This month Susan is completing her first draft of her third book Brandi Sagadore.

Cheeks to Chair: The Novel Begins

I came up with the idea for Brandi Sagadore more than ten years ago. Over the years I’d tinker with the story. Brandi was seventeen, then eighteen, then twenty-one and finally twenty-two years old. She had two parents. She had no parents. She had one sister, then no sister. She had no brother, then two brothers. The layers and ideas kept piling up. Every once in awhile, her ‘voice’ came through and I’d pound out a chapter or two. Over time, the Brandi file got fat. All that material was put to good use last month as I developed the story outline.

My approach is very physical (see my September 2008 blog). Our dining room table – with both leaves in place – is large enough to hold forty separate pages. Each page equals one chapter. That single page grows into a pile of papers as I toss in the writing fragments, notes, quotes and articles. Eventually I cut and paste these various pieces together. I am the mad professor operating on my Franken-book.

This physical approach allows me to see the story and move elements around before I get to the computer.

And thanks to Hallie Ephron’s workshop, I can also feel the pace of the story. Each chapter-pile gets its own sticky little Page Marker. A pink or red sticky means the pace is blazing hot. Blue means the pace of the chapter is slower. And green or yellow indicates a pace that is somewhere in between.

After the chapter-piles are pretty much set, I take a single sheet of heavy white paper and pull out a black Sharpie. In large print, I briefly summarize the main point of each chapter. These chapter descriptions usually include a choice, a decision, an action or an event.

Intense shuffling occurs for several days. Those little stickies get thrown into an order that feels almost musical. No one wants to read a load of blue stickies in a row.

During this stage of the creative process my husband (let’s call him Slugger) and I eat all meals at the kitchen counter. Slugger, sweet man that he is, doesn’t complain a single bit. And he’s a bit of a neat freak so this is saying a lot.

After about a week I have an inch-thick stack of papers, in chapter-by-chapter order. It’s a glorious moment. Slugger hugs the clutter-free dining room table. He weeps.

Here’s the best part: I belong to the RWA* in Greater Vancouver. Each month, our chapter has a week-long online writing support group. Participants contact a volunteer moderator with a list of personal writing goals. At the end of each day we report our daily accomplishments. The moderator compiles a digest of each writer’s triumphs and heartaches. Encouragement, observations and writing tips are always included. (My favourite participant is a published writer who gives the rest of us a clear idea of what a real writing week looks like.)

The support group is charmingly known as ‘C2C’. Cheeks to chair. Happily, the February C2C was an ideal way to get Brandi Sagadore off the ground. For a week, I set my own cheeks to office chair and wrote.

Somewhere in this process I volunteered to become a C2C moderator, myself. And that’s exactly what I’ll be doing March 16th - 22nd. I’ll be the moderator, the congenial host, the friendly sheepdog who gently coaxes participants into achieving their goals.

Which takes me back to my Writing Goals for 2009 (see February Blog). This month I get to check off a few goals on my list:

• On March 7th I will attend a professional development workshop at Simon Fraser University called “Making the Leap to Writing as a Career”.
• I am now part of a critique group. It’s an online critique group of dedicated writers. I love it. These people are serious.
• I am indeed writing an average of twenty hours per week, or more.
• And, I’m getting more involved in my writing association. (I even organized our annual awards luncheon last month.)

By the end of March I will submit at least one more story to an editor or publisher. My first full-length manuscript, 2ManyCooks, is still in the hands of three publishing professionals, bless them, who requested more of my work.

And so I write.

* The RWA is the Romance Writers of America. The full title is slightly awkward for us non-Americans (some Canadian chapters call themselves Romance Writers Association) but the organization is indeed international.