Greetings From Deadline Hell

by Maggie Marr

In this cycle we Girlfriends are blogging about the Crazy. While many have blogged about crazy characters and crazy stories, I am blogging about my own personal brand of Crazy: Deadline Hell.

Every writer who has ever put pen to paper has felt the press of this Crazy. It starts to form as we push up against those ever present (and for me necessary) deadlines whether self-imposed or because a manuscript is due to a House. This year, my deadlines are self-imposed so I have no one to blame but me--ah smell the scent of self-punishment as we embark on this journey.

First there is the: I can get this done if I do x number of pages per day. This, usually starts for me, in revisions at about the T-30 day mark. I do the math. I mark the calendar. I inevitably fall behind. As the page count of actually revised pages falls further and further behind and the day-count grows greater and greater, I sink into a firm state of denial. I redo the math and think calmly to myself: Of course I can revise 179 pages in 3 days--really who can't?

(Cue maniacal laughter.) Bwa ha, ha, ha, ha!

At the T-48 hour mark there are certain things every author embraces and certain things every author gives up. A little list of my faves.

1. Sleep. Who needs it? Why would anyone want it? Especially in the depths of despair of chapter 14 which has no reason for existing. My brain works BETTER without the zzzz's.

2. Coffee. (See 1.) In order to inhabit any deadline one must guzzle coffee as if the nectar of the Gods. Fortunately I can thank college and grad-school for this little nugget of knowledge.

3. Showers. Forget about it. My computer doesn't have a nose. We're all good.

4. Children. I had two before the deadline, and fingers crossed they are smart enough not to throw knives and play with fire, because at this point it will take a 3-alarmer or a laceration to get my attention from this damn book.

5. Friends. I'm an introvert, they get it. Plus they know I'm a writer which makes me inherently odd.

6. Communication. None. My characters are getting everything I have.

7. Sunlight. Maybe if I can stand up after 14 hours and it's still daylight, I might haul the computer outside and work. Then again, I'm fair-skinned and easily burned. Hello darkness my old friend...

8. Pajamas. Come to Mama! Truly the biggest perk of any deadline. Their is no expectation that I clothe myself in the traditional sense. I could (haven't yet, but hey, it's early in my career) go to the grocery store, the dry cleaners, and even the mall in my pajamas, wouldn't even flinch. I'M ON DEADLINE!

9. Email/FB/Twitter. Distraction? Did you say distraction? Yes, I want a distraction. Okay, just for 5 minutes...oh my God it's been TWO HOURS! WTF! I am on DEADLINE.

10. Food. Only the essentials. Chocolate, potato chips, and chocolate. Did I mention chocolate?

And finally--PANIC. Okay, not really something we want or should embrace as writers, but hey fear can be a motivating force.

So this is my current cup-o-crazy, the Deadline Hell. Please add your little nuggets of Crazy in the comments and once I turn this manuscript in (PLEASE GOD LET ME TURN THIS MANUSCRIPT IN) I'll let random.org choose a winner and send you a copy of Can't Buy Me Love. That's of course after I check on my children, sleep for a week, shower, put on some clothes, eat a salad, call my mother, and go outside.

xoMaggie

Maggie Marr is an author, attorney, and producer. She used to be a motion picture literary agent in Hollywood. She is the author of Hollywood Girls Club, Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club, and Hollywood Hit. She also writes the new adult Glamour Series. Hard Glamour and Broken Glamour are out, and Fast Glamour is KILLING HER. Can't Buy Me Love is the first book in her Eligible Billionaires Series and One Night For Love, book 2 will publish this summer if she lives through her revisions of Fast Glamour. Courting Trouble is book 1 in the Montecito Montgomery Series, which Maggie dearly loves, but for some reason doesn't sell as well as the rest of her books. Courting Trouble is only .99 cents. For only .99 cents why not give it a read? Maggie lives and works in Los Angeles. She has family and friends who are gracious enough to welcome her with open arms each time she turns in a book and exits Deadline Hell. 

Call Me Crazy

 

One of the main reasons I write is to get the crazy out. I’m not just talking about wild ideas, rants about the universe, or a need to share experiences. No. I am talking about getting to say and do all the things I would never say or do in real life. 

 Most writers limit the crazy to supporting characters. My crazy comes out in my heroes. You know, the one that is secretly me.

My first novel, 66 Laps, was inspired by my desire to throttle a model/mom who pointed out my first gray hair during a play-date for our toddlers. I wanted to slap the bitch. Guess what the first line of that novel is? “I slapped the bitch.” That reaction led to grave consequences for Audrey. While I smiled and let the comment slide, but poor Audrey’s identity issues made her the kind of character who reacted, so she was also the kind of person who would react to larger things. In fact, when she thought her husband was having an affair, she allowed herself to be seduced by a younger man. Unfortunately, tragedy ensued. Poor Audrey. But me? My only consequences were a literary prize and a contract with Random House.

 

Clearly, crazy was working. In my next novel, Wife Goes On, there are four protagonists, so I spread the crazy around. There’s an overworked mom who gets to rule the world, a ball busting lawyer who wears designer clothes, an actress who humiliates off her cheating ex on national TV, and a sweet young ex-football wife who sells sex toys. They become they kind of friends we all need. And they do crazy things that I’ve only imagined.

In What A Mother Knows, I explore the impulse to kill someone who threatens my daughter. You’ll have to read the book to find out if I did. I mean, if Michelle did. But that’s not all. The character faces all my worst nightmares and comes out okay. She also gets to have a makeover, a fabulous love affair, and a new career. See the pattern?

The greatest challenge to this method is that editors sometimes complain that my main character needs to start out more “likeable ." When they say that, it’s hard not to be insulted – they are talking about me. Then I realize they just need to see more of the real, boring me before they meet the hell raiser reacting to a gray hair, a divorce, or a threatened child.

So far I’ve gotten to swear, have an affair, come very close to committing murder, and have a happy ending.

Call me crazy, but it works. 

 _________________________________________________________________________________

Check out the film trailer for What A Mother Knows, email me about a book club visit, or read my NYT Modern Love column at www.leslielehr.com

Please "Like" the normal, not crazy me on Facebook to keep up with events and writing tips. www.facebook.com.authorleslielehr

The Creative Ram: Dealing with Transitions

by Malena Lott

Transitions are a fact of life. Last night finished off my third open house for my kids. I've sat in a tiny chair for my second grader, traipsed up and down the halls in a middle school, and finally, back and forth in a freshman academy for my higher schooler. The transitions are impressive -- and scary. They must become more independent and self-reliant. They have to prepare for their future.

Creative transitions are no less scary. What was once a fairly straight path - manuscript, query, agent, publisher, book, now looks as varied as a map itself. It could be manuscript, production, digital publication. It could be a mix of both. Many of my trad published friends now have books that are still with publishers and a backlist or other "almost sold" manuscripts they are publishing "indie" or with the help of small publishers or with the help of service vendors.

I used to vex about this myself. Even though I'm a marketer and have been a creative director for years, I had liked that I could let other people figure out what to do with my fiction writing career. I was relying on my agent, editor and publisher to just "take care of it" even though as the years went on, it became apparent authors must build their own platform. In 2011, I started an imprint to my creative company to publish stories of all sizes. Buzz Books is a huge undertaking, but I decided I wanted to immerse myself in stories. If I could market a university, for example, why not market books? I'm also doing workshops - and many GBC authors are contributing advice and tips GOD BLESS YOU - to support the art and craft of novel writing.

A couple of weeks ago my agent surprised me by saying she wanted to send out a young adult manuscript again that had been passed over several years ago during a particular saturation period. She knows that transitions are a part of life, too. Editors come and go. Types of stories are hot then cold then hot again. You know, who knows? And why not?

Transitions can also mean writing under several pen names and managing several "brands." But I like to think of it as putting on a different wardrobe from the same closet. I'm still me, but my "costume" is different for each genre. I've even got a cool trench coat in my wardrobe I'm wearing as I write my first mystery. I don't even know what I'm calling that "me" yet.

The important thing to remember is that you are still what matters. It takes the writer to write the story. Only you can write the story in your head, not your crit partner or your agent or a Girlfriend. You.

Hang in there. Ebb and flow. Breathe. Write. Write every day. Don't limit yourself to one brand or one type of story if your muse is telling you to try something new. Don't be afraid to try a new opportunity to get your work out there. You have to look out for your future. No one else is going to do your homework for you.

Malena Lott is the author of The Stork Reality, Dating da Vinci, Fixer Upper, and her next novel, Something New, releases in November. She also writes young adult paranormal under the pen name Lena Brown. She's the executive editor at Buzz Books USA and is a den mom, dance mom and yoga chick. 

Questioning Our Relevance: Fear, Change & the Digital Revolution

by Marilyn Brant

I totally wanted to blog about something light and fun and uncomplicated enough to have fairly clear-cut answers, like the best birthday cake you ever had or your favorite kind of appetizer (do I talk about food too much?!), but this topic kept needling me. I figured if I had it on my mind, a few other people here might be thinking about it, too... So, let me just state the obvious: This is a pretty unsettling time in the publishing industry.

No matter what your opinions are regarding what constitutes a book or who qualifies as an author, changes like the bankruptcy of Borders, the shrinking of print runs and the explosion of digital-only or digital-first releases (both self-published and through major NY houses, such as Bantam's revitalized "Loveswept" line or Avon's new "Impuslse" line) have been wreaking havoc on the professional lives of booksellers, publishers, editors, agents and writers alike.

There is some very real excitement out there, too, by the way. New opportunites are emerging almost hourly, and many entreprenurial souls have been quick to hop aboard the digital train in hopes of striking gold. Some have found it in the literary realm and are shouting their gratitude and their Amazon rankings from the rooftops. Others are still striving and hopeful and secretly trying to crack the logarithm for ebook bestsellerdom. And yet others are capitalizing on the author accessories needed for a successful digital experience -- the creation of book covers, the proofreading skills, the uploading and conversion know-how.

In my opinion, More Opportunties + More Choices = Something Good. I may not utilize every service available to me out there, but I love having options. Getting to self-publish a few of my light romantic comedies alongside my traditionally published women's fiction has been both an interesting venture and a fun one. But then, I'm a big fan of a good Asian buffet, too. You tell me I can have Thai satays and Chinese egg rolls and Japanese teriyaki chicken and Mongolian barbequed beef...all on my plate at once? What's not to love about that?!

Food fantasies aside, though, I'm also an observer by nature, and I've been watching and listening to everyone. Attentively. I've been reading their posts and their tweets and their messages. And for every public comment that unabashedly praises the Digital Revolution, there are at least five more -- ranging from whispered concerns to infuriated accusations -- that express in some way a powerful and pervasive sense of fear.

For me, trying to uncover the source of that fear has been occupying a lot of my mental energy this summer. Best I can figure, I think it comes down to a persistent questioning of our relevance and how well we think we'll fare in the publishing world of the future.

Whether our job is that of an author or an agent, an editor or a bookseller, we're united by worries about what these changes mean and who we are now if the original hierarchy and gatekeeping system we'd grown accustomed to is no longer in effect. Where is our industry going? Will readers abandon paper books in order to make the digital leap? Will the skills we've all worked so laboriously to acquire be relevant in this evolving publishing landscape? And, even if we fully embrace the lightning-like changes that have struck publishing hard in recent years, will we be able to roll with whatever comes next in an industry that has transformed so rapidly in such a short period of time?

Just about everyone I know is asking themselves some version of these questions. Publishers are wondering if they need to add a digital branch to their company or expand the one they already have. Literary agents are fielding a slew of queries from their clients about rights reversion or assistance in the self-publishing of backlists. Writers across the genres are wrestling with the decision of whether or not to dip their toes in the digital waters and, if they do it, then they're struggling to adjust to a different method of manuscript formatting and online marketing and the panic/elation of having daily updates on their sales numbers. Brick-and-mortar booksellers aren't sure where to go next or how to use their valuable skills.

To top it off, there's a social-media windstorm brewing around all of us, amplifying the collective fear and setting off an onslaught of comparisions between authors. (Whose downloads are higher?) Or between publishing professionals. (Whose services or distribution methods are better?)

It's been kind of exhausting.

So, I wanted to brush all the discord and confusion away for just a moment and say, à la Oprah, the one thing I know for sure... It's something I bet you know, too: Yes, change is hard (and frustrating and scary and, sometimes, exciting), but there will always be a need for stories. And what drives us to read those stories -- whether it's to feel that sense of connection with others, to be entertained, to escape, to learn something new -- that part is constant. That part will always be relevant.

I think we need to hang tight to this truth until the dust settles, even as we learn new skills and face the challenges that come with navigating our careers in this ever-shifting publishing environment and this not-exactly-stable global economy. How stories will be packaged, sold and delivered in five years or ten is still a point of some debate, and I suspect many of us are going to have to adjust far more than we may feel comfortable doing (sigh), but the craving for stories will live on. No revolution -- digital or otherwise -- will change that.

What's a story you've read this summer that you really loved? Did you read it in print or in ebook form? If you're a writer, have you self-published anything digitally -- reissued novels, new fiction or short stories? In honor of both print and digital books, I'll give away two novels today: a PDF copy of my first romantic comedy On Any Given Sundae (June 2011, ebook) to one commenter, and a bound advanced reading copy of my upcoming women's fiction book A Summer in Europe (December 2011, Kensington) to another commenter. Drawing Monday the 15th, just before midnight, Central Time! Will post the winners' names in the comment section.

Marilyn Brant lives and writes in Chicago suburbs. She compulsively checks her Amazon and B&N sales numbers (when she's not procrastinating on Twitter or Facebook) and is forever in search of the perfect dessert.