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I’ve written all my books in the Regency period and since there are twelve of those books out so far, I feel as if I have a pretty good grasp of that period.  So I decided to challenge myself and set a series in the Georgian period.  The Georgian period comes before the Regency:  think Marie Antoinette, big wigs, men in tights, powdered hair, enormous side hoops.  I sailed into this new period pretty confidently.  After all, I’m a professor teaching the Renaissance every day, and the Georgian period is closer to the Renaissance.  How hard could it be?

Well, it has turned out to be harder—and more interesting—than I thought.  At the moment my desk is piled high with books about Georgian England.  And in every one of them I’ve found a surprise, if not more than one.
But the crucial one, for me, has had to do with the very texture of aristocratic society in the period.  I’m used to the Regency, as I said above:  a refined, civilized society epitomized by Jane Austen.  I’m discovering that the Georgian period is something altogether different.  For example, there was a huge market in joke books—sold to women.  Here’s a typical example:

Lord D-- told Betty Careless upon shewing her legs, that they were very handsome and so much alike that they must needs be twins:  ‘but indeed, said she, you are mistaken, for I have had more than two or three between them.’

Hmmm.

Here’s another:

A gentleman happening to make water against a house, did not see two young ladies looking out of the window close by, till hearing them giggling, when looking towards them, he asked, what made them so merry.  ‘O lord, said one of them, a very little thing will make us laugh.’

Among female wits, according to the Duchess of Leinster, “want of delicacy was very much the fashion.”

The Georgian period was an age in which a gentleman—and a lady—might well embellish their clothing with buttons painted with pornographic scenes.  It was an age in which the most famous print makers sold thousands of prints depicting their king in bed or literally in the act of making love.  Voyeurism was celebrated; many, many marriages were lived out in separation.  Once an heir was provided, women seem to have engaged in multiple relationships.  As Lord Egremont wrote to Lord Holland:  “There was hardly a young lady of fashion, who did not think it almost a stain upon her reputation if she is not known as having cuckolded her husband; and the only doubt was who was to assist her in the operation.” In the words of a woman, Lady Mary Wortley Mortagu, marriage is “as much ridiculed by our young ladies as it used to e by young fellows:  in short, both sxes have found the inconvenience of it, and the appellation of rake is as genteel in a woman as in a man of quality.”

I wrote books set in the Regency period because I loved reading Georgette Heyer and Judith McNaught and all the wonderful romances that introduced me to the period.  At the base, I really would love to have been born in the Regency--as long as I was the daughter of a duke, naturally.  But now I’m changing my mind.  I think I’d like to have been born (as the daughter of a duke) into the raunchy, laughing, sexy Georgian period.

Let’s pretend that you could choose the historical period in which you’d like to be born.  When would you choose?  And Why?

Now for practical ideas on how to write more.

First, write what you love. Everyone says write what you know. That’s really not important. Readers read fiction because of how it makes them feel. They want to take the emotional journey. Romantic suspense readers want the thrill of the chase, the near capture, the bad guys punished. Paranormal readers want the emotion of possibilities. Horror readers want to be scared. People read fiction for emotion and the best way to get emotion into your books is to feel passionate about the story.

The technical writing skills can be learned, but the passion comes from your heart. You can’t ignore craft or market, but the best way to sell is to write what you love. When you love your story, your writing will have a genuine quality that is the difference between a book that is just okay and a book that is a keeper.

Second, write consistently. I swear, this is the hardest one for writers. Write consistently. That means writing about the same number of pages on a very regular (daily…daily is a good word to insert here) basis. I can’t stress this enough. Writing steady means you will stay connected with the book. You will be into the characters and that will allow you to go to a depth slightly beyond your skill level. It also means you’ll improve. You’ll be able to take all the cool stuff you learn at workshops and meetings and in how-to-write books and apply it immediately. Write consistently. It is the single most important craft related tool you have.

Third, add a half page a day. That’s the big secret to writing more. Adding half a page. Just a half page.

Say you write 4 pages a day consistently. Add a half page. Now you write 4 1/2 pages a day. Easy, right? Well, not at first, but it will be. When the 4 1/2 is comfortable, add another half page. Write 5 pages a day until that is comfortable, then add another half page and so on.

The magic is all in the math. Going from 4 pages a day to 6 pages a day doesn’t seem like much at first. But let’s play with numbers. Four pages a day times five days a week is twenty pages. That’s about eighty pages a month. So, in theory, you’re doing about 960 pages a year. Basically two single titles or three or four series books. (Yes, I know you need time for proposals, vacation, etc. But this is just a demonstration.) If you went to six pages a day, slowly, adding a half page at a time, you would instead write thirty pages a week. That’s 120 pages a month or 1440 pages a year. Hmm, I believe that works out to about *three* single titles a year or about six or seven series books. Just from going from four to six pages a day.

It’s like compound interest…a little bit every day makes a huge difference over time.

The secret to writing more is writing what you love, consistently, and slowly, very slowly, adding a half page a day. Trust me, it will change your life!

Christina asked me to talk a little about writing and craft and being prolific, which is one of my favorite topics. I do a whole workshop on the idea of writing more while maintaining writing quality. (Note from Christina—Susan has finished her hundredth finished manuscript.) People seem to learn a lot from it and I get to be bossy and tell them what to do. It’s really a win-win!

I’ve always written quickly. I didn’t know I was supposed to write slow. When I started I did ten pages a day because it was a nice round number and I increased from there. It was easy for me.

But life has a sense of humor and a couple of years after I became known for that workshop, my world got really, really complicated. For the first time in my career, I was scrambling to meet my deadlines, it was difficult to get my pages in every day and no matter how I lectured myself, I just wasn’t listening. So I sat down to rediscover how to write four or six or eight books a year. Here’s what I learned.

If you want to be prolific, you need to type fast. This seems simplistic, but you would be amazed at the number of writers who don’t type fast. The trick is to be able to type as fast as you think, when the writing is clicking. I do about 132 words a minute. I make a lot of mistakes, but they can be fixed later. You want to get that brilliant thought down right away because in about an eighth of a second, it’s gonna be gone.

A short attention span is helpful. Honestly (and you can’t spread this around, because no one really knows) I have the attention span of a gnat. One of the reasons I write so much is I get bored easily. I know there are brilliant writers who spend two or three years writing a book and I have no idea how they do it. After about six weeks, I get squirmy. After eight, I want everyone dead. I needs to move on to keep my interest up. So I’ve learned to write within the confines of my attention span.

Have lots of pushy ideas. My idea file is huge and every single book in there is really vocal about being written next. I feel the pressure of getting to as many of them as possible. I need to finish this book because I have eight or ten or twenty more waiting. If you only have the one idea, there’s no real reason to finish the book you’re on.

Like writing. Again, overly simplistic, right? But if you took a survey of most writers, they would tell you they want to have written. Which is really different. They want to be finished. It’s about the accomplishment, not the act of writing. So many writers love everything about their career, except the writing.

I’m really lucky. I love to write. I love the act of putting words on the page, of taking a scene and pushing it until I’m uncomfortable and then pushing it a little more. I love laughing at my dialogue and brushing away tears as I write the sad bits. I like to write. Some days I love to write. Enjoying the actual process is a huge help.

Check in this afternoon when Susan tells us her practical applications for writing faster.

I was reading Publishers’ Weekly recently, and I came across a fascinating little note about the latest Michael Crichton book, NEXT.  A while ago, a Yale graduate named Michael Crowley, a Washington political reporter, wrote an unflattering article about Crichton in the New Republic.  Lo and behold, when Next came out, it included a minor character named Mick Crowley, a Washington political columnist, a Yalie, and on trial for the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy. Coincidence?  Hmmmm....Crowley wrote a hysterical follow-up in The New Republic called Jurassic Prick arguing that authors generally endow enemies with a small penis, thinking that they won’t cry foul and point to their own characterization.

I didn’t read the original Crowley article on Crichton, so who knows what sent Crichton into such a tailspin of unflattering prose?  In a gesture of loyalty among authors, I want to point out that Crowley’s article might have characterized its subject in an untrue light as well.  But the episode started me thinking about revenge—literary and otherwise.  When I first started writing, I couldn’t create a villain to save my life.  How do I know?  Because I started out trying to write a mystery and utterly failed when it came to the murderer.  The murderer was great.  In fact, you would have wanted to marry him to your daughter, except that he inexplicably killed someone (by poisoning his toothpaste, a nicely removed way to get the job done).  Anyway, over the course of writing twelve romances I have been slowly developing the ability to create villains.

And I’m kind of liking it!

But along with villains comes the need to punish villains.  I think that’s a key part of the pleasure of genre fiction:  the bad get what they deserve and (if we’re talking romance), the good get multiple orgasms.  In my latest book, Pleasure for Pleasure, I happily meted out appropriate punishment and reformation.  The good guy who says bad things about the heroine gets reformed; the bad guy who tries to rape the heroine gets beaten up and shangied onto a boat from which he will not return for years, if ever.  Yes, sir!  I can tell you that one of the huge pleasures of writing Pleasure for Pleasure was the right to dole out literary punishment.

Now in my latest book (so far untitled, but it’s the sequel to Desperate Duchesses, coming out next June, I am crafting a really awful mother.  She’s so awful she’s stealing the show.  She has the heroine running (it’s her mother) and the hero running even faster.  This has all been really fun to create.  But yesterday one of my closest friends anxiously said to me on the phone, “She’s not at all like my mother, is she?  Because I think my mother reads your books.” I laughed.  My Lady Selby is vain, selfish, manipulative, and way bigger than life.  I suppose there are people unlucky enough to have a mother like this, but she came from my imagination, not from life. 

Yet the truth is that my own mother and I (like any mother/daughter) have had tough times, and of course one fuels creative work from one’s own life on some level—though thank goodness, my mother has not even one of the grotesque faults of Lady Selby, my heroine’s mother.

So I have a creative question for you, one that has to do with revenge.  Pretend you’re a writer.  Who (no names, please) would you transform into a character—and what would his/her punishment be?  In the example of Michael Crichton’s book, I presume that the child-molesting Washington journalist probably went to jail.  In the case of my Lady Selby, I’m not sure what to do.  Character traits are harder to “punish” than obvious crimes, like rape attempts.  Go on:  PLOT YOUR REVENGE!

I'm finishing a book right now and what happens is, I pour out so many words on the page I'm no longer able to vocalize. Enough writers have this that it has a name -- Writer's Ephasia. (Hope I spelled that right!)

For instance, when I'm cooking dinner and my kids are helping, I'll say, "Get the thingie out of the thingie." And the sad part? They get the right thingie out of thingie. They get the grater or the collander (hope I spelled that right, too) or the syrup. Whatever. THEY KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Poor kids.

BTW, the spelling fails, too.

I actually like heroines who are stupid at the beginning of the book. I relate to them (and to Terri) -- must reference the time we were moving and I was racing between houses and I pulled into the driveway at the new house, didn't put the car in gear, leaped out to open the garage door and heard this huge BANG! ... which was, of course, my car rolling backward into the pickup of the lady across the street who came over crying because she loved her pickup so much thus confirming my TSTL status in the new neighborhood. The point is, I learned from my mistake and check the stickshift when I park on a hill.

The heroines I consider TSTL are the ones who won't/can't learn. I read a historical and the Regency era heroine couldn't figure out why everyone got excited when she was caught alone with the hero, not once but at least three times. I didn't finish the book. I did fling it against the wall because honest to God, how dumb could she be? Why didn't she figure this out? How could she be all innocent and huffy about having to marry the hero? What a dummie! But the book sold a BUNCH and is a lot of people's favorite. So I'm going to guess that despite the negative talk on the web, TSTL heroines are actually a favorite of many readers.

Guess what I'm writing now? Okay, she does learn, but man, for the first half of the book, she's clueless -- and happy about it.