Shanna's Journal

Fear

2012-02-02T12:24:00.001-06:00

I got a good start on the revisions yesterday, though it was on the part that doesn't need so much revising. It starts getting more challenging today. Since most of what I'm revising right now is to make the narrator seem younger, I'm thinking I might start hand-writing "diary entries" for the critical scenes, then pull impressions from those to put into the interior monologue. It will be an experiment. Once I do that for a while, it may start coming more naturally.

I got more than my usual quota of hugs last night from the preschoolers. They were unusually clingy, and even the usual non-clingy ones were being very clingy, but it wasn't in a sad, weepy way. It was more of a need for contact, it seemed. I couldn't sit down without instantly having at least two trying to crawl into my lap, and when I was standing I usually had one clinging to one side and one holding my other hand, unless we were dancing, which we did a fair amount of, in which case I usually had one hanging on each hand. We're learning a new song by osmosis, so we just play the CD and dance around, and it seeps into their brains. And usually my brain, but I then had regular choir practice and we're doing a lot of old spirituals, and those really embed themselves in the brain. We get a lot of variety, doing spirituals this month and doing Verdi for Easter. I had nightmares last night about the song we're doing Sunday. Not that it's awful, but it's very syncopated, so it's hard to count, and that makes doing the solo a little more complicated and nervewracking. Oddly, I wasn't having nightmares about singing the solo. The song just followed me through my dreams in a nightmarish way.

I've been reading some psychology books about anxiety and fear in an effort to deal with the singing stage fright. I know that psychological self-help isn't necessarily a great idea, but as I can't afford real therapy at the moment and I'm working on a relatively minor and very specific issue, I figure that if I do it wrong it's not like I'm going to end up in a tower with a high-powered weapon, so I'm pretty safe. I've tried digging into my history to figure out why I have this strange thing about people hearing me sing, and I can't think of any particular event that scarred me for life. I've always felt self-conscious about singing in front of people. It's a vulnerability thing. Maybe it's because it was something important to me that I thought (or hoped) I did well, and therefore it mattered too much to risk letting other people judge it. Then not singing in front of people ever made it scarier to do so. I think a lot of my issue is physiological. I seem to have an overly sensitive sympathetic nervous system. Very tiny things can send me into major fight-or-flight mode. Just thinking about an embarrassing situation can make me turn bright red, my hands shake and my pulse race. It takes nothing at all to work myself up into a state, and that's kind of what happens with the stage fright. My body just goes nuts, shaking, sweating, fast pulse, shallow breathing, etc., which makes it difficult to control my voice, which means I don't perform as well as I'd like, which makes me even more nervous about the next time.

As for what to do about it, most books I've read seem to come down to exposure. By doing the scary thing repeatedly, you eventually teach the unconscious part of the brain that controls those responses that this situation is not actually life-or-death, so it can chill. You get used to doing the thing you're afraid of, and it becomes more predictable. The trick is that it takes a lot of cooperation from others to get the kind of exposure that leads to reducing stage fright. It helped when I was taking that voice class, but even there we only sang in front of the class five times a semester. To some extent, the preschoolers help, because I'm getting used to singing in front of them every week, and while they sometimes make fun of the fact that they think I sing opera, they also tell me they like how I sing. I just need to find more venues that are bigger and more adult than the preschool class but not quite as big and scary as the 800-seat sanctuary in a church service where I can get used to performing and create a comfort zone, and I need to do it more often than a couple of times a year. But I can't get assigned that many solos without being a total diva. I need to find a fear of singing support group, where we meet once a week or so and everyone sings a little something in front of the others. Maybe I'll talk to our choir director about that since I know there are others with the same problem, and he's a voice teacher and performer, so maybe he'll have some ideas.

Interesting factoid from the latest book I read on the subject of fear: The Blitz during WWII was meant by the Germans to be a psychological attack. The idea was to be so relentless in the bombing that the civilian populace would beg their leaders to surrender to make it stop. But there was a fundamental flaw in the plan. What the Germans saw as relentless the British saw as predictable, and that made the attacks less frightening. They bombed just about every night at the same time, and instead of the civilians going crazy with knowing that another attack would come, they got used to it, so they got to a point where it became a part of life and the attitude was, "Oh, the Jerries are half an hour early tonight. More tea?" To achieve psychological terror, the bombings should have been a lot more random and sporadic and less relentless.

New Beginnings and Old Crushes

2012-02-01T11:52:00.000-06:00

If yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of my layoff, then I guess today is my ten-year anniversary of not having a boss. I didn't really know that it was the start of anything at the time, though. I got laid off on a Thursday, and I'd already planned for that weekend to be a big reading binge, since I'd just gotten into the Harry Potter series and had finally got the fourth book (the most recent at the time) from the library. I just started a day early on the reading instead of letting myself worry about what I'd do for the future. I figured that could wait for Monday. I do recall that my reading was frequently interrupted, as all the former clients were calling to express their outrage and to offer me freelance work, and by the end of the day I had a meeting scheduled for Monday, and that was what made me decide to try not looking for a job at all. I'd also just come up with the idea that became Enchanted, Inc. and although I didn't start writing it for more than a year, it was in the back of my head that I wanted to be able to write that book.

I dug up my old Air Supply tape, and I learned that listening to the romantic angst music from my youth doesn't work for dredging up those feelings, since now that music just gives me the rosy glow of nostalgia. And, you know, some of it was really good. It's got a melody, good lyrics, and some of it you can even dance to. I was doing a foxtrot around my kitchen while cooking yesterday. I do prefer the songs where "the other guy" who's not the usual lead singer takes the lead because I like his softer, huskier voice better than the brasher voice of the usual lead singer. It may even be worth getting some of this on CD.

Actually, romantic angst is so far in my past that it's hard to remember. For the past fifteen or so years, most of my romantic angst has been of the "how can I make sure he knows I'm not romantically interested in a way that will allow us to remain friends?" variety. Or, with some of the "you spoke to me, so obviously you love me" convention stalkers, the romantic angst has been of the "how do I make it clear that I'm not into him in a way that won't make everyone else think I'm a raging bitch?" I don't think I've met anyone I was really into romantically and wanted to like me that way since the 90s.

I did have a lot of the unrequited love angst as a teen, in spite of most of my crushes coming because I thought the guy might be into me. My usual pattern was that I'd notice behavior in the guy that made it seem like he was taking an interest, and then I'd get excited about the idea that someone might like me and work myself into a big old crush. And then usually it would turn out that he didn't like me that way and I'd discover it when I learned he had a girlfriend. Usually, all the invitations to come over to his house and hang out turned out to be strictly because he wanted my help with his homework rather than him using the homework as a convenient excuse to invite me over and hang out, as I'd hoped. It's possible that I might have been right once or twice, but if so, then for some reason it totally freaked him out to get the slightest hint of an idea that I might like him back so he fled screaming (figuratively) rather than it being a nice "I like you, you like me!" start to a relationship. It's kind of hard to get myself back into that frame of mind, since I have the benefit of hindsight and perspective. I've seen how all those guys turned out, and all I can think was that I really dodged a lot of bullets. I find myself just laughing at that pining. But I do think I can recall the feelings well enough to write them. Oddly enough, it's not music or any of the other usual emotional triggers that brings it all back. It's the memory of being on a school bus, and then two particular scenes that happened on school buses come back in a vivid flash.

While I was digging around for old tapes, I ran across a CD I haven't seen in years and have been trying to find for ages, so that was good. It somehow ended up in a box that had nothing to do with music. Tapes were only in there because they'd fallen in from somewhere else.

Today I'm going to get down to work on the revisions, though it will be a short work day due to three choir rehearsals -- preschoolers, chorale and choir. I have a solo in the chorale piece for Sunday. It's an old-timey gospel number that's essentially a solo with choral backup, and the director has divided the bits of the solo among us. I'm really only "solo" for a few words and then sing the verses together with an alto, since they have an alternate higher melody written in and that's the part I'll sing, so it will be kind of harmony (even though I don't think they're meant to be sung together). We'll see how it works. It's all pretty low in my range because it's written as an alto solo, but for once I'll get to bust out my torchy jazz voice in church. I can sing really low if I'm allowed to get torchy with it. It's just a challenge when I'm supposed to be sounding classical.

Layoff Day!

2012-01-31T12:25:00.001-06:00

Today marks a momentous anniversary. Ten years ago today I got laid off from my last "real" job at a PR agency. I had a lot of money in savings and I had some freelance opportunities, so I took the plunge and instead of trying to find another job, I decided to try to make it on my own and really focus on my writing. And I haven't had a "real job" since then. I've worked for myself for longer than I worked at any other job. It hasn't always been easy. I've mostly been able to make it because I had all that money in savings. In my best years, I've come close to earning what I did in my PR job. In my worst years, I've been below the poverty level and living off my savings (and think of that before you illegally download a book -- most authors are in the same boat I'm in). But I've been far, far happier even without money than I ever was in a regular job with a steady paycheck. I guess I don't play well with others because going to an office and dealing with people all day is so draining to me that I don't get much writing done and I can't sustain much of a social life. Staying at home and focusing on writing all day means I can have a life outside work without going insane.

I celebrated by going to the dentist. Whee! Actually, I happened to have a cleaning scheduled for today. Then I stopped by the church to pick up the music for Sunday, since I got an e-mail this morning letting me know I have a solo in the piece and I thought practicing it before choir practice might be a good idea, and then I got groceries.

This afternoon, I have a good adolescent wallow scheduled. I re-read I Capture the Castle yesterday because there are a lot of parallels between that narrator and my heroine, even though the stories are entirely different, and I think that book does such a beautiful job of capturing that coming-of-age emotion. It's probably a good thing that I didn't discover it when I was a teenager or I'd have become obsessed and filled scores of notebooks with pretentious journal entries about my life, trying to imitate what was in the book. I also re-watched the movie last night, and while I normally like the movie and book equally, it really doesn't work to watch the movie too soon after reading the book. If it's been a year since I read the book and it's not too fresh, the movie seems like the perfect adaptation. If the book is too fresh in my mind, the movie bothers me because while it gets a lot right, it gets the wrong things wrong, and the book is so vivid that I'm not sure if what I'm remembering seeing in my head is from the book or the movie, so I'm disappointed when a scene I know I've seen isn't actually in the film.

Being locked in a castle dungeon would probably do wonders for my productivity. For now, I have to settle for being locked in my office or on the "library" loft outside my office.

Anyway, I think I've found the parallels from my own teen experiences to some of the things my heroine experiences, and now I'm going to dig out my college acting textbook to re-read the chapters on applying your experiences to a character because it works just as well in writing. It's funny that the college textbook I've most often referred to after college and the course that I probably use the most was the "acting for non drama majors" (aka Jock Drama) course I took pass/fail my senior year because I had almost all the credits I needed to graduate but needed one more class to maintain "full time" status and keep my scholarships, but I was interning and needed a light course load. I was one of three people in the class who wasn't a varsity athlete. But that made it very low-pressure for performing because no matter what I did, I'd be miles ahead of most of my classmates. Strangely, every character I played in the scenes we had to act out was the flighty, scatterbrained, slightly slutty type. That meant I really had to stretch out of my comfort zone. Fortunately, it was spring semester, so I didn't have to worry about traumatizing the football team (I did that enough in the fall when they were trying to date my roommate).

Maybe tomorrow will be the "celebration" day, since it will mark the tenth anniversary of the start of my self-employment. I may go to the library and get something decadent at the coffee shop next door.

Recapturing My Youth

2012-01-30T12:29:00.001-06:00

I finished the latest draft of The Book That Will Not Die on Saturday -- well, except for one line that I subsequently realized needs to be fixed. Meanwhile I had a chat with my agent on Friday about revisions I need to make on another project. That's going to require a complete mental gear shift as I'm changing styles of writing, kind of story, time period, point of view, narrator and age range.

The difficult one is age range. This is theoretically a young adult book, but the heroine is still coming across as too "old." When my agent was suggesting the things that might make her seem more like a teen, they were all things I thought I put in the book, so I probably need to take them a bit further. I wasn't ever really a "teenager" in the way we tend to think of them. I think I was born thirty and was always old for my age until I reached that point and am now young for my age, having passed that point.

But then if I'm honest with myself, I did go through all those feelings, even if I didn't share or express them or act on them. You can behave maturely even if you're churning up inside, and what I remember is more the behavior than the feelings.

So, the project for the day is a mini "retreat" to change mental gears. I'm reading some YA books that come close to the kind of heroine I'm writing -- reserved behavior, but deep feelings -- and I may even do some journaling to try to get my mind back to my youth and remember my first crush or the boy I liked in high school that I thought also liked me but who always went cold just when I thought we were getting close. Now I wish I'd kept a diary where I recorded all those deep thoughts. Instead, I sat on the back porch and poured out my feelings to my dog because he was warm and cuddly and obviously loved me back in the way a diary couldn't have. It's nice to get a "but I love you" response when you're crying about some boy not loving you.

Now I need to get out the Air Supply, the soundtrack to my adolescent romantic angst (I switched to Survivor in late high school and college, even though most of their music came during my high school years). Unfortunately, I only had Air Supply on LP and no longer have a turntable. I may have a cassette I made so that I could indulge in the romantic angst in the car, but I'm not sure it still works. I'm sure YouTube will come through in a pinch.

Warning to my friends: I may be very difficult to deal with for a while until I get into the mindset well enough to write it and then get into the groove enough to separate myself from it.

A Not-So-Brief Intro to Downton Abbey

2012-01-27T12:43:00.000-06:00

I'm still liking my crazy book. In fact, I was up until almost one in the morning because I couldn't put it down while editing. I'd get to the end of a chapter and say just one more chapter, until my eyes would barely stay open anymore and I knew I wasn't truly editing. That's got to be a good sign, right, if as many times as I've read this (this has to be about the tenth time), I can't put it down?

I'm going to have to really work today if I want TV time tonight, since an era ends with the series finale of Chuck. It's been a shadow of its former self lately, but I still want to see how it ends. However, my current TV obsession is Downton Abbey. I have to admit that it's essentially a soap opera, but it has British accents and history and it's on PBS, so it counts as Quality Television.

We're in the second season now, but for those who haven't yet discovered it, the series follows a British noble family and their servants, starting in 1912. The earl is one of those British noblemen who bolstered his dwindling estate by marrying an American heiress. That worked out well for him, as they ended up falling in love and being very happy while the estate thrived, except for one teensy detail: they had three daughters, and the lovely home and all the lovely money (including the money the wife brought to the marriage) has to go with the title to a male. It's not too bad because the earl has a slightly distant cousin who has a son (making him an even more distant cousin -- they aren't hillbillies or the royal family) who is engaged to the oldest daughter, Lady Mary, which means all the lovely money and the lovely house will stay in the family. And then the cousin and the cousin's son go down on the Titanic. Oops. Then things get interesting.

Lady Mary: Whew, I really dodged a bullet there.
Lady Edith, the middle sister: Wow, you really are a cold-hearted bitch. I see you've already gone into half-mourning. You may notice that I'm still wearing all black.

Normally, Mary would be the kind of character I hate, the beautiful snobby one. But I love her. Some of it may be residual awesome because Lady Mary is also Susan, Death's granddaughter, the nanny feared by the monsters under the bed, and I could totally see Mary riding Binky, Death's pale horse, and wielding a mean fireplace poker. But we do start seeing cracks in her icy facade that reveal a lot of vulnerability, and the surest way to make me crazy about a character is to first make me not like the character and then force me to change my opinion. Then I'll defend the character to the death.

After the Titanic, the new heir is Matthew, who is (gasp, shudder) a lawyer. This isn't a lawyer joke. They're just scandalized that he has a job. It's probably because his father set such a poor example for him by being a doctor. You know you're in bizarroland when the lawyer son of a doctor isn't considered a good catch until he becomes a potential future earl. Maybe this is why I like the series -- it counts as fantasy, as this place is even stranger than Narnia. The earl decides to make the best of the situation and invites Matthew to come live at Downton so he can get to know the estate he'll inherit and start studying Earling 101. Matthew's not entirely keen on all this and insists on continuing to practice law, saying he can earl on weekends. That baffles the family, mostly because they're not familiar with the concept of some days being different from others. (See, it's a total fantasy world. I bet they even have weekends in Narnia.) They also think it might be good if they can marry him to one of the daughters, which he's not keen on until he gets a look at Mary, and then he figures he might be able to take one for the team.

But the best thing about Matthew is his mom, a former nurse who is better known to Doctor Who fans as Harriet Jones, Prime Minister. She's totally on board with this nobility thing, even though she's awfully middle class about it.

Isobel: Isobel Crawley, future earl's mother
Everyone at Downton Abbey: We know who you are.
(that will only be funny to Doctor Who fans)

Isobel's nemesis is the earl's mother, Lady Violet, played by Maggie Smith, who is brilliant at every little moment, from her witty lines to her facial expressions to sitting in a swivel chair. Seriously, one of the best moments in the entire series consists almost entirely of Lady Violet and her first encounter with a swivel chair when she visit's Matthew's law office. Isobel likes to shake things up and Lady Violet wants everyone to stay the same. If she had her way, they might still be wearing animal skins and living in caves. It worked for their ancestors, so why should they presume to change things?

There's all sorts of other stuff going on, including the new valet that everyone hates until they all love him, except for the evil footman and the evil lady's maid, and then there's the sibling rivalry, the politically minded youngest daughter and the radical Irish chauffeur, the maid who wants to be a secretary and sneaks around studying typing, and the kitchen maid who doesn't realize she's totally barking up the wrong tree. Oh, and there's the dead Turkish diplomat in Lady Mary's bed, which becomes an ongoing problem (the fact of him -- he's not still there stinking up the house).

After a rocky start, Mary and Matthew actually become friends because they may be the only two people in this group who can carry on an actual conversation and say what they think to each other instead of maintaining the social facade. And then they fall in love and he proposes, but you know it can't be that easy. There's that issue of the dead Turkish diplomat that she feels she ought to tell him about but that she's afraid to tell him about, and then her mother has a surprise pregnancy, so he might not inherit, after all, and he thinks she's delaying because while she might marry the future earl, she won't marry a (gasp, shudder) lawyer. And then World War I starts.

That may have been a bad move. Well, yeah, the war was a very bad idea, but it also means that with Matthew off at war that makes it a challenge to come up with reasons for him to be around so we can have scenes of him and Mary gazing at each other. You see, he's moved on and gotten engaged to someone else, just as she's realized that she really does love him. So she keeps a picture of him under her pillow and prays for his safety every night, and gave him a cherished childhood toy to take to the front as a good-luck charm, but it's just because he's her beloved cousin (not too close a cousin, mind you, as they're not hillbillies or the royal family). And he takes her good-luck charm with him when he goes into battle and always seems to go to Downton, up in Yorkshire, first on leave rather than to London where his fiancee is -- but it's because of his family, of course, including his beloved cousin.

And they have lots of conversations along the lines of:
Mary: I'm just happy for you that you're happy being engaged to someone else.
Matthew: I'm happy that you're happy for me, since I just want you to be happy.
Mary: Well, I can be happy if you're happy.
Matthew: Then that makes me happy.
Lavinia (Matthew's fiancee): Oh, for heaven's sake, will you two just kiss already? I mean, I'm engaged to him, and I spend all my free time while he's at war or at Downton on leave writing romantic fanfic about you two.

I love me some good romantic pining, especially when it involves a man in uniform and a woman in lovely period costumes. I'm totally unspoiled, even though the second season has already shown entirely in England, but by the rules of war movies, Matthew might be in danger, what with that last heir thing and an engagement, but by soap opera rules, since he's in a romantic triangle, that might give him a chance of survival. I'm thinking there may be some shell shock, and we'll know which woman is right for him based on which one can deal with it. The fun thing is that his fiancee is actually likable and Mary is very nice to her, so there's no bitching. But there is still that dead Turk ...

Pondering Book Viability

2012-01-26T13:58:00.001-06:00

I discovered last night when my decongestant wore off a few minutes into choir rehearsal that it's very difficult to sing soprano when your sinuses are totally blocked. I could manage up to an F (and probably could have done a G if one had been in the music) because I can do that without going into my head voice, but when an A above the staff came up, that just wasn't happening. When it's more of a throat or chest problem, I can sing the high notes and not the low ones, but when it's in the head, high is the problem. I sort of made it through the rehearsal of the piece we're singing Sunday, and then I bailed because the more I tried to sing, the worse I felt. I'm doing a lot better today, even without drugs, but I'm really tired of the sniffling and sneezing. I'm still not sure if this is a major allergy attack or a mild cold, but I suspect this will be a weekend of hibernation to let myself rest and recover.

In spite of the stuffy head yesterday, I got some serious work done in reviewing/editing The Book That Will Not Die. The more I read this book, the more I love it. I'm just still not sure how viable it is. I love reading it, but I don't really get the "this is it!" tingle that I got from Enchanted, Inc. I don't know if it's because this book evolved gradually over time instead of coming to me as a flash or if it's because I'm less naive and more cynical about the publishing industry (so that I know my "this is it" doesn't coincide with the industry's) or if it's a bad sign that I don't have that much confidence in this book in spite of loving it. It's not exactly "high concept" in that it's very difficult to describe quickly and convey what's cool about it. It's sort of a "Tam Lin" story, only contemporary and about sisters, and there's a whole plot about what's going on with the fairies that's the reason one was taken, and trying to get her back gets the other sister into even bigger problems.

I've also noticed that while this book isn't really a mystery (the main character knows what happened and just has to figure out what to do about it), it has a lot of mystery-like elements, so maybe I've been moving in that direction without knowing it, or maybe writing this book got me headed in that direction. We have the heroine who's something of an amateur sleuth in that she's not officially a cop or detective (even if she happens to know more than the cops about this sort of thing), and then there's the real police detective who's also on the case (without knowing what's really going on) and who's suspicious about the amateur. There's even a bit of police procedure. I don't think this could be published as a mystery, though (if it can be published anywhere). I don't normally do the beta reader thing, but I may get a sanity check from some friends with this book before I send it to my agent, just to see if I'm the only one who loves it. And before people start volunteering, that will be limited to people I know personally whose reading taste and experience I'm familiar with.

Meanwhile, I've been continuing my mystery market research reading. I appreciate all the suggestions, and many of them are going into my "to be read" notebook for potential pleasure reading, but for the purposes of the current exercise, I'm looking at relatively recent (still being published, preferably started in the past few years) series that are published as mysteries and shelved as mystery in bookstores and that contain paranormal elements. I'm trying to read as many first books in as many series as I can, and then I'm getting subsequent books for series I like or that I think get close to what I'd want to do. Because genre lines tend to blur, it's entirely possible that whatever I do could still end up being published as fantasy (if it's published at all), but right now it looks like the fantasy/mysteries published as fantasy are darker and grittier, more noir than cozy, and since "cozy" is more my style, my hope is that the mystery publishers could be more receptive than the fantasy publishers have been.

One area where I may tend to stray from the mystery norm is with the world building. In most of these books I've been reading, the heroine and maybe one or two (usually older) relatives have the same or similar paranormal talents, and the rest of the world is very normal. I haven't yet seen a situation where the world itself has a little more magic in it -- aside from the Charlaine Harris books that were initially shelved as mystery (though that may have changed after the urban fantasy wave hit and after the series became a bestseller). I guess I'm more drawn to writing the "normal" person in a crazy world than the "crazy" person in the normal world, or else I like the idea of being in on the secret in spite of being normal, because all my ideas lean more toward the curious outsider discovering the location's secrets than to the gifted person whose gifts get her in trouble. However, having a location with secrets does give a reason why the per capita murder rate in a seemingly sleepy small town is higher than that of most major cities.

I've also started reading some "how to write a mystery" books I found in the library, and that's had me rethinking my series idea. Now I have two potential avenues I might take with my amateur sleuth. With one, I think I would like it better as a reader, but it will be harder to do and require more research. The other would be easier to write and might even be more marketable, but I kind of think it would be less interesting in the long run and I wouldn't like the character as much. But I still have a lot of work to do before I get to the point where that's an issue.

And first I have to finish editing this book.

Avoiding Cliches

2012-01-25T12:13:00.000-06:00

Every so often one of those Internet lists of things writers should never do gets forwarded around -- usually lists of cliches for particular genres. They mostly seem to be written as humor aimed at those familiar with the genre tropes, but are often presented, or at least forwarded, with the idea that if you do any of those things in your book, your book will be cliched, derivative and awful and is guaranteed not to sell. The last time I looked at one of those lists for the fantasy genre, I realized that most of my favorite books would never have been written or published if the authors or publishers had taken a list like that seriously. The fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones wrote a humorous book on the cliches that come up in fantasy fiction (The Tough Guide to Fantasyland) and then wrote a whole series in which she proceeded to cleverly use all those cliches. There's a difference between a trope and a cliche -- my personal definition is that the trope is used as a framework upon which something original can be built, while the cliche stops at the superficial. How do you avoid doing it the wrong way and having a book full of cliches?

1) Know your genre.
The best way to avoid cliches is to know what they are and to see how the tropes have been used. You should have some working familiarity with what's selling in your genre today, but you should also look at the classics of the genre over the years and the roots of the genre. If you write mystery, you should probably have read some Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler and the like, as well as going back to Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe. For fantasy, you need to have read Tolkien and Lewis, and it's probably a good idea to have read some folklore and mythology. Doing the background reading will help you recognize the common tropes and cliches that pop up in today's books. It will also help you know when a commonly believed cliche isn't really one.

For instance, one of those "fantasy cliches you should never use" list mentioned the farmboy who turns out to be the rightful king. I've read a ton of fantasy, and I can only think of one book off the top of my head where that happened -- Lloyd Alexander's The High King, in which the assistant pig keeper becomes the king. Maybe this trope was overused in bad fantasy books that haven't stood the test of time enough for me to have seen them, but I don't think it's common enough that it falls into the "must avoid" zone. It was fairly common in fairy tales for the third son of a farmer or woodcutter to win the hand of the princess and end up becoming the king, but he did that through feats of skill or strength, usually magically aided because of some good deed he'd done. It's far more common in fantasy for some unlikely person -- the farmboy, baker's assistant, neglected orphan -- to find out he has some kind of magical powers.

2) Think about the cliche or trope
These things are popular enough to be overused for a reason (and not just writer laziness). Going back to the unlikely person becoming powerful trope, that really makes for a more interesting story than a likely person becoming powerful. There's not much drama or contrast in the son of a king becoming a king or the son of a wizard who grew up surrounded by wizard stuff becoming a wizard. Then there's the wish fulfillment angle of the reader. Most of us aren't children of royalty or wizards, so for us to achieve great power it would have to be an "unlikely person" story. We can put ourselves in the position of a character and vicariously enjoy finding out we're special. Going to another genre, I was once part of a conversation in which a group of romance novelists were griping to an editor about the marriage of convenience cliche and how maybe it was outdated. The editor said to think of what it represented -- legalized sex with a stranger. Once you know and understand how the trope works and why it's popular, you may be able to find ways to provide the same appeal in a different way.

3) Do your research
A lot of the cliches get propagated through writers using other novels as their research material. Your work will come across as more original if you get beyond the commonly accepted facts to what's really true. If you're writing quasi-medieval fantasy, do some good research into the real medieval period. If you're writing mystery, research true crime and police procedure. You may find a telling detail that helps you subvert or elevate the cliche and that will make your work come across as a lot more original.

4) Think it through and flesh it out
You'll have a cliche if you just stop at that usual plot trope. Put more thought into it and readers may not even consciously notice the trope because they'll be too busy reading about your three-dimensional characters. Take the example of the farmboy who's really the rightful king (whether or not that's really a cliche). How did the rightful heir come to be living on a farm? Say the king saw a coup coming and sent his newborn son off with his most trusted soldier and a nursemaid, and they hide out on a remote farm. Did the soldier grow up on a farm, so he knows what he's doing, or has he always been a soldier? What does he think about farming? What's his relationship to the nursemaid? Does the prince know who he is or does he think they're his parents? Does the soldier teach him soldier stuff, or is he so paranoid that he doesn't dare give even that much hint about his identity? What does the farmboy prince think about being on a farm? What are his ambitions? What does he think when he learns who he is? Do his ambitions change? How does his farming background affect the way he goes after his throne? You could probably get a dozen different stories based on this trope depending on the answers you give these questions. The key is to not stop at "farmboy who's really a prince" but to make him a real character with real goals and motivations who is affected by his environment.

How NOT to tell a Fairy Tale Story

2012-01-24T12:32:00.001-06:00

I'm still in allergy la-la land. It's supposed to rain tonight, so if it is all the mountain cedar that got blown in from west Texas, I should feel better tomorrow. If it's a cold, maybe it will have run its course by then. I may have to start wearing a hazmat suit to direct the children's choir. Supposedly, after the first year or so of working with kids, you stop getting sick so often because you've built up an immunity to all the germs they spread around. I'm actually worse in my second year. As much as I enjoy working with the kids, I may have to reconsider it if it keeps making me sick.

Last night, since I wasn't feeling up to much of anything else, I decided to watch Red Riding Hood on one of the HBO channels. I hadn't heard great things about it (most of the reviews considered it a Twilight take on fairy tales), but I'm on a bit of a fairy tale kick lately, and there wasn't anything else on, so I gave it a shot, and I discovered The Movie So Bad That HBO (or maybe the satellite) Attempted Suicide Rather Than Show It. About halfway through the movie, the picture started pixilating badly, sometimes blacking out entirely or wobbling. At first, I thought I was losing yet another converter box that wasn't able to unscramble the signal, but all the other HBO channels seemed to be working fine. It was just this one movie, and it was to irritating to watch that way, so I gave up (and possibly preserved my sanity).

This was essentially a SyFy Saturday night movie, with bonus teen love triangle. We had the quasi-medieval setting, using what looked like the infamous Ye Olde Renn Faire Village set from all the quasi-medieval worlds ever visited on the Stargate series. We had attractive young people carved from wooden planks in the lead roles, capable Canadian actors with science fiction pedigrees in the supporting roles (Michael Hogan from Battlestar Galactica and Michael Shanks from SG-1 -- making me feel very old because he's actually a bit younger than I am and was playing the father of one of the love interests), and an acclaimed British actor slumming it in a highly promoted cameo role while feasting on the scenery. We had bad CGI monsters that only pop up occasionally because of budgetary reasons, so most of the movie is people acting scared of the monsters that might be out there. And we had absolutely horrible dialogue that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be hip and modern or quaintly old-fashioned, so that only the Canadian pros with extensive science fiction experience and the slumming British actor feasting on the scenery could pull it off with any aplomb. The carved wooden puppets playing the young people didn't stand a chance.

I think the SyFy Saturday night movie would have trimmed out the love triangle because it had very little to do with the plot and, besides, who needs character development when there are monsters? Not that the triangle really added any character development or even was a real "triangle." Our "Red" was in love with the brooding loner who had a knack for getting her to break the rules, but her family was betrothing her to the guy with a steady job who came from a well-off family. Her plan to run away with McBroody was foiled by a wolf attack on the village. Note to filmmakers: when casting for the two points on a love triangle, it's a good idea to get actors that the viewers can actually tell apart. Both were sort of low-rent Robert Pattinson types with similar coloring, who wore similar clothes and who had both made copious use of Ye Olde Hair Gelle (for that artfully tousled, semi-spiky look that was very in during the Middle Ages). When "Red" was upset about the betrothal, I couldn't figure out why she was upset because it looked to me that she was being made to marry the guy we'd just seen her running around the woods with. It took me a while to realize there were actually two different guys. I say if you can't tell them apart, go for the one with the job.

Then there was the rave scene. Seriously, they're celebrating killing what they think is the wolf that's been terrorizing the village (but obviously isn't because there's still an hour to go) by holding a rave, in which the kids dance together in what looks a lot like the dancing in the episode of Parks and Recreation where everyone got drunk on "Snake Juice" at the Snakehole Lounge and Ann and Leslie were fighting while doing very aggressive dancing with whatever guy they could drag to the dance floor. Only this movie wasn't supposed to be funny. Meanwhile, Ye Olde Village Bande is playing modern-sounding goth-lite rock on their authentic period instruments. Even aside from the dance scene, this movie had to have the most jarringly anachronistic score since Alan Parsons did the soundtrack for Ladyhawke (I love Alan Parsons' music outside of movies, but I would love a recut of that film with a more appropriate soundtrack because the music nearly ruins it).

Unfortunately, HBO started throwing up right when Gary Oldman showed up (maybe he was gnawing on the pixels instead of the scenery), so I'm sure I missed the really epic awfulness. I bet the girl ended up with the brooding outsider because that's how this sort of thing goes. I hope the other one didn't get killed because I liked him better.

And I still want to write a SyFy Saturday night fantasy movie. Maybe if I throw in a teen love triangle, I could get it on the big screen!

An Allergy-fueled Downton Abbey Recap (no spoilers)

2012-01-23T12:20:00.001-06:00

I finally finished what I think will be the last major draft of The Book That Will Not Die. I'd planned to start re-reading today it to make sure it still flows together (since there are months between the time I last read/worked on the beginning and the time I worked on the end), but a front blew in a dust storm from west Texas last night, and as a result I'm sneezing my head off, so I may give that set of people in my head a day off and spend the day with allergy drugs and doing some reading of and about mysteries. I'm not really up to editing today, and I'm definitely not up to forming words and putting them together in sentences that make sense (it's taken be about ten minutes to write this paragraph).

I had something planned to discuss today, but that forming words and sentences thing is being a problem, so I'll wait until I can do that better. So, for now I will discuss Downton Abbey in the only way I'm capable of at the moment:

Ooooh, pretty house. Pretty grounds. Pretty people. Pretty dresses. I wonder if I can do my hair like that. Pretty jewelry, and I don't even like jewelry all that much. Sigh. Thwarted love. Pretty people. Ew, evil, yucky, mean people. Meaningful gazes. Witty quip from the Dowager. Pretty people. Sigh. Ugh, now I have to wait for next week.

That oh so articulate recap is brought to you by whatever pollen/allergen blew in from Lubbock.

The Imaginary People in My Head Take Over

2012-01-20T12:24:00.001-06:00

Okay, so maybe today will be when I get the book done. I did some tinkering with the previous scenes, then got the next scene outlined in detail and then outlined the rest of the book, so while I didn't move forward in the manuscript, I think I still got a lot accomplished. I still have a little previous scene tinkering to do after changing my mind about something, but I should be ready to rock and roll and I don't have anything else that must be done today.

One thing I realized was holding me back was my clinging to a few elements that I thought were essential. Once I let myself let go of those, I figured out a better way to do things that made a lot more sense. Some of that involved going back to my original research (in the spiral notebook, which is why those are so essential), which offered some better alternatives. All this thinking started yesterday as a procrastination method, but now that I've done it, I'm pretty sure I'm eager to write today.

If I'm really good, I'll finish in time for TV night. Otherwise, I'll take a TV break (I can't miss Grimm) and then pull a late-nighter.

I'm sure I have other things to talk about, but I seem to have reached the stage where the book takes over the brain to the point I can't really talk or think about anything else. I'd better finish today or early tomorrow because I've got a party Saturday night and it would be nice to be able to interact with the real people around me rather than the imaginary people in my head. Then again, the geek quotient at this party will be rather high, so they might not even notice that I'm mostly interacting with the imaginary people in my head because they'll be too busy interacting with the imaginary people in their smart phones.

A Mole Boy Breakthrough!

2012-01-19T12:33:00.001-06:00

I've been having this problem all week with feeling like it was a different day of the week than it actually was. Yesterday felt like Thursday all day, though I did go to choir instead of to ballet, so I seem to have kept it straight. I had a real breakthrough with the preschoolers, though. Mole Boy came out of his shell! Not only did he not cry at all, but he never went into his corner or his hiding place under the chairs and he participated in everything from the start. And then he spoke and interacted with people. Although we call it "choir" it's more of a general introduction to music, with some very basic music theory. We were playing a "concentration" game using various musical symbols (the clefs, different kinds of notes and rests, etc.). The little kids generally take a while to catch onto this game, not realizing that what you want to do is get a look at as many cards on the table as possible so that when you turn another one over, you'll have a better idea of where the match might be. Most of the kids keep turning over the cards that have already been turned over. But Mole Boy caught on right away and got really excited in coaching the others in where the matches were -- "No, it's over there! That one!" I feel like that was a major breakthrough. I don't know if I can take any credit other than in maybe creating and maintaining an environment where he eventually felt safe enough to relax, but it was still kind of cool to see the change from hiding and crying to leadership.

I didn't get much writing done, though I did plan the major showdown scene, and that then brought up some things that will need to be changed in previous scenes, so I decided to get a running start and go back through the previous 50 or so pages to fix those things and build to the new scene. I still have about 20 more pages to go through before I get to new stuff. Today I don't have any errands and have nothing on the to-do list other than writing. I also don't have to cook because I have tons of leftovers. I just have ballet class tonight. So I should get a good amount done if nothing distracts me.

I want to get this done so I can start digging into this mystery idea. I checked a bunch of "how to write mystery novels" books out of the library and will begin studying soon. However, I discovered that it's difficult to find school supplies when it's not August or September. Do you have to buy it all at the beginning of the year without restocking during the school year? I couldn't find a plain spiral notebook at Target -- the kind they have in packs of five for a dollar in August/September. They just had the fancy ones with stuff like various teen pop stars on the cover. I resorted to buying a binder so I can take my notes on notebook paper and then put them in the binder, but I really prefer spirals for this kind of work for the portability. I do my brainstorming on loose-leaf paper because I can rearrange it, but I like to put my research in spirals. I'll have to check one of the office supply stores.

Speaking of organizing material, have any of you writers out there tried Scrivener? It's software created by a novelist to organize research material, brainstorming type notes, character information, etc., and then link it all together with a manuscript. It looks like it would be a good way to keep details straight for something like a long-running (hopefully!) mystery series. But it also looks like it would allow for some truly epic procrastination. You could spend all day creating note cards and arranging them on the virtual cork board and then linking them and cross-referencing them with your research materials, and you'd feel like you'd done an entire day's work without adding a single word to the manuscript. Not that I can't do that sort of thing without technological help. Since I do better thinking and brainstorming away from the computer and writing by hand, it might result in a duplication of work, transferring handwritten notes to the computer, but then that added step might help synthesize free-form brainstorming into more concrete plot or character points that would then be a lot easier to keep track of. Then there's the fact that I'd have to use it on the new computer, but I write on the old computer. I guess I could always refer to the new computer as needed, but keep the distraction away while actually writing and then copy and paste my work into the new computer. Again, duplication of effort, but all the planning might speed up the productivity. They offer a free trial, so I may give it a shot and see if it fits my process, and then it's not very expensive software.

And now speaking of procrastination, it's time to get to work.

Hate at First Sight

2012-01-18T14:00:00.001-06:00

I'm feeling very righteous. I just forced myself to walk to the library to return a book. I dithered for a while and even tried to tell myself I could just drop it off at the drive-through on my way to choir tonight, but then I reminded myself that it wasn't about the errand, it was about the exercise, and I'm more productive on days when I get some exercise, especially exercise in the sunshine. My productivity yesterday came after a walk to the post office, bank and Indian market.

I did finally get over the distraction and got some substantial work done yesterday. I'm tantalizingly close to the end, but I suspect I still have a lot of writing to do. When I was at this point in the initial draft, I thought we'd just blown up the Death Star, and now all we had to do was return to base, have the happy reunion and then get our medals. It turned out to be more like Return of the King, with all the loose ends that had to be tied up. But with the rewrites, it's more like we've just blown up the truck with the Terminator in it and think we've won, but then we see that the metal skeleton is still coming after us, so now I still need to write the showdown in the factory. Except instead of it being like the horror movie staple of the villain not being dead yet, it's more like the villain you defeated turns out not to be your only (or biggest) problem, only I can't think of a good pop culture analogy for that. I may not finish today, since it's choir night and I have to run a couple of errands before choir, but tomorrow is a possibility, and then there may be hiking on Friday.

I'm still doing my market research reading on the paranormal mysteries, and I discovered (or articulated) another book pet peeve: hate at first sight for no good reason. I can see hate at first sight when there is a reason: he's Darth Vader, attacked your ship and is taking you prisoner or even he's the cop who suspects you/your best friend/sister/brother/mother/father/employer of murder and doesn't seem interested in looking beyond that to the real killer. But I can't get into a book in which the heroine just hates someone from the start for no reason other than the author needed to throw in some conflict. That's something you normally see in romances: the gorgeous guy comes to town and smiles at the heroine, and that pisses her off to an insane degree, though that's usually a sign that she'll be in love with him by the end of the book (then again, so is hate with a cause. In general, the guy the heroine hates most or who hates the heroine the most at the beginning will be the guy she ends up with). I was surprised to see it in a mystery, and even long before anyone found a body. The heroine is basically being a bitch for no good reason (and that's not the true opposite of doormat), and though we do eventually get a reason why she's touchy with people in general, it's far enough into the book that I would have stopped reading a lot earlier if I weren't reading to study the plot structure and use of paranormal elements.

Speaking of finding the body, I grew up reading Agatha Christie and the like, where the story pretty much starts with the discovery of the body (or it at least happens within the first chapter), but I'm surprised at how far into the book the murder seems to happen in a lot of the current books, especially since modern attention spans are shorter and you're generally encouraged to start the action as soon as possible. In this book, we don't get to a dead body until halfway through the book. I suppose some of this has to do with the fact that I've been reading mostly first books in series, so we have to establish our heroine and her situation before plunging her into a murder investigation. We didn't much care about Miss Marple's personal life, but the personal stories are almost as important as the crimes in today's series. Still, I think someone should probably be dead within the first 50 pages.

I think my January agoraphobia is kicking in because there's a conference in New York in a couple of months that I usually go to and find very valuable, and I've been dragging my feet about registering. It is very expensive, and this is shaping up to be a financially uncertain year, as one of my ongoing writing contracts has ended and my new client hasn't started tossing work at me. Not to mention the complete lack of action on the publishing front. But then that lack of action means I probably need to go. The networking and business info could be very valuable. I just can't bring myself to commit to traveling there, with all the hassle that comes with that these days, staying in a hotel and sharing a room (because the conference hotel is way too expensive to go solo -- I'd have to get a room elsewhere and commute to have a room to myself). And airfares are really high right now. I wonder what the tax rules are for frequent flier miles -- if you use them for business travel, can you deduct the value of the trip or just the fees you actually spend?

Now, off to fight the Terminator in the factory, or some more relevant and accurate cultural analogy.

DIstractions

2012-01-17T12:20:00.001-06:00

My task for the day yesterday was the makeup drawer in my bathroom, and I found that I am apparently reluctant to throw makeup away, even if I no longer use it. In my twenties, I succumbed to the siren song of the Clinique Bonus Pack, where you could buy a foundation and get a handy little travel case filled with sample sized skin lotion and other treatments, plus eyeshadows, blushers and several full-sized lipsticks. You never had to buy any makeup other than the foundation. But then they changed the price threshold for getting the bonus pack, so that it was a dollar or so over the cost of the foundation, which meant you had to buy something else in addition to the foundation. Since I already had just about every shade of lipstick they made, I figured I could move on to some other kind of makeup. Considering how long ago that was, I just threw away every Clinique item in the drawer, and that emptied a lot of space. What I was really surprised to find was a Merle Norman blush because that had to date back to high school, when the Merle Norman makeover was a kind of rite of passage (and a big reason why most of the girls in my school looked like they were in the circus, or at least on stage, and why my senior portraits involve a truly scary eye look). I have no idea why it was still in there, as it's certainly beyond use and I have no sentimental attachment. I guess I have issues with throwing away things that haven't been used up. I was also surprised by how many hotel hand lotions I have in there, and I found a few other things that I should have been using but forgot I had. I need to find a way to organize that drawer (possibly using some of those Clinique Bonus Pack cases) so I can find things more easily and put away more of the stuff that's on the counter.

Other than clearing out that drawer, I don't feel like I got a lot accomplished. It was a day when I needed to focus, and I got a bit of news that threw my focus off. Not bad news, but the kind of thing that made me start thinking about something else, which led to research, which led to more thinking, which led to composing e-mails in my head. I think I have managed to figure out the ending for The Book That Will Not Die, but I couldn't seem to focus enough to actually write. I know the person who sent the e-mail wasn't deliberately trying to sabotage me, but it was frustrating since there was no real time urgency to the message and nothing I could do about it at the moment, since it was mostly a heads up about something I might need to think about in the future. So my response was, "Really? Today, of all days, you decide to drop that on me and kill my productivity?" Though that response was in one of those mental e-mails that I didn't send. I might have done better if I'd written some of those mental e-mails, but on the non-Internet computer so they couldn't accidentally be sent. Then I would have them out of my brain instead of still composing them. I've read about a study saying that people feel better after writing a letter about something than they do after venting to a friend. People actually feel a little worse or angrier after the friend venting, but composing a letter, even if it's one you never send, does better for getting the anger out of your system and clarifying your thoughts. Not that there was actual anger here, just a lot of points that need to be clarified, and a little bit of "someone on the Internet is wrong!"

Speaking of Internet, as a word of friendly advice, do not visit the web site for a certain very famous anti-breast cancer organization (I'm afraid to even type their name online because they'll start stalking me again) or for their famous several-day fundraising walking event. Because then every single ad on every single Internet site you visit will be for that event, and the amount of pink will make you gag. We were talking about the walking thing in ballet class and couldn't remember the exact (rather high) fundraising requirement, so I was looking it up, and then I regretted doing so. I support their cause, and I even dealt with them when I worked at the medical school, and the people who run it are good people, but if I've gone to their site, I already know about them. I don't need to see their ads everywhere. I cleared cookies, cleared my browser history and finally resorted to clicking on any ad that wasn't for them. Now I'm getting a lot of clothing, furniture and jewelry ads, but I can deal with that. When your marketing makes people afraid to mention your name or visit your web site for fear you'll stalk them, you're doing it wrong.

Down with Doormats!

2012-01-16T11:31:00.000-06:00

So, it's Monday, and I didn't manage to finish the draft on Friday, mostly because I started trying to work and realized I didn't have it all figured out. I had a few breakthroughs over the weekend that may have brought it closer to something I might be able to write, but I still have a few things to figure out.

One breakthrough came from thinking about something I don't like in books. I was reading a book and getting increasingly irritated and realized that yet another one of my hot buttons is the doormat heroine (you almost never see a male character like this). I realize that the character has to start somewhere and presumably will grow a spine over the course of the book, but it's hard for me to care for a character who brings a lot of her problems on herself by letting everyone in her life walk all over her. It's even more irritating when she finally decides to assert herself and does it in a stupid way by disregarding the knowledgable advice from people who care about her well being as still more of the kind of control she's trying to escape and puts herself under the power of someone who's going to walk all over her ("You can't tell me what to do, so I won't read the fine print in that contract you're warning me about before signing it. See, I've learned to stand up for myself. Oops, I think I just signed over my first-born child and the rights to every thought I'll ever have, so I guess I'm stuck."). I reached the point where I had to skim the book (I needed to reassure myself that she'd grow a spine and a brain, so I couldn't just put it down) because reading it was too irritating.

Then while stewing over that, I realized that while my main character is in no way a doormat, she is a nurturer type who tends to put other people's needs ahead of her own, and the negative side of that is that she has a tendency to take control because she feels like she knows better than others, and then people get used to that and start expecting her to just do things for them. I've reached a situation where anyone would hit the breaking point and tell everyone to take care of their own messes because she's done with it, and I realized that's what this scene needed.

I still have one big event that needs to happen, but I'm wavering on when and why it should happen, but maybe I'll figure it out when I get there.

In other news, I watched Black Swan on HBO over the weekend, and I may not be smart enough for movies like that because I'm not sure I got it. I guess I figured out what was going on, but I can't figure out why anyone thought that would be interesting enough to make a movie out of or what they were trying to say with it (because it seemed like the kind of thing that was supposed to be saying something). And I can't believe there was ever any doubt about how much was a dance double and how much was really Natalie Portman because I thought it was pretty obvious. The only times they really showed her face when she was dancing were when they zoomed in on and circled her so that we only saw from the shoulders up as she frantically waved her arms. Not that there's anything wrong with that, since there's no way an actress who has not been primarily a dancer could possibly dance at the level of the kind of ballerina who'd have the lead in a major production of Swan Lake, and the "really, she did all the dancing herself!" campaign pre-Oscars just made them all look silly. And now I want to see a real production of Swan Lake and I have the score stuck in my head.

Meanwhile, in the last couple of days it seems like the spammers have decided my blog is a good place to sell handbags. I've been deleting tons of spam comments about handbags. Which is ironic because I've pretty much been carrying the same bag since about 2004. I bought a new one a little more than a year ago and sometimes use it, but more because of function than style. And I buy most of my purses at places like Target and TJ Maxx and refuse to use anything with obvious designer labels.

Now, to work, since I got a reasonably early start on the day. Buy purses now!

Making Mysteries Magical

2012-01-13T12:32:00.001-06:00

If I'm really, really good and don't have any major distractions this afternoon, I might actually finish this draft of The Book That Would Not Die, and this might actually be the nearly final draft, aside from another round of proofreading to make sure all the changes flow together and then maybe some revisions after I give it to some beta readers. I only have about 30 pages left, but then these are the 30 pages that are the wall I seem to hit every time, where I can't quite get the book to end the right way. I think the changes I've made in this round will help an ending come together, and this morning when I was doing my awake-but-not-up daydreaming I think I came up with the solution to part of my problem.

Unfortunately, it seems when the writing is going well, everything else falls by the wayside. I totally stalled on the organizing project. I think part of it was I hit a task I wasn't very motivated to do, in addition to being more focused on the writing. I may put that task back in the jar, then pick something else and move on. I'm bad about starting with great enthusiasm and then stalling out, but this time I'm going to just pick myself up and get started again. At least I've maintained what I've already done.

It turns out I was right that the book I was reading would be one where I was left wanting to see what happened next for the characters. It still may not be my absolute ideal, but it is a paranormal mystery where I may be somewhat hooked on the series because of wanting to see where it goes from here.

However, now I'm curious as to just how paranormal you can get with these things. Most of them seem to be in the realm of "paranormal" rather than going all the way into fantasy. The paranormal element mostly seems to involve the heroine having some level of psychic ability. There's the one where she's a full-on psychic who can read things about people's past and future, but most of them seem to have a very specific, limited skill, like the ability to get information from certain kinds of objects or the ability to find lost things. A lot of them have the ability to communicate with or at least hear ghosts -- in fact, that often comes along with the other specific skill. There is one series about a woman recruited and helped by angels to right wrongs. The closest we get to magic seems to be "new age"-style witches, who mostly have the general psychic abilities and intuition that come with the psychic characters in addition to talking about herbs and throwing in the occasional "goddess" reference.

Though some of this may be a selection bias, as I started my reading list based on books that were in the "people who bought this also bought these" list for my books on Amazon and then branched out from there via lists with those books. That might weed out the vampire detectives and stuff like that. A bookstore visit may be in order to really peruse the available titles.

The trick seems to be to give it enough "other" to make it paranormal without it being enough power to make solving the mystery too easy. The idea I have has a lot more worldbuilding than I've seen so far, where a lot of the paranormal element is inherent in the setting and makes it more difficult to gather viable evidence of a sort that will hold up in court. Most of the mysteries I've seen are about using paranormal abilities to solve ordinary crimes, but what I've been thinking of is paranormal abilities being used to commit crimes, and the sleuths having to work around that to solve them and bring the perpetrators to justice. The fact that it is weird means the cops may have to rely on the civilian sleuth (who may or may not also have abilities) to help work around that while the cops stick with due process. I wonder if that would fly.

But first, I must finish the current book. And then it's a good TV weekend. We've got new Grimm tonight, new Once Upon a Time and the next installment of Downton Abbey.

More Mysteries: The Personal Element

2012-01-12T12:19:00.001-06:00

It finally occurred to me that I've been getting up at the same time every morning, regardless of what time I get to bed and regardless of whether or not I set the alarm, so I may as well stay up later instead of spending so much time in bed. That turned out to be a very good plan, and the book I'm working on must either be a "night" book or it's something about this time of year (my winter books tend to be "night" books) because I got a lot more done in an hour and a half after I got home from choir rehearsal than I did all afternoon, and then I woke up feeling a lot more alert this morning at the same time I usually wake up.

Speaking of waking up to the alarm, I've finally figured out that "Wow, Mom, I didn't know you had a sister" radio ad after hearing the whole ad. It turns out that my still mostly asleep brain misheard some of it when I heard it out of context. There were actually two speakers, both pre-teen or teen boys -- or the radio ad version of teen boys, which means voiced by adult women, or possibly woman, as the voices aren't very different (when I heard the end of the commercial without realizing it was a conversation, I thought it was all one woman talking). Boy 1 asks Boy 2 what he's doing, and Boy 2 says he's waiting for his mom. Then he goes on, for no reason I can discern, to talk about how different his mom has been since she started taking these supplements that are good for her skin and hair (because that's the sort of thing teen boys talk about all the time). Then Boy 1 says, "Whoa, I didn't know you had a sister!" and Boy 2 says, "Hi, Mom," then mutters, "See what I mean?" And then the announcer tells us about these miracle supplements. I'm curious about the situation and setting for this conversation. Where is Boy 2 waiting for his mom? Outside the vitamin shop where she's buying her miracle supplements? Or maybe he's in the mall, waiting outside Forever 21, and then Mom comes out in a miniskirt and midriff-baring shirt, prompting Boy 1 to think she's Boy 2's sister rather than his mom. I feel rather sorry for Boy 2. He's probably going to need therapy. Then I realize that I'm the age my mom was when I was a teenager and I wonder if I'm dressing in a way that would be gross to my teenage kids (if I had them). And I'm way overthinking a microbudget radio ad, but this is what happens when I hear something while my subconscious is still off in dreamland. I try to turn it into a story.

And speaking of overthinking, I'm continuing my analysis of paranormal mysteries, and I think I've figured out part of why no one series has totally grabbed me yet: The main thing that gets me hooked on a mystery series isn't the mystery element. It's the personal element -- what the heroine is dealing with in her life outside the mystery and particularly the romantic relationships. It almost needs to be a character and situation I'd enjoy even without the mystery element so that the mystery then mostly lends additional tension and complicates her life while maybe also giving her a reason to interact with and get to know the love interests. I know the heroine is going to solve the mystery and survive (unless maybe there's a series about a ghost who solves crimes after being killed during an investigation). What keeps me coming back for further books is to see how her life is progressing. It's like when I was a kid and hooked on the Nancy Drew books and I kept trying to find the last one (ha!) to see if Nancy and Ned ever did more than smile politely at each other at fraternity dances and to see if Nancy ever did anything more with her life than live at home with her dad and solve mysteries. She was obviously very intelligent, so why wasn't she in college with Ned? (This may have changed with the later books, but the ones in my school library when I was a kid were published in the 30s through maybe the 50s.)

But there's a delicate line there in the relationship arena. I'm kind of disappointed when the main relationship is pretty much a done deal by the end of the first book in the series, so for the rest of the series they're just an established couple. If the relationship is resolved and the heroine's figured out her life in the first book, then there's nothing that has me anxious to read the next one. On the other hand, it can get ridiculous if things are strung out too long, particularly with romantic triangles where the heroine is into both guys or even sleeping with both without making any decision and if she hasn't really learned any better how to deal with the situations she keeps finding herself in, like a certain bestselling series that shall remain nameless in which the heroine doesn't seem to have learned anything or figured out which guy she wants in something like eighteen books. I think my ideal might be that there are a couple of viable options in the first couple of books, but then the events of those books help make the choice more obvious to her, and then for a few more books there's a slow build as that relationship develops. I'm even kind of a fan of the bait-and-switch, where initially there's the one who seems like the obvious romantic interest with all the overt sexual tension, but then there's also a quieter guy who's steadily there, and then the obvious one fizzles out because there's no substance under the sexual tension but then things gradually build with the quiet one.

I've seen this sort of personal life development in the non-paranormal mysteries I've read. For instance, I grab the Rhys Bowen "Royal Spyness" mysteries as soon as I find them (note to self, check library for new one). I barely remember the cases, but I'm enjoying watching the heroine deal with having a title but no money, so she's secretly running a housekeeping service while regularly having tea with the queen, and there's the guy who's always there for her but practical matters make it nearly impossible for them to end up together. The book I'm currently reading shows some promise, though I'll have to see how the situation stands at the end, but I'm wondering about the fact that I haven't yet found the "personal" side that grabs me in the five or so paranormal series I've sampled. Do they think the paranormal stuff alone will be enough to hook readers? Do they not want this kind of thing? Is this genre more influenced by romances, so readers want their romantic resolution in the first book? If I wrote what I want to read, would that hook people into the continuing series or would they think it too "soap opera"?

I've also discovered that I seem to have a thing for cops -- and local cops, not private investigators or federal agents. If one of the romantic possibilities is a cop, that will end up being the guy I pull for (there's one series that disappointed me because I thought they were going to do the bait-and-switch thing and the cop would be the quiet one, but then all the surplus guys were paired off with the heroine's friends by the end of the first book, so the best friend got the cop I liked for the heroine and she ended up with Obvious Guy). And then I realized that although I haven't known a lot of cops, I do tend to get along very well with the ones I do know. In fact, one of my choir buddies is a cop in my city, and I had dinner with him and his family last night. It's not just the uniform, either. I haven't seen any of my cop friends in uniform (except when my choir buddy played Officer Krupke in the youth group's production of West Side Story when they decided they wanted real adults playing the few adult roles to make it more of a contrast to the kids, and having a real cop playing the cop added even more realism). (Note to self: see if he knows any single men on the police force.)

Sharing Your Work

2012-01-11T12:23:00.001-06:00

It's a new year and time to get back to the every-other-week writing posts. For those who are new here, every other Wednesday I tackle writing topics. (You can also subscribe to these posts via e-mail.) I'm open to questions or topics you'd like to see me address.

I have a reader question this week: How do you bring yourself to show your work to others or even submit it to editors and agents?

Letting others see your work can be scary. Writing is intensely personal. You've poured your heart and soul onto those pages, and that can make you feel like you're giving the world a window into your inner being that makes you very vulnerable. With a first book, in particular, there's a real high that comes with finishing. In that moment, your book has limitless possibilities. You imagine agents fighting to represent it, publishers throwing huge sums of money at it, you see the book cover, and you then see piles of copies at bookstores. You imagine the bestseller lists and the crowds at your booksignings. You dream about the movie deal and meeting your current Hollywood heartthrob (who's starring in the film) at the red-carpet premiere, then starting a hot romance and walking the red carpet together at the Oscars, where the movie based on your book is up for all the awards. But there's a lot of fear under those fantasies because you know that you can only maintain that perfect fantasy world if no one else sees the book. The moment you get feedback, reality will intrude. Someone might not like it. Agents and editors may reject it. It may not even get published, and if it does, it might bomb. Reviewers and readers may hate it.

So don't let anyone see it -- not at first, anyway. It's only in TV, movies and comic strips where an author types "The End," rips the page out of the typewriter or off the printer, sticks the manuscript in a box, puts it in the mail and then gets a contract and a check while he's still at the mailbox. When you've first finished a book, you can't be at all objective about it. So put it aside for a while -- at least a month -- and go do something else. Work on that Inconvenient Midpoint Idea that popped into your brain to distract you when you were in the middle of this book. Write a short story or an article. Catch up on your reading, TV shows and movies. Read how-to books on the aspects of writing that you found challenging with this book. Catch up with the things you may have let slide while you were writing, like housework, hobbies or your friends and family. In short, try to forget about your book and fill your head with other stuff. Then take another look at it. If you still think it's the most brilliant thing ever, put it away again because you're not yet ready. Not that you have to hate the whole book, but at this point you should be able to spot things that need to be fixed.

After you've done another draft, then you can start showing it to people. If this is really, really scary to you, start with someone who is likely to love everything you do, like your mom or a good friend. You're not looking for real feedback, just getting over the fear of someone else reading your work by starting with something safe. Then you may be able to branch out. Show it to a friend you can trust to be honest with you -- the kind of friend who'll tell you that those pants you're trying on make your butt look big when you go shopping together. You don't necessarily need a detailed critique from this friend, just an honest opinion about whether or not it works and what your friend likes or dislikes about it. Depending on how you work, you may want to find a writing group that does critiques, look for a critique partner or find an online writing community where you can submit work for critique. This kind of feedback not only helps your writing improve, but it also helps you toughen up and get used to hearing negative things about your work. You also learn to discern which suggestions to take and which to ignore, which will come into play when you're dealing with an editor. Another good way to get feedback is to enter manuscript contests, where your entry is anonymous and judged by published authors and industry professionals. Be careful with these, though, because there are a lot of scams out there. Look for contests run by writing organizations and be wary of contests where publication is the prize because that often sticks you with unfavorable contract terms.

Then it's time to put it out there into the world. These days, there are a lot more options than the traditional route of trying to find an agent or taking your chances with a publisher's slushpile. You can now publish your work yourself online, but check your motives about that. If you're doing that because you want to avoid rejection from publishers, then you're setting yourself up for a meltdown when the reader reviews start coming in. If you're doing that because you don't want any mean old editor to change one word of your precious manuscript, then your'e setting yourself up for failure. A self-published book still needs to be edited by a professional because you'll be competing against a lot of other books of professional quality.

I may be a dinosaur, but I would still recommend at least testing the waters of traditional publishing before you self publish. You never know what reception you'll get unless you try, and going through the submission and rejection process helps you develop the perspective and the thicker skin that will prevent those author meltdowns that tend to go viral, when the author can't believe a reviewer would dare say anything negative. Submitting to agents and editors can also help give you a sense of where your book fits into the market. If you get form rejections, then it's possible that there's nothing too special about your book that would allow it to stand out even as self-published book. If rejections criticize your writing or specific aspects of the story, it may not be ready for publication. If you get the "I love this but don't know what to do with it" kind of rejections, where the problem is more with the market than with your book, then self publishing may be viable.

And if all this still sounds utterly terrifying, there's nothing wrong with writing for your own enjoyment. You only have to let other people read your work if you want to make a living at it.

Decoding Mysteries

2012-01-10T12:30:00.000-06:00

I haven't talked about reading in a while. I read a lot over the holidays but don't really have any books I particularly want to single out and discuss, with one exception. I read the Steampunk anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and I found myself thinking about most of the stories, "Yes, more like this, please." Steampunk is kind of a problematic genre for me. I LOVE the idea of it. I like the Victorian esthetic and Victorian fiction, and the idea of adventures in airships or with fantastic machines that should have existed thrills me. But I haven't been all that crazy about most of the actual steampunk books I've read. I'm looking for stuff that maybe could have been a lost Jules Verne book, but most of what's being published in the adult market is essentially urban fantasy or paranormal romance with bustles and maybe an airship in the background. The closest I've found to fulfilling my wishes for the genre is the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld and the Hungry Cities and Larklight series by Philip Reeve -- all written for young adults. But the stories in this collection -- written before the current steampunk vogue -- were closer to what I imagine when I think of the genre. I don't object to mixing in fantasy, since the clash between magic and technology would seem to fit the theme and since there was a great interest in the occult during the Victorian era, but it's very, very hard to find something published as steampunk without vampires, werewolves, demons or zombies in it. I want my airship adventures, darn it!

Meanwhile, I've been binging on those paranormal mysteries, with an eye toward maybe writing something like that. I've discovered that there appear to be some challenges in the mystery genre, particularly with the amateur sleuth kind of stories. One is that the genre practically requires that the heroine (and in the amateur sleuth cozies, it's usually a heroine) come dangerously close to Too Stupid to Live. If someone close to most of us dies or if we come across a dead body, we're likely to limit our involvement to calling 911, giving the police whatever information we have, maybe making a tearful plea for information on the evening news and nagging the police for status updates. We generally don't take it upon ourselves to investigate the case. It seems to be rather tricky to come up with a strong enough motivation that most reasonable people would totally believe would make the character actually get involved like that. In the first book in the series, it usually seems to be that the heroine or someone close to her is the prime suspect, with the police not interested in looking at anyone else, and so to clear her name or her loved one's name, she has to find the real killer herself. In subsequent books, it's a little more understandable that she'd get involved after having successfully solved previous cases.

Then there's the climax of the book, where it seems to be fairly mandatory that the heroine have some kind of dangerous confrontation with the killer. I guess the old Agatha Christie thing of gathering the suspects in the parlor and going over why each one may or may not have committed the crime is no longer considered exciting enough. Getting into this situation generally involves a big dose of Too Stupid to Live, like the heroine going alone into the creepy place where she knows someone who's already killed at least once is likely to be, or else going alone to meet with someone she doesn't realize is the killer until he pulls a knife on her. Again, motivation seems to be the key, where we have to believe she has no other choice than to confront the killer alone or where there's a good reason for her not to realize the person she's meeting alone in the secluded place is the real killer.

Adding the paranormal element seems to be a mixed blessing. On the down side, it can come across as a bit of a cheat if the sleuth is just pulling clues from the ether instead of really solving the case through investigation. I read one where the heroine is such a good psychic that she pretty much picks up on everything she needs to know about the case, so the "mystery" is mostly about putting together the clues (though I suppose it does skip past the more tedious parts of the investigation), and the police totally trust her, so when she tells them where a body's buried, they pick up their shovels. I think it works better when whatever supernatural gift the heroine has mostly serves to get her in trouble. It seems to be a great way to motivate a civilian to investigate a crime -- like one where she has a vision of a buried body, but she knows if she just tells the police they'll likely dismiss her as a crackpot, and if they do dig for it and find a body, she'll look like a suspect, so she has to at least make some headway on the case on her own to have some hard facts to give the police. Or there's another where the heroine picks up on "vibes" from ghosts, so when the police think a death is an accident but the ghost is too unsettled for that, she has to prove it's murder. If the heroine is too powerful, that can amplify the Too Stupid to Live at the climactic confrontation, since shouldn't a good psychic have known that the person she's meeting is the killer?

Mostly, I think it works best when the paranormal part provides more complication than help and when it's not openly accepted by the authorities. I'm afraid that this genre may have a similar issue for me that steampunk does, where I love the idea of the genre but haven't yet found the specific book that makes me go, "Yes! This is it!" Though in this case, I've liked the books I've read, and they're all stories that interest me, but I haven't yet hit the series where I'm suddenly desperate to find all the rest of the books because I can't wait to see what these characters will do next. I've been reading a lot of first books in series, and when I'm done, I read another series, not rush out to get the next in that series. I don't know if this is a bad sign or an opportunity.

Tea in the Trenches

2012-01-09T12:09:00.000-06:00

This weekend was pretty much Super Bowl Sunday for fans of British costume drama, with the return of Downton Abbey on PBS. There was all the pre-game buildup with a marathon of the first season (my PBS showed it during the afternoon, but I watched on DVD). And then, finally, we got to see what happened next. They found the one way to improve a British costume drama for me: add battle scenes! We got to see former skeevy footman Thomas looking terrified (and skeevy) and future Earl Matthew looking handsomely pensive in the WWI trenches. But you know you're watching a British costume drama take on a war story when the pivotal trench warfare scene (so far) involves two characters having tea. I still think they should send Lady Violet over to meet with the Kaiser. That would end the war in a hurry, especially if she takes her frenemy Isobel with her. The only thing better than those two sniping at each other is those two teaming up on a common cause.

I did catch up on movie watching over the holidays -- OnDemand, not actually leaving the house to go to a theater. I watched The Adjustment Bureau, which I found rather disappointingly dull. The previews made it look action-packed, as a man goes on the run to escape the people trying to shape his fate, but that turned out to be the last ten minutes of the movie. The rest of the movie was Matt Damon waffling. It was a story that would have made for an awesome Twilight Zone episode but that didn't stretch out well into a movie.

And then there was Julie and Julia. I'd read the book and wondered how they'd make a movie from a memoir about writing a blog. Blending that story with the true story of Julia Child was an interesting way to go, except that the true story of Julia Child was worthy of its own movie and far, far more engaging than the story about a whiny narcissist writing a blog -- even if the whiny narcissist is played by the usually endearing no matter what Amy Adams. But Meryl Streep's Julia Child was wonderful, and now I want to read Julia Child's memoir about actually doing something (as opposed to blogging). I can see how Julia Child might have been put off by the idea of this chick drawing attention to herself by using her work. I don't know if the filmmakers planned it this way, but it was especially jarring to me to see Julia's struggles to get her cookbook published for a relative pittance after years of hard work juxtaposed with Julie's answering machine being filled with offers from agents and publishers because of her blog about following Julia Child's recipes.

I think I may also want to try cooking something from Julia Child's cookbook. And then maybe not blogging about it, or at least doing so in a less annoying way.

I'm sure there was something else I watched that wasn't a rewatch, but I can't think of what it was, so I suppose it was incredibly memorable.

I rewatched Inception, and I guess my latent romantic streak peeked its head up because my main question at the very end with the abrupt cut to black was not "Does the top ever stop spinning?" but rather "But what about Arthur and Ariadne? Will they get together in real life?"

And now it's a beautifully dreary and rainy day, so I imagine I will accomplish a great deal of work.

Overanalyzing Disco

2012-01-06T12:12:00.001-06:00

This morning's out-of-context Radio for Old People commercial line when my alarm went off: "Wow, Mom, I didn't know you had a sister!" The ad seemed to be for some nutritional supplement promising to improve your skin, hair and nails, and I think the idea was that the speaker thought she'd seen her mother's younger sister after seeing the results of the supplements, but it doesn't work if you think about it too much. I mean, if she's calling her "Mom" she knows she's not talking to the younger sister. I obviously missed something in the part of the commercial that happened before my alarm went off. And then the day's Patriotic Moment came on and I had to frantically turn off the radio because I just can't face "The Stars and Stripes Forever" within a minute of waking.

I found my BeeGees cassette and I may have to retract some of what I said about the meaningful relationship described in "How Deep is Your Love." It seems the deeply latent romantic sector of my half-asleep brain got all swoony over the line "I believe in you. You know the door to my very soul. You're the light in my deepest, darkest hour, you're my savior when I fall" and totally missed that the context seemed to be that they're in a physical relationship that the singer has realized means a lot more to him, and now he's trying to figure out if maybe she feels the same way. At least he is wanting a deeper relationship and he's not just proving his manliness by seeing how many women he can nail. And I have now officially overanalyzed the lyrics of a 70s disco song. Tune in next week when I do a literary deconstruction of the works of ABBA.

I know it's become a cliche to say "I never could get the hang of Thursdays," but I really didn't get the hang of yesterday. I did force myself out of the house for grocery shopping, so that I can now make a variety of meals out of the contents of my pantry and freezer, and I shouldn't have to go to a grocery store other than to get milk and fresh produce for several more weeks. Otherwise, it was a washout of a day. I couldn't even focus on a cleaning task. I gave up and read one of those paranormal mysteries I picked up at the library to research the genre. It sort of counted as "work" but was about all I could get my brain to do. We had a fairly dumbed-down ballet class to ease us back into it (and for the benefit of some brand-new people) and I still could barely keep my head around the combinations. I really must accomplish something today.

Speaking of those mysteries … with the idea of writing mysteries in the back of my mind, I've been reading the newspaper, looking for murder cases for inspiration, and one drawback for me in trying to do this may be my logical, literal brain. I can't find enough good potential murder cases in a large metropolitan area that actually has a higher per capita crime rate than New York City to sustain a series. In a smaller town, people would have to be dying at a rate that would draw national attention. And most of the murders aren't even mysteries, just people getting stabbed or shot at parties. There was a mass shooting nearby at Christmas, but the only mystery was motive. They know who did it. There has been one situation that might make a good mystery novel scenario because it's seemingly mysterious on the surface. In real life, it's not much of a mystery, but in a book you could turn it into a mysterious murder cleverly staged to look like an accident. I may have to clip that newspaper article -- and then immediately file it in a place where I know I can find it.

The Internet must be spying on me, since I've started seeing ads on site for closet organizing services after I've been writing about my cleaning project. Then there was the one suggesting I become a professional organizer. Um, yeah. That would go really well. I suppose it could be because I visit the Unclutterer site daily. Or it could just be the time of year when they know people are making resolutions to reduce clutter and it has nothing to do with the amount of time I've spent blogging about organizing.

Today's tasks (since I didn't do one yesterday): clean one of the desk drawers (my desk doesn't technically have drawers, but I have a plastic drawer unit under my desk) and one of the plastic storage bins in my office. It's possible that if I get around to redoing my office entirely, those will go and be replaced by some of those Ikea wall unit shelves with baskets or bins that slide out of them. But first I have to sort out the clutter to know what I'll need to be able to store and access.

Officially Old

2012-01-05T13:30:00.000-06:00

I was getting tired of sleeping way too late and throwing my whole schedule off, so I set my alarm this morning, and it turns out my problem isn't waking up, it's getting up. I was awake before my alarm went off, and then I lay around thinking for more than an hour afterwards. I haven't decided if this is entirely a bad thing. After all, thinking is an important part of my work, and does it really matter when or where I do it?

I did hit the snooze button a couple of times. I have my clock radio set to the "music for old people" station, and while I like their music mix, their commercials are awful. The first time the alarm went off, it came on in mid-commercial, just as some woman was saying, "After Hank took this pill, he was like a completely new man." I hit the snooze button quickly because I didn't really want more details than that about Hank. But I have a very literal mind, so I lay there thinking about how it might be kind of cool to have a pill that really could make someone into a new person. "I was getting tired of being married to Hank, so I gave him this pill, and now he's a completely different person." But that would only work if you could specify the kind of person he turned into.

The next time the alarm went off, the Bee Gees were singing "How Deep is Your Love," and you know, we may now think of that as 70s disco cheese, but that's a really good song. For one thing, the lyrics are lovely and are about the emotional and supportive side of a meaningful relationship, which is a big contrast to the songs now that seem to be more about casual hook-ups. Then the harmonies are so tight that you almost can't tell when the backup vocals join in, and you have to really listen to catch all three parts because they blend so well. And it has a really danceable beat. It would be good either for West Coast swing (push) or maybe a quick foxtrot. At any rate, you can do an actual dance to it and not just sway or gyrate. I think I still have a Bee Gees Greatest Hits cassette, and if it still works, I may have to play it.

I think I'm now officially old if I'm doing the "music from my day is so much better than today's garbage" routine. I would say that having music from my childhood playing on the "music for old people" station also makes me officially old, but this station does play selected current music, like stuff from Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman. It is kind of scary that their programming matches my music collection so closely when most of their ads are about planning for your retirement, finding a nursing home and that pill that makes Hank a new man.

I was back with the preschoolers last night, and they had some trouble adjusting. A couple of the kids who are usually quite good at coming in and getting involved without making a fuss were really reluctant and clingy. I think one of them wasn't feeling well, so I doused myself in hand sanitizer afterward, since I was the one she was clinging to and I just finally got over the last plague. My little love bug was her usual self, though. There's one little girl who's very sweet and affectionate, and she seems to have taken a liking to me because she just lights up every time she sees me and runs to hug me like she hasn't seen me in years. It's great for the ego, but then she does the same thing to her mom when her mom comes to pick her up.

Today I really need to get groceries to restock after purging the pantry this week, and I kind of desperately need a haircut. I'm having my picture taken for the church directory next week, and portraits tend to look funny when your hair is up, like you have no hair, but my hair is out of control when it's down. But I really don't want to go anywhere today. I didn't sleep well, then there was the lying around being an old person, and now I'm groggy. I suppose that means I should run errands so I can devote tomorrow to work.

Cleaning Addiction and the Never-Ending Book

2012-01-04T12:30:00.001-06:00

I had a panicky moment this morning when my Internet went out. Eep! What would I do? And for once, there was truly something I needed to be able to send, so it wasn't just that I'd be forced to work instead of reading TV message boards. But I just turned off the DSL modem and went to work on the day's cleaning job, the printer cart under my desk. It's a relic from the days of dot-matrix printers, where you had the top shelf for the printer, and then you fed the paper up from the bottom shelf through a slot in the top shelf. Now, since the current desk is only a flat surface with no drawers or storage (what was I thinking?) it serves to hold printing and mailing supplies. No interesting finds or purges on this one, just getting rid of an outdated phone book and organizing and dusting everything. The area around my desk already looks and feels a lot cleaner. And now, obviously, my Internet is up again. It was back when I finished my cleaning.

I'll get back to the every-other-week Wednesday writing posts next week. My brain is still struggling back into work mode. Choir and preschool choir starts again tonight, and ballet tomorrow night, and I think all that will jolt me back onto my usual schedule. I've also taken down the Christmas tree and will be putting it back in the garage today.

Yesterday I managed to plan/re-plan the rewrite of a pivotal scene, but I couldn't quite get my brain around writing it. Maybe that will happen today. I think maybe my usual all-or-nothing approach has kicked in with this organizing project, so it's all I want to think about or do. I really must get over that. All-or-nothing isn't a very productive way to live. But there is a kind of high to seeing visible progress in something that's been a nagging irritant for a long time, and I may as well go with it while I actually want to do this sort of thing. I just need to squeeze in some writing while I'm at it because one of my goals for the year is to finally finish this never-ending book.

The Year Behind, the Year Ahead

2012-01-03T12:33:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year! I guess the holidays are officially over, since I ate the last of the Christmas Eve waffles I had in the freezer this morning. I'm normally a "Christmas lasts until Epiphany" person, but I think the Christmas stuff is coming down today because I'm eager to move forward in post-holiday mode. Between the December illness and the holidays, I feel like it's been ages since I've had a normal working day, and it's hard for me to get my nose to the grindstone with the Christmas tree up (maybe I'll just deal with the tree today and keep the garlands until Epiphany).

I didn't get to my "year in review" post at the end of the year, so I guess I'll tackle that now. It was yet another year without any major high or low points. I did a lot of work that hasn't yet come to fruition. It was a fairly lean year financially, but there are good possibilities on the horizon. But it wasn't a bad year. I guess I'd say it was quietly good. Most of my memories of the year's "high points" involve fairly simple pleasures.

I read 100 books, which is down a bit, but only 20 of them were re-reads, which is a lower percentage than normal. I read a surprising number of non-fiction books, and not all of them were even for research -- at least, not direct research for a project in progress. As usual, my most-read author was Terry Pratchett, but all but a few of those were re-reads. My most-read author for first-time reads was Mercedes Lackey, mostly due to a late-in-the-year binge when I was in the mood for slightly lighter fantasy with romantic elements. My new-to-me series discovery was the Locke Lamora books by Scott Lynch. I don't really have a favorite book of the year. I'm really going to be stumped for Hugo and Nebula nominations.

As for the year ahead, I feel like I'm standing on the brink of something and big changes may be ahead. That may mean moving in a different direction with some things or trying something new (that sounds like I'm writing my horoscope). Something pretty much has to change, and I need to step out of my comfort zone in some way. I hope that all the work I've been doing lately will finally come to something, somehow. Personally, I also may need to shake things up and be more willing to take chances.

I make the same resolutions every year, to get my house in order and to be more physically fit and active. I'm already making great strides on the first with my job jar approach. I finally got to some tasks where the results are visible, as two thirds of the bar in my living room (aka the Horizontal Surface Where All Things Go to Die) is totally clean. The difference between this and other times I've cleaned the living room is that I'm not just shoving everything somewhere else. A lot of the decluttering I've done with cabinets and boxes has revealed the results of previous emergency cleanings, where I've just stuffed things away in a hurry. Over the weekend, I dealt with a couple of the boxes in the office closet, which turned out to be full of newspaper and magazine clippings -- and in a lot of cases, entire newspaper sections. I seem to have avoided tossing the food section of the newspaper, thinking there might be a recipe I'd want, and then those sections got shoved in a box. I did end up clipping a few of those recipes, but there were entire newspaper sections that ended up in the recycling bag. It was interesting to watch the evolution of the local newspaper (or, really, the devolution), as it went from a dedicated weekly food section to a few articles and recipes in the lifestyle section, and the sections got much smaller. Apparently, I like the idea of molten chocolate/flourless chocolate cake and chocolate cheesecake because I found a lot of recipes for those things. And I could probably cook a different thing every day and never get through all the recipes I'd saved. I tried to really limit myself to interesting or unusual things that I couldn't find in any cookbook I've got. I may start a grab-bag approach to using these recipes, like picking one a week, buying the ingredients and making it.

As for the fitness, I tend to go in spurts of enthusiasm. I need to find more activities I enjoy doing and focus on that rather than on "exercise." But I say that every year.

Now, on with 2012!

Confessions of a Bag Lady

2011-12-30T12:28:00.001-06:00

The "job jar" approach to house organizing seems to be working so far. I'm actually enjoying finding out what my job for the day will be, and I'm tackling it with some enthusiasm. Yesterday's job was to clean the laundry room. Actually, it's more of a laundry closet in the wall opposite the kitchen/dining room (and it's actually the breakfast nook next to the kitchen, since according to the floor plans, the back part of the living room is the dining room, but I'd rather have a large living room than both a breakfast nook and a dining room).

The main thing I discovered is that I seem to have the makings of a bag lady. I've been mostly using cloth grocery bags for a couple of years, but when I do get grocery or other bags, I use them as trash bags or for carrying out my recycling, and they get stashed in the laundry room, usually on top of the dryer. I thought I didn't have too many, but once I started pulling things out, I found that some must have fallen over the edge between the dryer and the wall, and they must have been breeding for years. The more I pulled out, the more there were. I now have a few bags for trash and recycling purposes hanging on hooks on the wall. The rest will go to the people at my church who cut bags into "yarn" and then crochet sleeping mats for the homeless. I also found that I'd stashed some glass for recycling, probably during an emergency cleaning. The big find, though, was a stray black sock that I must have blamed the dryer for eating. It's one of my good ones, and I don't think I've yet disposed of its mate.

And then I was so enthusiastic that I went ahead and did today's task, which was cleaning out the lower cabinet of my pantry. There I found some plastic water bottles that apparently got stashed there during an emergency cleaning. I also found most of my paper/plastic party supplies and some cloth napkins and an apron I haven't seen in years. I moved some things around and now have a lot more storage space, so I'll have to figure out how to move things around as I get to the rest of the kitchen.

So far, my tasks have all been in hidden areas, so my house doesn't look any cleaner, but I am clearing out space to be able to put things away properly. I must admit to opening the laundry room doors when I go by there to admire how clean it looks. In addition to sorting and decluttering, I scrubbed off all the spots where dryer lint got trapped in detergent drips and I wiped off the handprints around the dryer door handle. Now it's all sparkly and white.

Today's task is cleaning out the top desk drawer. So far, I've been finding pens that don't work, and I've trashed the planner pages from 2001. I'd saved them because I used them to track time for clients, but I don't think there are going to be any questions about that this late. I still have more sorting to do in there. This is just what I've done while waiting for Internet pages to load. Instead of drawing a second task, I may just work on clearing my desk so I can put out the blotter calendar I got.

The trick will be to see if I can maintain the enthusiasm long enough to get around to the whole house. I tend to start these projects with great glee, then get bored and taper off before it's done. I guess I just need to keep staring at the laundry room for motivation.

And, wow, this will be my last post of 2011. I guess I'll do my year in review/looking ahead stuff next week. Happy new year!

"Colin Firth" and the Crush from Afar

2011-12-29T12:36:00.001-06:00

I didn't exactly sleep late this morning. I woke up at a very reasonable time. My delay in starting the day came from thinking late and not realizing how much time had passed. I mentally composed about a week's worth of blog posts, added a few elements to the Plan for World Domination, debated with myself over whether the current project could be rewritten into a cozy paranormal mystery (I think if it goes into a series it has some of the right elements, but it would have to lose a lot and the first book wouldn't fit) and planned today's housecleaning project.

I'm getting a jump on my annual New Year's resolution to get my house in order, and this year's tactic is to create a job jar. I wrote all the areas that need to be cleaned, decluttered or organized onto little slips of paper, put them in a jar, and I'm drawing one (or more, if I'm bored or inspired) a day. Yesterday's task was the cabinet under the kitchen sink, where I found that I'm apparently hoarding Swiffer cloths (or the Target brand equivalent). I just bought a new box because I'd used the last one from the old box, but in taking everything out of the cabinet I found two opened -- and almost full -- boxes. Now I should have clean floors for a while. Today's fun task is to tackle the laundry room. I already have some ideas of how to organize the things in there that tend to produce clutter, thanks to this morning's thinking time.

In discussing the things that were great about Christmas Eve, I forgot to mention an important one: I had a "Colin Firth" sighting. This is sort of like the church edition of "Where's Waldo." From the choir loft, I have a good view of the congregation, and I find myself looking for familiar faces, especially on those Sundays when I have to sing in two services and I'm getting round 2. Playing these little "Where's Waldo" games helps me look alert and focused. A few years ago, I noticed a man sitting alone in the sanctuary. That's actually rather odd. In my years of observing congregations from the choir loft in various churches, I've found that men seldom come to church without being accompanied/dragged by a woman. When they're younger, it's their mother, and that influence may extend into the post-college years. But then if a man isn't married by his thirties and being dragged/accompanied by his wife, he tends to have this big realization that his mom can't make him go to church anymore and he doesn't have to answer to anyone, so he then drops out until he marries someone who makes him go to church. You may see older men alone -- most often widowers who keep going -- but it's very rare to see a man in his 30s-50s sitting by himself in church unless he's the spouse of a choir member. That makes dating very difficult when you're over thirty and one of your criteria for choosing someone to date involves religious faith. It's nearly impossible to meet men in church since they're not there, but outside church it's hard to tell the difference between religious but lazy, lapsed but not entirely gone, and not interested in that sort of thing. So, one Sunday I noticed this man, and I thought he kind of had a Colin Firth thing going on. Not so much of a lookalike that I wondered what Colin Firth was doing in my church, but he's kind of that type (though more Love Actually or The King's Speech than Mr. Darcy). Then when I passed him during the recessional, I noticed he didn't wear a wedding ring. Since then I've made a habit of looking for "Colin Firth" in church. I didn't see him Christmas Eve, but it was too crowded to spot individuals, but then I saw him during communion, with a much older man who had an almost identical profile, probably his father. They seemed to be in the overflow seating in the foyer.

Of course, I haven't done anything wild and crazy like introduce myself during all this time. I am the queen of the Crush from Afar. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I'm extremely shy about that sort of thing, and the crushing disaster that has been my dating life thus far doesn't lend much confidence. I find that when I talk to someone I find interesting, I get loud and shrill and talk too much, too fast. It's like what happens to me with singing stage fright, where I'm aware of what's going on with my voice but have no control over it. That means I'm likely to avoid my crush objects because I figure it's better to come across as aloof and mysterious than as loud and obnoxious. At least he might be intrigued by the mystery, while the loud and obnoxious might repulse him. A friend used to joke that I needed to get cards printed up to use at parties or other events. One would say "I'm sorry if I've given you the wrong impression, but the fact that I'm talking easily to you means that I have zero romantic interest in you. I would enjoy being friends, though." The other would say "The fact that I seem to have been avoiding you other than casting numerous glances your way means I fancy you madly and am afraid of making a fool of myself. You are welcome to initiate conversation with me, but please be patient until I can get over my nerves." The latter card is important because the same behavior can also mean I really am avoiding someone who irritates me, and it can also mean I'm trying to cool things down from someone who took my easy conversation the wrong way (which is why that first card could come in handy).

At the same time, the Crush from Afar may just be for fun, not something I want to do anything about. Having a little crush on someone I see regularly but don't know can give me a little charge that lifts my spirits. Actually meeting him might ruin the fantasy. I haven't decided where "Colin Firth" fits in. He is the exceptionally rare man in my general age range who attends church with no woman in sight, so that gives us one important thing in common, but I don't know anything else about him and I haven't had too many opportunities to get anywhere near him, since I'm in the choir and he's usually at the back of the church. He wouldn't have any reason to have noticed me (other than maybe my looks and my voice) since my being in the choir gives no clues as to my social or marital status. I don't have to sing in the choir on Sunday, so if I can drag myself out on New Year's morning and if I sit in the right area, I might have an encounter (that is, if he drags himself out on New Year's morning). Otherwise, I'll just have to keep acting like I'm in junior high and have a crush on a boy I pass in the halls. We're getting a church directory made, and I'll have to search it for his picture, then draw little hearts around it in my copy.

And now I think I need a viewing of Love Actually. I didn't watch it before Christmas because I needed to sing and that was already precarious, so watching a movie guaranteed to make me bawl would not have helped matters.

Christmas Aftermath

2011-12-28T15:27:00.001-06:00

I'm home again after Christmas and having a really slow/distracted day. It's amazing the number of things I've found myself Googling, just because of a cascade of free associations. There was a link in Facebook to an event, that I then looked up, but then I wondered if it conflicted with something else, that I then had to look up, and then that made me wonder about something else that might have been a conflict to that event. When it wasn't, I had to research options relating to that event. And then it was an hour later and I realized I was getting lightheaded because I'd forgotten to eat lunch.

Anyway, I had a really wonderful Christmas, and I think my breaking of my usual schedule turned out to be a great idea. When I'm away from home for more than a few days, I tend to get these sudden "I want to be home, NOW" feelings, and I'm very antsy and restless until I can get home. When I go to my parents' house a couple of days before Christmas, my "I need to be home, NOW" urge often strikes on Christmas Day itself, totally dampening the mood. This time, I arrived on Christmas so I had a couple of days of being content where I was, and that made the whole day go better for me. I'm also one of those people who gets my holiday high in the buildup, so that there's a huge, anticlimactic letdown after Christmas morning. This year, we did "Christmas" in the afternoon, after dinner, which stretched Christmas out, and since I was newly arrived at my parents' house, I didn't get the same letdown at all. We went straight from my arrival to Christmas dinner, to Christmas presents, to Doctor Who.

Plus, I really enjoyed the days leading up to Christmas. On Friday night, I turned on my Christmas lights, lit the candles in the fireplace (the ambience of a fire without the mess or danger), made some cocoa and watched The Holiday, which left me feeling all cozy and warm and fuzzy. I slept late on Saturday, made waffles, and had a lazy day eating popcorn, reading and watching bad cable Christmas movies (it's a weakness). The Christmas Eve services at my church were wonderful. The early service, at 7, had an Easter-like crowd, with standing room only, folding chairs brought in for the ends of rows and several rows of chairs in the foyer (there are windows between the foyer and the sanctuary). When we lit all the candles at the end and turned out the lights, it was amazing to look down from the choir loft and see those hundreds of candles stretching all the way to the back. The 11 p.m. service was less full, more like a normal Sunday, but it had its own kind of energy. Driving home at 12:30, I had "What Sweeter Music" on the car stereo and some of the houses in the neighborhood I drove through still had their Christmas lights on. At home, someone had a fire going, with that fireplace scent in the air. It was all very magical.

I went to my parents' house later than I planned because the night was later than I expected and I had a hard time getting to sleep and thus overslept. It was nice to travel with hardly any traffic, and it was dark and cloudy enough that the lights in each of the little towns I went through showed up. I had my Christmas music playing and was singing along merrily. The only hiccup was the fact that my "check tire pressure" light came on when I was between small towns, and it's impossible to tell if that means "you should probably check the pressure when you get a chance" or "YOUR TIRE HAS GONE FLAT!!!!! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!!!!" Because I've had a tire fall apart on me in the middle of nowhere and didn't want to count on pickup truck chivalry on Christmas, I pulled over at the next gas station to check, and one was visibly low but none were flat, so I put a little air in the visibly low one -- and then suddenly had concerned offers of help from the other patrons at the gas station, which is one of those small Texas town things. The light didn't go off, so I drove the rest of the way worrying a bit, but I made it, and my dad put air in all the tires before I came home so I could get rid of that light.

Anyway, I may make a new tradition of doing things that way, going out of town on Christmas Day and spending Christmas Eve at home. This was one of the best, happiest Christmases I've had in a long time, and I think a lot of it had to do with synching my schedule with my personality, plus I really enjoy that kind of big service with amazing music. My taste veers toward the classical, especially in church, and my parents' church tends toward guitar and drum sets, which is so not my thing in church. We had an orchestra and handbells and sang Faure.

And now I need to focus my brain and attempt to do some work because I do still have work to do this week.

Almost Christmas

2011-12-23T12:03:00.001-06:00

Wow, I can't believe it's the day before Christmas Eve. I had all sorts of grand plans for this holiday season that fell by the wayside because I got sick. Then again, I managed to do some things this year that I've been saying for years I wanted to do and then never got around to doing, so I may have done more holiday activities in spite of my illness than I usually do in a good year. I think the key was mentioning some of these things I wanted to do to friends. Then plans got made, and plans I make with other people usually come about. When I'm making plans for myself, it's way too easy to change my mind. I'm also staying in town for Christmas Eve, so that will be something new.

I did have an excursion tentatively planned for today, but I think I had valid reasons for changing my mind. I have a lot of stuff I want to get done today, and it got a lot colder. If I want to sing tomorrow night, being out in the cold wind probably wouldn't be the best idea. Instead, I may go to the library to stock up on books for the holiday and then have lunch at the cafe next to the library. They have a divine tomato basil soup.

I'll be taking my "holiday" early next week, so I don't know what my posting schedule will be. So I'll take the opportunity now to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Good, Great and Mastery

2011-12-22T11:42:00.001-06:00

I must be on the mend because in addition to trying to work yesterday, I also managed to get sidetracked the way I usually do. I got fed up with the second call that day from the same number that I didn't recognize on my cell phone, with no message being left, so I tried a reverse directory lookup to see who it was, then Googled the number and found it on a site listing telephone scams or telemarketers that don't observe do not call lists. I also found the other numbers that have called me repeatedly on that site. Apparently one is selling security systems, one is selling some kind of home warranty and one is that "this is your final notice from credit card services" call that I also get all the time on my home phone. It's funny that they don't name the credit card and that you get the final notice several times a day, every day. Then I started looking up how to block those numbers, only to find that with my carrier, the ability to block a harassing number is an optional service that costs extra. While I was at it, I tried seeing what I could do about all the spam text messages I'm getting, and blocking those also costs extra. Then I had to learn how to forward a text message to their spam number from my phone, which I didn't get from the user manual for my phone. I had to go to the online forum for users of this kind of phone to find that answer.

And then after all that when I finally did sit down to work, my phone rang, and it wasn't a telemarketer. I think every time I've tried to work this week, someone has called me. Fortunately, we had a very short choir rehearsal (and I made it through, though I doubt it was pretty), so I got through a couple of scenes after choir.

When I talked earlier this week about mastering an art, I really wasn't feeling down on myself or fishing for compliments. I'd bet that most of the people we think of as having mastered their art don't think they have -- and that's why they're masters, because they're always pushing to be better. As the saying goes, "good" is the biggest enemy of "great" because it's easy to be satisfied with good, and if you are, you won't become great. I think that's why the "participation trophy" mentality is a recipe for mediocrity. Unless you're really internally motivated, receiving the same award for showing up that you'd get for being excellent makes it way too easy to be satisfied with getting your trophy for showing up, and that means you'll never be great. The drive to work hard toward being truly excellent, regardless of external rewards, is pretty rare, so when external rewards become meaningless, you get a bigger division between the people who keep striving just because they want to be the best they can be and the people who are happy with their participation trophy (in whatever form it takes).

Not that I'm saying that this is a sure sign that I'm likely to become a "Master," but based on what I know of my personality, I don't think I'd be one of those authors who starts phoning it in once I reach the point where publishers would fight for the right to publish my grocery list and it would instantly shoot to the top of the bestseller list. I'd feel driven to uphold a certain standard and try to make each book better. I guess I was thinking about this because I had read a book by a perennially bestselling author I have enjoyed in the past and was very disappointed by what seemed to me to be a lack of even trying. If I had submitted that same book, it would have been rejected instantly because the characters were thinner than tissue paper, the conflicts were simplistic and all the major turning point scenes were skipped, with the events being told in interior monologue by the characters sitting and drinking coffee as they remembered what happened. There would be this huge, impossible situation made suddenly even more complicated at the end-of-chapter cliffhanger, and the next chapter would begin the next day, with the character smiling to herself as she remembered what happened next and how crazy it was and how through it all the enemy came around and realized they were on the same side, so they decided to team up. I found myself screaming "show, don't tell!" at the book. These were scenes that were begging to be written out, and they all marked major turning points in the situation and in the characters' relationships. It was like there was a mix-up at the publisher and they accidentally published the synopsis instead of the novel itself. Here was an author who must have been satisfied with "good" because she achieved a certain amount of success, and so she not only didn't push on to "great" but let herself slide to a level that wouldn't have been acceptable without her huge success. (Though maybe I'm alone in this impression because the reviews at Amazon -- both the professional and the reader reviews -- were overwhelmingly positive. Even Publisher's Weekly didn't mention the skipping of pivotal scenes, and they're usually hypercritical.)

Anyway … Today will be my "get my act together" day to do laundry and otherwise prepare myself for the fact that Christmas is in just a few days. I've already started washing all the bed linens -- even washed the duvet cover and put the comforter in the dryer to fluff. If I'm very good today, then I can relax on Christmas Eve before singing for two services, one at 7 and one at 11 (the Methodist version of midnight mass).

Christmas Shopping Accomplished

2011-12-21T12:25:00.000-06:00

I'm now done with my Christmas shopping. I went out this morning and managed to hit what seemed to be a lull -- even got gas without having to play Mad Max. Now I just have to wrap everything.

I made it to our "bonus" dance class last night and even made it through the whole class. There were a few coughing spells and I pulled back on some of the more energetic stuff, but I think the physical activity was good for me. I know I slept more and better than I have in ages. I even got to indulge my inner five-year-old. Since the school is technically closed for the holidays, we got to use the big studio where they do the serious classes and where the ballet company rehearses, and there were some rehearsal tutus in the room. At the end of class, I couldn't resist putting one on. They were the calf-length ones, very Swan Lake, and I swear, wearing one made me a better dancer (or maybe it just hid my legs). I did a few pirouettes and some tour jetes and felt so very graceful with all that tulle swishing around me. I doubt my teacher would let me wear one to class all the time, but we had fun playing ballerina. Then we all went out for ice cream and some serious girl talk. I may deserve to get shot for it, but I actually invoked the He's Just Not That Into You mantra. I think the situation called for it, and the others backed me up on it because it sounded like too many excuses were being made for why they haven't ever gone out on an actual date after months of flirtation. If he's not asking you out, he's just not that into you.

Tonight we'll see if I can get through a choir rehearsal. I imagine there won't be a lot of singing from me, but just listening will help me prepare for Christmas Eve.

Leaving the house and then coming home has made me realize what a mess the place has become while I've been sick. I may need a forklift to haul off the bags of used tissues -- I went through two entire boxes during this illness. Then I should probably disinfect the entire house. I also desperately need to do laundry. Christmas has kind of snuck up on me this year, and I've gone directly from too sick to do anything to a very busy week. But at least I know that even if I don't get anything else done this week, I will have gifts for my family.

I'm kind of tempted to go on a walk today because the weather is really lovely. I just don't know if that would be overdoing it and asking for trouble or if giving the lungs a good workout and some fresh air might help.

Mastering an Art

2011-12-20T12:16:00.000-06:00

I knew I'd made great strides in my recovery when I actually worked yesterday -- and optional work, not "I have to drag myself off my deathbed because I have a deadline" work. Part of it had to do with finishing the last of my library books, aside from one that isn't really pleasure reading, and being a bit bored, and part of it had to do with the last of those books being a huge disappointment that sparked the "I can do better than this" impulse. I didn't work much, but I finished a new scene I'd been working on.

Then since I wasn't quite up to dance class, I watched The Nutcracker on PBS. I think they need to find another Christmas-season ballet to make a tradition because, let's face it, this one can be kind of boring. There's almost no actual dancing until about 45 minutes into it, just a lot of miming. And then while some of the dancing in the second half can be really lovely, there's really not a lot going on. It's a story about our main character sitting around and watching stuff happen. This one did have one of my favorite Waltz of the Flowers sequences. I loved their costumes, and the dancer who was the Dew Drop Fairy was amazing. I'm writing a book in which one of the characters is a dancer (so this kind of counted as work), and she danced the way I imagine the character would.

Watching anything like that involving people who have mastered an art tends to give me a slight pang of regret. I've never been able to focus on any one thing well enough to achieve that kind of mastery. I felt oppressed by dance lessons twice a week because they got in the way of other things I wanted to do. I haven't had the time or money (or the nerve) to really master music. I'm mostly a dabbler who does a lot of things reasonably well but none of them brilliantly. I'm at an age when it's a little late to achieve mastery, and even if I did, there's not much I could do with it, and taking the time and effort to do so would probably not be worth the opportunity cost. About the only thing I might be able to "master" is writing, and there "mastery" is in the eye of the beholder.

Although different people may have different preferences for something like dance, there are still objective measurements -- you can tell if the steps are done properly, if the positions are correct, if the dancing fits the music. Writing is a lot more challenging. You can't really measure "mastery" by success because there are some truly terribly written things that are wildly successful. Then again, the fact that they are successful means that they touched a lot of people very deeply, which would imply the mastery of something (even if it isn't avoidance of cliches, character development or the ability to string words together). The more literary set tends to define mastery as beautiful prose, but if I'm reading something for the first time and notice the prose, then that means I'm not into the story, and I would consider that a writing failure. I've read prize-winning books that I found dull and lifeless, which characters who were obvious mouthpieces for the authors' world views, and I've read the kind of commercial novels that critics tend to sneer at that really captured my imagination and made me think about my life and my role in the universe.

So I'm not sure it's possible for a writer to really reach a point where someone can say, "Wow, she's really mastered her art." It doesn't help that writing is something just about everyone thinks they can do -- all those "I'm going to write a novel someday" people. Just about everyone knows that getting up on stage and doing The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy would require years of training and preparation to even get their muscles into a condition to do those things. Everyone knows that you have to practice a lot for years to play Rachmaninoff on the piano. But since just about everyone has had to write something at some point in their lives, they don't see writing as something that has to be learned and mastered.

Too bad it's too late for me to be a ballerina.

Christmas Movies

2011-12-19T12:06:00.001-06:00

I think I've finally turned the corner. I survived all of Sunday without any medication. I didn't feel great, but I was able to function and breathe without cough syrup or decongestants. Then I finally got some deep, restful sleep last night -- something that hasn't been happening with the cough. I'm still not up to doing much and I think there will be much napping and sleeping, but if I continue improving at this pace, I'll be well by Christmas. I was supposed to have a make-up dance class tonight and tomorrow night, but I don't see it happening tonight. Tomorrow, though, I might be able to make it through at least the barre section of the class, even if the rest might be too strenuous. I made the mistake of looking in the mirror this morning, and I look kind of like the walking dead -- dark circles under my eyes, red nose, wild, tangled hair, sallow skin. I could probably scare a miser into changing his ways.

I managed to fight through the congestion with weapons from a variety of cultures. Friday night, I had pasta with arrabiata sauce (a very spicy tomato sauce with a lot of garlic and peppers). Then Saturday it was vindaloo, which I might not be able to eat when I'm not stuffed up, as it was so spicy my ears were tingling (but I could breathe after eating it). Sunday night I made chili that I'll probably have to eat this week instead of freezing some of the batch, since it also might be a bit too hot for normal eating.

This weekend, I may have overdosed a bit on the cable Christmas movies. I've already confessed to my fondness for these cheesy concoctions. I guess one reason I like them is that they're not at all edgy, and with "romantic comedy" having turned into mostly a gross-out, "edgy" thing on the big screen, this is one of the few places where you can see something unabashedly sweet and romantic. I started my marathon with ABC Family's latest, which I didn't have high hopes for, as their movies tend toward the corny, but it turned out to be surprisingly good, maybe even better than any big-screen romantic comedy I've seen in the last few years. It was called The 12 Dates of Christmas and was about a young woman who's been trying to adhere rigidly to her life plan, which included marrying her now-ex boyfriend. She messes up an obligatory Christmas Eve blind date with a promising prospect because of her focus on meeting up with the ex, only to find out that the ex is now engaged to someone else, and she thinks she's missed her chance -- until she wakes up and it's Christmas Eve all over again. It's sort of a Christmas Groundhog Day concept, and I think they did a good job with it because her reactions to it seemed very realistic as she worked her way through each go-round the way you'd imagine someone would, thinking it's a dream, then seeing a doctor, then focusing on ways to get the ex back, then finally focusing on the new guy, then getting frustrated with the constant re-sets and going a little nuts with it. I actually liked the main characters and wanted them to get together, and they avoided a lot of cliches by not making the ex or his new girlfriend evil. In fact, there was no villain. I wonder if they ever sell these on DVD because I could see myself working this one into my holiday film festival collection (I like to rotate movies and keep them fresh instead of wearing out the same ones over and over again).

And then to get my true cheese factor, I started working my way through the Lifetime Movie Network OnDemand Christmas menu, alphabetically. I landed on one called All She Wants for Christmas, which involved a business-minded young woman working in the corporate office of the local Christmas decorations factory in her small town. She's trying to make the operation more efficient, since it's been losing money, and if the plant closes, much of the town will be out of work. It gets more urgent when the recently deceased owner's granddaughter shows up to review the plant, but she's a little distracted by the charming free spirit who shows up and takes a seasonal job at the plant. This one was cute, but very predictable, and it included the romantic comedy cliche of the woman flipping out when she sees the guy speaking to another woman, and if you don't know the other woman is actually his relative, then you've never seen a movie like this (the women in Lifetime movies never seem to watch Lifetime movies). But it was really hard for me to concentrate on the actual movie because all the women in the cast had the same extremely fake-looking, overprocessed, yellow-blond hair that didn't at all go with their skin tones, and that got to be extremely distracting. It was like Christmas With the Lannisters (geeky reference: In A Game of Thrones it's a plot point that the Lannister family is known for their blond hair, and that means in the TV series that a number of naturally dark-haired actors have really fake-looking yellow-blond dye jobs (or wigs) that don't go at all with their coloring).

I finally found the corny I'd been expecting from ABC Family with a movie on the ION network (I can't tell if they're repurposing Hallmark stuff or if some of this is actually original programming) that was on Sunday afternoon. This one had several of my "don't" elements, but I didn't feel like looking for anything else, and it managed to do the "don'ts" in an inoffensive way. It was called Christmas Mail and was about a young woman who shows up at the local post office, sent from the postmaster to answer children's letters to Santa. The paranoid manager thinks she's been sent to spy on him and assigns a young mailman (the geeky lab tech from CSI: NY) to get to know her and find out what's up with her. What she doesn't know is that he's the uncle of a little girl who keeps writing to Santa about wanting to find a way to make her uncle happy, since he had to put his life on hold to raise her when her parents died. I normally steer away from any holiday movie with adorable moppets and single parents, but this kid reminded me of young Amelia Pond on Doctor Who. And then there's the fact that the letter writer seems to have some connection to the North Pole. They keep it pretty subtle, so I couldn't quite tell if it was a gender-reversed (and less annoying) Elf or if she's supposed to be Santa's daughter. At any rate, she managed to be just enthusiastic and unworldly enough to make it work without being obnoxious. This one also had the "see him with someone else, assume he's married/cheating, then storm off instead of asking about it" cliche. Not one of the better Christmas movies, but possibly the kind of thing I was in the mood for.

What are some of my favorites? In no particular order:
1) The Holiday -- mostly for the English countryside scenery. I wouldn't mind spending Christmas in a cottage in an English village like that.
2) Love Actually -- but I can't watch it when I'm sick because it makes me cry, and that makes my nose run, and that just makes matters worse. It does, however, work for any mood because there's such a mix of stories. There's enough bittersweet that it doesn't make me feel pathetic in contrast if I'm feeling low.
3) The Muppets Christmas Carol -- One of the more faithful adaptations of the novel, aside from the talking pigs and frogs.
4) Scrooge -- the musical with Albert Finney. I love the music, and I love that the perkiest songs are used ironically, until the end. The cheery "Father Christmas" is meant sarcastically to describe Scrooge, and then "Thank You Very Much" is sung during a funeral procession -- the "nicest thing anyone's ever done for me" is Scrooge dying.
5) Christmas in Connecticut -- the original from the 40s -- a great Christmas screwball comedy
6) Gremlins -- I love the contrast between the idyllic small-town Christmas setting and the mayhem that ensues.
7) While You Were Sleeping -- I usually do this one between Christmas and New Year's Day, since that's when it takes place, but it's a nice holiday-set romantic comedy.

These are the ones I can watch over and over, though there are a few of those Lifetime/Family movies I'll catch when they're on. You may notice that A Christmas Story is NOT on this list. I don't really get the love for that movie. It was cute the first time I saw it, but it's not something I can watch repeatedly, and playing it non-stop is a good way to keep me away from your channel for an entire day.

Flashback: Jane Espenson Interview

2011-12-16T11:11:00.001-06:00

I seem to have a constantly mutating plague which has now migrated into my nose, where it has poured concrete that is expanding as it solidifies. At least, that's the way it feels. I'm afraid that if I bend forward the least little bit, my head will crash through the floor. I guess that means another day of not being able to think, and to make things even more annoying, the sun came out. I hate being sick on a bright, sunny day.

I have profound thoughts swirling around in my head that I can't quite seem to form into words, so I think instead I'll do a spammer special today. I keep getting notifications of comments on very old posts, which generally turn out to be spam comments. But when LiveJournal sends a comment notification, it includes the whole post, which means I've been getting some fun blasts from the past. Thanks to the spammers, I'm finding some old favorites and some things I'd forgotten about. For instance, when the Serenity Found anthology came out, the Trashionista web site asked me to interview editor (and former Firefly -- and many other shows -- writer) Jane Espenson for them. It was an e-mail interview, with my questions passed through the site, so I never had direct contact with her, and I'd forgotten entirely about it until a spammer tried to post a comment to a post in which I directed to that interview. Once I read the interview, I remembered the questions and it all came back to me. Thanks, spammer!

So, here's my 2007 interview with Jane Espenson, who is now writing for Once Upon a Time, which is one of the things I have thoughts about but can't quite seem to be coherent about at the moment.

A lot of your TV writing career has involved science fiction and fantasy (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica), but you're also a big fan of Jane Austen (and contributor to Flirting with Pride and Prejudice) -- that seems like a complete opposite, but do you see any similarities or parallels between those vastly different genres?

Parallels! First off, is life in Jane Austen's England any less exotic and strange than life on Galactica or Serenity? But the real parallel is a set of characters who seem completely fresh and real and identifiable no matter how alien the world they're inhabiting.

You know what current show I also see as having this quality? Friday Night Lights. It's a gorgeous show that consistently reminds me of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly -- it creates/reflects a real world filled with lots of real and complex characters with consistent but constantly-changing relationships, shot as if the camera just happened to be catching slices of real lives... the fact that FNL is set in small-town Texas instead of on a spaceship doesn't matter one bit to me. Both worlds are a little bit strange to me -- what does it matter that one requires artificial gravity and other artificial turf?

What do you think Firefly fans will get out of reading this essay collection?

They will not just be educated and entertained, but also delighted and outraged! Actually, I think they'll get a couple different things. Several of the essays, including the fine ones by Nathan Fillion and Loni Peristere, give an insider's look at the show, that I think fans will find fascinating. Others, like Orson Scott Card's outstanding contribution, discuss the show's place in the history of this kind of production/literature. I found that particularly interesting. Still others analyze the show from a wide variety of social and political points of view that highlight how much viewers can draw from this show to support or challenge their own opinions.

I think everyone is going to come away from the collection with a different favorite essay, and probably a different disfavorite too. (I know, but it COULD be a word.) It's not just a paean to the show -- it actually adds to the experience of watching. At least I hope so. Read it, watch, and then let me know.

Do any of these essays change your perception of the series in any way?

I was fascinated to read about the history of the SciFi-Western as discussed in the essay by Bruce Bethke. I had no idea this had been a pre-existing model and CERTAINLY no idea that it had been a disrespected one and why. I was riveted by this. I also adore the essays by Natalie Hayes and Maggie Burns, both of which shed intelligent light on Joss's treatment of female characters. But the two that most literally changed how I watch the show are probably those by Loni and Nathan -- it's the inside knowledge that these two bring that actually pulls me INSIDE the scenes.

Why do you think this series has had such enduring popularity, in spite of being cancelled midway through its first season?

I'm starting to think that it's as much "because of" as it is "in spite of." There's something about a life tragically cut short that stokes fascination because of the sense of what might have been. "Firefly" is James Dean, you know? But that's only a small factor. I think the show, with its crystal-clear vision, simply gave people something they were hungry for: a show with a point of view, with something to say, and very human characters to say it. Audiences now are enjoying shows with moral complexity, and "Firefly" had that. The wonderful thing about flawed and complex characters is that you never feel like you've fully gotten to know them, so you keep wanting more. And there you are, around at that James Dean thing again.

What more "girly" stuff (books, TV, movies) would you recommend for the Austen side of the brain?

I think it's all the same side of the brain, but I have to recommend Margaret Atwood's classic "The Handmaid's Tale" and Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let You Go," both books that take a scifi-ish premise and then install strong female (Austeny, if you will) characters that project utter reality.

What are you reading now (or most recently)?

Roots -- "reading" it in the unabridged audio book form, with Avery Brooks from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine doing the reading. It's wonderful and long... fills weeks of commuting time and makes me sorry to leave the car! I'm also reading (actually reading this time), Stephen Colbert's book, "I Am America (And So Can You)". Hilarious -- the marginalia stuff is just the kind of thing that most amuses me.

Your Flirting with Pride and Prejudice essay was a follow-up to Pride and Prejudice. Have you found yourself coming up with additional story ideas for the TV series you've worked on after you've left the staff or the series has been cancelled? Do those characters keep living in your head, or do you have to move on for the sake of your own sanity?

I generally move onto a new show right away, and I always think the characters have gone away, but I have to say that at least once a week I'll think of some little joke or funny observation that references pop culture and I'll think to myself, "Ooh, maybe I could work that into my next script -- Anya or Willow could--" And then I'll remember that there's no way to work a pop culture joke into Battlestar.

If you were going to suggest a topic for another pop culture book, what topic would you choose?

Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert and their fake news empire. I'd love to read more about the backstage workings of putting together those shows, and more about their impact, too. I'm baffled by the way they put those shows together four nights a week. Genius!

Is there an essay you're dying to write about some aspect of pop culture?

I want to write a book about how to write for television, but that's not really the same thing. An essay about pop culture? Well, I'm very interested in the evolution of joke styles in broadcast comedy -- from radio to classic television to today. Not just the topics of the jokes, but the way the information is presented in the joke. I think there's an interesting analysis to be done there.

Fighting Alien Incursions

2011-12-15T12:05:00.001-06:00

It's a good thing I got all the Christmassy stuff I wanted to do this year done last weekend. Now all that's left on my to-do list (other than the shopping) is the sit quietly at home stuff, and that's about all I've been up to this week. I think the worst of the actual symptoms are over (I think my neighbor's dog is confused because she thinks I'm barking at her when I cough), but I now feel like I've fought off an alien incursion. I guess I have, in a way, but that means I probably need to spend a few more days lying on the sofa, reading and drinking tea.

Actually, yesterday I wasn't even feeling much like reading, so I caught up with all the shows I don't care enough about to watch live by marathoning them OnDemand. Let's just say that Hawaii 5-0 and Primeval make a really odd combination, though I guess they make about the same amount of sense. Today I have some work I really must do, and after that I think I will bond with the sofa. I may break out the holiday movie DVDs, or I may be in the right frame of mind for a marathon of made-for-cable Christmas romances (with mandatory snarking at any stupid decisions by the characters)..

I still want to write a Lifetime Christmas movie, along with a SyFy channel fantasy movie. I even have story ideas. I just have to learn how to write and sell a screenplay, which would probably involve finding an agent who wouldn't sneer at such things (the film agent who handles my books represents Oscar winners for a major agency, so I doubt these would be something she'd consider, but maybe she knows someone with a sense of humor and low expectations).

Now I'm going to go make more tea and see if I can remain coherent long enough to write five "health news you can use" scripts.

Writing Advice

2011-12-14T11:49:00.001-06:00

I didn't get any writing questions submitted for the last writing post of the year, so I'll do a list of the best writing advice I've been given (that I can remember). In no particular order:

Don't chase trends (but be aware of them)
If something you're working on happens to fit into a current trend, then play that up and take advantage of the situation. If a current trend really sparks your imagination and fires you up to write something like it, go for it. But if you try to write something just because it's currently hot, you probably won't do a very good job of it, you'll probably be miserable, and by the time you get a book written and submitted, the trend may already be on the downswing. You're better off sticking to the stories you're passionate about and doing them really, really well. Then maybe you'll set the next trend.

When you're stuck, make a list
This was a lifechanging piece of advice for me. If you don't know what to do next or if you've got a scene with not enough going on, make a list of at least twenty things that could happen. That will force you to really think and be creative. You'll probably come up with a brilliant twist down in the last few items, or else you'll find the element that will give your scene a spark. The trick is to force yourself to keep thinking even after you've come up what you think is the perfect solution.

If a scene isn't working, look for the goal and conflict
Each scene should be about someone trying to accomplish something, with something else trying to stop that from happening. If no character in the scene has a clearly defined goal, then the scene isn't really necessary. If nothing is getting in the way of the character achieving the goal, then you can probably sum up any important action in a sentence and move on to the part where there's conflict.

A touch of the unexpected makes for interesting characters
Each character should have at least one element that doesn't seem to fit. Not necessarily something out of the blue, but something unexpected that only starts to make sense once you really get to know the character. There's something about that surprise or that "something here doesn't fit" that makes readers latch onto characters. The tough guy who turns to mush in the presence of a baby is a little more interesting than your standard-issue tough guy who doesn't turn to mush for anything, for instance.

Let it rest
It's really hard to be an objective judge of your own work, particularly when it's fresh. Either you'll hate it more than it deserves because you only see the flaws or you love it more than it deserves because it's your baby. It's very easy to see what you meant to be there rather than what's really on the page. I've found that I do a much better job at revisions when I put a project aside and work on something else for a while before I look at it again. Then I can see what's really there and fix it.

Finish the book
In most cases, you're better off finishing a project instead of flitting from project to project. Once you're a more experienced writer, you can judge when a book isn't working and move on to something that will work, or you can sell based on a partial and only worry about writing the book when you're under contract. But when you're starting out, finish the book, even if you hate it and have a dozen better ideas. Even if the book remains hidden and never sees the light of day, you'll learn a lot from getting to "the end." Your next book will be much better, and those dozen better ideas will have had more time to process in your subconscious, so they'll be more fully formed by the time you're ready to use them.

The World Domination Potential of Snowglobes

2011-12-13T11:19:00.000-06:00

Today was going to be MonTuesday, but I think I'll have to just have a big MonTueWednesday tomorrow. I have this bad habit of getting sick after stressful or tiring times, so it seems that the allergy attack over the weekend was a harbinger of something worse and as soon as the stress eased, the worse hit. I decided it was in my best interest to spend the day with cold medicine, hot tea and a book.

Since I wasn't up to doing much else, last night I decided to do an Evil Snowglobe Double Feature. I re-watched the Haven Christmas episode, where the snowglobe wasn't exactly evil but it did do some terrible things to the town, and then I watched the Saturday-night movie I'd taped, Snowmageddon, which was about an evil snowglobe trying to destroy a town. In short, having a snowglobe of your town is a very bad thing. Snowmageddon was awesome in its utter silliness. I got the feeling that the script was a result of locking a writer in a room and saying, "Okay, your writing prompt is 'evil snowglobe.' Now, you have two hours to write a movie," and then they went with whatever got written, with no revisions.

The movie made no sense whatsoever. Our generic nuclear family in a small town in Alaska finds a mysterious Christmas present on their porch, and they think it's from a neighbor. The box contains a beautifully crafted, kind of steampunky snowglobe of the town. Their young son starts playing with it, which sets off all the steampunky gears. Soon, a mysterious crack opens in the ground in the middle of town, which sets off a chain reaction of disasters. The kid notices a similar crack in the ground in the snowglobe and starts to suspect something is going on, but everyone thinks he has an overactive imagination because he likes to play fantasy games. Then the next day, when something else sets off the snow globe, a terrible storm comes up that involves ice missiles shooting from the clouds. Yes, ice missiles! It was worse than a Texas hail storm. Then there was the avalanche. Of course, there's the screaming, useless teenage girl trapped on the mountain during all this. Eventually, they start to believe the kid, mostly because the clock on the town hall has started working again -- in spite of all its workings having been removed years ago -- and it shows the same time as the clock on the town hall in the snowglobe. And then it doesn't seem to matter what happens to the snowglobe because disasters hit at the top of every hour, and these include giant spikes coming out of the ground. The kid, who has read fantasy novels and knows how these things work, suggests throwing the thing into a volcano to destroy it, and wouldn't you know, one of the disasters is that the nearby dormant volcano mountain becomes active again, which makes that solution a lot more viable.

The thing is, they never bother figuring out what the deal with the snowglobe is -- what it is, how it works, why it works, who sent it and why, etc. It just shows up, horrible things happen, and then they throw it into a crevasse full of molten lava, the end. Whoever gave the snowglobe doesn't do anything to stop them from destroying it, and that person is presumably still out there. There's also no character growth or any character arcs -- heroic dad is still heroic at the end, screaming teenager is still screaming at the end, no one learns A Valuable Lesson, no one falls in love, no one even realizes just how heroic they really can be. But still, ICE MISSILES!!!! SHOOTING FROM THE CLOUDS!!!! If there were Gremlins riding those missiles, it would be the best Christmas movie ever!

I had no idea that there was so much world domination potential in snowglobes. I need to start collecting those things. Oh, wait, I have a snowglobe from a client event where you can put in your own picture and make it a snowglobe of anyone or any place you like. That should make me invincible! Kneel before me, peasants, or face my wrath!

Ahem. I did mention I'm on cold medicine, right?

Monday Has Been Postponed

2011-12-12T13:24:00.001-06:00

I survived my Crazy Christmas Weekend, but barely. As these things tend to go, the sinuses decided this would be a good time to go nuts, so I spent the weekend with the kind of drainage that makes the throat really raw. I didn't lose my voice, other than perhaps the very low end of my range. It just hurt to talk or sing or to go without liquids for very long. But I managed to lead preschool Sunday school singing, direct the preschool choir and sing in the church service Sunday morning, then get through a dress rehearsal and concert on Sunday evening.

Today has been cancelled due to lack of enthusiasm and energy.

But my kids were very, very cute. One of the parents posted video to YouTube, but I hesitate to repost here, even though that was public, since not all the kids' parents necessarily knew they were being recorded and I don't think they know that one of the teachers is mildly famous enough to have people around the world reading her blog. We had no major meltdowns, no kids leaving the stage in tears during the song and they were mostly audible. There were a few who refused to wear robes, but that's a pick-your-battles issue.

The rest of the month should be relatively easy. I have a choir party Wednesday night, then all the choir has to sing on Sunday is the Hallelujah Chorus, which I can do in my sleep. And then there's Christmas Eve, with two services, but it's just repeating other stuff we've already rehearsed.

I suppose at some point I need to do my Christmas shopping, since I came to my "do we really need to do the gift thing?" epiphany after my family had already bought gifts for me. But seriously, I've realized that the gifts are my least-favorite part of celebrating Christmas. It can be fun to give the perfect gift, but otherwise it's just stress for everyone and not even essential to my enjoyment of the season.

But for now, the allergy drugs are calling, as are a stack of library books and my bed.

Crazy Christmas Weekend

2011-12-09T12:36:00.000-06:00

It wasn't even all that cold this morning, and I still didn't make it out of bed for a very long time. But it was dark and foggy, so I didn't realize how late it was, and I got to bed late after dance. And it turned out to be productive time, since I finally fixed the main problem I've had with the book I'm working on. I was thinking about one aspect of the story and then realized I hadn't explained why some of the characters had a particular piece of information. In fact, there's even a reason given why they shouldn't have that information. So, in thinking about how they could have learned it, I realized that they would have learned it in a situation like the problem scene. This scene is utterly pivotal to the book going forward, but it's never made sense how the previous part of the book led to it. I always knew it had to be there, but getting there was the hard part. And now I have a reason! So even though I slept too late to run the errands I was planning to run this morning, I feel like I accomplished something major before I even got out of bed.

I'd been worried about ballet last night because we were going to have a substitute teacher, and we'd all feared the Strict Ballet Mistress. We'd even made a pact to be there, so no one would have to be alone with her. Instead, we got this cute little punk rock ballerina -- a teenager with an asymmetrical haircut and tons of piercings who thought she was just filling in for the children's classes but who jumped in when she realized we didn't have a teacher. She seemed a little intimidated about teaching adult ballet, but then she got into a groove and did a great job and we all had a ton of fun.

This is going to be my crazy weekend for this holiday season. Sunday morning I'm leading the preschool Sunday school singing, then the preschool choir is singing in church, and right after they sing I'll have to run into the choir loft to sing Vivaldi. That afternoon we've got the dress rehearsal for the big Christmas concert, and then the concert that evening. In that concert, in various songs I'm singing first soprano, second soprano and alto. The alto is new for me, so I guess I'm really being a switch-hitter now. I always alternate rehearsing between the first and second soprano parts so I'll be ready to sing either, depending on what we need when it's time to perform. I'm also going to a party Saturday night and out to a German Christmas festival with a friend tonight. Whew. I may not leave the house on Monday.

But since I didn't get errands done this morning, they have to be done this afternoon. I wonder how I should count that thinking time I did this morning toward my work total. I have no idea how long it took to work out those plot threads, but it really did fix one of the biggest problems with this book.

Ideal Sleeping Conditions

2011-12-08T11:24:00.001-06:00

TV programming note: Grimm is back this week, with an episode tonight at 9 central and again tomorrow night.

And I noticed the promos for this weekend's SyFy Saturday night movie that I think I must record (since I'll be out that night). It's a disaster movie involving an evil snow globe! That should be epic. Between the Haven episode and this, I may develop a phobia of snow globes. Then again, I've always been a bit suspicious of them …

This time of year is proving deadly to my morning productivity. My favorite sleeping conditions are essentially an igloo under a pile of bearskins. I love a nice, cold room and a big, fluffy comforter and an electric blanket (just to warm the bed initially -- I don't leave it on). It's been cold enough to chill the house, but not so cold that I have to leave the heat on at night for fear of freezing pipes. That makes for ideal sleeping conditions but nearly impossible getting out of bed conditions. I probably need a programmable thermostat that can cut the heat off at night and then turn it back on an hour or so before I need to get out of bed.

On the up side, that makes for some very good thinking conditions. I've found that changing the one scene that was wrong is creating a ripple effect. I won't have to rewrite the entire rest of the book, but I will have to tinker with a lot of it. That's good because I think it fixes most of what wasn't working. There were scenes later in the book that were there because I had this feeling that they should be there, even though I was having to strain at the plot logic to justify them. Now, though, they make more sense. Maybe all along I knew what needed to be happening and it just took my conscious brain a while to catch up.

However, I kind of have a strange shopping impulse tugging at me right now. I don't know if it will last or if I'll be focusing on the book in the afternoon. Maybe tomorrow ...

Coming Attractions

2011-12-07T12:19:00.001-06:00

That was a fun night of science fiction Christmas TV (as a person who considers Gremlins one of the best Christmas movies ever, I can appreciate the odd mash-ups). The people behind the Eureka episode must have found some really good drugs. I actually like It's a Wonderful Life (though a lot of that has to do with my deep and abiding affection for Jimmy Stewart) and I thought the Warehouse 13 episode was a fun take on that motif. I liked that they were able to show someone the impact he has on others without him having to be in the pit of despair first. And then Haven inverted the It's a Wonderful Life motif by showing Our Heroine how the other people in her life affect her.

When I was discussing movies, I forgot to mention the trailers that I found interesting. There's an upcoming Snow White movie called Mirror, Mirror that looks a lot like a movie version of the Snow White backstory as seen in Once Upon a Time, but with the evil queen (played by Julia Roberts) as the central character. The trailer had a lot of good laughs in it, and one of my friends suggested that as a good girls' night out movie. I normally am not a fan of Julia Roberts, but I'm okay with her being evil and getting her comeuppance. I also, for personal reasons that should be pretty obvious, have a keen interest in fantasy comedies doing very well at the box office.

Then there was the upcoming Pixar movie, Brave, which is getting buzz as the first "girl" Pixar movie. If that's going to be the focus of any analysis of the success/failure of the film, that makes me kind of nervous because it means that if it doesn't make money on a par with previous films, they'll consider it proof that "girl" stuff doesn't sell. I actually hadn't noticed that the previous Pixar films were all "boy" movies centered around male main characters because I was too caught up in the story and characters to do the statistical analysis (and wasn't it the mom in The Incredibles who really saved the day?). But apparently that matters to some people, and now they're making a conscious effort to break the mold. The thing is, "boy" stuff is generally going to do better than "girl" stuff because while girls will go see "boy" movies (and may not even notice that they're "boy" movies), boys are less willing to go see movies perceived as "girl" stuff. That means "girl" movies automatically have a smaller potential audience (especially when they're aimed at an age group too young for boys to be forced to take their dates to them). Some of that is cultural expectations -- there's far less stigma to girls doing "boy" stuff than there is to boys doing "girl" stuff . Some of it is availability -- there's traditionally been less "girl" stuff available, especially of a fun and adventurous sort, so girls had to resort to "boy" stuff if they wanted anything other than "Princess Sparkles Plans Her Wedding," while there's been enough good "boy" stuff that boys don't have to broaden their reach to have things to enjoy. In the book world, it's shifting, to the point they're now worried about there being next to nothing aimed at boys. While there is a lot of the "Princess Sparkles Plans Her Vampire Wedding" type stuff in books, there is more girl-oriented action and adventure these days. Movies, though, are more focused on the male demographic.

Anyway, Brave is about a female main character and still looks like a good action movie. My other concern with this film is the hair. In the trailer, she has wild, curly hair that looks a lot like mine, only a bit redder, and since I've seen movies before, I have this dread that at the Happy Ending when she's accepted as the great warrior princess, or whatever, that they'll make her "beautiful" by giving her sleek, glossy, straight hair. I'm not sure even the storytelling geniuses at Pixar will be able to escape that particular cultural image.

Meanwhile, I had a very vivid dream last night in which I was served this absolutely divine chocolate cake/pie/cheesecake type dessert, and now I will have to dedicate my life to actually creating this recipe.

Secret Bookcases and Conspiracy Walls: Modern Office Decor

2011-12-06T12:26:00.001-06:00

My house is now about as Christmasy as it's going to get. I'll probably swap out my tablecloth and put out my Christmas cookie jar as a centerpiece, but that will be it. I think next year I may make some modifications in the decor, since this is my 14th Christmas in this house, and I've been doing things more or less the same since I moved in. I did change the way I did the tree in 2000, but nothing else has changed. The main modification will likely be the garland on the loft and staircase railing. It's a (fake) pine garland with small white lights. I originally had also wound a metallic garland through it -- a gold wire with little gold mylar snowflakes on it. But this year I took that off because most of the snowflakes had come off and those things won't go away. I'd still be finding them in August because they'd cling to something and lurk, and then pop out. I may pick up some ribbon at post-Christmas sales and try something with that next year.

While I'm talking about stuff to do with my house, I found instructions for making a hidden door bookshelf and now I desperately want that. Unfortunately, there's no way to do it in my current house, since I barely have doorways (it's hard to have secret rooms with an open floor plan). But if I ever get a house with walk-in closets and use one of those bedrooms as an office, I think I will have to put bookcases on the wall with the closet door and make the closet door the "secret" bookcase door. It would go well with that "conspiracy wall" thing I kind of want to do -- you know how in TV series or movies, if a character has a conspiracy theory or is obsessed with something, there will be a secret or hidden wall collecting and connecting all the information, with photos and newspaper clippings and lines drawn between them. That would be a fun way of organizing information for my books, though I guess the conspiracy wall would have to be in the office itself instead of hidden in the secret closet or it wouldn't do much good as a reference. Maybe I could get a moving whiteboard that I could stash in the secret closet. Or I could start my day's work by triggering the secret bookcase door, going into the secret closet, pulling the string to turn on the single bare bulb (because it has to be a single bare bulb) and then studying the important aspects of the Book Conspiracy Wall before closing it up again. I could probably do a good Conspiracy Wall on the mirrored closet doors of my current office, but it wouldn't be as much fun without the secret bookcase door.

Meanwhile, today marks five months without comment since I sent a project off. I'm torn between nagging and letting it go and seeing how long it does go without nagging, since I've got plenty to work on (that may even be more profitable) and seeing how long it goes will give me valuable data points in any decisions to keep working with this organization. The people I'm about to start working for are very big on deadlines and timelines, which sounds lovely. And they aren't a state agency, which has its own administrative frustrations (you've got to love bureaucracy, unless you're relying on it to pay you in a timely manner). In general, as a self-employed writer you're usually either fighting with corporate or government bureaucracy or you're dealing with the glacial pace of the publishing world. I suspect that's a big reason self-publishing sounds appealing to a lot of people. To me, that sounds like I'd have to deal with even more of the business end of it that I'd rather let a publisher take care of. In my ideal world, I'd prefer to hide in my cave and write stories, and then a publisher would do all the work of getting them out into the world, occasionally sending me a check. Sadly, I'm not sure the world works like that anymore.

Tonight we get the SyFy summer series' Christmas episodes. I think I'll be making some pizza and then I may even turn out the lights and just have the Christmas lights on when we get around to Haven, since that one's bound to be at least a little spooky (even if they're going with the funny side of it in the promos). I'm not crazy about the way they do the "out of continuity" Christmas episodes that take place sometime in the past of the previous season, but then I guess they can hardly resolve the cliffhanger of the previous season, jump forward to Christmas, and then have a Christmas story, all in one episode. They manage it with Doctor Who because they really wrap up their seasons, without cliffhangers, and then they have a time machine that allows the Doctor to jump right to Christmas from whenever he was. With the SyFy way, it's a little disconcerting to have to do a mental rewind and disregard whatever changes happened near the end of the season. And you know there can be no consequences for the Christmas episode, or we'd have already noticed the fallout. I'm not going to complain about bonus Christmas stuff to break up the wait for summer, though.

Muppet Movie Monday

2011-12-05T12:26:00.000-06:00

I got a start on the Christmas decorations yesterday, getting the wreath on the door and the garland on the fireplace mantel. Today I need to get the garland on the loft and stairway railing, and then I think the tree will go up during tonight's airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

In the meantime, I have some writing to do. I was brainstorming some things to work on in a scene I knew wasn't working, and that sparked an idea about a previous scene that I'd thought worked, but then when I really analyzed it, it didn't. And fixing that will solve a lot of problems going forward.

It was a movie weekend, so I have a full Movie Monday report.

Saturday I went with a bunch of friends to see The Muppets, and it was awesome. I think it was written more for adults who watched The Muppet Show as kids than it was for kids. The one child in our group seemed to enjoy it, but not nearly as much as the adults did. I laughed myself silly, and my face hurt at the end from smiling so much. In addition to twisting, poking holes in and subverting just about every movie cliche ever, it actually had a relevant message about the cynicism in our world and what counts as "entertainment" these days. Plus, there was good music (that definitely showed its "Flight of the Conchords" roots) and a duet between Amy Adams and Miss Piggy. I think I need the soundtrack CD for that song alone. And we had quite possibly the best use of Jack Black in any film. I may need to see this one again to catch all the cameos and jokes.

Then on Sunday afternoon, I made the mistake of watching Never Let Me Go on one of the HBO channels. It seemed to fit the grey, gloomy atmosphere of the day. It wasn't a bad movie. It was well-made and well-acted. It was just such a bleak worldview that it left me so bummed out that I needed to watch The Muppets again to get my head on straight. Fortunately, last year's Phineas and Ferb Christmas episode was showing on the Disney Channel at the time the movie ended, and that worked. I got the feeling when the movie came out that some information that was in all the trailers and movie descriptions was supposed to be spoilery for what was a major twist in the book, so I don't know how to describe this without possibly spoiling the twist. It comes pretty early in the movie, so it doesn't seem like a huge secret that these kids in the boarding school are actually clones being grown to be used as organ transplant donors when they're adults. You can tell this is "literature" with science fiction elements instead of science fiction because in science fiction, the story would have ended up being about the clones banding together and fighting back while trying to get the story out to prove their humanity and force people to know who they were killing when they got life-prolonging transplants. I think the movie thought it had a happy ending, but I found it very depressing, and not in a "made me think about the meaning of life" way. I would say that I probably need to read the book in order to see what it was really supposed to be about, since the movie inevitably overly simplified it and messed it up, but I'll have to wait until The Muppets comes out on DVD, because I'll either need to have it on while I'm reading or have it standing by to watch immediately afterward so I won't want to slit my wrists -- or else I'll have to write the "clones fight back" story, though I suspect it's already been done, repeatedly.

I was really very pleasantly surprised by the first part of Neverland on SyFy. It was actually rather good, and not just in the typical SyFy movie "so bad that it's highly entertaining" way. The cast was all top-notch and though some of the effects weren't so hot, the story was interesting. It tinkered with the Peter Pan mythology a bit, giving a slightly different backstory and making it science fiction instead of fantasy (Neverland is another planet and the fairies are the local life form), but I think what they did worked. I kind of like the idea of Hook and Peter having had a past father/son relationship that ended in a sense of betrayal. They also seemed to mend some of the more problematic elements from the original story, like making an effort to more accurately portray the Indians instead of going with the stereotypes of that time (and using Tiger Lily's name in her native language). This version of the backstory even explains how all those disparate adventure story elements like pirates and American Indians ended up in the same story. I'm looking forward to part 2 tonight.

Meanwhile, I've discovered that all the Family channel and Lifetime Christmas romantic comedies are available OnDemand. I know some of what I'll be doing this month. I'm considering changing my usual travel schedule, since I really want to sing for the Christmas Eve services at my church, so instead of going to my parents' house several days before Christmas and then leaving the day after, I think I'm going to head over there Christmas morning and stay a few days after. That means I'll have a few days leading up to Christmas with not much going on, and that will be a perfect time for a cheesy movie marathon.

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

2011-12-02T13:39:00.001-06:00

I had a meeting this morning to meet with my new client. This is actually an agency, so there will still be a client beyond that, but I'm working through them, and I'm a contractor rather than a regular employee, which to me means it's the best of both worlds (aside from the benefits issue, but I was already providing my own benefits, like health insurance). I can probably have fairly steady work with these people, as steady as a regular job, but I work at home, set my own hours (as long as I meet deadlines) and take on as much or as little work as I can handle. When I'm not on a book deadline, I can take on more. If I have a book due, I can do less. This may help keep me from burying my agent in manuscripts, since I can write them almost as fast as she can read them, while paying my living expenses and adding to the World Domination fund (a good plan for world domination requires capital).

Though it was a little embarrassing to open my oh-so-professional-looking notepad and find that it had dust in the creases. I haven't had to meet with clients in a very long time. It sounds like I should have taken that "vacation" in November because I'll be rather busy for the next month or so. Then again, being that busy may mean that I can afford to take a real vacation. Or that I can add some days to a trip to New York for a conference early next year and maybe even splurge on my own hotel room instead of sharing (which is the biggest stress of a conference for me).

I'm actually starting to kind of get into the holiday spirit. It started with choir Wednesday, where we're finally digging into our Christmas music (including some old standards in creative keys). But this morning driving across town on a grey, misty day really got to me, since it meant that any lights that were still on really showed up, and then when I stopped by the grocery store afterward, I had to walk through the forest of Christmas trees to get to the door, which really flipped my "Christmas!" switch. I may even put the Christmas music back into the iTunes playlist, and I'll be baking some cookies this afternoon, since the church cookie sale fundraiser is this weekend. The Christmas decorations may go up this weekend, too.

I'll have to get the decorating done before Sunday night, though, because there will be some good TV. First Once Upon a Time, which I'm really loving, and then the channel formerly known as SciFi is doing a two-part Neverland miniseries, and the cast looks astoundingly good for this kind of production. Of course, next Tuesday they're showing the Christmas episodes of their summer series, though Haven is requiring real creativity to get a Christmas episode, since the entire series so far has been set in a single summer.

The My Little Pony Death Match

2011-12-01T11:40:00.001-06:00

I had a frustrating day yesterday dealing with business stuff. I actually had to talk to someone on the phone, which is getting extreme for me. But a client not only owes me money, but hadn't sent me a new contract covering last month, which might have kept me from getting paid for work I've already done, so I wanted it resolved, ASAP. It turned out that they'd misspelled my name in my e-mail address and no one had noticed that the e-mail address they had on file for me didn't match the way my name was spelled in the contract itself or in any of the e-mails forwarded to them by the person I usually deal with. But I was friendly and perky on the phone and got the matter resolved, and then I may have indulged in a little primal screaming of the "What is the matter with you people?" variety once I got off the phone. I ought to look up their policy for what they do if someone is a month late paying a bill to them and then establish that as my policy for dealing with them. I seriously doubt that "Oh, I guess that didn't get processed when it first came in, so we forgot about it" would fly as an excuse when you owe them money.

Then later in the evening I got to break up a fight between preschool girls. It helps that I'm enough larger than they are that all I had to do was stand between them. We then had a chat about how they were friends, so why were they fighting, and I'm still not sure what was going on because I got a long, garbled explanation that seemed to have something to do with a My Little Pony birthday party and who got to be which pony. It was definitely smile and nod time because I had no clue what they were talking about. At any rate, my conflict resolution skills were apparently good enough to end up with both of them settled into my lap and not trying to kill each other. I know the very idea of My Little Pony incites me to violence, but I didn't realize it had the same effect on the target audience. I may have to do research. If the ponies are getting into death matches, that whole thing may be a lot more interesting than I realized.

Speaking of research, I was reading a list of upcoming book releases that are considered "genre benders," and it seems like the cozy mystery genre has taken a turn toward fantasy, with a number of series involving magical elements. Since I love cozy mysteries, I may have to look for some of those. I'd probably enjoy them as a reader, but that might also be something I could do as a writer. Those kinds of series are a great fit for the way I like to write romances, so it could take a number of books for the amateur sleuth heroine and the hunky cop to get together. I just can't think of a gimmick (and they seem to require a gimmick these days), and all the situations I come up with seem to turn into a strange Haven/Once Upon a Time mash-up. If I move it to Texas, would anyone notice the similarities? And then apparently you also need knitting or cross-stitch patterns or recipes. I've been known to create cross-stitch patterns (like Firefly hand towels) and recipes, so maybe I could do this. I'll need to find and read a bunch before I can start thinking along those lines. It seems like a few of those series come up in Amazon's "people who bought this also bought that" function for my books, so that's a good starting point.

First, though, I need to finish reading the new Terry Pratchett. And writing a book.

From Idea to Book

2011-11-30T11:17:00.001-06:00

In my last writing post, I talked about evaluating an idea's potential. Once you decide that your idea really will make a good novel, you have to do still more work to actually develop it into a novel.

I have found that the biggest pitfall in turning an idea into a novel is specifics. When you're talking on the idea level, you can afford to be vague. You could even write a query letter or short synopsis without too many details. But when you write the book, you need specifics. Mostly, that comes down to "what" and "why." You may know what the villain is up to that the hero will have to stop, but why, exactly, is the villain doing this thing? You may also need the specifics of what the villain is doing, broken down into an actual plan instead of a big-picture goal. Your synopsis may talk about the hero going through a number of trials on the way to reaching his goal, but when you write the book, you need to know exactly what the trials are and exactly what the hero does to get through them.

When you come up with these specifics depends on your writing process. If you're a plotter, you may want to work it all out before you start writing. If you're more of a seat-of-the-pants writer, you'll more likely want to tackle each of these questions as they arise in your book. Either way, at some point, you'll have to drill down into specifics, and I sometimes find this to be the most challenging part of writing. An idea that sounds great when I'm talking in terms of "and then they stop the villain's evil plan" sounds less great when I have to figure out exactly what the plan is, exactly why the villain is doing it, exactly how the hero will try to counter it and exactly what the villain will do in response. One sentence in a synopsis can amount to ten or more pages in the finished book, and writing ten pages requires a lot more information than writing a sentence.

How do you get those specifics? Sometimes, it's just going through the work of asking yourself questions -- and then what? Why? Work through cause and effect. If you can't answer these questions through straightforward brainstorming and logic, then you may need to do additional research. Look at how things like elements in your story work in the real world. Research the setting, the career field or industry or any historical analogues to come up with answers. Or you can look for inspiration in other fictional works like movies, TV shows or novels. That doesn't mean copying plot elements exactly, but sometimes looking at the way another writer has handled a similar situation can help you come up with ideas for handling your own work. One thing I like to do when I'm stuck for specifics is brainstorm while putting iTunes on shuffle. It often seems like the answer to what needs to happen will pop up in a song that comes on just when I'm thinking about that problem. Daydreaming is also good. Imagine different scenarios playing out and use the one that makes the best movie in your head. If you're more left-brained, make flow charts.

One thing you may need to do in developing the novel is let go of some of the original elements of your idea. Those elements may be things that sparked your interest in the story, but they may not fit into the book, and you'll twist yourself into knots trying to force those things into your story. The characters you started with may not be the right ones for the story. Some of the scenes you first envisioned when you first came up with the idea may have no place in the actual novel. If you're having to work too hard to make something fit, it may not belong.

I guess all this comes down to work. Coming up with ideas is easy. You can even develop the ideas enough to talk about them without too much effort. But going through all the steps of writing a novel is where the hard work comes in and is what separates the relative few who complete a novel from the many who say they have a brilliant idea for a book. This is one reason why publishers are often leery of buying incomplete novels from first-time authors. An author who has never completed a manuscript may not realize the difference between developing an idea enough to write a synopsis and developing that idea into a novel.

I'm going to do one more writing post this year, so are there any end-of-year questions you want me to address? I may even do a Q&A if I get several questions that don't require post-length answers.

Tis the Season to Be Mean?

2011-11-29T11:25:00.001-06:00

It looks like I'll be starting work for the new client next week, as I've got a meeting on Friday. The work I'll be doing with them will actually use my degree -- specifically and not just in a general "stringing words together" sense, as it involves writing video scripts. Now I have to think of something to wear. I suspect they're pretty casual, as it's a virtual agency, but I still want to look professional. It's been more than a year since my last business meeting.

And that means I need to buckle down this week to get done with the current phase of the current project. Yesterday was relatively unproductive until late in the day, but I don't have to go anywhere or do anything else today, so I should be able to rock and roll.

I didn't do as much reading over the weekend as I normally would on a holiday, but I did watch a fair amount of TV, and it seems like the theme for this holiday season is "mean." There are ads about gloating to Santa that you've already bought all the good presents (gloating to Santa? Really? Talk about getting on the naughty list). There are ads about being obnoxious to store staff. The car ads are particularly bad, with the parents who run off in their son's car instead of acknowledging his arrival, the entitled rich jerks who hire celebrities as holiday employees, the Lexus driver who wipes out a person with a more common car using a giant snowball so he can get his parking space, and the test drivers who take the salesman hostage by refusing to return the car after the test drive. It's all enough to justify my reclusive nature. I feel like doing a Charlie Brown lament. It was bad enough when Christmas was commercialized in the sense of getting more stuff to make your holiday extra merry, but now it's commercialized in the sense of "I'm getting what I want, and I don't care how that affects anyone else."

It's all very depressing, and it totally harshes the warm fuzzies from watching the Lifetime "discover the true meaning of Christmas while falling in love" movies. But since almost everything I watch is in reruns this week, I can ignore it all and focus on my work.

My Thanksgiving Holiday

2011-11-28T13:34:00.001-06:00

I think I'm having my post-holiday slug day. I barely dragged myself out of bed this morning because the bed was so cozy and warm, and I couldn't think of any urgent reason why I absolutely had to get up. Now I'm trying to persuade myself that I must get groceries. I have Thanksgiving leftovers, but I'm lacking one or two crucial ingredients for each thing that I could do with the leftovers. To make things even more fun, I discovered while searching the pantry to see if maybe one of those crucial items might be hiding in the back that a jar of molasses had fallen on its side and oozed onto the shelf. That meant cleaning the pantry, which ended up being a bit of a decluttering as I got rid of those things that lurk in the back, long past their expiration date.

I had a good holiday, which I started early by going with some friends Tuesday night to the fall concert of the One O'Clock Lab Band, a student jazz band that regularly gets nominated for Grammy Awards for best jazz recordings. I also discovered a restaurant in my neighborhood that night. On the outside, it looks like just another restaurant in a strip mall. Then you step inside and are in a New York City Italian restaurant. It has similar dimensions and decor and atmosphere. I almost felt like if I looked out the window, I'd see Greenwich Village. Italian is my favorite thing to cook, but now I know that if I'm craving Italian and don't want to cook, I can walk a few blocks and go to New York. It's small enough that it's the rare kind of restaurant where I'm willing to eat alone.

Then we had a real family Thanksgiving for the first time in about six years, since my brother and his girlfriend came. There was a bit more work and less lazy relaxing than when it's just my parents and me, but it felt more like a family holiday. I did discover through playing with my mom's blood pressure machine and my parents' elliptical machine with heart monitor that while I'm thin and have great muscle tone, I'm terribly out of shape. It looks like I need to exercise more regularly than just in ballet class and the occasional long walk. I've also noticed that I have a bad habit of holding my breath when I'm concentrating on something. I've heard of sleep apnea, but not thought apnea. Now I'm trying to remember to breathe. That's not supposed to be something you have to think about.

This was more of a weekend for sports than for movies, but I was tired enough Saturday night to actually watch a Disney Channel movie, and it wasn't that bad. The movie was Geek Charming and was about a film geek who needs to make a documentary for a film festival student contest that could win him a Hollywood internship, and he decides to make an expose on popularity, focusing on the school's queen bee whose life goal is to win their school's equivalent of prom queen. Along the way, he learns that she has hidden depths and she learns that there's a difference between being popular and having friends. It was rather cute without being too irritating, and they managed to sell me on an outcome I was dreading at the start of the movie. Plus, unlike almost every other Disney Channel thing ever, they didn't feel the need to cram in songs performed by the stars (unless that was what was in the soundtrack I didn't pay attention to). I'm a fan of musicals, but I'm not a fan of the Disney Channel teen starbots whose voices are so weak that they're Autotuned into sounding inhuman, just so they'll have something to play on Radio Disney. And it was nice to see teens aspiring to something other than being rock stars.

Now I simply must drag myself out so I can eat this week.

Book Report: Fantasy and Nostalgia

2011-11-22T12:07:00.000-06:00

Today is the day I get ready to travel for Thanksgiving. Laundry is already in progress, and then I have to figure out what to bring. At least this year we don't seem to have major climate shifts in the forecast, unlike some years when it's 75 degrees on Wednesday, then there's snow or ice on Thanksgiving day, or else it's in the 40s on Wednesday, but warming to the 70s or 80s before I return home. I should be able to bring just one jacket instead of needing several different kinds of coats. It complicates packing when you need both shorts and sweatshirts. I likely will not be online the rest of the week, so I'll take this opportunity to say Happy Thanksgiving!

I actually have some recent reading to talk about, so it's time for a book report!

First, there's Cold Magic by Kate Elliott. I'd heard of this as a steampunky sort of thing, but the steampunk-like elements are pretty minor (the fact of airships plays a major role, but we don't actually encounter them). It's really more of an alternate history Victorian story, but I think all Victorian-like settings these days get called steampunk. Whatever you call it, I really enjoyed this book. The alternate history is REALLY alternate, not just Victorian London with zombies. There's an entirely different history that leads to an entirely different population in what we think of as England, and there's even some different geography (Great Britain is part of the continent, not an island). There are elements of fairy folklore, and there's a wonderful romance woven throughout. Cat is an orphaned young woman living with her aunt, uncle and cousins and attending college when a Cold Mage shows up with a contract that demands the oldest girl in the house be married to him. That would be Cat. Next thing she knows, she's off on a cross-country adventure with an arrogant mage who's part of a movement to sabotage industrialization and technology so the mages can maintain their power. And then when they reach their destination, things get much worse for Cat -- and for her husband. I was furiously turning pages on this one, and now I desperately want to get my hands on the sequel. In addition to hitting a lot of my fantasy buttons, it's also a good example of the kind of romantic story I enjoy, where the relationship grows through the things they experience together.

And then I read Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, which is a fantasy classic I hadn't read before. It's based on the old ballad about a woman who has to rescue her lover from the fairies, but it's set at a Minnesota college in the early 1970s. Although it's a fantasy, the fantasy elements are very subtle until near the end of the book, and it takes a long time for them to show up and for us -- and the heroine -- to be sure they're supernatural. I may have to re-read it because I suspect that more fantasy elements will become more obvious now that I've read the end and know what's going on. Mostly, though, this is a book about college life. Although it follows the heroine through all four years, the most detail is lavished on the freshman year, getting into the way groups of friends fall together and the way patterns and habits develop. It reminded me so much of my own college years that I practically ached with nostalgia. I don't know if I've ever had another time in my life when I made friends so quickly and easily. It seemed like you could just fall in with a group of people, and then suddenly it was like you'd known them all your life. The book got into those standing appointments for group dinners in the dining hall, the late-night study hall conversations, the midnight movies at the campus theater and all those other things I remember from my college years. The only difference was that in the book the heroine had far more masculine attention than I got. Guys just weren't interested in me my freshman year (well, really, ever, but I did have a boyfriend for part of my sophomore year), unless they were extremely subtle about showing it and/or I was extremely dense about noticing it (both of which were possible). I do know that my initial group of friends turned out to involve one frenemy who claimed she was going to help me learn to attract guys, but then every time I designated a target, she went after him herself, even though she had a boyfriend back home. I don't know how far it went with any of them, but she did manage to wrap them around her little finger so they noticed no one but her, and I'm very sure none of them had any interest in me. I ended up switching groups and falling in with the geeks around Halloween, and I was much happier. There were some couples pairing off in our group, but for the most part, we ran as a general herd instead of a group of pairs. I guess another difference was that in the book most of her friends were classics or English majors and went around quoting Shakespeare all the time, while my friends were mostly engineering and computer science majors who went around quoting Monty Python, Star Trek and Star Wars all the time.

It's hard to separate my feelings for the book itself from all this nostalgia, so I can't say how much I enjoyed it because of the book itself and how much was that I was enjoying the nostalgia. As I said, I may have to read it again to focus more on the story instead of getting caught up in misty, watercolored memories triggered by events in the book that reminded me of my college years.

Now off to go to useful things.

Chick Flick Bust

2011-11-21T14:08:00.000-06:00

I spent this morning helping get the church set up for Advent. My main job was polishing the Advent wreath candelabra and then refilling the candles with oil (instead of using wax candles, we have these things that look like candles but that are actually oil lamps). And then I helped decorate the Christmas tree. It was fun, but I think I may have inadvertently landed myself in the altar guild. I suppose that wouldn't be so bad. It's a rotating thing and not that much work.

My planned weekend of chick flicks kind of fizzled out, mostly because the first couple of movies I chose to watch turned me off chick flicks entirely for a while and I had to switch to documentaries and crime dramas to clear my palate.

First, there was Love and Other Drugs, which was essentially a Lifetime Disease of the Week movie, only with lots more nudity. Lots and lots of nudity and fairly graphic sex. This is not a movie to watch with your parents or with anyone of the opposite sex with whom you don't have a really good comfort zone. Definitely not a first-date movie. A pharmaceutical salesman meets a woman with early-onset Parkinson's disease and has some grand idea that since she must go to a lot of doctors, she could probably provide him good introductions to doctors he could sell to. Somehow that turns into one of those "this is just sex, it doesn't mean anything" non-relationships, but then of course they start falling in love, but then there's her illness, and along the way a new drug that I'm not going to name because it will attract tons of spam comments gets introduced. I'm not sure if this movie wants to be some grand statement on the health care and pharmaceutical industries, some exploration of love and disease, a raunchy guy version of a romantic comedy, or what, but it didn't work for me. I guess I'm just old-fashioned, but I like the idea of the sex coming after you fall in love, not before, and if the characters talk so much about how they don't really care for each other, why am I supposed to care about them or their relationship?

Then there was Going the Distance, which was just lame without trying to be profound and with less nudity, though with enough sex to make it another bad movie to watch with your parents/on a first date. This one's about a couple who meets in New York, has a one-night stand (sigh, I get that the whole no sex before marriage thing has totally gone by the cultural wayside, but does it always have to come before love now?), then decides they want to see each other again -- except she's only there for a summer internship during grad school and she'll be returning to Stanford in the fall, so it's supposed to be just for fun, no deep feelings. Of course, they do develop feelings, so they decide to try to maintain a long-distance relationship. They both work in fields where jobs are hard to find, and she doesn't want to sacrifice her career for a relationship because she's done that once before and that's why she's so far behind in life. So, there's lots of waffling and whining and sulking. I will give this one credit, though, for not having the Romantic Comedy Dash. No one makes the desperate, last-second sprint to reach the other person before it's too late. There's not even a publicly humiliating declaration of feelings.

However, both do show the "falling in love" process via montage to a pop song and both rely on the current gross-out trend of the guy having friends or family members who are the overgrown man-child type who talk way too much about bodily functions and who eavesdrop on the relationship.

After that, I resorted to watching the British series Whitechapel OnDemand. It's about a squad of detectives in the Whitechapel station who find themselves dealing with a copycat serial killer who's reproducing all the Jack the Ripper killings. That part was interesting, but what I really loved was the team. The detectives are a bunch of slobs who may even be a bit lazy, and then they get assigned a new boss who's relatively new and inexperienced but very politically connected and on a fast track to bigger and better things. He's supposedly just in this job long enough to gain that little bit of credibility before moving on in the hierarchy, and the team has zero respect for him at first. But as they investigate the case, they all start gradually changing. He learns a lot and learns to respect them, and they start smartening up their act as they grow to respect him. It was really fun (if a bit gory). I was mostly watching for the team stuff and read while they went through all the Ripper parts, which were a bit much for me.

I had some romantic comedies on DVD, but after those first two, I was afraid to try anything else new, and I wasn't in the mood for anything I had that was a known quantity. Next weekend starts all the Christmas programming, which means Lifetime starts the one time of the year when people are allowed to have happy endings instead of learning that their spouses are serial killers. We get to watch a bunch of Canadian and/or B-list actors (lots of SyFy channel regulars) fall in love in a Christmassy setting. Though I draw the line at any of those "Santa needs a wife" movies because Santa Claus is not my idea of a romantic fantasy.

Starting the Weekend Early

2011-11-18T12:34:00.001-06:00

I felt somewhat "off" all day yesterday, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, but it looks like today will be better. For one thing, I got up at a slightly more reasonable time without having had realistic nightmares, and then my e-mail has been working. The main thing I need to do today is read, and it's a lovely, if chilly, day today -- one of my two favorite kinds of fall weather. It's what you might call "crisp" -- so I think I'll take another long walk and then sit in the woods to read. I've got Black Forest ham, good crusty bread and a few treats. I've been trying to de-spice my Thermos to carry ordinary tea. I thought the lingering spice scent might have come from the chai I took last week, but then I remembered that this was the Thermos I took to cold weather football games when I was in high school, which means it carried a lot of spicy tea.

It wasn't real spiced tea, though. I hadn't started learning about tea or drinking it (other than iced) at the time, but one of the popular "gifts from the kitchen" in those days was this spiced tea mix that involved lemon-flavored instant tea, Tang, cinnamon and cloves. You mixed a couple of spoons of this mix with hot water for hot, spicy tea. It was very popular as a teacher gift, presented in jars or tins, which is why we had a lot of it. It sounds hideous to me now (instant tea! Ew!), but I recall liking it quite a lot, and it made for a good warm drink while sitting in the stands during a football game. And now my Thermos smells like that stuff. It seems to have permeated the plastic. But it's been soaking with baking soda all week, and I think any traces of spice smell are all in my mind. If not, I guess I'll resign myself to bringing spicy teas on my walks.

I had this whole deep analysis of the fairy-tale themed shows currently on TV planned, but I suspect it would have gone epic, and I'm not really in the mood to do it justice now. That's the kind of thing I have to write the night before, and last night I was at dance class. Maybe I'll put it together over the Thanksgiving holiday to have to post some day in December, when I hope I'll be busy with income-producing work.

So, instead, I'm going to head off on my afternoon walk/reading time, then tonight it's a good TV night, and then a weekend of chick flicks.

Yep, it's Thursday

2011-11-17T13:34:00.001-06:00

I'm really understanding Douglas Adams and his inability to get the hang of Thursdays. I started my day by oversleeping extremely. I got to bed late last night, then had very realistic nightmares. I had the hardest time dragging myself out of bed this morning. There was whimpering.

And then I couldn't get into my e-mail. I could occasionally get into my personal account that I use for most business, but my domain name account just hangs. Mostly, I get fan mail there, but that's the address my potential new client has been contacting me at, so I don't know if they're trying to reach me today. I got desperate enough while trying to get into my main e-mail that I resorted to trying to set up Outlook so I didn't have to use webmail, but that hasn't been successful. There's some security setting that isn't working, and all the online troubleshooting is for the Windows version of Outlook that's one year older than the Mac version I have.

I think this is all a sign that this should be a reading day. Or I should start my weekend early. I'd already been looking forward to the weekend because it's the last one in a while in which I have no appointments, obligations or plans. I'm thinking it's going to be a chick flick extravaganza. There are some movies on HBO OnDemand, and then I have DVDs I've never watched. I also have popcorn, something pink and sparkly, good bread (finally!), cheese and chocolate, plus ingredients for pizza. I may even get out the pink, fuzzy bathrobe (it sounds like I'm really into pink, and I'm so not, but sometimes it just works).

And all of this sort of counts for work (well, not the food, but the movies) because a couple of the ideas I'm working on kind of fit the mold of romantic comedy, but with a twist, and looking at "normal" romantic comedies is part of the research.

I think tomorrow will also be another long walk. I need to escape into my fantasy world for a while.

Now to go read and maybe my e-mail will repair itself while I'm gone.

Ideas: Is it Enough?

2011-11-16T11:40:00.000-06:00

I had a reader question that coincided with something I'd been thinking about, so I'm going to talk about ideas. Not where to get ideas. If you're having to ask where you can get ideas, then maybe you're not cut out to be a writer. Every writer I've ever known has had far more ideas than could ever be written in one lifetime. Ideas are everywhere, and they come constantly. The hard part is turning ideas into a book, and that's what I'll talk about.

The first trick is figuring out which ideas are enough to sustain a story. Not all of them are. A story needs conflict, and the longer the story, the more complex or strong the conflict needs to be. A novel needs a conflict that isn't easily resolved, that may be able to change or grow and that will affect the main characters on multiple levels, both internal and external. Dealing with this conflict should require the characters to make some serious choices that will change them in some way. When evaluating an idea, think about the potential for conflict and how the conflict might be resolved. If the conflict could be resolved if all the main characters just sat down and had a conversation (and there's no good reason for them not to have that conversation), then you don't have the kind of conflict that can sustain a story.

A novel also involves a lot of events. A good way to see if there are enough potential events to flesh out a novel in your idea is to make a list. See if you can come up with a list of at least twenty events that are inherent in your story idea. These don't have to be entire scenes -- several events could occur in one scene -- and you don't have to develop these events into one scene, but you need to figure out if stuff can happen.

But if your idea doesn't contain all the conflict or events you need to develop a story, that doesn't mean it's a useless idea. I often find that two different ideas may merge to create a solid idea. I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head at any given time, and every so often one may come to the surface and I'll think about it. I may add something to it when I think about it, and if it's still not "done," then I'll let it go back into the general mix. That's where ideas may collide or merge with each other and turn into something I can build a story on.

Ideas also need some input. Research can give you the kind of input that will add flesh to an idea. Even if you're writing about a subject you know, research will help spark additional ideas. Read about the setting -- time and place. Read about business types or careers related to your story. Read memoirs or biographies about people similar to your characters or who had to do the kinds of things your characters may have to do. I often find myself reading about historical situations even for books that will be in a contemporary setting, since history does tend to repeat itself. A war, conflict, crisis or other event may have parallels to something in my idea, even if it's on a much smaller scale in my story. You can also research elements that show up in a story -- music, art, various cultures, food, clothing, technology, etc. This kind of research may help you find sources of conflict or ways to add layers to the conflict in your basic idea and may give you ideas for more story events.

Even if you've got an idea that can sustain a story, turning an idea into a novel takes a lot of work, and that's what I'll talk about next.

Re-entering the Business World

2011-11-15T11:41:00.001-06:00

I had a very business-y day yesterday, dealing with the paperwork to start my new freelance job, and the fact that it's been a long time since I've had to deal with this kind of stuff really showed. First, I needed a new cartridge for my laser printer. The old one still has some juice in it, but it made messy print-outs. It was fine for internal use, but it wouldn't work for something that had to be scanned or faxed. Then I went to fax the documents (these were PDFs that had to be signed, and I don't think I have the software to add a signature to a PDF, so that meant I couldn't do it without hard copy), and my fax machine totally died mid-way through. No dial tone, no read-out electronically. So I resorted to scanning on my flat-bed scanner, which meant a multi-page document took a while. Then I discovered that there's some kind of disconnect between my scanner and my new computer, even though I have the current driver for the scanner. The document would look fine in the preview window of the image capture application, but then the actual scanned document would be just a bunch of wavy lines. I resorted to scanning to the old computer, then transferring the files to the new computer to e-mail them.

Since my color ink jet printer is also dead, I may get an all-in-one fax/scanner/printer/copier. Most of my fiction work has been done entirely electronically, with no need for printing or faxing. The normal business world may be different. Both the fax and the scanner are at least ten years old. I probably could have tinkered with settings to make the scanner work, but I didn't have the time or patience and went with what I knew would work to send the documents I need to start work.

I'm hoping for a little less stress/hassle today. I'm also looking forward to immersing myself in fiction for a while. I have brainstorming to do, which means getting out the crayons and colored markers and letting myself get wildly creative. I want to apply some of the techniques I found in that book on creativity I found at the warehouse sale. After yesterday being all business, a good creative day should be fun.

It's also apparently Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, so if I can find the hazmat suit, I may give that a shot. It's the freezer that's the real issue. I have a vacuum sealer, which means I have a bad habit of buying in bulk, sealing and freezing, and then forgetting what I have and buying more. December may be "live out of the freezer" month.

The Magical Land Across the Bridge

2011-11-14T13:33:00.003-06:00

I did eventually drag myself out of the house to take my hike/walk, and I'm glad I did because it was pretty much a perfect day. I discovered that they've created a new way to get to the trails along the river from my neighborhood, and that makes it much easier to get there. There's a kind of canal/lake down the side of the neighborhood, and then the levee, and then the river basin where the park is. Before, the only way to get to the park was to go to around the lake, so it was about 40 minutes of walking from my house to get to the park to then start the walk in the woods. Now they've built a bridge from the middle of the neighborhood, at the end of the walking path that runs by the library, so I can get all the way to the park without walking along or crossing surface streets, and it's only about five to ten minutes beyond the library (I didn't time it, but that's what it felt like).

There's also something kind of magical about it. It reminds me of Stardust, where there's the Wall outside the village, and on the other side of it is a magical world that you can't really see from our world. In this case, there's a levee, and you can't see what's on the other side. You cross a bridge (iron, to keep the fairies on the other side out, of course) and climb the levee, and from the top, you can see both the neighborhood on one side and the forest on the other.

Here's the view of the bridge and the neighborhood from the top of the levee:

And then you follow the path (it sort of seems like it should be made of yellow bricks) down the other side of the levee, and it feels like the "real" world disappears as you enter this new world and follow the path into the woods:

The path stays mostly away from the river (probably because the river tends to flood), but there are spots where you can glimpse it between the trees:

I was out for about two and a half hours, though I did take a few breaks. There are occasional park benches, and I stopped to eat my sandwich, walked a bit more and then stopped to eat my apple, and then before I headed home I sat and had tea and cookies while reading a bit. It was just the right weather for it, warm enough to be comfortable but not warm enough to get hot with the walking. By tea time it was just slightly chilly. I haven't thoroughly explored the whole area. For instance, there's a non-paved path that I don't think is meant to be an official path, but there aren't any keep-out signs. I saw a couple of armadillos rooting through the underbrush, and there were a lot of squirrels. I will have to make a habit out of this. Last summer, they were doing a sermon series at church about sacred spaces -- the places that feed your soul and make you feel close to God -- and there was some discussion about beach vs. mountain. I think I'm a forest person, though I need some water in my forest, like a stream, river or lake. I like the whispering sound the wind makes as it blows through the trees, the crunch of leaves under foot, and the way the sunlight filters through laves and branches to dapple the ground. I think it would be good for my soul to escape to my magical land regularly.

And to top it all off, I was able to salvage a loaf of bread out of the starter that didn't really start. It did eventually get bubbly, but I figured it wasn't enough to make the whole recipe rise, so I improvised. It wasn't the best bread I've ever made, but it was just enough to enjoy with my cheese.

Then I had a very busy weekend and I would love to hibernate today, but I have to do some forms for this freelance gig, and my printer just completely ran out of toner, so I must leave the house.

Thwarted Plans

2011-11-11T11:28:00.001-06:00

I'm starting to rethink my grand plans for the day. It started last night when I stopped by the grocery store after ballet class to get supplies. They had all their gourmet cheeses on sale, along with Black Forest ham. My plan was to get some French bread to make a sandwich to take on my hike and then to have with my cheeses and maybe a glass of wine for dinner. But they were out of French bread. Because I don't deal well with having my plans thwarted, I came home and decided to make my own. It wouldn't be ready for a lunch sandwich, but I had some sandwich rolls in the freezer, and I'd still be able to have my cheese for dinner. I like to make a rustic bread that uses a starter you have to make the night before, so I mixed up the starter right away. For a moment, I contemplated leaving it at room temperature instead of in the refrigerator and then getting up in the night to make the dough before going back to bed while it rose (you can leave the starter at room temperature for 6 hours or in the refrigerator for 14 hours) so I could have bread for lunch, but I'm glad I decided not to because when I got up in the morning (at a reasonable hour), it turned out that the starter didn't start.

At first, I thought maybe I'd done something wrong, and I was thinking about starting over with a regular French bread, but then I thought before I started that, I ought to test my yeast. It turns out that the yeast I just bought last week was dead. I put it in warm water with sugar, and nothing happened.

I think I've talked myself out of making bread because I also need to make a batch of cookies today. I'm currently wavering on that hike/long walk because the wind was looking pretty gusty, but it seems to have calmed a bit, so maybe I will go. This is one of those things I keep saying I'm going to do but that I never end up doing. Things may get busy for me in the coming weeks if that freelance opportunity comes through, so I may as well take a "vacation" when I can get it. I have good ham and cheese, even if I don't have good bread (this neighborhood really needs a good bakery -- about the only bread I can buy without getting in a car is naan). I can make a small Thermos of tea, I've got some Honeycrisp apples and I've got some slightly imperfect cookies. It's a lovely day, even if there is a strong breeze.

There, I think I've just talked myself into it. Now to make my picnic lunch.

Preschool Social Dynamics

2011-11-10T12:33:00.001-06:00

I managed to hit the sweet spot in timing for running errands this morning. I got gas without needing air and artillery support, even pulling right up to a pump (though there were at least two pumps that were blocked by people parking badly at the pump they were using), and then hit Target when it was nearly empty and there was no line to check out. Meanwhile, I got an incentive to clean my desk and keep it clear. In the dollar section at Target, they had a desk blotter 2012 calendar, with plenty of space on each day for appointments, plus room around the edges for notes and to-do lists. Now I just need to clear off enough desk space to be able to fit it and keep it clear enough to keep using it. I think the space for notes and lists should eliminate some of the stuff that goes on my desk.

We had a very trying night with the preschoolers, thanks mostly to preschool social dynamics. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a Wild Kingdom type show, observing the creatures as they interact with each other, except they don't let me have a tranquilizer gun. To start with, we had a clingy one in tears because she didn't want her mother to leave. I ended up with her on my lap, crying on me, for a while, until the rhythm band instruments came out and she forgot she was sad. Then we had the weirdest game of musical chairs I'd ever seen. Since the last time we played that, the kids were crushed and devastated when they were out, we decided to let the ones who were out play instruments. While we still had one or two who were actively competing in the game, most of the rest preferred the instruments. We'd stop the music and have three chairs remaining empty while the kids just stood around, refusing to sit in one because they wanted to be out. We ended up having to stop the game because no one was playing. Then once we were playing the instruments, the social dynamics came up. We were trying to rotate through who got instruments like the drums, small cymbals and wood blocks and who just got the sticks, but then there were those who refused to give up their instruments when it was time to rotate and those who refused to participate when they just had sticks. So we had to take up the instruments and move on to something else.

Then we have a very odd best friend dynamic. There are two girls who are apparently best friends and do everything together. They even carpool to come to choir. One seems much older and more mature and is a lot more confident (she's also really tall, the size of some of the first graders) while the other one still has a lot of baby to her, she doesn't always participate and hangs back shyly. Strangely, though, it's the little one who is dominant and knows it. The other one who seems so much more socially advanced will defer to the other one on every decision, wants to do whatever the other one does and seems much more desperate to have the other one as her friend. We had an activity where the kids needed to find a partner, and the one girl just assumed that her best friend would be her partner, but her friend refused. I think she thought she'd then get me as her partner, but I told her I was the teacher and wouldn't be anyone's partner. I sensed some serious hurt feelings about to kick in, so I paired off the rejected one with a girl who didn't yet have a partner, and they made a good team, but the rejector refused to work with anyone. I think maybe next time we'll have to assign partners or do some kind of random selection because letting them choose turns into a political mess. I could have used that tranquilizer gun. I may need to work on helping that one girl be a little more independent of her friend. Her dad seems to be aware of the situation, and he's been working on it, too, but maybe separating them some in choir will help.

If I get desperate enough to go back to school and study child psychology, I think I have the makings for my dissertation field research.

But today is cookie baking day, and since tomorrow is supposed to be really nice and I have nothing urgent to do, I think I'm going to pack a picnic and take a long walk/hike over to the river. We're starting to get some fall color, and I want to walk in the woods.

Unwelcome Twists

2011-11-09T11:54:00.001-06:00

I've been freakishly productive this week, getting through everything on my to-do list, accomplishing house cleaning and even being fairly creative. Monday I cleaned my kitchen pretty thoroughly, and in spite of cooking dinner both Monday night and last night, it's still clean. Yesterday, I cleaned out my bathroom/closet area. My bathroom is kind of like a dressing room, where it's a fairly large room (for a bathroom) that has the usual bathroom stuff plus closets and open space in front of the closets, with mirrored doors on the closets that work kind of like fitting room mirrors. I put a chair in that area that was originally intended to be for sitting down while putting on shoes, but it turned into The Chair of Doom, where clothes I took out then changed my mind about, clothes I wore so briefly that I don't need to put them in the clothes hamper and sometimes even clothes I just need to fold and put away after doing laundry go to die. It was spilling over to the floor, and I made the room a lot neater by either putting away or washing everything that was on the chair. I also cleaned out the floor of one side of the closet, and I emptied the secondary Chair of Doom in my bedroom. Today's task is a little more daunting. I plan to clean my desk and the area around my desk.

While doing all this mindless work, the creative part of my brain kicked into high gear, and all those Inconvenient Midpoint Ideas were bobbing to the surface. I realized that some of the research for two of them overlaps, in spite of them actually being very different kinds of stories, so I can research two potential stories at once.

Speaking of midpoints, when I was talking last week about being leery of buying books at today's prices because so many have disappointed me, it wasn't something that the preview feature for e-books would help with. What I've found happening a lot lately is that the book makes a sharp turn about midway through and becomes something entirely different that isn't anything like what was mentioned in the cover copy or set up in the opening chapters. I can sometimes deal with a sharp turn into a darker story when the characters remain true to themselves, so that I can still like the characters I liked in the beginning, even if they're going through much more difficult stuff. But what I've seen a lot of lately is the characters themselves changing midway through a book, in addition to the story changing, and in a way that bothers me. I'll be going along, enjoying this fun adventure with characters I like, and then suddenly one of the main characters turns into a demon (it's so often a demon) and starts killing the other characters, and I'm saying, "But wait! I thought he was the hero! Okay, so he is killing the bad guys, but he's also killing the good guys -- including that girl I thought was perfect for him -- and bringing the world to the brink of destruction. I did not sign up for this!" I'm not a big fan of demon stories, but most of them are good enough to put it in the title or in the cover copy, since demons are apparently big now and a lot of people like them. But these are in books where there's no hint of demons previously. It doesn't have to be demons, though. It's just anything where the characters seem to abruptly change and start doing things that make it impossible for me to care about them.

Sometimes it strikes me as the author having an Inconvenient Midpoint Idea and just incorporating it into the book he's writing, since he's totally stuck at the middle and isn't sure what to do. It's like, "Hey, I know! The hero turns into a demon and kills everyone!" And then the editor's response, instead of being, "Um, did you maybe get your manuscript pages mixed up? Because the second half of this book doesn't seem to fit the first half. And we've already designed and printed the covers," is more like, "Wow! It's so unexpected! I love it!" I suppose it is unexpected if the hero turns into the villain and attacks the heroine midway through the book instead of falling in love with her and teaming up to defeat the bad guys, but to me it's not a very satisfying read. I get nervous now whenever I reach the middle of a book, and I'll skip ahead and read a random page to make sure the main characters are still more or less the same people they were and that the word "demon" doesn't come up too often. I was reading a book yesterday that made me really nervous as I neared the middle because I could see the possibility of things going wonky, but it ended up working out okay -- enough that I may actually buy a copy after getting it from the library (it's from a publisher whose books tend to do that sharp veer into "Huh?" so I was leery of buying it and didn't read it until the library finally got a copy). I'm not sure how to avoid this kind of trap since the usual book-buying tricks don't seem to work. About the only thing that might flag this is the reader reviews on Amazon, but I so often tend to disagree with them, and it seems like the reviewers think the twist I hate is brilliant writing.

Maybe I just have bad taste.

I let myself spend most of the past couple of days reading mostly for fun, but today will be more of a work day, with desk cleaning and research reading.

Tinfoil Hats and Inconvenient Ideas

2011-11-08T10:39:00.001-06:00

I may need to start wearing tinfoil hats because either I'm tapping into other people's brainwaves and picking up on their ideas or other people are tapping into my brainwaves and picking up on my ideas.

The latest case: Yesterday I was taking advantage of having some free time by cleaning my kitchen thoroughly. As so often happens when I'm doing mindless work, an old Inconvenient Midpoint Idea bubbled up to the surface.

As an aside, an Inconvenient Midpoint Idea is one of those shiny new ideas that strikes just when you're slogging through the middle of a book, when you've passed the fun and excitement of initially creating the characters and discovering their world but you aren't yet at the exciting conclusion. You're doing the hard part that requires thinking and planning, and at times you're tempted to write "and then the aliens landed and killed everyone. The End." The Inconvenient Midpoint Idea is The Other Woman of writing. The book you're working on is the reality of what happens after the initial thrill of the idea, when it's work that's sometimes tedious. It's the very non-glamorous part of writing. But then that shiny new idea pops up, and it's all fantasy. It doesn't yet have all the work and thinking attached to it, and it's easy to forget that if you pursue it, eventually it will be the book you'll be slogging through when yet another idea pops up. A lot of potential writing careers are sabotaged by the Inconvenient Midpoint Idea when writers are lured by the shiny new idea that's so much better than the thing they're working on, and as a result, they never actually finish a book because they jump to the new idea when things get hard.

This particular Inconvenient Midpoint Idea hit me in the spring this year, and it was particularly inconvenient because it was an idea for a sequel to the book I was working on. There was no point in even stopping to consider this idea until I finished the current book and sold it, but that didn't stop it from consuming my brain. I did a big brain dump, just writing down everything in my head about it, and that allowed me to submerge it in my subconscious so I could get back to work. Since I've finished that book, that idea bounced up for further consideration.

And that's when I realized that my idea is very similar to a couple of things that have come on TV between then and now -- things I had no idea were coming when I had this idea. Considering production schedules, I'd guess they were gearing up for production, maybe finalizing the initial scripts, around the time I got my idea.

Of course, these ideas would have been in development for some time, but then so was mine. It actually started with a dream I had years ago when I essentially dreamed an episode of a TV series. I liked some of the plot elements of that dream and mentally played with them off and on, figuring out how they might develop over a hypothetical season of the series (yes, this is how I amuse myself). I really liked the story I came up with for the "season finale," and then I started trying to figure out how I could take that story and remove it from the universe of that series, file off the serial numbers, cast new characters and make it an entirely new story. I'd already stolen another aspect of the daydreaming that came out of this dream for something else, but this one was more difficult.

So the Inconvenient Midpoint Idea that came probably around the time these series that turned out to be based on something really similar were going into production was about how that concept could work with the characters I was writing at the time, and then I knew how I could make use of that concept, with it being the natural follow-up to what I had planned to happen at the end of the book I was working on. That turned it from an "idea" to a "story idea."

And, no, I'm not telling what it is because I think by the time I'm through with it I'll be the only one who notices the similarities, but if I say something, then that will be waving a red flag so people will be looking for parallels or similarities. If it ever gets published. And, no, the idea doesn't have anything to do with fairy tales, so that's not the trend I subconsciously plucked out of the ether. There was one thing I was planning to throw in as what would have been a subtle inside joke that I will have to change because that will make the comparisons more obvious now, but while I'm exploring similar things, the actual story will end up being very different.

But, really, I may have to shield my brain when I'm working. I don't like having to twist so hard to avoid looking like I'm copying. It's bad enough that the book I was reading yesterday turns out to have some thematic similarities and even similar terminology to a book I wrote last year. It's different enough that I might be the only one who sees the similarities, but it's still disconcerting.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

2011-11-07T10:54:00.001-06:00

I had a rather earthshaking weekend -- literally!

I'd spent all day Saturday in a massive proofreading session, the kind of thing where I read an entire book out loud in one day. It was more than seven hours of work, with breaks here and there. I finished a bit after 10:30, and there's always a kind of adrenaline-fueled exhaustion that comes after something like that, where I'm dead tired and can barely keep my eyes open, but I'm also too wired to actually rest. I curled up on the sofa to watch a DVD, and then I thought I was in really bad shape because my head started swimming. I lay back on the sofa, hoping that would make me feel better, but then it seemed like the sofa was shaking. I'd consumed copious quantities of sugar and caffeine throughout the day, so I was pretty much vibrating already and I assumed it was just me. But then I noticed that the safety cage on the nearby fan was quivering. That was when I realized that it was an earthquake. We just got the tremors coming off the earthquake in Oklahoma, so it was very subtle, but that made it rather unsettling. I thought for a moment that it might have been a really big truck sitting at the traffic light behind my house, since those often rattle my windows (and set off my security alarm), but this was a different kind of shaking. It wasn't so much a vibration like that is, but more like being on the water. I felt a little seasick. It seemed to go on for a long time, at least a full minute, but I remember where on the DVD I was watching it started and stopped, so I guess I could go back and figure out the timing.

I know that even the main earthquake was minor in California terms, but this was the first time I'd ever encountered anything like it. The local late news was on, since it had been delayed by a football game, so I switched over to that and eventually they reported that an earthquake had happened in Oklahoma at that time, and then later in the newscast they mentioned reports of tremors in our area, so I knew I wasn't crazy and that I really had felt something.

Now I know how to describe it if something similar happens to a character. I know how it feels when artillery fire lands nearby, and that's the way I'd imagined an earthquake would be, but this was very different.

Meanwhile, my major project is done and off my plate entirely. However, I may have scuttled my plans to take it easy the rest of the year. I ran into one of my favorite former clients at the party Friday night (I guess the fact that she's the only former client I'm really in touch with and we're still friends and interacting socially to the point that she's introduced me to her friends means she's my favorite former client), and she's got her own agency now. She mentioned that she was desperate for freelance writers and before I knew what I was saying (wine was involved), I said I was done with my big deadline for the year, so I could pick up a few projects. She was excited because she'd wanted to ask me but was afraid I'd be too busy. I'm already pretty far ahead on potential books and need to give my agent a chance to catch up, and even if one of these projects does eventually sell, it could be at least six months before I see any money, so it won't hurt to spend some time on paying work. Income is good. Besides, I seem to be more productive when I'm busier because I have to manage my time better. And since it's totally freelance and project-by-project, if I get too busy or need a break, I can just decline a project. She said these were things I could probably write in my sleep.

But for today, since I don't yet have projects or deadlines and since I just finished something, I'm planning a nice reading day. Though the reading counts as input for a brainstorming session I have planned for tomorrow, so it's still "work," but the nice thing about my job is that reading is part of my work.

Renting Books?

2011-11-04T12:45:00.001-05:00

My ballet teacher is back and everything in class is back to normal -- including having other people in the class -- so at least that part of my world is right once more. When your main form of stress relief becomes stressful, that makes things difficult. But since I'd missed a couple of classes after being scarred for life by the one-on-one session, I suspect some soreness will kick in later today. I hope it's not too bad because I've got a party to go to tonight, a real grown-up party. It's a wine tasting, so that means no Tylenol.

This week, Amazon started a kind of rental program for e-books. Right now, it sounds kind of like a Netflix model -- Prime members can borrow up to one book a month, one at a time, with no due date -- but it also seems like they're trying to demonstrate that e-book rentals can work before rolling out something on a bigger scale. As usual with anything new, that's resulting in the publishing industry wailing, gnashing their teeth, rending their garments and screaming, "The world's coming to an end!!! We're all going to die!!!"

As a reader, I think this sounds like an awesome idea and might be the sort of thing that would push me into buying a Kindle (I'd prefer something less proprietary -- and if other e-book vendors do this sort of thing, I'd go with that). I might actually start spending money on books again. Due to a variety of reasons, I've bought only two new books this year and I've set foot in a bookstore twice. That's in spite of me being a big-time reader.

One reason is convenience. My book purchasing declined significantly when they opened a new library branch a couple of blocks from my house. I hate to drive, and if I can take a very pleasant walk to a place where the books are free, then that's what I'll do. I imagine I might buy a few more books if it were the bookstore instead of the library just down the street.

But I think a bigger part of the reason is a combination of price, current publishing trends and clutter. When mass market paperbacks were about three dollars, they were an impulse purchase. I was a lot more willing to take a chance on something that sounded interesting because it was no big loss if I didn't like it. Now a mass market paperback is about eight dollars. Buying one is a decision, and it's a bigger loss if I don't like it. Meanwhile, what editors currently think people want to read is not lining up with what I want to read, so there are very few books I'm interested in purchasing these days, and even when I hear they're good, the subject matter is iffy, so I'm not eager to shell out eight bucks to see if maybe the book overcomes the subject matter. In most of the cases when there was something that sounded interesting to me and I bought the book, I've been burned by discovering that the book itself still fit more with the current trends than with my interests. I've gotten into a couple of new series in the past few years, but otherwise all the new books I've bought have gone straight into the "sell to the used bookstore" box. I haven't even shared them with my mom because I know she wouldn't like them. And that brings me to the clutter problem. My house is overflowing with books, so I don't want to add anything new that I don't love. If I buy a book and don't like it, then I have to deal with it in some way. Most of the new books I've bought in the past few years have been either authors/series I already know I like or keeper copies of books I initially read from the library. I know an e-reader would eliminate the clutter problem, but that still leaves the problem of paying eight to ten dollars for something I end up not liking.

But if I could pay two or three dollars to rent an e-book for a few weeks, I'd spend a lot more money on books because it's a lower risk. I'd be a little more adventurous, try a lot more new authors, and I'd get things when they first became available instead of waiting for them to show up at the library. It would be cool if you had the option to buy a book after renting it and your rental fee applied to the purchase price, so if I did like a book enough that I might want to read it again, I could have a copy to keep. If I didn't like the book, it wouldn't be left cluttering my house or my e-reader. I'd probably still buy the same books I already buy, but I'd then be spending a fair amount of additional money on the rentals, and the rentals would likely lead to a few more full-on sales than there would have been without them. I might still use the library a lot, but there are a lot of things (usually the mass market genre fiction) that I can't readily find at the library, and that would add to the library as a way of test driving books before I buy them.

As an author, I also think this is a great idea. I'd rather get maybe 25 cents a copy from a rental book (about what I got in royalties per copy when I wrote mass-market paperbacks that sold for $3.50) than not get anything at all from people not buying my books because they weren't willing to pay the full price for a book they weren't sure about. And then there's always the chance that the rental would lead to a purchase and then subsequent purchases of other books I've written. The boom in self-publishing, with success coming from mass sales of very low-priced e-books, has shown that e-book readers are willing to take chances when there's little financial risk. It seems silly for publishers not to come up with a model to take advantage of that, and rental seems like a way to offer a lower price while still not entirely eliminating the market for selling books. There are people who never re-read books, but they tend to be voracious readers who would still amount to a lot of revenue even just from rentals. I think, though, that a lot of avid readers do want their own copies of books they know they love, even if they've already read them. Even if they don't, I'd bet the numbers would still work out due to volume. You could make more money on five people renting a book than you would on one person buying a book, and while the rental option might mean some would-be purchasers would rent instead, I think there would be far more people renting who otherwise wouldn't have bought the book.

Dreams from the Other Reality

2011-11-03T11:51:00.001-05:00

I got the edits that I'd been waiting for entered, and now I'm letting the book rest a little before I devote my Saturday to re-reading the entire thing straight through so I'll catch any continuity issues that might have arisen from the edits. And then I will be done! Done! I think then I'll take a break for the rest of the year. It won't be total slacker party time, but I will try to get some balance in my life. I have a couple of projects that are in a "pick at it" phase where it's probably best to do a little at a time, focusing on working on specific aspects rather than diving in head-first. I also want to do a big fall cleaning on the house. I've tried doing the small bits at a time thing, and that hasn't worked. I just need to go with my all-or-nothing nature and devote a few days to the effort. That may give me enough of a boost to keep going to finish more gradually. And then I want to catch up on my reading, watch some movies, maybe do some day trips around the area, go hiking, bake and generally have a life.

Meanwhile, I have to ask: How long do I need to be out of school before I stop having the "I have an exam in the class I've been forgetting to go to!" nightmare? The other night I had a particularly pervasive one, as it followed me through multiple dreams. I was tracking the guy who was fighting a Terminator and searching his last motel room when I had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something, looked in my bag, and found a class schedule and realized I was missing a class. Then there was another dream where I was on a vacation with my mom, and I found the class schedule again and realized I was missing a class. Then there was a dream more about the forgotten class where I learned there was an exam coming up, and it was an art history class where it was all lecture and slides, so I couldn't catch up by reading the textbook, so I knew I had to start going to the class. But then there were still more dreams about lots of other things, all of which included some element of me not being able to get to that class because I only remembered it while the class was already in progress. I finally woke in a panic and had to remind myself that I've been out of school for more than 21 years. And I never took art history (though I did take one history course that involved art and literature from the time period being studied, and that did involve a lot of slides, but I got an A in the class with little effort because I loved it, so I don't know why it would trigger anxiety).

I swear, on my deathbed I'll wake up briefly from a deep sleep, and my last words will be, "I've got an exam in art history, and I've been forgetting to go to class." Though the class varies in the recurring nightmare. Sometimes it's a foreign language, sometimes it's English literature. Sometimes I don't even know what it is other than that I'm missing it. When I was actually in school, I kept dreaming that I was skipping ROTC, and I was never in ROTC (though my dad taught it when I was a small child, and I was the mascot for their drill team).

I ought to start tracking occurrences of this nightmare to see if it maps to anything in the real world. There must be some anxiety that triggers it. Like maybe rushing to get a project done after having to wait for someone else's input that didn't come until after the deadline. That certainly breeds anxiety, but I wonder if there's something else out there I'm forgetting to do.

Now I'm thinking that there might be a story in there somewhere, like one reality leaking into another, so you're getting anxious about stuff the other version of you is supposed to be doing or should have done years ago.

Conveying Character

2011-11-02T11:42:00.001-05:00

One little correction to yesterday's post: the author Kim Newman I mentioned is a "he" not a "she." I should have noticed that they used masculine pronouns in the intro to the story, but then he handled a female POV character well enough that I never got that "man writing from woman's point of view" vibe.

I've been talking about character development for a while -- about figuring out who these people are from the inside out. But all that planning and thinking doesn't do any good until you put it into the story, and that's where things get tricky. "Show, don't tell" is one of those writing mantras that gets repeated a lot, and characterization is one of the main areas where it applies. You can't tell readers that a character is brave, kind, impatient, evil, curious, etc. You have to show it through the character's actions.

A brave character will take on the school bully on the playground, will volunteer for the dangerous mission, will stand up to the boss, will eat the strange foreign food that makes everyone else at the table queasy. A kind character will do nice things for people and notice when people may be in need of help. A curious character will ask questions and investigate and won't be brushed aside with partial answers. You get the idea.

But it's not just big actions that show who a character is. You can also convey character traits through little mannerisms and body language. The impatient person is probably going to be a little fidgety, not sitting still, maybe pacing, and will interrupt or finish other people's sentences. A shy person blushes easily, may not make eye contact, won't initiate conversation and may maintain a larger than normal personal space bubble. The curious person may be nosy about everything, asking a lot of personal questions, picking up and looking at items, reading anything left lying around. The important thing about using mannerisms to convey character is that you have to be consistent and persistent, but you don't want to overdo it. Unless something happens to change the character, these actions should continue through the whole story, in every scene where they apply. It's way too easy to start the book really showing the character and then forget to carry these traits throughout. But then you don't want to go overboard with these actions so that the reader is shouting "I get it, okay?" It should almost be subliminal, where the reader just gets the impression you're trying to convey without noticing that you're trying to convey it.

It can help to make a list of actions and mannerisms that might convey the key aspects of your character. Then you'll be less likely to keep going to the same ones so many times that they become annoying. Your plot should also help convey character, since the choices the characters make will affect how the plot progresses (or else the plot turns will reveal character -- it's a chicken-and-egg thing). If your plot has your character choosing to take on the dangerous mission, you're showing that he's brave. If the plot has him going into hiding instead, then let's hope that "brave" isn't a character trait you're trying to convey.

One area where you may resort to "telling" is in the way other characters react to a character. Other people in the story may talk about this person, which means they're telling their impressions or attitudes (and the fact that they're telling these things is in turn an action on their parts that shows us something about their character). People are probably going to say nice things about a kind or brave person, and the fact that people like this person will help your reader see the kind of person he is.

If there's any conflict or contradiction between showing and telling, readers will believe the showing over the telling. No matter how often you tell us what a person is like, we're going to believe what the person actually does. This is often where the "Mary Sue" effect shows up, when the author overidentifies with a character to the point of losing all objectivity. In those cases, all the other characters will talk about how great this character is and this character will be universally loved -- and yet we never see the character doing anything that gives any reason for this universal appeal. We just see this bland, empty person that all the other characters tell us is great, and we don't believe the other characters.

However, you can use that show vs. tell conflict to effect if you do it deliberately. It can work if your character has a secret identity -- people treat Peter Parker or Clark Kent like they're useless wimps, but we see them acting like superheroes. Or it can work if the other characters just don't get this character, so they say he's one thing but we see through his actions that he's another way. Or you can use it to try to keep readers guessing. In a book I'm working on now, we hear about a character from the other characters before we meet her, and when we actually meet her, she's not at all what we expect based on the way others talk about her. But then once we start seeing her in action, we can kind of see why people see her that way, but we can also see that they're not getting the whole picture, and it takes a while for the viewpoint character to figure out what she's really like. Carrying that off requires a mix of showing and telling, with clashes and sometimes agreements between the showing and telling. But you have to do this on purpose for a reason. Otherwise, it just looks like you don't understand your own characters when there's a clash between the showing and telling.

This wraps up the series on characterization. I'm open to questions on other topics related to writing and the publishing business.

Recent Reading

2011-11-01T12:35:00.001-05:00

The scariest part of Halloween for me was when the church across the street from my house (I live on a corner and the church is on the adjacent corner) had a "fall festival" carnival that involved a live band playing outdoors, extremely amplified. They sounded like a bad Gin Blossoms cover band -- very mid-90s slacker monotone whining rock -- though I would imagine the lyrics were rather more religious. It was loud enough that it was uncomfortably and distractingly loud in my house, with the windows closed. To make matters worse, the noise was really upsetting my neighbor's dog, who howled constantly in protest. And then the squeals of what I believed to be teenage girl band groupies started carrying across the street. I resorted to ear plugs, but the drum beats still carried, which made it fairly hard to concentrate on the serious editing work I was doing. Fortunately, they stopped playing at eight. I couldn't help but wonder what the neighbors who protested when the owners of that lot were trying to change the zoning from office to commercial to put in a small shopping center had to say about the noise. They thought a retail center would mean more noise and traffic, but the office park we got after the zoning fight is mostly taken up by a church, and I doubt the retail center would have ever had live bands playing outdoors at night. I guess it's only a couple of times a year, and the church does provide assistance and bottled water to victims of the frequent accidents at the intersection, but I could do without the outdoor concerts across the street.

I haven't talked about books in a while, so here's a wrap up of some recent reading. I've been trying to tackle some things from the towering To Be Read pile, and most of them haven't been worth talking about, but I did find one gem that's a perfect example of Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover. I got a novella collection called The Fair Folk in the goody bag at the World Fantasy Convention in 2006 (at least I think that's where I got it), and it's languished in the TBR pile mostly because it has a cover that looks like what you see on really bad self-published or extremely small press (the kind of "small press" that mostly exists to publish the author and her friends) books. It's not so much that the art is all that bad, but there's just something about the way the cover is designed and printed that screams "cheap and cheesy" to me. It turns out that the book is full of novellas by rather distinguished, award-winning authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. The theme is the fae -- not the cute Disney fairies with butterfly wings, but delving into the folklore version of fairies/elves/fae. I'd read a lot of the authors involved but will be looking up some of the others. In particular, there was a story by Kim Newman that seemed to come from a universe she's established in other works that's sort of a steampunky/gaslight fantasy with a secret society that investigates strange occurrences in Victorian England, and I want to read more about that world. Unfortunately, this collection appears to be out of print.

I picked up what I think must be the latest (it was on the library's new books shelf, but that doesn't mean much in my library) of the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey, Unnatural Issue. Finally, the book about Peter (a recurring character who provides a lot of the connective thread to this series but who hasn't yet been the "hero" of a book). These books are all loosely based on fairy tales, but the connections aren't overt. Some of the fun is figuring out which tale is being used by finding the patterns. I think this one was based on "Donkeyskin," the one in which the princess has to flee her home when her father decides he has to marry her, since he swore he couldn't marry any woman who isn't as beautiful as his late wife, and the daughter grows up to look just like her mother, so he sees her as the only option. It's a Cinderella-like story, as the princess ends up working as a servant in another king's castle. This book got a bit creepy, what with the father wanting his daughter and all (in a way that's actually ickier than the original fairy tale), and then it gets into the start of WWI, and you can just imagine what can happen when you combine a necromancer and trench warfare. But I really liked the main characters and the way the relationships develop. It's books like these that I read for my romance fix because the romantic aspect is more satisfying to me than the romances in most romance novels.

Then the book that kept me up way too late Sunday night was Goliath, the final book in Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy. I'm going to have to re-read the end, since I was barely staying awake for the last few chapters. I was really tired and wanting to sleep, but I couldn't put the book down so close to the end of not only that book but of an entire trilogy. I've learned that when I do that, I tend to dream bizarre endings to the book and don't sleep well, so I may as well stay up and read. But then I miss a lot when I read while barely awake. This series is about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to join an airship crew, and then a fleeing Austrian prince who gets picked up by the airship at the start of an alternate version of WWI. Things get a little complicated when the girl falls in love with the boy but she can't do anything about it because he thinks she's a boy and because he's a prince and she's a commoner. In this volume, their ship picks up a mad scientist in Siberia who thinks he's invented a weapon that can end the war. And meanwhile, the girl's secret becomes less of a secret and they have to deal with the consequences. I enjoyed the book, but I may not be entirely satisfied with the outcome to the series, though it's possible I'm applying adult standards to a YA series. After all, these characters are 16. Their lives shouldn't be decided and settled, so it's probably going to feel a little unfinished to me as an adult. Though this trilogy has ended, the outcome does leave some threads hanging that might lead into another series with the same characters as they move into the next phase of their lives, and I'd like to see that.

I'm really behind on my reading this year, so I hope to catch up in the next couple of months. I think I'll go on a lighter schedule after I get this one project done, and then I can do a lot of reading (which is still work-related).

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T12:28:00.002-05:00

I way overslept this morning, in part probably because I'd had two late nights in a row -- a Halloween party and then reading a book where I was sooo close to finishing, and it was the end of a trilogy, so I was not only waiting for the resolution of the story but for the resolution of the characters' lives -- and probably in part because I was just too comfortable to get up. And actually, I wasn't truly sleeping for the last hour and a half or so. I was just lying there, thinking and daydreaming and being way too comfortable to bother getting out of bed. And then I looked at the clock and freaked out because I had no idea it was that late.

So, the Halloween costume for the year. It was a theme party this year, with a focus on 1950s science fiction movies. I did a sort of space vixen spaceship crew member thing the way they tended to be represented in movies from the 50s and 60s, where the men might be in very practical, functional uniforms, but the women wore high heels and cat suits. It doesn't show in the picture, but I had my hair in a bundle of looped braids, kind of like Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. The original plan was to wear the pleather pants, but they're extremely uncomfortable (as I said, like wearing a sauna) and didn't give the sleek look I wanted, so I got very brave and wore leggings in public with a sweater that only came to my waist.

At the party we watched some 50s movies, including the Mystery Science Theatre version of This Island Earth and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Now I finally have that project I've been waiting on for two weeks -- naturally, on the day I think it would be good to clean house -- so I have serious, urgent work to do. It's a good thing I had a fun weekend.

Halloween Preparation

2011-10-28T13:09:00.002-05:00

I got a late start this morning after staying up and watching the end of the World Series game. I thought that since I'm a good luck charm in person (the Rangers never seem to lose when I'm at a game) I might help them when I watch on TV. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to hear all my shouts of, "Just one more strike, and you win the World Series. No, that was a hit. That's not what you wanted."

In addition to finally doing something with my Stealth Geek blog, I've also revived my semi-defunct cooking blog, The Mildly Adventurous Chef. Yesterday's cooking adventure was pulled pork in my Crock Pot.

I started re-reading that fairy tale book I mentioned earlier this week, and you know, I really like it. It's young adult, which was a departure for me, and it's possible that it didn't find a home because it's not the angsty Twilight stuff that's taken over the YA market. There's no real love triangle, for instance, and no vampires at all. There are a few things about it that I'm reconsidering, but I won't make any decisions about what to change about it until I've read the whole thing through and maybe had someone else give it a sanity check. Then I guess I'll have to work out how to do a cover (I have a cover in mind but will have to figure out the logistics of producing it) and how to do all the formatting/uploading. Maybe I should aim at getting it out there around Christmas, so people who get new e-readers for Christmas will have something to buy. That will depend, though, on how much work it ends up needing. If I'm going to experiment with e-publishing, I may as well go for it with something I've already written that probably won't sell to a major publisher but that I think there may be a market for.

Now I have to get ready for Halloween. I need to bake for Saturday night's party, and there's an item I may need for my costume. I could do without it, but the alternative I already have isn't all that comfortable. This particular costume is maybe a little more edgy than I usually go, but then again, there was the year I was the Generic Urban Fantasy Book Cover:

The (temporary) "tramp stamp" tattoo is a bunny rabbit, because that's what I had handy. I couldn't be a Generic Urban Fantasy Book Cover without a tattoo. And those pleather pants are like wearing a sauna. I may have lost five pounds that night. But at least they're easy to wipe off after a small child has climbed all over me with sticky hands. The smile probably isn't representative of the Generic Urban Fantasy Book Cover, but I couldn't stop myself, and this wasn't the camera/photographer who captures my evil side.

Tune in Monday to see this year's costume.

Hurling Pumpkins and Launching Books

2011-10-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

I didn't have preschool choir last night because it was the Halloween carnival, so instead I helped run the "pumpkin bowling" game at the carnival. This involved using mini pumpkins as bowling balls. There were some bowling pins, but they were very lightweight plastic and wouldn't stay up, so they drew ghost/pumpkin faces on toilet paper rolls, and we stacked those into a pyramid. It became a weird cross between a softball throw and bowling, depending on how each kid threw the pumpkins. I must say it was highly entertaining to watch. There is something rather satisfying about hurling pumpkins at things.

I now know to be flattered when my preschool girls call me Rapunzel. I think half the girls were wearing some kind of Disney princess costume, and Rapunzel was this year's favorite. Some went all-out with the long wigs, and they were proud that their hair was longer than mine. We also had a surprising number of Darth Vaders and Jedi Knights, especially considering that some of these kids weren't even born when the last prequel came out.

Speaking of throwing things, I keep forgetting to mention this … At WorldCon, there's a newsletter every day listing events, parties, etc., and there are a lot of book launch parties mentioned. On the last day, they do a joke newsletter, and in that one, there was an article announcing the results of a book launch party, giving the winning distances.

I immediately thought that sounded like more fun than the typical book party. It was a pity I didn't have anything coming out. But then I thought, why would I want to do that to my own books? If you're having that kind of book launch party, it should be for the wallbangers, the ones that deserve to be hurled with great force. Unfortunately, I'd have to find some other place to hold it because I don't have enough lawn to really go for distance, and I live either within or dangerously close to the airspace of a major airport, which would affect how high we could go. And with my friends, yes, yes that would be a potential issue. Mentioning "launch" would start a discussion on the best way to achieve orbital velocity. But we really must have a book launch party someday.

Today is my favorite kind of autumn weather, nicely cool and grey. My (hopefully non-homicidal) Crock Pot is busily making dinner (and possibly plotting against me -- but I know which circuit breaker to flip if it gives me any attitude), I've made a pot of tea and since I still don't have that work that needs to be done, I may declare this a research reading day. I need to provide stimulus input for my creativity.

Being Creative

2011-10-26T11:34:00.001-05:00

Wow, it sounds like there's actually some interest in my wacky fairy tale book. Sadly, every single publisher in New York rejected it. I suppose it could be that the idea was clever but the writing wasn't good enough. Or it could be that they expected it to be a chick-litty style comedy when it's more of a mix of humor and drama (I'd say a similar tone to Buffy -- some humor and funny one-liners, and the premise may sound kind of silly on the surface, but they're actually in some really scary situations. Instead of being a comedy it's more of a serious story about characters who have a sense of humor and who are dealing with an odd situation). That is a book I'm considering e-publishing myself, since I have it written, the publishers don't want it, some readers might want it, and it's not doing me any good just sitting on my hard drive. I haven't looked at it in a couple of years, so I may want to give it another once-over and see if maybe the publishers were right and how much work it needs. Or maybe I'll still love it and decide to prove the publishers wrong.

In the meantime, I'm stuck in a holding pattern where I have something with an urgent, pending due date, but I can't do anything about it until someone else gets their part done, and they're already a week past when they said it would be done. When I get it, I'm going to have to leap on it instantly and then work really hard to make the deadline, so I'm almost afraid to delve into any other work that's only going to have to get shoved aside. So I've found odd little ways to spend my time. Yesterday, I was working out my Halloween costume. I had something planned that would actually be pretty timely for pop culture, but it turns out that the party I'm going to has a theme this year, and while dressing for the theme isn't required, I think it would be fun, and my planned costume was the exact opposite of the theme. I planned something else that was kind of tangential to the theme, but then yesterday I got an idea for something else that might fit better and that could be a lot of fun. However, I suspect it will generate a lot of photos posted to Facebook or elsewhere on the Internet. Hey, publicity, right?

The other thing I was doing was reading a book I picked up for a dollar at that warehouse sale. It's a business book on creativity, written by a guy who apparently does seminars for corporations to help them brainstorm new ideas. Supposedly, this whole process is copyrighted, but it's very similar to what I do when working on a book idea. In fact, he seems to have validated my creative process. One of his principles is that just telling someone to come up with ideas doesn't get you a lot of ideas, and those ideas won't be very good. You need some kind of stimulus/input to generate creative ideas. The first step in one of his idea generating sessions is to immerse the group in all kinds of input relating to the project -- research as well as relevant sensory input. That's pretty much how I start working on a book. I read all kinds of random stuff even tangentially related to elements of the story, including non-fiction research and novels that have something in common with the story. Then before I really dive into the work, I do a kind of "retreat" in which I watch movies that remind me in some way of the project, listen to music and create a kind of soundtrack for the book and sometimes even eat food that relates to the setting or the characters. After that, I'll start the serious brainstorming and plotting. This theory also validates what I call "iTunes roulette" that I sometimes use either when I'm stuck or when I'm plotting. I put iTunes on shuffle and let it play in the background while I brainstorm, and sometimes a song that comes on will spark some idea. One of my favorite plot twists ever (in a book that got rejected, but I'm salvaging that plot twist for another project) was inspired by a song that came on at just the right time.

There are a few other things in this book that I haven't tried, so I'll have to put them to the test. I do know that I need to improve my sense of adventure. I tend to be a bit of a scaredy cat -- rather risk-averse -- and I need to force myself out of my comfort zone. Most of his suggestions for things to do to generate a sense of adventure utterly terrify me -- not physically because they're not things like skydiving, but socially, as most of them involve some kind of interpersonal situation that would have me looking to join Mole Boy in his tunnel. Sometime next year, depending on when I get the current slate of projects cleared and depending on what becomes of those projects and whether I'll need to do editor revisions or copy edits, write sequels, etc., I will be diving into a totally new project, so I'll have to apply some of these ideas in the planning stage.

Really, though, creativity isn't my problem. I have no shortage of ideas. I'm not sure what my problem is or if it even is my problem, aside from the problem of being square when round is the big trend of the moment.

Fantasy on TV

2011-10-25T11:46:00.001-05:00

One weird thing that came out of that "where are they now?" thing at the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books site is that an editor for a romance line e-mailed me to say that she couldn't help me continue my series, but she would love to see any manuscripts I had that might be suitable for her line. I must confess to enjoying a moment of ironic glee at writing a "your line doesn't suit my needs at this time" letter to an editor, since all my manuscripts contain fairies, wizards or other forms of magic and use romance as only a subplot. Not that I'm really in a position to "reject" an editor, but my writing really would not be a good fit for her, and trying would only make me miserable and would likely fail. If only an editor who might want the kind of stuff I write had seen that post and the response to it and had come recruiting.

It does seem like there's a TV cultural trend possibly brewing that fits my style. I caught up with the premiere of Once Upon a Time last night (since I was out singing when it was on), and it seems like the kind of thing I might write. In fact, I have written something similar, except I was using the Piney Woods of East Texas instead of Maine (that area reminds me of some of the forests in Germany, and it gives me a fairy tale vibe). I did a spin on Sleeping Beauty, using the ballet version of the plot, in which the good fairies (enchantresses in my story) took the infant princess away to raise her in obscurity and hide her from the wicked fairy (enchantress) until after her sixteenth birthday, only in my story, they brought her to another world entirely, so this Disney princess with all those magical gifts of beauty and song had grown up in a small East Texas town. Everyone thought that her tendency to walk down the street doing her own musical numbers with lots of small animals following her around was kind of weird, but they couldn't help but love her. Then on her sixteenth birthday the evil enchantress had managed to find a way to open the portal and send her men to fetch the princess, only there was a mix-up and they got the wrong girl, so a very ordinary, non-princessy (but very practical) teenager was in this fairy tale world where everyone thought she was the princess, but once she figured out what was going on, she had an advantage because she knew how the story went, while everyone around her was living it and didn't realize they were characters in a story. The sequel took place in our world, when they found that Sleeping Beauty wasn't the only person who'd found their way here to take refuge. They found Snow White working as an aid in a nursing home, where she was looking after seven feisty WWII veterans, and the evil queen had come looking for her, setting herself up in a beauty parlor where she was surrounded by mirrors. I wrote the whole first book, but no one wanted it, so the series didn't really get developed.

Anyway, I really liked Once Upon a Time, since I'm a sucker for fairy tale stuff. It looks like it could be fun. My only complaints were that the "fairy tale" parts of the story suffered a little from the curse of SyFy fantasy movies, where the characters in this quasi-medieval European fantasy world speak colloquial modern American English -- except when they don't -- and that they seem to be doing a very Disneyfied version of the fairy tales (since ABC is owned by Disney), so that the dwarves have the Disney dwarf personalities, and they seem to be considering everything made into a Disney animated movie to be part of the same fairy tale world, like Pinocchio. Still, I like the characters and the situation so far, even if I now have an urge to dig out my Into the Woods DVD.

However, there was something oddly familiar about the set-up: A snarky blonde with no friends or family who doesn't even know anything about who her family was travels from Boston to a small coastal town in Maine, where she learns that the town is under a kind of curse, the town may be the key to her mysterious past, and she may be key to breaking the curse. Now, where have we seen that recently?

They had a sneak preview of Grimm OnDemand, about 20 minutes of the pilot that I think may be enough highlights to let us know what's going on and to get into the plot, and then cutting off at a cliffhanger moment, and I think I may like it, too. It's like a fantasy procedural, and I like what we saw of the characters. Also, on a shallow note, the main character is really cute and has a very pleasant speaking voice (he would make a really good Owen), so that alone would get me to give it a try.

Apparently, the ratings for Once Upon a Time were pretty good, so maybe this will start a trend. And then maybe they'll want more contemporary fairy tale-like series. I know of a good possibility ...

Peeking Through the Fog

2011-10-24T10:43:00.001-05:00

It's a spooky, foggy morning, perfect for the start of Halloween week. I'm sitting at my desk, looking out the sliding glass doors that lead onto the balcony, where normally I have a view of the lawn, the street and the small office park across the street. Today I can see the lawn, the brick wall surrounding the lawn and some hazy outlines of the trees running along the street. The street is mostly visible because it's at ground level, but I can barely see the buildings across the street. It's better than it was when I first got up. Then I couldn't even see the street and there was no sign of the buildings across the street.

I've seen this episode of Haven, and it doesn't go well. I may not go outside today, in case the weather lady is really pissed off (she must be a St. Louis fan).

Not that I was planning a lot of excursions today. It was a busy choir weekend, with a dress rehearsal most of Saturday and then a performance Saturday night. It's a very challenging work to sing, and although I sing the second soprano part, I was still spending a lot of time above the staff. So today I'm a little raspy. But it's a lot of fun, and I love singing stuff like that. Even more fun was that some of my friends came, and we then went to Dairy Queen because I desperately needed ice cream.

I was proud of myself for resisting my usual scream and jump tendencies. Saturday was the first time we'd practiced with the brass and percussion, and since the piece is about war and peace, there's a lot of percussion used to simulate gunfire. There's one movement that's a capella with just the men, doing a Gregorian chant type thing, and at one point the singing stops, and in that rest, there's a loud hit on a drum that sounds like a cannon going off. In the rehearsals so far, that's just been a moment of silence, so Saturday was the first time we heard the drum. It made me scream and jump. But since I knew it was coming, I braced myself and did not scream during the performance. I think my friends were disappointed. The rest of the startling loud drumbeats all came right before I was supposed to sing a loud, high note, so they were less of a problem.

Now we get to start practicing music for Christmas. The nice thing about doing a major choral work in late October is that it means we aren't singing Christmas music in September, but we will have to work hard to be ready for Christmas.

In the meantime, I think this may be a tea and book day, especially if the sun doesn't come out.

Running Errands Beyond Thunderdome

2011-10-21T12:22:00.001-05:00

My timing was off for my morning errands, so it looks like I'll have afternoon errands. If it gets close to 11, the lunch crowds in my area come out, and then the traffic on the main road becomes a nightmare, there are lines at the gas station pumps and the grocery store and Target turn into zoos full of long lines and unruly customers. I think I was about fifteen minutes too late today. I absolutely had to get gas because my warning light came on when I was on my way to choir practice Wednesday. My car seems to go quite abruptly from looking like there's nearly a quarter of a tank to the "Oh no! We're out of gas! We're all going to die!" light coming on. (Though that is possibly my interpretation of the light. The intended meaning may be "You're running low on fuel, so when you get a chance, you might want to fill up," but I can't stop myself from panicking when a warning light comes on.) Of course, the light only comes on at night when I'm on my way somewhere and don't have extra time, and when I'm in a place where there are no gas stations at all between me and my destination. The needle wasn't yet that close to "E," so I just came home after choir and figured I'd fill up the next time I went out.

The closest, most convenient gas station, the one in front of the grocery store, seems to stay in this scary "every man for himself" demolition derby mode straight out of Mad Max, with lines at the pump and people jockeying for position. I nearly got hit three times just trying to escape after giving up and deciding to try another station. You'd think there was no other fuel for miles rather than just no fuel without making an unprotected left a block away. I got my cookie-baking supplies to be ready for tomorrow's choir dress rehearsal and managed to get to a gas station before my car died (I don't think I was actually in danger, but warning light!), then decided it would probably be best to go home and catch my breath after my ordeal before venturing out again after the lunch crowds die down. On errand day, I should get into the habit of going out before I do my usual Internet reading/tea drinking so I can be home before the mobs emerge. Or else get hood-mounted weaponry (if you're gonna play Mad Max, you may as well go all the way).

This has been a spectacularly unproductive week, in part because of fighting the last remnants of the cold/allergies and in part because I was anticipating getting something I'd need to work on from someone else, so there was no point in getting too deep into anything else, only the delivery estimate seems to keep slipping and I'm still waiting (just watch, I'll get it right before the deadline, at the worst possible time, then have to kill myself to get it done on time after all this waiting). So, today I'm just going to catch up on errands, check out the Half-Price Books warehouse sale (like I need books, but it's practically in my neighborhood, and I'm always on the lookout for oddball reference books), and then bake cookies. The cookies are for lunch at a choir rehearsal, but I suppose I should taste them for quality control. There's a new law in Texas that allows people to sell baked goods made in their homes. You no longer have to use a commercial/industrial kitchen. I do good cookies. Maybe that's something I can look into if this writing thing doesn't work out, or a possible source of bonus income between books. Maybe someone would want to outsource their holiday baking. Unfortunately, I don't really do "pretty" cookies, unless I'm using the cookie press. I'm not a fan of icing, so I don't do the traditional decorating.

Oh, and go Texas Rangers! Winning a World Series would be really cool (especially the same year the Mavericks won the NBA).

Triumph!

2011-10-20T11:06:00.001-05:00

I achieved a great victory yesterday: I got Mole Boy to speak! And he then even participated (sort of) in the choir activities instead of hiding in his corner. We were making tambourines by punching holes in the edges of small paper plates, then tying them together with pieces of pipe cleaners with little jingle bells threaded through them (this is very exciting when you're four). To start, we had the kids color their plates, and as the kids arrived, we handed them their plates and directed them over to the crayons. Mole Boy was just sitting there for a while, either not wanting to force his way through the mob of girls surrounding the crayons or using that as an excuse not to do anything. I asked him what his favorite colors were, and he actually spoke to tell me -- probably the first words he's spoken since he's been coming to choir. So I found those colors for him (aided by the mob of girls suddenly competing desperately to help me) and he then colored his tambourine and played it with the others when we were later using them. He still didn't sing, but he stayed with the group and did most of the stuff the other kids were doing.

The other teacher and I have worked out that she'll focus on leading the lessons and guiding the 80 percent of kids who participate easily and willingly, and I'll deal with the 20 percent who need extra help or encouragement. I also deal with leading the actual singing. It was interesting trying to teach a new song last night with one child in my lap and one sitting behind me, playing with my hair. I have longer hair than Barbie, so I make a great toy. I did double check my hair before going to adult choir practice because I had no idea what I'd look like after being styled by preschoolers fighting over who got to play with my hair next. I had to make the no-combing rule (I had it pulled back with combs, and they started trying to use those to comb it) because if you try to comb my hair, it just gets huge and tries to take over the world. A waist-length Afro is not a pretty sight.

It was a little terrifying to learn that I apparently get these kids at their best behavior. We only have choir once a week, so it's "special" enough that they don't get into a total comfort zone like they would at school. The mom of one of my kids sits behind me in choir, and at rehearsal she apologized for inflicting her child on me. He'd been absolutely awful all day, to the point that she felt like sticking him on the front porch with a "free to good home" sign, and she'd even wondered if she should bring him to choir at all, but she needed the break from him and then felt bad for using me for her break. I told her he's one of the good ones. He never gives me any trouble, and he's so sweet and kind to the other kids. When we still thought Mole Boy was just being afraid, this was the kid who went over to him and tried to coax him out of his corner by offering to be his friend. She gave me this look that said, "Are you sure we're talking about the same kid?"

Next week is the Halloween carnival, so I don't have to deal with choir. I'll still probably help with the carnival so I can see the kids in their costumes, but I won't be in charge. I'm guessing there will be a lot of princesses.

Speaking of choir stuff, for those in the north Texas area, my choir and people from some other choirs in the area, along with a brass ensemble, are presenting The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace on Sunday night at seven at the First United Methodist Church in Coppell. This is a really cool choral work that was originally commissioned by the Royal Armouries for the millennium and was dedicated to the victims of the tragedy in Kosovo. But then the recording was released on September 10, 2001, so it took on an additional meaning. The piece is based on a 15th century French song and contains many of the traditional mass elements, mixed in with bits of poetry by people like Kipling and Tennyson set to music. The music covers a lot of styles, including Renaissance motet and Gregorian chant. It's really fun to sing, even if the composer really likes the sopranos to stay above the staff. For a sample, here's a movement from the original recording, courtesy of the Tube of You (this is not my choir, but it gives a sense of the piece). And it's free! I tried on my black concert dress last night to make sure I could still zip it after losing some of the range of motion in my shoulder, and I'm good to go.

Character Development: Building Traits

2011-10-19T11:37:00.000-05:00

I'm continuing a series on character development. Previously, I discussed the way I like to start building a character from the inside by considering what the character's driving need is. Next, I move out a little from that and determine what the character's personal goal is. This is different from the drive because it's something the character has actually chosen, whether or not he admits it to himself. The drive is just kind of there. Few people actually choose that they need to be in control of every situation, but they may have a goal of becoming president of a company. It's also different from the story goal, even if those goals may coincide. The story goal is about plot, but the character goal is about character. This is what the character wants out of life before the story gets started. It may change along the way as the story teaches the character that what he wants and what he needs are two different things. In fact, usually the story goal does upset the character's life in some way, even if it coincides with his personal goal -- often by making him put his money where his mouth is. He's always said he wanted this one thing, but he's never actually done anything about it, and now the story goal will make him do it.

Once you know these key internal things about the character, you can start adding other character traits. Think about how the character fits into her world -- does she fit in, or is she a misfit? Does she like her current situation? Who are the people in her life, and how does she relate to them? Where does she live, work, play, and what does she think about these things? I think the character's attitudes toward the things in her life are as important as the things themselves. There are few things in our lives that we don't have some attitude about, and a character without opinions and attitudes about the details of her life will come across as weirdly blank. For instance, even if you don't think about your neighbors very often, you probably have attitudes or opinions about them -- they're noisy, intrusive, weird and reclusive, messy, leave their trash bins out, don't clean up after their pets, are way too obsessive about their lawns, come and go at odd hours, are like the family you never had, etc. So, it's not just important to know your character's profession, but you need to know what she thinks about that profession.

I once went to a writing seminar where the instructor suggested that each character have four key traits -- like stubbornness, altruism, enthusiasm, etc. -- and that one of them should be something that doesn't seem to fit. Too few traits and the character seems undeveloped, but more than that and the character will be unfocused because you won't have time to really develop all those traits. I've never actually made that work, at least not in a first draft. I find that I'm more likely to discover traits like these along the way because they emerge as I write the characters, and then I can work to develop and emphasize those traits in later drafts. I do think that having one thing that doesn't quite seem to fit, that's unexpected, plays a huge role in creating a character that people find fascinating. A person who isn't entirely what he seems to be or what you'd expect him to be is automatically intriguing. This oddball trait shouldn't come out of the blue, though. It needs to make sense for the character, and you may have to do some digging into the character's backstory or inner life to either find the oddball trait or figure out how the oddball trait fits. In my series, the character who most captures people's imagination is Owen, the super-powerful, very handsome wizard who's also ridiculously shy and can barely have a conversation without turning bright red. There is a story reason behind the shyness that I know and that's only hinted at in the books, and I think that oddball trait is one big reason why readers are so intrigued by him.

How much backstory you need to develop depends on the character and the story you're telling. Some characters and stories may require you to at least think about all the major points in the character's life, even if you don't mention those anywhere in the book. Some characters only need the slightest amount of backstory because their past doesn't matter that much. I would say to develop what you feel you need to understand the character, but remember that you don't have to put any or all of it in the book. If you need to know what his elementary school years were like to grasp where he is today, then think about that, but don't feel you have to develop his whole life story if you have a good sense for who this person is and that information doesn't matter to the plot. I find that there's a point where a character clicks for me and I feel like I know this person well enough to write the book. I'll always discover stuff along the way, and that's what revisions are for.

Next I'll get into how to convey all this character development in a story.

History Overload

2011-10-18T10:45:00.000-05:00

On the good news front, it seems that my plagiarist got taken down. He made the mistake of copying articles from Cracked.com, and that got noticed. I guess I missed my chance to get publicity out of it, but I also didn't have to worry about confrontation and having an Internet psycho after me, which I worried about because his "about me" info indicated he's local. I didn't want some weirdo showing up on my doorstep or stalking me.

On the bad news front, if it was allergies before, I think it turned into a real illness because by yesterday afternoon I was running what for me is a high fever. Other than that icky fevery feeling and the general malaise that comes with it, I actually feel better because I'm not sniffling or sneezing, and I only cough when I get dry. I think that means I'm going to take it easy today and just lie around drinking hot tea. SyFy is showing the entire The Stand miniseries. Maybe that will make me feel good in comparison, and maybe I'll be able to pick out a few more Stephen King references in Haven. Or I could get bored and switch to something else.

I seem to go for different kinds of entertainment with each illness. With last fall's bronchitis, I did the Lord of the Rings trilogy (something that didn't make me laugh or cry -- both of which caused problems). With last winter's cold, it was a weird combination of SyFy monster movies and Lifetime romantic comedies. This time around it's been historical documentaries. Friday afternoon, the PBS World channel did a program on Maria Tallchief, the Native American prima ballerina from Oklahoma. I'd read a bio of her when I was in a brief dance-mad phase as a kid, and she was one of my heroes as a ballerina from Oklahoma (I was born in Oklahoma and was living there at the time). But I'd never actually seen her dance, and this show had lots of footage of her. She was amazing, very powerful. Today's ideal dancer body is a skeleton with a bun (then again, the typical ideal female body for just about everything these days is a skeleton with whatever appropriate accessory), but she had a very solid, muscular body. Still slender and lithe, but not at all fragile looking. She also seems like a really cool lady with a great sense of humor.

Then at night, there was an interesting "When Weather Changed History" on the Weather Channel about the Nome diphtheria epidemic and the frantic dog sled relay to get the serum there in time -- the basis for today's Iditarod race. It says something sad about the History Channel when the Weather Channel has better programs about history. Saturday morning there was an old documentary on the History Channel about pirates (I think it was from when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out), and then that afternoon there was a program on Jesse James that started out being interesting but that then turned into the more usual current History Channel fare. In other words, conspiracy theories (but no aliens, this time). They were tracking down the places the James gang may have hidden their treasure, based on carvings in the walls of caves in odd geologic formations in one part of Kansas where the gang operated. That part was kind of cool. But then they went off on how James was actually part of this secret society keeping the aims of the Confederacy going, and he was robbing to raise money for this group. I didn't have a problem believing that, but their evidence was often pretty slim -- like they'd point out some supposedly secret sign that he was giving in a photo, and I couldn't tell anything different from the way everyone else in the photo was standing. Then they went off on the "Jesse James faked his own death" theories and pointed to some man who died decades later who claimed he was Jesse James. They did a DNA test that shows that man was no relation, but then said that a forensics expert had problems with the test -- as though that was definitive proof that the test was wrong. But all the forensics expert said was that the test results wouldn't hold up in court because there was no chain of evidence. They couldn't prove decisively where the samples came from, mostly because the sample supposedly from Jesse James had gone through so many hands without firm documentation. They found a stash of old coins in one of the places the marks on the caves seemed to point to, and some of them were minted after James's death, which they took as more proof that he faked his death. I pointed out that those caves were covered with carvings and were ideal hiding places for criminals, so there was no telling who had buried that money. If I can spot the flaws in your theory while lying on the sofa, zonked out on cold medicine, then maybe you shouldn't be breathlessly stating it as fact on TV.

And then there was a program on the great San Francisco earthquake, which devolved into doom-and-gloom scenarios about what would happen if another one of that size hit now -- and it could at any time! Maybe tomorrow! It did raise the interesting question of why, when the city was almost entirely destroyed, they rebuilt it in the same place, on top of a known major fault line, which is a really bad place to have a city. One of the geologists interviewed on the program pointed out that in Europe and Asia, there are ruins of former cities that were abandoned when they proved to be very bad places to have cities. They didn't rebuild Pompeii in the same place after they discovered it was under a volcano, for instance.

I did make one attempt at watching a Lifetime romantic comedy. They were showing New in Town, in which Renee Zellweger is an executive sent to close or retool a plant in Minnesota, where, of course, she starts out as a fish out of water but then is transformed by the locals and falls in love with her total opposite local guy, Harry Connick Jr. I love him in romantic comedies (though not sure I can buy him as a Minnesotan because he never loses his Louisiana drawl), but I barely made it far enough into the movie for his character to appear. I just can't watch a movie with a heroine who is too stupid to live. This woman travels to Minnesota in the winter, wearing a skirt with no tights or stockings and just a little sweater as a coat. Not to mention the spiked heels for travel. And then she's running around in short sleeves with just that little sweater coat. I am from a warm climate, and I've taken a business trip to Minnesota in December. And, you know, there are these things called weather forecasts. It's easy to find out what the weather will be like and to dress and pack accordingly. Since I don't have a Minnesota in winter wardrobe, I went with layers, including long underwear, wool slacks, multiple pairs of socks, sensible shoes and layers of sweaters, under my long winter coat with a hat, gloves and scarf. That was the coldest I've been in my life, even with all that stuff, and it was supposedly a warm winter for them. I just couldn't believe that anyone smart enough to make it anywhere in business would be so clueless as to be surprised that it's cold in Minnesota. That was when I decided to take a nap.

But what did happen to the History Channel? It now seems to be mostly reality series about people who run pawn shops or drive trucks on bad roads. How is that even remotely "history"? I can't even buy their "being made daily" slogan because, no, that's still not history. No one will remember these people or care because they're making zero impact on the grand scheme of things. There are dozens of channels for the lowest common denominator. Why do they also have to get one of the few channels for smart people? I'd even take the non-stop WWII programming they used to run, so long as it's not about how the Nazis were really space aliens.

My Choir's Debut

2011-10-17T10:56:00.001-05:00

I promised no more whining, but can I help it if things just keep happening? After all the "fun" of last week, to top it off, on Friday afternoon I learned that my high school band director had died. My mom pointed out that I haven't really had any contact with him in more than 25 years, so this could hardly be a case of bad things happening to people I know, but it didn't help my mood. And then I came down with either a really bad allergy attack or a mild cold, or possibly an unholy combination of both. It was strangely a relief to have something bad actually happen directly to me because then I didn't feel like I was being self-indulgent or making it all about me to feel pitiful and wallow in my misery. I was fortunate that although I've had all the symptoms on the Nyquil bottle, I never had them all at once. They came in phases. I started with the runny nose, fever and sneezing on Friday, which continued on Saturday. By Sunday, the fever was gone and I'd stopped dripping but had become stuffy. Today the sneezing seems to be gone, but I'm still stuffy and now I'm coughing.

And, wouldn't you know it, it was one Sunday when I couldn't stay home. I was directing the combined preschool and kindergarten choirs to sing in the early service, and I was the one with the sheet music for the pianist. Then it was my Sunday to lead the preschool singing in Sunday school, and then if I was already there, I didn't want to miss the piece we were singing in the late service. I was feeling a lot better and wasn't running fever (and if it was a cold rather than allergies I probably caught it from the little germ machines), so I dragged myself in at 8 in the morning.

It seems my assessment of Mole Boy, that his behavior was about seeking attention rather than true timidity, was correct, since he was the one kid who refused to wear a choir robe and stood front and center in the group, not singing and glaring straight ahead. Since his older brother is in the kindergarten choir, I figure that if he'd been truly timid and afraid of being noticed, he'd have done exactly what his brother did and clung to him. A timid kid definitely wouldn't have made himself stand out by being the only one not wearing a robe. He may be too shy to outright demand attention, but he's trying to get attention. I think he thinks he's somehow punishing his parents by refusing to get involved and have fun at things they're making him do, and he's too young to realize that he's the only one he's really hurting. At least he stood there and didn't crawl under something. We had a few meltdowns in the choir room, but only one big one while performing, when the most outgoing girl in the group, our class clown, burst into tears and ran off in the middle of the song. It turned out that she'd walked into a wall on her way out of the choir room (because she was goofing around) and hurt her nose, so it was a hurt thing, not a stage fright thing. And then my choir director's son wouldn't go on with the choir without his dad being next to him. I'll get lots of teasing mileage out of that. I may tell the choir director I can't sing unless my dad stands with me (though my dad would object to that, I'm sure). The nice thing is that with kids this young, they're so cute that it really doesn't matter how they perform, and, really, the more crazy stuff that happens, the more the congregation enjoys it because it's that much cuter.

Needless to say, I got home and collapsed. Today I'm a lot better and am functioning without medication so far. There may still be napping this afternoon, and I'm kind of hazy, so I'm not anticipating high productivity. I've got a busy week and weekend ahead, so getting better is priority #1.

Rapunzel's Secret Identity: Mole Girl

2011-10-14T12:35:00.001-05:00

First, a minor announcement: Several years ago, I snagged the Blogspot address for The Stealth Geek and parked my Stealth Geek FAQ on it. In a fit of procrastination yesterday, I decided to do something with it, so I'll be indulging in my geeky side there. There may be some overlap with topics here, but it will be more focused on being a fan blog instead of a writer blog. If that's your thing, then visit The Stealth Geek and spread the word.

Yesterday was an all-around weird day. It didn't help the general sense of gloom that my friend's obituary was on the list of top local stories that showed up whenever I went to my web mail's landing site. Then when I'd put off going out for groceries too long and was killing time before lunch, I ran out of things to look at on my usual Internet haunts and started just going to all my somewhat publishing-related bookmarks (so I could call it "work"). I got to the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books site, and what do I see at the very top of the page? My bookcover. And my name. I was the "whatever happened to?" question of the day. And I really did find it that way. I was not egosurfing or Googling myself. It was a real shocker, and it took me a while to stop shaking. On the one hand, it's wonderful to know that people are still thinking of me, and that kind of exposure on that popular a site can be a good thing (it looked like my Amazon ranking improved). On the other hand, if you're a "whatever happened to?" question, does that make you a has-been? I responded in the comments, since there was a lot of speculation that wasn't entirely accurate (like the accusation that my web site was out of date -- it isn't. It's just that nothing has changed in a very long time). And then it turned into a discussion on e-publishing, which I'm staying out of because that site can get ugly if they turn against you and the e-book zealots scare me.

I went to ballet class because I figured that dancing would be great stress relief. On the way, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up the essential items from my shopping list, and on my way into the store I ran into someone from choir, then I ended up in the checkout line with my pastor's wife. Since I was on the way to ballet, I had my hair in a tight bun and no makeup on, so I felt a little self-conscious. At least my pastor's wife recognized me even out of context, so that proves I'm active enough in church that she knows me (and it's a pretty big church). Then I got to the ballet school and found that I was the only person there from my class. I guess everyone is staying out until our regular teacher gets back from maternity leave. Worse, the substitute was the Old World-style ballet mistress. If you've seen any ballet movie ever, you know the type, except this one is Mexican instead of Russian. So I had her eagle eye on me and only me for the entire time, which made me even more self-conscious and got me flustered. I'm fairly graceful, but I'm not all that coordinated, so remembering what I was supposed to be doing while moving my feet, maintaining proper positions with my arms, moving my arms and moving my head all at the same time while being flustered and knowing I was being watched intently was a train wreck in the making. I made her shake her head in despair, though I'm sure I did learn a lot and got a lot of minute corrections. I found myself thinking that maybe Mole Boy has the right idea. If I could have found something to crawl under, I would have.

And then I realized that one reason Mole Boy gets to me -- and that I "get" him -- is that I have a fair amount of Mole Girl in me. I simultaneously fear and crave attention. It feels weird and wrong to seek attention openly, but I kind of want to be recognized, and yet it can be utterly terrifying to be the center of attention.

This cartoon came out earlier this week, and my first thought was "Darn! They're on to me! Back to the drawing board for the Ongoing Plan for World Domination, since this is pretty much the basis of it, and now everyone knows."

I generally function on the "if you're good, no one will see you coming" idea, along with the idea that if you're nice, people will want to work with you and want to do nice things for you. But as I've been dealing with some career things and thinking about my Mole Girl tendencies, I'm realizing that there's a fine line between not seeing you coming and taking you for granted. People are more likely to notice the people who make a fuss. Doing PR for Ericsson as long as I did showed me that this may be a cultural thing I've picked up from my dad. It's a very Scandinavian attitude -- you don't put yourself out for attention because if you deserve it, you'll get it. You also don't have to make a fuss about things you're working on because you know that everyone else will get their part of things done when they need to be done. You don't need to nag or remind people -- and doing so is even something of an insult. This could explain why I worked so well with Ericsson that I got recruited by another agency when they consolidated their accounts and the new agency needed someone to run all the Ericsson accounts. It's a very low-stress way to work when everyone's on the same page and operates that way. But it all falls apart when you're dealing with someone who doesn't work that way, and most Americans in the business world don't work that way. You have to push yourself forward and ask for things you want, like promotions, raises and job assignments. If you don't, they'll go to someone else, even if you deserve them more. You have to remind and even nag people about deadlines and deliverables or they won't happen, and you'll get nagged even if you're on schedule. If you're thinking Scandinavian and are dealing with American practices, that gets frustrating. You'll get passed over for advancement and left to languish where you are. You won't find out until the due date that something hasn't been done. You'll get nagged even when you're on schedule.

At first, if you're like me, you turn it on yourself. You'll think you didn't get the promotion, raise or assignment because you really weren't worthy. You'll think that other people didn't get their parts of your project done because it was a low priority item and they didn't care about it. You'll think that you're behind schedule or have given people reason to believe you're unreliable when they nag you. So you don't protest or complain. Eventually, though, you'll start to look at things objectively and evaluate the situation and realize that you really should have been the one to get the promotion, that your project was important enough to be done on time. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, though, so you'll say something generalized and oblique about it, and when that doesn't get the message across, you'll find a polite way to mention it that doesn't place blame. And then the explosion happens, and it usually comes as a complete surprise because the person you're dealing with hasn't been paying attention.

I tend to let things slide, in part because of that "if I'm not getting attention, then it may mean I don't deserve it" thing and in part because I pick my battles and don't complain when I don't think it will matter much. But I'm not really letting things slide. I'm just not making a fuss. That means that by the time I say something in a self-deprecating way, as though it's some kind of quirk that there's this one thing that I really like to have happen in a certain way, with no direct accusations or specifics, that means NORAD has already gone on high alert. When I get more specific but without being too angry or accusing, the "I kind of hate to mention it, but it bothers me when this happens," sort of thing, the bomb bay doors are already open and it's probably too late to get to the bomb shelter. When I actually complain specifically and directly, what you're seeing is the mushroom cloud. The bomb has already detonated. I've been dealing with a situation where NORAD has been on alert for a few years, and I've made multiple "gee, this is one thing that gets to me" remarks. But I think my being "nice" has created a sense of complacency that I won't mind. The nuke went off this week, and there's someone out there awash in radiation who doesn't seem to have noticed. I'm not sure what more I can do to make it clear without getting really ugly, and getting ugly isn't in my nature. Getting ugly would also probably hurt me more than it hurts the people I'm dealing with (for now).

And, yeah, that's on top of everything else that's going on. I had thought about retail therapy, but that can backfire if they don't have anything in my size (and they never do) or if it doesn't fit well. I ended up at Target and bought a couple of fun little things while also taking care of my grocery list. There was a Phineas "big ideas" notebook on the clearance shelf that I couldn't resist. And I obtained chocolate. I think I may head to the library and see what DVDs they have. I think mostly I need a really good laugh, and old favorites don't work in the same way because most of the laugh yourself silly response comes from surprise. I haven't decided what I should do this weekend. It might be good to spend some time with others (more laughing) but I'm not sure I'd be very good company. There aren't any movies out right now that fit my current emotional needs, and there's major construction on the freeway that connects me to the rest of the metro area, so that also hampers things.

I promise next week I'll quit whining.

The Adventures of Rapunzel and Mole Boy

2011-10-13T11:38:00.000-05:00

I generally try to avoid a lot of negativity or downer stuff here because the main reason for this blog is to promote my books, and since I'm known for writing humor it would kind of go against my branding to have a downer blog. But I will confess to having had a rough month or so. It's not so much because of bad things happening to me -- there are certainly areas of my life that could stand improvement, but there's nothing really horribly wrong right now -- but because bad things are happening to people all around me. I seem to know too many people who are seriously ill or who have seriously ill family members. A friend lost her infant daughter not too long ago. Last week I found out that a friend/former co-worker from two jobs ago was in a coma, they took him off life support yesterday and he died this morning. I'd lost touch with him over the years since I left that job, and now I'm really regretting that because of the potential time I lost and now can't make up. This is all putting my career struggles in perspective, but it also makes it a little more difficult to deal with those more ordinary setbacks. Normally, I can shrug things off or have a mild temper flare-up in the privacy of my office and then shrug things off. Yesterday, I had to stay offline to keep from sending an e-mail that probably needs to be sent but that wouldn't have had the proper tone if I'd sent it yesterday. I also recognize that any big decisions I make right now might be more emotional than rational and not at all about the actual issue at hand.

Strangely, although dealing with the preschoolers is stressful, that was one of the highlights of my day yesterday. It was like a healing prescription to go be surrounded by little people who apparently think I'm awesome. I got lots of hugs, I had kids leaning against me or holding my hand, and then I had kids crawling into my lap. It's like therapy. The girls seem to have decided which Disney fairy princess superhero I am. They were playing with my hair last night and said I was Rapunzel. I am hoping they mean that in a Tangled sense, not like most depictions of Rapunzel (especially not from Into the Woods, though I doubt preschoolers would know that one).

We may be making headway with Mole Boy. There's one kid who will crawl under anything that can be crawled under and hide there. In our classroom, that means under the stack of chairs. I had to physically remove him from his hiding place when we went to the sanctuary to practice for the song we're doing in church Sunday because he wouldn't come out on his own and we couldn't leave him in the room alone. Once in the sanctuary, he crawled under the communion rail and then later the pulpit. I think with this kid we have a deadly combination of shyness and being spoiled. He didn't object to me pulling him out, and I rather got the feeling that's what he wanted me to do. He is truly shy, but he also craves attention, and I think he uses the shyness to get attention in a sort of passive-aggressive way. The other kids will tug on me and shout, "Teacher! Teacher" when they want attention, but he crawls into a corner and expects us to spend a lot of time coaxing him out. That means there's a fine line between really dealing with him in a way that lets him feel loved and catering to him in a way that encourages this behavior. I got a better sense of the situation from talking to his grandmother on Sunday, so I'm going with "we want you to have fun with us, but we're not going to make the world revolve around you." Still, I swear that if we weren't on a concrete slab, this kid would dig a hole and tunnel his way out -- but poke his head up every so often to make sure we knew he was tunneling his way out.

You know, if this writing thing doesn't work out, child psychology is sounding like an interesting career field.

The other bright spot to my day was the announcement that SyFy has renewed Haven. The cliffhanger will be resolved! That show is really, really pretty on Blu-Ray. So many of the shots would work perfectly as postcards. And that's not even getting into the cast. I don't know if it's the balance on my TV or something specific to the lighting/photography of this show, but the blues really pop, and that means blue eyes are even more gorgeous.

Needless to say, yesterday wasn't very productive. I think I have some ideas for fixing the current problem in The Problem Child, but I spent most of the time mentally composing e-mails I should never send while narrowing down on one that needs to be sent. Today I must obtain groceries. I think this weekend I'll make my first batch of veggie soup for the fall. And I think I will allow myself copious amounts of chocolate and maybe some long walks to balance it. It feels weird to be so discombobulated about bad things that aren't happening directly to me, but I suppose I am human and I'm allowed to have feelings. That's why I had the emotion chip installed, after all.

Wakefulness

2011-10-12T11:46:00.001-05:00

It's a good thing I found tea yesterday because last night was not conducive to much sleep. One problem was the big thunderstorm that hit about 3 a.m. -- the kind with enough thunder and lightning to make me get up and run around the house unplugging electronics, and then since we tend to get hail with that kind of storm I ran onto the patio and moved my new herb pots up under the balcony.

That was after it took me a long time to get to sleep because I'm wrestling with a couple of career issues that are kind of no-win scenarios. With one situation, I seem to be dealing with something that is literally not working for me, but saying anything about it tends to make matters worse. Doing something decisive about it is a huge risk. It could either be something that would make a big change for the better or it could be a career killer, and I can't know which it would be before I take action. Even in a best-case scenario there would still be lots of complications. But I'm not sure I can deal with things continuing the way they are now.

Yes, that's awfully cryptic, but that's part of the dilemma. I can't even really talk about what's going on or ask advice without taking a big risk. Thus the lack of sleep.

Meanwhile, apparently my plagiarist is still out there, as I'm getting more e-mail from readers letting me know that when they do an Internet search on a writing topic, they're getting someone else's blog, with a nearly word-for-word copy of my posts. Worse, that other person's blog comes higher in the search results, probably because his posts are more recent since, you know, they're copies. I'm not sure what I can do about that, either. I don't like the idea of him getting away with it, but any direct action could also backfire on me, and I don't need an Internet nutjob coming after me right now. I don't think I'm a big enough name that the publishing blogs or big-name writers would get involved and turn it into a public shaming that would raise my profile as a victim. I know I'm not the only one he's copying. It seems that very little on his how-to-write site is his own work.

I even hesitate to post links for people to check out because having links to his site will only raise his profile in the search engines. Then again, having minions to call him on the copying instead of me doing it directly could be a strategy.

When the bigger problem was occupying too much space in my brain, I seem to have moved on to the smaller problem to try to figure out a solution.

And during all this, I've been working out a few problems with The Problem Child. It turns out that the big issue isn't where I thought it was (or that wasn't the only issue). There's something missing from one of the plot lines, and I'm not sure what it is. It's like I just sort of forget one of the plot threads for a very long time, leaving those people in suspended animation. I guess I'm out of practice in writing a book with multiple points of view.

On the up side, butterflies! It's monarch migration time, and they're swarming to the park across the street that's full of plants that draw butterflies. Since I have some brainstorming to do, I may take a notebook over there and see if sitting surrounded by butterflies helps stimulate my creativity.

I've decided that maybe my idea of taking an at-home vacation isn't going to work. That is, I shouldn't just take a whole week off. What I may do is allow myself to call in on vacation on any day when I don't have something pressing. I used to think about that when I had a real job. There would be a cool, rainy day that was perfect for curling up with a pot of tea and a good book, and I had nothing urgent at work, and I'd wish I could just call in on vacation that day. Or there would be a perfect day for a hike or a trip downtown. When you have to schedule vacations in advance, you never know what kind of day you're going to get. But now I work for myself, and since after this week all my deadlines should be met (assuming I can get the necessary cooperation from others), I may declare that from now until the end of the year, I have a certain number of days I can spontaneously declare to be vacation days. If it's a good reading day, I'll take a day to read. If I'm in the mood for a long walk or an excursion, I'll do it. That may be more likely to happen than attempting to schedule time off.

And, yes, thinking of this idea also kept me awake.

The Quest for Tea

2011-10-11T10:38:00.001-05:00

While looking for something to watch while I ate dinner last night, I stumbled across a fun little animated movie on the Disney Channel: Igor. It's about an Igor who really wants to be a mad scientist, but because of his hump he's stuck in the job of assistant. But then after his master has a bit of a lab accident, he gets his chance to create his own monster to compete in the Evil Science Fair. Only things don't quite go as planned, and instead of being evil, his monster just wants to be an actress. And the role she desperately wants to play is Annie (which may be kind of evil, after all). The climactic fight scene done as the monster sings "Tomorrow" may be one of the funniest things I've seen in ages. Adding to the fun are Igor's sidekicks, the results of his previous experiments: an immortal (and very snarky) rabbit with a death wish and a brain in a jar on wheels. I'm assuming this was a theatrical release because the voices are all pretty big names, so I don't know how I missed this one. This could make for a good triple feature with Megamind and Despicable Me, or else a good addition to a Phineas & Ferb marathon featuring the best of Doofenshmirtz (especially their Frankenstein spoof).

Then I was accidentally forced into watching part of Terra Nova when the schedule got messed up by the baseball game and House wasn't on when I switched over after the movie. From the small bits I saw, I can say I made the right decision in not watching that series. The dialogue and the characters made me cringe. I very quickly switched over to a PBS documentary on the War of 1812. I'm also likely to give up on House. The character has never been what could be called "pleasant," but I think he's a more unpleasant version of unpleasant now. At the beginning, it was more like he said the things we all think but don't dare say, and then he said and did some of his more outrageous things as a diagnostic technique -- poke it with a stick and see what happens -- that helped him figure out the people around him. Now he's just acting like a selfish, overgrown toddler who thinks he's at the center of the universe and who expects everyone to cater to his whims. There's less of a purpose in his behavior and there's nothing left in him that I can relate to. Unfortunately, now that the SyFy summer season has ended, there's nothing else in that time slot, and that's my prime time for needing background noise for doing my weekly writing for the medical school (I enjoy the irony of doing medical writing while watching House).

Today's work will mean hitting the part of The Problem Child that will really change it and send it in a different direction. It will be interesting to see how the ripple effects work from this one change. This is such a strange book that I'm not sure how any of it works. I love it, and I love the characters, but I'm worried that anyone else reading it will be going, "Huh?" Once I have it where I'm happy with it, I may recruit a few friends to read it before I subject my agent to it. This is the longest I've spent working on a single book. It's been more than two years since I started it. I have written two other complete manuscripts in the meantime, so I haven't spent two whole years working on it, but I did spend the better part of a year working on it, with a couple of gaps, and then spent about a month on the last draft. I don't know how long this draft will take.

Otherwise, today I must undertake the Quest for Tea. I'm almost out of my favorite writing tea, and we finally have the kind of weather that allows me to enjoy hot tea in the afternoon. Fortunately, obtaining tea is easier than ever since there's an Indian market across the street from the post office. They have an entire aisle dedicated to tea.

Restless Rainy Sunday

2011-10-10T10:47:00.001-05:00

I got my rainy Sunday, though there wasn't as much reading and tea drinking as I had planned because I fell asleep on the sofa. But even an unplanned nap is a good thing on a cool, rainy Sunday. It's still cool and cloudy, so this may be a productive day. Or there may be another sofa nap.

I got my Blu-Ray player, and I found a bargain copy of the original Terminator movie on Blu-Ray. I still just had that one on VHS, so I figured an upgrade was in order. That's actually a fairly grainy movie, so the Blu-Ray doesn't make a lot of difference, but I found that the upconverting on regular DVDs makes a huge difference. With regular DVDs, when something is dark, it's pretty murky on the LCD screen, but on the Blu-Ray I can see actual details. I amused myself Friday evening by watching bits of random space shows on DVD. I sense a Firefly marathon in my near future. Rewatching parts of Battlestar Galactica brought me great amusement because of where I've seen the actors recently. It was a jolt hearing Jamie Bamber's American accent again -- and seeing him alive (does his character have to die in almost everything?). Just last week I saw the too-good-to-be-true Helo (or as I started calling him, Halo) as an intolerant, fairly bloodthirsty bad guy on Haven. And these days we're more likely to see Boomer on a surfboard. Ah, good times.

I still haven't watched an entire show or movie on the new player, though. I was strangely restless and couldn't really focus on an entire movie or episode of anything, though I have watched the Phineas & Ferb Halloween special three times. That's about the level of my attention span at the moment. I'd think about watching something, and it all felt like too much of a commitment, so I'd watch the cartoon that comes in at about 20 minutes total, once you skip past all the promos for the hideous Disney Channel sitcoms. Memo to the Disney TV people: The fact that it's meant for children doesn't mean it can't be good. The over-the-top acting that comes across like a hideous cross between a mime and a cheerleader is not necessary.

I had something all ranty planned to talk about today, but now I can't remember what it was. That's probably for the best.

Looking Forward

2011-10-07T10:44:00.001-05:00

The air has that peculiar "pre-rain" feel to it, but the chances of rain in the forecast are really low. I've got my fingers crossed, though. Not only are we in a major drought so we desperately need rain, but I could really use a rainy Sunday afternoon. My weekends have been very busy for about a month, and Saturday is going to be kind of crazy in wildly diverse ways (fortunately, the fun part comes after the potentially difficult part), but I have nothing planned for Sunday, for the first time in ages. A rainy afternoon spent on the sofa with a good book would be just what the doctor ordered.

Though there could also be some movie watching going on, as I'm about to go out and buy a Blu-Ray player. I've been too busy/sidetracked to spend my birthday money (from two months ago), and I've had an HD TV for about five years without HD input. I can now get a Blu-Ray player for half what my DVD player cost back when I got it, so I figure it's about time. Of course, that means I'll have to get something on Blu-Ray to watch. I don't think I want to start replacing things I already have on DVD, so that limits me somewhat, as there isn't much that I don't have that I really want. I've already got season one of Haven in Blu-Ray coming from Amazon (I've heard that show is absolutely gorgeous in HD, thanks to the location shooting -- I need to go to Nova Scotia), but I'll want something to watch before that shows up, and since the Amazon warehouse is no longer a couple of miles from my house, shipping may take a little longer than it used to.

One thing I'm not doing this weekend is going to my high school reunion. I went to the first two and had fun, but I think I've reached the point where I'm ready to put that chapter of my life behind me. I haven't really stayed in touch with those people, though now I do hear from more of them on Facebook, and I don't have much in common with them. I'd rather look forward, and I already had an event scheduled with my current friends. Now I also have a memorial service for a friend's child, so I have a double excuse involving the people who are currently important in my life. I got the sense that this event would be not for me when they decided to hold it in a hotel where they could have a bar and a DJ and when all the "awards" they're giving out seem to have to do with marriage and children. It's all stuff like longest marriage, most marriages, most recent marriage, most children, most grandchildren (Yikes!), etc. Surely there are other things to recognize as life accomplishments. Like, say, most books published. Or even who can still wear her prom dress.

Now off to go shopping, and then back to work on the Problem Child. I hit a wall yesterday when I realized there was something seriously wrong with an existing scene, but then I figured out how to fix it while I was making breakfast this morning.

Healing the Mortal Injury

2011-10-06T11:20:00.001-05:00

Slight improvement with the preschoolers last night. No tears, and one kid who refused to enter the room last week actually stayed this week. He still hid in the corner and didn't really participate, but he did some of the activities from his spot in the corner. I did come across the Mortal Injury, though. One of the kids called me over at one point, calling out, "Teacher! Teacher! She's hurt!" about one of the other girls, who then held up her finger to show me. The amount of drama surrounding the situation made me worry we'd have to pick up a severed fingertip and pack it on ice to get her to the emergency room. But I couldn't find anything wrong when investigating the allegedly injured finger. There was no blood, no sign of a scrape, no redness, no whiteness, no swelling, no funny angle. It just looked like a finger to me. I suspected the Mortal Injury was more like a Desperate Need for Attention (the child in question was a former clingy non-participator who has gradually warmed up), so I said, "Oh, you poor thing," and gave her a hug. I was immediately swarmed by little girls telling me stories of every injury they'd ever sustained in their lives and showing me the paper cuts they got in school that day. I think I may have added "nurse/doctor" to the Disney fairy princess superhero mom they seem to think I am.

The child soon forgot the injury and was actively involved in a game of zombie tag not long afterward when the kids were playing in the fellowship hall while the adults finished eating dinner. I was sitting to the side, reading a book on my phone and occasionally being bombarded by little kids and being turned into a zombie a few times. The way they described the game to me, the first time you get tagged, you get turned into a zombie, and then anyone you tag will also become a zombie (you have to move around like a zombie during this phase). Then the next time you get tagged, you get turned into a chicken (that phase was highly entertaining). After that, you get turned into Superman. If you get tagged after that, you're out, and you're back to being a normal person. You go through the phases pretty quickly if you stay in your seat, reading Dickens, and don't try to run away. It does actually sound like a fun game, but there's no way I could keep up with those kids.

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention the passing of Steve Jobs. At first, I was a little bemused by all the Facebook tributes for someone most of these people never met, but then I realized that every one of my books was written on a Mac, so even someone I've never met can have an impact on my life. I got my first Mac in 1990 and am currently on my sixth. I suppose those books still would have been written on another computer, but I like being able to focus my time and energy on writing the books instead of messing with the computer. And the newest one is just plain pretty. I like the idea of the design mattering. Why not make things lovely as well as functional?

Going back to the earlier post about fantasy plausibility, I have to agree with the comments about how fantasy can become implausible when the author isn't consistent with the fantasy elements. I may be more willing to let that slide when it makes things more difficult for the characters instead of easier. For instance, one thing that kind of nags at me in the Harry Potter series is the fact that in most of the books they act like they can't do magic without wands (and preferably their own wands) and specific spells. If they have their wands taken away, they're entirely disarmed and helpless. But the whole opening of the first book was about how Harry managed to do all these magical things with no wand, no spells and no awareness that he was magical. He made his hair grow out when he got a bad haircut, escaped from bullies by levitating and made the glass in the snake's enclosure disappear. It wasn't just something that was in the first book and then forgotten because the last book showed in Snape's memories that Snape and Lily did bits of magic as children before they got wands. I can kind of handwave that inconsistency as it being an ability kids grow out of once they start learning proper magic (though it does seem odd to train people into needing a crutch) because being required to have a wand makes things harder. I'd have a problem if they'd established that they needed wands, and then Harry suddenly discovered that when he was in a bad situation he could just get himself out without needing a wand.

As for my wish for the couple who may be enemies but who like each other, I should probably clarify that. I was speaking in terms of that "fated/destined for each other" trope that comes up a lot in fantasy/paranormal romance. There are plenty of examples of enemies who fall in love. It's a classic Romeo and Juliet story (though hopefully without the characters being Too Stupid to Live), and that's one kind of romance novel I like (I used to be very fond of the Norman/Saxon medieval romances). The reason I threw in the enemies is that there's not much story without conflict, so a story about two people who are destined for each other and who seem made for each other and actually like each other would be boring. There has to be some monkey wrench thrown in, so have them made for each other but be on opposite sides of a conflict, with their destiny drawing them together. Or they could even be the kind of destined couple where their coming together will bring about something, so there are factions with a vested interest in keeping them apart. I think maybe my problem with the idea of a couple being fated for each other but being totally wrong for each other may be another one of those things where I can't believe it because it contradicts my personal beliefs. "Fate" or "destiny" to me boils down to "God," and I can't imagine that God would destine you for someone who was totally wrong for you in every way except sexually.

Character Development: Starting Inside

2011-10-05T11:29:00.000-05:00

My "time off" lasted until nearly 4 p.m. yesterday, when I found myself digging back into the Problem Child project. I think I figured out what the problem was and how to deal with it, so I think I know how the book needs to end. I'm also sure that this needs to be a series, so I don't have to complete all the character arcs in this one book. One character's arc will complete, but everyone else is a work in progress. I may not kill myself on revisions and may allow myself to do some other stuff, but I'm not on "vacation."

For my writing posts, I'm continuing a series on character development. Previously, I talked about some things not to do -- or to do with extreme caution. Basing characters directly on yourself, on other real people or on fictional characters created by someone else is generally not the best way to develop characters. There's no one right way to create characters, and I find that each character is different. I may go through some of the same exercises, but they work in different ways every time. There are some characters I never develop. They just seem to appear fully formed in my head, name, physical description, and all, and I know them without thinking about them. I doubt my readers could tell which characters are like that and which ones have notebooks full of character development.

One thing that essential in forming your characters is your story. Character is plot and plot is character, no matter which comes first. The needs of your story will dictate some of your characterization, or else some of the character attributes will dictate your story. While you don't want to fall into stereotype, there are going to be some traits that will be essential for your characters to do what you need them to do. For instance, anyone in any kind of investigative role -- police detective, scientific researcher, explorer -- has to have a fair amount of intellectual curiosity, and that will have some impact on the character's overall personality. If you want your character to look into things, that trait will be a given, even before you start developing anything else. If your character doesn't have this trait, it will be nearly impossible to make a story where this character must investigate something work.

That doesn't mean you always have to put the perfect person in the perfect position. The story could be about getting the person into the right place. Your character with intellectual curiosity could be in a position where that trait is a liability (that would be the basis for most amateur sleuth stories -- the person who just can't help but dig around, even though it's not their job). You may have to have a commanding presence and some charisma to be a great leader, but you probably have a more interesting story if the person with those traits isn't yet in charge. A CEO who likes to be in control and who can bend people to his will is to be expected. The mailroom clerk with those traits means things are about to get fun. If you have a particular role to fill in a story, at least consider someone who's got some personality traits that are totally wrong for that role, as long as you can still justify that person having achieved that role. While you may find powerful, charismatic people outside a leadership position, you're not likely to find people who lack those traits becoming a general or a CEO. On the other hand, king is an inherited position, so you may find a painfully shy person who'd prefer to avoid the spotlight inheriting a kingdom (and then you get The King's Speech).

I often say that I like to develop characters from the inside out. That doesn't mean the physical description comes last -- sometimes I have a vivid mental image of a character before I know anything about that person. It just means that when it comes to the character elements, I try to go for the core before I think about traits. There are all those character development worksheets out there, with stuff like their most vivid elementary school memory, what's in their refrigerator, what's their favorite color, etc., and if I don't already know the character, those answers are meaningless because they come on a whim or out of thin air. I've found that it works best if I start with what's deep down inside. What drives this person more than anything, even before the story starts and the story goal develops? The inner drive is something that achieving the story goal won't fulfill. Unless the character is really transformed, it will always be there, and even a transformation will just change the drive to something else. That inner drive may have been developed by an event, but it can just be inherent to personality. Two people may go through the same events and come out with totally different responses.

Some of the kinds of drives you can find are a need for harmony, a need for control, a need for answers, a need to belong, a need to be loved or accepted, a need to nurture, a need to be right, a need to be rescued, a need for separation, a need to win, a need to set things right. Everyone may need any or all of these things, but at least one of these may be so powerful that it drives every other decision a person makes, and it may be a need that can never be truly fulfilled -- or if that need is met, there will always be the fear of losing it. A person who needs control may fight to get to the top, and then he'll fight to stay there. Becoming CEO or even supreme ruler of the world will not satisfy that drive. We all have some need for love, but most people will have that need satisfied by feeling loved. People with that drive may be terribly insecure about the love they receive, may become overly protective about loved ones or may keep finding new people to love them, just to prove to themselves that they're worthy of love.

Once you have that, you have a sense of what makes that person tick, and it will affect any other traits you build on top of it.

There are other core things that can be at work. I've read a lot about the Myers-Briggs test and how to apply that to characterization, but I haven't made it work without finding that core drive first. Otherwise, it's like any of those characterization questionnaires. The core drive sort of gets into the Jungian idea of archetypes, and the Myers-Briggs is based on Jungian psychology, so I suppose it all flows together. One thing I do like to determine is whether a character is an introvert or extrovert. That has nothing to do with how friendly or outgoing or verbal they are. In Jungian terms, it's about focus and energy. An introvert can be verbal and outgoing, but finds that draining and needs solitude to recharge, while an extrovert gains energy from being with others and finds solitude draining, so an extrovert can still be a quiet person who just feels most comfortable with others around. There are other elements in that typing, like sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling and judgment/perception, though I haven't done that much work going that deep with this (it does, however, make an excellent procrastination tactic to take the test with your character in mind).

I know of people who do this sort of thing with astrology, figuring out their characters' charts and using that as the core, though I don't know enough about astrology to do that. I have found that when I've needed to come up with a character's birthday for a plot purpose, the astrological profile ends up being eerily accurate.

Next I'll get into how some of these deep inner traits may manifest in more external traits that will show up in the story.

Plausibility in Fantasy

2011-10-04T12:11:00.000-05:00

I got the book proofread and off to my agent. Now I want to clean my kitchen, straighten my living room and bedroom and maybe start shoveling out my office. And I also have my medical school work to do. Speaking of which, another faculty member at the medical school where I used to work and that I still freelance for won a Nobel prize yesterday, which brings them to five, which I think is still a record for Nobel-prize winning faculty members at American medical schools. I had to do the research and call around to other schools when we got the fourth back when I worked there, and at four we were on top back then. I don't think I knew this doctor when I worked there, so I haven't added to the list of Nobel prize winners I've met personally, but considering I have Watson and Crick on that list, I think I'm still doing pretty well. I had tea with Dr. Watson once when I had to entertain him while he was waiting for a news interview (they weren't on the faculty at my school but were there as guest lecturers for a seminar).

My next project is already nagging at me. It's a mostly completed book that still isn't quite right, and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. It's falling apart at the ending -- not the resolution of the main plot, but what that resolution really means to the characters and how it affects them. I think that means I need to go back to the characters and really look at what their arcs should be, since the resolution of the main plot should complete the character arcs. I may not have to change the main plot, but I may need to change what I see as the journey the characters are on and what they're supposed to be learning from it.

A couple of weekends ago at FenCon, I was on a panel that I find myself still thinking about, in part because an audience member asked a question that I wasn't able to answer at the time, and I'm still not entirely sure what my answer would be. The topic was "Plausibility in Fantasy," and we were discussing how to write a novel in which unbelievable things happen and make readers believe it. When you read fantasy, you're pretty much buying into the idea that impossible things will happen -- magic exists, vampires exist, etc. How do you create a world that people will accept? Someone in the audience asked us if there had been a fantasy novel where we couldn't buy the premise or that struck us as implausible.

At the time, I couldn't think of anything. It's usually the real-world stuff that throws me out of the novel. If I'm reading a fantasy novel, I can buy that there may be immortal people who could be hundreds of years old but who look young. I have a hard time believing that these centuries-old people would be going to high school or falling in love with teenagers. In urban fantasy, I'm more likely to question the heroine having a nice Manhattan apartment and a closet full of designer clothes than I am to question the fact that she has magical powers. I guess it's because I don't have any experience with the supernatural, so I'll take what the author gives me there, but I will question the things I do have experience with. One of the conclusions the panel came to was that most of this boils down to how entertaining or engaging the story is. If I'm mentally calculating the heroine's cost of living, then the story hasn't sufficiently engaged my brain or emotions.

Since then, I have thought of a couple of cases where it was the fantasy element that threw me out of a story. One that shall remain nameless because these books are very popular and I'm acquainted with the author probably suffered from the fact that they contained fantasy elements I'm not overly fond of, so the rest of the book would have had to be really engaging to get me involved, and one of the key fantasy elements that was unique to the premise just didn't work for me. I didn't believe it would work the way the book said it would, and something the book treated as a plus I thought was absolutely horrible. I think this was because it was a fantasy element with roots in religion, and the use of that element didn't fit with my personal religious experience, so it probably falls into the category of me questioning things I have experience with.

The other case of a fantasy element that I don't find plausible is a popular trope in paranormal romance and urban fantasy that crosses over with paranormal romance, and that's the couple who are supposedly destined for each other but who have absolutely nothing in common -- no interests, no values, no goals that mesh in any way -- and who may even be enemies, but because they're destined for each other, they can't resist each other. I would think that being destined for each other would mean they're made for each other. They'd be the perfect fit. They may be entirely star-crossed and be on opposite sides of a conflict, but when they met it would just seem right in ways that go beyond physical. I can't get into any book where the characters hate each other, are total opposites, have nothing in common and yet who can't help but be drawn to each other because it's destiny.

Now I kind of want to read (or write) the book where the two people from opposite sides who should be enemies meet and everything just clicks, and they find they agree more with each other than they do with their supposed allies.

Otherwise, for me it seems like a case of getting the real-world details right, and then I'll buy whatever you try to sell me in the fantasy elements. Let me know that you've thought about sources for food, money and clothing. Make the characters act like real people -- or explain it really well if they don't. Put some thought into logistics. And then I'll probably accept that your characters have magic powers.

Crunch Day

2011-10-03T10:34:00.002-05:00

Today is a big push/crunch day, in which I will read an entire book out loud to myself in almost one sitting so I can proofread before sending it to my agent. And then I will promptly collapse. I was going to take some time off instead of switching gears while I wait on the next project, but I have a book nagging me for attention, so I may do some thinking and planning about it while I take care of tasks like cleaning my house. I want to do a good fall cleaning before I dive heavily into another project or before I take that fall "staycation" that I am determined to take this year. I figure that this has already been a very productive year, so I can afford a nice mental break (so as to avoid a nice psychotic break).

I stepped away from the work this weekend to spend some time with friends. There was the Lebanese food festival at a nearby church and then Doctor Who viewing, and then the British import shop nearby had a Doctor Who day on Sunday, and a number of our friends were there, including Joe Dalek. Some of the costumes were amazing. And it's always fun to catch up with one of my favorite men in my life (the cardboard Doctor is not life size, and yet he's still significantly taller than I am).

I have more photos from the event, including a Dalek in a fez, but I'd have to get them off my camera, and that won't happen today. This is courtesy of my friend, who took it when my camera battery died.

However, although I spent much of the weekend with the Doctor, I have to say that the Haven finale won for sheer mind-blowingness, possibly because it was a real cliffhanger while Doctor Who sort of wrapped up the story. There were new questions raised, but it wasn't as though any of the major characters were in immediate jeopardy, while the Haven finale ended with all the major characters in jeopardy, along with a last-second "huh?" revelation. Plus, they get bonus points for a TV couple who act like real people, where they get together because they like each other, not because they can't stand each other and bicker all the time, and where making the transition from friends to maybe something more comes with some awkwardness but without major drama (the drama comes from outside because it can be really hard to have a nice first date when people think you need to die in order to save the town from what they see as evil).

I can't really get into Doctor Who details because I don't think my parents have seen it yet. Spoilers!

Now, off to work I go!

Deadlines and Exploding Heads

2011-09-30T11:38:00.001-05:00

I was on a big push yesterday, so I skipped ballet and stayed up until one in the morning and I got to the end of the draft. I need to re-read the last few chapters, and then there's a little tinkering I may need to do, and then I need to read the whole thing straight through, and then I should be done. There was a little bit of the kind of sidetracking that seems to come with a deadline. My skin got really dry and itchy, so I went looking for the really rich body butter that usually helps. Next thing I know, I'm sorting through my bathroom drawers, throwing out old or expired stuff and organizing. Fortunately, I realized what I was doing before I lost the whole night to an organization impulse, found the body butter, stopped the itch, and got back to work. Since I suspect I may be waiting a while to get revision notes from my agent on project #2, I may take the time to do a big organization project instead of switching gears and working on something else. Though it would be fun to always have a new project to hand to my agent the moment she gets done with one. But that's what happens when I can write a book in the time it takes her to review one. (Yes, I do have my evil moments.)

I'm going to re-read the last few chapters today, and then I'm going to try to take my mind off it all until Sunday night. That will be helped by my current two favorite shows having their season finales this weekend. I will likely spend the weekend with my head exploding. First, tonight there's Haven. Just about every episode this season has had some major twist or change in the status quo, and they've almost run out of recurring characters to kill, erase or send away, so there's no telling what they've got in store for the season finale. Last season's finale was packed with major game-changing revelations about our main characters that showed we didn't actually know who they were -- and neither did they -- and then still ended with a twist that was even more mind-blowing. I'm almost afraid of what they'll come up with this season, considering that the last couple of episodes have already pretty much changed everything. They'd best renew this series because it's got such a complex and well-developed mythology. For that I understand we can thank Stephen King. Although the show is extremely loosely based on a King novella, apparently part of the condition for getting approval to use his book (and his name) was that they had to run their plans by him, and that meant they had everything planned up front. This isn't a making it up as we go series where they don't yet have answers in mind for all the big questions they're raising.

They've also managed something I thought would be impossible. When the network formerly known as Sci Fi added wrestling to their programming lineup, we all knew that would inevitably lead to network-mandated insertion of wrestler guest stars into their usual series. In this case, that's been one of the best additions to the series. It is rather silly to have the wrestler listed in the credits as "WWE Superstar" because "Edge" (ugh) is actually a credible enough actor that you might not spot him as a network-mandated wrestler insert otherwise (well, aside from the fact that he makes his six-foot-two co-stars look tiny). And his character is awesome, someone who starts out seeming like some kind of superhero but then who gradually reveals that he's just a guy who has a strange job and a lot of connections, along with a soft spot for children and a surprising knowledge of ballet (ballet dads are so adorable). I was groaning when they started publicizing the wrestler addition and now I'd be furious if they killed Dwight (who is pretty much what TV's other Dwight, the one on The Office, thinks he is, in his wildest dreams). But then considering the average lifespan of a recurring cast member on this show, I probably shouldn't get too attached. At least he's not a police chief. Those have the life expectancy of a Spinal Tap drummer. There was one who exploded and one who melted. The only one who's still alive was only "interim," and that's probably what saved him (plus, he's one of the leads, but on this show, I'm not sure even that keeps him safe).

I may still be cleaning up the pieces of exploding head from that finale when I see the Doctor Who finale on Saturday. I'm a little worried about this one because they've tried to fit some really huge, life-changing stuff in with all the running around having adventures in time and space, and that's been somewhat jarring. I don't know if that's been intentional or if it's just a case of being afraid of altering the show too much by actually dealing with all the huge, life-changing stuff. There are so many plot threads in the air, so much to deal with, that I'm not sure it's possible to deal with everything in one episode and have it be at all satisfying. Just as long as they don't kill Rory. I mean, again. Well, not permanently, at least. He has to be alive in at least one timeline.

And now I need to inhale more tea so I can focus on re-reading those last three chapters that I rewrote late last night. They may not even be in English. Then I may nap, and I may do some baking.

Mary Sues and Mean Girls

2011-09-29T11:20:00.001-05:00

The preschoolers were far easier last night. My co-teacher was back and we had a teen helper. We also had no tearful meltdowns among either teachers or kids (well, one kid was crying upon arrival, but his dad then took him away because it was an immediate post-nap meltdown and he didn't want to inflict that on us). One kid who usually bursts into tears upon arrival was better, probably because it was his dad who dropped him off, and he did so with a fist bump and a high five rather than with the "oh, you're not going to miss me, are you?" routine his mother goes through. He still hid in the corner, but hiding in the corner with no tears is an improvement. And there was no throwing up. Yay! While I may complain and occasionally twitch, I must say that this gig is a good way to feel loved. Having kids light up when they see me and run to hug me or fight to sit next to me or snuggle against me makes me realize just how much these little people seem to have accepted me. It's kind of like that saying about wanting to be the kind of person your dog thinks you are, though in my case it's trying to be the kind of person the small children seem to think I am.

I am afraid that with some of these kids, that means I have to be a superhero fairy Disney princess/mom, and I'm not sure I can pull that off. The "mom" is the hard part.

But looking at these little girls who are still thoroughly convinced that they can be beautiful superhero fairy Disney princesses has reminded me of a discussion that was going on a while ago among a number of authors about the misuse of the Mary Sue label and what it says about the way women/girls view themselves and each other.

I'm not defending the use of a true Mary Sue in writing -- when the author uses a character as her surrogate in a story and loses all objectivity so that the person is too perfect to believed and is universally loved for no good reason. But from a reader/reviewer perspective, I think the term is way overused and misused, and in a way I find very disturbing. You'll see just about any female character with the tiniest shred of awesomeness or competence described as a Mary Sue. If she can do anything at all and do it well, if anyone likes her, if anyone falls in love with her, if she's even moderately attractive and if she succeeds in anything, she'll be dismissed as a Mary Sue. This goes double if there's any similarity whatsoever between the author and the character because then readers will assume that the character is meant to be the author. But then if the character is very different from the author, then the "wish fulfillment" claim will come up, with readers suggesting that the character is what the author wishes she was.

The really sad thing is that it's almost universally female readers who make this claim, and it's very seldom made against male characters, no matter how perfect they may be (you want to see Mary Sue style wish-fulfillment characters, read men's action-adventure novels). It's like women have some kind of issue with the idea of a woman being amazing. That doesn't mean you have to like all female characters or accept everything you read. But if you're going to criticize a character, be more specific than just "Mary Sue." If you thought there was nothing in the character's personality or behavior that you felt justified the universal adoration she received, then say that. If you couldn't believe that this character could possibly have developed the knowledge and skills to accomplish what she did, then say that. If you think the character was thinly developed instead of being three-dimensional, then say that. But at least think about why the character doesn't work for you instead of using "Mary Sue" to mean "a female character I don't like."

I'm right there with you on being annoyed with awesome that doesn't make sense. I roll my eyes at the Magical Specialness. But if a character does have a talent, puts some work into learning how the talent works and some thought into using the talent, and is therefore good at using that talent, then it's a competent character with a talent, not a Mary Sue. Hermione Granger was an admitted author insert in the Harry Potter books, but I don't think she was a Mary Sue. Yes, she often had the right answers, but she worked really hard, read every book she could get her hands on, studied and did research to get those answers. I have no problem with someone who puts in that much time in the library getting the right answers.

The other thing that bothers me is this idea that self-esteem seems to equal "bitch." You see this more in young adult fiction, but it seems like the heroine has to think she's nothing special or she'll get called a bitch or conceited by readers. Only the mean girl antagonist is allowed to like herself at all, and then it's seen as a negative character trait. This does reflect real life, to some extent. I read the non-fiction book that the movie Mean Girls was based on, and there's a section about how it's practically a social ritual for girls to denigrate themselves, and if you don't, then you're labeled "conceited." That section of the book was dramatized in the film in the scene in which the mean girl tells the heroine she has pretty hair, to which the heroine replies, "Thank you." The mean girl is aghast at her just accepting the compliment instead of denying it. That means she really thinks her hair is pretty, and that makes her conceited. I remember from my own childhood that the word "conceited" was tossed around a lot as an insult. Demonstrating that you felt good about yourself or about something you could do would earn that label. I don't know why girls and women do this to each other. It would be nice if we could maybe change some of these attitudes by portraying reasonable self-confidence as a positive trait in fiction, but then there's a good chance that readers will decide that makes the character a bitch. I sometimes wonder if even editors see it that way.

I guess I'm just saying to think about what you're saying and why you're saying it when you label a book (or a person). There's room for valid criticism, but be specific and accurate instead of tossing out generalizations. And really, really think about the message you're sending about yourself and the way you see others in the way you talk about characters.

Now I'm down to the wire on getting a project done, and I've reached the hard part, so I'll be in cave mode today. Ack.

Covers and Genres

2011-09-28T12:12:00.001-05:00

I'm close to being done with the latest draft of the latest project. I just have a couple of chapters to rewrite, but they're the ones that will require a lot of rewriting. It's nose-to-the-grindstone time.

I haven't had any specific Enchanted, Inc. questions posed for the blog, but there is something that seems to pop up in e-mail a lot, so I'll address it here. I get asked a lot about the cover art, usually in the context of someone wanting me to hire them to illustrate my books.

That's not something I have any say over. I know nothing about how you break into the art business and start getting cover art assignments. I also don't have the clout to choose who does the art for my covers. I did have a little say over the style of covers on my books. When the first book was first bought, I had some long talks with my editor about how we wanted these books to look, and I sent her links to book covers I liked. The cover look I got was very close to what I'd imagined, and I love my covers, though I'm not sure they were the best way to go to sell the books in the long run.

When I first sold the series, back in 2004, the hottest trend in publishing was "chick lit." It had grown so big that it had started to splinter into subgenres, and they'd only just started doing some paranormal chick lit. Meanwhile, urban fantasy was barely on the horizon, especially not in the form it has eventually taken. There were the Charles deLint books and some of Neil Gaiman's stuff, but much of what we now think of as "urban fantasy" spun off the chick lit genre, with the mix of real life and fantasy, the snarky heroine and the romantic subplots that didn't necessarily follow the romance genre rules. My agent suggested we try to sell my series as chick lit rather than as fantasy because at the time, it didn't look like there was anything like it in fantasy. It was more likely to get more attention in chick lit. Those were the books coming out in trade paperback, being put at the front of the store and appearing in places like Target.

Thus, the chick lit style covers. I really liked the kinds of covers that appeared on British chick lit books that were more line illustrations than outright cartoons. I also, for some weird reason I'm not sure of, wanted the covers to be white. That does make them pop on the shelves, but the books also get really grungy really quickly (the copies in my library look awful already). The covers don't actually depict any characters in the books. The fairy who keeps appearing on the cover doesn't correlate to a book character. I did end up writing the frog guy into the books just because I liked him so much. The covers work more to convey the mood and style of the books. You see those covers, and you know what you're getting.

Of course, the chick lit genre completely cratered not long after the second book was published, so the bookstores cut their orders of similar books, which led to the decision not to publish more in the series after the two more that were already contracted. I think the fact that the publisher sees these books as chick lit and not as fantasy has a lot to do with why they're being so weirdly stubborn about not wanting more books. They've distanced themselves from that genre and don't want anything like it. I don't know if my career would have gone a totally different way if we'd tried to sell the books as fantasy. A lot of fantasy editors are big fans of the series, but I don't know if they'd have bought them to publish them at that time, and I don't know what the response would have been. I also can't imagine any other covers. I've got friends who do cover art, and we've had chats about that. The covers sort of pigeonhole them as chick lit and may have kept some fantasy readers away, but we can't think of any other style cover that would fit the books. I definitely can't imagine the Generic Urban Fantasy Cover -- the black cover with the tattooed chick in black leather, holding a weapon and looking back over her shoulder.

I guess this is my career Sliding Doors moment. Maybe there's a reality where we took the fantasy route and the books became fantasy bestsellers and I'm living a JK Rowling life. Or it's possible that in that reality the book never sold at all and I've had to go back to having a day job. Maybe this will turn out to be the best reality, after all, because those books help pave the way for the books that really make me famous. It's probably best to not spend too much time dwelling on that kind of stuff because it will drive me crazy. All I can do is focus on the future and keep writing.