DIY MFA: Contemporary Romance Reading List

This semester's reading list is for contemporary romance and women's fiction.

(By contemporary we mean recently published, so you'll notice not all of these books are what we would call contemporary in the blog-o-sphere).

Romance:

Brenda Jackson, A Brother’s Honor

Robyn Carr, Virgin River

Kristin Higgins, The Best Man

Women’s Fiction:

Linda Goodnight, The Memory House

Terry McMillan, Who Asked You?

Debbie Macomber,  A Girls Guide to Moving On

Have you read any of these? Are you going to read along with me this semester? 

Term Writing DIY MFA #6

As I mentioned in 15 Magic Minutes, for my MFA every semester I take two classes :Term Writing Contract and a reading class.

We're going to focus on the term writing contract. The term writing contract sets Seton Hill apart from other schools. It literally is a contract you create with your professor. You determine a goal to work on for the semester, a number of pages to produce each month, a craft book to help with your goal which you will review, and a number of pages to edit by the end of the semester. You produce these pages on a deadline. You revise these pages on a deadline.
What I think is beneficial about this is you've committed to do something in writing. Your grade is contingent upon it, and craft development aside this is pretty much how a publishing contract works. Even if you sell a completed manuscript, there will be revision required. It will be required by a certain date. You need to meet your deadlines. Being easy to work with will go along way toward working again. Granted, if you really can't meet a deadline for some reason, most editors are easy to work with. Communicate. Let them know the problem you're having and give them a date when they can expect those pages.

For a DIY MFA project, create a contract with a friend or critique partner. Pick a number of pages and promise to produce them for the next four months. Write it down, and practice writing on a contract.

Have you ever had to produce on a timetable? 

15 Magic Minutes DIY MFA #5

You are looking at my craft book from last semester's term writing contract. (I'll post about term writing contracts with a DIY project next week).
My goal for last semester was to build a writing routine, and Around the Writer's Block is about that.

The most helpful thing in the book is the concept of "15 Magic Minutes." You don't even need a genie. All you have to do is write. For 15 minutes.
"But Beth, I sit down, stare, at my computer and the 15 minutes is gone before I get a word out."
That's fine. You showed up. That's all that matters. (As long as you weren't on facebook during those 15 minutes).
The idea is that we all say we don't have time to write, and between school, family and day jobs, many of us REALLY DO NOT have time to write.
But we kill 15 minutes on Facebook, easily. So if you quit looking for an hour to write, you can make time to write. And if you ignore everything else during those 15 magic minutes, you'll be surprised at what you can produce. With fifteen minutes of uninterrupted writing time I can often produce a page. That's 250 words. But if I find 15 minutes four times that's 1k!
And you're building a positive habit. The more positive experiences you build with your writing the less likely you are to have writer's block, because your brain is less likely to be programmed for resistance. (That last statement is simplified, but the brain science behind it is explained in the book).

FYI: I wrote this blog post on a 15 minute break at work. That means I had a timer set because I had to be done in 15 minutes.

Where in your day can you find 15 magic minutes?

DIY MFA #4 Misha Gericke on Dealing With Insecurities

Thanks for having me over, Beth!

I’ve been sitting in front of my computer off and on for about two days now, trying to find something to say. And then I realized that maybe this is exactly what I want to talk about.

See, for about a month now, I’ve been resting, but mainly because I keep struggling with the sense that what I’m writing just isn’t going to be good enough. It’s aggravating, because I usually work past this. But for some reason, the moment I let myself rest, my self-doubt caught up with me.

So hi. My name is Misha, and I’m battling to believe in my writing.

That was easier than I thought. Maybe it’s the fact that I know that a lot of people out there have the same problem. No matter what we do, those little nagging voices of self-doubt and insecurities just won’t stay put.

What do I do to keep writing?

First, I admit that my insecurities caught up with me. (Because if I don’t, I’ll just keep saying I’m tired and keep right on procrastinating.)

Second, I then prove those little voices wrong by opening my notebook/scrivener/word doc and writing anyway. Just like I am right now. And…. Right now. And… Oh you get the point.

Third, I accept (and in fact encourage myself) to write absolute nonsense. This one might seem a little counter-intuitive, but sometimes, that liberating sense that I could call something like “I wish I was a goldfish. (Hey, it’s really hot here at the moment.)” writing is really liberating. And with that freedom comes inspiration. See, inspiration tends to come when we have open minds, and that means not shooting down every single word that comes to us without writing it first.

And there you have it. 15 minutes ago, writing this 300 word post (more or less) felt impossible. But as soon as my three steps kicked in, I got going.

What do you do to keep your insecurities at bay?

Bio:

Misha lives (and is currently dying of the heat) in the Western Cape, South Africa. If you manage to find her outside the pool, she might be mildly upset because you interrupted her writing.

If you’d like to read more about her writing activities, or to just get in touch, you can follow her blog (http://Sylmion.blogspot.com), tweet her (@MishaMFB), circle her on google plus (+MishaGericke) or even read some of her stuff on Wattpad (MishaMFB).

Big Dreams Blogfest 2016 #1

The Big Dreams Blogfest is hosted by myself and Misha Gericke.

This  blogfest is as much about accountability as it is dreaming. In one way, it gives us a place to set goals each month and in another it's a place to talk about the steps we took--or didn't take--to get there.

When Misha and I started this blogfest in 2013,  I had two goals. 1)Make a million dollars writing in a twelvemonth period 2)Write a million words.
I've all but given up on one goal. At this point in time, I find it unreasonable to think I will ever make a million dollars writing, but I'd be happy just making a living writing now. I still recognize the need to write a million words. (This is the point at which an author is said to become an expert, and being an expert would likely make profitability easier).

My goals for 2016:
Increase my count to a million by two hundred thousand words.
Get romantic fiction published in woman's world ($800/short would help with next goal)
Make $1,500/month writing at least one month this year.
Get my thesis novel through the first pass
Complete 20 graduate hours
Find a new job (I quit the day job due to migraines).
Get off Coke-Cola
Find a better writing/life balance. (I either don't write at all or abandon other parts of life).
Make $500/month writing at least one month before June


Now what I've accomplished this year:

1. Not as much as I would have liked
2. I wrote a draft of my thesis novel! (57,834 words)
3. 10 grad hours
4. Romantic short to submit to woman's world (969 words cut to 800).
5. wrote a picture book 5,000 words

Goals for this month:

1. Get blog traffic back to 100 hits/day (I was getting 200 before going back to work)
2. Add 2 scenes to thesis novel
3. Get through 1 round of revisions on thesis novel
4. Write four shorts for submission to Woman's World
5. Find 3 other mags to submit to regularly 

Steps I'm Taking to Get There

1. I've introduced a DIY MFA series in which I give away tips I'm learning at $7100/semester. Traffic has already gone up since introducing the series last week. I'm also opening to guest posts again, provided the author give some useful hints on craft in the post.
2. I've thought out the scenes to be added and will be adding them Sunday/Monday morning.
3. As I'm currently unemployed I'm writing in the morning before doing anything else. This ensures I get writing time, but may have to change when I find a job.
4. Saturday morning is my "Market Place day." The writing I do on Saturday morning is for a short I can quickly submit.
5. I do not have a good way to find 3 other mags to submit to. I have found a couple of resources but need free resources!

I will be hopping around a little bit later. Must do some cleaning first. Do you know of free resources to find mag/online writing opportunities? What did you accomplish in 2015? What are your goals for 2016? What steps are you taking to get there?

The Book Based Action Plan DIY MFA #3

On Monday, I posted a couple of  reading lists. The most helpful thing I learned all last semester (besides the kick in the butt of a monthly deadline, because some of you know I've been off the bandwagon for a while) was the action plan.

If you scroll down to the "subgenres" list, those books including my self chosen book of Beastly were used to create an action plan in my manuscript. This is how the action plan works. It helps if you can self-evaluate your manuscript before you start reading. What are some weaknesses you need to overcome? Make a note of that. Read 5 books in your genre. (The ones I used are all romance books. If you're a YA writer, you may want to use only YA even though it may still be romance). What do they have in common? That's something the market expects. Did you have a couple of favorites? What are the things those authors did really well? Chances are if it has become of favorite of yours, it has become someone else's favorite too and there is a reason for it. Out of all of this find five steps you can take to improve your WIP. Write them down. Justify to yourself how they will help make your book more marketable. If you're hoping to make a living--or even a royalties check--writing, marketability is the key. It doesn't matter how strong your manuscript is, if no one is willing to buy it.

My action steps were:

1. Pacing (but if you've read the Peace books, you know I can handle pacing, so my action here was to maintain).
2. Characterization--The hero has a redemption arc, and is one of the most hated people in history--literally. He's not likable in the opening scenes, but he has to be relateable. I found a couple of specific lines in the first chapter of Beastly that gave me an idea of how to accomplish this.
3. Setting-- I don't care about this. To me description slows pacing. So by default I'm not good at it. My action here is to add one line of description for each new location. This shouldn't be soo much that it slows pacing.
4. Showing-- The freakin rock in every writer's shoe. My action here is to find 3 places I can show not tell in each chapter.
5. Layering- Flowers from the Storm was a beautiful book. It was so long but still one of my favorites and reminded me of Beauty and the Beast. The most important lesson I learned from that book was the art of layering. There was so much going on, so many conflicts, all overlapping it made for a good story. I thought I could layer my story better by adding subplots with similar themes to the main theme.

DIY MFA #2 :Reading List

In 2016, I'm going to be doing a lot of posts on things I've taken away from my MFA that you can do on your own to improve your writing.

Because Hana asked today I'm giving you a reading list. One thing all MFAs have in common is a substantial amount of reading. Last week, I mentioned Lady X was this session's residency read and said I didn't know why because to me it didn't have cross genre appeal. Hana wanted to know what else we're reading for the MFA. 

Now let me start off by saying my focus is romance. I'll list the classics first, because you're likely to find use in these whether you write romance or not. If I were studying another genre I'd likely have a different list, but here's what I will have worked on from June of last year to June of this year:

Classics

Pride and Prejudice

Framely Parsonage

Jane Eyre

Nine Coaches Waiting

Our final project for classics RIG (reading in the genre) will be to find a book of our choice we will believe will become a classic. We are not supposed to select this book until mid semester but I'm leaning toward Twilight because 1)it's my favorite book, but 2)it's half way there. It needs to stay in print for twenty years to be a classic and Twilight has been in print for ten years.

Subgenres of Romance

The Liar-Nora Roberts

The Saint-Tiffany Reisz (seriously erotica; not recommended for fans of sweet/clean romance)

Destiny's Embrace-Beverly Jenkins

Outlander-Diana Gabaldon (genre mash-up, but we like to study how elements of another genre can add to our readership)

Flowers From the Storm-Laura Kinsale (my personal favorite)

Grave Danger-Katy Lee

contemporary book of choice. (I chose Beastly which was a re-read for me.)

 

DIY MFA: Three Weeks with Lady X

So I've been trying to figure out how to get started with the blog again after my extended absence. I've decided I'm going to let you follow along with my MFA. My writer friends will benefit from this without paying the $7100/semester that I am, and readers might find a few things interesting.

My MFA program works like this: every semester starts off with a residency where a lot of writers from different genres (YA, Romance, Horror, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery, and Children's Literature) come together for a week to work intensely on specific elements of craft. That week always begins with a chat about a specific book chosen to hopefully pacify people from different genres. For our January residency the book is Three Weeks with Lady X.

"Having made a fortune, Thorn Dautry, the powerful bastard son of a duke, decides that he needs a wife. But to marry a lady, Thorn must acquire a gleaming, civilized façade, the specialty of Lady Xenobia India.
Exquisite, head-strong, and independent, India vows to make Thorn marriageable in just three weeks.
But neither Thorn nor India anticipate the forbidden passion that explodes between them.
Thorn will stop at nothing to make India his. Failure is not an option. 
But there is only one thing that will make India his—the one thing Thorn can't afford to lose...
His fierce and lawless heart."

My Thoughts
I enjoyed the book, but I can't see why this was chosen for the residency. I don't think it has a lot of cross-genre appeal. It was a historical romance, which was fine for me because I love romance. I love the title. It makes the book sound racier than it actually is, and in the times we live.... 
So when I read it like a romance:
I immediately like the attraction between India and Thorn, and I knew it would go somewhere. I would have liked more emotion from Thorn sooner, and even India a couple of times. They're sneaking around together, and he's still trying to marry this chick and is telling her about it. And once or twice I felt like she should just knock on his door and then when his butler called him, slap him in the face, and leave. *Shrugs* I would have. But when his best friend decides he's interested, Thorn is finally ready to make a commitment. It just might be too late. I thought the author created urgency for me to read on, and I loved both characters as they each had a sympathetic backstory. 

Have you read Three weeks with Lady X? Do you feel it had cross-genre appeal? Did you love the romance?