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Rolling With The Punches

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I read the responses to Cara’s day asking what the readers of this blog want. I love research things myself, and I love just composing. The writer part of me is often more eager than the history buff, so I change around a bit.

Today I have something a little different. Since there are writers reading Risky Regencies, some published, some aspiring to be published…I thought I’d talk a little about my own experience.

The details of my back-story aren’t that important. Everyone has one, and they are all good—they all lead to the love of writing. I’ve mentioned before what made me love Regencies—and romantic suspense and good gothic romances—and that was my early reading. I loved Charles Dickens, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Victoria Holt, Helen MacInnes, Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer—by way of Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and the Black Stallion. 😉 Readers have the first ingredient that makes writers, by the way.

Growing as a writer—For those who would like to read about this, with apologies to those who don’t: To make it as a writer you do have to write every day, or nearly every day. Like anything else you become better at, it is practice, practice, practice. Many of us start with the love of the written word and write to please ourselves. Eventually our minds turn to the possibility of becoming published. We keep on writing, have our highs and our lows, and one day, after what seems an eon of time and a colossal amount of work, we receive an offer. My offer came from NAL Signet for my manuscript that I called “Cat of My Heart.” It was renamed “The Best Laid Plans” and came out as a Signet Regency in November 2003.

Here comes the “Rolling With the Punches” part: I now need to seek publication all over again. This is the lot of a writer, particularly a novelist, and it is not that unusual. Signet Regencies will no longer be produced, and I have completed my last contract for them.

I still love Regencies, but my current project is a romantic suspense. I am, however, daily attacked by Regency plot ideas! So no one must think I will not write in the Regency period again. I shall. It is only a matter of when.

Those of you who are aspiring writers may find it discouraging to know that being published does not mean a constant state of being with no further concerns about being published in the future. But I can tell you that it is not all that bad, either. I am eager to plunge ahead and see where I end up. Our books are adventures—so our careers must be. And the current state of publishing only makes it more of a challenge.

I’d love to hear everyone’s comments about publishing, either their own story, or about the state of publishing, or what they are targeting and why. Regency historicals are still popular, and this is where I hope to find myself eventually. There are also other avenues. If you love Regencies, where are you focusing your efforts now?

Laurie
LORD RYBURN’S APPRENTICE
Signet January, 2006

Let’s Do It Again

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If you visit writers’ blogs, chances are good you’ve come across the terms Pantser and Plotter. Writers use these terms to distinguish the style of writing they do; pantsers write by the seat of their pants, with no idea where the story is going. Plotters, no surprise (in more ways than one!), know where their story is going before they put finger to keyboard.

I am a pantser. I know the characters, I know why they absolutely should not be together, and that I am going to force them together nonetheless, but I have no idea how I am going to get them there. Which is fine if you’re working on the story steadily, but what about if you take a break?

I just returned from a vacation to Portland, OR, where I drank coffee, shopped for books, and hung out with my best friend. Note that I did not write. So now I’m back in Brooklyn with REALITY staring me in the face. Not the laundry, that’s doable, or the dishes, or the fact that the Spouse DID NOT BUY MILK even though I have an issue with not enough milk in the house (see the coffee comment for a clue). All manageable, albeit with much gnashing of teeth.

No, the problem is that I have to pick up the threads of my story and start weaving them together again. And since I write by feel, that’s really, really hard. To put it in perspective, think about misplacing a book you’re in the middle of reading–you locate it about a week or so later, with relief, but you don’t remember exactly why it’s important she revenge her father, or he has trust issues, or whatever. If you’re reading the story, you can get past that. If you’re writing the darn thing? Yow. Hard work.

So today I am buying milk, doing laundry, and heading off again to collect my son from his grandmother’s house. Monday I launch myself back into writing, where I hope I can figure out where the heck I was going when I last touched the story.

So–what do you do to jumpstart a project? If you’re a writer, how do you convince yourself to write again after a break?

Start Me Up,

Megan
www.meganframpton.com
PS: I don’t know if you can read it all, but the album cover is a movie soundtrack featuring “Let’s Do It Again” by the Staple Singers. I just love the Staple Singers. Mavis Staples has one of the sexiest voices in the universe, and this song seemed appropriate.

Near misses with the classics

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Last week I blogged about favorite books when I was a kid including at least one writer loathed by teachers. That got me thinking about books forced upon me at school that nearlyput me off the authors for life. And in fact I recently re-read one of them, Cranford, and loved it (thanks, Pam Rosenthal, for suggesting it). I was wondering what other books, or authors, others encountered at the wrong time and place, school or elsewhere, and how you’ve come to terms–or not–with them.

Cranford by Mrs. Gaskell was chosen by educators for its length, I think. It’s a very short novel, mainly a series of vignettes about life among the spinsters of a small provincial English town in the 1840s. I can’t really find any other reason to inflict it on a bunch of teenage girls who were fantasizing about marrying John, Paul, George, or Ringo. We were totally clueless about what the novel was even about or when it was set. I had the vague impression it was set in America, as there was a reference early on to “the railroad” and not railway–apparently an early Victorian term. I think we’d have responded much better to Wives and Daughters (yes, I’m always going on about Wives and Daughters), which is so romantic (but long), and with a decidely modern outlook on mother-daughter relationships. And then there’s always the hero and his famous knobstick in North and South (which I tried to re-read recently but found heavy going).

Continuing the catalogue of literary disasters, we were also inflicted with Silas Marner by George Eliot. Guess what: it’s short. It’s a very difficult book. It’s particularly tedious if you’re trying to guess the inseam measurement of Mick and the boys. Now I think we would have loved the teenage angst of Mill on the Floss (not my favorite), or Dorothea and her toyboy Ladislaw in Middlemarch. Or even the uberhot Daniel Deronda (though he is fairly boring) and naughty Gwendolyn Harleth.


Sadly, Thomas Hardy was represented by Under the Greenwood Tree. I still have no idea what it was about. I remember a lot of smock-clad yokels pontificating away about life, the universe, and everything, and a scene the teacher (bless her heart) described as being extremely risque, when the heroine appears at an open window with her hair down (the hopeless tart). It’s so sad. To think we could have had the rampant romanticism of Tess of the d’Urbervilles or Far from the Madding Crowd (both made into terrific movies).

Tell us about your near misses!

What everyone thinks is true… Part III

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Taking a break from the pleasure of viewing athletic male bodies in tight bodysuits (isn’t men’s speed skating grand?) to do the final bit of myth-busting on the history of pregnancy and childbirth.

#4: Husbands were always excluded from the birthing chamber.

Well, yes and no. Much as my husband bemoaned the loss of the “good old days” and offered to take up smoking and pacing rather than attend me through my two labors, having the husband in the delivery room isn’t really a modern invention.

It’s true that the centuries-old childbirth traditions usually excluded males. There was a female bonding ritual associated with childbirth: closing up windows and doors, lighting candles, the drinking of caudle (a hot spiced wine or ale) by the laboring woman’s female friends and relatives. Usually the man was not welcome, but that was when births were attended by midwives.

When male practitioners were starting to get in on the act, it became inappropriate to exclude husbands. Believe it or not, some opponents of man-midwifery wrote, with great zeal, about the risks of the man-midwife becoming inflamed with passion by the sight of the laboring woman. I can just picture that, remembering what a femme fatale I must have looked during my two labors!

So husbands were not as a rule excluded from the birthing chamber. Old-fashioned female friends and relatives of the woman might complain or try to enforce the earlier ritual, but during the 18th century and into the 19th, the old rituals of childbirth were eroding, especially among the monied classes.

During Victorian times, when “chloroform-and-forceps” births became more common, the moral support provided by friends and family was increasingly replaced with medication. Doctors began to exclude any “unnecessary” persons from the birthing chamber, claiming they only distressed the patient anyway. By the time hospital births became more common (in the 1920’s and 30’s) everyone was excluded until the return to natural childbirth of our own time. And now there are some women who believe we should return to the old patterns of childbirth, with women helping women.

Anyway, during “our period” husbands sometimes did attend their wives. Prince Leopold was quite devoted to Princess Charlotte and attended during her 50-hour fatal ordeal. So on a happier note, it is perfectly acceptable for a proper Regency hero to attend the heroine during the birth of their child. It is equally possible that a scummy husband would go off hunting.

So who do you think about men in the delivery room? If you lived in the Regency, what might you prefer? Would you like a return to the old ritual? How would you feel about having your mother, mother-in-law, sisters, cousins, girlfriends and neighbors all there egging you on? Would it feel supportive or overwhelming? Who would you not want to have there?

And oh yes, I was modern enough to want my husband there. He does a wicked neck massage that really helped. Bucking other trends, though, I refused to do that “hee-hee-hoo-hoo” breathing. And promised my husband that anyone bringing a camera or any recording device near me before the baby and I were cleaned up would die a quick but painful death. 🙂

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee
www.elenagreene.com

Tell Us What You Want!

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We at Risky Regencies are always delighted to know which posts you, our blog visitors, find most interesting here — or what you’d like to see here in the future. At the moment, the best we can do is judge based on the number of comments a post receives — so if a post gets a lot of comments, we assume that our visitors found it interesting…and if a post doesn’t, we may not make similar posts in the future.

However, we also know that there are some posts that our visitors may enjoy quite a bit, but that do not elicit comments! But we have a hard time telling the difference between posts you enjoy but don’t see the need to comment on, and posts that don’t really interest you.

So, for example, the fact that Bertie’s last two posts received only three comments each, none of which were from visitors to the blog, might indicate that people aren’t really interested in poor Bertie’s hapless posts. (Or it might not.)

Similarly, the fact that my two “what dirty bits did Kemble cut out of Shakespeare” posts also received no visitor comments might seem to indicate that our blog readers aren’t interested in Regency Shakespeare…. Then again, it might just be that our visitors felt the posts did not lend themselves to comments.

In other words, do you really want me to stop posting Bertie’s clueless questions? And the naughty bits from Shakespeare? Do you want more talk about Jane Austen movie hunks, or about Georgette Heyer novels, or about Horatio Hornblower? Do you want to hear more about the writing process, about how we create our novels, or how the publishing process works? Are you interested in hearing about what we’re working on now? Do you want to discuss your favorite romance heroes, or the romance cliches you hate the most, or what you require in a heroine? Do you want more Regency history info here? Do you want to discuss your favorite Regencies, and get recommendations that may lead to new favorites?

Do let us know!

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — out now from Signet Regency!!!