Monique Sorgen

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
“How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex” is my first novel, but I have written over 20 film and television scripts leading up to that. Some of the scripts were re-writes of other people’s work, some we original ideas that I had, some were original ideas that producers had, some were based on pre-existing books or remakes of movies.

I’ve written both on spec and for hire, and in that world, I learned to write project that I was passionate about as well as projects that I wasn’t passionate about. Both types of projects involve challenges. When you’re not passionate, the challenge is obvious, but the solution is to find some angle that you can get excited about. When you are passionate the challenge is less obvious, but it’s still there. When you care a lot for a project, it can cause you to feel precious and proprietary about every little word, joke, or sentence. So I’d say that the hardest part of being passionate is letting go of some of the moments that you love, when they are not helping the story along. Sometimes (often) this can include deleting parts that you may consider to be your best work.

In the film business, many writers gripe that they are forced to kill the best parts of their script because the producer or financier (i.e. their boss) has asked them to do so. Sometimes these changes can improve a script, and sometimes they make it worse. But one thing most screenwriters would agree with is that writing a book is liberating. You are no longer constrained by the mandatory hour and a half to two-hour length of a movie. You are no longer constrained by having to get in and out of scenes quickly because the audience has become “so A.D.D.” You are no longer constrained by budget and schedule, the way you often are on a movie project.

All that said, I pride myself on having learned to cut as much extraneous business as possible and get to the point, which is a skill I learned through screenwriting, which also shows up in my book.

For me, though, one of the most gratifying things about moving from screenwriting into book writing is that I no longer have to wait for a “greenlight” before audiences can see my work. Of all the over 20 scripts I’ve written and rewritten, for hire and on spec (some of which I’ve sold or optioned), almost none of them have been made. For the first time, the only person who has to greenlight my story is me. Thank you technology!

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex” was inspired by a lot of dating, which culminated into one situation which may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. After losing my virginity as a fairly young person, I immediately assumed that if you had sex with someone it meant something. I’m sure that assumption came from two things: 1) That it was true of my first couple of (read: formative) experiences, and 2) I always felt more into a guy after we had sex, so I assumed that he must feel the same way. In researching this story, I found out that that is actually the opposite of the truth.

It turns out that women have attachment hormones, which release into their bodies during sex, which causes them to feel closer to a person after sex, while men have hormones that cause them to feel more attached before the sex– which is why they will literally do any horrible thing in their efforts to sleep with a woman– and then often seem to check out immediately after the deed is done, because the hormones that were driving him are released during sex. This isn’t to say that a man can’t have sex and be attached to a woman at the same time, but only that his attachment feelings are completely unrelated to whether or not sex is taking place. He is attached to a woman when he feels a deeper admiration for her, regardless of whether that admiration is based on her looks, her brains, or her general thoughtfulness and personality. Bottom line, his attachment is not based on the sex.

But back to the story at hand… I guess I had had enough situations where I felt differently about a guy after having sex with him, and enough situations where he felt differently about me, too—but not in a good way—to where I wanted to find out the answer to this question. The final guy that inspired this book was someone who I had gone out with a bunch of times, and had realized was really a good match for me on an intellectual level. I thought we had fun together, we liked to do a lot of the same things, we had similar backgrounds and similar ideas about our futures, and I also thought he was cute. I didn’t want to have sex with him anytime soon, because I was really enjoying getting to know him, and I didn’t want my vision of him to be blurred by the sex… But after several dates, despite my own lack of readiness, I got drunk and somewhat accidentally fell into bed with him. In my own opinion, it was premature. I knew that I did not feel ready to take that step yet, but I lost control of my control when I drank too much to drive, and couldn’t just go home when I wanted to call it a night. Sometimes, it’s hard to stop kissing without just getting up and leaving, so things escalated, as I waited to sober up.

Anyway, after that, things did change, and before too long, he faded out of my life. I regretted the sex, again, mostly because I did not hold myself to my own standard of waiting until I really felt like it was the right thing for me to do. But I also felt like he did not get a chance to get to know me in the way I had wanted him to. I had seen our potential, and I think he was close to seeing it, too, but he wasn’t quite there yet. So I mentally flogged myself for betraying my better instincts, and then I wrote this story about what would’ve gone differently if I could go back in time and wait longer. In real life, you don’t get a do over, but in fiction you can.

Obviously, everything had to change in the story line for dramatic effect. Characters in the book are invented people doing invented things, but the emotion underneath it—the sentiment of what a woman goes through in her mind when she sleeps with someone in a time span that may or may not be “too soon”—is what I really wanted to capture in the book. I knew that the feelings I had known were relatable to a lot of women, so I made up a story that revolved around those feelings.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Who doesn’t?! One thing that people don’t seem to understand is that I treat writing like a real job. I sit down at my desk every day, first thing in the morning, whether or not I feel like writing, and I sit in front of my work until I start to write something. Then I stay there all day, like any other worker bee. If people call me up and tell me I should go to lunch with them, because I work at home and can make my own schedule, I try to politely explain that this is still a job, and the schedule that my boss (i.e. me) has made for me, dictates that I work during work hours. Truth be told, I’m not always that polite about it, because it sort of angers me when people don’t take what I do seriously just because I’m not getting paid an upfront salary for it. My theory is that if you go to lunch today, why not go to lunch tomorrow? Hell, why not have a glass of wine with lunch, since my time working for myself doesn’t matter? Hey, you know what, why don’t I just get drunk, while I’m here taking a leisurely lunch on a Tuesday? That’s what writers are supposed to do, right? Be drunks?… Anyway, my point is that approaching it any other way can be a slippery slope toward talking about what you’re writing, instead of actually sitting down and doing the work. So I try to prioritize the work. And when the workday is over, then I can go drink myself into oblivion like a good writer should!

I also have some interesting cures for writer’s block. Here are two of my favorites:

1) I go get some exercise. This keeps me in shape, and it clear up my brain. The endorphins get you thinking outside the box, until you’re not so attached to doing things the way you had originally planned. Writer’s block is really just fear. It can be fear of writing something that sucks—which is kind of stupid, because you can always rewrite it into something that doesn’t suck. Or, when it comes to rewriting, it can be the fear that you won’t come up with something that works better than what you have—which you will if you just go get some exercise, and stop holding your mind to the constraints of what you already have on the page. Sometimes we become unnecessarily attached to thoughts that we’ve already put to paper. We want so badly for them to be correct, so even when they are getting in the way of your story’s advancement, we fear changing them, because that’s like admitting that we were wrong. And nobody likes to do that. But as soon as you can let go of everything you’ve already done, your mind will open up to the possibilities that you hadn’t yet considered, and exercising helps it do that.

2) I take a nap. Same theory as to why this works. Basically, your mind enters a less judgmental state when you sleep, and you wake up in a daze, in which you’re not thinking straight, which is great, because some of your most creative and original thoughts are bound to come when you’re thinking crooked.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
I’m not gonna lie, the success of “50 Shades of Grey” influenced me to write a novel… but then I read it, and I couldn’t get through it because I didn’t like the characters or the situation, so I can’t say that the book itself influenced me—at least not its content.

As far as authors that I can’t put down and hope to be compared to, Sophie Kinsella’s books always give me that feeling of absolutely needing to know what happens next! That’s what I enjoy in a book. I like page-turners, that get to the point and don’t dwell too much on the poetry of the scenery. I also learned a lot of interesting tricks from reading Anna Maxted’s “Running in Heels.” There is a twist on page 100 that is only possible because she writes in the first person point of view, and it really surprised me and made me think. And I’ve read almost all of Peter Leftcourt’s books, because he’s also a screenwriter, and his fast-paced sensibility speaks to my own. Basically, I enjoy books that feel like they should be movies. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since after all, I did like movies enough to think that I should try to make my career out of them.

I don’t know if it has influenced my writing, because it’s in such an incredibly different style than mine, but the book I’ve read the most often is “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. I just love the message in that book!

And as a kid that books that formed me where first Judy Blume, then the “Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton (“We’ll do it for Johnny!”), and finally Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” which I related to as a free-wheeling, independent teenager, and Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” which I lived out, by following his path through Paris and Spain, in the summer between high school and college.

What are you working on now?
I have several books in the outline phase, meaning that I know the gist of the storyline, but still need to work out all the details and write the actual books.

One is called “Happily Whatever After” which starts as the story of a woman who gave up a promising career as a fashion executive to become a stay at home mom and wife with three kids. Before long, she feels unappreciated for all that she does, and she wishes she had never gotten married. Much like in “How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex,” he wish comes true, and she wakes up in an alternate universe where instead of getting married, she became a powerful career woman with no familial obligations. At this point, we also enter into her husband’s point of view, which is that of a man who is over-worked as he tries to provide for a family that he almost never gets to spend time with. In the alternate universe, since his “alternate” wife has just left him, he suddenly becomes a single-dad, and gets more time with his kids that he bargained for. Through experiencing the alternate versions of their lives, both parties begin to recognize some ways in which they’ve gone wrong in their original situations… This is the book most likely to come out next.

I’d also like to write a prequel series of short stories about Samantha Harper as a teenager that depict how she got to be 30 years old, and still doesn’t know how long she’s supposed to wait to have sex. This series would be more about her sexual formation and sexual misadventures in a new dating world where she no longer has the excuse that she’s a virgin when she wants to hold out for sex. It’s a very confusing time for a girl. And it lasts a lot longer than it should.

Of course I’m also still working on film and television scripts. For example, I just finished a first draft of a comedy pilot about a young narcoleptic woman, who is living two versions of her life at the same time. One is a dream and one is real, but since she doesn’t know which is which, she has to live both of versions of her life like they’re real.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Freebies are amazing. I’ve gotten more reviews and built a presence on more websites from giving away books than anything else. There are several websites that are nice enough to spread the word for you when you’re doing a free promo, and they are very good at what they do! There’s this one (Awesomegang.com), of course, which offers this great opportunity for us to post our author interviews. BookGoodies.com posted an interview of mine that turned into a fair amount of sales, and I was grateful to them. AutorsMarketingClub.com has one of the most comprehensive lists of who to submit to when you are doing a free promotion, and they make it really easy to submit to whole bunch of websites in one place. (That site is where I discovered all the other one’s I’m mentioning in this answer). And based on a friend’s recommendation, I experimented with placing an ad on BookGorilla.com, which actually garnered me the most free downloads ever. I had to pay to be on BookGorilla, but it actually seemed worth it. I blogged about my successful experience with that ad here: http://moniquesorgen.tumblr.com/post/59319353362/results-of-my-latest-free-kindle-promo-experiment

The other most powerful tool I’ve used is in-person word of mouth (i.e. just talking to people about my book), coupled with business cards for the book. I’ve noticed that the ratio of business cards I give out to book sales I make is incredibly high. Unfortunately, the price of the business cards isn’t much less than my profit on each book sale, so I’m not sure that the cost ratio is much better on this than giving it out for free. Then again, a paid sale can get you on more top 100 indie sales lists, like Christiana Miller’s list: http://yearoftheindie.blogspot.com/ …so maybe it’s worth the money, because being on her list (even at the bottom, as I have been) does lead to more paid sales.

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Amazon Select seems to be the best game in town at the moment. I hope that changes, because monopolies aren’t good, but in all the research I’ve done and with all the writers I’ve spoken to, and with all the blogs I’ve read, the profits from your other sources pale in comparison, and Amazon treats you like crap if you don’t go exclusive with them for digital. Honestly, they don’t treat you that well if you do go exclusive with them either, but it’s better. What I’m basically saying here is it’s an abusive relationship, and you’ll be the victim… Recommendations don’t get a lot better than that!

Also, write more books. I’m just now working on my 2nd and 3rd books, but if you look at the numbers, those with more books sell more other books. (I hope it’s obviously that by “more books” I mean “more good books,” no one is telling you to sacrifice quality for quantity here.)

Also, be honest with yourself. If you don’t love writing, take the pressure off, and do something else. There’s probably more money in it anyway.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Just do it!” – Nike. Just kidding. Although that is good advice, and I’ve pretty much followed it my whole life, significantly predating the ad campaign. So I guess it goes back to my parents who always advised me to follow my heart. Yes, they were hippies.

What are you reading now?
I’m reading a fascinating non-fiction book called, “Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight,” by a Harvard Law Professor named Robert Mnookin. It breaks down a lot of recent historical situations and analyzes if war or negotiation was the better approach considering what the parties know before, during, and in hindsight.

I’m also reading, “The Elegant Universe,” by Brian Greene, because it’s supposed to be a simple explanation of String Theory, but frankly, I’m struggling with that one—maybe quantum physics is over my head, no matter how simply it’s explained! Talk to me in three years, hopefully I’ll have conquered it around then.

And, I just came out from under my rock and finished my first Janet Evanovich book. I noticed that she has a lot of the top bestsellers in some of my categories, and I wanted to see what she was all about, so I read, “Plum Lovin,” which seems to be part of a bigger series about Stephanie Plum, and I’m pretty sure the one I picked up is somewhere in the middle. I thought she was a very good writer, with a simple and elegant style, but the story itself was a little predictable to me, and the solutions to problems where a little too easy for my tastes. Still, the writing was strong enough that I would give her another shot, for sure.

What’s next for you as a writer?
Santorini, Greece. Anyone got a free ticket to spare? (For non-joking answer, see question, “What are you working on now?”… not that this answer is a joke. Seriously, who wants to buy me a ticket to Greece?)

Also, I imagine I’ll be spending some time responding to your comments about some of the more controversial things I’ve said in this interview. Or maybe I should just apologize in advance… I’m sorry. I was wrong. It’ll never happen again. (How many times have I had to write that on the chalkboard?)

What is your favorite book of all time?
I’m not a fan of picking favorites because I think it’s insulting to all the great books you couldn’t pick, when you had to pick just one. But if I am really pressed to pick just one, I would have to pick, “How Long You Should Wait to Have Sex,” because so far in my life, it’s the only one I can personally be proud of. That said, I won’t be offended if your favorite book of all time is the one you’ve written. Would I expect you to like my children more than you like your own? No. So it’s basically the same thing.

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