Writing Wrongs

March 07, 2006

So Mary started the trend of talking about your first book, then Marianne weighed in. It took me a short long time to write my first book.

What�s a short long time? The short part came when I started it, not so much on a lark, but because I wanted a particular type of book I couldn�t find on the shelves.

I wanted something adventurous and romantic, something with more serious bad guys than say Romancing the Stone, but in that vein. I wasn�t wild about angst-filled mystery protagonists, or romance heroines who wouldn�t shoot the bad guy when he really needed to be shot, and things like that. So I took a lot of what I disliked about both genres and changed it to suit me.

No wonder no one wanted it.

I learned a lot writing that book. At first, I played around with it. Then I got more serious, decided this was something I might want to go back and read at some point. A little later on, I knew there was a gap between what I was writing and the quality of what I liked to read. That�s when I decided to take a few online classes. Not long after that, I met D.

I used scenes and whatnot from the book as writing assignments. Then I ran into a problem. People actually wanted to read more. And I knew without being told that some parts weren�t redeemable or even fit for human consumption.

So began the long road to making the whole thing passably readable. And that part wasn�t easy. I essentially ditched most of a 98,000-word draft and started over, with character sketches, plot outline, in-depth research. I get tired just thinking about it.

Over the course of about four years, I reworked the book into something agents and editors requested, one that made the finals of more than a few contests, including the Golden Heart. I ended up with a trip to NYC from the deal for the RWA Conference in 2003 (for the Golden Heart). I learned about the publishing industry and how to navigate it.

So, all in all, not bad for a first book. No, it won�t ever be published. I realized sometime last year what was off with the pacing. I knew how to fix it and even did a rough cut edit on the manuscript. I sat down with every intention of doing a new revision.

Then I hit that first bit of information that had required in-depth research. No one wants a contemporary book with outdated research. And mine was. Even to verify that nothing had changed (and I knew some of it had) would take a significant amount of time.

Did I want to invest in that? Or did I want to write something else?

Something else won.

But you know, I don�t regret a minute spent on it. If not for it, I wouldn�t have been able to write the second book, or the fifth. They say you have to pay your dues somehow. I can�t think of a better way than spending time with a charming, if unrepentant, art thief and the spunky soldier girl who gives him a run for his money.

Charity Tahmaseb wrote at 11:56 a.m.

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