Know Your Audience

A conversation on another blog got me to thinking (always a dicey area) about how important the choice of audience can be in the manuscript phase.

A number of years ago...more than I want to think about...I had asked a friend, who was himself a writer, to read a 1st-ish draft manuscript I'd written. Now, I was young and dewy-eyed and this was the very first novel length piece I'd ever actually finished. This friend, who was a mentor in a number of ways, agreed to read y book. Although this person said many things, I remember two things clearly: "Do you realize that all of your characters are sex addicts?" and "I guess it's alright, if you like that sort of thing."

Argh....

I was crushed.

I write in the midzone between Women's Contemporary Fiction with Romantic Elements, and Contemporary Romance with Erotic Elements. Depends on who you ask. I tend to go for the HEA (Happily Ever After) or Emotionally Satisfying Ending which, it was pointed out to me, defines Romance. Okay, I have no problem with either label.

But...what I found out after this person had read my book was that he despised Romance. There was no way he was going to like it, even if he assured me that he could remove his own preferences from his ability to critique. Hah!!! Not bloody likely.

After that awful critique, in which I took copious notes on what was wrong with the book, I fond myself completely unable to get past page 45 in any new venture. I went out and did some vocational training in a completely non-writing field, in which I've been successful...but I stopped writing. Rather I stopped writing as much as I could stop. Which means that from time to time I would come up with a story idea and explore it for anywhere from 10 to 45 pages, but I wouldn't actually let myself dig in to it. I was scared that I would produce more "I guess it's alright, if you like that sort of thing" critiques.

About a year ago, I asked a different friend (you must read her book...really) to give it a quick read and let me know if it was readable/salvageable. Her comments were that it read like a first draft (which it was), had a really good story idea, and it was completely up to me if I wanted to go back and rework it, or if I'd told that story and was done with it, to move on to something else.

I've been writing ever since.

What does she mean, putting words on the page in order?

I'm at the dangerous point of a manuscript. The dreaded middle. Wherein all the characters have been introduced, all the conflicts have been set up, and I know how it all ends. Part of me wants to clap my hands and say, "...and now we're done!!" and move on. But there's no book there yet. The story still only exists in my head. This could be enough if I were only creating stories for my own amusement, but I'm not. I'm creating stories for everyone else's amusement (or entertainment).

What we have now are characters and a plot and ending. So, how do we get from here to there.

As one of my mentors once said (he probably said it more than once, but you get the picture), "you write it."

To which I asked, "And just how do I go about doing that?"

"You put words on the page in order."

And that's what I do when I'm stuck. I remember that all I have to do, even when feeling terribly uninspired, is "put words on the page in order." They don't have to be well crafted sentences or witty dialog....first time through, they just have to be words on the page in order.

And so, there you have it. They answer to the mystery of how do I get from here to there....say it with me:

Put words on the page, in order