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Dana, you know how much I love your books. You’re one of my favorites!

Oh, and I do love pirates!

Mallory

Oh, and I wanted to tell you that you inspired me to find out my pirate name. Just call me Jolly Marie Smithe.

Dana/Marie

And a big THANK YOU to Dana for being such a great guest blogger and sharing much knowledge and inspiration. You can be sure if…err…when I get to that research, you’ll get all the scoop!

Dana - thank you for coming too! I’m so pleased and grateful that you decided to visit. It has been wonderful having you.

Thank you for coming by to blog with with Dana! I will definitely have to add you to my TBR pile. (And your editor came by and said hello too! *waves at Allison* That’s just way too cool!) I totally understand what she’s saying. There are so many books that are good or fine, but just don’t stand out–and it’s rare to find an author who stands out, especially in category romance where everything is so constrained. I think it’s phenomenal anyone is able to do it, to be quite honest (because I couldn’t), but to do it and do it brilliantly–definite KUDOS.

So thanks again for taking time out of your busy workday to play on the ship!

Kathy–I can’t listen to music while I write. If I listen to music, I can’t hear the story in my head. Does that make sense? In my head I’m saying the story as I’m writing it down. Very rarely, I storyboard. I no longer need to put myself in the writing mood. I sit at the computer. I write. I try not to even go downstairs until I have a few pages. If I do, I see the half-finished cereal sitting in bowls and the milk nobody put away and I’m tempted to clean up the kitchen. Then I’d get into cleaning mode. I’m so good now at ignoring mess After I have a few pages, I go grab a banana, (put away the milk) bring the banana back up to my PC, eat it at my desk. Won’t go back down until lunch. I eat that on the patio if the weather is nice. I don’t stop working until the family is home. Then I multitask cleaning with spending time with them. I can chat while doing dishes. Basically, look at writing as if you were at an office job. Could you run home to clean up breakfast dishes? No, they’d have to wait until you got home from work. I’m pretty ruthless about this. Nobody expects CEOs to toss in a load of laundry between board meetings. At the beginning, I’d have neighbors asking me to watch their kids during the day because I worked for home. They wouldn’t have asked another neighbor to take a vacation day from their office job to baby sit. I politely and very professionaly declined. They caught on after a while. I even broke friends and family from calling me during my “office hours.” When I’m in an action scene with some bomb ticking, I don’t need to hear about my cousin’s hampster’s adventures.

Allison–Thank you for stopping in!! Allison is the most fantastic editor to work with. She’s made every single book she edited for me so much better and I’m so grateful for that. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being part of Intrigue.

Really, as she said, the thing is not to get discouraged. Rejections will come. Not all my ideas are accepted even now. But that is also a challenge, to make the next one even better. To be truthful, I’d write even if I knew I could never publish another book. I LOVE the writing process itself.

I’d recommend keeping a folder of rejection letters and envisioning using it at a workshop you’re giving at an RWA conf to hopeful writers. Picture yourself holding up that folder when you are a bestselling author and nobody believes that you were a beginner at one point, too. You are not getting rejections, you are collecting material for your “How to be a Bestselling Author” seminar.

I’ll be in the audience, cheering.

Thank you again for the warm welcome! I’m so glad you found me, Marnee!

Dana