I hope everyone has been having a great week! We're at the official countdown of three days after today before Jon's summer break! Yay!
Also, I wrote like a machine yesterday and now I'm more than halfway there for my August 1st deadline! Whew! I'm starting to feel a little less stressed about making it in between vacations, time off and the inevitable beautiful weather. (It is just SO hard to write when it's gorgeous outside!)
I want to introduce you to another friend of mine. Jenness Walker is a romantic suspense writer for Steeple Hill. She's married and her first novel, Double Take, will be in stores October 2009! Yay!
Tomorrow, I'm going to talk a little bit about how to propose your novel once you've got it completed. How does it get in the hands of editors? You'll find out tomorrow!
Here's the interview! :)
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Erynn: Why did you decide to write fiction? How did you get published?
Jenness: The voices in my head made me do it. :-) Growing up I always had a vivid imagination--acting out dramas with my friends or my Barbies or my brothers' G.I. Joes, whichever happened to be available at the time. I even forced my little bro to play along sometimes. :-) For some miraculous reason he still likes me. So writing fiction came naturally. Getting published, however, took a little bit more work. After many years of writing short stories, I finished my first novel just out of college, but it took three more novels and a few more years of submitting and attending conferences and entering contests, etc., before The Call came. Double Take took first in ACFW's 2008 Genesis contest, an editor requested the full, and after many revisions, I'll finally have a book on the shelves in October.
Erynn: How do you usually get ideas?
Jenness: I can't say I really plan it. They come at me from everywhere, which can be rather distracting for me and disconcerting for whoever's around. :-) A song, a phrase from a sermon, a news article--anywhere and everywhere.
Erynn: Do you ever have problems finishing a book or an idea? How do you overcome that?
Jenness: My problem is, with so many ideas, I can be totally excited and into one plot, and then I get a new one that sounds more fun. I want to dive into it right away. I'm pretty sure I have the writing form of ADHD. lol. To overcome it...well, I jot down the idea, allow myself to do a little bit of preliminary research, just to make sure it's feasible, and then I drink a Sobe, blast the music, and make myself concentrate on my current WIP. Because if I don't, I'll never establish myself as a writer. I'll just be an idea generator. If I could figure out a way to make money from that, I might pursue it (ha!), but until then, I'm trying to learn discipline. Because we could really use a new car. :-)
Erynn: Are there any books on writing that have helped you?
Jenness: Confession: I am horribly shallow. It's hard for me to actually finish reading a non-fiction book. I know, I know. But I have learned from the snippets I've read. lol. I did finishg Stephen King's book On Writing and found out it was okay to not be a plot-first novelist. Which is good, because I'm, um, not. Hooked by Leslie Edgerton had a lot of good thoughts that I jotted down. I'm still planning on finishing that one, although I've already reached my renewal limit at the library once and am halfway there again. :-) Probably the one that has helped me the most is the Writer's Market book. Not that I learned from it, necessarily, but looking through it inspires me. All those opportunities, and I'm wasting my time playing spider solitaire?? Get to writing, woman!
Erynn: What's your favorite part of writing? Your least favorite part of writing?
Jenness: I love the ideas, the limitless possibilities. And I love when you come to the home stretch and the writing flows, and the plot pulls together in ways you never could have planned out. It feels like such a God-thing, the way some of the pieces come together better than you imagined they could. Then comes the rewriting...The times when you're second-guessing yourself and having to change things so much that you're afraid you've lost the heart of the story. The times when you look it over for the millionth time and wonder why you ever thought it was good enough to let your mom read it, much less an editor. But you know, the rest still makes it worth it. Besides...the voices in my head make me do it. :-)
Erynn: And last, but not least, how do you take your coffee? :)
Jenness: I've tried it about every way possible--iced, with whipped cream, ice cream, chocolate syrup, sugar, French vanilla creamer...I hate the stuff. I know. It's very sad. It smells great and I want to join the coffee club. Alas, it's not to be. I'll never be as cool as you, Erynn! :-) But Sobes are a pretty good consolation prize.
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Well. The coffee club is very cool. So sad she won't join us! Just kidding. :)
Remember to post questions! Have a fantastical day!
