WTF - How to write a sex scene

So a possible editor sent back one of romance manuscripts telling me I need a few "steamy" scenes.

Enter how to pull off the sex scene.

Read a bunch of porn, no I'm just kidding. My imagination is much better than that.

Sit in the living room, working on the scene, figuring out what three items should be included.

boobs?

Butt?

The big deal?

Then figure out how they are going to do it, not the Fifty Shades of Grey do it, but a normal, "romantic" sex scene do it.

Why can't they fade to black like most of the movies? Why is she asking me for details?

Oh FiFty Shades of Grey you ruined it for everyone.

So I start writing the scene, and soon get lost in the moment. Stopping periodically looking around the room.

It is surreal.

Here I am writing a sex scene and both of my boys are sitting and doing their homework. The Great Food Truck Race is playing on the TV, the dog is snoring on her bed. Everything so ordinary, then why am I sweating so much.

I plow into it, wondering,

"Seriously, does that ever really happen?" (Gazing into her luminous eyes, his breath caught at her beauty, gag gag!)

Then I move to, "Wait, I forgot the part where they stripped, how did they end up there from getting out of the car?

Finally, rereading thinking, "Is most of that humanly possible?"

I look up again and my perfectly normal household is continuing on, no one noticing my face is flushed and I am sweating.

Then I go back again over it again, please, not for the pleasure of it, because it is not right.

"Started a story as old as time?" Oh god, that sounds horrible.

"Pausing, he asked, Are you Sure?" Hell, they are already there, have to remove this line.

Crap, she had a white T-shirt in the beginning and now is putting on a black one, is she a quick change artist?

Finally, I get it the way I want it, going in the kitchen for a cool drink of water.

"Mom, are you OK?"

"Sure honey, just working on a few things."

"Why is your face so red? Are you having a hot flash?"

"Yes honey, it is a hot flash."

Then it hits me, they want this because it is good exercise for us women. Reading what I written, made my heartbeat rise, I used my arm muscles fanning my face, several muscles tensed (kegels anyone?) 

That's why we have to include these scenes in our novels, it is for the good of society.

It keeps everyone in shape.

WTF-National Novel Writing Month, the creative process

November becomes a blur each year as I embark on writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Luckily I've won every year for five years.  The whole point of this process is writing so fast your inner editor cannot correct or make you second guess your work. Thought I would share a little bit of the creative process with you:

Prepping for Novel Writing is the most stressful part of this process. This year I had two ideas jostling in my brain for first dibs, both interesting ideas.

How did I get these ideas? Dreaming!  Isn't it crazy. I can dream an entire novel, or a scene that leaves me so breathless I have to structure something around it.  Both ideas came in a dream, me quickly writing them down in a journal beside the bed so I don't forget them. Once the ideas sets, the obsession starts, where I cannot stop thinking about them, so I start notebooks for each idea, further embellishing the idea.

I thought about writing two books in one month, but one idea backed down the other took hold. My goal is finishing the one book early and starting the next,  effectively writing two novels before the end of the year. Next time you see me, hold me to that promise.

Here's the hard part.  The ideas came to me beginning of October and since I am a purist, I could not write the first word of the story until Nov 1st.  That's not the easiest thing to do, because when an idea takes hold, everything in your system wants to flesh it out, you want to start writing. I keep the faith by writing notes about characters, possible scenes, anything keeping me from writing that first line.

It's always hard telling people my ideas for stories because when I talk about an idea it becomes real and sometimes sounds a lot weirder than what's going on in my head. It's hard to explain werwolves and stuff in a serious tone without people looking at you like you are crazy. Well, maybe I am crazy, but these people in my head are real to me.

Now that I got the first day out of the way and 4,000 words down, I'm feeling pretty good. Do I remember most of what I wrote? Not a thing.  Usually the good stuff I don't remember writing, that's when the brain takes over and I'm just the poor sap typing at the keyboard. It is fun going back and re-reading what I wrote because sometimes I'm like, "Damn, that's some pretty good shit."

So my story has notes, it has characters, specifically Ben, Toby, Jane, Chloe, and the tall stranger.  It now has a beginning, and as the month rolls along a middle and an end.  Maybe I'll take a nap to see if I can dream a little more of it.  Oh creativity, you are so fickle.

Good luck to other NANOers, here's to toasting 50K in words before the end of November!

Oh and what will I do with the other 5 novels I've written? I've edited two and need a proofer, one  is part of a series, I'm editing Novel #1. My other goal is to get my work out there and move into publishing some of this stuff.  That's another post at another time about courage and sharing your work!!

What if you went with the first draft?

There is nothing worse than sitting at a blinking cursor thinking, “I got nothing.”  Many famous authors also had the same problem, but they did something about it - they just started writing.  Some of it was not that good, but others turned out to be great.  I wonder where certain stories would be if the writer had gone with their first idea, that idea that jolted then out of writer’s block?  Here’s a few false starts, can you guess the novels?

Call me Darryl  - “Call me Ishmael.”

In a hole in the ground there rabbit. - “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

Jacob Marley has just had permanent cessation of biological functions. - “Jacob Marley was dead as a doornail.”

Who doesn’t enjoy watching the charred remains of paper in the fire. - “It was a pleasure to burn.”

As Gregor Samsa woke one morning, he found his bed turned into a pink Barbie Convertible Glamour Mobile. - “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

The sky above the port was tuned to The Price Is Right. - “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

They’re out there, waiting to give me my happy pills.  Maybe today, I’ll take them. - “They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”

All happy families are dysfunctional, but ours, we got the gold medal. - “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Lolita, you never told me you were a pole dancer? - “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

It was the best of times, it was the worst of time...heck, Once Upon a time. - “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...” (psst, maybe the first was better, what a LONG sentence!)

Getting that opening line just right is an integral part of the creative process, the best thing for your novel is having an opening line that grabs.  It can grab in absurdity, or surprise, or stating something simple but compelling.  Remember, anyone can write a first draft, it’s taking that first draft and making it polished that separates writers from writers.  Happy writing.

Going to the beach...don't leave without....

Going to the beach with my family has taught me a few valuable lessons prior to school letting out and summer beginning:

1.  Sand is evil.  It has this power, I call it the crotcrakmiserwear power, the ability to find the one place that would annoy you and working it's way in there.  Here are a few example:
In the hinge of my glasses, so every time I open them it crunches.
In my beverage/food/mouth so I can hear the crunch between my teeth.
Inside my bathing suit just as I go for a long walk and feel every inch of it.
On the lollipop BEFORE the child even gets first lick - I just take lollipops and roll them in the sand then say, "Here honey, let's just get this out of the way."

2.  It is very easy to skip your mortgage when at the beach.
It starts with the trip to the grocery store for every snack food you can imagine without any nutritional value.
You then spend a fortune in the souvenir shop so you don't have to buy them a LIVE hermit crab to bring home.
There's not one, but many trips to the arcade and each involves lots of money, money for THE CLAW, the one game that has taught too many children the agony of defeat.  With THE CLAW is the DRAW, if they hit it big, there's a iPod Touch they could win!  Children will result to digging through the couches to satisfy their claw addiction.

3.  Food at the beach has no calories, especially those that are good for you like - French Fries, Funnel Cake, Ice Cream, Candy, and especially Caramel Popcorn - when followed by a Diet Coke.

4.  Everything will stay perpetually wet at the beach - your bathing suit, your towels, your clothes, toilet paper, coffee filters and especially

5.  There is no way to look sexy running - Bo Derek was a fluke, probably because they filmed her in slow motion so she didn't fall all over the place when her feet hit the sand.  When you do fall in the sand, it's usually with that lollipop in hand.

6.  If you want to feel better about yourself - go to the boardwalk.  Your choice of bathing suit is so much better than 400 lb men in Speedos and women in thongs where their butt cheecks eat up the butt floss.  If they are not walking in bathing suits, they are in too short shorts, too tight T-shirts, and usually holding the extra size bucket of French Fries.  Feel better about your self and go on a diet all at the same time.

7.  Thinking about a tattoo - go to the boardwalk - best deterrent out there.  The 70 year old female in the thong with the tattoo of Free Bird from the 60's that now looks like a Turkey Vulture on crack will make you think twice.

8.  You will look like shit at the beach, beach hair - that fully humidity, kinky, hard water shit you can't get a comb through will be the norm.  Want to feel better, go to the boardwalk and see that everyone else is in the same predicament, some worse than yours.

9.  The pirates had it right - the only way to survive the beach - the sand, the boardwalk, the mini golf, the food is with rum.

What have you learned at the beach/

Today my life was a Hallmark Movie, specifically I crashed the set of a Hallmark Movie filming downtown running this morning.  I think my 15 seconds of fame will end on the cutting room floor because it consisted of me running down the street, me being stopped by a policeman, yelled 

 “didn’t you see the barricades,”  the policeman yells as I hear sighs by the group of people I'm running in between.

“oh, those?  I thought they were for cars," I smile at the camera and pick up my pace.

So during the next hour and half of my run I wondered what type of Hallmark Movie would I star in, and I came up with the perfect formula.

Love on the Run is a new movie on the Hallmark Channel.  Staring Ashley Judd (isn’t she in all the Hallmark movies?)as Kelly Melang a woman entrepeneur, runner and writer who just can’t find love as she lets everything in her life take priority.

Love on the Run is a story of a chance meeting, a different running route and the story would never happen.  A chance meeting by running into local Rockstar, Raif Strange (played by Matthew McConaughey), a rock star with six pack abs, brooding blue eyes, a sensitive side (don't they all have this in Hallmark movies?)  Raif doesn't believe in love, he's been jilted by his supermodel girlfriend (of course Kelly is prettier) and running to forget about love and loss.  After meeting Kelly and liking her ENGAGING (this part of the movie IS true) he enlists the help of Kelly as he trains for his first race, the Valentine’s Sweetheart Race.  What the two star crossed lovers don’t realize is there are boyfriends and girlfriends that want them back, the issue of trust between them and a lot of other road blocks in the road.

Will Raif and Kelly find love on the run?  Will they run from the love they both know is there?  Or will the secret Kelly is hiding tear them apart and leave them running FROM each other.  (ooh, what secret - she loves barefoot running?  or that she is a secret heiress?)

Love On the Run is the newest and most exciting movie on the Hallmark Channel, a new direction of fitness love, that love of fitness and love can intertwine and you never know, choose a difference direction and find that one that completes your soul as you run into the sunset together.

I trip over some electrical wires and am brought back to the present.  Well, I guess my fifteen minutes of fame is over.  What would the trailer of your Hallmark Channel sound like?