Samhain Publishing

Top Stressors in Life are Divorce, Family Issues, Death, Move, New Job, and a myriad of other major life changes. And for writers, major edits and rejections, and deadlines can add to the stressful mix. For me, my mother’s currently in the hospital, I have a new job, moved, new email address (belive me that is a big stressor—having to change blogger—am on 6 accts, wordpress.com, websites, yahoo groups—which turned out to be a major nightmare, and have a million people to notify) and have had edits for 4 books, one set of galleys waiting now, one set of edits on the back burner, final edits coming on two books, AND, I teach online classes so am finishing one, starting a new one, and creating an even newer one, plus have a contracted book I need to finish, and another I need to write. Sooo, stress is the name of the game. How to get through all of it with keeping all my marbles intact?

Hmm, well, I’m afraid I misplaced a few in the move. But, prioritizing helps. Not worrying about the stuff, but jumping in to getting whatever needs doing, done. Like selling the house. I started fixing it up and cleaning it out right away. Course that’s when the bottom dropped out of the market too. And believe me, getting the place ready to sell, having it on the market, selling it, and moving have all been major time-consuming stressors. But I didn’t do them all at once. I took them in steps, one problem at a time. Now it’s all done. Can’t find anything, but the move, the selling, the fixing up…all that stuff is done. And that’s how to deal with stressful situations. Set goals. Tackle them instead of stewing about what needs to be accomplished. Don’t worry about what can’t be fixed (the economy, the house market) And finish them. One down, ninety-nine left to go.

My goal? To unstress in October. Hopefully. For now, I just have to get my mom home from the hospital and care for her, get ready for my next class, and keep on revising manuscripts. It’ll all get done. Stress or no stress.

What do you do when stress gets you down?

Terry Spear
The Vampire…In My Dreams, Deadly Liaisons, Heart of the Wolf, Don’t Cry Wolf
www.terryspear.com

What happens to the avid listener? The storyteller has lost him. The listener is now drawn into the past. Will he be as rabidly entertained? Maybe.

But wait, we have to get back to the present, and the narrator pauses and begins again with the current crisis.

I just finished reading a terrific historical romance—super characterizations, descriptions, plotting, but a couple of times the author pulled me out of the current riveting story to reminisce about past life experiences.

In one of the passages, I was so disoriented by the shift, I had to flip back to where the flashback began to assure myself that it was a flashback. Did it add to the story?

Not for me.

I read a paranormal like that, too, where the story was going along great and then the author stops everything to reminisce about the past. Again in this instance, it didn’t add anything to the story as far as I was concerned. It was filler, boring, and a distraction.

Whenever possible, keep the story moving forward. Sure, it’s fine for the hero to think of the special moments he’d spent with the heroine the night before, or consider the grudge he’s held against his brother for the last hundred years.

But when a flashback turns into actual scenes with dialogue and action, is it really necessary to the story? Does it maybe force the reader out of the story too much? Will you lose some of your readers? Will they forgive you?

Move the story forward. Write in the present. Don’t force your reader to live in the past unless it’s absolutely necessary and adds to the story. Use them sparingly and when you do, don’t make them so long that the reader forgets this is not the current story, but a flashback to the past.

Terry Lee Wilde/Terry Spear
www.terryspear.com The Vampire…In My Dreams (Avail ebook/print Aug 26, 2008)
www.terrywildeteenbooks.com Deadly Liaisons (coming Fall 08)