Where do you get your ideas?

I'm always asked where my ideas come from. I can't very well say I don't know. Well, I can, but that would make me sound disinterested and unprepared.

I suppose ideas are everywhere. The idea of my first release with Champagne Books, Man Of Her Dremas, came from an online dating commercial. I was in the kitchen, doing dishes, half asleep, when a "what if?" popped into my head when the TV in the next room aired the dating commercial. What if the hero's nosey sister answers a mail order bride ad for him without his knowledge? The rest just fell into an entire novel.

Stranger In His Bed, my August 2009 release with Champagne, came from all the things I'd been hearing about what publishers are looking for. "Give us 'out of the box'," they cried. Well, Angus French, hero of the story, couldn't get more out of the box, I don't believe. (And you'll just have to read it to find out why. *grin*) And the rest of the book was inspired by fairytales I'd read and heard as a kid.

Mythology, history, both local and internationally, also fuel my ideas, as do museums, movies, and of course reading. Now that I think about it, I get a lot of ideas from people watching too. Mannerisms, facial expressions. They all go into my boks. I also listen to strangers' conversations. Shameless but true. Writing has made me terribly nosey.

So I guess ideas are everywhere and in everything. All you havet o do is look close enough.

Writers out there, where do you get your ideas?

~ Nancy

http://www.nancyhenderson.com/

http://www.nancyhenderson.blogspot.com

Writing Classes

I'm wondering if I should take more writing classes. I haven't taken any in awhile, other than the workshops I attended at the Romantic Times Booklover's Convention in Pittsburgh this past spring. I'm feeling a little rusty. Or uninspired maybe.

I took Barbara Samuel's workshop on voice last year when she was kind enough to come to our local RWA mini conference my chapter holds every year. Before that, I took an online class on promotion, I forget the instructor's name. (I'm terrible with names.) Writer's Digest offers great basic and advance novel writing workshops. I took both about ten years ago.

I have shelves of books on writing, everything from writing magazine articles to writing romance. Too many books and not enough time to read them. My RWA chapter offers a one hour workshop on a writing topic every monthly meeting. And I'm strongly considering joining RWA Online for the opportunity to take their online workshops.

So I guess all this rambling has some sort of point. Point is, I'm always learning. As a writer, I guess I always will be.

Writers or readers out there: Have you taken any good classes lately?

Thanks for reading.

~ Nancy

http://www.nancyhenderson.com

http://www.nancyhenderson.blogspot.com

Writerly Identity

“Oh, you’re the history writer.”

“That’s me.” I smile and nod.

I get this all the time. People, especially around my neck of the woods, know me for my love of history. Probably because I spend summers combing historical landmarks and attending Rev War and French & Indian War reenactments. I sometimes wonder if they know I write romances. They seldom recognize me for my paranormal romance novels.

I was recently asked if I’d be interested in becoming the local town historian. I was flattered, but I had to decline. I don’t have time what with working full time and writing part time. She told me I could give up writing.

Give up writing?

Um….no. Not in a million years. Writing is more than putting words on paper or computer screen. Writing is my identity in so many ways. I seldom introduce myself to anyone without slipping them one of my author business cards. Hi, I’m Nancy, and I write historical and paranormal romance. It’s just who I am. Even if I never had another book published I couldn’t give it up.

So my question to you is, how do you as writers or readers, identify yourselves? Are you the pages you write or the novels you read?

~ Nancy

http://www.nancyhenderson.com
http://www.nancyhenderson.blogspot.com

Summer Writing

I don’t know why I expect to be more productive in the summer. Nothing really changes for me. Nothing gets easier. I mean, I don’t have children, so I don’t have a lifestyle change with kids home come summer, and I’m not a teacher so I don’t have summers off. I work the same full time hours year round. So there’s really nothing different. Summer brings no more hours in the day than any other holiday.

So why do I expect to get more writing done come summer? Summertime brings warm weather, a rarity living in New York state, believe me. With the warm weather, I want to read more. If I’m writing a book set in Colonial New York, such as I’m doing now, I want to travel, visit the places I’m writing about, get lost in our state’s rich Colonial history. This takes time from writing. I also like to garden. I could spend hours pulling weeds, and I usually do. It’s one of the most relaxing things for me. Plus this year, my mom and I have decided to start canning and making homemade jelly together. More time from writing.

But the warm weather comes and goes so fast. Before you know it, I’ll be wrapped down in goose down with the laptop by the fire. Then I’ll get more writing done. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Nancy

http://www.nancyhenderson.com/

http://www.nancyhenderson.blogspot.com/

RT

I tried to come up with something to talk about other than my recent experience going to a large book convention, but I quickly discovered that nothing else compares to it. I attended the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. The flight to Pittsburgh went smoothly, but the shuttle from the airport to my hotel was less than fun considering I was dropped off in the middle of a construction zone and had to walk through it toting way too heavy suitcases. Promo alley was amazing. This was literally tables upon tables filled with free author promo stuff for the taking. I have a huge duffle bag stuffed full of bookmarks, postcards, and CDs, which I still need to go through. I have a list of e-books I want to order which would wear down the numbers on my credit card.

Wednesday’s RT was spent with me playing stalker…er, fangirl. I met Lisa Jackson, Jade Lee, Marjorie M. Liu, Colleen Gleason and many others. Thursday I attended workshops all day. There was a particularly interesting one with a Harlequin editor, which unfortunately, I cannot remember her name, and Kate Duffy from Kensington. The general consensus was that historicals are not dead, that they’re making a larger than life come back with edgier plots and hotter sex.

Thursday night I went to the famous “Fairy Ball” dinner and dance. I did not dress up, but boy the costumes went from beautiful to the outrageous. I had the chance to sit with a table full of librarians, one from Boston, who said her trip was all expense paid by the library she worked for. Talk about your dream job! I learned so much about what criteria make them order books and the main one was cover then the back cover blurb, but they said cover was the ultimate deciding factor. All interesting stuff.

Friday it was more workshops, one on blogging, two more editor panels, another on e-book marketing which I learned I was already doing everything they suggested. I didn’t go to the famous Heather Graham “Vampire dinner” Friday night because I was completely worn out. A friend once told me large conventions were intense, and I never really understood what that meant. By Friday, I knew.

Thanks for reading!

~ Nancy
http://www.nancyhenderson.com
http://www.nancyhenderson.blogspot.com

Bio - Nancy Henderson

Website: http://www.nancyhenderson.com/

Taking it seriously

First off, I'm excited to announce my latest Champagne release, Belonging, is now in print. This is a story near and dear to me, because my inspiration comes from my third great grandmother, who worked as a lumbercamp cook in the late 1800s. Check it out here.

What? You didn't think I'd miss an opportunity for some shameless promotion, did you? *grin*

Oh, all right...

When I started out writing, I considered it a hobby. Writing was something I’d done in periods of time where I didn’t have anything else to do. As the writing bug grew and my desire to become published gradually turned to obsession, I realized I would need to treat my craft as more than a hobby.

First and foremost, writing is a business. I believe this realization is the first mindset needed to taking your writing seriously. Publishers are in the business for one thing only: to make money.

So. In order to make money for yourself and for your publishers, you need to carve out a set number of hours to put into your business, which is what you are: a business.

When not on deadline, I need to write a minimum of twenty hours per week. I do this one of two ways. I work full time, but my nights are generally free, so I usually reserve 7:00 to 11:00 pm for writing time. That’s four hours Monday through Friday. Of course, things happen, so I can’t always keep this commitment, but I’m flexible enough that I can write on the weekends to at least get my twenty hours in. And most weekends I’m writing anyway, so I’m usually working over the set twenty hours each week. Sundays I reserve for my slug time when I flop on the couch, usually reading for pleasure or for research needed for a book I’m working on.

Another way to take your writing seriously is to have a writing space. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, just a spot where you come to write every day and your are free to leave your mess as is and call it your own. For years, I worked at the kitchen table. I now have a separate writing room. It’s cluttered and disorganized, but it’s my space. My cave where I can escape to my own little world. Or big world, depending on what I’m writing at the time. Going there forces me to take my writing seriously. I’m not quite sure how, but it does, so I go with it because it works. Don’t get me wrong, I also write in other places like the library, the local coffee shop (I don’t have the luxury of living near a Starbucks.) or even in my car on lunch hours. This is all fine. As long as it’s somewhere you can work. That’s what’s important.

I also set weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. There are constantly changing, depending on what I’m working on. I constantly go back and revise them too. This helps keep me on track so I can see where I’ve changed, if I’ve gone a new direction, etc.

These are some of my own ideas for how I take my writing seriously. You can probably come up with ones that work for you.

Happy writing!

Nancy

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Goals

This is the first year I’ve ever made goals. Oh sure, every New Years I make them in my head. You now, the usual I’m-going-to-exercise-everyday and the I’m-going-to-lose-50-lbs-in-two-weeks goals. Those crazy, unattainable goals for which we set ourselves up for obvious failure.

This year I set writing goals.

Setting writing goals is nothing new either. I’d always set them in my head, which was one problem because they’re easily forgotten up there. (Hey, it’s a crowded place up there, in my head.) And because they’re easily forgotten, they aren’t measurable. You can’t really go back six months from now and evaluate your progress if you don’t remember exactly what you’d set out to do six months or a year ago.

Another problem was that my goals were always beyond my control. For example, one of my goals was to be on the New York Times bestseller list. Attainable? Well…maybe one day. Who knows? Within my power to attain? Not a chance. I have no control over this. I can work hard, submit, promote like crazy, but what I cannot control is my sales. So being on the NYT bestseller list is unattainable. A goal that sets myself up for failure.

Do you follow where I’m going with this? Goals have to be something you can control.

One of my goals which I wrote down this year is to increase my readership. Well, this isn’t a goal either. Why? Because I don’t have control over it. If I tweak this a big and instead write down the ways I can increase my readership, such as going to RT this year, writing a newsletter, writing more books, blogging more, advertising more, these things become my goals. I can control all these things. Increasing my readership becomes the product of my goals.

Goals can be made to wrk for you. Write them down so you can revisit and revise them as needed. Make them attainable by making them within your control.

And don’t forget to eat lots of chocolate for inspiration.

Thanks for reading.

~ Nancy

http://www.nancyhenderson.com/

http://www.nancyhenderson.blogspot.com/