I feel like a bit of a twit attempting to give writing advice to anyone, seeing as I still don’t have much of a clue myself, but here goes. If any of the following drivel makes any sense to you and it helps with your writing, great! If not, I completely understand.

How do you find the time to write?

This is something I struggled with for years. I always had the mindset that I would need to set aside a large block of time in order to really “get into” my story. Once in a while, on a weekend perhaps, those blocks of time would come along and I would enthusiastically make some headway on my work in progress. Then the week would start, and with working full-time, childcare, cleaning the house and everything else that we all deal with on a daily basis, I wouldn’t get back to it, and so my poor unfinished novel would sit there collecting dust until I picked it up again in a couple of months. At which point I would have to start all over again familiarizing myself with the plot and the characters.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, that I can share with you, it’s that if you come back to your book every day, even if you only have twenty minutes, it’s worth it. Touch your work on a daily basis, even if all you can do is read over the last page you wrote. Don’t let it get cold. After a while, you will become like Pavlov’s dog. When you sit down at the computer, you will be able to do something, because the characters and the world you have built in the book will still be fresh in your mind, and you will be able to jump right in. Trust me on this one.

Another thing I struggled with was to try and write in the evening when I got home after a long day at work, where I was sitting at a computer all day. To sit down at a computer again was the last thing I wanted to do. My solution was to start getting up earlier (Thank you, Alison Brennan for this inspiration!) around 5:30 a.m., which sounds hideously early, but once you’re up, and have a cup of coffee, it’s not so bad. I can log in a good hour and a half of writing before I have to get ready for work. Yes, I’m tired when I get home that night, but hey, I would be tired anyway. I find that I’m better at plotting and writing in the morning, when I’m driven by caffeine, and better at editing in the evening.

How did you get started?

I joined Romance Writers of America, and subsequently joined my local chapter, Valley Forge Romance Writers; a warm, supportive, albeit boisterous group! I was inspired to enter some contests where I achieved a few finals and some wins, which was a tremendous shot in the arm for me and validation that maybe I actually could write. I also found a great friend, Debra Lew Harder, who became my critique partner, and who always gives such insightful, clever advice. I think that’s the time that I really started thinking of myself as a writer, and began to take it seriously. At most meetings we have a speaker, often a published author, who gives insights into the business and who talks about their writing techniques.

When I think back to those early days of my involvement with the chapter, and see how many of my peers have been published since then and how far we all have come, it’s very inspirational. It is certainly true that perseverance pays off. You need talent, true, but you also need the passion and the commitment to see it through.

Why do you need an agent?

As a former talent agent, and real estate agent, I firmly subscribe to the concept of “agency”; of having a professional handle for you what they do best. Sure, you can sell your house by owner, but will you get the best price and will you be able to handle any problems that arise? Same goes for literary agents. Many publishing houses only accept agented material now anyway. Romance Writers of America provides a current list of agents and editors and what they are looking for and how to submit to them.

All the RWA chapters sponsor contests each year, and it is a great way to get your work out there, (typically you will submit the first 25 - 35 pages of your manuscript), and receive comments from the judges as well as score sheets. If you make it to the final round of judging, you will also be getting your work in front of an editor or agent, who could possibly request the full manuscript. Some of the comments will make sense to you, some won’t, but I have found contests to be a valuable way to test out my material and get some good feedback.

Any tips on how to write?

As Nora Roberts says, you can’t edit a blank page. Get it down on paper, or on the computer, and then you can revise it. Sometimes it comes out great the first time, but more often than not, what I write on the first draft is absolute crap, but by the second or third run through, it starts to take on a rhythm and I am able to live with it. Actually I think editing is the fun part; the polishing and playing with words until they shine.

I tend to write scenes, like brief movie scenes that I see in my head, and they could be all over the place. If I see a scene that could be the climax, I write it down. I certainly don’t write chronologically from the beginning of the book until the end. When I hear people talk about which chapter they are on, I can’t relate. My book is like a giant jigsaw puzzle to me. Sometimes I might move around a scene to earlier or later in the book and suddenly it works.

I’ve found that an Excel workbook helps me to keep track of everything very well. I don’t get involved in too much preparation, as I would rather just get on with it and write the book, but I have found this a useful way to keep track of all the myriad details. I first started doing this with my first book, STEPPING STONES, as it was very much tied into the seasons and gardening and flowers. If I mentioned a flower in a scene, I had to make sure it was appropriate to my time line and that I wasn’t talking about daffodils in July.

It’s a simple system: I write a line for each thing that happens in the book and in the column to the left, I track the day that it is happening on. An added bonus is that this becomes the bare bones for your synopsis. And it is also much easier to play around with the plot by making changes to the Excel list to see what works, rather than chopping up your manuscript.

For THE END AT RIVER’S BEND, I added more pages to the workbook. One to keep track of the characters, one for their individual speech patterns, one for all the stores in the town, one for whodunit, one for the time line of events before the book started, and so on. I also had a “working page” where I would jot down questions as they occurred that might involve research, so I could carry on with the writing, but wouldn’t forget to check out the information later, such as how many gears does a Porsche Carrera have? (Six, by the way, but I would have said five if I didn’t do the research).

The library is a great place to start with books on writing. I have scoured the shelves of my local library and I am sure I have read every book they have on “how to write”. There’s a list of Recommended Reading on the For Writers section that you may want to check out.

A word to the wise - no matter what the books say about how you should write, no matter what your critique group or your chapter mates might say, or whatever the feedback is from contest judges, or even all that you hear from well-known published authors, at the end of the day, IT’S YOUR BOOK. Take what makes sense to you, use it as you will, and ignore the rest. Don’t get so caught up in trying to please everyone that you lose sense of what makes you unique.

Of course, the publishing world is a business, like any other, and there will be some truths about what sells and what will make it in the marketplace. But write a good book, the best that you can, be open to good advice when it comes along, and edit it and polish it until becomes a book that you would want to read.

Happy writing!

Cathy Pritchard