Failure leads to success

I have been reading Tharp's The Creative Habit and have found much to like. I loved her chapter on disasters. How people do their best work often after failure. Nobody succeeds all the time. Failures humble. The best failures are the ones you make alone in your room with no one watching as you strive to perfect your material.

It is the old Thomas Edison theory about finding 9,999 ways that a light bulb didn't work. In order to get to the 10kth time, he had to try the other ways first. As Tharp points out -- contrary to the assertion in Amadeus, Mozart work hard to perfect his musical skill. The striving towards perfection means you are going to fail. It is better that you make mistakes at the start so you can develop the skills later on. One of the worst failures in Tharp's opinion is denial. You know something is weak but you are hoping against hope that no one else notices. This is also where a good editor and good critique partners or as Tharp calls them the validation squad. I trust them with my crudest and clumsiest work and they reward me with honest criticism. I put a lot of faith in them and their eye. I trust their talent. I know they have hammered my work in the past and therefore no afraid to be critical and above they want what I want -- the strongest story possible. By working with them and learning also to examine my work critically,

Revision is the biggest test in the creative process. It is the admitting that something does not work as well as you hoped/feared and then putting it right. She has a great mantra -- first put right those things you know you can fix. It is also something that I believe.
Anyway, I hope to avoid the public humiliation of a total disaster. by going through the validation process and working with my editor and critique partners. From my point of view, it was lovely to see someone else provide a clear and concise reason why it works.

I am not a master Romance novelist yet. Perhaps I never will be. But I can strive towards making my work better. There is always something to work on. I also liked her idea about polishing skills being a clock face. You polish up one, and then go on to the next until you have come full circle and the first one needs polishing again. She spoke of how dancers spend time perfecting the basics, and how the best dancers are the ones who are constantly going back and relearning their basic moves.

Anne McAllister went on and on about this book, and now I am as well. It is excellent.

I shall be drawing the winners of the Sold and Seduced contest soon. I was very pleased at the response.

Hired by the Cowboy arrives

Donna Alward who is one of my cps has sent me a hardback copy of Hired by the Cowboy, her first novel for Harlequin Mils and Boon. She has officially joined the Pink Lady brigade of authors. The Pink Ladies is the affectionate name given to those women who check the hardback copies of Mills and Boon out of the library. They are the backbone of the UK library system, coming in week after week to read these books. Once it is in the system, Donna's book will probably not be shelved for upwards of two years. It will come in and go out immediately. The popularity of the titles is one of the major reasons that so many UK city libraries still purchase them in hardback -- otherwise they would fall to pieces...in a short span of time.

Donna has v kindly mentioned me in the dedication but the real thrill for me was reading the first page. She has worked so hard on this book, and it is a testimony to her guts and determination. No doubt I shall be blogging about this book again when it actually in the shops, but for now, I have the quiet satisfaction of knowing I made a small contribution to it.

And the timing was perfect as it is my birthday today.

I am working away on my latest wip --VC. It is starting to take shape. I have promised my lovely editor the first three chapters by the end of January, so we shall have to see.