COMING OCT. 30th… CONFERENCE PROPOSALS

October 23, 2016October 23, 2016Leave a comment

Graphic by Alexis Daria

Writing conferences are a great way to get our names out there and meet other writers. But what if we could not only go to conferences but present at them? Having the bravery to get in front of a room of writers and talk to them about what you know – it’s a hallmark career moment. How do we get there?

If you’ve been on a panel before, come share your experience. If you’ve never done it or even thought about it, come learn how it’s done.

See you Sunday 4pm PST / 7pm EST.

~Robin Lovett

Coming Oct. 16th… NaNoWriMo

October 9, 2016October 13, 2016Leave a comment

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – starts November 1st.

For the virgin writers out there, it’s a crusade to write 50,000 words in the month of November along with hundreds of thousands of writers around the world. It’s about committing to a writing goal with the help of your peers.

Your #RWChat hosts are big fans of NaNo. Alexis Daria has been doing it since 2004 and has been a municipal liaison for the New York City region since 2006. C.L. Polk has done the NaNo camps in April and July, and my first book published this summer was written for NaNo in 2014.

This Sunday we’ll chat about what it’s like to plan a writing marathon with big word count aspirations. If you’ve done it before, come share your tips. If you haven’t, come learn more.

See you Sunday 4pm PST / 7pm EST!

~Robin Lovett

Coming Oct. 9… Fear of Success

October 8, 2016October 9, 2016Leave a comment

We all want to succeed, right? Of course. We think. Most days. Sort of.

Battling through our insecurities and self-sabotage on the road to success isn’t easy. But the good news is – we’re not alone. Everyone does it. Join us to talk about how your Fears of Success manifest and learn how others do battle with it. We all fight the fight toward the goals we deserve to achieve. Let’s compare notes! Sunday 4pm PST / 7pm EST

~Robin Lovett

Coming Oct. 2nd… Procrastination

September 30, 2016October 9, 2016Leave a comment

rwchat-oct-2 It took us till Friday to come up with this Sunday’s topic cuz, yeah, we were procraaaastinating. Every writer does it. It gets in our way. We all lose large amounts of writing time to it. How do you cope with procrastination? What effect does it have on your process and how do you overcome it?

Come with ideas, come with questions. See you Sunday on #rwchat at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST.

~Robin Lovett

Graphic courtesy of Alexis Daria.

A Simple Plan (shame if something happened to it…)

September 23, 2016October 9, 2016Leave a comment

What goals do you have for the autumn season? According to my bullet journal, mine are simple:

Don’t touch the MS for Project Arcade until Oct. 1!
Research methods for revising novels (Sep 30)
Read Story Genius
Re-Read 2k-10k
Google search for blog posts (Fiction University)
Play Dragon Age: Inquisition for background and feel for Project Arcade (no deadline)
READ PROJECT ARCADE (Oct 1)
Make a revision plan for Project Arcade (Oct 4)
Ask 3 people to be critical readers for Project Arcade (October 15)
Make it up to 50 queries submitted for WITCHMARK (october 15)
Revise Project Arcade, round 1 (November 15)
Revise and edit Project Arcade, round 2 (December 15)
Plan Winter 2017 goals (December 22)
Reading Break (December 31)

This is pretty much in order. It also focuses exclusively on stuff I can control. For example, I wrote “query more agents to a goal of 50” because I can do that myself. “Find an agent to represent me” depends on other people.

I also have a lot of freedom with my plan. I have set deadlines, but they’re just for me, as I’m not under contract for anything. I am super comfortable with my deadlines, and if nothing happens to disrupt my plan, I’m going to have a contemporary romance ready to query when publishing re-opens in January.

The only problem is if something happens to wreck my beautiful plan, like say getting a response on WITCHMARK that means I have to hold off on Project Arcade. Then I’ll have to do it over, but honestly, that would be a nice problem to have.

How do you plan ahead for writing?

Coming Sept. 25th… Autumn Goals

September 18, 2016October 9, 2016Leave a comment

Graphic by Alexis Daria

The summer’s gone… The years have passed… I mean, well, not years, but it’s been since July when we talked about our mid-year goals. How are they going? Are you where you thought you’d be at the end of September? Are those goals you planned for “By the end of 2016” still looking possible?

Whether you need a totally new goal plan or you’re running right on track, come join us Sunday evening 4pm PST / 7pm PST on #RWChat to tell us how your writing is going this fall.

~Robin Lovett

Our Point of View on POV

September 17, 2016September 17, 2016Leave a comment

rwchat-sept-18-email

Since everyone has a different POV on POVs, we thought we’d give you the four POVs of our #RWChat hosts.

“I write dual POV in very close third person,” says KIMBERLY BELL. “I choose dual because I like having the perspective of both of the romantic leads in my story. It allows me to play with misunderstandings and have a bit more flexibility in a character’s behavior because the reader understands the why. I write close third because…writing in first person feels weird to me? I need that little bit of distance to feel like an observer rather than like it’s MY story—but I write third very close, because I enjoy playing with the internal thoughts of my characters and using them to really get you into their personalities.”

“I’m flexible,” says C.L. Polk. “I’ve written in first person and third at varying narrative distances, but my most comfortable perspective is third person past, written as close to the skin as possible. I tend to limit the number of POV characters to no more than two, which works well for romance novels. Third person close is vivid and personal, and since I want people to connect to the story and characters, I don’t want to hold them at arm’s length.”

“A close third person POV was how I started writing,” says Robin Lovett. “I wrote three novels that way until I decided to try first person present tense to see if I could. As of now, my two first person POV books are the only ones that have sold. For whatever reason, I’ve had no luck yet with my third person books. I enjoy present tense verbs in the first person because it makes everything feel more immediate and in-the-moment exciting. We each go with our strengths. It takes trial and error to find our voices.”

“Before I admitted to myself that I wanted to write romance,” says Alexis Daria. “I used to write a lot more in first person (past tense). Now, I write exclusively in third person, but that might change in the future. Sometimes I’ll read scenes out loud to myself, converting them to first person present as I read, in order to get a deeper POV.”

Join us Sunday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST and tell us what your POV is on POV.

Coming Sept. 11… Evoking Emotion

September 4, 2016September 4, 2016Leave a comment

RWchat Sept 11 We all want to “hook” our readers and the fastest way to do that is by evoking an emotional response. But how do we do that? How do we write an “emotional hook” and once we do that, keep evoking an emotional response strong enough to keep the reader engaged for an entire novel?

Come with your ideas and your questions! See you Sunday at 4pm PST, 7pm EST.

~ Robin Lovett

Reading as Research

August 24, 2016August 24, 2016Leave a comment

DeathtoStock_Clementine2 You know the feeling. You’re reading a book, and for some indefinable reason it completely sucks you in. When you finish, you seek out the rest of the author’s backlist, and devour them. Wow, you think. This is a really good book!

Great. We all love good books. But as authors, we also want to write really good books. The problem is, a really good book will make you forget you’re reading a story created in the imagination of someone who labored over a laptop for months at their kitchen table. It takes a lot of work to make a book read effortlessly. At the end of such a book, you’re left wondering, how did they do it?

Continue reading →

Coming Aug. 28th… Learning from our Favorite Books

August 21, 2016August 24, 2016Leave a comment

RW chat learning from your favorite books It needs to be capitalized, I think. Our FAVORITE BOOKS are like living breathing things to us. But how do we make OUR books like THOSE book?

All of us have favorite authors and favorite series, but when we read, it’s so easy to get lost in the story, we forget to think, how did she do it? Join us next Sunday when we’ll talk about how to learn from our favorite books to help our writing and how to learn from our favorite authors to help our careers.

See you Sunday 7pm EST, 4pm PST!

~Robin Lovett