Rebecca Chastain

It's Time for a Seated Happy Dance

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

Writing has begun! Writing has begun!

After over a month of plotting and outlining, I've started writing Eva's story! I'm so excited!

Secondary Careers

2012-01-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

My husband has recently launched his career in the film industry, reminding me of the days (wow, now ten years ago!) when I took a screenwriting class at college and thought the silver screen was my ticket to success.

My dismal ability to write compelling dialog combined with my love of prose soon turned me back to novels, and I've been happily writing stories (and learning a lot) since.

However, in light of my husband's changing career path, I wanted to learn a bit about what he was getting into. Thus, I borrowed What I Really Want to do on Set in Hollywood from him and started reading.

The idea was to gain insight into the positions that appeal to my husband, but instead I found myself imagining myself in each role. While he was fond of the technical positions, as well as director and producer, I found myself leaning toward two very distinct and different jobs.

Script Supervisor - These are the people in charge of story continuity. Since movies are shot out of order, it's very important to have someone in charge of keeping it all looking like it was actually shot chronologically, or the way the audience views it. The script supervisor is in charge of everything from ensuring that the actors' hair is the same length throughout the production to the dialog matching the script to keeping track of which hand the actor picked an item up with. This also includes timing scenes to make sure the movie isn't running longer or shorter than desired (I'd get to have a stopwatch!). So when you see something wrong in a movie (an actor with a full glass of water one second and an empty glass the next), the script supervisor is the one who should have caught the mistake.

An example of one S.S.'s tracking sheet.

This is one of the top most stressful jobs on the set. It requires copious amounts of organization, the ability to maintain the director's vision and work closely with the director to keep the scenes perfect, detailed note taking, an eagle eye for detail, and a wellspring of energy to keep intense focus on minute details for twelve-plus-hour days.

That sounds...addictive. There's an intellectual high from being on like that constantly, every day, from the beginning of the project to the end. All those details to maintain in your head, in your notes, all the people looking to you for guidance and instruction. It would be an incredible rush. And then, unlike many high-paced, high-demanding jobs, the project would end in approximately twelve weeks, and you could take a breather. Take a few weeks off, take a vacation, take a few months if you need it, then get back to work on a brand-new project.

The other position that appealed to me could not be more opposite - Crafts Service.

This department is in charge of refreshments and snacks. It's not the caterer that does the sit-down lunch. It's the person in charge of keeping the coffee and sodas flowing for the long days of shooting. This person orders pre-made meals, like sandwiches or fruit platters, from other companies (with money provided by the movie's budget for your department), then sets them out for consumption as walking meals for the crew. If I were to do this full time, I'd purchase a truck with a fridge, sink, and microwave (a roughly $100,000 investment) and drive to the locations myself.

It is, by far, the least stressful job on set. Basically, you're catering to people who are stressed, and you get to make their lives better by having the nourishment that keeps them going. I wouldn't have to learn how to make food (not my strong suit) or prepare meals for 100+ people at a time. I would have to learn how to make coffee, but I've known ten-year-olds with that skill, so I'm sure I could pick it up.

The other appeal: crafts service makes more in twelve weeks than I do in fifty-two.

My husband thinks it's amusing that I desire to spend time in each of these careers. I partially agree with him—the crafts services job is much like my fantasy of owning a restaurant: It sounds good on paper but would be a nightmare in reality. But I would make a damn fine script supervisor, and I could see a lot of personal satisfaction in that position.

For now, though, I'll stick to writing novels and, just maybe, translate a novel into a screenplay and see if it could shine on the silver screen.

Why I Must Be an Egyptian Ticking Clock

2012-01-29T13:23:00.000-08:00

I have spent three weeks trying to fall in love with Jane Lindskold's The Buried Pyramid. It has everything I want in a novel: a spunky heroine, an interesting hero, adventure, exotic local, and a different time period. Throw in a little Egyptian magic, some pyramids, some treasures and curses and superstitions, and it should be everything I enjoy.

Should be. And yet, in three weeks, I made it less than fifty pages into the book. Every time I sat down with it, I was ready to like it, ready to fall into the story and get lost. Only to find my mind wandering and the story drifting from my thoughts.

My inability to focus on Lindskold's novel has nothing to do with her writing. Her writing is very beautiful, engaging, and well paced. It has something to do with me. I am utterly fascinated with all things ancient Egypt. I love the history of the culture, the hieroglyphics, the religions and pyramids. Yet, every time I try to read something nonfiction or fiction about Egypt, I nod off. When I have the opportunity to watch documentaries about the Egyptians, I find excuses to prevent myself.

I've come to the only conclusion that makes sense: Hidden within my DNA is a switch that will be activated when I learn a certain threshold amount of Egyptian facts. Once that switch is flipped, a horrific power in me will be unleashed, one that will blast me from my beloved life into the past, where I will be held on trial for the crimes of my past lives. Thus, into my DNA, I've put a fail-safe, one that prevents me from learning about all things Egyptian by forcing feelings of boredom into my neuro-network, making me turn aside from a fate worse than death.

It's the only answer that makes sense.

Writing Stats of 2011

2012-01-10T21:29:00.000-08:00

Last year was a strange year for me in writing. The story that was supposed to be finished in 2010 bled over seven months into 2011. Afterward, I wrote a novella, a first for me. Then I started the world-building of the novel I'm currently working on. But somewhere along the way, I'd burnt out a little. My momentum staggered, and it shows in my numbers.

I believe in weekends when I'm not writing—when I'm doing all those other parts of a book, like research, character development, world development, editing, and querying. If I didn't, I'd be beyond burnt out to blackened, charred ash by now. When I write, I like to do it in the vein of NaNo WriMo: 1,667 words a day, nonstop, until the novel is done (weekends and holidays included). When the book takes one month (or even three), this is doable. When it takes eight, not so much. So just to orient myself, that means that I should be working on writing-related things 261 days of the year.

This year, I measured in at 192 days spent working on writing-related tasks, and 116 days on actual writing.

This isn't bad. It's an accomplishment. On top of my paying job—and celebrating my first wedding anniversary, enjoying two vacations, hosting my sister's baby shower, and attending my dad's retirement party, five birthday parties, and two weddings—I still squeezed in 192 days of writing work. That means I devoted over 200 hours (I'm not going to figure out those numbers, but definitely over 200, probably over 250) to writing.

But a large part of me is saying this isn't good, either. I missed 69 weekdays of writing. In NaNo time, that's two novels' worth of writing time missed out on.

I'm also not organizing my time efficiently, or spending a lot more time on the pre- and post-novel elements than I thought (think) necessary.

To combat the building wave of guilt, I've refreshed an old goal: work on writing every business day. It's a matter of making writing a priority, but it's also a matter of balancing my work life and not taking on more work than I can handle. There were several days and weeks of 2011 where my work life overwhelmed everything, and if I wanted to see my husband, or sunlight, or the inside of a shower, it meant trimming out everything else, including writing. Every once in a while, this is necessary, but my goal is balance.

I've also added a new goal, and one that one week into it has worked very well: write for 20 minutes every evening, including weekends. Twenty minutes is nothing. It's not a full half hour. It's often less time than I might spend trolling Facebook and Internet articles. The beauty of this goal is it is doable. On weekdays, I write before work. An hour minimum, more if I can afford it. But this gives me leeway at the end of the day to do a little more work...and, if I have the energy, to work longer than the twenty minutes.

Which is how I finished my first outline on Eva today instead of in an additional week. Over the last six days, I've worked an extra two hours on writing without feeling like I'm cramming in too much. In the (paraphrased) words of Ilona Andrews (when asked how she can write 3,000 words a day), writing is like exercise: the more you do it, the easier it becomes, and what seems daunting at first becomes routine.

Before I know it, maybe I'll be writing three novels a year and 3,000 words a day!

The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

2012-01-05T17:01:00.000-08:00

In a quest to refresh myself to the Wheel of Time series before reading the last three novels in the series, I checked out the audio version of the only book in The Wheel of Time series my library had (book two, The Great Hunt). After it was finished, I assumed I would skip ahead to book ten or eleven and read on from there.

And I did. I got over 100 pages into book ten, Crossroads of Twilight, then realized that I was disappointed by how much I missed. Rather than power through or read the summaries (short or long), I went back to my bookshelf and pulled out The Dragon Reborn for the first time since 1991.

I have carted this book along with the entire series published to date (in both hardback and paperback, because I'm obsessed that way) from my parents' house and through three subsequent moves, each time wrapping them with love, and unpackaging and shelving them with care. The books made a huge impression on my teenage self—as a writer and a reader—and it was as much that memory I was honoring as the books themselves. Every Christmas for eight years, I got a brand-new Jordan to add to my collection...and then I would hole myself away for my winter break, reading late into the night, losing myself in the novels.

Now, 20 years later (!!), I thought some of my appreciation of the book, and frankly, my idolization of Jordan, would have built up the grandeur of the series in my imagination. In fact, I've thought this for years, which was one of the reasons I didn't reread any of the novels along the way. And while I remember the series sagging in the middle, book three was everything I remembered: fast paced, descriptive, and hard to put down. Even better, some of the scenes that seemed to drag to my teenage mind were entertaining to my thirtysomething-year-old mind (I wish I could pinpoint which; I'm sure it would help me as a writer to know).

Despite the entire series being based around Rand al'Thor, I've never particularly cared for his character, especially not in these early novels. He's whiny, and when he's not whiny, he's egotistical, and when he's not egotistical, he's melodramatic, and when he's not melodramatic, he's a jerk, and when he's not a jerk, he's insane, and when he's not insane...well, you get the point. Which is why I was delighted that Rand's parts were kept to a minimum, and all the other characters I like so much more—Egwene, Elayne, Mat, Nynaeve, Perrin, Faile, Moraine—were the center of each chapter.

I'm highly motivated to jump right into The Shadow Rising, but past experience of having an author sour on me if I read too many by the same person in a row means I won't be following this impulse. I am definitely looking forward to reacquainting myself to the entire series now, though!

Top Ten Books of 2011

2011-12-29T11:39:00.000-08:00

I have just spent several hours wallowing in my beloved Excel tracking sheet for the books I've read in 2011. I now know such delightful things as how many fantasy novels I read this year (16), which author I read the most of (Janet Evanovich at 5 books), what month I read the most books in (10 books in August), and how my totals stand up to last year's totals (new-to-me authors dropped by 8%, while the number of books I personally authored doubled).

Inspired by Just Can't Know's Top Ten Favorite Books I Read in 2011, I've toiled an extra twenty minutes in winnowing out my favorite ten books out of the 81 I read this year. In the order in which I read them, they are:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I trolled through bookstores for months oblivious to this book, aside from admiring the cover. I'm not a huge fan of YA novels. I find it hard to connect to a lot of the themes of many of this genre, and I don't make an effort to hunt them out or read their cover flaps. I would have continued to ignore the whole phenomenon if not for a friend's recommendation and the fact that she literally put the books in my hands. They languished on my shelf for a few weeks before guilt made me pick up the first one, then I wondered what had taken me so long. This trilogy made me break one of my cardinal reading rules: I read all three books back to back. Normally more than one book in a row by the same author can sour the author's voice for me, or cheapen it. It's simply too much at once, but Collins held up through the marathon reading. I can't wait for the movies next year!

Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning. I fell in love with this series from the first book, and I've been eagerly looking forward to each new installment. Moning's pacing was nonstop, no-holds-barred action from the first book to the last, and while sometimes constant action can be tiring, Moning balanced character development with action in an addictive blend that took me along for Mac's wild and frightening ride. This isn't a series that you can jump into in the middle; you'll lose so much if you don't know the whole story. However, despite the fact that Moning wrote this book after she's written several stand-alone novels about druids and Highlander Scotsmen traveling through time, and this novel is the consequences of their actions, you can skip those—though you'll be missing out on some great books if you do.

Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison. I love Kim Harrison. She's one of my heroes. She can fit more into one novel than some authors can in an entire series. Her characters are fresh, interesting, and not at all cliched. She is one of the defining authors of urban fantasy, and while the genre ballooned since she first started the Rachel Morgan series, her novels still continue to shape and instruct the genre as a whole. I was lucky enough to meet Kim Harrison this year at a book signing, and she's inspired me to try out her method of story building. (So far, I'm liking it.) Unlike Moning, Harrison gives enough backstory in each novel that you could start at any book, but why would you want to miss out on anything?

On the Edge by Ilona Andrews. I fell in love with Andrews while reading her Kate Daniels series (Magic Bites, Magic Burns, etc.), and I was thrilled to find a new series to sink into. (I recently learned that Andrews writes 3,000 words a day, which is why despite first being published in 2007, she already has 12 books in print, another 8 ebooks, and several short stories. For those that don't know, 3,000 words a day is about 9-10 pages a day. And for those who think that doesn't sound like much, Hemingway wrote a mere 500 words a day, and if you want to win at NaNo WriMo, writing an entire novel in a month, you only have to write 1,667 words a day. I'm beyond impressed with Andrews, and so thrilled as a reader!) If you love a solid urban fantasy novel, with great characters and interesting magic, check out Andrews. There are two secondary characters in this novel that will win your heart...and there's rumors that they'll be getting their own novel sometime in the future.

Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey. It's been well documented on this blog how much I love and adore Jacqueline Carey's novels set in this alternate universe. With all Kushiel and Naamah novels by Carey, I strategize when I'll read them because I know that they will consume my life and make anything and everything else I have to do seem like a tedious interruption (sorry, Cody!). Which meant this novel sat on my shelf for several months before work and home life slowed enough to immerse myself. The wait was well worth it. Naamah's Blessing is the third in the series, and again, while you could jump straight into this one, you'll only be hurting yourself. Sadly, this is the last planned novel in this universe as of this date. Up next, Carey's trying her hand at urban fantasy. I can't wait!

Heartmate by Robin D. Owens. As I recently told a friend, reading Robin D. Owens is like active meditation for me: While reading her novels, I am a calmer, happier person, even when the book isn't in my hand. It's the strangest phenomenon, and one I treasure. It's as if her novels speak to the creative core of me, soothing and inspiring it. I don't meditate and never have, but I imagine that's what the lingering benefits of meditation would be like. Heartmate is the novel that started the Celta Heartmate series, and after reading through all eleven currently in the series, I wanted to return to the start to refresh myself with this story. The second read was as good as the first—a paranormal romance with intriguing magic, complex characters, and a fun love story. And Fam animals! A must read.

Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich. There are several Between-the-Numbers Stephanie Plum novels, but I think this might be my favorite. The basic plot: Diesel and Stephanie team up with a strange man who thinks he's a leprechaun in an effort to save a horse named Doug and Grandma Mazur. Humorous read, check. Hot man, check. Weird secondary characters, check. A horse (!), check. A horse that ends up in an elevator, and a horse that seems to understand English, double check! I put together a list of things I love in a story, and on that list was animals. If they animals are cute, funny, or telepathic, I'm almost guaranteed to love it.

Heartless by Gail Carriger. I think I'm seeing a trend in this list: They're all part of a series! Heartless is the fourth in Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, and she raised the bar again with this one. To the very, very last line, I thoroughly adored this novel. What's not to like about an infant inconvenience, tea treacles, steampunk inventors, dirigibles, and Victorian proper vampires and werewolves? Did I mention they're tongue-in-cheek funny? I adore this series while simultaneously being jealous of Carriger: She submitted a novel to Literary Agent Kristin Nelson (who I'd love to sign with), who told her that her first book wasn't strong enough to launch as a debut author. Carriger resubmitted with Soulless and Nelson signed her and together they launched a debut book to the New York Times bestseller list. I want to follow in Carriger's footsteps!

Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr. This is the only nonfiction, non-series book to make my top-ten list. I stumbled across this book through a convoluted series of people, flirted a bit with the Crazy Sexy Life blog, and then bought the book. I was intrigued by what would enable someone with stage-four cancer to live a healthy, normal (or better than normal) life for over eight years (and counting). I read it slowly, over a multitude of breakfasts from September through November. I don't know if it was my gradual introduction to the lifestyle and dietary changes or just that I was ready for it, but adapting to her methods (again, just as gradually), hasn't felt that extreme. My husband and I bought a juicer and now juice vegetables for breakfast every day. (My husband's blood pressure dropped from high enough to require medication down to well within the normal range after only two weeks of juicing!)

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan. Ah, The Wheel of Time. I first read this novel when it was released in the early '90s, and now that the series is finally drawing to a close, I wanted a refresher. I chose the audio version of the book this time, and that was a surprising treat. Who knew exercise could be so much fun when you're listening to a great story? I was shocked by how well I remembered this book, almost scene for scene. It clearly made a solid impression on my teenage mind. Unlike many other epic fantasy authors that I devoured as a teen (David Eddings, Terry Brooks), Jordan's novels withstand the test of maturity. As a much more educated reader and writer, I found myself appreciating different aspects of the novel this time around (character depth, the way he packs in setting descriptors, the pacing), and far less impatient for the story to "get back to" the characters I was in love with as a teen. One thing remains unchanged: I'd still give up indoor plumbing to be an Aes Sedai (and that's saying a lot!).

World-building Bliss

2011-12-09T08:23:00.000-08:00

Dani Marco: My inspiration for Eva

For the last month, I've been happily building the world of my next novel. There's no rush. I want to get it right from the beginning. Plus, I'm trying a different approach this time. I'm trying Kim Harrison's method. With my own adaptations, of course.

For me, this means extensive character write-ups on my main people. I now know how Eva Parker (my protagonist) dresses, what her hobbies are, what she's afraid of, what her strongest and weakest character traits are, etc.
The same goes for a half dozen other people in the cast. Along the way, as I've built all these characters, I've jotted down idea potentials for the novel. I know a few elements that will definitely be in the book, but for the most part, I don't know where I'm going with this story. (I'm trying not to be terrified by that and just relax into building up the world first.) I now have over eight pages of notes of possible plot points.

Next up, I will be creating a collage and writing a three-page synopsis for the book. That means that I have to actually get down and dirty with plot. While I've got the elements and tons of ideas of what could happen, the entire arc of the story hasn't unfolded in my head yet. I was hoping that inspiration would strike by now, and in a stroke of genius, I would suddenly have the major plot outlined. In lieu of that, I'm going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: Sit my butt in a chair and keep at it until that moment when creativity meets hard work, and the story starts flowing. Right now, the characters are speaking to me. They're fun and funny, flawed and needy. I can't wait to throw them up against some tough challenges. Now to get the plot to start speaking to me at the same volume.

On the Block: Round Two

2011-10-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've finished the first editing pass of my novella, Mika. Two weeks of steady work netted me a much tighter story, one with a great arch and a solid, fun tale. However, I didn't meet my word cut goal. The original story was 23,667 words. I wanted to cut 10 percent across the board, but while I'm sure I cut even more than that, rewrites added it right back in. After round one, I cut 1,483 words (4 pages!), leaving me at 22,184 words.

I'm committed to the goal of reducing my novella down to a maximum of 21,301 words. In fact, I'm feeling a little rabid about it. I've calculated imminent success if I cut 12 words from each page of the novella.

Does this method seem extreme? Grossly practical for a creative process? Yes to both, but I'm determined to give it a try. When it comes to reducing my stories' lengths, I need a strategy that works!

Seeing Red

2011-10-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

After six weeks of writing, my story idea morphed from short into novella. I made peace with the bloating before I began, when I was still in the storyboarding stage. Even then, I could tell it wasn't going to be a simple 12-page piece. But I liked all the elements, and the goal of this project was to give myself some creative freedom while keeping the writing crisp and tight.

It sounds like a conflict of intention, but it worked. I wrote slower than I've ever written, but it was good writing. In fact, those passages that took the longest to write, where I was the most careful in my wording, have been the lightest to edit.

Other pages, well, they've had me seeing red.

Despite my best efforts, passive phrases, weak verbs, and those pesky "ly" words crept in again and again. A few scenes ballooned as I got caught up in the action and had to be slashed back down to size. Even dialog, which I often rewrote in the first draft, needed further tightening and an infusion of personality.

It came as little surprise to me, too, to find problems in the third act. I avoided earlier third-act pitfalls (for instance, I actually included it), but I fell into a new one: When writing, I was struck by a compelling twist on my idea, and I followed it, veering from the outline.

While I fully endorse my actions, not every inspiration is great, and this one made the final conflict far too easy for my main character. It also added several unnecessary pages and brought up an internal conflict that, while compelling and a theme I would like to explore, was not right for this story.

I've since rewritten the scene, and the story flows better, but it served as a reminder to not get completely caught up in the inspiration of the moment. Had I assessed the full impact of the story's change, followed it mentally to the end, I would have seen the flaw before I finished writing. Now, I've got at least three extra days of work ahead of me. Had this been a novel, I could be looking at a month of extra work. I'm glad I'm learning on something short.

A Query Letter That Worked

2011-09-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

This week on Number One Novels, we have an exclusive look at Amy Ackley's query letter—a query letter that won her the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction. Out of 10,000 entrees, Ackley's novel was selected to move from round one to round two by her query letter alone. Amazing.

Gaining New Perspective: A Lesson from a Derailed Novel

2011-08-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

As the dust of Faye settles and I'm able to more rationally look back over the massive derailment that is the novel, I realized that despite the immense frustrations of the project, I think I learned more while working on this one novel than I did on the previous four. I learned a lot of what not to do (rush down plot holes, begin before the plot is solid, change points of view, have a vague theme, have a vague emphasis of the overarcing story, and change the magic/world system midway through the novel—to name a few).

There were also a lot of productive lessons—I defined what it takes for me to write a good novel, I streamlined what makes a novel great (to me), and I pinpointed my key weaknesses (overwriting and dialog).

Happily, I found a workaround for the my troubles with dialog: third-person perspective.

I've written first-person novels from the start, liking the immediacy of the sound of first-person narration as well as the narrow focus. First-person narrative filters the world through the main character's eyes, giving the reader a unique look into not just what the character is saying and doing, but what they're feeling. I've never been one for third-person omniscient (seeing into every characters' head and emotions). It feels too cluttered and too easy.

However, with first-person writing comes the trap of knowing the main character extremely well and forgetting that, as the author, I need to know the motives and emotions of the other characters, even if the main character doesn't.

While writing, I would find myself getting mired in dialog as I attempted to bounce back and forth between characters' heads while maintaining the limited view of the main character. Yet, during scenes (that in my insanity) I wrote in third person, I had a much easier time lending veracity to all the characters' words and actions. It was so much easier to see into everyone's mind while writing from none in particular.

While I would never recommend that anyone do as I did and write the first third of the novel in first person, the middle third in third person, and the last third in first person again, it did teach me the that, as a tool, switching to third person to plot out a troublesome scene is tremendously useful.

The key, of course, is to not get carried away with the new perspective and decide it is the best thing since the backspace key for your novel.

The Power of Doing Nothing

2011-08-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

I finished Faye with a smear of mixed emotions and underwhelming ennui. After a sprint that lasted ten months rather than the predicted two, I was numb. The book ballooned beyond control to over 850 pages—a length no editor wants in a debut and a length that far exceeded what was necessary for the story. I'd self-indulged in plot paths and ill-fated decisions regarding point of view and character exploration. Ahead of me was a massive edit and rewrite, if I could muster the energy.

Meanwhile, two other stories, both seeming infinitely more interesting and marketable, build in the back of my mind, spilling over to cover the hallway-length whiteboard and splatter the walls on colorful sticky notes.

I looked at it all and I felt a great desire to do everything. I wanted to get the novel of Faye edited down to something worthy of a critique. I wanted to blast through the short story I've been toying with. I wanted to jump to the next novel and not look back. Instead, I laid down on the front room floor and watched the fan move in lazy circles above me.

Thinking of Stephen King's advice in On Writing, I finally decided to pursue the short story first, like a pallet refresher for my muse. I began halfhearted research and plot development. I spent a lot of time on the couch, "thinking," with my eyes closed.

I was saved by happenstance from my own spiraling burnout. My husband had a week of vacation to use, and having the freedom in my work schedule, I took the break with him. I didn't write. I didn't plot. I didn't edit.

It was heaven. Guilt-free, I ignored my office and the whiteboard. I let my muse rest. I slept in, took naps, and (gasp!) went outside. I had sorbet and cupcakes and grouper cooked to perfection. I read three books. I watched movies and TV shows. I played Call of Duty: Black Ops and Lego: Indiana Jones. I played with my cats. I rearranged the front room.

Yesterday, I came back to work and writing refreshed. Surprisingly, during that carefree week, when I wasn't really thinking about it and without setting any goals, I still managed to work on my short story the same amount of time I would have had I not taken the week off, just at different times of day. Given the freedom to not write, not research, not plot actually freed my creativity to do just that.

I often forget, now that I have a job I love and get to write as much as I do, that I still need vacations. They're no longer the escape to recoup my sanity, but a break in routine to refresh. From my new perspective, editing Faye sounds worthwhile, plotting this short story is exciting, and the ideas that keep building for the next novel are a constant, guiding inspiration.

Welcome Back, Science Fiction

2011-06-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've wanted to read true science fiction. I've read a few technology-heavy fiction novels, but it's been almost fifteen years since I last delved into this genre. I tend to enjoy fantasy far more than science fiction. However, Gini Koch's Touched by an Alien was almost a blend between the two, and a very enjoyable reminder of a subgenre I've been ignoring.

One might say it was fate that directed me to buy Touched by an Alien.
On a recent vacation, I flew through the two novels I'd taken (The Time Machine and Laurell K. Hamilton's Flirt) with days left in my vacation. Bookless on vacation is as inconceivable as being cakeless on a birthday, so rather than squabble over Cody's novel, my wonderful husband and I and hunted down a bookstore, finding a nearby Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately, the store almost exclusively stocked new books, and over and over again I was attracted to the third and fourth books in series, only to find that there was no first in stock. Barnes and Nobles, not only is that incredibly frustrating, you're missing out on sales! Luckily, Koch's novel was still stocked, despite being published (gasp!) last year.

It was a delightful romp through a world I wouldn't mind living in (all the heroes are ridiculously attractive, the techonology is fun, and the enemies are easy to identify). If the main character, Kitty, happened to have everything go her way too often, figure out everything that has stumped an entire more intelligent race for generations too quickly, or make the transition from marketing director to alien-fighting badass too easily, at least it was done in a fun, entertaining way.

Thank you, Gini Koch, for reminding me that science fiction can be a lot of fun, not just stuffy space travel that takes itself too serious. And thank you for making all the men so attractive. Now how can we get Hollywood to make this into a movie, and how can I finagle a seat in the casting department?

A Guideline to Great

2011-06-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

My approach to writing novels so far has been a bit like stabbing in the moonlight: I've had an inkling of what I'm doing, an idea, organization, some skill, but no real plan aside from finishing a novel. Of course, I always plan for my novels to be instant New York Times bestsellers that launch my career in a J.K. Rowling/Stephanie Meyer/Suzanne Collins sort of way, but aside from that, my general plan has been to write something I find entertaining.

As far as a plan goes, it's a good one. In fact, I think it's key to producing a good novel. No, make that a great novel. I doubt Rowling or Meyer or Collins were bored by their own tales. There's something about an author who loves her characters, who writes from that place of love and enthusiasm, that comes through in the end result.

However, I think there's so much more to the art of writing a novel. So I've been taking a serious look at the novels I love—what works in them, what I love about them, what I wish I could change about them. It's research that every agent, editor, and author will tell you to do, and it's one I've done in an osmosis sort of way until now. This time, I've been deliberate in my research.

I've come up with a list of what I consider essential for a good story. It's a list that will be sitting beside me when I do the edits on Faye and it will be a list that I reference as I outline my next novel.

In no particular order:

a strong female lead (yes, I like novels with male protagonists, but I doubt I'll ever write one) who has some key flaws to make her interesting
a protagonist who is tested, has her buttons pushed, and who is forced to deal with issues/problems she'd rather not
conflict that tests the protagonist but doesn't break her, or if it breaks her, the break is temporary, mendable, especially with the help of friends or learned inner strength
conflict that puts the protagonist in situations that help define her character
a cast of characters I might want for friends or who I at least enjoy seeing as friends of the protagonist
friends who assist the protagonist when the going gets tough
a happy, uplifting, good-conquers-evil ending
magic or mysticism and/or a unique world, even if it's this one from an angle I'm not familiar with
adventure: physical conflict as well as inner conflict
humor
if the novel is in a series, I adore when jokes, themes, and secondary story lines are carried across the series to make the characters feel like old friends and like I'm someone on the inside with them, someone in the know
love
animals
something new

In some ways, it's a standard list (especially the first four points), but there are components that make me tick that others probably don't care about. For instance, half of the reason I enjoyed Tangled was because of the horse's antics. Nothing's better than a fun animal in a story. Same for Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels and the dog, Bob. Same for the Robin D. Owens novels and all the Fam animals in them.

Creating this list has opened my eyes: several of the novels I've written don't have almost half of the bullet points. Or if they do, the elements are weak. I've definitely pinpointed areas to strengthen in Faye and in my next novel!

Belatedly Catching The Time Machine

2011-06-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

I don't know how the first thirty years of my life passed without me reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. As a fantasy fan, as a public school student, as an English major, somehow this book slipped through the cracks until I received a free copy with an ARC of Felix J Palma's The Map of Time.

While I read this book, I unexpectedly had the scholar on my shoulder, where she hasn't perched in almost a decade. I found myself noting themes, passages that would work well for essays, and analyzing the prose.
I spent a lot of time musing over the contrast between the known world of the late nineteenth century and now and what I believe Wells got "right" and what seemed like a fallacy of his era's interpretation on life, culture, society, and science. For all that the world has advanced in the last 100 or so years, I forget how little grand-scale discoveries have been made in regards to our planet's predicted evolution.

On my other shoulder perched the feminist, who often rides along with me, noting things that make her happy or irritated: She she spent a lot of time ranting during the reading of The Time Machine. Women were represented in the future by one single character, Weena, who falls immediately in love with the time traveler when he saves her life, mindlessly follows him thereon into peril, and happily filling his bed for a few days before she's injured and lost by the time traveler in the middle of a raging forest fire.

Wells' irritated and amused me with this story, and I wish now I had noted where so I could quote passages as examples. But of all my questions that I might ask the author if I could talk to him about his novel, it would be this: Why is the title The Time Machine and not The Time Traveler? This book is so much more about the time traveler than it is about the machine. The machine made the story possible, but it was only a means of transportation, not the bulk of the story. Wells even opens the novel with "The time traveler..."

But whether the scholar was intrigued, the feminist irritated, or the fantasy reader in me amused, I'm can now finally say I've read The Time Machine.

To Write a Good Novel, Read This

2011-05-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Dear me,

Sometime soon, maybe not this month, maybe not even before summer ends, but sometime soon, you're going to start another book. Your sixth novel (!!), and like the ones before, you're going to get very excited about the project. You're going to start storyboarding, start building the characters, then say, what the hell, and jump into the story only half ready because you simply can't wait.

I'm writing you today to remind you, to beg you: Don't do this! Read this letter again. Pay attention to everything you've learned. Make number six the novel that gets it right—from the beginning. So remember:

1. Plot it out!

Remember that first novel? The one that clocked in at 1,300+ pages and took three years to write? There she languishes on a shelf in my desk, the first draft finished, the third attempt at editing it with only 80 pages completed before you realized that length does not equal a complete story. This behemoth proves that writing the story as it comes to you does not work. Writing a story as it comes to you means a lot of great ideas get mushed together in a knot too large and complicated to unsnarl.

2. Plot all of it out.

Don't let your excitement to get started cripple you. Don't let yourself plot out the first two acts, then put in vague generic scene markers for the last part of the book. You'll forget something this way. Your second and third novels didn't have a third act because you didn't plot it all the way out. They ended, but it wasn't complete, and you had to go back and rewrite extensively to make it work. Spare yourself this anguish!

3. Plot out everything, including the emotional arc.

Five books in and you realize this? Okay, breathe. A story is only as good as its storyboard. A plot includes the internal conflict as well as the external conflict. Trying to keep the pacing of the internal conflict as you write is impossible, whether the book takes 30 days or 9 months. Make it easier on yourself. You can always make adjustments later, if it doesn't feel true to the story.

4. Double-check the plot.

The hero's arc is your friend. Use it. Live it. Breathe it. Love it. Know when you can toss it out the window, but do it consciously.

5. Know your character. Thoroughly.

Oh, it's tempting to piecemeal her together, to get the outline of her, and to think, I'll get to know you as I write, as I throw you into horrible situation after horrible situation.

Worst.

Mistake.

Ever.

You've got to live with her first. Talk with her. Ask her about her love life. Ask her about what scares her. Make her uncomfortable before you even introduce her to the plot. Then paw through her closet, her medicine cabinet, her vehicle. Look up her friends in her address book. Go through their belongings. Pull out her yearbook, talk to her past acquaintances, especially the ones that hate her or the ones she hates. Crawl so deep into her life that she begs you to leave her alone, then befriend her. Don't tell her, but do background checks on all her past, present, and future friends, lovers, employers, neighbors, enemies, acquaintances, and family. See if she tells you the truth (because she probably won't, not all of it, at least). Only then think of starting to write.

6. Know your theme.

You're going to have one. Not at first. Not even possibly during the entire plotting process. But you're going to reach a point when you realize this story is more than just an adventure. There's something else you're trying to say. Now make it conscious, but make it look like it was unintentional. No one likes to be beaten over the head with a message.

7. Above all, entertain yourself.

If you're bored, the reader will be bored. You're writing for fun. You're writing for pleasure. Yes, you want to sell your novel and make lots of money, but unless you're having fun, no one else is going to. So that idea you were thinking of saving for another novel? Throw it in this one. Those characters that crack you up? Flush them out, add them in. You'll get more ideas. No need to hoard these.

Good luck!
Rebecca

I Want to Outline Like Kim Harrison

2011-03-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

Kim Harrison and I had a chat yesterday. Well, technically, Harrison talked with all two hundred of us gathered for her book signing (my first-ever book signing). But I did get my two minutes of one-on-one time with her, in which I gushed shyly about how inspiring I find her writing, and she encouraged me to keep writing. "You speak about it with such passion, I can tell you'll be published," she told me. I was struck speechless, frozen in place while I had a momentary commune with the Universe and whatever power Harrison might have to evoke the truth from those words. Then I mumbled my thanks and danced away from the signing table, feeling elated and like an enormous dork all at once.

The question and answer portion of the evening was insightful. It was refreshing to hear an author answer questions like, "Why is your main character an adrenaline junkie?" and "When will the main character grow up?" with the blunt truth: It makes it easier to have a story with a main character who is quick to judge, quick to emotions, and has a thrill for getting into dangerous situations. Harrison didn't treat her characters like they were people who spoke to her, but she did talk of them with affection. I love that she didn't lie and say something like, "It was the way the characters wanted to be and they wouldn't let me change them." (Ahem, LKH.)

One of the things about her Rachel Morgan Hollows series that has always impressed me is the sheer amount of action she packs into every novel. So much happens in every book, and not just plot, but character development too. And not just the main character develops and changes, but the secondary and auxiliary characters grow and change. It's truly astounding to me how she keeps it all together and moving forward, so I was leaning forward in my seat when someone asked, "How do you keep all the threads straight in your head?"

Her answer was to explain the way she writes:

She starts every novel by writing on a paper everything she wants to happen in the book. This can be everything from "see Keebler elves" to "evil guy gets what's coming to him."
Then she sits down in front of the computer and puts together a three-page synopsis, one page for each part of the book—beginning, middle, and end.
Synopsis in hand, she then writes a page for each chapter, detailing what she wants to happen in each chapter and how she's going to make a smooth transition from one chapter to the next.
Only then is she almost ready to write the book. With her chapter note in hand, she writes out all the dialog first. She said this draft ends up looking like a play, with simple notation to indicate who is speaking.
Last, she fills in all the other details.

I'm enthralled by her novel-creation process. She says it takes her about three to four months to write a book that way, rather than the three or four years of writing it by the seat of her pants and having to go back and edit it down to something sellable.

Given my recent extensive troubles with my own novel, even with my own outlines, I'm definitely looking for a smarter way to write, and a way that makes more sense to the way I think during every stage of the writing process.

I know my novel-writing flaws by now:

I get tricked into thinking the story is done when it's actually only the end of the second act.
I get a little lost in the story—writing a novel over a month or several months, an hour or two each day means I often lose my place, lose my focus, and before I know it, the story's off the rails and I've gone down some crazy rabbit hole.
I write WAY too much.

I fully intend to adopt Harrison's strategy on my next novel. Hopefully by following this example I'll be able to keep track of the entire story no matter what part I'm writing since it'll already be thoroughly outlined for me. Also, hopefully this will help satisfy the excitement and pressure that builds up in those early phases, when I'm so excited about the novel it's hard for me to concentrate on the details like the ending and the final act's scenes. This way, I'll actually get a stab at writing part of them without detriment to my outline.

Which means the next novel will hopefully not require the extensive rewrites I know Faye is going to require, and it also means, fingers crossed, it won't take me nearly so long to write the next book!

Thank you, Kim Harrison, for sharing some of your wisdom with me!

Under the Influence: Bingo by Proxy

2011-03-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, I come across a fact that stops me in my tracks while my mind whirls around to catch up. Often, they're not even significant facts. This week is a case in point:

If you are into bingo and enjoy going to bingo halls as your form of gamboling, as my grandfather does, you no longer have to actually participate in order to play. You can, instead, have a computer play for you, and your sole job is to yell out "bingo" when the computer tells you that your ticket has reached a bingo.

This has driven my thoughts in circles over the last few days. What would the point of playing bingo with a computer? I consider the fun of the game being the dobbing of the numbers and the anticipation of the correct numbers being called. When I play, it's a stretch of my telekenetic abilities (still dormant, but there's always hope) to influence the next ball that is dropped. I get a thrill out of the chance of the game.

Were I not actively playing my card, there would be no thrill. I'd simply be sitting in a noisy, crowded hall listening to someone call out nonsensical letter and number combinations, which is about as much fun as listening to someone spout sporting stats for their fantasy football players.

However, my grandfather loves the computer. It takes the stress of the game away, I suppose (I've not consulted him on his reasoning, so this is speculation). He doesn't have my same mistrust of computerized programs, not knowing how easy they are to rig or how often they fail. When it comes to anything gamboling, I'd trust humans above computers.

But using the computer to play bingo allows my grandpa to socialize rather than fixate on his cards. It changes the environment and his perspective of those around him. He's no longer annoyed by people who talk too loud next to him. He doesn't have to worry he missed checking one of his sixteen or thiry-some-odd tickets when each number is called. Like many others, he could bring a book, leisurely sit back and wait for his tickets to cash in, or not.

Which brings me back to my point: Why play? Why not simply meet up with people and socialize without the computer and the bingo and the announcer speakers blasting out the latest number? The only answer that makes sense is the money: It's a form of gamboling, and my family does like to gambol. As a form of gamboling, it's a longer game than a regular slot machine, and I don't know the odds, but it seems that the time-to-money-spent and the time-to-money-won ratios would be better on bingo than on slot machines. If you're not going to fool yourself into thinking that you're playing bingo because you so thoroughly enjoy the sport of the game, and you recognize you're their just to try to win money, then I suppose the computer makes sense.

Which brings me to a major writing (and life) directive: Perspective is everything. So is motivation. Key points to consider whether deciding how to play bingo or when developing a character. So I asked the question of my characters: Would you play bingo using a computer to do the work? Faye's answer: No. Blake's answer: Yes. Huh. I wasn't expecting Blake to take the other side of that argument.

Whole Foods and I have different perspectives on things, too. For instance:

When Whole Foods posts on their Facebook page that they're having a Fair Trade tasting "event," this can be exactly one table tasting exactly one product. In my perspective, an "event" involves at least three attractions, and that's still a rather pathetic "event." Lesson learned: Whole Food "events" are nothing to get excited about.

I'm being stocked by certain words. You may notice this in your own reading. You haven't seen a word in a while, or you haven't ever seen it before, and suddenly it's everywhere.

This week, ennui and raison d'etre kept popping up in the oddest places. Hubris haunted my thoughts, too. I stopped myself from saying it at least five times in the last week, mainly because it sounded rather pompous. But there it was, judging a variety of people (and myself) in the back of my thoughts all week long.

This week's nonfiction and fiction influences:

O magazine
Jennifer Ashley
Karen Marie Moning
Janet Evanovich
Boston Legal
Samantha Who?
The Spy Next Door
Top Gear

Tension Tells the Tale

2011-03-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I read Jennieke Cohen's piece "Dynamic Duos" on the New Kids on the Writer's Block blog, and it's been rattling around in the back of my head ever since. To summarize, Cohen pointed out that there is always tension between the protagonist pair. In ever novel or movie, the two main people (usually the two people destined to fall in love) experience a perpetual frisson. This frisson can morph, grow or shrink, but it remains until the end of the story. Without tension, of course, there is no story.

I read her article, and my knee-jerk response was that she was wrong.
The novels I loved the best, those with the most intense love stories, didn't have a couple pitted against each other. They had couples that worked together toward common goals.

Isn't memory a crafty thing? Especially one like mine, which likes remembering the good more than the bad. The great love stories of Jacqueline Carey, Karen Marie Moning, William Goldman—every one of them was exactly the same as Cohen said: There was tension between the protagonists throughout the entire novel/series until the very end, when everything gets resolved and there's the moment of happily ever after.

That couldn't be right. I mean, with romance novels, this made sense. Without the tension between the lead woman and man, what would be the point? Even my beloved Jayne Ann Krentz novels, where the lovers work together to solve another mystery, the characters still maintained a tension between them—a secret one couldn't share with the other, a trust issue that needs time and experience to be dissolved, a guilt of expectations holding one or the other back from fully committing themselves. Until the third act, this tension rides the story, steers it, cuts short those happy moments and pushes the characters back into action.

Fine. Romance I will allow needs this device. But what of fantasy? In fantasy, there's an outer villain that needs conquering. Two people who love each other can battle side by side against this foe. Can't they? I sifted through my favorite novels. Carey, Harrison, Jordan, Collins. The external foe is there, the quest is laid out before the main character, but the tension between the protagonists remains a driving force in them all, especially in those that I remember so fondly as binding tales of love. The happily ever after tricked my memory, the fantasy I created for these characters after the novel ended was as strong in my mind as all the struggles they overcame in the novels.

Since these last two weeks, while I've cared for my cat recovering from surgery and been too distracted to settle into writing, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this tension between the protagonists. The way it can change, the way it can shape the characters. My instinct is to make things happy for my main characters, the ones I come to care about. Like good friends or my own relationship, I want to soothe out the bumps, make the trials less strenuous. But I know that it's not going to do them any good to give them the kind of life I'm happy living. No one is going to write novels about my life, lived peacefully, quietly, with the man I love and (thankfully) no great strife. No one would want to read that novel. But they'd want to read about two people finding love against insurmountable odds while in the midst of saving the world.

Thank you, Jennieke Cohen, for reminding me that first and foremost, I must torture my characters. I'll begin writing again this week on Faye if all things go well (and I fully expect them to), and that perpetual writer's question will be at the forefront of my mind as I type: How can I make it worse? Specifically: How can I make the relationship between Faye and Blake (the male protagonist) harder?

Under the Influence: Degloved Edition

2011-02-26T20:21:00.000-08:00

As planned, here's the first "Under the Influence" post, detailing all the tidbits of new-to-me knowledge that manipulated, molded, and influenced my thoughts and actions this week, including the fiction and nonfiction my highly susceptible subconscious processed.

The most prominent, seared-into-my-brain new piece of knowledge is this:

Veterinarians call the removal of the tip of a cat's tail skin down to the bone and tendons "degloved." As in, my cat degloved her tail this week and had to have the last few vertebrae of her spine amputated.

Traumatic, for all involved, least of all me (aside from a little pocketbook shock). My adorable cat has suffered through a tail shaving, a leg shaving (for the catheter during surgery), and self-inflicted degloving, an amputation, and a week of wearing a cone and having antibiotics stuffed down her throat every twelve hours along with pain medication. It's been a long week. Everything else I've learned this week pales in importance.

However, my knowledge of degloving had confirmed another fact for me:

I do not have what it takes to be part of a crime scene clean-up crew. While I've formed a new appreciation for Simple Green and glossy paint (as opposed to matte paint), I hope to never need to clean up so many blood splatters again in my life!

And, as a biproduct of antibiotics, a cone, and an upset cat, this new knowlege also mildly relates to degloving:

I'm not a fan of Jackson Pollock–style art. I knew this before this week, but I learned that viewing it in the medium of cat barf on carpet, splattered via panicked head jerks when I'm trying to remove a protective cone has in no way improved my opinion. (Thank you to Cody for sparing me from cleaning up these artistic offerings!)

In trying to make life as comfortable as possible for my cat, we purchased a long, low Tupperware designed for storing rolls of wrapping paper under the bed. We use it as the litter box. With its low sides and three foot by two foot sprawl, it is easy for a cat with a cone to navigate. Which brought about an unexpected new discovery:

I have been seriously stifling my other cat Mac Fu's artistic sculpting skills. While he'd sufficed with simple volcanic litter piles in the smaller boxes, he now happily builds replicas of the Matterhorn and the Appalachian Mountains in the new litter box. Oh joy.

Fortunately, there was more to this week than my cat's blood and bowel movements (ah, the glamorous life of an aspiring author!).

There is, apparently, an ancient art of tapping. By tapping on your body at key meridian points, you can help cure various mental and psychological illnesses, including reducing stress and helping with weight loss. Who knew? Apparently most of the rest of the world, if this technique is as well known as the experts in the field say.
Almond meal + mashed banana + pancake mix = heavenly pancakes!

I have dubbed this new recipe "Baby GO Pancakes" in honor of our good friends (with the last name initials of "GO"), who were in the middle of the delivery of their child while we were eating these pancakes. There will be more Baby GO Pancakes in our future.

I read in a fiction novel of a recipe for dessert wine–soaked strawberries, filled with white mousse, drizzled in chocolate. My taste buds demanded I make this for them, minus the mousse (because of a lactose intolerance) and probably minus the drizzled chocolate (because contrary to popular opinion, strawberries are far better without the addition of chocolate)—just the wine-soaked strawberries sounds heavenly.

I got as far as purchasing the strawberries, but then was too distracted to take the next step (see previous bullet on degloving). I hope to finish this "recipe" this week and see for myself if the strawberries are as enjoyable to me as they were to the characters.

I have been spending way too much time (and money) on Number One Novels. It was actually a revelation that came in tandem with my revelation of where my novel had gone off the rails. Both projects had taken a turn that, while at the time I thought had been the right course, was the opposite direction of where I needed to go.

It would be absolutely wonderful if Number One Novels grew as popular as Cute Overload or Go Fug Yourself or a thousand other widely followed blogs. I would love to have a database to email followers about each week's contest like Free Book Friday does. I would love to give away more books in each contest and feature more authors on the site. And Cody and I have been hard at work to make all this happen.

Only, NON is not my primary focus. NON is a motivational tool for me, and has developed into a fun place to find new authors. But it's not where I want to be devoting hours of each week to nor, since I make no money from it, do I want to be spending money to send large batch emails (the only practical solution were companies that assist in this) and start up a site and buy books for contests. My weekends were becoming NON development days. So were Cody's. I already spend about two hours a week on regular NON-related posts and maintenance—more was a time suck I didn't need or want.

This week, I finally realized that my grand dreams and desires for the site are counterproductive to my main goals (becoming a published author and spending as much other time with Cody, friends, and family). While my grand plans for NON won't work now, I hope there might be a point in the future where I can make NON the site of my dreams. Until then, I'll be putting the focus back on my writing (and my website, which was another project backburnered by this NON project).

The other facts I learned this week are unrelated to everything, but interesting nonetheless.

During WWII, there were people known as Jewish catchers: Jewish citizens who were known to turn in their fellow Jews in favor of differential treatment and safety for themselves and their family.

It's hard for me to get my thoughts into the mental position to understand the motivations that would make a person do this and how they would cope with their choices. Naturally, part of me is fascinated by how complex a character a Jewish catcher would make.

Computers control about 70% of the stock market's transaction.

This fact scares me more than stock market crashes and the effects of the recession on my portfolio. Perhaps now's a good time to look into a money-stashed-in-the-mattress savings plan.

Social engineering. I think I could benefit from this, or at least use parts of the genius of people who social engineer backgrounds for people in the marketing of my novels and myself once I'm published. Strictly legally, of course.

While most of my attention was diverted from everything else to the needs of my cat, I have no doubt that the books and magazines I read and the TV and movies I attempted to distract myself with still had an influence on me (if in my dreams if nowhere else). This week's nonfiction and fiction influences:

Charlotte Hughes' What Looks Like Crazy
Wired
Game Informer
Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven
Drop Dead Diva
Top Gear
Boston Legal
RED
You Again

Easily Influenced (And Not Proud of It)

2011-02-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

In college, I took a literature class—American Literature or Literature Criticism; I forget what it was called—in which we studied Whitman and Thoreau and similar authors. At the beginning the semester, the professor handed out the syllabus and this advice: Don't make any major life decisions while taking this course.

Bizarre advice, he admitted, but one he'd been told by many former students to give to future classes. The class changed the way people think, at least temporarily, and decisions made during the semester were often regretted a few months after the semester ended.

Honestly, I thought he was blowing smoke and inflating the importance of the class. I thought he might be referencing how much homework we would have—how it would eat up our lives. And then I forgot all about his advice and got busy with discussions and papers and reading and life.

A month after the class ended, that first day's warning shattered my thoughts in a way much like waking from a dream. I looked around my apartment and realized I'd come perilously close to making a few major life decisions while under the influence of his class. And he was right: they weren't decisions true to my nature; they were decisions true to the person who'd just spent three months immersed in these existential, transcendental authors.

I was living in a tiny 490-square-foot studio with a single used recliner, a TV, desk, computer, and two bookcases—and it felt enormous and packed with material goods. I'd stopped watching TV almost completely. I'd considered getting rid of the chair, feeling I didn't need the extra possession. My lifestyle, that of a working student, seemed too fast-paced. I was spending a lot of time in quiet contemplation.

None of these things sound too awful, not even combined. An unexamined life is not worth living, and all that. But this wasn't me. I wanted more furniture, so friends could have somewhere to sit when they came over. I wanted more space, somewhere that would fit pets. I didn't have the monetary means (or social personality) to lead a life of contemplation.

But I wanted to. I seriously considered altering my entire life. I wish I could describe it better, but that feeling is so distant now—just three months out of my life, but three months under extreme influence of this class.

It was my first blatant, unavoidable proof that I am an easily influenced person. It's not the most stellar personality trait. I find it annoying, sometimes, and amusing other times.

Granted, my key, core beliefs have remained true for years—no one's swaying my opinion on children, politics, or meat. But when it comes to everyday life, I'm sadly rather malleable.

Since that class, I've had plenty of opportunity to witness this bizarre effect books have on me. When reading a book set in the Wine Country, I tend to drink more wine, go to more wine tastings, and buy more alcohol in general; when reading a knitting book, I crafted projects in my mind, gifts for friends (I even went to the bookstore and picked out some books before realizing that I had zero true interest in knitting); when reading books with more profanity, even made-up words, I cuss more, including using the lingo from those books (go around saying "blood and ashes" after a reading a Robert Jordan, or "by the shell!" after reading Anne McCaffrey Pern novels and see if you don't get weird looks).

Having a mercurial mood and thoughts driven by what I'm reading (or, sometimes, watching) makes me more cautious with the literature (and movies) I select. I like happy novels. I like novels of romance and adventure and comedy. I don't want gore and horror or tearjerkers. I don't need those moods following me around. (There was even one time when I had to stop playing Metroid because I was starting to analyze the world around me from a defensive/offensive position, checking windows and stairwells for enemies without even being conscious of it.)

This character trait (weakness? flaw?) makes me hyperaware of the daily influences in my life. Between what shows I watch, what I read for pleasure, and the research and reading I do for work, there are a lot of mixed influences each week. My life is immersed in routine, and often the only thing that changes is the fiction and nonfiction—the things I read and learn.

All this to say, I'm starting a new segment on this blog: Under the Influence—a post of things learned and influences that manipulated that week's emotions. Stay tuned for the first installment.

Baffled

2011-02-24T08:12:00.000-08:00

After my last post, Marc asked if I outline my stories before I begin. He pointed out that it doesn't stifle creativity and it could help with my plot problems and save me a lot of time. I totally agree. I was going to respond in the comments, but realized I had a bit much to say on this.

First off, I love to outline. I love putting the pieces of the story together and spending all the creative daydreaming time with the novel before I start. It gets me really excited about the project, building the type of drive that's necessary to work on a novel for the next year or so.

I've outlined every novel I've written except the first one. The first one ballooned; 1,300 pages and it rambles, doesn't carry a theme, and doesn't have a true, strong plot to go with the characters I love. I learned from that one that I need the structure of an outline to stay on track.

The problem is this: Even outlining, I don't see all the problems in advance. I imagine there's a certain amount of practice in this. Trial and error. Or maybe I just need the whap-me-upside-the-head lessons before outlining can become a truly efficient process for me.

The first novel I outlined didn't have a third act, something I didn't see until a friend pointed it out to me in the fifth or so round of edits. Which meant that the second book that I'd already "finished" also didn't have a third act. Or maybe it doesn't have a second act. I smooshed them both together in a lackluster climax kind of way.

That's a tough lesson to learn with two novels to fix. I spent several months fixing the first, and the second (which is the second in that series) waits until the first is sold.

So when I sat down to plot out Faye, I was very careful to make sure it had a third act. I forced that third act in there with a crowbar, conveniently ignoring the fact that while Faye's motivations stay true throughout the novel, the secondary characters' motivations, and even parts of the world logic, didn't work in the third act.

Yeah, that was another tough lesson, one that's going to take me months to fix. But just like learning about my blind spot when it comes to the third act, I now know to take more time with character motivations in the outline stage. I get so excited to write the novel when I'm outlining that I often start writing before I'm completely done, reasoning that "it'll all just fall into place when I get there." Nope. Nah-uh. Not next time.

There's a few other smaller problems I've had along the way that I'm keeping in mind for the next novel. For instance, while it's easy for me to storyboard plot points, it's harder for me to see in an outline the pacing of the protagonist's inner conflict. It's one of those elements I hope to be able to include on future outlines, but every character so far has surprised me in this regard. (I know these characters are all pieces of me, parts of my imagination, and not people who are in my head talking to me, but when it comes to inner conflict and how it manifests in various scenes, I'm often completely surprised—a scene I planned to have a character mad in, they're apologetic, or sad, or defensive when they should be offensive, and it works; time and again, my characters have taken the reins of emotional scenes and proved that my outlined thoughts were no longer relevant to their inner conflict.)

So when it comes to outlining, I'm 100 percent on board...even if I'm baffled by the enormous problems I still fail to see in my outlines until I've written past them.

The Long Road: Back on Track

2011-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

Despite my best efforts, my novel has ballooned beyond rational proportions. Five hundred pages, and only one-third of the way done. Worse, my plot is fundamentally flawed.

I don't know how I got this far without seeing these large, gaping holes in logic and character motivation. How I missed that I was forcing plot so I could have character development, rather than the other way around, or at least plot and character working in tandem. The story's trail had grown murky, and I was mired in a swampy plot that was sucking me under.

Almost two weeks ago I stopped writing completely. I debated setting the story aside. Completely. Just abandoning it. The option was more appealing than not, but I've come this far, so I gave it one more try. Printing out the novel, I began to read it, looking for ideas and solutions to my plot problems.

I brainstormed. I wrote pages and pages of notes and possibilities. After 500 pages of plotting and writing toward one storyline, it was difficult to look at it with fresh eyes, almost impossible to see how new ideas would fit in.

Reading the novel helped. It took the pressure of daily writing off me, and it showed me that there were some good places. It reminded me of the characters as I'd originally envisioned them. It—horribly, wonderfully—made me realize that I should be writing the novel from the first person (as I began) and not the third person (as I wrote the last 300 pages).

It did not clarify how I could fix the novel.

Last Saturday, armed with plot notes and detailed character descriptions, Cody and I sat down over lunch and I explained the problems. I explained my "solutions" and why they wouldn't work, the holes they still had. Cody tried to help, but there's a fundamental difference in the way we think: he's a plot-driven thinker, I'm a character-driven thinker. All his solutions seemed too deus ex machina for me, with the characters reacting. All mine did not make the plot cohesive. We called a halt to the discussion when Cody's ideas started to attempt to convert my fantasy to a science fiction, stopping before I got angry and too frustrated to enjoy the rest of the day.

I considered the lunch a complete waste. Nothing new (and usable) had been presented. I considered the best thing to come from it this: As we were driving away from the restaurant, Cody said, "It doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you're writing." Meaning, after I'd expressed my thoughts of giving this novel up to the writing gods as a sacrificial manuscript, he was supporting me, saying he knew whatever I was doing was right, so long as I keep writing. I was affronted! I couldn't give up now. There was a novel here! Somewhere. I would find it. And there was no way he could make me stop writing!

Still, while we hit three different grocery stores for the week's food supply, I poked at the story ideas in my head, coming up with no solutions. When we got home, I got on the elliptical machine. Just me, the machine, and my thoughts. No TV or radio or company for distractions. I ran. I thought about the novel.

When the solution came to me, it was so simple in its brilliance. One statement, and the rest of the problems dropped away, the plot realigned to match this new truth, the complexity of the story grew, and best yet, the character development deepened.

Ironically, the solution was a story fact I'd tossed off the cuff at lunch, not realizing its importance. It was so fundamental, it was almost like it didn't need to be stated. When the thought resurfaced on the elliptical machine, it stretched like an arrow through the plot, impaling plot and characters with equal skill.

It was also an original idea, one I'd shied away from detailing mostly because it involves an issue I don't want to explore in my own head. I resisted. Resisting wasted so much time and energy.

I've made peace with the idea now, just as I've made peace with the pages I can keep (about a hundred, tops), and with how much writing is still ahead of me (to finish and to rewrite the beginning).

I'm moving forward again, making visible, positive progress, and I know the story is stronger for it. I hope to never have to go through this extensive process again. I'll be watching for storylines I resist in the future. It probably means I'm onto something good. For now, though, I'm content to be back on track.

Fully Converted to YA

2011-02-03T15:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been knocked upside the head by a book? Please tell me you have. If you haven't, you haven't lived. (Or, you haven't found your genre, at least.) Sometimes a book comes along that grabs reality and folds it into an origami swan, and the world printed in tiny black letters on paper becomes more substantial than the people around you, than your job, than the priorities you place so much importance on.

Granted, getting lost like this in a book was so much easier when I was a teenager. My emotions were more easily manipulated. The demands on my time were less critical. I didn't have to make my own meals, and laundry did itself (thanks, Mom!).

Maybe it's not so ironic that it was a YA novel, then, that capsized my world recently.

I've confessed my resistance in reading YA novels many times on this blog. I've also admitted that those things I most resist often tend to be some of the best. From the small (delaying watching Firefly for months because I was sure it wouldn't appeal; now it's one of the only TV shows I own, definitely the only one I rewatch with fondness) to the large (I resisted falling in love with Cody—such a fool am I!—and delayed marrying him much longer—it was one of the happiest days of my life!). I really should start paying attention to what I resist.

Suzanne Collins changed my mind about an entire genre in a way that J.K. Rowling couldn't. Of course, I bow at Collins' feet, in utter awe of her writing skills, so she could probably convince me that true crime novels were fun to read at this point. (Not that YA and true crime novels are in the same category on any level in my head.)

I'm late to this party, slow to catch onto a trend, and for once, incredibly thankful. How could I have waited the year between each novel to find out what happens to Katniss and Peeta? (How did you all do it?) Would I be so incredibly obsessed with the world if I had given myself a breather, not finished all three novels in under two weeks? Probably. But sometimes full immersion is half the fun.

I could rave for posts and posts about the mastery of Collins' novels, but I'll limit myself to this: She truly brought home for me the power of well-chosen words. There are lines within the novel that resonate days later. My two favorite (**possible spoiler if you haven't read all three novels**):

"It must be very fragile, if a handful of berries can bring it down." --Katniss

"That was the one thing I had going for me. Taking care of your family." --Gale

There are so many more lines that were superb, but these two, they say so much about the characters, about the world, about the way Katniss thinks and the way people see her—the way people know her. Writing books and instructors can repeat the advice every word should advance plot or develop character, ideally doing both until they're hoarse, and it wouldn't be as clear to me as these lines.

There's another line, a mini-speech given by Plutarch that hammers home the theme of the final novel, that makes me think of the real-life1930s and the 1950s and the 1970s...

"Are you preparing for another war, Plutarch?" [Katniss]

"Oh, not now. Now w'ere in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated. But collective thinking is usually shortlived....Although, who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss."

It reminded me of the Philip Pullman quote: ‎"There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book."

Teach this series in high school, America. These are the themes of today. The power of a single person. The ramifications of decisions and actions. War. Compassion. The layers of right (often just as murky as the layers of wrong). The strength of hope. Capitulation through willful ignorance. Love.

And one last thought for the Universe: Please raise my writing skills up to this level!

Avocados to Autism

2011-01-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

I had the perfect avocado the other day. I do not award an avocado with the status of perfection lightly. I'm an avocado connoisseur. Or, more accurately, I eat a lot of avocados. (Thank you, Chile, for shipping this glorious fruit to Costco all year long; and I apologize, Planet, for not eating locally.) The last few batches of avocados have been crap. Brown and stringy, off-tasting, or just plain rotten. But not this one; this one was perfect.

Thus, it's no surprise that as I was falling to sleep that night, I was happily reliving the moment of slicing open the avocado and seeing the perfect yellow and green center. (What? You've never done that?) The perfect avocado in January—who would have thought? But wait, there are always good avocados around January for everyone to make guacamole for the Super Bowl. I think I read somewhere that more avocados are consumed on Super Bowl day than on Cinco de Mayo. We should call it the Avocado Bowl, not the Super Bowl.

I jolted wide awake. Had I missed the Super Bowl? Completely. Was it possible? I don't watch news, I don't read a newspaper or go through paper websites to get my daily information. Cody doesn't follow sports. None of my friends do, either. I hadn't been in a grocery store in well over a week: I could have completely missed the yearly mock goal post made of chips, salsa, and soda, which is my usual first clue.

The followup question belatedly surfaced: Would it be so bad if I had missed it? I mean, I don't need an excuse for guacamole. And watching football isn't exactly entertaining. In fact, what I thought was: Watching football makes me feel autistic.

That thought completely derailed all others. It makes me what? (Does this ever happen to you—do your thoughts about yourself ever shock you? Doesn't that seem like it should be impossible? I mean, they're your thoughts. You're the only one in your head. Yet, somehow one part of you can surprise another part of you. How many people are really in there?)

And what did I mean by It makes me feel autistic? What does autism feel like? What do I even know about autism?

Very little. Bizarrely, what I know about autism comes to me a bit in the way I feel an autistic mind might process information: everything was pictures and sound bytes. Conversations and shows. I can't ever remember reading or being taught what autism is. Here's the general breakdown:

Jenny McCarthy. Vaccines = Autism. America's Next Top Model and Asperger's. Neat piles of clothes, neat racks of shoes, everything arranged by someone with OCD. Excessive hand-washing. The exhausted face of a parent I knew who has a child with autism. Scattered Pick-up Sticks with a number that flashes over the image. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory. "Penny" knockknockknock "Penny" knockknockknock "Penny." Vaccines do not equal autism; scientists like to manipulate studies.

And finally, always, there's a video clip. I don't know where I saw it. I don't know why I saw it. I know it was a show on autism, and the scientists had chosen to test the visual reactions of autistic people by using Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Had they used any other movie, I doubt I would remember it. But I was so flummoxed by why they would choose that movie. I mean, here are people that have a difficult time connecting with family members and the colorful, interesting world around them, and then the scientists decide to conduct their experiment with WAoVW? A black-and-white, agonizingly boring film with completely unrelateable characters? It makes no sense.

Using the movie, the scientists proved that autistic people did not pick up on the body language cues of the actors. When the actors point to somewhere else in the room, and then the camera cuts to show what they were pointing to, the average person's eye goes directly to where they were directed. The autistic person's eyes wander over the screen, landing on all the pieces of art and the light switch on the wall.

Which is exactly how I feel when I watch football. My eyes roam over the screen, but nothing seems more important than any other thing. Not one player. Not the fans. Not the officials or the cheerleaders or the little colorful boxes with the statistics and score and flashing ads. The TV stops being a medium to show me an event and it becomes like a canvas, a piece of art, where no one section holds more weight or importance than another.

Is that really how autistic people feel? I have no idea. But it's the way my brain interprets both autism and football.

Eventually, thankfully, I fell asleep, to dream of more interesting things, like saving the life of a cat from a man burning a subdivision of little cat houses after taking a zip line across a trampoline field while enemies raced above me on catwalks made out of flexible, sheer netting.

A Minor Victory

2011-01-19T20:30:00.000-08:00

There is nothing quite as satisfying as having a tough scene finally break open and start writing! Today, the conversation I've been writing and rewriting worked. It was too pivotal of a plot point for me to leave a note and pass up; the way the characters responded and behaved here determines events later.

I didn't finish the conversation or even the scene. That's okay. It's starting to flow. I'm happy with today's results.

Dialog: My Archenemy

2011-01-17T19:34:00.000-08:00

This morning's writing session was an exercise in frustration. It should have been easy. The entire scene is basically a conversation. But it's one that shifts a few people's perceptions and reveals character growth only hinted at before this. This isn't just characters chatting; this is emotional translation.

The problem seemed to be the mash of personalities. Two of the characters are new, one is still a malleable substance in my head, and the other two are my main characters, who are being put under a different kind of pressure than they've had to face to date in the novel. So there were five heads to balance, five personalities to cycle through.

The scene calls for three of them to be front and center, arguing things out, shoving their emotions and preconceived notions at each other. But everyone in the room has a strong personality, so no one's just going to sit there. Everybody's got to have their say. It was like trying to weave a tapestry with two anvils, a sword, and a few throwing stars.

I ended up writing the scene three or four times, none of them exactly right. In an hour and forty-five minutes, I wrote about 1,200 words, about 300 of those worth keeping. The only thing that kept me going was that I kept finding pieces that I liked. If it'd all been futile, I might have backed away and given the scene some time to simmer, maybe done a writing exercise instead. But I was getting somewhere. Actually, it was a bit like working out: painful and slow and repetitive, but the final results were worth it.

Tomorrow, I dive back into the scene, making every word count, ever comment one that reveals character and advances plot. I can't wait for the next action scene, though. Those write so much faster for me! Conversation is still one of my writing weaknesses. Maybe I should do some writing exercises just to work on dialog. Not a bad thought.

Facebook Domination

2011-01-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

On October 3, 2010 I finally succumbed to peer pressure and joined the Facebook community. Initially, I was overwhelmed. Then I became addicted. It was only in December that I realized it had become something of a problem for me.

Since joining Facebook, my blog posts dwindled to nigh nonexistent.
This correlation puzzled me for a few weeks until I finally realized that my typical posting time was being used up by Facebook time. The end of a workday, or the early evening, when I would normally post, was now spent catching up on this whole world. What had Laurell K. Hamliton tweeted? Did Karen Marie Moning or Katie MacAlister post a blog? A quick Facebook tidbit? Had my friends linked to any cool, must-see articles? Had random strangers I used to know shared something embarrassingly intimate about themselves?

Bombarded by this whole new level of mini-stories from friends and corporations and authors and artists and TV stars, my thoughts were overstimulated into lethargy. After checking Facebook, I no longer had the energy to craft a blog post.

It's only in the last few weeks that I've reached saturation and began to filter and pare the Facebook postings down. I know, I took a while to catch on. I've learned to hide posts from a plethora of people who I didn't really care about and whose posts drained my energy. I'm learning to skim.

I'm also learning to separate my Facebook time into smaller, strategically allotted portions; I never check it before writing for the day, before work, or even right after I finish either of these tasks. I need the buffer to allow my thoughts to settle into workable patterns and rhythms. I'm not a multitaskers at that level. Facebook caters to those with ADD, which I do not have—though I could see how Facebook could help me develop it.

It was a completely unexpected learning curve, and one that I'm glad I hurdled at this phase in my writing life, not when I launched with a published title.

However, Facebook has given me a new opportunity to spread the word about debut authors. Number One Novels can now be found on Facebook here. What's next? Twitter? Maybe...but not yet. My Facebook experiences have left me wary of adding another social network (read: time suck) to my life. Cody recently jumped into the world of Twitter, but I'm content to watch from the sidelines. For now.

The Dreaded Slump

2011-01-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

Every novel I've written has one: a point in the process where I can't remember why I'm writing this piece. I call it the slump. Maybe it should be The Slump. As obstacles go, it's worthy of the proper-noun capitalization. The slump is when the excitement of new characters, new settings, the whole story has been worn away from hours and days of familiarity, and the story has stretched in my mind. It's no longer a series of key points on a storyboard; now it's 100,000+ words of events and dialog and decisions and characterisations to keep track of.

The slump is when it all feels foggy. The beginning is so far in the past, started 123 days ago, before New Years and Christmas and Thanksgiving and Halloween. The novel has taken twists I didn't foresee, characters have warped and changed as they've come to life, making storyboarded plot points no longer logical. The novel has ballooned, as I knew it would do, but as I fought so very hard to prevent.

The end seems so far away.

I circle through the current scenes in my head, pondering their importance—not to the story, but to my life, my happiness, my world and the world of others. Does this book matter? Is it worth writing? Is it worth others' time to read? Will it sell, or simply take up hard drive space like the stories before it? Has it simply been a really, really long writing practice?

The problem with the slump is that I have no perspective. I'm bogged down in the quicksand of the story, trapped at the edge of an event horizon of my own making. I can't make good decisions from this perspective. I can't tell if what I've written is complete crap, as half of me honestly expects, or brilliant—or at least worthy of a read—as the other half expects.

But I know two things about the slump. One: Every book has one. There's a point in the writing of every story where it's impossible to separate the world and the art from the work and the toiling and the drudgery of continuing to write when so many other ideas sound so much more appealing and releasing this project to work on something else seems the wisest use of my time.

Two: Stopping now is the worst thing I could do. I stopped at this point in last year's NaNo Novel. I'd completed the challenge. Fifty thousand words were logged and recorded, and the story felt...adrift. It no longer felt like the story I wanted to work on, and it had become a drain on my resources, preventing me from focusing on selling a different novel I'd written. So I stopped, shelved it.

I have been haunted by its characters ever since. It's now the next project in the queue. It needs to be reworked and redone, completely, not simply edited, but it need to be written, if only so that it stops looping through my thoughts.

There's one other thing I know about the slump, and it's fuels my dedication: the slump never lasts. This book, like all the books before it, if given the chance, will get its second wind and become exciting again.

Thus, like so many of the hurdles that writing a novel presents, I'll continue to practice the one, true method of persevering: sitting my butt in my writing chair and writing daily. It's the only way a novel is ever complete. It's the only way a scene is ever perfected. It's the only way a slump is overcome.

Succulent Redo

2011-01-09T19:51:00.000-08:00

Sadly, the succulents from my birthday did not survive me or summer (though probably it was me). One by one, they withered, wilted, and died. With each death, so died my hopes of ever getting anything to survive on this sun-baked balcony of my apartment. For several months, I have resisted buying new plants, hardening my heart against their cute greenery. From my office window, I have gazed out at the empty plant holder and thought, I'm doing the right thing. Nothing else need die at my hand.

It was rather dramatic, but I never really paid attention. I would look at that lonely white plant holder and think of all the plants that have died there, then look away. All in all, bad feng shui. But it was an insidious thought that existed in my subconscious. If you'd asked me what I saw when I looked out the window, my gaze would have shifted to the trees beyond the balcony and described that, or the weather, or something in the foreground.

Then my mom announced that she'd found several succulents at Home Depot whose prices begged for them to come home to my house. All these ignored feelings trapped in my subconscious welled to the surface and balled into a single, clear emotion: dismay. What was I going to do with more succulents (other than kill them)? Then they arrived, and they're cute. Some succulents can be disturbing looking—like a disease viewed through a microscope or something that's mutated horrifically. These were cute. Fun. Very alive.

So I did some research today about transplanting them. Everything about succulents goes against my nature. They don't want tons of water. They don't even need to be watered when you first transplant them. They like things dry, then to be drenched, then just to be left alone. They don't need to be babied and talked to and pruned and watered weekly (or more often) like my other house plants. They basically are the teenager of plants: just give them space and check in with them every so often and they thrive.

Yet, much like teenagers who pretend to be tough but are really just disguising their fragility behind arrogant posturing, succulents have a certain delicacy to them. They don't like a lot of direct sunlight and have to be eased into it. Again, counterintuitive. Succulents are always grouped with cacti. Cacti love sun. Thrive in it. Shouldn't succulents? Apparently not.

For now, they're tucked in with my other plants, getting used to bright light near the windows, before being transitioned to some place where they'll get a few hours of sunlight a day. Not too much to shock them. Then I'll ease them outside. If they show any signs of wilting or withering, they'll come back in to live happy lives inside our temperature-controlled apartment. If they can take the sun, Cody's already planning on building them the equivalent of a sun shade for when the weather heats up.

For a plant that needs very little watering, they sure do require a lot of care. I hope I'm up for the task!

A Book Collection as Personalized Art

2011-01-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

I love a good home library. It shows, too. Our moderate-sized apartment is packed to the rafters with bookcases, so full that we have to have bookcases behind our couch (and there's no room left for walking between them, so the bottom shelves are, unfortunately, covered). I look forward to getting a house for many reasons, but not far from the top is to have a library or at least more wall space to press bookcases up against.

My bookcases are filled, for the majority, with romance novels and fantasy, with a shelf or two of nonfiction, cookbooks, and Cody's thrillers. Which means that my walls are a collage of color and size, ranging from pastels of romance novels to the eye-popping colors of thrillers (and Evanovich novels) to the black of fantasy novels. Looking at all this color is incredibly pleasing to me. I can pick out a specific title from across the room just by the color and size of the spine.

But for some people, all they see is a jumble of color, a mismatched eyesore. They may love the books (or just the look of books), but they don't love the look of all those different-sized spines cluttering up their otherwise pristine library shelves. The answer for those folks is here: Juniper Book.

Juniper Books will handpick a collection of books for you or transform your current books into works of art. Do you like leather-bound books? They've got that. What about a library categorized by color? Yep, they can do that, too. Maybe you want a collection of books to create an overall picture across the spines. That's possible, too.

I'm intrigued by the possibilities Juniper offers. Could they, say, put my favorite painting across the spines of all the books in an entire bookcase, so that it would look like the art piece was four feet wide and five feet tall? What about color-coding books, by shelf, by genre, by feng shui colors? Or perhaps creating wall art for the sake of wall art (check out some of the creative ways that Juniper found to display books).

Ultimately, I love my books too much as they are to transform them, but I could see doing this with, say, Cody's extensive collection of computer books, or better yet, with old textbooks or cookbooks—something that might not become useless (like the computer books). However, if I ever opened a store (of any kind, not a bookstore), I would definitely use Juniper Books to help decorate my space. It's just so pleasing!

Books Read in 2010

2011-01-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

The last half of December was vacation time for me. I took a few weeks off work, a week off writing, and checked out of pretty much everything but fun for a while. It was wonderful!

What did I do with all my free time? See friends, family, and an delightful amount of Metroid: Other M. I also spent an inordinate amount of time playing with my Excel chart of the books I read last year.

Here's the list of books I read strictly for pleasure:

Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton
Eleven Big Ones by Janet Evanovich
Soulless by Gail Carriger*
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
Secret Lives of the First Ladies by Cormac O'Brien
Mona Lisa Awakening by Sunny
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni
Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
White Cat by Holly Black
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
Midnight's Daughter by Karen Chance
Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
Heart Fate by Robin D. Owens
Steamed by Katie MacAlister
Heart Quest by Robin D. Owens
Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews
Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton
Heart Thief by Robin D. Owens
Bride on the Loose by Debbie Macomber
Same Time, Next Year by Debbie Macomber
Heart Duel by Robin D. Owens
Heart Change by Robin D. Owens
The Fidelity Files by Jessica Brody*
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning
Naamah's Curse by Jacqueline Carey
Lean, Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
Eighteen Acres by Nicolle Wallace
Love in the Time of Dragons by Katie MacAlister
Rescue Me by Christy Reece*
The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind
Changeless by Gail Carriger
Obsidian Prey by Jayne Ann Krentz
Lion's Heat by Lora Leigh
The Trouble with Harry by Katie MacAlister
Divine Misdemeanors by Laurell K. Hamilton
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin*
The Native Star by M. K. Hobson*
Must Love Mistletoe by Christie Ridgway
Styx's Storm by Lora Leigh
Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck
Wither by Lauren DeStefano
The Atlas of Love by Laurie Frankel*

* Number One Novels interviewed debut authors

The books I would most highly recommend are:

Soulless by Gail Carriger
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni
White Cat by Holly Black
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
Heart Fate by Robin D. Owens
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
The Native Star by M. K. Hobson
Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck

In messing with my chart a thousand different ways and tracking random patterns, I was surprised to learn that my fantasy numbers went down 6 books compared to 2009, but my paranormal romance went up 6, so that evened out. My most-read author this year was Robin D. Owens (last year it was Janet Evanovich). The most books I read in a month was August (10), but the number of authors that I read in both 2009 and 2010 is only 12. Part of that low number is due to Number One Novels: I'm finding more debut authors, which means my must-read author list is getting longer. This means my current (fiction) TBR pile is 44 books deep. (I've promised Cody I won't buy any more books until that stack goes down, then rather unexpectedly, I've had several friends offer to let me borrow their books. The Universe is clearly on my side.)

Only one book is on the chart so far this year: Christie Ridgway's Crush on You. I'm looking forward to adding a lot more titles to that list!

My Codependent Relationship with Writing

2010-12-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

"Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working."
—Stephen DeStaebler

I saw this quote today and was impressed by how easily and succinctly Mr. DeStaebler summed up the gist of so many of my blogs. This is how I feel about writing.
I love it, I want to do it full time, but there are days and weekends and vacation days when writing is the last thing I think I want to do. And then a little time goes by when I don't write, and I become miserable—and miserable to be around. Then I write, and remember how wonderful it is to have this creative outlet at my fingertips and what a gift it is and how lucky I am to have found my passion.

Interestingly, I've found that writing is like so many addictions: the more I write, the more I want to write. The more I write, the less time it takes for that pain of not working to build back up. It's like I build up a tolerance and need more to get my fix. Just Tuesday, I got upset with Cody because he'd thrown off my routine minutely, and suddenly my usual hour and a half of writing time was cut down to an hour. Last night, I had a hard time falling to sleep knowing that today's writing time was going to be similarly truncated.

Of course, since this writing addiction is something I love and that loves me in return (leaves me more energized, happier, at peace with myself and the world, as opposed to sugar, which causes tooth decay and weight gain but has the same withdrawal symptoms of irritability and neediness), I'm embracing my addiction and have every intention of continuing to bow to its demands until I run out of stories to write.

NON's First Guest Blog

2010-12-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

Number One Novels' first guest blog is up today at Gelati's Scoop! Thank you to Giovanni Gelati for helping spread the news of all the debut authors out there!

Writing on Faye continues. November felt like one big hitch in the process, with so many scenes written and deleted and written and cut to be mashed into a new form until finally December hit and the book started moving forward again! What a huge relief!

I'm no longer kidding myself that this book is going to come close to a 100,000-word count. It's already at 96,000+ and I know how much more story is left. This means some serious hacking and slashing later, but I've decided to worry about that when the first draft is done. The treadmill feeling of November has reminded me how much clearer the book will seem (and clearer the edits that are necessary will be) once it's complete.

So the goal remains the same: a minimum of 1.5 hours of writing, six days a week. Until the book is done, I will not waver. (Okay, maybe I'll take Christmas off.)

Balloon Popped: The Multiple Purposes of the Editing "Pin"

2010-11-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Faye Progress:
67915 / 90000 words. 75% done!

The cuts continue. Recently I posted that I cut a total of 31 pages from Faye to move the story along. It had gotten off the rails, and I needed to go back to the point where things jumped track and start again. Today, I realized that my derailment happened a lot farther back. To be exact, it happened 66 pages before those 31 pages I cut!

I debated the decision to cut over 19,000 words thoroughly. In fact, I finished the scene I was writing before juggling the merits of tying it back into the storyline or cutting it. My solution: keep some, cut the majority. So I've moved those 66 pages to a different document and will be spending the next couple of days reworking the flow of the story, taking snippets of those 66 pages and weaving them back into the story.

The hope, is that what took me 66 pages (and was probably going to take another 20-50 to reroute back on track) can be completed more efficiently in ten or less. It'll make the story stronger, the pacing smoother, and the character development more realistic. It'll also prevent my book from ballooning out of control.

Again, like with the first cuts, I feel good about this. I was dreading trying to trim this section down in edits, I was feeling a little nauseous about the direction of the story (in an unhappy-muse sort of way), and by taking the useful pieces of it, it means that all that work isn't a complete waste. So while today's progress was more sideways than forward, tomorrow's progress should be straightforward and true to the story.

Getting Crafty

2010-11-20T22:43:00.000-08:00

Urg. Work has slammed me this week, which means that when I finish the long hours in front of the computer, I haven't had any energy left for blogging. (I've still been writing first thing in the morning, though—keeping that commitment to myself is one of the things in the day that gives me energy...and a great deal of happiness.)

I have managed to squeese in time here and there to read half of M. K. Hobson's The Native Star, and have been loving it! I also was inspired by friends (and a small decorations budget for Christmas) to create my own garland.

This isn't something I normally do. Writing usually satisfies all my creative impulses. Yet, today, I baked (which I feel falls under the "creative energy needed" category—and it was only cornbread, so it wasn't that creative), and I made this:

It took about an hour. Okay, it took about two hours, but some of that was wasted seriously messing up the first felt piece I attempted to grid out to cut, and an equal amount of time was spent fending off the not-so-helpful overtures of my cats. Apparently, String + Fuzzy Pompoms = Irresistible to Cats. Fortunately, the only injury sustained was a minor poke in the finger from a needle, and that was self-inflicted.

It's not the most posh garland, but I think it's cute, nonetheless.

Perception Is Everything

2010-11-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

I'm repeatedly amazed how very little value facts—hard, cold, scientific truths—have on life and how much more our perceptions of facts (or falsehoods) shapes our realities. Today, while world building and jotting notes on characters, I spent a great deal of time contemplating this question: How would I view life were I to believe that I was inherently evil rather than inherently good?

I'm exploring this theme through my main character, Faye, who has been raised to believe that her magical ability taints her and all like her. She's was judged and convicted before she was born based on the actions of her ancestors and through the warped lens of a victorious nation's collective memory.

That's a very large-concept perception to color an entire life, and one that weaves through Faye's life in tandem with her environment, one supporting the other. It's a concept worthy of book-length exploration (along with a lot of adventure and a little love, of course).

Just as with real life, everything that makes up a character is tainted by their own perceptions, not just the large-picture concepts like the inherent nature of good versus evil. Everything from how a character perceives themselves (Strong or a victim? Good-natured or gypped of all the good things in life?) to how they perceive the world affect the story. Is everyone out to get the main character or is every day a new adventure just waiting to be started? Is a city a place for socialization or a claustrophobic cluster of strangers? Is sex on the first date okay or does it make you a slut? Are elders to be feared, revered, or ostracized? There's so many different ways each character can twist.

It's thoughts like this that pulled me away from writing today and had me opening up my character profile documents. Writing can wait. I want to get to know everyone's world perceptions a little better first.

The World Is My Novel

2010-11-11T17:57:00.000-08:00

Faye Progress:
79988 / 90000 words. 89% done!

One of the facets of being an author that has always appealed to me is that every experience I have and every tidbit of information I learn can potentially be useful later in a story. This factoid has saved me from mind-numbing boredom in endless checkout lines (where better to study my fellow humans, pick up odd snippets of conversations, or glean details to make those secondary characters come alive?), it has made long road trips interesting (endless vistas out bug-splattered windshields are great for getting setting ideas, and great just for letting the mind wander and the muse create without pressure, too), and it has encouraged me to try experiences I might otherwise have said no to.
I've attended garden and home shows when I have neither a yard nor a house I can renovate; I've said yes to dates with men I'm not attracted to (though not lately, Cody, I promise). It's all potentially research.

The professor of my leisure and recreation class called these experiences "discovery events." He proposed filling your life with discovery events as a way to stay young at heart. I propose doing it as a way to please the muse. We could be saying the same thing.

In tandem with this idea is that I get to choose my characters' lives and decide what discovery events they pursue. Anything that sounds fun and interesting, I can toss them into the middle of, making the research fun. Sure, not every situation my characters land in are fun for them, but I enjoy researching weapons, genetic manipulation, catastrophic weather, and the proper procedures for police when dealing with kidnappers. (And I feel it necessary here to add that I'm really a very nice person. Honestly!)

But there have been many author-related research projects that I hadn't ever considered would be part of my daily routine. For instance, I didn't realize how much time I'd spend researching how to become an author. I've spent countless hours studying agent sites, publisher sites, publishing trends, publishing contracts, eBook manufacturers, and query letters. None of these are the least bit related to being a writer, but they're very important for authors.

More recently, I've been researching marketing and the various platforms that are available on the Internet. This means that I (and NON) are now on Facebook, I've learned the two-year-old vocabulary equivalent of html for coding widgets, and I'm talking with moderate intelligence with Cody using acronyms like CSS and FTP. Soon I'll be learning DreamWeaver and Photoshop and exploring WordPress.

Again, none of this has a thing to do with being a writer, but these skill have become virtually essential for a twenty-first-century author. It takes a lot of time, and I'm constantly balancing the two sides of this career choice: the fun writing/editing/world-building side and the technical researching and marketing side. All of this so that when I do sell a novel, I'm ready to make the most of it. It's daunting, but ultimately it's incredibly rewarding to be putting so much of my energy into something I love and am passionate about!

Moving Backward, Making Progress

2010-11-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

I wrote myself into a corner a week ago.

It didn't stop me, though. I plowed on, adding to the scene, deepening it, changing and tweaking it. I followed it down a dark, halting path that grew progressively harder to continue. The scene had gained a life of its own, independent of the story.

Still, I didn't stop. I kept adding to the scene, not completely out of stubbornness, but out of self-doubt, so many layers of self-doubt. I've had days I would swear my writing was terrible, where I doubted every word and every line, only to read it the next day and realize it was exactly what the story needed. I've learned to doubt that negative voice that says my writing is crap. I've learned that it's better to have something on paper to edit later than nothing, and it's especially better to have something on paper than to have deleted it and later realize it's exactly what I needed. Doubting my doubts is why I now save large chunks of text to other files before deleting it from the main manuscript.

It's hard to determine the difference between doubting my own doubt and knowing that the writing is off the rails.

I've never had a story go so far off the rails so quickly, either. Not like this. Over the last seven days, I've struggled to force this scene to happen, and each day that I've written, it's been harder, the words coming to me slower.

Yesterday, I finally listened the voice in my head that said I needed to backtrack, get rid of some text. I cut 18 pages. I started the scene again, changing it drastically. It felt like it might be working.

Today, I sat down to the same scene, wrote for an hour, and realized again that it had gone wrong. I finally pinpointed why: I didn't need the scene. It was interesting for me. It was building character, changing the relationship between my protagonists, but it wasn't working for the whole story. It was making a middle I already suspect is lagging droop lifelessly.

I deleted another 13 pages.

I've cut scenes from stories before, and almost every time, it's been with regret and, honestly, a great deal of whining. It usually feels like wasted time, wasted story. Like I'm backpedaling even when I know the cuts are good for the story.

This time, it felt like I'd lifted a weight from my story. The scene is completely gone. The action is going to happen much different, and oddly, a little delayed rather than faster. But it's right. It's what I needed to do. All 31 pages needed to go. Even though I lost day's worth of text, I made more progress today than I've made all week.

76123 / 90000 84.58% Done!

As NON Is My Guide

2010-11-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress
79163 / 90000 words. 88% done!

Not having a book to read is a certain kind of torture, as I've lamented more than once on this blog. Not having a book to read is not the same as not having any books on my shelf that I've not yet read. It's not having a book that I want to read. I have three different TBR piles (categorized by genre), and not a single book out of those 29 appealed to me.

What's a girl to do? Go to the Official Number One Novels Amazon Bookstore, of course.

I can't often predict when I'll be struck by one of these TBR-pile slumps. Sometimes they strike after I've finished a really good novel, and I don't want to leave that world in my head yet. Sometimes they strike after I've finished a really bad novel, and I'm burnt for a bit. Sometimes, it has to do with other factors in my life—too much work, too much fun, too much How I Met Your Mother to catch up on.

This time, though, I felt it coming. I've interviewed a lot of great authors on NON this past year, including N. K. Jemisin and M. K. Hobson, debut fantasy authors. I've Internet-stalked both authors post-interview and watched their novels garner praise from other blogs and sources. I've run across their novels more than once in Borders, and I've admired their covers, read their first lines, and then ultimately put the novels back on the shelf, telling myself I'll get it later.

The problem with delayed gratification with novels is, after a while, it sours all other books, because in the back of my head, I'm always looking for these books, and no other novels are going to measure up. I fully acknowledge that I funneled myself into this TBR-pile slump, and I suffered for the long four days it took Amazon to ship the novels to my house. Tonight, my book dry spell ends (to the delight of the entire household). Now I just have to decide which to read first:

The Native Star by M. K. Hobson

First Line: Five loud, hard, sharp crashes.

Intriguing...

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

First Line: I am not as I once was.

Oooh, a troubled character—always a grab for me!

And because it was imperative that I get free shipping, I also ordered...

Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

First Line: Ellie came into the story very late.

I love Robin McKinley, and I've been looking for good short stories: it was a serendipitous purchase, but as I mentioned before, I've been building those two fantasy novels up in my mind, so this doesn't sound right quite yet.

Getting Away for a Day

2010-11-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

I've had my nose to the grindstone, or more accurately, my fingers to the keyboard and my nose to the screen, for several weeks. They've been glorious, productive weeks (11 pages yesterday alone!), but they've left me and my muse a little deflated.

Today, I got out, went to a local nursery with a good friend, and meandered around in plants and sun and good company, and it was exactly what I needed. I came back refreshed and ready to get back to work (unfortunately, not the writing work, but that will happen again tomorrow).

I also came back with a few things that I didn't know I needed: decorative squash. I wish I could have gotten the picture of Fu (my 22-pound cat) with his head stuck through the small handle of the bag (his own doing), but it was more important to soothe a panicking cat with three pounds of squash dangling from his neck than a photo op.

Since I couldn't get that picture, I staged a few, and my cats, for once, were willing participants in my photo shoot.

Fu always poses. He's a ham. Most of my shots of Zenzo were blurry, but I did get this one, in which she is looking like she's considering either being annoyed or humored by me:

Now that all the sniffing inspection is done, it's time to wash my treasures and decorate the office. My desk could use a little festive cheer.

Happy NaNo WriMo Day!

2010-11-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
72965 / 90000 words. 81% done!

Congratulations to all the people participating in NaNo WriMo! Today is the first day of your mad-dash adventure to 50,000 words in the month of November and, hopefully, a novel you can polish up and sell afterward.

After three years of being an active participant, I'm not taking part in NaNo this year a reason I feel everyone in the NaNo community would support: I couldn't wait until November to start this next novel.
I've been working on it now for a month and a half, and going strong, writing six days a week. That's a solid 41 hours of writing in the month of October. It's amazing how an hour and a half each morning can add up.

In celebration of NaNo, today I wrote 11 pages in two hours! That's a record number of pages in one sitting for me on this book so far. I think my all-time most number of pages in a sitting is 19, and I don't remember how many hours that took me. I'm proud, but I'm not going to expect the same speed every day from here out. It'd be nice, but it's not worth adding that kind of pressure to the creative process.

Divine Misdemeanor = Literary Disappointment

2010-10-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Even the masters make rookie mistakes, as New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton's Divine Misdemeanors proved.

As anyone who regularly reads this blog knows, I'm a huge Hamilton fan. Her characters are so very different than any others I read, and I don't mean in the fact that they have more magic and sex per page than most erotica and fantasy novels combined.
It's that her characters have this intensity in everything they do that I suspect Hamilton herself has, if her blog is any indication. There's something about that intensity that is appealing. For instance, there's always room for more people to love in both Anita and Merry's life (again, not just sexually), and it's always a conscious choice. There's always time for a little comfort or affection, and often time for a lot more. Hamilton's main characters are hyperaware of people around them and of themselves and how they react to others. They place the people they love in an obvious place of highest priority, over everything else in their life, and that main factor is what shapes many of the decisions in the novels.

I don't necessarily admire everything about the intensity Hamilton infuses in every moment or wish to emulate it. In fact, it can be downright annoying. Throughout Hamilton's novels in both the Anita Blake series and the Merry Gentry series, there are scenes that feel like they'll never end because every member of the cast has to have an emotional weigh in that then has to be discussed, debated, etc. The saving grace of these scenes is that they always develop plot or characterization.

I also admire the way Hamilton blends her style with the firm structure of a mystery. Which means that despite the magical and sexual tangents that make the stories so rich, every novel has a case to solve, a mystery or a battle, a driving action that pulls the characters along despite the fact that they'd so clearly prefer a day off.

Which is why Divine Misdemeanors was so terribly disappointing. The plot line was disjointed and mashed together. The mystery framework with a murderer to catch was there, but only in the first fifty pages and the last thirty. The middle two hundred or so pages developed character, but didn't relate at all to the murders. It was like reading two different stories that had been mushed together.

Worse, the mystery was solved in the awful deus ex machina style. Merry doesn't do a single thing to solve the crimes other than show up at the scenes and witness the aftermath. The plot moves forward because a secondary character steps back onto the scene, two hundred or so pages after he was first mentioned, and confesses everything, giving Merry exactly the information she needs to solve the case and save the day.

Too weak, too convenient! It was as if Hamilton hit the three hundredth page, realized that her deadline was upon her, and rather than finish rounding the story out, smashed the ending to the middle and the publisher ran with it. Very disappointing.

Loving Rain, and Other Things that Make Me Weird

2010-10-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

Were all Americans to be polled, my general views on what constitutes happiness would place me distinctly in the minority on many issues. Case in point: today was a gorgeous cloudy day, with rain imminent, and I had a much harder time focusing on work than I have had all summer through all those bright and clear sunny days. You all can have your sunny days. I'll take a day with clouds, any type, any day over a crystal-clear blue sky.

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that most of the activities I love are indoors: writing, reading, playing video games, watching quality TV (like Cake Boss), spending time with Cody and friends (though this works outside, too), painting, playing with my cats, etc. All these activities are made cozier by rain and stormy skies.

I've got a plethora of other opinions that throw me clearly into the minority: I don't like apple pie (or pumpkin pie, or cherry pie, or pretty much any pie), and no, this doesn't make me un-American, as Cody claims. I don't like eggnog. I don't like coffee, not even the smell. I don't believe that busier is better or that more is better, either (and that includes money, too—more can be nice, but it's not always better). I don't want children. I'm not religious. I love rain. I love the way it feels, the way it smells, the way it tastes.

I've considered that some of these beliefs might affect my writing. They might make my characters less rateable to the general public. But I can imagine quite clearly loving pie (if, for some odd reason, that's imperative to the storyline); one of the first things I usually build in a fantasy world is the religion, since spirituality is at the root of every human culture; and I can imagine the emotions the average person feels about children, especially if I, say, insert the image of a kitten instead of a baby.

Of all my non-majority opinions, the only one that affects the verisimilitude of my characters is this: I forget that most people don't make it out the front door without coffee. Most don't face work without it. Most savor that first sip like it's the only thing binding their sanity to their soul. Most people have a signature way they take their coffee, and it's a very specific formula. None of my characters have been coffee drinkers because I don't know how to savor it. I don't know how to drink it, and I can't think of anything that I drink or eat that I treasure as much as I've seen people treasure coffee.

That, and my characters are a bit more cheerful about getting caught out in the rain than most.

Let Me Eat Cake!

2010-10-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

I've recently attempted to cut sugar out of my diet, specifically processed sugar (not fruit or anything crazy like that). For the most part, my experiment was going well. I didn't have cravings. I had everything under control. I didn't even whine when Cody continued to eat desserts. Better yet, I didn't even feel the urge to whine. Even I was surprised by that.

Then season two of Cake Boss came out on Netflix.

Cake Boss is one of those shows that Cody and I can watch back-to-back and not get tired of. The general conflicts of each episode are entertaining without being over-the-top annoying/painful to watch like many reality TV shows (but seriously, blond Mary, do you have to be so difficult all the time?). I love the character studies of Buddy's clients—those one-minute slices of personality that tell you so much about the people who come into the shop to buy cakes. They're great inspiration for the muse.

But better than the interpersonal drama or the insights into New Jerseyians and New Yorkers are the cakes! Not only do they look so delicious, but watching their creation, seeing the culinary magic and the amazing artistry is captivating. I think it appeals to the same part in me that can watch endless episodes of The Dog Whisperer despite the fact that I don't own a dog, nor do I plan on getting one. I just like to see the tangible magic of people who have a talent and are using it to its fullest potential.

The trouble with watching masters of their craft is how easy they make it seem. I almost believe I could create similar cakes right here in my humble home, minus all the equipment, the artistic eye, the culinary training, and the fondant. Just me and my Betty Crocker cake mix and some pre-made frosting. Okay, maybe I'd make the frosting, because I'd need something dairy-free.

I've spent a lot of time fantasizing about cakes lately. About sugar and frosting and ganache. It's not helping me cut sugar out of my diet. Although, come to think of it, I haven't noticed any improvement in my general well-being without sugar, so maybe it's not necessary. (Or is that the siren of sugar talking, not me?)

Lucky for me, Buddy's written a book! Now, the real question is: If I got the book, would I do more than drool on the pages?

Bridge to Freedom

2010-10-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
61725 / 90000 words. 69% done!

When I was in high school, I took a few years of drawing classes. I studied with pencil, colored pencil, and ink. I loved it. Drawing taps into that same part of my brain that writing does. It shuts out the rest of the world and brings complete focus into every aspect of the piece, narrowing the world down to a line, a shadow, a shape, a texture. The only problem was that inevitably, at some point in the project, my mind would wander and I would start working by rote.

Art is not something that can be created by rote. At least not good art. Invariably, when my mind would wander, what I created was, well, crap. There was no life to it. There was no originality. No beauty. It's this inattention that caused perspective to drift, realism to slip, and mistakes to be made.

It was the mistakes that would snap me back into focus on my project. They'd glare at me from the paper or mat board, bold and ugly. They required twice as much work to fix as they did to create, and caused hours of frustration.

On one particular project, when I was doing an ink drawing of a building while lost in thought, I carelessly extended the shadow of the roof's line beyond the roof in a wide swath of pitch-black ink. Horrified, I stared at my picture. I might have moaned. I probably tried not to cry. I know that my joy in the piece shattered in that moment. Now it was just another failure, another piece of art that wasn't as good on the paper as it was in my head.

Given a little time and perspective, and probably with a lot of sympathy from my friend who sat beside me in the class, I was able to see the humor in the mistake. I extended the lines of the tree that already existed in my picture, and I covered over the mistake with extra branches. No one who didn't know it was there would notice.

My friend and I dubbed that dark patch a Bridge to Freedom. The name doesn't make sense, but it did make me laugh. Now, instead of looking at the picture and seeing a stupid mistake, I saw a Bridge to Freedom, a symbol of potential, or maybe just a blob that had a different meaning.

One of the things I've come to believe is that every artistic project, including writing, has its own Bridge to Freedom. In my first novel, a fantasy that took three years to write and over three reams of paper to print, it was a rambling, guideless plot. In my second novel, Madison, it was a beginning that started far too late in the novel, as well as a missing third act. In the third novel, it's that troublesome third act again.

These writing Bridge to Freedoms don't happen because my focus drifts. A wandering mind is not a factor with writing. My mind is fully engaged in what I'm doing. I'm processing the scene, how it ties into the next one and the book as a whole, where the characters are in their arc and what it's going to take to get them to the next step, whether or not I've included enough description or too much, how the dialog is flowing... The list goes on, and it's plenty to keep my mind right there, front and center in the project.

They happen because learning to write is a process, and there's a lot of details to perfect along with great, sweeping elements to learn how to weave the details through.

Lying awake on Sunday night, I believe I realized Faye's Bridge to Freedom: I'm writing the novel from first-person perspective, the world displayed through Faye's eyes. It works, but it only works about half of the time. The other half, I think it would be good to see the world through Blake's eyes. Not only that, I don't think in first person when I'm plotting Faye in my head. Faye's world comes to me in third-person perspective.

I think I'm going to have to change it to third-person, with chapters alternating between characters.

Let me pause a moment to breathe.

This is no easy task. With perspective changes come different descriptions, different angles of seeing things. Beyond that, if I switch scenes to Blake's perspective, all that I've written is merely framework. It's the scene, the elements of the plot, but nothing else stays the same, most definitely not the rhythm of the words. Blake would process the world with a vastly different vocabulary than Faye.

I'm 206 pages into this novel. I'm about halfway done. I'm torn. Do I go back to the beginning and do the changes now? Do I switch to third-person perspective where I'm at and continue writing? Do I keep writing in first person and change it all later, or not, if this turns out to be one of those 2 AM thoughts that has no foundation?

While I ponder, I'm still moving forward, writing in first person for the time being. But that voice is in the back of my head that the next scene I write would be so much better from Blake's perspective. Maybe that's the test. I could write the next scene in third person from Blake's perspective and see how it goes. If I like it, then continue. If it doesn't work, I've answered my question without wasting a lot of time and energy.

Wish me luck!

Second Wind

2010-10-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
48944 / 90000 words. 54% done!

My last post inspired another few pages and now I'm only 1,056 words from the traditional NaNo goal of 50,000 words in a month! Hooray! I also finished the scene I had to leave off this morning when it was time to get to (paying) work. Tomorrow I start fresh with a very intense scene.

Now to get some food!

One Month and Counting

2010-10-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
47332 / 90000 words. 53% done!

It's been one month since I started writing Faye, and having typed 47,000 words / 158 pages is a good feeling. Were this during NaNo WriMo, I would have failed the 50,000-word challenge, mainly because I took five days off during the last month. Still, an average of 1,577 words a day isn't bad at all!

As usual, my worries at this point aren't what's going to happen next or if I'm going to have enough novel. My worry is that I'm going to have too much novel. I'm not to the halfway point in this story yet, but I'm beyond the halfway point in my word count goal.

Of course, when I say I'm worried about it, I mean that it occurred to me, but not that I'm going to do anything about it. Not at this point. When the novel's done, I'll see what I can trim from the beginning. I'm sure there'll be plenty, if my history serves me. Or maybe the middle sags. Or at least the middle of what I've already written, because what I wrote this morning was pure action and so much fun. Writing days like today make me crave the day I get to do this full time—and that there were great, big, fat royalty checks rolling in every quarter.

The Rejection Slump

2010-10-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
41798 / 90000 words. 46% done!

Normally I'm positive about my writing. I feel I've got it going on, at least well enough to know what needs to be edited and changed and fixed and polished. I truly love my Madison novel. I usually think it's well written. But this unlucky number 13 rejection took the wind from my sails. I've got a lot of doubts circling in my head right now—about my talent as a writer, about my main character, about my novel's opening, about various little factors that agents have commented on.

I'm torn between two desires: burying my head in someone else's novel and forgetting about Madison altogether or writing my fingers raw on Faye until it's finished and I can get the next novel ready to parade in front of agents. Both arguments have the same general outcome: Madison is set aside. At least until I can think about it rationally. Right now I'm just frustrated and depressed about the whole process.

Give me a couple of days. I'm sure with a breather I'll bounce back with more enthusiasm than ever. Already, I'm toying with ideas to improve things: polish Madison book two and sell it as book one; join RWA and get some helpful critiques; ignore the world and write for my own pleasure; buy some more how-to-write books.

But right now...right now, I think I'll just stay in this slump for a bit.

A Few of My Favorite Stalkees

2010-10-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:

36154 / 90000 words. 40% done!

Some people have actors that they'll watch anything they act in or novelists that they'll read anything they write. I've got a few of those, too, but I also have a few directors/screenwriters/producers that I actively stalk. Their numbers are few at the moment—three, to be exact—but I'm very loyal to all three, and for completely different reasons.

I fell in love with Aaron Sorkin's writing/directing/producing while watching The West Wing. It was a love of character and theme. Here were a group of fiercely loyal people with strong moral compasses, stellar work ethics, good senses of humor, who were impulsive for all the right reasons (love being the main reason) and staunchly patriotic. Toss in a president I might vote for and some really good acting, and I was hooked. I thought it was a magical combination that couldn't be reproduced if removed from the White House setting, but Studio 60 proved me wrong. Again, Sorkin produced the same addictive cocktail of admirable character traits layered underneath flawed characters, backed with a heavy dose of my favorite themes: love (friendship or romantic) enabling people to achieve greater things than they were capable of before; loyalty is something to be cherished, rewarded, and appreciated; doing the morally right thing is always the right choice even if it means superficial trappings (like, say, your oh-so-important career) are put in jeopardy. I didn't find Studio 60 until I was browsing Netfix, and I am disappointed it didn't air longer.

I love Guy Ritchie, but for not a single similar reason. I will watch any movie Guy Ritchie creates because I know that it will be A) violent, B) have some well-muscled men in it that have their clothes ripped away in the aforementioned violence, C) crack me up. Ritchie has a style of directing/producing, or maybe it's editing, that emphasizes the humor in the horror, can hone in on the most depraved of scenes and make me laugh. Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels are two movies I have watched more than once without exterior coercion. I'm not a typically bloodthirsty viewer, but Ritchie can splatter the screen and leave me smiling.

Firefly was my introduction to Joss Whedon. I promptly bought the DVD set (the only TV show I've ever purchased) and gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer a try after avoiding it the entire time it was on the air. Next was Angel and now I'm tapping my fingers with impatience for Dollhouse season two to come out on DVD. I don't know if can say I love everything he does, but I've liked these shows a lot. I like the mixture of fantasy with relateable characters and heavy action lightened by humor. If I can be on the edge of my couch cushion during an action scene, and laughing over a character's reaction a few minutes later, I'm pretty much hooked. Firefly remains my favorite, and like many fans, I dearly wish the show hadn't been cancelled so hastily.

If I could take a little from each of these writer/producer/directors and combine it into my writing it would be this: Sorkin's themes, Ritchie's catastrophic situations that arise from the most innocent of intentions, Whedon's balance of humor and action, and a combination of all the characters—the thinkers and the muscles with guns and the chosen heroes and their tag-along sidekicks. It'd make a kick-ass story, that's for sure.

Painting Frenzy

2010-10-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that I have been writing six days a week for a minimum of an hour and a half a day, my creative impulses have not been completely satisfied. I've felt a compulsive desire to paint.

Now, for me, this isn't about a canvas or creating a picture. I want to paint three-dimensional objects. Since I first moved out on my own, I've found a certain meditative pleasure in painting, and very few items in my home are safe.

It started innocently enough. My mom gave me this attractive lamp.

Originally the fisherman's pants were dirty brown, the jacket a drab blue, and his beard was lost in the fleshy tones of his face. I stared at this single source of light in my bedroom the first day it was at home, and thought: What fisherman wouldn't be proud to have a coat with fish on it? Plus, this lamp is so...unique it needed a little cheering up.

Once I had started, I began to look around at my belongings with a new perspective. The dully beak of a duck passed down to me from my grandpa needed to be brightened:

My plants no longer needed to be housed in boring terra cotta pots when they could have colorful bases:

My filing box needed some cheering up:

I've painted my nightstand drawer fronts, knobs for the closets, borders on corkboards, and picture frames. I look around at these items, and they mock me. I want to paint something now, badly!

The problem is I don't have anything left. So I've been wracking my brain for something, anything, that I might want to paint. My standard (lamps—I've painted more than one) is no longer an option since we have sleek stainless steel lamps throughout the house. All my plant pots are filled, with no room for new additions; I can't paint a filled pot and I can't fit another pot in my house. There are no figurines to be seen that would benefit from my hand wielding a paintbrush anywhere near them.

I'm getting desperate. This weekend, we went to an antique store, because along with expensive antiques, there's usually a plethora of ~~junk~~ interesting items. I found nothing paint-worthy (but I was tricked into buying a religious necklace that I'm going to pretend is a tiny lightbulb).

I need ideas! Soon I'm going to cave and start painting surfaces better left alone, like our TV tray/coffee table (goodness, don't I suddenly sound too classy) or my cats' fancy water bowl. Help! Suggestions wanted!

Lessons While Reading

2010-10-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished Gail Carriger's second novel, and I loved it as much as the first. (Carriger was a Number One Novels find last year.) I love how she pokes fun at Victorian society, the humor that weaves through action-filled plots, and the sheer imagery of the setting, but most of all, I love how well werewolves and vampires are integrated into history in her crossover steampunk, fantasy, and regency romances.

Unexpectedly, I found my vocabulary improved while I was reading Changeless. I was more articulate, both in my writing and speaking (and even in my thoughts). I think that's pretty high praise for an author. Not only was I entertained, I was reminded of the breadth of our language. She'd probably be a good author to read if you were prepping for SATs.

I followed up Carriger's novel with Jayne Castle/Krentz's novel Obsidian Prey. I'm a huge Krentz fan. If I don't own everything she's written, it's only because I'm not keeping up with how fast she writes them. The rhythm of her stories is familiar and all the more enjoyable for it. Plus, she's so grammatically perfect. Krentz doesn't play around with the rules of grammar, and as interesting as that can be in some novels and in certain situations to convey pacing and tone, Obsidian Prey was simply relaxing for my mind to read. It was so clean and structured, I was never caught up on a sentence, puzzling over the way I would have written it differently for clarity. I can't express how enjoyable it was simply to relax into the story and turn off that critical editorial mind.

Relaxed as I was, and as familiar as I am with the pacing of Krentz's story, it allowed me to enjoy the story as a reader and as a writer. Since I'm trying to craft my own novel right now, and focusing on making sure every word counts and improves the story, I was looking for this in Krentz's novel. She's a master. I think classes could be taught from just her first page: the introduction of characters, the hook, the dilemma, and the tone is all right there before you turn the first page. Not a single word is wasted. Each sentence advances the plot, the setting, or the character, if not all three. Backstory is woven in (and it's amazing how little backstory any given story needs to hold up the story told in the novel).

I'm in awe of both these authors. They're such a pleasure to read and learn from.

A Bit of Seriousness

2010-10-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
26009 / 90000 words. 29% done!

I just watched part of J.K. Rowling's interview on today's Oprah, and I was struck again by how seriously she takes her craft—how much thought goes into each word. She thought she knew the final word of her novel before she even got there. She can remember certain lines that she considered writing into the work and later scratched. Much more than simply putting down the story, she put a great deal of thought into each word of that story.

What surprised me was my own dismissive attitude. Buried under the endless persistence and (nearly) unfailing determination to become an author, I have that traitorous kernel of belief that says writing is easy. It's something for fun and something for entertainment, and therefore should not be taken too seriously; the authors who dare to take themselves and their work seriously are guilty of unwarranted arrogance and vanity.

Yet, I know that the novels I enjoy the most are the novels that have had their sentences nitpicked over and reworked to fine tune the pace to perfection, have had individual words meticulously chosen and altered to find just the right tone in a single verb. The very best novels I've read are by authors who take their craft seriously.

Knowing this, I still cringe away from the idea of taking my own writing that seriously. At least at this point. In the first draft, I aim to write a perfect novel, but my larger goal is simply to get the story down on paper/screen. I want to flesh out scenes and dialog and enjoy the first rush of adventure through the novel. During the rewrites, though, I'll remind myself of Rowling's interview. Just as much as getting the setting, characters, tone, and themes right, word selection matters and sentence structure is vital. It's okay to spend an hour perfecting a paragraph or a week reworking the beginning a dozen different way (especially since I don't currently have a deadline).

Even more, it's important for me to remind myself that I take what I do seriously: I want to be a New York Times bestselling author. Unless I place importance on my writing, unless I respect the craft and the skill required to write the kind of novel that reaches bestselling status, I can't expect other people to take my writing seriously.

Watching the interview was an unexpectedly eyeopening and a much-needed reminder of the larger picture of why I write. Thank you, Joanne Rowling.

Website Critique: Kelly Armstrong

2010-09-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

Faye Progress:
19734 / 90000 words. 22% done!

Through my recent NON author searches, I've encountered a lot of terrible and several good websites. Also, today I managed (after an hour) to upload a new banner on my website that's has a modicum of appeal. All this website surfing got me thinking about doing another critique.

I selected Kelly Armstrong this time by closing my eyes while standing in front of my bookcases, spinning my arm in the air, and seeing what I stopped on. Very scientific, I know.

Overall Impression: Oh my goodness! How attractive is this site! It's got a great color scheme that's got a little art around the edges without detracting from the text or cluttering the page. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of a well-organized site, and Armstrong's site doesn't disappoint.

Favorite Feature: The Home page. Normally home pages are almost wasted, with either a bunch of links (a la Laurell K. Hamilton) and/or pictures of current novels for sale. While those are good things to have on the home page, chances are if a fan has found your site, they know what has been released or they want additional or personal author information. Armstrong's Home page contains the standard featured new releases (and I like that they have a single-sentence tease—if you want to know more, you'll click on the picture). The added features that make this Home page special are the brief three-sentence update about what Armstrong is currently working on, a longer "Welcome" message that is clearly updated regularly, a link to the mailing list, and recent tweets. It's a lot of information all at once. In other words: perfect.

Least Favorite Feature: This was actually hard to find. There's so much that works well with this site, but the one thing that doesn't work seems like it would be an easy fix: The header and tabs aren't anchored. When the text is longer than the current viewable screen size, and you're forced to scroll down, the tabs, and therefore your ability to navigate the page, scroll up with everything else, becoming inaccessible until you scroll the page back to the top.

What Translates to the As-of-yet-unpublished Author's Site: Aside from wanting to steal her color scheme (all those warm tones are so pleasing!), I really like the "Demonology 101" link on the Extras page. Obviously, it'd be a lot better to have a world-descriptive document like this (filled with similar anchored links for easy navigation) after I've built up a fan base, but it could also be a good tease for people who are considering buying a novel or getting involved in the world. Plus, defining my world in a reference manual is already something I'm doing on the side for my own uses. With a few tweaks, it could be reader-ready.

Critique Group: Second Thoughts

2010-09-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

I've always thought that it would be really beneficial to be part of a writers' group. I envisioned weekly or biweekly meetings where we would critique the selected writer's chapter, rotating through people's turns. As we wrote, we would be helping each other improve and perfect our stories. Optimum efficiency, and all that.

And then I read Stephen King's On Writing, and he brought up a downside to critique groups I'd never considered: Do I really want to have my WIP critiqued as it is written?

Having just started my new novel (Faye), I've been pondering this question as I write. Do I really want someone looking over my shoulder, so to speak, at this point? Do I really want people prying into my story, picking apart the good and bad just yet, while the story is still in the conception phase?

The answer surprised me: No, I definitely don't want anyone else in my head while I'm writing the first draft of this story. Me and the characters have already crowded the place up. I don't need critique partners slowing down my rhythm, chiming in at the back of my thoughts, making me second-guess word choices or pacing.

I want to write. I want to get the story down on paper. I want it to flow from me and me alone, without anyone else's input, even the input I only imagine they'll say at our next critique session. Even Cody, the man I love dearly, endangers his life when he suggests story ideas, and that's when I solicit his advice. Having more people's opinions would be too much.

However, I still want other people's help. I don't know if this is being selfish, but I want to dictate the timing of critiques. I want to be able to pass off my whole novel to several trusted critiquers and get great, needed feedback all at once, and only after the whole novel is there.

Maybe if I were in a situation where I got regular feedback as I wrote, I would feel differently, but right now, King's idea of writing the first draft with the door closed, not letting anyone else read it until I'm finished—that sounds like the best plan for me. Even then, I want one editing pass between me and the first reader.

I worry that my method will be too slow when I have a contractual deadline, but it's what is working for me now, so it's what I'll stick to.

Faye Progress:
16961 / 90000 words

On Writing: What Is Ambiguous

2010-09-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

While I agreed with nearly everything King wrote about the craft of writing in On Writing, there were a few things he said that contradicted what I've heard other authors say.

For starters, he recommends (commands) all writers read. Constantly. Everywhere. A moment is spent waiting is a moment that could be spent reading. So is a moment spent riding as a passenger in a car, standing in line at the post office, and brushing your teeth. He also advises reading everything, not just novels in your genre.

I happen to agree wholeheartedly with this decree. The more I read, the more I learn. The more I learn, the better writer I'll be. Of course, there's also the fact that I need to be able to critique what I'm writing to understand what is good and bad, but I'm getting there.

But I know for a fact that several of my favorite authors don't read while they write, specifically Janet Evanovich and Laurell K. Hamilton. Evanovich says on her site that she doesn't read when she's writing, and since she's pretty much always writing, she doesn't fit in a lot of novels. Hamilton has professed on her blog that she simply doesn't have much time left for reading fiction after she writes and spends time with her family, and that her reading time is typically dedicated to reading her nonfiction research novels. While neither of these New York Times best-selling authors read, they are still great authors. Of course, for an unpublished author, not reading seems a lot like chopping off your own fingers. Not to mention, not reading would just plain suck. I'm happy to go with King's advice on this one.

The other debatable statement King makes has to do with rough draft to final draft ratios. He has a formula for this: the second draft = the first draft – 10%. He'll take the final word count of his latest creation and consciously shorten it by 10% in the second draft, claiming that "every story and novel is collapsible to some degree. If you can't get out ten percent of it while retaining the basic story and flavor, you're not trying very hard."

The other ratio I've heard is Laurell K. Hamilton's. She's stated on her blog that when she started writing (and she believes this to be true for all novice writers) that only 30% of her first draft was reusable. The other 70% had to be cut and/or rewritten.

Seventy percent of a first draft seems like an awful lot to throw out. I would scoff at Hamilton if not for struggling through all my rounds of edits on Madison. I don't know if I took out and changed 70%, but I'd say that's a pretty good estimate. However, being a perpetual "putter-inner" (to quote King), my revision ended up adding several thousand words to the novel.

I suspect that for beginner writers, the ratio falls somewhere between what these two authors estimate. Even if I were to trim out 10% of a rough draft, I'm pretty sure that I'd still need to cut, rewrite, and fill in a lot more than that. My hope is that with more practice, my ratio of revision will fall closer to King's estimate than Hamilton's.

Faye Progress:
10093 / 90000 words. 11% done!

On Writing: What Works

2010-09-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Stephen King's On Writing off and on since June, and in the last few weeks, I finally got past his biography section to his advice on writing. Since then, my interest in the book has definitely increased. Having never read one of King's novels, I have no more than a passing interest in his history. However, on his thoughts on the craft of writing, I'm all ears.

I've found his advice to be remarkably straightforward and surprisingly helpful in pinpointing the parts of writing that work and don't—the types of things that I could previously recognize by instinct and taste but not pinpoint what was making a paragraph/chapter/writer good or bad. Since starting the actual "On Writing" chapter of the novel, I've read four fiction novels, and I've not been the least bit surprised that the authors' whose writing has followed the "good writing" guidelines have been far more enjoyable to read than those that don't.

You can't be a writer long without hearing the negative press passive prose gets—for good reason. King covered that, but he also brought up the evils of the "ly" adverbs. I'm as guilty as the next writer of inserting too many in my first drafts. It's also one of the things that typically gets edited out in the next draft. But once King pointed it out, I started paying attention to it in the writers I've been reading. Terry Goodkind's writing was heavily smattered with them. It weakened the prose. Julie James's writing was clean of all but the most aptly placed "ly" words. What a difference it makes in pacing and clarity!

Having read On Writing just before starting my current novel, I can already tell it's helping. I find myself noticing passive voice, those pesky "ly" words, and pertinence of the parts I'm including in my story. Overemphasizing backstory was one of the largest chunks of text deleted and time drain in editing for Madison. I don't want to make the same mistake with this novel. Thus, I'm doing my best to not include a single line that doesn't advance the plot or character or both. I'm sure there's a lot I'll change later, but it's a better rough draft than my previous novels.

A Recycled Novel

2010-09-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Generally, I'm a huge fan of recycling. I have a several stashes specifically for recyclable items—plastic bags, batteries, computer parts—and I live in a neighborhood where trash is sorted by the city for recycling purposes (which I've done some research on, and they actually do it!). In fact, up until last week, I would have said I'm a huge fan of recycling. Period. No caveat.

Then I read Terry Goodkind's The Law of Nines. It's not a novel about the horrors of recycling. In fact, it's a fantasy novel about a man who must use his wits (and a gun) to save his world from destructive villains from another world. The problem, though, is that I've already read this book. I've read it eleven times already, to be specific.

I loved Terry Goodkind's first series, The Sword of Truth series (later made into The Legend of the Seeker TV show). Despite the fact that Goodkind drills his themes through each installment in the series with the delicacy of a jackhammer, I enjoyed the adventures of the main characters, Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell. I even was excited when I read on his site that he'll be releasing book twelve soon.

However, I was even more thrilled to see that he had released something completely different, contemporary, and with all-new characters. In The Law of Nines this brand-new character, according to the book jacket, turns twenty-seven, and this birthday sets off a chain of events that lead to the world becoming a target of "extreme and uncompromising violence." Finally, after the first long, drawn-out series, Goodkind had released something new and fresh.

Imagine my surprise when this mysterious main character turns out to be none other than Alexander Rahl, a descendant of Richard Rahl, a fact not mentioned anywhere on the cover, not even in the quotes of praise. In fact, Alex's last name isn't sprung upon the reader until chapter five.

Shockingly (or perhaps not), Alex falls in love with Kahlan, ahem, I mean with Jax, a woman who looks, acts, and talks the same as Kahlan. Together they race to stop a threat, one that is painfully familiar to anyone who read the first eleven novels Goodkind published. How do they defeat the enemy this time? Exactly the same way they've defeated him the last eleven times: with a little bit of trickery that proves the protagonists are smarter than the villain because they have honor, trust, and love on their side.

I finished the novel with grudging curiosity—not about the story, but just to see if Goodkind would regurgitate everything from his previous novels. Yes. Everything. He recycled everything from the themes to the characters to the setting (this novel was contemporary, but the final battle takes place in this world's version of exactly where the battle took place in the world of the eleventh novel).

I'm shocked that this novel was published at all, let alone that Goodkind's editor and agent thought he had a new story here that deserved being published. I'm amazed that Goodkind was able to stretch this recycled story beyond the length of a short story (which would have been far more appropriate) to 566 pages. I hate that I bought it, that I was suckered into paying $10 and wasting several hours of my life reading a recycled plot. I'm thoroughly disappointed in Goodkind—this novel trades on nothing more than his name and reputation, and it cheapens both.

Faye Has Begun!

2010-09-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

I had planned on crafting the scene-by-scene notecards of the in depth storyboard of Faye (my new novel now that Madison is done and waiting to be sold) before I began writing. But when I sat down this morning, the scenes didn't want to be divided down into little bites like that. They wanted to be written.

Normally this is when I'd wrangle my muse and creativity into something that resembles organization and insist on filling out copious notecards, knowing that having these to guide me through the novel will make life so much easier. However, this is the first project that I've outlined using my hero's journey template. Having found using this template to be incredibly useful when it came to editing Madison (and finding and filling the plot holes), I thought I'd try it at the start of this novel.

The result is that I have a rather thorough, broad-strokes outline for the novel from beginning to end. Paring it down to individual scenes on top of that felt a bit like torture. I know where I'm going. I know the points in my destination that are rooted firmly in place. I don't need to preplan every side road I'll take or every restaurant I'll stop in along the way. There needs to be some room left for the imagination to roam, the creativity to flow.

I'm not sure if this new method will work for me or not. Right now, it seems to be working, and instead of going through the outline again today, I got to write!

Faye progress:

1687 / 90000 words. 2% done!

Naming without a Tune

2010-09-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

I've been busy working away on writing-related projects, despite the blogger silence of late. I finished yet another round of Madison edits, and now it's going to sit in the sidelines until an agent requests to see it. I don't think that'll be too long. It's ready for the public. Finally. Three years later. It took me three years to write my first novel, and three years to write and polish and query my second. I think I'm getting faster, even if it doesn't look like it from here.

Which means that my attention has turned to the next project. I mapped this one out, and have it ready to go except for two looming obstacles: naming my main female and male characters.
Normally the names come to me pretty quickly, but on this one, I had to grab my favorite name book (Baby Names Made Easy: The Complete Reverse-Dictionary of Baby Names). I started with female names, the female being my lead protagonist in this novel.

The unexpected result: an odd assortment of tunes stuck in my head.

Have you ever contemplated how many songs have names in them? No? Me either. Until we (Cody was my sounding board) were going through the lists. Here were all the names that were crossed out no matter how much or little we liked them, simply because I don't want a song stuck in my head for the next three months to three years:

Joleen (Joleen, Joleen, Joleen, please don't take my man just because you can)*
Cecilia (you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily)*
Eileen (come on, Eileen, oh I swear what he means)*
Ella (Cody insisted on singing Rihanna's "Umbrella" song, so I'm counting it as a "name" song and it's definitely vetoed since I don't want to listen to Cody sing "Ella, Ella, Ella, eh, eh, eh, eh, Ella, Ella, Ella" for a day, let alone three years)*
Peggy-Sue (pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy-Sue)
Maria (Take a letter, Maria, address it to my wife)
Sara (Sara, Sara, storms are brewing in your eyes)
Janie ('s got a gun)
Brandy (Brandy, you're a fine girl)
Michelle (my bell)
Rosanna (Rosanna, Rosanna, I never thought a girl like you could care for me)
Jean (Billy Jean's not my lover)
Caroline (sweet Car-O-Line, doo-doo-doo, the good time never felt so good)
Lucy (Lucy in the sky with diamonds)
Roxanne (Roxanne, you don't have to put out the red light)

*Indicates names I was considering before the song lyrics got stuck in my head.

Once we started singing songs with names, we were on a roll. I didn't need a name book for a prompt, but I did need it for inspiration of name that don't yet have songs. I mulled over three names that night (going to sleep with "Take a letter, Maria" stuck in my head, and waking up with "Joleen, Joleen, Joleen" playing in my thoughts when I turned off the alarm), and the final decision is Faye.

It's short, it's simple. It fits a fantasy genre. I've never had a character with that name, and I don't read any novels with that name used for a main character. I know no one named Faye. It has a lot of potential.

Now to find a male character's name. These ones are already vetoed:

Alejandro (and Roberto and Fernando: Don't call my name, Alejandro)
Jessie (Jessie's girl; where can I find a woman like that)

(And if you want to find your name in a song, here's a good place to start looking. No one has yet to sing about a Rebecca...except Cody, who sings me this song: "Re-bec-ca, your name rhymes with 'hecka.'" I don't think that one's catching on.)

New Website Text!

2010-09-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

I've been attempting to hold out on updating on my website until I could do everything—layout, design, images, and text—all at once. What I realized that meant was that I had a crappy, outdated site just sitting there for years. Not a good plan.

Today, I gave my website its first overhaul. Outdated tabs have been deleted. New tabs were created. Every single page has updated text. It's a great weight off my mind to have taken this first step.

There are at least a dozen other things that I want to do to each page. For instance, my website creator mysteriously changed the template on me, so now I have some funky gears at the top of the page. Those have to go. The coloring styles need to be made consistent. So do the fonts and text sizes. Pictures need to be added. Style needs to be added! But the text is there.

For today, I'm happy. Check it out. Let me know what you think.

Finding the Right Voice

2010-09-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there are millions of people around the world who do not experience a tailspin in their life when they are between books. I'm not one of them. If I don't have a current book to read, people die.

Okay, okay, maybe not die. But Cody suffers. There's only so much of my undivided and disgruntled attention the man can take. When I don't have a book, Cody, who loves nothing more than to come home from work and stay home for the evening, is suddenly happy to escape the house at any hour of the night to obtain me one. The only thing that keeps him home are bookstore hours.

Not having a book gives me time to reflect, time to notice the world around me, like the dust on my bookcases and the cat hairs that have accumulated behind my dresser, how hot it is outside, the wailing screams of children playing on the jungle gym outside my apartment. Things best left unnoticed. And without an alternate world to escape into, I find I can't resist pointing out to Cody things he'd rather I remained blithely unaware of, like the gray hairs that have cropped up in his sideburns and the fraying hems of his favorite shirt.

I also tend to roam the house restlessly, which works well for the first hour or so, when I'm in constructive clutter-picking-up mode. After that, I begin to start working on those "someday" projects, but there's a reason they're put off until someday, and I usually end up creating more of a mess than accomplishing anything.

I've been without a book for a full twenty-four hours now. I'm antsy. Cody's noticed. I see the worry in his eyes.

It's not that I don't have books to read, either. I have twenty-seven fiction novels in my TBR pile. The problem is that none of them sound right. I don't feel like reading the latest Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan novel, hoping instead to wait until I have the final three before beginning one (in case I simply can't help myself and NEED to rush through to the end). The #14 Janet Evanovich book looks good, but I just finished reading #13. I have to pace myself with her novels. I love them too much to rush through them all at once. Gail Carriger's second novel looks intriguing, but I know I'm not in the mood to appreciate her voice. (And just in case you didn't know, Carriger is a former NON novelist.)

I have a few new-to-me authors on the shelves, but this restless feeling has really taken hold, and I don't want to miss out on a good author because I'm in an agitated frame of mind, erroneously thinking their stories aren't good when it's actually me who's off. I have just as many books that have been collecting dust on my TBR shelves, and I don't feel like picking them, either. They haven't sounded right for months, and they still don't. Pretty soon they'll be shuffled out of the rotation.

Where does this leave me? With a very problem I know is silly, but a problem nonetheless.

I went to the bookstore today. Nothing looked good. I'm going to give the library a chance tomorrow. I strongly suspect that this will be the perfect solution. In my agent hunt, I came across Bruce Campbell's novel, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Having fallen in love with Campbell on Burn Notice (he plays Sam) and then again as the voice of the mayor on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I'm curious to see what his writing is like. I have a feeling this book captured the attention of my book-reading muse, and she's not ready to try anything else until we've seen this novel.

Even-keeled Optimism

2010-08-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

The recent contest I entered at Miss Snark's First Victim's blog galvanized me to action once again. After sending out a batch of queries in January (I can't believe it's already been eight months!), and receiving many rejections, a few requests for pages, and a few more rejections, I decided to wait a little before querying more. In that time, I've worked on other projects, but I've also been busy tightening that frustrating beginning of the story and also crafting more engaging query and synopses.

This time around, I didn't win the contest—the prize was a request for the first 100 pages of your manuscript by the secret agent. I didn't come in second or third, either. But I did get a request from the agent to review the first twenty pages of my novel! Exciting!
So the first few chapters are in the agent's hands, and I await her response with mild optimism. (Cody's far more excited than I am; I'm feeling decidedly rational and even-keeled about it, but it's nice to have someone jumping for joy.) I'm not putting all my hopes in her, though. I've begun researching and querying agents again. I've read through Madison twice since January, once for edits and once just to read it. I like it. I have a story to sell. I have confidence in my writing.

And while I wait, I'm going through the book for another edit, smoothing out a few bubbles and repetition in the internal conflict—making the edits I know an editor would request now that I've had some distance to see where the flaws lie.

I'm also checking email with an increased obsessiveness, but that's to be expected.

Sanity's Slippery Slope

2010-08-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

For those of us who spend hours agonizing over creating a perfect one-page synopsis of a 300-page novel or the exact correct phrasing to condense an entire novel down to two paragraphs of compelling text in a query letter, I would like to introduce you to SlushPile Hell.

After hours, days, or weeks of meticulous query crafting, it's refreshing to see these horrible, disastrous queries that agents have received. First, it reminds me that what I'm writing is definitely better than a lot of queries the agents are receiving. Second, it reminds me that despite reworking the same ten sentences for the last week, I still have my sanity.

Enjoy.

Critiquing Experience

2010-08-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

I've been reading through the entries in Miss Snark's First Victim's contest, offering my critiques and reading what other people have to say. There's definitely a spectrum of critiquing experience out there! Sadly, I'm not counting myself at the top, either. For me, writing, and knowing what writing is good vs. what is either bad or not quite there, is very instinctual. I can't always point out the specifics of what works and what doesn't. Which is a rather large problem for a writer attempting to perfect her craft!

I can tell I've gotten better over the course of editing Madison, just as my drafts have gotten better. I can also see my critiquing weaknesses—there are many scenes and sentences that made it through several rounds of edits before I realized what the problem was. My opening is a prime example. I've reworked the first chapter so many times I've lost count, and from what I can tell from the critiques I've gotten (and from seeing how little story there actually is in those first 250 words), another round of edits is in order.

I'm pleased and frustrated at the same time with my experience in this contest. Pleased that I'm in it, that I see another way I can improve, and that I'm getting these critiques from people who talk the language. But it's so frustrating to know that my editing eye is not as well honed as I thought it was. Worse, I'm not sure how to go about improving my critiquing skills.

For a start, I'll be reading through everyone's comments on every piece entered, learning from others. But beyond that? What's the next step? How do I make myself better, sharper? Because the faster I can see the mistakes, the faster I can correct them and stop making them.

Getting a Critique

2010-08-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

In 2008, Miss Snark's First Victim began hosting contests on her blog for unpublished authors to help each other out. Over the course of the week, the peers who also made it into the contest (only a limited number of people can participate) critique one another's pieces. Even better, one of the anonymous people critiquing is an agent!

I've been trying to get into one of these contests for the last year, and my timing has been off every time (the window of entries is usually very brief because so many people are waiting, email ready, lurking in the blogger background until she posts "the contest is open," then pouncing). Today, I made it in!

Thus, the first 250 words of Conventional Demon is up for critiques this week, and an agent will be seeing it! Very exciting. Granted, the first 250 words is three paragraphs, so I'm not sure what I'll get out of this, but it will be interesting. Wish me luck at catching the agent's eye and having him or her request to see more of my novel!

Life in Motivation

2010-08-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

Two days after my cat, Zenzo, had to go to the vet, I think we're in the clear. The (surprisingly nummy-smelling) pain killers did their magic, along with the antibiotics, and everything seems normal for Zenzo again. She's playing, she's rolling on her back to expose her belly, and she's purring. Truly, my world is set to rights again.

It's shocking to me how profoundly the health of my cats affects my general well-being. When they get sick, it saps my energy. The world grays at the edges, and my focus narrows to what needs to be done to make them better.
And when they get better, it's like placing my frozen toes in a sunbeam: I don't realize how terrible I've been feeling until I feel better.

Does this seem dramatic? Yes, even to me. But I'm on an emotional high, and so, so happy that Zenzo is better.

In the afterglow, I can think about this recent experience objectively, and from this happy place, contemplate the power of motivation.

Most of the time, I'm focused on my goals: writing, eating healthy, exercising, making money, saving for a house. I'm very self-motivated and driven, but it's a slow drive, a simmer, not a fast-burning fuel. These are, for the most part, long-term goals that I chip away at day by day. I'm motivated, but not with a life-and-death intensity—not with the kind of intensity I want my characters to feel.

Which got me wondering: what would motivate me to an epic story-worthy level? What would light that motivational rocket in me, cause me to embark on journeys around the world, undertake missions with improbable odds of success, and inspire me to achieve the impossible? What would launch me from this office chair and into the pages of history in a big-bang kind of way?

In other words, what would it take to motivate me as I strive to motivate my characters?

The answers are pretty universal: if my loved ones (family—including pets—and friends) were in danger, if I were in physical (or even extreme emotional) danger, if my core beliefs were threatened or attacked. I have fairly high-concept motivations, which from where I sit, makes me very happy with my life. I'm not struggling with youthful motivations like fitting in or finding my place in the world, and I'm not struggling with basic-needs motivations like finding a job or a place to live or food to eat.

Life is good. Really good. But as I write, it's good for me to remember the way it felt when my poor little Zenzo wasn't doing well, and how all these wonderful things that I have melted away, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure she wasn't in pain and recovered quickly. More than all my cushy decisions—write for an hour or edit, take on another project and work weekends or spend the time with friends—those moments when high-concept motivations are ignited are the moments and decisions that define people and characters alike. It's important to remember how those moment feel, even as I'm thankful that they're few and far between.

No Focus

2010-08-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

I try to write every day, working after I finish. I'm a creature of routines, very happy in them. In fact, I'm my happiest when I get my allotted amount of writing time and a good work day, followed by a physical workout, then some blog and NON time, and if necessary, more work time, then dinner and some relax time. When the routine works, it works really well. I've had super efficient days that have made two normal days look like I spent the whole time slacking off.

The routine has not been working lately.

First off, I'm finishing up details on different stages of several writing projects, and while I'm getting a lot done, it feels like I'm spinning my wheels because I'm not seeing a lot of progress. Everything I was doing was necessary, so I'm glad I did it, and now I can focus on Madison again. So I thought today was getting off to a good start.

Then my little girl cat, Zenzo, got either a bladder infection or has crystals in her urine (the vet wasn't able to determine which because they couldn't get a sample from her), but the inconclusive findings took over five hours of Zenzo at the traumatizing vet's office. She came home with a bag of medicines—including some liquid pain killer that smells like a fruity cocktail, as in if someone had served it to me in a bar, I would have sipped it with a smile—and a shattered sense of well-being, which has had her hissing and growling at her brother and slinking around the house to investigate otherwise normal sounds.

Meanwhile, my apartment porch is being repainted. Since I'm on the top floor of a large, three-story building, this involved a lot of noise (though not as much as when they were replacing all the porches last week), and no less than three different workers up and down on the balcony doing various painter-y things, including taping and papering the edges of my windows, which has blocked about half the light I normally get in the house.

Thus: I didn't exercise today. I didn't get a lot of work done. I got half my writing done. I did nothing for NON. The one thing that made the end of my day a little bit better: the discovery of Tempt Chocolate Fudge Non-dairy ice cream. It's delicious! The closest to traditional ice cream I've found. Best yet, it's not just plain chocolate. I highly recommend it.

Patterns in Names

2010-08-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

Before yesterday's post took an odd turn, I had something very simple and a little peculiar on my mind: the pattern of names. Specifically, the number of syllables in the names of protagonists. In the majority of serialized novels I read, there's a very orderly breakdown: if the novel has a female protagonist, her name has four syllables; if the novel has a male protagonist, his name has three syllables.

I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but check out the lists I have:

Female

Anita Blake
MacKayla Lane
Rachel Morgan
Sookie Stackhouse
Stephanie Plum
Izzy Spellman
Kitty Norville
Savannah Reed
Casey Daniels
Avery Baker (if you pronounce it "av-ree" not "av-er-ee")
Madison Fox (even my own main character!)

Male

Jack Reacher
Serge A Storms (if you pronounce it "surge" and not "ser-gay")
Mack Bolan

(Okay, I don't read any of those male characters, but they're the three main protagonists that Cody loves.)

When going through my shelves looking at the protagonists names I found there, I was surprised to note that most other female characters have three-syllable names, but all of them are characters I either no longer follow or whose series have stopped (May Northcott, Aisling Grey, Claire Randall, to name a few). Surprisingly few characters have names with more than five syllables. Meredith Gentry is the one that springs to mind whose series is still ongoing.

So is this a pattern? Is it a societal pattern, that readers feel more comfortable with female characters with four-syllable names? Is it just me? And if I were to try to predict from this list, not only would I purposely make my main character's name four syllables (if it wasn't already), but I think if I were to use a pseudonym, I would pick one with four syllables.

Pattern Geniuses

2010-08-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

I imagine that really intelligent people are really good at putting together subtle patterns from otherwise random events. I'm not talking necessarily about those who score high on the IQ tests or those who are gifted with street smarts, but those who have an intellect that lends itself well to either side of the law enforcement spectrum—con men/women or FBI agents. Seeing the details and how they connect would give you a subtle advantage, enabling you to predict future actions better.

In the con man, this means you'd be able to read your mark more clearly, understand what they're feeling, what motivated them in the past, and be able to manipulate them into the future action you desire. This ability to read the subtle patterns would work much like charisma, or what I feel is often mistaken for charisma: the ability to read people's micro- and macroexpressions really well, enabling you to react to things people think they're only thinking, not telegraphing with their body. In the FBI agent, you'd be able to look at a criminal's profile, the choices they make, and predict where they might be next, thus, achieving what you desire: their capture.

To an extent, authors get to play this genius person. We see into everyone's head, and we get multiple rounds of edits to add in those subtle clues for the reader and the protagonist/villain to notice. Even at that, most authors require a secondary voice or five to help them recognize the missing pieces, the parts of those patterns that they either didn't supply or, often, the parts that don't pertain to the current pattern (i.e., the current story).

From the outside, this genius pattern-reader operates with what appears to be magic. They seem almost psychic or in some way superhuman. Clearly, this genius archetype appeals to our culture. One merely has to observe the popularity of such characters as Sherlock Holmes and Hercules Poirot, such TV shows as Psych and Castle.

I'm not really sure where this is going. I started out this blog to write about names, but my opening line sort of got carried away, and then this tangent happened. I guess the point could be this: this pattern-reading genius is not some innate gift you have to be born with—with practice, anyone will get better. Certainly, some people are born with more of a knack for it, and they'll probably also enjoy it and excel at it faster (because don't we all like doing things that make us feel smart), but that doesn't mean another person with a lot of hard work behind them couldn't achieve the same level.

Writing's a lot the same. Some people seem to be born with a silver keyboard in their hands, and some people have to struggle harder to create those seemingly effortless masterpieces that work magic for the reader.

I Am Mobile!

2010-08-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

It has finally happened! I have a laptop! Now I have instant mobility and the ability to work and write and blog anywhere in the world (with Internet access for the blogging). I'm super excited by all the possibilities, and simply by the thought of editing my novel somewhere other than at home.

I've had one laptop before, or more accurately, Cody had a laptop years ago that I commandeered at random for my own uses. It weighed twice as much as this one, had a smaller screen, and it filtered the heat through the bottom, so my legs would feel like they were on fire and develop a light heat rash if I worked on it too long. All in all, it was usually easier and more pleasant to write at my desk.

This laptop has a 15" widescreen, which, while much smaller than my desk monitor, is still pretty big when it's sitting 2.5 feet from my face.

Once we load Word on here (Cody's task for tomorrow), this laptop is everything I need to get out of the house and write/edit a bestseller. Or go on a vacation and bring my writing with me. Or take a day trip and bring my work along. The possibilities are endless.

And where am I sitting right now while I type? In my front room. Granted, it's not a cute cafe with a tasty drink sitting beside me, but it beats sitting in my office, where I spent the rest of today.

A Family First

2010-07-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, something truly new and unexpected happens. When I learned several years ago that most people have something like 80% of the same thoughts each and every day, I started to pay attention to when I have a completely new thought, something I've never thought of or considered before. Something that takes even me by surprise. I don't know if this is a sad comment on me, but I don't notice brand-new thoughts and ideas every day. Not even every week. But a lot of good story ideas come from these kernels of ah-ha!

Just as rare are the physical moments of experiencing something completely new and unexpected, especially something that I haven't even heard of another person I know doing. Something like that happened to me yesterday—well, to me and to Cody.

I received a call from Cody's work about a half hour after he was supposed to head home. The moment the lady announced herself as a member of the security personnel at his four-story building, my heart did a funny skip, but I was reassured by the lightness of her tone. She verified that, yes, I was Cody's wife, then said: "Your husband wanted me to let you know that he's stuck in the elevator."

My thoughts stuttered. It was simply so unexpected. Holding back an inappropriate giggle, I asked if he was okay. Yes, just fine, only he was stuck in the elevator and the nearest technician was forty-five minutes away. Cody hadn't wanted me to worry, so had asked her to call. After I verified there was nothing I could do, we hung up.

I've never known anyone who was stuck in an elevator before. I've never heard of anyone receiving a call that their spouse was trapped in one either. It was funny, but I didn't really want to laugh until Cody was out safe. Naturally, when he made it home safe and sound, I teased him all night long. I even marked the event on our calendar. It was a bizarre first for both of us.

Open Endings: A Lazy Writer's "Device"

2010-07-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm on a roll after yesterday's rant, and I think now's a good time to point out one of my most loathed "plot devices": open endings. There's nothing quite like getting to the end of a story and not having it really end. The author gets to say, "You choose," but what I hear is, "I was too lazy to wrap this story up in a logical way, so I'm hoping you can do that in your spare time," or, just as bad, "This story is an artistic reflection of real life so of course it can't have a definite ending!"

Open-ended stories are the result of lazy writers. I despise them.
Every single story I've ever read or watched with an open ending left me feeling cheated of all the time I'd spent reading or watching it. If I wanted to write the ending of a story, I'd sit down and my computer and work on my own novels. And, yes, I get it: endings are hard. It's difficult to wrap up all the storylines you've woven, to make sense of the emotional and physical growth your characters have undergone, to provide that feeling that this adventure has come to a close. But if you weren't willing to see the project through to the end, why did you start it to begin with?

My other pet peeve with open-ended plots is that they're never happy. It's never a choice at the end of the movie or book for the main character (who you've hopefully grown rather fond of by this point) to pick between traveling around the world on a brand-new all-expenses-paid yacht with the man of her dreams or taking over the reins at a ranch with a stable full of trained Lipizzans, where she and the love of her life will live our their days in happy splendor riding these wonderful beasts. No, it's a choice between one type of death or the other. Between losing one person or the other. Between giving up a loved career or a loved person. Depressing.

Which seems to be the underlying theme of open-ended plots: this narrow-minded idea that open-ended plots mimic reality, and reality is always a sad, miserable existence. I don't buy into that, not in real life, and most especially not for my fictional characters. (Which just made me think, if I could be reborn as a character in someone else's book, I'd want to be born into a paranormal romantic comedy. I'll have to think a little about exactly who I would want to write it, though.)

I can site a very annoying open-ended waste of time. Do you remember back in June when I was complaining about how nothing kills a story quite like confusion? In there, I mentioned that we were watching Riverworld (spoiler alert). Well, we finished it and it disappointed on yet another level. After watching nearly three hours and two episodes of this miniseries, the ending didn't bother to answer a single question the whole show had raised. Why were these people on this strange planet after they died? Were they dead? Why didn't everyone show up on the planet? Who was evil? Who was in the spaceship? Who are these blue people that kept showing up and playing God? Is the love between the protagonist and his girlfriend real or imagined?

That's a lot of questions, but the author(s) took the easy way out and left the ending up to your interpretation.* I don't want to interpret someone else's creative vision. I want them to interpret it for me, show me what they envisioned. It's the equivalent of an architect showing up to build your home with some prebuilt walls and a few windows, but then asking you to draw the blueprint from the supplies provided. Irritating. Frustrating. Pointless. The only saving grace of an open-ended plot is that now I know to avoid those authors' future works.

*In the reviews on Netflix, I just learned that Riverworld the TV miniseries that I watched is part of a larger work of fiction by Philip Jose Farmer. The reviewer says the TV show didn't cover the full works, only part of it. This doesn't in any way make me more lenient to the show—if you're going to take the time to adapt a series of novels into a miniseries, adapt enough to make sense to the audience. It does make me curious, though, to see if Farmer gave his readers a real ending. Too bad this miniseries ruined any interest I might have had in reading the novels.

Success Does Not Mean You Failed Your Genre

2010-07-19T18:06:00.000-07:00

My recent infatuation with short stories led to me to the library and ultimately to The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection.

I should have skipped straight to the stories, but I started with Terri Windling's summation of the year in fantasy, thinking to learn about books I might enjoy. Instead, I was treated to an insulting and irritating tone of superiority. Windling and I got off on the wrong foot when she states that "...fantasy...has made a solid comeback after too many years when all we saw were those endless Tolkien clones clogging the bestseller lists. ...[N]ow there are some fine alternatives for the serious fantasy reader." (emphasis mine)

In two sentences, she manages to insult me and the majority of her reader base as well as a good many of the authors in the genre she confesses to love. Here, she will shed light on the "real" fantasy novels that were released this year, the "serious" fantasy, books you might not find on your own, if left to fend for yourself among those brainless, pithy fantasy titles found at the top of the bestseller lists.

Her statement implies that those people who sold the most novels and celebrated the most fame did it by being hacks, not true fantasy writers. For how dare those people who dream up whole medieval worlds, build dynamic, fantastic stories that capture the attention and delight thousands of fans across a nation crowd out the real artists? How dare they write a novel of their take on a medieval world, one with their own unique characters and settings? This from the same woman who praises other, lesser-known novels and who selected countless short stories for this collection that are blatant, stated retellings of myths and fairy tales. Shouldn't these be stricken from the shelves with the "endless Tolkien clones," as being yet another in the endless myth and fairy tale clones?

To top it off, the authors had the audacity to write novels that made it to the bestseller lists, apparently nudging out all the better stories that Windling would have selected. Only, they didn't nudge anything out. These novels were sought out by readers across the nation, while those that made Windling's top twenty list simply weren't as popular. The underlying message here implies that these authors dared not only to sell epic fantasies, but they dared to sell a lot of them. They made money. Lots of money. A virtual artist sin.

But wait, there are still some stories left out there for us who are serious about fantasy. For those of us with refined, superior tastes, we still have a few options, a few authors who are still plugging along, producing "real" fantasy, even if it doesn't sell well.

Her attitude cooled my excitement over the whole volume, but I tried not to let it bother me too much. After all, the authors whose works were selected didn't necessarily sit down at their desk and think, What will Terri Windling think is serious fantasy?

I despise the idea that writers who become national bestsellers are suddenly less skilled, less artistic, and less creative than writers who struggle along and hope for the day Oprah selects them for her book club. Success does not make your writing bad, yet I've encountered this attitude time and again. People don't want to be caught reading genre fiction, especially not fantasy. It's somehow not as real, as important, or as good as literary fiction. It's frustrating to find this discrimination even within the fantasy genre. In what other career would you judge amassing a devoted following of people who appreciate your work to be a failure to your craft?

What's in an Age?

2010-07-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

I mentioned yesterday that I don't yet know the age of my next protagonist. It seems peculiar even to me. I mean, how can I plot a novel without knowing how old my main character is going to be? The thing is, I thought she was going to be in her midtwenties. I planned the novel that way. It works. The journey works with her young but with some life experience under her belt. The only thing is that it works so much better if my character is younger. Like sixteen or seventeen.

Most writers wouldn't hesitated at the thought of writing a YA novel, because that's exactly what this would have to become if my character suddenly loses a decade. Sixteen-year-old protagonists don't exist in standard adult fiction.

So why am I hesitating? A bit of principle: I've had a hesitation—okay, an undeserved adversity—to even reading YA novels. I'm not a young adult. I went through that phase and read my share of YA novels during that time. In the last four years, I can count on one hand the number of YA novels I've condescended to read: Glass Houses by Rachel Caine, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, and White Cat by Holly Black. Caine's novel bored me, McKinley's was a reread of a novel I knew I loved in the seventh grade, and Black's novel wowed me. If I'm not reading the material, do I want to write it? On top of that, I just demonstrated that I don't know the market. The first rule any editor or agent will tell aspiring writers is to read, a lot, in their genre.

The market in general is another reason for my reluctance to make my novel a YA novel. YA has taken off in the last ten years. Specifically, YA fantasy has exploded. I've watched this from the sidelines, unsurprised. You merely have to look around our society, or your local TV programming, to see that teens run the show, especially teen girls. They make or break a thousand different markets. Why is Justin Bieber so popular? (Hint: it's not that ridiculous haircut.) Why do any boy bands survive? Because teen girls lusting after them. Why did American Idol last as long as it did in the prime slot? Look at all the similar spinoff shows: So You Think You Can Dance, America's Got Talent, etc. Teens eat these shows up. Other people watch them, yes, but teens drive the audience. I don't think I even need to mention Twilight, either. It's not a novel written for the thirtysomething audience (though it found a market there).

The YA market is hot, but is it at the end of its popularity streak? Would I be latching on to the end of a dwindling fad? Vampires were hot, but Twilight just about put the nail in that coffin. I could name at least five top-selling vampire series out there, but I guarantee you I'd not bother writing one right now. Agents don't want them. Editors aren't buying them. The public is drifting toward different markets. Is the same true for YA novels? Is that bubble about to burst?

There's also the fact that I'm not a teen any longer. I'm not very in touch with what makes a teen tick. Yet, here's the kicker: my main character is going to be dealing with some very traditional teen themes. Yes, they'd work on an adult audience, because we all need to learn who and how to trust and we all want some place to belong, but these themes resonate more with teens, who are facing their own struggles of finding where they fit in the world and who they can trust.

As much on the fence as I am, I'm still leaning toward writing this as a YA novel. It's what speaks to the story, or it's what the story speaks to me, and I know enough by this point to listen.

Post-plotting Slump

2010-07-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

Last week, I finished plotting my next novel. I now know, in a vague, overarcing way, exactly what's going to happen. I have a pretty good idea who my main character is (though not a name, and not an age...but I'll get to that tomorrow). I know who her main friends are, and who her main enemies are, including those who walk the line between being a friend and an enemy. I know the lessons she'll learn. I know her internal conflict and her external one. I know that I would dearly love to see novel on the bookshelves of bookstores everywhere and then to film, as I dream for ever novel before it's even written. Best yet, I know that it is a novel. It's something that will flesh out to be sellable. Always a HUGE plus.

I'd forgotten a part of the process, though. I'd forgotten the post-plotting slump. For weeks, thoughts of this novel have nipped at my heels, kept me awake and night, and generally made a nuisance of themselves, forcing me again and again to the Ultimate Storyboard in my hall to jot down a few more notes. It kept me up one night, flashlight in hand (Cody was sleeping in the bed just off the hall, so I didn't want lights blazing), writing until my hand was cramped and my cats had long since returned to slumber.

Then it was complete. All the points of a hero's journey were there. I was at a good stopping point—I don't plan on writing this novel for another three and a half months, so I don't want to start full character building for a while, because I know doing something like that will only make me need to write the novel right away. So I stopped. I didn't look at the Ultimate Storyboard for a whole day (which is hard to do when it takes up my entire hallway).

I was enjoying the satisfied glow of a novel ready to be written when I was blindsided by a crashing lull in my creative energy. I couldn't think of a thing to blog about. The other book that I'm supposed to be working on didn't seem that urgent. I coasted, content and happy with my progress, happy with my muse.

Like always, this lull, this creative lethargy, took me by surprise. After being so driven during the creative process, I suddenly didn't have an overwhelming need to write anything down. It took me a week to realize what had happened, that I was no longer being chauffeured by my muse and that it was time to slide back behind the wheel and start driving myself again. I'm here, present again behind the wheel, showing up once more for my daily writing time, but very much looking forward to when I get to write this new novel and be chauffeured along once more by the newness of it.

Critiquing Holly Black's Website

2010-07-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking more about what I said in the Halfway through the Year post: that White Cat by Holly Black is one of the books most frequently on my mind this year. It was one of those things I typed and then realized how true a sentiment it was. So, in honor of how much Holly Black has had me thinking, I thought she'd be a good author to feature in an author website critique.

Here are my findings on Holly Black's website.

Overall Impression: I'm so impressed with the breadth of work that Black has produced in a few short years. Short stories, novels, graphic novels, cowriten novels, and co-edited anthologies —it seems like she's done it all. One of her cowritten series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, was also made into a movie and a video game. I would have adored the series when I was younger, I'm sure.

I find myself to be especially strict when it comes to the visual appeal of a page. The wrong color (one that might look good on the author's monitor but not on mine), too much flash, sloppy design, sloppy organization, are instantly off putting and can sway me away from an actual book purchase. Your website is the face of your product, 24 hours a day. It should reflect either your novels or it should simply be clean and easily navigable, if, like Black, you have several genres out there. Black meets every nit picky criteria I have. On every page, the top menus stay anchored, and the text scrolls through an unoutlined box. Each page is clean—black text on a white background, the art to a minimum. It's easy to read and easy to navigate.
Favorite Feature: The Writing Resources page is immensely useful! This is a page that almost all authors have, but this is the first author website I've encountered with multiple links to articles and websites, as well as the usual author's personal advice and several reference novels that she likes. For instance, I'm a sucker for name sites and often get lost in them, so when she suggested Behind the Name, I found a new meaning for my name, making me a snared angel (first and middle name combined). I also just got sucked into ten minutes of reading the Not So Grand Cliche List.

Least Favorite Feature: While she lists all her different writings in one place, not all the links go to the publisher's home page rather than to her novel's page on the publisher's site or even her novel's page on Amazon. Also, the links open in the same page. Okay, I'm actually torn on that. Is it better to have a new browser opened, or is it better to have the link supersede the page you were just looking on? I go back and forth, but for a page that is a list of all her titles, I think I'd rather a separate browser open up so I don't have to keep hitting the "back" button.

What Translates to the As-of-yet-unpublished Author's Site: I'm very enamored with her helpful list of resources, and I think that something like this could be incorporated into my site. I've learned a lot along the way, and a lot of people's articles and books have helped me. The least I could do is link to them.

The Allure of Short Fiction

2010-07-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't written short fiction since college. I haven't read it since then, either. About the time I finished my creative writing class and graduated, I realized that to pack in the information that I wanted, I needed many more pages. Which led to my first novel being over 1,300 pages. Whew! I got that out of my system, and my next novel was only in the low 300s—much better written and far more marketable.

I didn't think I'd ever look back. For one, I want to make a living as an author, and I think even short-story editors who've manned their post at various short-story magazines for the last twenty-five years would be hard pressed to point out one person who's made a good living on short stories alone.

But lately I've found myself thinking about them more. I think it's part of brainstorming several books at once, and one very specific novel that I'm not sure I'm capable of writing. It's a high-concept blockbuster (think Independence Day or 2012 or War of the Worlds) that would require far more research than I feel capable of at this moment—though from my complete unwillingness to reveal even a scrap of the idea, you can tell I'm still considering it.

I've thought through this novel concept from every angle. From the movie I'd love to see it as to the backdrop it could be for a different, smaller story to being an important footnote in history in a story. I've built elaborate research strategies in my head that might help this book one day reach reality. I have five large sticky notes on my wall that detail several different approaches, including my research approach, which is the longest sticky note of all. It's an idea that doesn't want to die.

Here's the strange part: this novel is huge; it's broad-reaching and would almost have to carry several story lines, something like a James A. Michener novel. (You're hopefully seeing my intense hesitancy with taking on this novel, right?) But there have been multiple points in my brainstorming process when I've thought a scene, a moment, an event would make a wonderful short story.

Which has gotten me thinking about other ideas, stories I've abandoned or put on the back burner, and which parts could be picked out for a short story.

I'm also trying to remind myself that just because it's short doesn't mean that it's easy. I remember how much I worked on my short stories in college. I remember the problems of a novel are there, they're just condensed. But there's still that shining allure that a short story would not only be easy (and yes, even as I think it, I laugh), but it would help get some of this story either out of my system or help me clarify how the novel should play out.

Naturally, there's the hope that in the meantime, I could get published!

An Unwelcome Reminder of How Spoiled I Am

2010-07-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, something happens to remind me that I'm a very lucky, very spoiled woman. Lucky in the fact that I was born to a middle-class American family, which immediately put me in a position superior to that of more than half the women currently living on Earth. And by "superior" I mean that I have all my basic needs met, have birth control, access to education, and a strong sense of self-worth and an ability to achieve my dreams. I have a wonderful husband who cherishes me and spoils me on a daily basis, in ways private and public. I have great friends who I love spending time with—so much so that my weekends are booked into August. I have a job that I love, working for myself and from home, two things that suit me very nicely. I love my job so much that when I was without work for two days, I was already missing it.

I also have a great many things that I take for granted, most of them electronic, and most of them are hooked up to the Internet. Which, when something happened to our cable connection this weekend, I realized exactly how materialistically spoiled I am.

We currently run our TV, phone, online gaming, streaming Netflix, email, and Internet through the cable line. It's a lot of dependency on one company, and usually they don't let me down. As for this weekend, I'm still not sure what happened exactly. My best guess is that our bandwidth was seriously hampered. I still had the ability to use the phone (that's always fun when the cable goes out and therefore my phone does too, and in order to let the company know, I have to find a payphone to call them and let them know, because, until two months ago, I didn't have a cell phone), and the basic TV stations that we normally received still came in.

However, I didn't want to watch boring TV. I wanted to watch a streaming Netflix. No dice. So I decided I'd hop online and check out Hulu, thinking it was Netflix having the problem. Nope. I couldn't even get Google's home page to come up. Email was out of the question.

To compound matters, Cody, my resident IT man, was out. When I got ahold of him, the fix was simple and one I honestly should have thought of myself: unplug and replug the modem. Problem solved. It was thankfully an easy fix, but it was a frustrating four hours in which nothing sounded enjoyable but the things denied to me.

The great thing about the whole annoying experience: it reminded me how fortunate I am. All those things listed in the first paragraph—those are the things that matter. In the grand scheme of things, Internet is low on the list. It's become a necessity for my job and for my writing, but were my apartment to be without Internet access for several days, I could find work-arounds. All those important things first mentioned I wouldn't trade and would never be able to replace.

When a Romance Is Just a Romance

2010-07-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

I recently finished two of Debbie Macomber's novellas bundled together in The Manning Grooms. This was my first time reading Macomber, and her writing, both in style and content, took me back to my teens, when I first started reading romances. It's been a long time since I read a story that was just a romance.

Most of my romance reading these days falls into two categories: action romance and paranormal romance, with the occasional mystery romance thrown in.

In these novels, the romance is often the subplot or secondary plot; at most, it is run in tandem with the rest of the action. If it's a paranormal romance, the world often acts like a character of its own, demanding nearly equal time to that of the main characters.

I like these types of romances a lot. I like the weave of seduction and attraction around other events. I adore paranormal fantasy. It's the best of both worlds. There are even action paranormal romances, which are pretty heady stuff.

But I'd forgotten how sweet a romance story that's just a romance story can be. In these two novellas, the main plot is the characters' growing love and the surmountable obstacles that they face. The secondary plot is the small action in the background (a daughter's ninth-grade dance; the male character's campaign for superior court judge). The stories were written in the early '90s, but they felt more dated, like they'd been written in the early '80s, and I think it was merely because there wasn't a werewolf, murder, or magic-worker in sight, no aliens attacking, bounties to collect, or dragons to fight over treasures.

It was a nice reminder (for a woman plotting a new story and who fears not adding enough action) that a story is more than the plot. It's the characters, it's the development of their relationship. This idea transcends romances and is true for all genres. I'd forgotten that a little. It was nice to be reminded that characters can carry a story just as much as a plot can.

The Siren Call of Harry

2010-07-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

I feel so refreshed after this last weekend/vacation. I didn't go anywhere, but I also didn't have a lot of work to do. In fact, I was able to take Monday completely off. No work. No Number One Novels details to take care of. I didn't email. I used my computer for a total of two things (printing out a coupon and settling a debate with Cody), which, combined, took less than five minutes. So little computer time in a day is unheard of for me. I didn't realize how much I needed the break until I got it, either.

So what did I do with all my free time? I spent nearly all of it with my husband, which was splendid. We ran errands and straightened up around the house and did all those little things that get pushed aside all week long and are waiting for you at the end of the week. But we also went on a picnic on the Fourth and had plenty of down time. And we played LEGO Harry Potter.

Truly, I am addicted to these Lego games! I played until my thumb hurt, took a break, and then got sucked right back in. I now own all the Lego games for the Wii, and I'll be happy to shell out another $50 for whatever comes out next. Unless, I suppose, it's LEGO Twilight. I'm just not into Twilight. I've been pondering what the next Lego project could be, since if it follows the formula, it'll be based on a movie series. Oh, maybe James Bond! How cute would that be!

Do you hear that? The melodic sound of tiny Lego characters and suspenseful music? The call of Harry? Do you hear it? I do.

Whiteboard Pictures

2010-07-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if these pictures will show the wonder that is my new whiteboard. Cody wasn't around to pose to show the perspective. Here it is, in all it's current glory:

You can't tell from this picture, but the middle of the board says "The Ultimate Storyboard" just in case anyone who happens to see it forgets its true purpose.

Here's the hero's journey map:

I colored over my current notes out of what I'm sure is misplaced paranoia, but you can see from the different colors that I've several ideas about how this story could play out and I'm still working though the possibilities. Plus, I like playing with all the colors.

It just occurred to me that this board would work really well for a desire board. I have good luck with being able to conjure the things I want in life by drawing them on whiteboards. I'll have to figure a way to draw myself as a New York Times bestselling author.

A Late Favorite

2010-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

A while ago I posted about a few of my favorite birthday presents. This one didn't make it on the list only because it came late: Cody got me a roll-out, tape-up, super-thin whiteboard that's six feet long and three and a half feet tall. After some finagling, we managed to get it stuck up along the only wall with a free six feet of length: the hallway.

I've been playing around with how to use the board. The idea is for it to be my new brainstorming space.
Now, when an idea strikes me, I can simply grab a dry-erase pen and jot away on the board. I also drafted out the requirements for the hero's journey, so that as ideas for the current story I'm brainstorming come to me, I can plot them on the board.

The process hasn't yet become fluid, but it's getting there. I think it will eventually be a combination of sticky notes and whiteboard notes. I also can't decide whether the board would work better as I've been using it (for only one story) or as a place to list and write out ideas for any story that springs to mind. I suspect that I shall figure it out as I go through the entire book process for this NaNo-novel-to-be. However, anything that improves the process (or serves as a very large reminder to just sit my butt down in a chair and write) is something to celebrate.

Halfway through the Year

2010-06-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

We've reached the last day of June, which means we're officially at the halfway point of 2010. So the big question is: how many books have I read so far?

Granted, there are much bigger questions a person might wish to ponder at this point in the year. Questions that would help realign goals with those beginning-of-the-year resolutions. Questions about where you want to be at the end of the year. Both are good things to ponder, but not nearly as much fun as checking over my Excel "Books Read in 2010" spreadsheet.

The number of books read to date is just about where I expected it to be: 36. Compared to 34 at the end of June 2009, I'm pretty much on par with my usual pace. If I keep it up, I can expect to read another 39-41 books this year (for some reason I always read more books later in the year). This means I won't be topping 100 books this year, which was never a stated goal, but something I've wondered if I could do. Maybe next year I should make it a goal.

Of those 36, 21 of the books I've read this year have been by new-to-me authors. No genre has shown itself as a forerunner, either. The fantasy and romance genre are tied at 8 each, unless you count paranormal romance in the same category as regular romance, and then romance dominates by 7.

My top five favorites of the year are (in order read):

Janet Evanovich, Eleven Big Ones
Gail Carriger, Soulless
Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight
Robin D. Owens, Heart Fate
Laurell K. Hamilton, Skin Trade

Oddly, the book I've thought the most about this year is not on the top five: Holly Black, White Cat. The ending of that book pops into my mind at the oddest of times. It was simply so perfect, and I can say that even though I really, really disliked the ending. I know, it doesn't make sense unless you've read the book.

Nonfiction is, as always, a distant last, with only 4 books making it onto my list so far. I've been feeling this strange (for me) desire to research a topic that I've wanted to write a book about for at least a year now, so maybe the nonfiction numbers will jump. I'll be sure to keep you posted, as I know you all wait with bated breath.

Killing with Confusion

2010-06-29T17:56:00.000-07:00

There's nothing that kills a story—whether it's a novel, a TV show, or a movie—faster than confusing the audience. Stories hinge upon the connection the audience makes with the characters. The moment this connection is broken by a confusing event or action on the part of the characters, or even a poorly transitioned time jump, the audience will start to lose interest.

I've had the opportunity to study this phenomenon up close and personally the last few days, due to some questionable reading and watching choices.
It started with our choice to watch Ong Bak 2: The Beginning. We both really enjoyed Ong Bak: Thai Warrior, and had moderate hopes for this sequel. From the opening, though, we were lost in confusion. We couldn't tell the bad guys apart from the good guys, and the dialog did nothing to help. None of the events seemed prompted by anything deeper or more meaningful to the characters than filler between fight sequences. Halfway through the film, the timeline jumped to the past, only the switch was so poorly done, it took Cody and I several minutes to confirm we understood what was going on in the story. By now, we weren't watching the movie so much as playing a game of who can figure out what the heck is going on first, our connection with the characters—that parts that makes you care about what happens to these fictional people—was nonexistent. That the end was absolutely pointless didn't help at all.

Then we decided to watch Riverworld, a TV miniseries, and the verdict is still out on this one. Watching this with Cody was like a study in plot weaknesses, with Cody as the unwitting detective. Invariably, the moment the plot shifted awkwardly, a character made a strange choice, or parts of the mysterious world were explained poorly, Cody would pipe up with a question for clarification (as if I knew the answer). Cody was frustrated. I was amused, mainly because almost every time Cody would question something, a character on the screen would repeat, nearly verbatim, exactly what he'd just asked within the next minute.

Were this a Hollywood movie rather than a made-for-TV two-part movie, all these question I would think would be ironed out, the plot tightened, so that before Cody was asking for clarification (or at least at the same time that Cody was asking for clarification), the characters would be.

We only watched part one of the show last night, and I'm very interested in the second part, but I think Cody could take it or leave it. While he was confused and lacking the crucial connection with the story, I was pulled in by the mystery of the whole story. I'm more of a fantasy fan than Cody. I like the man playing the main character (Tahmoh Penikett) more than Cody. In general, I'm more willing to suspend my disbelief. But if the producers of the show were relying on all these reasons for the show's success, they drastically limited their audience.

Novels are the same. There's nothing worse than a confusing passage, one that doesn't reveal what the characters' motives are or why they suddenly stepped out of character. (Though, I've noticed it's much easier to have an audience forgive a typically mean character who sets aside their usual reactions to do something nice than it is to forgive an otherwise intelligent character who opts to do something stupid. I consider the latter to be a cheap plot device.)

At no point in reading or watching something do I want to lose my connection with the fictional characters. I'm there to live through their story with them. The moment that I am taken out of the story and reminded that what I'm reading/watching isn't real is the moment that the story loses its magic and dies.

Succulent Success

2010-06-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

It's took a few days to gather the supplies, but my birthday succulents are now happily planted in well-draining soil and ensconced in a planter holder outside my office window. Shockingly (to me) this pot is the only of my 15 potted plants that has more than one species of plant in it! I really need to branch out with my planting strategies. Unfortunately, I've run out of surface area near windows on which to set more potted plants, so I'm stuck with the current arrangement for the time being. (Eventually I will live somewhere that has windows on more than one side of the building. And, while I'm wishing, more than one door so the place isn't a total fire trap.)

I think that my arrangement, while simple, turned out rather cute.

Nonstop Research and Loving It

2010-06-21T18:02:00.000-07:00

I have dedicated a fair amount of time recently to studying the craft of writing. I haven't been looking at nonfiction novels filled with guidance about how to create the perfect fill-in-the-blank (character, plot, marketing strategy). I haven't been attending any lectures or going to any classes. I haven't even been reading anything on authors' websites to learn the tips straight from the masters.

I've been studying the old-fashioned way: by reading.

It occurred to me after I plotted out a recently finished novel using my Hero's Journey template, that I have the absolute best job-training research methods available to me. While professionals in other jobs have to read books about their profession or various traits necessary for good job skills (being a good manager, understanding which leadership methods work, and basic on-the-job manuals) I simply get to read.

It doesn't matter what type of fiction I read, so long as I take the time to notice the way the author has put together the elements. What made a character stand out? What made me want to keep turning pages long after my eyes had gotten blurry? What didn't work, dropping me out of the story and making me aware that I was reading black words on an off-white page rather than watching a movie unfold in my mind?

I've been reading mysteries and thrillers lately to understand tension and plot development. There's nothing quite like a mystery to emphasize how key it is to have a well-built storyline. One thing missing, and the reader either learns the killer's identity too soon, or is too confused to care to continue reading. It's a fine level of tension to maintain, a delicate balance of information distribution (including false leads). The same can be said about the suspense of thrillers, especially romantic thrillers. The pace has to fast enough to keep the action immediate, but there also needs to be balance of internal development to complete the character's internal conflict arc.

The key to this "research," of course, is paying attention. I've read thousands of books in my lifetime. I couldn't tell you why some of them worked and others didn't, because I wasn't paying attention—I was too caught up in the story. Sometimes that's how I want it. Reading is still a leisure activity, but that doesn't mean that I can't occasionally learn a thing or two while I'm at it.

A Few of My Favorite Things

2010-06-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

So despite yesterday's post about how much I was working the last few weeks, I did manage to squeeze in a good deal of fun. I saw my friends several times. I participated in a city-organized treasure hunt (so much fun!). I visited with my mom. And I celebrated my birthday!

I made it thirty-one years before having to work on my birthday. I consider this quite an accomplishment. Every other year, I either didn't have work (I didn't start working until I was eighteen), or I took the time off to embrace the celebration of the day. This year, I worked four hours of my birthday. Had I been working for anyone other than myself, I'd probably be immensely bitter for rather unjust reasons, but as it is, I'm more amazed with myself that I managed to make it to my thirties without working a birthday before. Plus, I have a new goal: another thirty years of no-work birthday!

I had a wonderful birthday, and it continues this weekend. What, you don't celebrate a birthday week? If you don't, you're gypping yourself. A week of celebration is the way to go. Cody doesn't ever seem to feel the need for a birthday week (weird, right?), but he's kind enough to indulge me. He, and my family, also spoiled me on my birthday.

Here are my three favorite gifts, in no particular order:

1. Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I've never read a single Stephen King novel. I've never wanted to. I tried to read one when I was a teenager, and it didn't appeal to me and I've had no desire to give him another try.

Even so, I recognize that he's a writer of much talent. Either that, or he's had an amazing marketing strategy, but even the best marketing campaign can't continue to sell crappy books forever, can they?

I thought it'd be interesting to see what he had to say on the subject of writing. I also thought it would be more of a how-to book. I was completely wrong on that account, but I'm greatly enjoying it.

And yes, I can see that King has a knack for writing. I've winced, I've laughed, I've cringed and groaned at his tales, and I'm only on page fifty something. It makes me want to try his Dark Tower series, but I'll have to think about it a little.

2. For some reason, in the last several months, I've become obsessed with owning a glass button jar. I don't sew. I don't knit. I don't need to replace any buttons on any shirts. But I really like a button jar.

Not just any jar would do. I wanted one large enough to stick my hand down in. My mom has a great button jar, though I believe hers is plastic. I can fit my hand down inside, and all the buttons running through my fingers feel really neat. I wanted that experience from my own buttons.

Cody and I looked at an antique fair and found several button jars full of buttons, but I didn't want one that was full. Where would all my buttons go? Plus, the asking price was a little steep.

Cody found me this lovely jar for my birthday. It is taller than my hand is long, and my fist easily fits through the opening. I love it. I was working the other day with it on my desk, and I was overcome with the desire to hug it. I think it's happy with me, too.

I, however, seriously overestimated the number of buttons I've collected in the last twelve years. I've been stuffing all the free buttons that come with shirts and pants into a plastic bag with a few other sewing odds and ends like travel sewing kits and safety pins.

When I opened the button jar, I immediately ran to get the plastic bag, then poured all my buttons into the jar. What you see at the bottom of this jar, not even covering the entire bottom in a layer of buttons, is my vast collection. I'm now on a quest to find button jars full of buttons to fill my jar. Even with a few inches of buttons, I think it'll make a very attractive bookend, don't you?

3. Succulents!

I have been searching for several years to find something I can keep alive on my sun-baked porch. Most plants will survive happily from November until May, and then the intense summer heat kills them off faster than I can keep (or remember) to water them.

My hopes now rest in these four beauties. My parents found these three tiny succulents for me for my birthday, and they look sturdy and willing to tolerate a little watering irregularity. The cactus, a friend got for me, and if I can't keep that little guy alive, perhaps I should just have a rock garden filled with silk plants.

One of my plans this weekend is to get some proper succulent soil, then make some sort of attractive arrangement for my new babies in a pot we recently got as a wedding present.

I've seen a lot of great examples online of creative succulent and rock arrangements that make me think that even as an amateur gardener, I can make something magical with little rocks and my succulents. If I do manage something stunning (or at least not something you'd point a finger at and laugh), I'll post a picture here.

4. (I know I said this was going to be a list of only my top three, but...) When Harry Potter Lego comes out on the 29th, I've already got a game with my name on it waiting for me, and I can guarantee you that it's going to be another favorite present.

Guilt Assuaged

2010-06-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

It's been two very busy work weeks for me. My best work days are usually only six or so hours long, leaving time at the beginning and end for the very important tasks of writing and blogging and finding new NON authors and exercising. These last two weeks, I worked every single day but one. I didn't write. I didn't blog. I only did minimal upkeep on NON. On days when I had prior engagements, I squeezed in working around it. On days when I didn't, I worked at least nine hours—longer if I could still see the computer screen and thought I was still able to perform my job with some sense of quality.

I can hear the immense lack of sympathy now from the majority of people out there who work a minimum of eight hours every day. I hear that derisive voice in my own head, telling me I should push more and harder and embrace the Puritanical work ethic alongside everyone else in this county. I've felt my share of guilt over the matter, too. On days when I work (paid) for only four or six hours, I envision how much more I could make a year if I were to push myself and work a schedule similar to what I did these last two weeks.

I've done that schedule full time before. It's not fun. My value structure doesn't support a workaholic lifestyle, especially at a job that is not furthering my writing career. I become increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied. Ask me to work the weekends on top of overtime during the week, and I'm a grumpy girl.

But short pushes like this one I don't mind, for a few reasons. One, the paycheck is going to be nice. Two, and more importantly, it reminded me why I choose not to be a workaholic for the majority of the year. I value all the other time so much more. When I have to work so much that I've cut out writing time, it defeats the purpose. When I am working so much that I backburner querying, my focus is skewed away from my goals. When I'm working so much that I don't even feel like reading a novel when I finish the day, that's just plain crazy.

Yet, I proved to myself that I could do it. That small voice in my head that taunts me with thoughts of not being able to work the hours necessary to meet future deadlines with writing projects (you know, when I make it big as a published author) has been quieted. I can do it. I can sit at this desk for hours on end and work.

And I know for sure that if all that time had been spent on writing and editing my novels, I probably wouldn't have noticed how long I was working.

Repetitive Motion

2010-06-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

Today, for some unknown reason, the TV in my apartment complex workout room had only one channel that worked instead of the usual 73. On that one channel: a fishing show. So instead of watching Ellen, which I normally do while I exercise, I turned off the TV and ran on the elliptical machine in silence.

To distract myself from being annoyed at the new apartment managers, I decided to contemplate a story idea that's been brewing in the back of my mind. I'm so glad I did. I'd honestly forgotten how well repetitive motion helps me think!

In twenty minutes and a mile and a half, I plotted out an entire story—from beginning to end, act one through three, with a whole cast of characters, escalating conflict, intertwining plot, and a whole new setting/world.

I, of course, hastily typed everything up the moment I was back in my apartment and saved a backup copy to my flash drive. Tonight, I'll run it by Cody, who is a good sounding board and can help me explore possible plot-hole fixes and character traits. I'm so excited to have this whole idea almost completely mapped out! I've had sticky notes of ideas for it as they've come to me up on my wall for the last six months. A little snippet here, an idea there, a magic rule jotted down, a scene typed up. Now it feels like a book, not just an idea.

If this story passes the Cody test, I am almost certain it will be my next NaNo novel, and I'm glad to be plotting it out now, in advance. One of the key things I learned from my last NaNo novel was the importance for me of having the acts clearly defined. The other thing that I learned was to make the magic crucial to the story. 2009's NaNo story fizzled out because of those two large flaws. It makes a great character sketch and scenes for another novel, but it needs a full novel's worth of work. I'm sure there will come a time when ideas for that novel are brewing in my mind, but for now, I'll concentrate on this new idea.

Hero's Journey: Leap Year

2010-06-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

When I posted the Hero's Journey Template, I really wanted to provide a real-life example to explain the whole concept, not just provide the template. However, I drew a complete blank of any story's hero's journey, flipped through The Writer's Journey a dozen or so times, and hit "Publish Post" when my stomach told me I was simply wasting time on lackluster brain cells that obviously needed fuel.

Today, I'd like to finish that post with this one, a true breakdown of a hero's journey, using the movie Leap Year as the example (since that's the most recent movie I've seen). As bonus credit (for me), this little exercise is the first of many to help me study my craft and improve my own work. If anyone wants to submit their own hero's journey breakdown (or link to one), I'd love to see it. I've determined that it's time for me to focus a little more on my own writing education...but that's a different post.

Warning: this post is going to be a huge spoiler if you've not seen Leap Year yet.

Hero's Journey: Leap Year

I didn't include this in my template, but every good story includes a main character (or several) with two struggles, one internal and one external. Here, Anna's external struggle is getting herself to her boyfriend's side so she can propose; her internal struggle is determining if she really wants the life she's so determined to wedge herself into.

Ordinary World: Anna, the main character, lives in Boston in her very organized and structured life with her boyfriend of four years.

Call to Adventure: Anna wants to be married. She thinks her boyfriend is going to propose.

Refusal of the Call: Anna waits for her father in a bar, a barfly proposes, Anna refuses. I'm a little fuzzy on this step. Either her refusal here to just get married (which is her goal) is the refusal, or the fact that when her boyfriend doesn't propose, she doesn't say anything and lets him leave is her "refusal" to act.

Mentor: Her dad, who drops on screen long enough to tell the tale of Anna's grandmother, who proposed to her grandfather on February 29, citing an old Irish tradition about leap years and women proposing.

Crossing the Threshold: Anna decides to do the proposing and hops on a plane to Dublin, Ireland, where her boyfriend is currently at a conference.

Tests and Trials: Everything travel related that could go wrong, does. The plane is grounded in the wrong airport, the bus takes her to the ferry terminal right after the last ferry braves the storm, the boat she hires can't make it to Dublin and drops her off in a town a day's drive away, the taxi she hires rolls into a river, etc.

Allies: Declan, the taxi driver turned love interest

Enemies: the inn owners who won't allow unmarried people to stay the night, mother nature herself

Approach of the Innermost Cave: At a wedding they crash, Anna finally lets go of her urgent rush toward Dublin and decides to wait out the wedding for a ride from the pastor. Her self-centeredness is stripped away, and we see Declan's troubled past for the first time. She and Declan have a few quiet moments, one in which they almost kiss, and Anna recognizes the good traits in Declan. They are united, ending up sleeping the night together on a bench by the bus station and setting out together for Dublin the next morning, a united group with a "we're in this together" mentality.

Ordeal: Anna must choose between Declan, a man who has stood by her side through all the movie's trials, who has shown her kindness and a different side of herself than she's experienced before, and who respects her and treats her like a good friend, and her boyfriend, a man who takes her for granted, but who has everything she thinks she wants...including a ring.

Reward: She accepts her boyfriend's ring and is finally engaged.

Road Back to Ordinary World: Anna and her boyfriend return to Boston, to their new amazing apartment and her best friend who seems all the less friend-like after seeing the kind people along Anna's journey. She has everything she should want, and her life is once again very orderly and organized.

Resurrection: A ring and being engaged did not fill the void that she expected it to. When she pulls the fire alarm in her apartment and has to pick the item she would take (a question proposed to her by Declan during their trek to Dublin, and a question she previously couldn't answer), there is nothing in all her possessions or life that she needs. Nothing she would take from a burning building. What she needs is clearly not in her ordinary world. (Also, there's a nice juxtaposition here between Anna, who looks around and sees nothing worth taking, and her boyfriend, who is so preoccupied with grabbing up all his electronics, finding everything in their material world to be of worth. Of course, there's also the obvious point that he doesn't even worry about Anna during this fire scare; he's much to preoccupied with himself.)

Return with Elixir, Two Worlds Combined: The two worlds combining is very literal here: American Anna goes to propose to Ireland Declan. He has everything she wants; he is what she would want to have safe from a burning building. He is the man she loves, and she returns to him with the idea of building a solid relationship together, not striving to achieve a status symbol of marriage. Of course, by accepting that the person and their daily life together are more important than the ring and all her previous possessions, Anna gets her original desire, and Declan proposes marriage. Anna now has the best of both worlds. There's even a short scene where Anna shows she's no longer over-controlling her life and not as obsessed with her material items as she and Declan drive off on their honeymoon.

Musing on Muses

2010-06-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't used to understand when authors would talk about their muse as if it were a secondary person. About how their muse gave them ideas, presented them with a new character, stepped in and killed off a character unexpectedly, etc. I figure, if you're the person writing the story, you're the one creating the characters and doing the killing. There's no second person there. There's no attractive woman, maybe with a harp and long flowing red curls, who whispers new ideas in your ear when you're thinking of someone else.

As you can see, I had a very Hollywood-version idea of a muse.

And then I wrote three and a half books, and somewhere along the way, I began to understand it. I felt this other force at times, one that had my fingers flying over the keyboard, typing eloquent passages, realistic dialog, and turning the story in an unexpected direction, catching me completely off guard. I had moments of brilliance while brushing my teeth reading someone else's novel, while talking with friends about completely unrelated ideas, while driving. I wasn't consciously attempting to create story ideas. I wasn't looking to build upon my character's personality. The idea was simply there.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped mocking authors (to Cody and on this blog) who refer to this secondary influence in their work, their muse. Somewhere along the way, I attracted my own muse. She formed in harmony with my work, and I don't think I could continue to write without her.

My sister sent me a TED video today of Elizabeth Gilbert talking about that other force that rides along with an author (or artist). It got me thinking about my own relationship with my muse, and my intense gratitude for those ole! moments of my own.

Elizabeth Gilbert says it far better than I ever could:

I intensely love the story of the poet who experienced poems as a force of nature that she had to catch before it passed her by. How incredible!

The Hero's Journey Template

2010-06-02T18:06:00.000-07:00

I talk a lot about the hero's journey on my blog and leave Christopher Vogler's very educational The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers on my Shelfari widget because I'm almost constantly referencing or thinking about Vogler's advice. Having just finished my first read through of Madison book 2, the hero's journey has been on my mind a lot as I try to determine whether or not the book has all the necessary elements.

In an attempt to obtain a clear picture of the whole novel, I'm getting ready to sit down with my pages and plot it out, scene by scene in an Excel doc. It sounds like a tedious process, but in doing so, I find a lot of the plot flaws along the way, and when I have a finished scene-tracker Excel doc, it makes a great reference for all future edits.

It also, potentially, helps me see if I have a strong third act. I'm almost positive that I have the structure of three acts. My hesitation is based on the fact that I think I might actually have a second and a third act, but a precariously defined or absent act one. The edits could go several different ways, and I want the clarity of an Excel doc to see the book at a glance. The easiest way to determine if a novel is complete is to assign the points of the hero's journey to it; if one of the elements is missing, my novel isn't complete.

So in light of my next step, I thought I'd share the basic steps of the hero's journey and the general template of any great story's structure—from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings, they all follow these general guidelines:

The Hero’s Journey

ORDINARY WORLD:

CALL TO ADVENTURE:

REFUSAL OF THE CALL:

            MENTOR:

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD:

TEST AND TRIALS:

           ALLIES:

           ENEMIES:

APPROACH OF INNERMOST CAVE:

ORDEAL:

REWARD:

ROAD BACK TO ORDINARY WORLD:

RESURRECTION:

RETURN WITH ELIXIR, TWO WORLDS COMBINED:

Critiquing Christy Reece's Website

2010-06-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

This three-day weekend (which was a four-day weekend for my hubby and me), I jumped the gun on my website. I know I don't have a lot of information to put up, but I get so excited by looking at all these authors' sites and then I look at my current website, and I feel the compulsion to DO SOMETHING. So Cody and I hashed out a few things—new (tentative) template, new text, new siders and headers and tabs. We almost bought Dreamweaver, but couldn't quite justify the expense. Nothing's up yet. Nothing's close to going up yet, either, but we made a start.

Of course, it inspired me to hop around a bunch of authors' sites while we were looking for further inspiration. I have a list of authors for future critiques, now. Christy Reece isn't on that list. However, last night, when I was unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep after realizing that my birthday is only 14 days away, I had this wonderful thought: What if I sold Madison in a three-book deal, with three books coming out back to back over the span of three months. Then the next year, another three, so that in two years, I could have six books sitting on the shelves of bookstores everywhere!

I had a glorious vision of my titles lined up on a shelf and Madison's adventures in fans' hands everywhere. Is six books in two years possible? For me? I don't know. Reading through Book Two made me think it was. If I got the deal now, with three books coming out next year, it would give me a year to edit book two and write and edit book three. Then a year later, three books to write and edit. Yikes! It sounds hard, but doable. I don't know if I would have this faith (or even if I would have had this thought) if not for two things: my love of all things in Madison's world and the plethora of ideas I have for future novels, and Christy Reece.

Christy Reece was a Number One Novels author last year, and now she has six books on the shelves of bookstores everywhere! Last year, a debut author; this year, a seasoned author with a shelf presence. Incredible. So in honor of my awe, I thought I'd take a look at her site.

Overall Impression: That's a mighty tall banner art at the top of every page. I have a large monitor, and it takes up almost everything above the fold (what you can see on the page without scrolling). The art's not doing much to promote the books, either. Otherwise, the site's a nicely shaped and colored, and easy on the eyes. There's not a great deal of depth, but that doesn't detract. It's easy to navigate, which is always a plus.

Favorite Feature: On the News/Contests page, Reece has developed a good compromise between a time-intensive blog and a generic "here's when my books are coming out" news page. Updated at least weekly, her News/Contests page provides a surface insight into her world as a writer, and still offers fans a little something extra with the occasional contest.

(On a side note for people attempting to create their own website with an integrated blog, I'm very intrigued by how this one page is run by blogger, while the rest seems to be part of an independed website/design. Cody's checking out the source code on it now to see exactly how she did this magic.)

Least Favorite Feature: This is a toss up between two items. The first is very nit picky: I don't like the fact that every page has a "Join Christy's Mailing List" option. If people want to be on a mailing list, they'll find the information, even if you put it only in one place. My other least favorite feature is the fact that when you go to the Books tab and click on a book, it takes you to that novel's page (all of which are done very nicely with the back-cover blurb and some reviews), but you can no longer select another book from this page. You have to navigate back to the main Books tab, then select a new book. If each of these book pages had a sidebar links list of the other books available (like her News/Contests page includes links to previous entries on the right), navigation would be streamlined.

What Translates to the As-of-yet-unpublished Author's Site: This site didn't offer me as much inspiration as the author herself did. The only possible translatable items would be a Links page (though I feel that a lot of this could be incorporated into the FAQ page, if necessary), and a few FAQ questions, like "What books or authors have influenced your writing?" That's a good question, the answer of which should give readers a hint of the type of book and tone of book I'm writing.