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Divine Misdemeanors is off to New York. It went out last night via e-mail. Once you actually had to Fed-Ex the manuscript to the publisher, but now everyone seems to prefer an electronic copy. It does save trees. A lot of you have asked am I excited, yes, and no. I’m thrilled to be done but mostly when I finish a book that has really kicked my ass as Divine Misdemeanors has done I’m simply grateful. Grateful that I’m done. Grateful that I made my deadline Grateful that I can actually see my daughter in a more than hi and bye kind of way. Yes, I took time out during the crunch for Jon, my hubby, and I to take her birthday shopping for Grandma also known as Jon’s mom, but the book ate the world as the books are wont to do.

I did something I’d never done before with this book I was on Twitter and I tweeted about my process, my life during the writing. One of the interesting things about that was the near instant feedback I could have and questions asked during the writing of the book. Questions from fans and other twitters that I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. Sometimes because I’ve been writing professionally for over a decade so I don’t think of the new questions anymore, and sometimes because its never occurred to me to think about it quite that way.

One such question came in last night. I was asked about how much I’d cut from the book, or if this was first draft and I’d be cutting later. When I was a new writer and didn’t have the confidence of 28 books finished and under my belt, first draft was full of things that would not survive later. I wrote the first draft without editing as I went and then the second draft was filling in holes. Holes are when I’m writing along and I have to have my characters eat something, but I don’t know what. I’ll leave it empty if its not important what they eat, just that they need to eat. What is my character wearing, if its not important they just need to not be naked I will skip clothing description, now if it’s a seduction scene then the clothing does matter, or can, so can’t skip. I would also, and still do, leave spaces for research later. Example: What is that street that goes from X to Y? What color is are the eyes of that character that we haven’t seen in two books? What does fourteenth centaury underwear look like, or is there any? I know not to break for this kind of research because I’m like most writers I’ll get distracted. Libraries, the internet, it’s all too tempting unless your will is absolute steel I’ve learned to only research small things that make a difference to the scene so I can keep making pages. I used to fill in the blanks in the second draft and then finally start editing the writing in the third draft. I think my first book had seven drafts. Because I had the 70/30 rule. Seventy percent of any first draft is crap, but thirty percent is gold, the trouble is you must write the entire one hundred percent in order to get that thirty and then throw out the seventy, but its all mixed up together.

Major research should be done before you sit down to write, usually.  That’s a different blog all together. Just wanted to add that so that you didn’t get the idea that I don’t do major research for my books. I do a lot of research. Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

The above was how I wrote the first five books I ever wrote. I’ve had several other writers that have used this advice to finish and even publish so it works. Having said that, I’ve gotten better at my job, practice, practice, practice. Some first drafts are now 70 percent gold and only 30 percent crap, which makes rewriting easier. I’ve had few books that are 90 percent gold and only 10 percent crap, but that’s rare. You can’t know which way its going to go until you finish the book. Having said that, I realized that I have changed how I write over the years in one major way.

I edit first draft now. Its made me a slower first draft writer, but a much faster writer from first conception to finished book. I don’t rush headlong into a book as I did when I was starting out, I pick my way through ideas and scenes. I usually have a mystery as the spine or bones of a book so I know that part but how I get all the way to the end that can lead me down some blind alleys. But it can also lead me to some surprising moments that are just magic, when the characters come to life enough to argue with me, to make their own choices, that is magic to me. I am more likely to begin a book and just write and see where it goes, but as I get further in I make more and more choices farther and farther out from the moment of decision. That was not the case when I began as a writer, but then maybe that wasn’t the case when I was younger. Maybe maturity, decision making, knowing what you want out of life isn’t just for my real life, maybe it also works for my fictional half. Hmm, interesting thought.

All the above thought because someone asked on Twitter if the book I’d just finished was finished or if I still had to trim and cut? I looked at the file and the things I’d cut away and saved, because I seldom erase anything no matter how bad until the book is finished because I’m always convinced that I might need it later, or that my head had gone ugly and it doesn’t suck, but if I delete its gone, so I keep all of it and only delete it when the book is completely utterly done. Which means I know exactly how much fat I trimmed. Over two hundred pages that will never see print. It just didn’t work. This was a hard book for a lot of reasons, but when I realize that I’ve got a manuscript that its about 550 and I’ve cut over 200 pages I realized that was a high percentage of cut to keep. I will keep track of the ratio of keep to cut from now on and I will be curious if the books that kick my ass the most are ones where I come closest to cutting the most pages. Or maybe I always do this, but I’ve just never kept track. Once the book is done the trash gets thrown out except for scenes that were fun and worked, but just not for this book. One of the delights of writing an on-going series is that scenes can be used somewhere else so they aren’t lost completely. Yes, out takes just like for DVD’s except my out takes may get recycled, or even find a home almost verbatium. Sometimes one book will talk so loud in my head that I write bits of it in another book and have to surgically remove and save for later. The Harlequin was a book where some Edward scenes were actually written for an earlier book and were used almost unchanged for Harlequin. That book talked to me for a long time before it was time to actually write it.

I’ll be seeing edits of Divine Misdemeanors very soon, and copy edits, and page proofs. The deadline is pretty serious so the book will be winging it’s way back to me sooner than I would like, but not today. Today its in New York in my editor’s and agent’s hands and I don’t have to worry about it today, so I won’t. What will I do today? I have no idea, but that’s okay, too.