Victoria Janssen

Please welcome my guest, Katrina Williams!

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I began to write seriously in the tenth grade, but like all teenagers, would have benefited from looking up “seriously” in the dictionary, despite using the word on a frequent basis. I was convinced I would be a writer one day and majored in English Lit to prepare, but life soon beat me down to the point where I put writing away. Forever. Too impractical. Too hard. Not good enough.

Then I married someone who looks to the future. We started having conversations about where we wanted to be in five years, ten years, and it wasn’t at the corporate middle management job where I collected a paycheck. We read articles about following your passion, talked about what kind of business we would open if we came into some money. I didn’t think about writing again until my husband called me at work and told me his mother couldn’t provide daycare for our kids any longer and what did I want to do?

In a flash, I realized writing was my passion and if I wanted to make my passion a career, I had to quit the day job and take it seriously. So I did.

I jokingly told a writer friend that I write to discover my identity. I guess I wasn’t kidding. There are so many people inside me writhing to get out, people who have more courage than I do, people who make more mistakes because they aren’t afraid to take risks. People who are at the cusp of discovering themselves and still have the optimism to be successful at whatever they try. I can be a skydiver, a surgeon, a thief, a fairy, a man – anything I want – when I’m putting fingers to the keys.

I love to read and the capacity of a book to transport you into another world is unparalleled in anything I’ve experienced thus far in life. I want to create that for others. My dream is to have a reader tell me they were moved by my writing and they couldn’t put it down; this motivates me in a way nothing else could.

I’ve had great successes and strides in the last year since I became a serious writer. Last year, I completed the book I started in college, and then wrote another one. I placed fifth in the first writing contest I entered, which was quite surprising. I’ve learned more in the last year than the prior years combined. My biggest failure is not pouring effort into every last available second, because that’s writing time I can’t get back.

Connections in life, and writing, are paramount and often serendipitous. One of my professors encouraged me to attend a writer’s conference. I knew no one there, but started talking to the girl seated next to me and we’ve been critique partners on and off for over fifteen years now. I have more recently enjoyed the great people at Romance Divas and found support, friendship and accountability, which I find to be critical in this business.

I’ve learned I need time to process comments on my writing. My first reaction, upon learning the comments are not “It’s perfect! I loved it!,” is to give up, like I did many years ago, but if I allow myself time to be mad, cry, and get out all the negative self-doubt, I can then start editing. I have an image in my head of writing something perfectly the first time I touch it and that’s just not reality, at least not for me. I have to remind myself even the published writers I adore are not universally accepted as being great, and fiction is subjective.

My journey has brought me to tears. To a place where I feel consumed by the things inside me bursting to be free. To indescribable frustration because I’ve worked so hard for so long and I’m still not published. To great heights when I’m really “on.”

I take pride in my accomplishments of the last year. I’ve finished two books and I have a plan to write two more in 2010. I’ve started thinking of myself as a writer and telling people I write. This is a huge piece of identity I am thrilled to have embraced and is the key for new writers. So the best advice I can give someone else is print this out and hang it up: I am a writer.

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Thanks, Katrina!

Please welcome my guest, Cate Hart!

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So I’ll start at the beginning. My mom read to me every night. As a teacher, reading has always been a very important part of her life. When I could read to myself, I devoured everything I could get my hands on – Carolyn Keene, Beverly Clearly, Judy Blume, Laura Ingalls Wilder, everything. But it was in the 3rd grade that I discovered what it was to write my own story.

My teacher, Mrs. Little, let students who’d made a 100 on their spelling test try something different with the vocabulary words the week of Halloween – we got to write a story using all the words. Ironically, I think that little assignment also set my path toward paranormal. Of course, in that list were Vampire, Ghost, and Haunted House. After the assignment, I found I liked writing stories and continued to write a few more.

I’ll just briefly say that when I was in high school, I spent a large part of my time writing. But it was primarily fan fiction, though at the time I had no idea what that was. I wrote to entertain my friends, and they’d read my stuff while we sat out in gym class. I hated gym class. Then I focused on graduating and getting into college – writing took a backseat. Until I picked up a book my mom was reading over summer vacation. When I read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, the story resonated and I realized two things: I wanted something else to read with as good as a love story; I could write it myself. Hahaha. For me that was the first turning point. I knew that people made a career out of writing and I wanted to do that. This was also the naïve part where I had lofty hopes and absolutely no idea what writing entailed beyond getting to the end. I believed if I could just type the last word of the story I’d made it.

I spent another ten years sporadically working on that first manuscript, an historical romance. By that point, I wanted to become published, and I thought that was the story that would get me there.

A year and half ago, the spark of a new story reignited my passion to write. And I never imagined I’d write Young Adult. I found that my writing voice was a sarcastic, seventeen year-old girl still trapped in my body. So I set a goal, met it, and ended with one fabulous first draft novel – okay maybe not fabulous. But I was excited that I had it completed.

On January 1, 2009, I started the real journey to publication, stepping from a naïve writer to diligent learner of the craft. Over this past year, I have found how valuable critiques partners are to show you the imperfections in your writing. I have learned so much about the industry from published writers, agents, and editors who willingly reveal their processes to aspiring writers so that they can achieve success. I have submitted to several agents and faced the rejections as another learning experience. And I have successfully been asked for my full manuscript from an agent and I am in the process of seconds edits for her. I hope I’m ready for the next step, moving from aspiring writer to agented author in search of publication.

Every day I wonder if I am crazy to pursue this dream, but I realize how passionate I am for the written word. I dream and want to put those dreams on paper and to share them.

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Thanks, Cate!

Please welcome my guest, Mima!

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Out of the Black
by Mima

In the fall of 2005, my husband dared me to stop writing scenes and openings in my pretty journals. He dared me to stop bitching about the books I’d paid good money for and throwing them across the room and moaning to him about how I could have written better. And he reminded me how I glowed when I finished a wonderful story and sighed about wanting more just like it. “So do it,” he said.

I have a book I wrote very young, bound with yarn, about my family vacation. I began keeping a diary in second grade. I also have my first script for a humorous puppet show my friends agreed to put on in third grade. It was a scifi. My first romance was in the fourth grade, and my first rejection came in the seventh grade, for a fantasy poem about a unicorn *wince*. I won an award for my creative writing in undergrad, but mostly I’ve written all my life, for me.

My first book, then called Out of the Black, clocked in at 250k words. I cut out three major subplots (for interested fans: there were 2 other friends besides Freezha, Rylan’s parents and his reunion with them, and also a third, more serious suitor for KarRa besides Merk). I added more sex, and cut out a massive amount of specious geek-a-licious history of Vladaya and the Clans. It became Wild Within at 85k words. It became the base for a series that will be 10 books when finished (plus some anthologies for all the people who keep writing me about my secondary characters), has generated awards, fan mail (!!!), and given me hours of pleasure exploring.

I am 40, and I’m here to tell anyone who reads this and quietly writes stories in secret, you can do this. I submitted my first story to a major epublisher and they rejected it. I submitted it to Liquid Silver in winter of 2007 and they accepted it. We now have a long and successful partnership. I have 10 fantasy erotic romance titles with four publishers. No agent was needed, just a lot of honest, clear-eyed self-editing, and courage.

Passionate readers who are secret writers can be assured there are other readers out there who want quirky stories that don’t quite fit in any one box. We like ‘em weird. We’ll read raw talent that still needs polishing, and we’ll follow you as you get better and better. Like people have done for me.

Bio:
Mima lives in western NY with a heroic guy and a black cat. Visit her at www.mimawithin.com.

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Thanks, Mima!