NaNoWriMo – Julia Park Tracey

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015

Work-in-Progress blog hop!

I know I wrote on this topic about six months ago, but I’m working on new things, so I said yes to the invitation to share my WIP. I was invited by Laurie Baxter (click here to visit her blog post). Thanks, Laurie!

What is your working title of your book (or story)?
Veronika Layne Has a Nose for News: #2 in the Hot Off the Press Series

Where did the idea come from for these books?
I wanted Veronika to have some more adventures, of course, but my friend Woody Minor told me a true story about a local Victorian house that possibly had Gold Rush coins hidden in the walls. I took that idea and ran with it.

What genre do your books fall under?
Veronika is a mystery. My Hot Off the Press series is suspenseful and romantic, but closer to NA mystery than anything else. You could also call them chick-lit but NA (New Adult) is the preferred term these days.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Veronika Layne chases a story about a Hollywood real estate house flipper, mysterious gold coins, and why someone is buying up old houses on San Pedro Island.

Will your book(s) be self-published or represented by an agency?
Booktrope, a hybrid publisher, is representing my Veronika Layne series, as well as Tongues of Angels.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote this quickly, as a NaNoWriMo project — thirty days! But revisions took quite a bit longer. I revised for several months after that. it’s a short book, just 50,000 words, so it goes fast, both reading and writing.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I think you can compare Veronika Layne Has a Nose for News with anything that Dick Francis wrote — it has the same steeped-in-her-occupation as Francis’s jockeys or other MCs. You could also compare Veronika with Bridget Jones, for getting into sticky situations and feeling like a flop.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My friend Woody gave me the idea, but I have been nurturing Veronika Layne inside of me for some time. She has the characteristics of my daughters — smart, feminist, fun — with the shrewd journalist I longed to be. She has some of my insecurities but she hasn’t yet attained wisdom. I’m enjoying watching her grow as a woman and as a reporter.

I also included a character named Flo who was a real-life sweet friend and neighbor of ours who painted beautiful florals and still lifes. I have several of her paintings. The story about Flo is mostly true. Here’s some of the real Flo’s work:

I still miss Flo today, and was happy I could include her in this sub-plot about a talented artist who acts as Veronika’s surrogate grandmother. These paintings are in my office and I see and love them every day.

December 1, 2014December 1, 2014

Five Things I Learned from NaNoWriMo

I survived NaNoWriMo. What is NaNoWriMo? It was the kooky idea of a handful of friends who challenged each other to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, and that launched an international movement to get others to join in, and now, a dozen years later, NaNoWriMo is a juggernaut where normally sensible people do insane things. Let me tell you about how NaNoWriMo went for me.

I vowed, rashly, to get out of bed at 5 a.m. and write my fingers off every day until I had hit my 50,000 word goal. I planned ahead, writing myself an inspirational note on the kitchen chalkboard (“NaNoWriMo 5am BITCHES!”) and pre-setting the coffee-maker. I pre-plotted a little tiny bit. Like, the first two chapters. After that, I was in the land of Pure Imagination…

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or a good thing. In NaNoWriMo, the motto is, “No plot, no problem.” Just keep writing. So I got myself out of bed, poured the coffee, wrapped up in a blankie and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Things went along pretty well until I got to about 40,000 words, and then I hit The Wall. In NaNoWriMo circles, this is a very common occurrence. About the third week of November, the enthusiasm wanes. The adrenaline wears off. It becomes a slog through mud. A deathmarch toward 50K. I had run out of plot. I had a crick in my shoulder that wouldn’t go away. I was sleeping on a heating pad and popping ibuprofen daily. What time is it? Advil o’clock. I was afraid I was out of story. It worried me. I mean, what if my imagination had run dry?

Then I went to a write-in without my laptop. I took a notepad and a pen and hand-drafted a chapter. Then another. By the end of the two-hour session, I had consumed a Mexican hot chocolate and a currant scone, and drafted the last five chapters of the novel. I went home and hit the laptop. The only day I couldn’t write was Thanksgiving Day, and it was a maddening day, torn between peeling potatoes and vacuuming cat hair and making a cheese platter while my eyes glazed over, thinking of what was in store for my heroine. I tell ya, the life of a novelist is no picnic.

But I finished. November 28, and I slammed the door on this (extremely) rough draft. I’m taking the month of December to let the draft marinate, so to speak, and revisions begin January 1. This, the second volume of the Veronika Layne Hot off the Press series, will be out in spring.

So what did I learn from NaNoWriMo?

1) Goals are important. Set them. Pursue them. Try to make them. Adjust the timeline if you have to. But give yourself something for which to strive, as a writer and as a human being.

2) Don’t live in a vacuum. Pay attention to the world and let it affect your writing. You are not a precious flower under a bell jar. You are a creature of the universe, and your work should reflect that. The Ferguson/Michael Brown case unraveled in November, and I found myself writing some of that passion/compassion into my novel.

3) Pursuant to item 2, go write with friends. Don’t be a recluse. I discovered a handful of women writers in Alameda I never knew, who have — through this firewalking experience — become my friends. I see us writing together and supporting each other’s work in the foreseeable future. And those are Good Things, as Martha Stewart says.

4) Take a walk every day. Whenever I needed to work out a scene or a sticky plot point, I took a walk. The act of moving the body, breathing fresh air and the change of scenery made a huge difference to me and the story.

5) Write a crappy first draft. Don’t sit in judgment of your rough draft. Let it flow, and then revise the heck out of it. Anne Lamott said it years ago, in Bird by Bird: Write a shitty first draft. Don’t edit until you’ve drafted something. In NaNoWriMo, you don’t have that kind of time or luxury. And the good news for writers is that the longer you write, your first drafts will get better, too. You won’t be working with dreck. You’ll be working with a rougher version of the story. And that is an encouraging development.

The result of this year’s NaNoWriMo experience is that I find I’m a better writer than last year, and the year before that. I know how to work out the kinks. I know how to take care of myself in the stress. And I have learned to take friends with me — don’t do it alone. All of these are winning strategies for more than just spewing out a novel in 30 days. I anticipate using my lifeskills for — pretty much — forever.

* * *

Have you read Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop? It’s online at you-know-where and you can order it from your local bookstore, too. I have to ask, because this is the biggest shopping season of the year. And it’s Cyber Monday today – so if you’re thinking about cyber-shopping, why not pop into Amazon and click, click, click?

October 28, 2014October 28, 2014

Weekend Wonders…

Saturday is the first day of NaNoWriMo and I am raring to go. So ready to start writing book #2 of the Veronika Layne series that I keep spacing out of conversations and falling into my story. I was up on a ridge, hiking, in my mind today, and suddenly there was a love scene happening, and then I realized my husband was talking to me and I had to snap out of it. I wasn’t fantasizing — I was writing. In my mind. Just like that.

NaNoWriMo is a 30-day bootcamp to write a novel. I wrote one last year and it was one of the best experiences — such a challenge — but I did it! And loved the results. That novel is still in the revision stage, not quite ready for the world, but definitely worth keeping. I need to get my second Veronika Layne book out into the world in spring, so it has to be written. And revised. And sent to my publisher. So. What better way to get it done than to force/squeeze/panic/deathmarch my way through it? Fifty thousand words in 30 days? BRING IT.

And just for kicks, here’s the working cover and title:

All I can tell you now (since I haven’t written it yet) is that she gets an assignment for the newspaper that takes her on a wild ride, with a few pit stops for making hot sweet love, and — well, I’ll stop there. Because it all will come out in NaNoWriMo.

This week I’m freelancing madly — I have interviews almost daily, and deadlines at the end of the week, to get these stories done and off my desk before NaNo begins. Most of these are for Alameda/Oakland magazines, but also for Sweatpants & Coffee and some other sites TBA.

This weekend, speaking of coming events (was I?), I’ll be at the Holiday Fest at Temple Israel in Alameda, signing and selling books. They’ll be specially priced for my neighbors and friends — hope to see you there!

March 28, 2014March 28, 2014

What’s new? “My Writing Process” blog tour

This week I’m writing as part of the “My Writing Process” blog tour. I’d like to thank Rebecca Lawton for inviting me to write my story as part of the blog tour. You can read more about the lovely and talented Becca Lawton at http://beccalawton.com/ and http://beccalawton.com/blog/.

1) What am I working on?
Currently I am hard at work transcribing diaries from 1930. I’ve been editing and publishing Doris Bailey Murphy’s diaries for about two and a half years now; I’ve published two books about the 1920s and am heading into the Great Depression, 1930-33, now. I transcribe her fountain-penned pages and laugh at her thoughts, and then I stop and go look for background information to tell me what she means. Sometimes I learn a lot about one thing – like grapefruit farming in the Arizona desert in 1930. Or the real estate business as the economy was crashing in 1928. Or Portland architecture.
I’ve also got two novels under construction. One is in the resting phase before major revisions begin; it’s a literary contemporary novel. The other is a work-in-progress as we speak, about 32,000 words of a genre romantic suspense about a girl reporter and her sidekick on the trail of some buried Native American bones. I’m aiming to finish that and get it up on Kindle later this year.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
My work is a little niche-y – or cross-niche-y. I’m a journalist by training, so I write fast and generally pretty cleanly. I don’t struggle over sentences or word choice; I keep writing til the thing is done. This comes from years of hard deadlines, editing my own and others’ work, and no time for revisions. One learns to write well in the first draft, or one doesn’t keep one’s job long.
I was early on the scene in the blog world; I had been writing a column in the newspaper since 1996, and it was an easy step to take it to the Internet. I’ve been blogging for 11 years now, and have kept my main blog (Modern Muse) alive all that time. That has given me a facility with the conversational style that newspaper writing or literary writing haven’t. I’m also a literary scholar; I’ve written for publication about Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and the Harry Potter phenomenon. My training in literary research has helped me immeasurably in the Doris Diaries project.
When you put all this in a cocktail shaker and agitate it, you get my conversational novel style with rich literary allusions. My editorial reportage tends to be more readable, and so does my literary work, I’ve been told. So there ya go.

3) Why do I write what I do?
Short and sweet? I have stories to tell. And I am pathologically afraid of being una dona priva di narrativa. I hate being censored.

4) How does my writing process work?
I write early and late in the day, with down-time in the middle of the afternoon. I let the pot boil, as it were, for some time, and then sit down and just pour out the story. I wrote my collection of short stories in just a few weeks, but I’d been stewing on them for about six years. If I get stuck, I start typing notes. I work on the story, leave a gap with a note like “add conversation here” and keep going. Don’t let those things slow you down, writers. Just keep telling your story. Come back and fill in later.
I’m a good editor, but I need editing, because I often can’t see my own errors. So I will do the first or second pass, then hand off my work to other trained eyes. I do a lot of editing for others, and it’s a pretty fair exchange. I’m used to being told what to fix. My ego is not involved. And if I think the editor is wrong, I won’t change it.

You are the god of your story. Do what you want.

October 28, 2013March 28, 2014

NaNoWriMo in just three days

Dude. Where did October go? I was sitting over there filing my nails and making glib promises to write a novel in 30 days, and suddenly Halloween is here and I have to get started writing. Like, soon.

I have a title. It’s called “That Thing I’m Gonna Start Writing.” I have no outline. I figured it would come to me in a dream. I have nothing simmering in my head, waiting to burst out onto the page.

The last few times I NaNo’d, I knew exactly what I was going to do, and I was revved up and ready to go. This year I am mid-book-tour, with a reading, an author fair and a research trip to another state planned (hello, Albuquerque!). In other years, I had been blogging about the book ideas. Once I wrote creative nonfiction. Another year I wrote 30 poems in 30 days. I’ve used NaNoWriMo in my writing classes to inspire students, and have guest-spoken in a middle-school classroom to budding authors on the delights of NaNo. I felt utterly confident about the ease of the project.

But here, now. In three days. I have no excuses. I have been working on other people’s projects. I have been producing nonfiction. But I haven’t been writing – my own sweet words. And chances are, as with many other areas of my life, that what I really long to do would get pressed to the side or nudged to the bottom of the list while I deal or manage or fix it for others. So. No title. No outline. Just a general idea, little more than an elevator pitch. One sentence with which to start a novel.

I’m not ready. But I’m ready. If you know what I mean.

Read all about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) here.