Down to Business

(If you've smudged around in this blog long enough to get here, thank you.)

To finish the story I began earlier, here are a few fun facts about my own story.

After the brutal psychological beat-down on my own soul, somehow I survived long enough to begin writing.  I chucked a few stories, although endearing, and I wrote my mother-in-law a book that extended a few slightly twisted bedtime stories she had told to her kids earlier in life.

Then I flushed out the book with a recurring character whose name is a reference back to my mother-in-law.  Thus, Strange Tales of Salem and Sugar Cleveland was born.

I sent Sugar off to thirteen publishers, knowing full well what will probably be coming back.  So far, I have cheered the arrival of two form rejection letters.  They are proudly hung beside me now.

I have done a few things to prepare myself for rejection:

• I noticed a trend that many good authors are rejected often enough before they break through, and I gave myself a limit of forty-five rejection slips received before I would let myself feel a little downhearted for a moment.
• I bought 2013 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market.  *Hugs book
• I found someone very close to me, my wife--lucky me--who will be entirely honest with me about my writing.  Her impeccable taste leads to absolute clarity about where my writing is at.  If she says, "This relationship feels a little forced," I obey the unspoken suggestion to improve it, period.

After Sugar happened, I sat down and looked at what I had accomplished and where I wanted to go next.  Sugar is a book without a character arc, or a plot.  Each chapter is simply fun, much like Sideways Stories from Wayside School.

I looked in my heart:

1. I wanted more character development.
2. I wanted to push myself.

Thus, I began brainstorming.  I happened upon an idea that led to my favorite novel that I have ever written.

I began with the villain, which is all I will cover today.  I interrogated myself about her, because villains are often as or more critical to a story than the heroes.

• How can I make her repulsive?  She became mean in my mind.
• What is mean anyway?  Repulsive--no I started with that.  How about society?  What do we value as one of the kindest things that a woman can do?
• That is easy.  Motherhood.
• How can I flip that to make her atrocious?

And that was the question that set me off on it.  In my next post, I will cover just how I decided to make the villain/mother of my novels as cheer-against-able as possible.