Tell Me Your Story Tuesday
Please welcome
Sharla Lovelace
Sharla is represented by Jessica Faust of Bookends. She is an author of women's fiction with a paranormal romantic twist...of the lighter variety. Anything ghostly or surreal or not quite of this world that doesn't spew anything gross and maybe make you laugh. She's a huge fan of romantic comedy, so "funny" always squirms its way into her writing.
Sharla is represented by Jessica Faust of Bookends. She is an author of women's fiction with a paranormal romantic twist...of the lighter variety. Anything ghostly or surreal or not quite of this world that doesn't spew anything gross and maybe make you laugh. She's a huge fan of romantic comedy, so "funny" always squirms its way into her writing.
Let's get to know Sharla!
Do you have a writing routine? What does it look like? Where do you usually write? I work full time and have a teenager so my “routine” is pretty much whatever time I manage to grab. Sometimes that is in the form of sitting in my car in someone’s driveway, with a notebook and pen. On weekends I usually get up at 6am and sit in my living room recliner with my dog and my coffee and write for 3-4 hours before anyone is moving around. That’s precious time.
Is the life of a writer what you thought it be? What is different? Nothing is different yet. LOL. Since being agented, the only thing different is the conversations. I’ve spent years with the goal of “get an agent”, now the goals and topics are new, like learning a foreign language.
Do you have any special time management tricks for working in writing time and living a normal life? The above-mentioned driveway…
What is the best advice you have received about this journey? To never give up. And do your research. Know everything about the agents you query, read their blogs, follow their tweets. Don’t do the very things they’ve publicly posted that annoy them…those are silly careless mistakes that can be avoided. And at DFWCon, the amazing Sandra Brown told me in the book signing line to “keep the faith and it will happen”. Sounds good to me.
What advice do you wish someone would have given you when you were starting out? Find out all the publishing and formatting rules before you start writing! LOL. My first book was written before I ever looked up a thing on the internet. It was 219K words. Yep, I learned all about editing.
What do you do to fight burnout? Do you ever worry about "running out of stories"? How do combat that? I don’t have burnout, but I do get writer’s block and it freaks me out. I start worrying I’ll never write another book. What if the publisher wants a multi-book deal and I’m left catatonic? I tend to stress myself into writer’s block. Once I relax, the clouds part and the ideas rain down like manna.
What sources do you use for inspiration? ( Music, movies, people watching) Definitely people watching. I get the best stuff just by listening and watching. And also TV. I’ll hear a line or (and my husband hates this) I pick up plot ideas off TV shows we watch and analyze it and figure out how to do it differently. I can’t just watch TV anymore, I’m picking apart the story structure.
What do you do when you aren’t writing? Laundry. Oh, and going to work while wishing I was back in that recliner.
Tell us a bit about your work in progress. Hmmmm, can’t do that yet. It’s still in the infant stage and may self-destruct if I expose it. I write paranormal women’s fiction, so I’ll tell you it has to do with psychic ability….that’s all. J
What is next for you? Hopefully a book sale for Anything But Normal!
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Sharla during DFWCon. She is great!
You can follow her blog at http://sharlalovelace.com/
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Sharla during DFWCon. She is great!
You can follow her blog at http://sharlalovelace.com/
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