as doing the work yourself. Unfortunately we can't speed up time until we are finished a book. We have to put in the real time and that means not procrastinating by playing games or watching TV or whatever it is that keeps up from writing.

So my Sim has taught me quite a bit about what kind of writer I want to be. I need to be more balanced in my approach to writing. I need time to play and take care of myself and my family. But I need to make writing a priority in my life and not keep shoving it to the space that should be reserved for playing Sims. I figure I'm going to use working on my Sims family (she cloned herself :) who needs a man...well me, but not Stella) as a reward for finishing my goals. Incentives do help ;)

My People!

When I started writing, I did it alone with communication every now and then with other writers, especially while in England (different time zone and all that). For a while I had friends in an endurance writing group who would meet in a Yahoo conference box and we would sprint (write with no distractions) for 45 minutes with 15 minute breaks. I finished quite a few of my earlier stories using this method, but like all good things, I was able to work during the day and most of them had day jobs :( So as that dwindled off, I moved into lurking in chat rooms on Romance Divas and Writechat.net where they do 20 minute challenges (same as sprints but with a cooler name).

You'd be amazed at some of the numbers I could produce in 20 minutes. Okay maybe not you, but I was ;) But there was a lot of chatter going on in the chat rooms and sometimes no one was around and it's kind of weird to whip yourself. Enter Twitter.

Oh, thank you, you brilliant writers you, who use twitter as a device to orchestrate #1k1hr challenges. The goal 1000 words in an hour. People who write during the day are there! And there's almost always one going on. With a book to write that's fully plotted and just needs to be drafted, this is manna from Heaven. Of course it doesn't stop the phone calls or the TV calling (what? it does. It mocks me with it's darkness.), but it does give me that kick in the pants to write, which is what I need.

I know 2 posts in a month. I'm spoiling ya :)

The Hard Sell

Selling the first book should have been the hard part of this business. Usually it takes a few tries and you get closer each time and finally after much toiling you sell. L.A. Cinderella was my third completed manuscript and I entered it in a contest because they were low in entries. When it won, I got a request for the full and eventually a contract for that book. I started working feriously on Casanova Exposed, but it wasn't right for the line. My editor and I have gone back and forth on a few more books and we're getting close, but somehow I'm just not finding that next book.

So for me the hardest sell has become my second book. I'm continuing to submit to Harlequin because I love category romance and want to find that story that will resonate with readers. So I continue to try. I'm also looking at writing single title contemporary romance and one of my favorites, paranormal romance. I have plenty of ideas and am continuing to submit, because that's what this industry boils down to: perseverence. You'll hear it over and over again from all levels of writers.

Will I self-publish in ebook? Hubby has green lighted me if I want to go that direction, but I'm not ready for that. There's more to a book than just the writing and right now, I want to focus on the writing. I haven't completely shelved Casanova Exposed, just put him on the waiting line for later.

Right now I'm at a cross roads in my career. I have something on submission with my editor, which hopefully they love. I also have two more synopses ready to go should we need something else for them to look at. But the looking at takes time. So while I wait, I need to figure out what direction next. And hopefully I figure out the right next move.

Bad Author Bad

I feel like I've neglected my poor blog for so long. :( I even got repremanded at Nationals by the lovely Abigail Strom, a fellow Special Edition author, for not posting since March! (Totally deserved the reprimand) L.A. Cinderella is enjoying a world tour after being published in Australia, Italy, Argentina and the UK. I never know when the next box of books will come in. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for France.

I went to Romantic Times Conference out in L.A. and got a great tour by my critique partner, Jeannie Lin. I just returned from New York where the Romance Writers of America had their national conference. It gave me time to talk with my editor and agent and reconnect with my writing friends and meet new friends. I had a fantastic time and it really was the kick in the pants I needed to keep on keeping on.

I've been working on proposals for Special Edition and when I get just the right one, I'll let you all know. I've also had my single titles stewing in the back of my brain for when I'm out on submission again. Trying to decide between reviving my angels, classing up Las Vegas with a contemporary or bringing back the dead with my zombie book. So dark paranormal, light contemporary or dark humor paranormal (kind of a mix of both). Meanwhile, I have a lot of ideas for Special Editions and hopefully one of them will be the right book to work on next.

I haven't given up yet :) And I still need to write a ton this month because I'm behind where I was last year and this month last year I wrote almost 20K words. Of course, I was recovering from surgery last year and probably a little loopey on pain meds, but words is words. ;)

Reading

I'm not only a writer but I love to read a good romance novel. I struggled through reading some romances and they were okay, but I had this amazing book waiting for me that I had waited for for over a year. That had been left on a cliff hanger for over a year!

Seriously, I devoured this book. I couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it and I couldn't put it down when I was. There were issues with the storytelling. First person present tense and then last it went into past tense. She included a secondary first person point of view that I don't think really needed to be there. But overall the story telling was gripping, which makes me want to dissect it and figure out what makes it tick. Unfortunately that isn't my strength. I know other writers who could probably tell me exactly what technique she used that had me so captivated. A lot of time it boils down to voice, but in this case it was voice and questions. The outcome was never clear in my mind. I never knew who to trust and who not to (because the main character didn't and it was told solely from her POV). There are cameos of characters I loved from her past romance books.

Besides the story beginning (five books ago) with the death of her sister, only bad people died. Good people sometimes did bad things, but they all survived in the end. I know I cared about the characters and wanted to see them come through it. At times I didn't like some of them, but I always cared about the POV character, even when she was being stupid. If there's a secret formula it's evading me.

Moral of the story write a damned good book. How to do that? *shrug*

Back to the grind stone for me... Try to write a damned good book!

Busy, busy

http://romancetradingcards.com/

This is what I've been working on lately. That and writing....

Not much more to add. At least, not right now. ;)

Hopefully I'll have news soon, whether good, bad or indifferent.

So What Changes When You are Published...

So before I entered the world of the published, I could write whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Granted that concept didn't always work, but it was fun. I could dabble in this and try out that. Now that I've sold, I'm trying to sell the same style over again. I went out on a limb with my option book and it unfortunately fell to the ground quivering in a heap. But the voice is still there. So I proposed a different type of book, a little more down to earth and a lot less Hollywood. I sent off the synopsis and waited and waited and wrote the book while I waited and waited some more.

Then I made all these grand schemes of how I was going to write more in 2011. I was going to conquer a first draft every month starting in January. Okay, well maybe not January, I want to try to revise my Hollywood story for single title, so I'll work on that and revise my poor Fallen, who has been neglected. And then I'll have the distance to revise the SSE I had completed. Yay! A plan.

In January I heard back on my synopsis and we talked about how to make it a stronger story. So Hollywood is off the plate and Fallen slips further off the dessert plate. I embrace this new concept for the completed story with the gusto of Eeyore. But when I finally get the right spin on it, I am once again Pooh (okay seriously how many metaphors can I throw in this, it's become a bit of a challenge at this point, bear with me). Ready to take off into the 1000 acre woods and find adventure.

So instead of tackling something new or making something old pretty, I'm working on (man, I wish I could use borrowed or blue here) revamping the NaNo book and giving it new life. So I'm postponing writing something new and revising the single titles to get the book that has the attention pretty as a posey again.

(I swear I won't try to stuff metaphors down your throat anymore. But heck it was fun trying) :)

What I'm trying to say is priorities change after you've become published and you have to be flexible enough to cope with different schedules and perhaps changing something you loved to make it a better story. And even if something wasn't good for Publisher A, maybe Publisher B will enjoy it. Oh, wait I've got it. When life gives you lemons, throw them at the person who gave them to you, because seriously without sugar lemonade isn't that good.

Did I mention the kids are home on snow day? :)