Okay, pity party’s over.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming… :blush:

Well today I went to the mailbox and found another rejection for my single-title length manuscript (you guys know which one I’m talking about, the one that does well in contests, has been solicited, and garners personalized responses, but I can’t get agented for). Once again it was a lovely personalized letter telling me “how much (she) enjoyed reading it” but the agent “just didn’t feel strongly enough about it” to represent it. Lord, today it really floored me. (I cried. I never do that!)

Usually I’m pretty adept at handling it (I mean I’ve gone the rounds with this story, but hell it’s got to be salable or it wouldn’t do so well in contests, get solicited, and get such warm rejections *oxymoron*) I need a critique group or something. I just am not willing to kill this ms yet.

Now I should point out that I sent the partial to this agent back in March and it has been extensively rewritten since then, but still… Ouch!

I’ve been struck a crushingly miserable blow today.

“You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist, you are learning your craft — then you can add all the genius you like.” - Phyllis Whitney

Well, my novella is pretty much finished. Now the storytelling part takes a backseat to the writing part. I’ll spend the next few days polishing it. Then I’ll set it aside and pick up where I left off with Seduce Me to Love. In a few weeks I’ll re-read my novella with fresh eyes and polish it further.

Yes… to be finished! This novella was a little different for me because I didn’t use any plot contrivances and considering the protagonists start out the story already married, it made it a challenge for me to keep them apart until the end. But I believe I’ve succeeded. It was a learning experience to be sure, one of the reasons I enjoy writing novellas. They give me a bit of license in how I approach the story. I’ve seen single author novella collections and I think I’ll work on one of those eventually. Right now I have so many stories to finish that I couldn’t possibly start any more, but the idea intrigues me. I bet it would be a lot of fun!

Switching gears–

I saw a few of you on the message board today. Yeah! (or was it yesterday? It’s pretty late right now! Or early, depending how you look at it.) I like how the message board gives so much more room for comments. Please feel free to start a new topic or expand on an older one. I enjoy reading everyone’s opinion.

Thank you so much to those of you who have added links to my site on your site! I’m always thrilled when I find out about it and I like to reciprocate.

Ahhh, I love it when a plan comes together! My novella is progressing beautifully (finally!) The story formed like lightning in my mind and within a couple of days I was half way finished. And then I got stuck! Argh! :crazy:

I took a week off and played around with the message board wondering if I was ever going to get back to this story. And then it happened. The pieces fell together in my mind at 2 am (or was it 3?).

And now… It’s moments like this that drive me to write. The satisfaction of watching the ends tie together in a neat little bow and the HEA actually happens. I’m not as bad as Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone and cry all over my endings, but I do get a… rush? thrill? How to describe it?

I just can’t. Fellow writers will understand exactly what I mean. Readers–you’ll know when you finish the story and feel the same satisfaction.

I’m having one of those, “Damn, that’s good!” moments. Hopefully, when you read it you’ll think so, too. :satisfied:

Last night, 2 am, I’m getting ready to go to bed and suddenly the novella I’ve been stuck on for the last almost two weeks came into clear focus. I had to force myself to go to bed rather than stay up all night working on it. I’ve got the story down now, I think, so I’ll be firing that off today. Yeah! What a relief! (Figures after I started a different story in my collaboration with Sasha White yesterday! :rolleyes: ) But I’m not complaining! After my writer’s block it’s a happy day for me to have two stories on high boil at once!

As a reader, I’ve found a new author! Yeah! Gaelen Foley. I am having a fantastic time reading Devil Takes a Bride. If I weren’t so busy writing I would read the book completely through in one sitting. As it is I have to tear myself away from the book in order to get any work done. I’ll have to order her backlist next. Wow.

I am even more grateful for my message board. It was the breeding ground for a wonderful idea by fellow author Sasha White. She suggested a collaboration on our next project and a WIP was born. It will be a fun and challenging process, a great learning and growing experience that I am looking forward to. I started a new topic on the board just a few days ago asking if the internet helped or hindered romance authors. I think I found my answer.

Where has my inspiration gone? I am in a writing rut. It’s lasted almost a week now. I’ve gotten very little done in that time. Just a week ago I had three stories I was working on simultaneously (four more on the back burner) and this week it’s just not happening for me. I’m forcing myself to write anyway, but it’s not flowing the way it should and I know I will have to revise everything I’m doing now. *sigh* I hate these periods. I know from experience that they pass but in the meantime I HATE IT! :crazy:

I’m wondering now about Alison Kent’s question on what kind of author I am–a writer, a storyteller, or both? I went with storyteller since I’ve been called that so many times before, but now I wonder. If that were the case, wouldn’t I be less concerned with word flow and sentence structure? I’ve got the story in my head and I’m pushing myself to write through my rut, but I know I’ll have to go back and redo it all when I’m in the right frame of mind so that my words come together in “my voice” to tell the story. I don’t over-analyze my stories but I do have a certain expectation about how they should move along with my words. And right now they ain’t movin’! I’m kicking them along!

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.”
Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)

Romance author Alison Kent brought up a wonderful and provocative point in her blog about romance authors being singular in their easy accessibility to the public through the web. Her entry prompted a new topic on my message board, so if you get a chance weigh in with your opinion.