I don’t blog about the craft of writing all that often anymore. There are a few reasons for that. The first is that most days, actually practicing the craft of writing is just about all I can manage. Barely.

The second is that, the more books I’ve written, the less I feel I truly know. Paradoxically, it also seems like any advice I give should be actually useful advice–which kind of scares me, because I am not a teacher. Some people have a true gift for crystallizing points of craft and imparting them as useful nuggets to other writers. Sadly, I’m not one of them. Plotting systems, storyboards, character worksheets, articles that tout “The Four (or Five or Nine or Eighteen) Essential Elements to Story” just make me break out in hives. And when I say that, I don’t mean to disparage them. For writers whose brains are wired that way, I’m sure they are lovely, useful things. To me, it’s kind of like childbirth. I would not dare criticize a writer’s process, any more than I would criticize a woman’s decision to give birth in a swimming pool–whatever feels right for you and gets the baby (or book) out, it’s all good.

When discussing my reaction to storyboards, I have often joked that I am allergic to squares. It’s more like, I just don’t think about stories spatially. Doesn’t work for me. By the same token, I am very reluctant to put forth the way I write books as … Read More »

A while back, I shamelessly asked for blogging ideas, and Sarah Tormey (I believe?) suggested I blog about how my writing process has changed since I began writing romance.

Gee, what an interesting question! Honestly, I am not sure. Let’s see. I’m currently writing my 6th romance novel (not counting the novella).

Things that have not changed: My pace of writing. Compared to many, I am a relatively slow writer. If I get 1500 words in a day, I’m thrilled. With deadlines every 5-6 months, this has meant I must be very disciplined and write almost every day. Of course, I inevitably fall behind–and I’m able to push myself to write 4 or 5,000 words in a day occasionally, when I need to. But that’s rare.

I still use the same method of plotting (or lack thereof). I tend to sketch out a fairly loose plot, basically strung around a series of “moments” I’m building toward (turning points, I suppose you might call them). But the connecting scenes between points A, B, C, etc. usually develop and evolve as I’m writing.

I like to think I’m a little better at identifying plot or characterization problems as they arise, and taking steps to correct them earlier rather later. Not perfectly prescient, of course, but to some degree I think I’ve internalized the voices of my trusted CPs and editor and can “hear” what they’d say before they say it. 🙂

Which leads me to another difference–I don’t exchange writing with critique … Read More »

It’s crunch time.  My deadline for The Desire of a Duke is Friday, and I’m on track to make it–which feels great.

Last week,  a few friends joined me in twitter-based rehash of my “Save the Kitties” writeathon from last year to motivate me to push through to the end of the draft.  The idea is to challenge yourself to write a certain amount over the course of a few days – if you meet the goal, you get to donate $ to a good cause (like Kitten Rescue, for me).  If you fail, you have to donate that money to a cause with which you, ahem, strenuously disagree (not telling which).  Add in public accountability, and I find this method extremely motivating for short bursts.  I’m proud to say I powered through to finish my manuscript in the wee, wee hours last Wednesday.   Now the book’s been out for some reads with CPs and friends, and the feedback coming back is frighteningly unanimous in pointing out the book’s major issue, so I have a very clear direction for revisions.  All of that is good.  🙂

So once I turn in my book on Friday (and I will!  I will!), I get to reward myself with a weekend CP retreat!  My main goal for the weekend will be to read, relax, and start plotting my next book, tentatively titled The Passion of a Warrior.  (Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it?  Again, I’m open to suggestions.)

A few … Read More »

It’s Tuesday, and I try to always blog on Tuesdays.  And usually I blog about something related to writing, because…uh, because I really have no life.  Seriously.  I write, I take care of my kids, I work at the library from time to time, I spend some time with Mr. Dare, and I try to keep the laundry pile from growing large enough to develop sentience.  That’s about it.

But wow – this week, I had a social life!  I went to a movie.  I went to a wine-tasting party on Saturday, and then a Super Bowl party on Sunday.  Whee!!

The movie I saw was Slumdog Millionaire.  And if you only see one movie this year (says the girl who only sees one movie a year), I suggest you make it this one.  Wow.  So gutwrenching and so heartwarming, so awful and wonderful, all at once.  It reminded me of that oft-repeated writing advice:  Make your characters suffer.  (Oops, I’m blogging about writing after all.  Oh, well.)  The protagonist, a Mumbai orphan named Jamal, has to go through so much crap (literally and figuratively) in this movie, by the last half-hour I just wanted to find director Danny Boyle and wring his guts until they felt as knotted as mine did.  But oh, how deeply it made me care.  And ah, how sweet the ending was, after all that pain.  As I left the theater, I felt resolved to put my characters through hell in this next book–and … Read More »

The short answer is, because I live it.

Seriously, when my books come out, I expect I’ll get some comments on the fact that they include a fair amount of slapstickyness.  People stumbling, tripping, falling on faces and arses (usually the heroines).  Some people like that kind of comedy in moderation (raises hand) and others don’t–it’s not ALL there is to my books, of course.  But I write it in because…honestly, I don’t know how to write a heroine who doesn’t fall on her face occasionally.  Because I do it all the time.

Right after New Year, for instance, I made a lunging grab for my younger dareling as he took off across the parking lot.  My boot caught on the curb, I fell swiftly and hard, and I ripped a newish pair of jeans and still have yellowing bruises on both knees. *sigh*  Yep, that’s me.  As my grandmother used to say, “Just call me Grace!”

These incidents also factor into my own real-life romance.  It’s astounding that Mr. Dare convinced me to marry him at all, considering that I incurred some serious blunt trauma on one of our first dates.  And it was all his fault. Yes.  It was.

See, we were at the Getty Center in LA (and the man was getting some serious points for taking me to an art museum on one of our first dates.  I’m not sure he’s taken me to an art museum since, but…)  The Getty Center is several galleries, connected … Read More »

It’s been a while since I wrote a newsy little post about my exciting life as a soon-to-be-published author.  I know a lot of you who read this blog do so because you’re either traveling the same journey or will be soon, and want to know what lies ahead. So here’s the status update:

Cover art for Goddess of the Hunt exists, but I cannot yet show you. 😛  It’s pending approval by…all those mysterious, powerful people who approve such things.  Covers for the second and third books are in the works, and I hope to get a peek at them soon!  My relatives can breathe a sigh of relief, because (unless something drastically changes) the “look” for the trilogy is very tasteful and pretty, with nary a nipple in sight.

I am expecting my line and copy edits on GOTH any day now…I’ve been assured I’ll have a whole week to go over them. 🙂  My second book, Surrender of a Siren, has been sent off for copy editing too, after I added a few pages to the epilogue at my editor’s request. No word yet on the third book, A Lady of Persuasion.

I was mentioned in Romantic Times!  Okay, so it was half a sentence (maybe a third-sentence?) in a 2009 preview article (page 10 of the current issue, if you’re curious), but hey – Romantic Times!

Oh, and this is super exciting for me – that little novella I wrote over the summer?  … Read More »

So, moving right along with the writing process…

I’ve got characters, a vague plot built around these “moments”, and I’ve started my research.  As part of the research, I collect pictures.  I find it helpful to imagine my settings and characters’ physical traits from the foundation of a painting or photograph of an actual place or person.  Or horse.

For example, for the book I’m working on right now (working title The Desire of a Duke, since it includes the essential Tessa Dare titling element: the word “of”, LOL), I’m loosely basing the hero’s estate on an actual estate in Cambridgeshire: Wimpole Hall.  Pretty impressive, no?

And there’s a very important racehorse in the book, who I am making the fictional “great-grandchild” of the famous stallion Eclipse.

Lastly, I also pick celebrity models for my hero and heroine.  I know different authors have mixed feelings about this – I don’t know why I find it so helpful, but I do.  It’s important that it not be just a photo of a model, but someone I can watch in action, on TV or in movies.  Somehow this helps me develop a visual image of how my character moves, reacts, stands, sits, relaxes, and so forth.  Seldom does the character in my mind match up exactly with his/her inspiration, but it’s just a helpful starting place.

If you’re one of those readers who prefers her own imagination, I’ll put the pictures of my Spencer and Amelia inspirations below the … Read More »

This would be the third installment in my little “How I write a book” series; click the tag below for all of them.  It’s my continuing effort to understand myself and have a cogent answer for people when they ask me that dreaded “are you a plotter/pantser/pepper” question.

Warning:  Overextended analogies ahead.

At this point in my process, I have characters.  I have this constellation of “moments” that I believe I can string a plot around.  My next step is to take all these wild ideas I have–like, “Ooh, what if she gets on a ship for the West Indies!” or “Ooh, what if he runs for Parliament!” and let historical reality crush them.  Mua ha ha.

No, not really.

For a writer of historical romance–okay, at least for this writer of historical romance–research is a chicken-and-egg thing.  Meaning, I eat a lot while I do it.

No, okay, seriously.  It usually starts out as, “Here’s the story I want to tell.  How can I make it historically plausible?”  (Note, I am relatively unconcerned about it being historically probable. It’s more than okay with me if I have my characters doing highly unlikely things–that makes for good story, IMO.  I just try to avoid having them do chronologically impossible things.)

So I crack open that egg and start the research, and discover all the defects in that perfect, fluffy adorable little chick of a plot I’d been dreaming about.  I have the inevitable moments like these:  … Read More »

So, last week I blogged about how my novel-writing process starts with months of thinking, and that usually the thinking starts with the main characters.

Once I have these two protagonists in my mind, even in very vague, shadowy form, what I start thinking of next are “moments”.  I’m not sure why, but this seems to be how I plot a book.  I don’t get big story trajectories coming to me in during all those long walks and hot showers, I get (what I’ve taken to calling) “moments”.  Little scenes with the potential for great humor, drama, angst, suspense….or heat. 8)  Some might call them the book’s turning points.

Anyway, these evolve in different ways.  Sometimes I just have a vague idea for a situation, and other times whole swaths of dialog just pop into my mind.  But they give me that “ooh, that would be soooo funny/sad/hot” feeling.   My gut tells me, I just HAVE to put that scene in the book.

I start to mentally refer to these “moments” by little one- or two-word tags.  For Goddess of the Hunt, for example, they might have been things like: orchard, wardrobe, letter, dinners, tears.  Right now, for this new book, I’m working with moments like: hay, party, piano, symmetry.  The moments are like a constellation of stars, and then the rest of the plot is a line connecting them.  By the time I finish the book, that line may change a dozen times–but the stars are pretty permanent.… Read More »

Hey, it’s a new month.  I’m starting a new book.  And I thought it might be an interesting experiment, this time, to blog about my writing process (such as it is) as I go.  I’ll tag them all “How I Write a Book.”

I know many of you who read this blog are writers, and you each have your own process.  I certainly don’t mean to suggest anyone should follow mine!  It’s messy, as you’ll see, and continually evolving.  But there are some people who follow this blog who may be wondering, “Just what it is Tessa’s doing when she should be [returning my phone calls/addressing my Christmas card/making my dinner]?”  This is mainly for them. 🙂

Right now, I’m getting ready to start writing this book.  Which means, I’m wrapping up the work involved in preparing to write the book.  Which brings me to

My Messy Process, Step One:  Thinking.

Lots of thinking.  Lots and lots of thinking.  In the case of this book, my fourth, I’ve been mulling over these characters and their story for at least 8 or 9 months now, since I was in the middle of writing book two.  And beyond Spencer and Amelia (the hero and heroine’s names), I currently have three other couples – wait, four – whose stories are spreading roots in my gray matter.

The thinking part of this process is the longest step, obviously.  It’s also the one most often mistaken by bystanders for daydreaming, inattention, child neglect, etc.  … Read More »