Megan Hart

74000 / 100000 words. 74% done!

lines of the day:I dropped the belt. It was a prop and I didn’t need it. Wasn’t going to use it. If I couldn’t leash and collar him with my words, then I didn’t deserve to have him.

I also finished my rough draft of Layover and I’m just waiting for final crit to make sure it’s all pretty and stuff before I send it in.

I have 100 pages to go in Switch and more story than that to fill them. EEEP! Oh, well. It will all work out in the end.

And then it’s on to Pleasure and Purpose, and man, am I excited!

M

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70500 / 100000 words. 71% done!

line of the day: It bothered me, the mess of it. The slick-slidingness and smell of it, too.

Ten pages a day. That’s what I’m doing. Ten pages a day. Day by day. And of course now I’m in the middle of a hot scene but because I didn’t get started on time today I had to stay up late to finish my ten and now it’s late and I’m too tired to kee going. Not so much that I’m tired NOW but if I don’t go to bed I’ll be tireder in the morning and then I’ll be worthless all day. And of course I have a chiro appt in the morning which means my whole writing day is pretty much kaput and I have to leave the couple at this point:

“Go to my bedroom,” I repeated and pulled the leather tight between my two fists. “Get on my bed, on your knees, facing the headboard. Put your hand on it and wait for me.”

But really, it’s the only kind thing to do, stopping right here. If I wrote more they’d be halfway through the sexxin’ and that’s just not fair.

M

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Wrote a few pages while watching Queer As Folk. Ok, so it was only a few, but c’mon. I kept getting distracted. ;)

65500 / 100000 words. 66% done!

line of the day: Being unable to speak is different than not having words.

I’m tired. That is all.

M

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62250 / 100000 words. 62% done!

haven’t posted lately, so there it is.

line of the day: I’d imagined the sender, my secret commander, crafting each word with the intent of forcing me one more step along a path so curved I couldn’t see the end.

And on emoticons. It’s hard to judge someone’s tone in writing, but with the advance of written communication like emails and IM’s taking the place of in-person words, I think we’ve reached an overload of emoticons and exclamation points. Because it’s no longer enough to say

Thanks.

You have to say Thanks! :)

Because if you don’t, it seems like you’re being insincere.

And so we all add exclamation points! To sentences we’d never shout or exclaim! But it’s the only written way to show enthusiasm! :)

I don’t mind LOL, btw, but the whole emoticon thing and exclamation points thing is something I’ve noticed more and more.

We have to be happy! shiny! happy! Shiny! Bouncy! Bouncy!

And I know how it feels to get a one word reply without the exclamation — it makes you feel like the other person is just being conciliatory and doesn’t really “mean” what they said because without the smiley face or the exclamation ,they’re just going through the motions. That’s how it FEEEEEEEEELS!

:(

M

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Oh, well, the glory couldn’t last. :)

My days as number one on the Amazon.com bestseller list (Erotica, yo!) are passed. I’m hovering at number ten now. Dirty and Broken have dropped in rank and made it onto some lists, too…pulled along by Tempted I guess and not bad for two books a year old. I’ll take it, yes I will!

It would easy, I guess, to look at the lists and ranks and be upset because I’m not number one anymore. But let’s face it. There will always be someone with a better deal, better sales, a better cover. You can stomp your feet and gnash your teeth or you can sit your butt in the chair and write the best book you can. I know what I choose.

Not that I’m immune to envy. I’m most certainly not. I want the pretty and the shiny, too. But I try never to let the gimme get in the way of the thankee. I work hard for what I have achieved. Nobody can take that away from me. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

And it’s so true, isn’t it?

But there are so many people in the world who want want want and never take the time to be grateful for what they have. They spend their time detailing all the nitpicky things wrong in their lives — so their hotel bathroom doesn’t have a soap dish and someone else’s does. So what? Instead of being grateful they can afford to stay in a hotel and take a vacation, they focus what they don’t have.

I find people like that very draining and difficult to be around, because I want to shake them and say “you are blessed. Be grateful.”

I’m not immune to envy. I want. So I’ll strive to get what I want, and if that means working hard, well, I’ll try. And if it comes to me, then it comes and I’ll be grateful once I get it. And if it doesn’t, well…lesson learned for me then, huh?

M

PS — wrote ten pages today again, but don’t have the urge to make a counter for the progress. Steady as she goes, loves. Steady as she goes.

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54250 / 100000 words. 54% done!

line of the day: Whatever had his garters snapping, it was going to make it impossible for him to get some work done until it was resolved.

Good day today. 15 pages. Figured out what scenes I have left = about 130 (min) pages. Not sure if I’m going to keep the subplot which would actually make the scene with the gartersnapping unnecessary, but I do like it and will keep it if I can. Maybe just have to shorten it. This book isn’t going to be “Finished” at 100K only because I’m going to have to write more and cut a bunch I already wrote, but whatever.

It’s working.

And as an aside, might I point out I don’t have a muse cooing in my ear and floating me along on feathery wings of inspiration. I have sitted my arse in this chair every day this week from about 9 am to 4 pm (or later) and written.

And it has been hard, yo.

It has sucketh mightily.

My arse hath fallen asleep and my back hurts and I am yea verily most grouchy.

But I have sat my butt in this chair and worked and worked even when the words don’t want to come because that is what I DO and it is my JOB and I have a contract and no amount of whining or fussing or hysterical dramz can counteract the fact I signed my name and I took the money, and I owe the work.

And now I’m just in the middle of a sex scene and it’s the weekend and I won’t get back to it until Monday! Haha!

M

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Didn’t update my 70 Days of Sweat progress yesterday…

50250 / 100000 words. 50% done!

line of the day: I’d fainted twice in my life, and this didn’t feel like that, the gray-red haze taking over my vision, the ringing in my ears.

Bad headache today, but I wanted to say this — the only ONE TWU WAY in writing is to sit your butt down and write. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a pompous git. You write. And write some more. That’s the only way to do it.

All the rest is commentary and opinion (and we all know about opinions, don’t we?)

Opinions are great. But that’s all they are. They’re not carved in stone, secret handshakes or guarantees. There are people who will try to lecture you about all the technical aspects of writing and impress you with their knowledge about things like black moments and story arcs and they’ll rattle off a laundry list of shoulds and must-dos…but really…in the end, what it comes down to is something simple.

Knowing about a black moment or resolution or what HEA means and that they’re important to the story is fine. But none of that will write your story for you, and it surely won’t guarantee that it makes it GOOD. If knowing that you need 1,2,3 and X,Y,Z to create a story is what works for you, FABULOUS! Go to it! But if you’re going down a checklist because someone told you the only way to write a story is to have X love scenes and a black moment by page Y and you absolutely MUSTMUSTMUST have this, that or the other in order for your story to be any good…well, hey, whatever. It’s your life. It’s your book. And I’m not saying that it’s not important to know what you’re doing with your book, or where it’s going, but I think you do yourself a huge disservice if you need a checklist in order to write — if without that checklist you can’t manage to put the words down.

It’s my OPINION (remember what we all know about those) that anyone who tries to tell you HOW you should write and WHAT you should write is a pompous, self absorbed and probably insecure person. Because really, nobody should be able to say “This is what I do, and you must do it the way I do it, or you are wrong. And more than that, you suck.”

I can tell you what I do, and if you want to try it, hey. Good. If you find it doesn’t work, or if the idea of writing sequentially but leaving spaces to add stuff later (which is what I sometimes do) drives you nuts, then don’t do it. I’m not saying and would never say that I have the one true way for everyone. I only have the one (or more than one) true way for me.

There are tons of experts out there and writing books and advice, and you know what? Great. Read them. Find what works for you. Some of that stuff will be great for you. Some won’t. But the bottom line is, NOBODY out there, and I don’t care who it is, can give you the magic key and say if you do this their way, you’re going to write a great book. Or that if you don’t do it their way, your book will fail.

You can spell it all right and use proper grammar and throw in every single “acceptable” writing convention and you could still write a wall-banger. And while I will concede that without good spelling and proper grammar and some basic storytelling techniques like beginning, middle and satisfactory end that your book won’t be much good…well, I guess it’s easier to figure out what will make a book bad than make it good.

You can’t write a good book unless you write it. Period.

And that’s my pompous and self-absorbed advice to you. All the rest is details and commentary. ;)

M

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48000 / 100000 words. 48% done!

line of the day: I folded it shut as though it might change what I’d read, but as though they’d been written in flames, the words burned my fingers through the paper.

also, I’m going by page count x 250 words to get my word count…the computer word count is slightly higher. Not that it matters. I’m aiming for 400 pages, regardless, and it’s likely it will still be around 100K, give or take.

M

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45250 / 100000 words. 45% done!

line of the day: There’s nothing potentially embarrassing about Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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