Katy McDermott

Remember those kits we had as children? A box of watercolors or crayons or even magic markers (belated apologies to my mother on that last one), a black and white drawing of a princess or a field of horses… all we had to do was follow the diagram, and soon there would be a four-color masterpiece. (Well, it seemed masterful to me at age 6, anyway…)

I miss them sometimes, those kits. And I find myself applying a similar principle to my writing: drawing = outline, painting = book. I’ve learned to do most of my outlining on the weekends, when what time I have is  little less structured. Since I try to write almost every day, and most weeknights I can only fiind an hour or so to do it, it helps to have a template.

What I do is make a super-short list of the scenes I need to write for my next chapter, then try to outline the first few scenes over the weekend. Often, by the time Wednesday night rolls around and I’ve written all the scenes I’ve outlined, I’m “into” the book to keep going – flying without a net, you might say. And, of course, I never need to outline the scenes with my main characters, Laurie and Tim. I know then pretty well by now.

But I’ll admit – as much as I appreciate the model, I hope my fnished product is just a little more professional than a paint-by-nunbers picture!

Here’s my routine: I work every weekday, leaving my house at around 7:15am, usually getting home 11 or 12 hours later. After a hasty dinner and a few chores, I go up to my office to write for an hour or two before falling into bed and doing the same thing the next day. On weekends, I try to keep my household running by doing more chores and errands, and I try to have a bit of a life too.

I’ve got a writing schedule to adhere to, a self-imposed deadline (like I don’t get enough of those at work!) that keeps my nose to the grindstone. I have to keep going, every chance I get. Have to get this first draft finished. I don’t want to lose momentum…

But sometimes, I fear I’m rushing. Writing too fast, not laboring over every word and phrase, every nuance and cadence the way I should. Basically, I’ve become a slave to my page count.

I keep telling myself I’ll have a chance to fix all the awkward patches once I get the first draft written and enter the rewrite stage, and that thought makes me optimistic.

After all, the Hare didn’t get a chance to run the race over, now, did he?

As I work on the manuscript for my second book (1/3 of the way done!), I continue to promote my first book, Meeting Murder. Recently, a co-worker mentioned that I should consider making it available to Amazon Kindle owners.

“Great idea!” I said to him when he suggested Kindle, and I read through the directions.  I’m a self-published author (this time around), so that means I’d be solely responsible for uploading my manuscript into the Kindle system. I was a little leery, but the directions made it sound incredibly simple – “just a few clicks.” Even I could manage a few clicks, I thought…

Enter HTML code.

Amazon suggests – strongly suggests – that manuscripts be uploaded as HTML files. Mine is saved as a Word document, and converting it would involve special software, and (more important) knowledge that I clearly don’t have.

Thankfully, my co-worker (the wonderful – and patient – Brian Gould) is both a computer whiz and an independent artist in his own right (music’s his thing – he produced his own CD). Also thankfully, he took pity on me.

“I’m just not sure about this HTML conversion thing. Could you tell me how to do that?”

Brian managed not to laugh directly in my face, saying gently that it “might be easier” for him to handle the conversion himself. All I’d need to do would be send him the files.

So I did, and Brian took care of it. When I previewed the Kindle version of my book, however, there were neither scene divisions or chapter divisions – key elements to the way the reader experiences the story. So Brian went back to work inserting spaces and breaks via “HTML tags” of which I know nothing. (Bear in mind too that he has a busy and demanding job just like I do.)

Bottom line? By next weekend, Meeting Murder will be available for Kindle owners to download, and hopefully more people will read it.

And I’ll owe Brian Gould a bottle/case of the beverage of his choice!

I haven’t been writing much this week. My reason? Simple: I tried to quit smoking cold turkey. As a result, I was a little – you could say – distracted.

You could also say that I was weepy. Constantly. Irritable to the point of committing a felony. Obsessed with food, especially chocolate (“Is that chocolate-covered lasagna you have there? Hell, yeah, I’ll try it!”) Prone to sudden fits of rage over the one sock that didn’t make it into the hamper. And so on.

In fact, I was so focused on myself – my own misery, my own determination to quit and stay quit in spite of said misery – that I didn’t spare my book or my characters the merest thought. But after 4 1/2 days, I figured the nicotine had finally left my system (and I was indeed a bit less of a freakazoid).

It was time to get back to writing. I’d missed it – quite a lot, actually. Even though it’s something I associate so closely with smoking, I thought I was strong enough to give the writing a shot without the cigarettes.

As it turns out, I was wrong. Yep, I’ve started smoking again. (And no, I’m not proud of it.) However, I did hit a milestone of sorts in the book (1/3 of the way done), so I guess that’s something.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to break my association between the two…