Rachel Hauck, Author at Learn How To Write A Novel

Writing For Him. No, Not Him As In The Hero But Him As In Jesus

… I mean writing for Him as in the Lord.

A month or so ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt the Lord saying, “Write for me.”

“Of course, always,” I said. “There’s never been a question.”

Then I kind of faced a crisis with writing a book that was hard, and finding myself under the gun.

The pressure mounted.

And when stress and pressure mount on me, I tend to get low and humble before the Lord.

I went back to the drawing board, why do I write? Why am I doing this?

Because to be honest, I wasn’t sure there would be a “next” book for me.

I mean, who needs stress and pressure that keeps you awake at night?

I determined one thing. No way out. No way around. I had to walk through it.

Psalm 23 “When I walk through a dark valley, I fear no evil. You are with me!”

What To Do When A Book IS HARD To Write

I hear you. “Rachel, what do you mean? Every book is hard to write.”

True.

But some books are harder than others.

I ran into a paralyzing premise book in “Dining with Joy” when I kept asking, “What IS that book about?”

What is “Dining with Joy.”

I ran into this same road block with “How To Catch A Prince.”

Just how does one catch a prince?

I’ve never had a book elude me so much. Never have doubts been higher.

But at the end of the day, books are not rewritten, they are rewritten.

What doesn’t work initially can be tweaked and fixed.

So, don’t get in too much of a wad — like I have — over a book that is hard to write.

My husband says when he doesn’t understand things or people he puts an “X” over it.

“Treasure buried here.”

Backstory, Flashback, Memory Moment: The Difference

In order to give our characters depth and widen our stories, we layer in backstory, flashback and memory moments.

Flashbacks and Backstory are familiar terms to most novelists.

Memory moments is my term to break out from backstory and flashback as ways to bring in “the past” of a character.

I also use the term Character History. But I’ve blogged about that already and it’s not exactly where I’m going with this post.

This post is the difference between backstory, flashback, and memory moment.

Backstory is back story. Another story. Something from the character’s “past.”

The rule in novel writing is no back story for the first 30 – 50 pages. Meaning, no wandering backwards in the character’s story line while we’re meeting them and discovering the initial conflict.

But we never really need a break from the current action to go backwards in the story.

Ten Things I Learned On My Writers Retreat

I had to escape. Get away.

For some reason my WIP just wasn’t coming together. And I am four weeks from deadline.

I had to start over… again.

Now I have a great office at home but between the internet, my husband and dog, and just all those little homey interruptions, I decided to break away.

I rented a room up at Teen Missions in Merritt Island.

I packed up, drove 40 minutes up the road and spent three days writing like crazy!

Here’s a few things I learned for making the most of your personal writing retreat.

1. Go some place near by. Traveling is emotional and physically draining. The closer your retreat to your home, the better. Make the retreat short rather than long. I left on a Tuesday morning and was plenty ready to return home by Friday noon.

Writing For The Long Haul

No one wants to be a one hit wonder.

You know, write that first book, or first series, and then struggle to find more success.

I was in this boat after the Nashvegas books.

Not that they were a break out… in fact, they weren’t at all.

So I had to decide what to write next that caught my publisher’s eye.

I was blessed to be at a house that believed in giving an author more than a one-contract chance.

But if I didn’t find some success soon, there was no reason for my publisher to continue with me.

I was writing chick lit but it was dying a quick death as a sub romance genre.

At an ACFW conference, I braved a conversation with my publisher. “What can I do to turn things around?”

“Well,” he said, “we’re not quite sure how to brand you.”

This really confused me. I wrote chick lit. Romance. How was it hard to brand me?