Telling Stories

I had all kinds of grand plans to write yesterday, and then a high ragweed count hit with a vengeance. Ah, it's that time of year. It's not as bad since I discovered Allegra, but I've only just started taking it daily, so it's taking a while to kick in, and then I forgot to take it for a day. I've definitely felt worse during early ragweed season, but it's just enough to mess with my head. I can think, but I have a hard time translating my thoughts into language. (So be warned that there may be odd flubs in this post that I haven't caught because that was what came out of my head and it made sense to me even when I was editing.)

So instead of writing, I read some of those books on marketing I got from the library. One had a very interesting premise that marketing is essentially the story you build around something, and the story is what often adds the perceived value. The audience already has a built-in worldview, and the trick is to suggest a story that they want to tell themselves that fits their worldview. The real marketing comes from people who are telling themselves a story, and then they spread that story to other people. So, for example, when it comes to a car, they all pretty much get you from point A to point B, and when you look at reliability ratings, the more moderately priced car is actually more likely to get you to point B. So why is a car that's more likely to break down worth so much more money? It's mostly about the story we can tell ourselves about a car like that. There's luxury in the details and the experience that makes people feel better about themselves -- if they're the kind of people who feel better about that sort of thing. If they're not, it's not going to work on them. If they are, then the more expensive car may be worth it to them because it matches the story they tell themselves about success or the kind of person they want to be. So the way to sell a car to them is to weave that story around it.

I'm still trying to figure out how this might apply to marketing books or an author. Can you spin a story around a story? I think the trick might be to capitalize on the sense of "I'm the kind of person who reads this kind of book, and that makes me better/smarter/more in-the-know than people who haven't read it." But then you have to figure out what "this kind of book" really is. In my case, I'm not sure there's really an established niche because I blur a lot of lines. For the most part, maybe what makes my books different is the lack of edge -- so much else these days is dark and edgy, but here's something for those of us who are tired of it and just want to have some good, clean fun.

There's some built-in "tribe" stuff with Rebel Mechanics that probably resonates with society today -- the makers and innovators who may be a threat to the status quo. It's also a steampunk book that's actually about steampunks -- people starting a rebellion with their technology, an actual counter-cultural movement that looks a lot like the cultural group we have now.

The trick may be to find a way to communicate these stories to these groups. Once you find some people within these groups, they tend to spread the idea to others and word of mouth spreads. The down side of that is that word of mouth spreads slowly from person to person, so you don't get that huge spike that gets you noticed in the publishing world. The up side is that it does tend to be more "sticky" that way because it's not about the latest trend but rather is about something that resonates with these people, regardless of the trend, which is why Enchanted, Inc. is still selling relatively well ten years after publication, when most of the books that were published around that time are now either out of print or went out of print and are now being brought back as self-published books. The idea didn't spread fast enough for the publisher to take notice, but it's still hanging on.

But actually coming up with a plan to do something about all this is more than my ragweed-addled brain can deal with at the moment.

I did reread a short story I wrote a couple of years ago (I think), and I was surprised by how much I liked it. I'm not entirely crazy about the ending, but I think it works. I'm not sure what to do with it, though. On the one hand, I think it could be fleshed out into a decent novella or novel that scraps the current ending and develops the middle a lot better before coming to a more satisfying ending (the current one seems abrupt, but I can't make it much longer and have it be a short story), but then again, in its current form it's short enough to read in a convention reading and it's easier to sell either a short story or a full-length novel. If I decide on a form, then what do I do with it? I'd probably make more money self publishing it, but then selling it to a good market would turn it into advertising, in a way, helping me reach a different group of readers who wouldn't find a self-published novella/short story.

I'm planning to use this story for my FenCon reading, and then maybe get some feedback from the audience, kind of like a focus group.

Priorities

I really slacked off on the "devote time to my priorities" program. It seems I really do need to keep the calendar and to-do list to keep it working, and until I get in the habit, it looks like that calendar and to-do list need to be on paper. I tried using the calendar on my computer, but while I'm working or online, that's out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I'd try it with my phone, but that would possibly get annoying if I set reminders and had it beep at me. Then again, maybe that's what I need to get myself in line.

There are some priorities I'm already pretty good at sticking with. The main thing I need to work on is devoting consistent, dedicated time to my work when I'm not on a deadline crunch, and devoting consistent, dedicated time to other things when I am buried in a book. That all-or-nothing behavior isn't good for me, isn't good for my work, and doesn't make me happy. I wouldn't need the all-or-nothing if I could be more consistent.

Then I really need to step it up with the marketing, because that's how I sell books. Most of my books now are independently published, so I have no publicist, and I'm not really getting publicity support from my publishers for the others, since I'm not in that tier of author. So I have to do it, and I need to do it consistently. The problem is that it's easy to get discouraged and slack off. When you do what feels like a big promo push for you, and the result is your number of Twitter followers shrinking and your Amazon ranking getting worse, it's hard to remind yourself that these things aren't necessarily connected. What I really need to figure out how to do is break out of my own circle. The people I can communicate with are already on board. But how do I find and connect with the people outside that circle who might be interested if they knew about me? I'm terrible at networking, social or otherwise, and especially online. In person, listening to what others say without feeling the need to chime in unless you've got something useful to add counts for a lot. Online, that's invisible, so staying on top of other people's feeds without inserting myself doesn't do me much good. And yet I can't bring myself to just pipe up for the purpose of getting my name out there. So I need to work on some ideas. I checked some books out of the library yesterday, but anything they had on social networking was hopelessly out of date, with the newest published in 2011, and things have changed since then.

I know I talk about getting my house in order a lot, but it's something I want to do, and I think I could do it if I dedicated consistent time to it. I think I really am a neat freak at heart. The main reason I love staying in hotels is that for a few days, I can keep my world perfectly in order, with no visible clutter. I only have the things I need, and there's a place to put them all. At home, though, this priority falls below other priorities, and then I get good at blocking it out. I think I'd be happier, more productive, and less stressed if I could do a better job at this. I just need to make it a priority and be consistent about it.

And then there's music. Singing is a physical activity, so daily exercise makes it better. I know when I'm keeping up with practicing my choir music, my range extends by a couple of notes on either end. I also would like to get better at the piano and actually learn the left hand. It's something I enjoy that's important to me, so I need to dedicate the time to it.

Theoretically, prioritizing these things and scheduling time to do them will then free up other time to do other things I like to do. But it's very easy to get into the "doom loop" of checking e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, lather, rinse, repeat.

Today, I might actually start writing words on the new book. I've written a synopsis and done some research. I've planned an opening sequence. I have on my "What you do may appear in my next book" writer t-shirt, and I'm using the mug with that slogan for my tea. So I need to put it in my calendar as something to do.

How Not to Start a Story (Maybe)

Continuing my writing theme of beginnings …

There's a lot of writing advice out there on ways you should never begin your story. And it's mostly right. There are exceptions, but you should think carefully before deciding that you're the exception.

Never start your story with:

1) The protagonist (or any other character) waking up in the morning.
It does seem like a logical place to begin and a good way to show the ordinary world before the character's life changes, but do we really want to read about someone waking up, having breakfast, getting dressed, and otherwise starting their day? I suspect that another reason this is popular is that it does show up frequently in movies, especially romantic comedies, where the heroine starting her day is the sequence that goes with the opening credits, while the movie's theme song plays. It's a good way to establish a lot of the character's traits and establish the story world. But in a film, the more visual information you can cram into that sequence, the better -- show whether she's a neat freak or a slob, how does she dress, what does she wear, what's her attitude, what's her routine, etc. -- while in a book, all that kind of detail just bogs down the opening. It's better to start as close as possible to the point where the character's life changes. Skip the teeth brushing and dressing part.

EXCEPT this can be a really shocking opening if the character wakes to something she doesn't expect to find, like discovering herself in a strange place or not knowing who she is. But then you're not going to get that going through a normal routine stuff because there is no normal. Or if you plan to make things seriously not normal within a few paragraphs, then it works to start with a very mundane beginning. We meet Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when he wakes in the morning and goes about his morning routine, with the tiny detail of seeing a bulldozer outside his house slipped into the mention of him opening the window, and then it takes a little longer, until after he's made coffee, before that thought catches up with him and he runs outside to confront the bulldozer. But you need to establish within a couple of paragraphs that something is really crazy.

2) The protagonist traveling somewhere and thinking about where she's going and why.
This is a very popular opening for romance novels, even some that get published, but it's become such a cliche. Unless something happens during the journey, the story either starts when she makes the decision to go, and then we can skip to the part where she arrives, or it starts when she arrives at her destination. The character sitting in the coach/car/airplane/train and thinking about her entire backstory makes for a dull opening.

EXCEPT you can play with that trope and make something happen. I got a book out of that when I was snarking about the trope and then wrote a book that opens with the heroine on the train thinking about the new life that faces her when suddenly a group of bandits robs the train, and this is what actually changes her life (though she doesn't know it at the time). The thing to keep in mind is that you need action, not thinking.

3) An exciting action sequence that turns out to be a dream.
This is a double whammy because first there's the letdown that that the exciting thing didn't actually happen, and then you get that "waking up in the morning" opening. This kind of opening can make the reader feel betrayed, and it looks suspiciously like an attempt to provide something exciting for the opening because you didn't have confidence in your real beginning. It also means that you've wasted pages on something that actually has no consequences.

EXCEPT I think this can be used judiciously in fantasy if it's a key element of the story that the character has dreams that are either prophetic or that provide a view into other people's lives. But you'd need to show us pretty quickly that this is what is going on. Like within a paragraph or so of waking, something in real life needs to happen that echoes something in the dream. You would have to use the dream to create a sense of danger and unease, not do the "whew, it was just a dream" kind of opening.

Book Report: Saying Goodbye to Discworld

This is a post that I've put off writing for a while because it feels like writing it makes it real, but it is real, regardless of what I say. I read The Shepherd's Crown, the final Terry Pratchett book, last week, and I want to talk about it, but it also feels like talking about it will somehow give it a sense of finality that it wouldn't have had if I hadn't yet talked about it. If that makes sense. Maybe it's that talking about it completes the process of reading the book, so it really is over. I also procrastinated about reading it. I had it about half a week before I let myself read it, and then after plowing through about half in one day I made the rest of it last the rest of the week.

It's hard to talk about the plot without spoiling a major event, and it's a book that isn't really about the plot. It's about the characters. The story is about the elves deciding to try to make a comeback, and it's up to young witch Tiffany Aching to find a way to stop them and save her land. But it's really a major coming-of-age story for Tiffany, who's still young but having to function like an adult, and it's about the way the world is changing, with new technology and new ideas.

I've read some reviews that say it reads like Pratchett knew this would be his last book, and I'd have to agree. There's a bit of a farewell tour among some of the major characters from the entire Discworld series, and it feels like most of the plot threads that intersect this particular sub-series are wrapped up well enough that we can feel like we know the outcome. I had the sense of an author saying goodbye to his people. Those were the parts that had me sobbing. There's a note at the end that says this book wasn't quite finished -- the story is complete, but all the usual tinkering that would have been done in revisions didn't get finished. I wouldn't say that I noticed this or felt any lack while reading it, but looking back and comparing it to other books, I can kind of see it.

It's hard to judge the book itself without all the emotions attached to it. I enjoyed reading it. I found it profound and funny at the same time. I want more, and it's sad that there won't be any more. It's definitely not something slapped together posthumously. It's worthy of the name on the cover. But it may be difficult for fans to read, in some respects, because these people have become real to us, and it's hard to say goodbye. Fortunately, there are all those other books we can revisit.

I would say that this is a book best read alone, with a box of tissues handy, and with your calendar cleared for the day (unless you end up doing like I did and dragging it out).

First Hints of Fall

My fall schedule is now complete, with the start of yoga class this morning. Now I just have to get used to the schedule of activities -- yoga Monday morning, children's choir and choir rehearsal Wednesday night, ballet Thursday night. I really hate the Thursday ballet because it interrupts the possibility of long weekends, and that's why instead of registering for the whole semester, I got a punch card for a certain number of classes. Then I don't pay for classes I don't take and I don't feel so bad about skipping classes. In a nice bit of luck, it turns out we won't be having a yoga class the Monday after FenCon, so I'll have recovery time.

I had a reasonably active and social weekend. I went with some friends to a festival and antique car show on the town square. I felt rather old when there was a "classic" car on display that was newer than the one I learned to drive in, but there were plenty of really old cars, like the Fords from the 1920s with rumble seats. Of course, going to any event on the town square requires going to the old-fashioned ice cream parlor on the square.

It's getting to be the time of year when it's cool enough to go outside for festivals and things like that.

I watched a movie Sunday afternoon because there was a nice bit of scheduling on HBO. My library is doing some events around The Book Thief this fall, and I plan to read it, but the movie was on one of the HBO channels Sunday afternoon, so I watched it because I'm the weirdo who likes to see the movie before reading the book. That's because if I loved the book, the movie is very likely going to disappoint me. But if I like the movie, the book will probably be even better and is sure to include lots of extra stuff, so it's like getting the special extended edition director's cut of the story.

It's hard to describe this story in a way that at all reflects it because it's a pretty simple story about a young girl taken in by a childless couple in a small town in Germany in the late 30s and how they're affected by the war. The girl loves books, a love her adoptive father encourages, and during the deprivation of the war, she sneaks into the well-stocked personal library of the mayor to borrow books to read. But it's really more a story about the characters, not so much how they develop but rather how they unfold as we get to know them better and see them in difficult circumstances. And the whole thing is narrated by Death. Since I've been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett lately, I kept thinking of this being the same Death, so I kind of expected to find a skeleton in a robe having a curry.

I definitely want to read the book now and see what the movie inevitably had to leave out. It actually kind of fits into some preliminary research I'm doing for a planned future book that takes place in a totalitarian society. There's not a lot out there about ordinary people in that regime -- not necessarily running a resistance movement, but also not party members -- and that's what this story focuses on. There's the fear from every knock on the door, the worry that neighbors are watching and might inform on you, sometimes for no reason other than spite, the indoctrination in schools, the fear parents had of their own children who had been indoctrinated and the uncertainty of whether the school's teaching or the parent's teaching would win out.

And now that I'm feeling all virtuous for starting my day with exercise, I have to get to work.

Plotting a Sequel

I had another busy day of brain thunderstorming, and I had the "duh!" moment of realizing that one problem with the plot outline I was trying to put together was that I hadn't stopped to think about what the goals of the various characters and factions were. Once I did that, it fell into place a lot better because it made the events make sense. I can't just look at what the protagonists' goals are. I have to look at what's going on with the other people and with the antagonists. Today's task will be digging more into what the antagonists are doing.

Outlining the plot for a sequel is a little different than a first book because some of the steps have already taken place in the first book. The "Ordinary World" segment is mostly about establishing the new normal after the events in the first book. There may not need to be a new "Call to Adventure" in the sequel, depending on how the first book ended. If the first book ending was a "whew, that's over, now back to normal!" then you might need all the initial steps, including the call and refusal of the call. But if the first book ending was more "we may have won this round, but it's only just starting," then the call from the first book can carry over and there's no need for the refusal/mentor, etc., stages. The hero is already over the threshold. But then that makes structuring and pacing a little more difficult.

But I'm seeing events play out and I'm getting back into that world, which is fun and exciting.

It's been interesting to look at my old synopsis for this sequel, written while I was still writing the first book, and see how much has changed. I think my opinions of some of the characters have changed. This was before I decided the book was YA, so there's a different focus. And I've learned so much as an author since then. If I wrote the book I outlined, it would be rather boring. I want a bit more adventure.

In other news, as a television reminder service, Continuum starts again tonight on SyFy, but in the post-prime time slot, at 10 Central. I'm glad they're getting the chance to wrap up the story because that was a big cliffhanger. I have this thing for time travel and seeing the repercussions of fiddling with the past, and this show scratches that itch. If I can stay awake that long. I hope it'll be OnDemand.

Back to Preschool

I survived the first night of children's choir, and most of the twitching has even stopped. It looks like I'll have about 10 preschoolers, depending on who shows up. We had a couple of serious separation anxiety/shyness cases whose moms stayed in the room with them and who ended up leaving early because the kids just clung to mom and cried or tried to hide behind mom. What's funny is that both of them had younger siblings who tried to participate with the other kids while the older sibling who was supposed to be in the choir just hid. One was a little girl of maybe 2-3 who raised her hand to be called on and answered questions and did everything the bigger kids were doing. I'd invite her to join us, but I suspect that would just make things awkward for her big brother. The other was a toddler just barely old enough to walk on his own, but boy, did he try to clap and dance along with the music while his big sister hid behind her mom.

I can already tell which one is going to be the biggest challenge. There's one boy who's the first to raise his hand and who has all the answers and learns things quickly, but he also doesn't do well with being at all still or following directions, and his idea of moving with the music is running in circles around the room. So I'll need to come up with extra challenges for him or find ways to make him be the helper so he has a task at all times to keep him too busy to run around in circles.

Otherwise, they seem to be good kids, and they make me feel old because many of them are the younger siblings of kids I've taught before, so I'm getting all those toddlers who used to stand in the doorway and watch wide-eyed as their older siblings came to choir. Then there's the one girl who, when she was a baby, was known for holding her arms out toward me and screaming, "Mama!" when she saw me, even if her mother was right there. And I look nothing like her mother. That got awkward if we were in the parking lot and I was parked near them and her mother was trying to get her in her car seat while she was crying and calling out for "Mama!" while waving at me. It looked like the poor woman was kidnapping my child.

Meanwhile, I've been brain thunderstorming the new book (when it's more than just a brainstorm). I realized that one major event I was building this book around might be better suited to its sequel, and then I realized that the sequel I'd been planning probably hinged on the wrong events and there was a much more dramatic way to do things. So now I feel a little unmoored and have to figure out how to fit in all the other events I came up with. This is the exciting part of the creative process.

Rethinking Things

Well, day one of my new, improved life didn't quite go as planned. I underestimated how much time it would take to do some things and also underestimated how much time I spend on non-priorities that are still things I enjoy. I need to work a little breathing room into my schedule to make it easier to adhere to. But I did get the amount of writing and publicity work I aimed for, and I did some housework, some exercise and some music practice, even if it wasn't as much as I hoped for. So, overall, an improvement.

I'm going to have to veer from the planned plot of the next Rebel Mechanics book. That synopsis I wrote years ago requires a character to do something that I now believe would be very out of character, and it's sorely lacking in a sense of adventure. The main plot will be more or less the same, but it will be resolved in a different way, I think. Scenes have been coming to me, which is a good sign. I know I have a book shaping up when it goes from being a list of events to seeing a movie in my head (which is why I don't have any Enchanted, Inc. books planned right now -- I can make lists of events, but they're just lists of events. I'm not seeing the scenes happen).

I really wish I could find a way to get a ride in some kind of airship (blimp, dirigible, whatever) because I think that's going to play a big role and I want to be able to describe it better. It looks like you can do that in Germany, but the US company that was offering that sort of thing in California has closed down.

Tonight children's choir starts, so I'll be fully in my fall schedule. I need to come up with a lesson plan that will entertain four-year-olds for 45 minutes. I don't plan to do a lot of "teaching" tonight, but I will need activities to do with them.

Now to do some other promo stuff for the day and then do some plot outlining and then some lesson planning. We're having a cool, rainy day, so I feel energized.

Charging Forward!

I'm diving into my latest stab at being super organized and productive. We'll see how long this one lasts. I figured out how much time I really need to be devoting to various priorities, and it was surprising how much time that still left me in the day. So I set out to schedule all those priority activities on my calendar, leaving the rest of the day unscheduled. I also got specific about what I wanted to do for each of those priorities. I've tried things like this in the past, where I said I wanted to spend an hour a day on publicity and marketing activities, and then it fell through because I wasn't sure what to do with that time. So I'm making a to-do list within the priorities.

If I go by my usual pattern, I'll be gung-ho for about a week, and then life will intrude on my carefully prepared schedule, and it will all fall apart. But I'm hoping this makes enough sense that it might stick. If I feel like I'm making progress and accomplishing a lot, I'm more likely to just make it part of my life. If I find myself realizing that I'm getting so much done, producing work, increasing sales, and getting my house in order, and I still feel like I have free time, then it may become routine. I've already adjusted some things when I realized that my overly ambitious schedule that I put together last night wasn't at all realistic.

But I have actually accomplished something publicity-wise. For that video I had to do for that subscription box service, I found some cool vintage film that's from a little later than Rebel Mechanics is set but that still gives the same feel. As I was doing my reading from the opening chapter at WorldCon, several lines jumped out at me as perfectly matching the footage. So, here's a short teaser/intro video I put together, just playing around with iMovie to see what I could do:



I don't know if it will sell any books for me, but apparently YouTube is a big deal among YA readers, so having a presence there is a good thing. So far, though, most of my social media efforts seem to just sit there without getting a lot of traction or feedback other than from my personal friends. I'm trying to figure out how to get some impact there.

This was also good for getting me back into the mindset of that world because this afternoon, I'm going to start work on book 2 in that series. I wrote a synopsis for that book way back when I was writing the first book so that we could submit the proposal for the first book with the plans for the series. I'm sure that a lot has changed in the past five years, so it may require some reworking, and then I have to figure out what happens in the first few chapters so I can write the beginning.

At least I already have a title in mind, so I won't have to go through that process again for a while.

Now, off to go be productive some more!

The Draw of Saturday-afternoon TV

I know it's a holiday, but I tend to treat Labor Day like a second New Year's Day, a kind of fresh start in a new year, even though I'm not in school, and so I don't want to wait to dive into all those new things I want to accomplish. I'm also trying to stay a little bit more in a regular schedule so that I don't suffer too badly from the "what day is it?" confusion.

I've mostly had a quiet weekend. Saturday I spent more time in front of the TV than I planned, but I got sucked into a marathon of a series called "Secrets" on the Smithsonian channel. They take some artifact with a lot of legend around it and use modern science to analyze it. There was one on the "Spear of Destiny" that's in an Austrian museum and is said to be the lance that pierced the side of Christ at the crucifixion. That was debunked by spectrum analysis that showed the metal was from well after that time and was medieval rather than Roman. It was probably never used as a functional spear, but did seem to have been used to carry a banner. However, the other legend that it contains a nail from the cross wasn't entirely debunked. There did seem to have been something inserted, and markings on it indicate that it was believed to be significant to Christians. That doesn't necessarily mean it really was a nail from the actual cross, just that people believed it was. They can't get to any nail that's in there without taking it all apart, so that's not happening. But in analyzing the piece and records relating to it, it seems that the power of the spear was originally just supposed to be the nail, and it probably was carried into battle with a banner on it as something to rally around that gave people a psychological boost. It was a later king who took that legend and added to it, claiming it was the spear at the crucifixion and wrapping it in gold with an engraving to that effect. Then there was an episode about Blackbeard's ship and whether a wreck they found might have been it, based on the analysis of artifacts found and a comparison to records. They were using large-scale X-ray, MRI, etc. I was really fascinated by an episode about what was purported to be a Norse map of North America from before Columbus. The map itself appears to have been an expert forgery (though there is room for doubt), but the information it contains is actually supported by archeological evidence of Norse settlements in North America. So it's a fake that represents truth that probably wasn't written down.

I really should do more reading/research into Norse history and mythology because with my name it would have built-in branding. And Norse mythology goes way beyond the standard Odin/Thor/Loki stuff. Most Norse-based fantasy seems to stop there.

In between all these, I also got sucked into a Hallmark Channel movie. I have that bizarre addiction to those kinds of Christmas movies, but it turns out they make them all year long, and since they don't seem to be making romantic comedies for the big screen that aren't gross-out, raunchy stuff, this is about the only place to scratch that itch. I caught one that was apparently part of their wave of Valentine's Day movies (who knew?) called I Do, I Do, I Do, and it had the rather brilliant premise of being a Groundhog Day story about a woman reliving her wedding day over and over again. I'm a sucker for Groundhog Day stories, so I gave it a shot. It wasn't bad as those things go, though it was one of those "the wrong guy for the wrong reasons" premises, and it's hard to pull that off without the heroine looking like a jerk or a twit. Jilting a guy at the altar is a bad move, so they have to make the guy look pretty awful to justify it, but then if he's that awful, she looks like a twit for not realizing how awful he is until they're at the altar. In this case, they tried to give her a backstory that explained her choice, that she saw him as a "safe" option without risk -- but considering he more or less steamrollered her into getting married, let his mother plan the entire wedding without even consulting her, then chided her about hurting his mother's feelings when she dared to suggest that maybe she should get some say in her own wedding, there were so many red flags that he didn't seem at all like a safe option. Still, it was a cute movie with some fun moments that made a good backdrop for ironing and folding laundry.

This made me once again think that I could totally write one of these and do a better job.

But now I need to dive into my "new year" so I can let myself play this afternoon and evening.

Kicking off the Holiday

I'm ready to start my Labor Day holiday weekend. I have no plans, a pile of books, ingredients for baking, and some music. I also have bad allergies right now. Ragweed isn't showing up in the pollen count, but I feel very, very ragweedy. I've got the drips and drainage, the itchy skin, the burning eyes, and that weighted-down sense of fatigue.

The pile of books and the music come thanks to my new greatest temptation. They opened a Half-Price Books next door to the grocery store, and they were having their extra 20% off sale this weekend. They got me before I even got in the door with their clearance CD rack, where I managed to snag several CDs of things that I have on cassette but now can't listen to in my car, plus some good writing background music. I also found a book I've been searching for and haven't found anywhere, a cookbook, and a few books I've read from the library but haven't found in stores. And I didn't even delve all that deeply. I didn't get a cart or a basket, so I limited myself to what I could carry.

Now, though, I'm utterly exhausted from my exertion. I should probably have started the daily Allegra a few days earlier because it will take a few days to kick in. I hope it kicks in soon because I'm singing in the chorale on Sunday. We're doing a fun little Renaissance piece.

I traditionally use Labor Day weekend as a brainstorming/research/mood setting retreat for the next project to kick off, so I need to decide which movies in my collection most remind me of the book I'm about to write. I'm not sure there's yet been a really good steampunk movie, so when I was planning the first book I mostly viewed things set in that time period.

A Catch-up Round-up

I have a title! Book 3 in the Fairy Tale series, now known as A Kind of Magic, will be arriving November 24 (tentatively -- depends on Audible). The cover art is done, so I should soon have a cover to share. The fun thing is that it takes place around the time of the release date. It's not quite full-on Christmassy -- it happens before Thanksgiving, but the production of The Nutcracker starts during the book, and there's already Christmas stuff out.

This may mean that the next book will be a full-on Christmas book, so maybe I'll plan for that release date next year. Assuming I get the book written by then. I need to write another Rebel Mechanics book in the meantime.

I guess that since I had to go straight from getting home from the convention to working on the book, I'm now having my post-convention recovery period. I've been mostly useless the last couple of days, though I did do some FenCon PR work. I got sidetracked into hypothetical vacation planning. That involved going to various travel and tourism sites, searching for what I wanted, then checking the review sites. It seems that what I really wanted doesn't exist. I wanted to do a road trip to the minor mountains in eastern Oklahoma/western Arkansas, and I wanted a hotel like the one I had near Hot Springs last year, where I had a balcony overlooking the lake. My favorite part of the trip was getting up in the morning and drinking tea on the balcony. But it seems that no hotel like that exists in the places where I was looking. I came up with a few alternate possible plans, but then I got a tip from a friend about a place to go that looks like it might fit the bill for a quiet getaway. Now I'll do more research.

In choir news, I did put myself forward for that Requiem solo, and the director came up with an interesting way to deal with it, since there were multiple people wanting it. It's divided into multiple pieces, separated by choir parts, and he's giving the different pieces to different people. I got the middle part that's my favorite part of it, anyway, and I don't have to worry about the really high notes. My writer brain has kicked in, and I already have a narrative for it in my head that suddenly makes the piece make more sense this way. If it's one person doing the solo, it's just the one person offering the prayer at what essentially sounds like a mass funeral (one of the repeated lines translates to "grant them rest eternal"), though since we're doing it for All Souls Day, I suppose it's about all the people who've gone on before us. But with multiple people, I'm picturing a number of people in a cathedral, all praying, and then the spotlight falls on one person offering her prayer, goes back to the crowd, then falls on another person. The different pieces of the solo all have a different tone, so you can imagine them being sung by different characters.

I may get a story out of this.

And in other news, I found this list of inspiring real-life geeks
, and would you believe who's on it? Yeah, I'm listed among people like JK Rowling. Kind of cool.

While I have stuff to do in the next couple of days, I think I'm going to treat the time up to (and including) Labor Day as a quasi-holiday, with the weekend itself being real holiday. Then I'm going to hit the ground running afterward and really try to be diligent and productive. I need to make a conscious effort to do more promotion, and I need to do a better job of staying on top of the writing. I have too many stories in my head that need to be let out. My pastor's sermon series lately has been based on the "first things first" concept -- that illustration where if you fill a jar with water, sand, and pebbles, you can't fit any rocks in, but if you put the big rocks in first, then add pebbles, sand, and water, you can actually fit more in the same jar -- and I've realized I need to do a better job of focusing on my priorities.

Good Beginnings

I helped with a couple of writing workshops this summer, which meant I was reading beginnings of novels, and that has me thinking a lot about what makes a beginning work. Here are some suggestions:

1) Save the backstory for later
I think this is the number-one problem with most beginner manuscripts. Writers feel like they need to explain the entire background of their world, exactly how it works, what the history is, and the main character's entire history before the story can start. This bogs down the beginning. It's better to show all this through action as the protagonist interacts with his/her world or notices what's wrong about it that needs to be fixed. And no, characters having a conversation about the history of their world is not a way to get around this, especially if both of them know the history already. Give us just enough information to understand the inciting incident and how it affects the protagonist. We don't need to know about the hero's childhood and relationship with his parents or about the war that was fought a century ago unless that's absolutely critical to understanding the inciting incident and how the hero reacts to it. Unanswered questions and curiosity can keep readers turning pages, as long as there's eventually some kind of payoff.

2) Give your protagonist a goal
Not just a story goal, though that should come as soon as possible in the book, but some goal, wish, or need that exists before the story kicks off and that would have been there even if this particular story hadn't happened. I think this is a big reason that villains are so often more popular than the heroic characters. You know from the start that the villain wants something, while the hero is often just reacting to the villain's actions without actually wanting anything. Having a goal can also create additional conflict for the protagonist because that initial goal might conflict with the story goal, and he has to make a choice.

The initial goal might be something that's focused and expanded by the story goal -- when we meet Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars, he wants to go to the Academy with his friends, mostly because he wants to get off that sandbox of a planet and have adventures. Then after he meets Obi-Wan Kenobi, his story goal is to get the Death Star plans to the Rebels so they can destroy it. So it fits his initial goal of getting off the planet and having adventures, but in a more purposeful way. The initial goal can also be contradicted by the story goal. In the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy initially wants to go "somewhere over the rainbow." She gets that very quickly, realizes she doesn't really want it, after all, and her story goal is to get back home. And the initial goal might be in conflict with the story goal. You see that a lot in romances, where the heroine initially just wants a promotion at work or to get a date with the guy she likes, and then she meets the hero and is torn because she likes him, but being with him requires her to reconsider her other goal.

It's also good if the protagonist's story goal is positive and proactive, rather than reactive. Instead of the goal being to stop the villain, which puts the villain in the driver's seat, there's a specific plan for stopping the villain that has nothing to do with the villain's actions. Going back to Star Wars, the goal is to get the plans to the Rebels and find a weakness rather than the goal being simply to stop the Empire, which would have had them running about, reacting to everything Darth Vader did.

3) Avoid flashbacks
I was surprised by how many manuscripts I critiqued this summer that started with some big, exciting incident and then flashed back to the start of the story. This is a common TV series storytelling structure that I think has become overused even on TV, and I don't think it works as well in a book. If you're using it, you should have a very good reason for doing so that's integral to the story, and you have to be careful about how you use it.

On TV, they can get away with starting with a big, exciting scene with a cliffhanger ending, then after the opening credits flashing up the "24 hours earlier" caption and going back to the beginning because unless you've recorded the show, you're stuck watching as it goes. In a book, it's easy to just skip ahead to see how that cliffhanger comes out. In a TV series, usually the viewer already knows the characters pretty well and knows what to expect of them, and that opening scene is usually shocking because it's something we know those characters would never do (like the cop hero shooting his partner), so we want to keep watching to find out what the real story is. In the opening of a novel, unless the novel is part of a series, we don't know enough to know whether or not this is shocking behavior for these characters, so it loses impact. This kind of opening is also bad about losing all energy once you leave that opening scene and flash back to the beginning. It's easy to put the book down then because everything that comes afterward seems boring in comparison. Plus, I think too many writers use the exciting opening as an excuse to then start the main story a lot earlier and fit in a lot of backstory before getting to the inciting incident, like if they start with a bang that gives them a license to be more leisurely about starting, and that makes matters even worse. And I suspect that this looks to editors and agents like a ploy to send the most exciting part of the book while sticking to the request for the first chapter or first three chapters.

Unless you really know what you're doing and you have a solid story reason for doing so, it's better to start at the beginning, as close to the inciting incident as possible, and find a way to make that opening scene interesting or exciting in its own right.

New Habits

I got my proofreading done. I then celebrated by going to the dentist this morning, where I brainstormed titles while having my teeth cleaned. Yeah, I really know how to live it up.

Now I just have to remember where my life was before it was interrupted by books and travel. I need to get back to doing more promo stuff. I need to clean my house. I need to get back into my routines, which have changed.

It's funny how little changes have big ripple effects. Take my ballet class. For years, it's been on Tuesday nights. This year, it's on Thursday. That's changing my laundry schedule. I used to do my laundry on Mondays because I needed my ballet stuff Tuesday night and it has to air dry, so I needed to give it an overnight for drying. Then I washed my sheets and towels on Tuesdays because I knew I'd be washing my hair that night after ballet class (I have this weird thing about not liking to go to bed on clean sheets without having washed my hair). The move to Thursdays shouldn't affect my laundry schedule that much. There's no reason I can't still do my regular laundry on Mondays. I think I'll move my sheets and towels day to Thursday, though, and remaking the bed can be part of a general spiffing-up before the weekend. It's also going to affect the way I view the weekend. I often felt like the hard part of the week was over after choir on Wednesday night, so Thursday was like the pre-weekend, but having something to do on Thursday pushes that back.

The new phone is also changing some habits, mostly because it's a lot more useful as a music player than my old phone was. I can plug it into my living room stereo and have all my playlists, which means I'm listening to a lot more music while I cook , work, or eat because I don't have to grab my computer and plug it in or pick a single CD. I need a different kind of adaptor to plug the phone into the stereo in my office because its line in requires stereo audio cables. I thought I had one of those adaptors from my old DVD player, but I can't think of where it is. Yes, I can play the same music on my computer, but I keep my computer sound off so I don't hear stuff like e-mail and Facebook alerts.

I realized how big an effect a habit change can have while I was listening to the piped-in music at the dentist's office. My awareness of popular music tapers off starting at about 2000, when I quit commuting, and comes to an abrupt stop in 2008. That's because I learned about pop music by listening to the radio on my way to and from work, and I still listened to the radio in the car unless I was on a long road trip and brought along my cassette collection. I got a new car in 2008 that played MP3 CDs, and after just a few weeks of having the car, I took a road trip. For that trip, I made an MP3 CD with at least ten hours of music, and it was like listening to the radio but getting to choose all the songs. I ended up just leaving the CD in the car. Since then, I occasionally switch out CDs -- I make new "road trip" mixes every so often, and I do book "soundtracks" -- but I completely stopped listening to the radio. I don't even have any stations set on my car radio. At the dentist, I was perking up when something from the 80s or 90s came on, but then there was stuff that was entirely unfamiliar, and I knew it had to be newer. So, yeah, getting a new car totally changed my awareness of music. Now I'm looking forward to taking a road trip with my new phone, where I can make up a playlist without having to burn a CD, or I can just set the whole library on shuffle, or I can change playlists to fit mood or scenery.

Meanwhile, using the phone for music means I have it out more and have discovered the other tools on it, so I'm making a lot more use of it than I did my old phone (which also didn't have all the same tools). Now if only it would organize my life.

Down to the Wire

I'm down to the wire in getting this book done. I have a couple of hundred pages to read, so that means I'll be busy today! I wish I'd done more this weekend, but it was a busy weekend, with a convention planning meeting on Saturday and singing in three services Sunday. That meant I had to get up early, didn't really get a break all morning because I was running from service to service, and then was dead tired when I got home. So today there will be work. Lots of work.

And then tomorrow I'll mostly have this book off my back. I still need a title and I need back cover copy, and I'll have to review cover designs and interior layouts.

But once this book is done, I have some convention work to do and then I need to get really busy on my next YA steampunk proposal. I think, though, that I'm going to take some time to clean the house. That's good for brainstorming and thinking, and right now, the place looks like it's been ransacked. I haven't really been noticing because my head's been in a book for so long, but it suddenly struck me, and after a week in a hotel, it's starting to bother me. My sofa in particular is a mess of promo stuff I was putting together, newspapers I've been catching up on, and notes and notebooks relating to my various books. There's that one little spot where I can sit. That will be a good way to clear my head while I switch between genres.

Now, it's time to dig into the proofreading. I'm liking this book a lot as I read it. There are moments that really hit me, and I'm already getting scenes in my head that I want to put in a future book. No concrete external plot yet, but I know what I want to have going on in the character arcs.

Title Crisis

I've made it through round one of copyedits. Now I want to re-read the entire book for a final sanity check. I still need a title. I worked for about an hour on that last night, searching Bartlett's Quotations with key words, skimming through Shakespeare, looking at the AFI's top movie titles, looking at lists of top songs, reading fairy tales, and all the usual things I do to come up with titles. And I'm still drawing mostly a blank. I have one or two ideas that are kind of stuck in my head, and while I don't like them, I don't seem able to move past them.

I would say that I'm having more trouble coming up with a title than I had writing the book, but I had a lot of trouble writing the book, too.

One strange effect of this book: It's given me a craving for petit fours. There's a tea party scene in the book, and I find myself vividly imagining those little iced cakes. I kind of want to try making them, but that wouldn't be a good use of my time right now. Maybe I'll run to Kroger and see if they have any. That's the only way I'll get through reading that scene one more time. Maybe that will inspire me to come up with a title!

In other news, I have a little booklet with the first chapter of the next/final Terry Pratchett book, which was just released in the UK. I'm not sure of the US publication date. But I don't think I want to read the first chapter without having the rest of the book handy. It would be just too frustrating. So I'll keep the booklet, knowing I have it.

In the meantime, I've been re-reading a lot of the other books, which got me out of a reading slump I'd been in. I guess I could read something else, since the convention's over, but I don't really want to right now. It's probably best not to get sucked into a book I haven't read before when I have so much work to do.

WorldCon Report

When I went to choir last night, everyone acted like I'd been missing for ages and they talked about having thought about calling me. I missed one rehearsal and one Sunday. I guess it's nice to be missed. I'll more than make up for it this Sunday (though I did go to a church service at WorldCon, so it's not like I really missed a Sunday) because I'll be singing in three services. I'm in a small ensemble singing in the early service, then that ensemble got drafted into singing backup for the praise band at the contemporary service (new experiences are good for me, I guess), and then I'll be singing with the choir at the late service.

The choir director said if we were interested in singing the soprano solo for the "Pie Jesu" in the Rutter Requiem, we should talk to him. I'm pondering it. I suspect he'll end up going with one of the grad students, but if they want that ethereal "boys choir" sound like in the British version, my voice comes closer in the upper range. It goes pretty high, but I've sung a solo in that range before.

So, WorldCon … I'm still too lazy to go downstairs and find my phone to transfer pictures, and I didn't take too many pictures of anything actually at the convention. Most of my photos are of the river and waterfalls. After my last on-the-spot report, I went to the dance lessons and steampunk ball, which were held in a lovely ballroom in a historic hotel (photo on my phone). As usual, there was an extreme lack of men. Seriously, guys, step up. You get bonus points on your man card for being able to lead in ballroom dancing. After two hours of lessons, I was getting pretty tired, and when I was feeling wallflowery for the ball itself, I slipped out about midway through. Good thing, since I could barely walk the next morning. I didn't take a walk then.

I had a panel Friday morning on the Terry Pratchett books for younger readers, and one of the panelists was the editor. I learned a lot about writing for younger readers from hearing what she had to say and what she reported as Terry Pratchett's views on the subject, and now a lot of the editorial notes I got on my YA book make so much more sense. Retroactive apologies to my editor for all my grumbling. I had my kaffeeklatsch that afternoon, and while I didn't have a waiting list, like a lot of authors, I did have a fairly full table, and we had a nice discussion. I did a little hanging out and wandering through the dealers room after that, then headed back to my hotel to discover that we'd suddenly been transported to Mars.

As you've probably heard, there are a lot of wildfires in that region, and that day the winds brought all the smoke into Spokane. It was like being in a dense fog that smelled like a campfire. The sky was hazy and yellow, and you could barely see across the street. They were warning people to stay indoors. So I did. I hit the swimming pool and hot tub for a while, and then they served an awesome chicken and rice soup at the hotel's evening reception, so I didn't bother going out for dinner. I spent the evening going over my critiques for the writers workshop.

Saturday, I was back to walking. I did the "Stroll with the Stars" walk, which was shorter and slower than I would have gone on my own, but I did get to chat with people along the way. Though I must say that going on a suspension bridge with a large group of people isn't recommended if you have bridge issues. The bridge seemed to be swaying alarmingly. I actually attended a couple of panels that morning, and then I had the writers workshop in the afternoon. That was three hours of intense critiquing that made me really think about my own writing and that had me eager to write. But I came out of it at 7 p.m. utterly drained. I'd thought about going out to dinner, but once I got to my hotel to drop things off, I didn't want to go anywhere. The hotel offered sandwiches, etc., in the area where they served breakfast and the evening reception, so I ordered a French dip sandwich, and the waitress took one look at me and asked if I wanted it boxed up to go to my room. She fixed me a tray with my sandwich and some wine, and I ate while watching a Doctor Who marathon on TV, then collapsed early.

Sunday, I had my final panel and ended up being the moderator at the last minute because the moderator didn't show. I sat at the SFWA table for a shift, and after doing a final round for good-byes, I went back to the hotel to start packing. I went for a very early dinner (switching back to Central time) at a restaurant overlooking the falls and had regional rainbow trout. I seem to be making a tradition of a final night dinner by the water. And then I was up early the next morning for the long flight home.

I probably didn't network as much as I should have because I didn't do the party circuit. I was off on time zones and the party hotel was so far away from everything else. I did make some new friends among the Discworld fan group, and the person coordinating that was staying at my hotel, so we ended up having breakfast together. I'm going to try to connect with that group online. I know that a lot of my promo items were taken from the freebie table, so we'll see how that translates to sales. Whether or not the convention did me any good professionally, I had a good time and I feel like I learned some things.

Time Adjustments

I was scheduled for a writing post today, but I think I'm going to skip a week since I'm still in convention/travel recovery mode (I went to bed last night early for Central time, woke up on Pacific time. I guess I was tired). Forming coherent thoughts isn't working for me.

Meanwhile, I made a good start on the epic to-do list yesterday. I got about a third of the way through going through the manuscript for the copyeditor's notes. I hope to get through the rest today, and then I'll need to do one more thorough read-through. That will be my reading out loud pass and will probably take several days. Most of what she found so far has been minor, including an embarrassingly high number of typos. I might need to increase the size of my screen view because even looking at these, it took me a while to see that a letter really was missing, so it wasn't just that I skimmed past it. I really didn't see it when looking at it. And yes, I did just get my eyes checked.

One question for anyone who lives in New York: In mid-late November, what time does it get dark? I was going off the US Naval Observatory tool where you can enter a date and location and it gives you sunrise and sunset times. According to this, civil twilight for the date in question ends around 5 p.m. Supposedly, that means that any outdoor activities after that time will require artificial light because the disc of the sun is totally below the horizon. The editor, who lives in New York, wasn't sure whether flashlights might be required in the middle of Central Park, away from the lighted paths, after 6 p.m. Since she lives there, she might know better than the computer what it's really like to experience it, but I wanted to get another opinion. It is a cloudy day, so that might make it seem darker. I know when I was there in early December, it seemed to be pitch black before six. Is this a detail that would totally throw you out of the story one way or another?

Now I really should obtain groceries because there's next to no food in the house. I made something for dinner last night with food in the pantry and freezer, and I'd planned ahead to have breakfast items for a couple of days, but now I really need some fresh stuff. I may splurge on some convenience foods to get me through the week of copyedits. Though when the copyedits end, I'll have to jump on developing Rebel Mechanics 2 (tentatively called Rebel Magisters). I think Labor Day weekend may be a research and mood setting retreat.

Home and Back to Work

I'm home from Spokane. I sort of slacked off on reporting because I got busy, and a more complete convention report will have to come later because I came home to lots and lots of work that needs to be done. Suffice it to say that I had an excellent time, and for once, although I was looking forward to being home, I was also a little sad about leaving. I had a fun convention, met new people, learned a lot, and really enjoyed the location. I'm going to miss those cool mornings. It will be months before we're in the upper 50s in the morning, and my neighborhood river is a bit too turgid for waterfalls. I liked the waterfalls.

I also have more photos to post when I remember to bring my phone upstairs and upload them.

The trip home wasn't as bad as I feared, though it did make for a day that felt long. I had one little snag that ended up working in my favor. I had just enough time upon arrival at DFW to catch the earlier train from the airport, but the airport tram to take me from the arrival terminal to the train station shut its door in my face and left without me. I wasn't even running to catch it. I was there waiting for it. I let people off first, as the recorded voice ordered, but then before I could get on, the door slammed shut. I only had to wait about a minute for the next tram, but then I missed the train by one minute. However, since the airport is the end of the line, the next train was already there, and they let us get on board to wait the 15 minutes before departure, and the train was air conditioned. Then I really lucked out in connecting to my neighborhood bus. If you go by the schedule, the train arrives one minute after the bus departs, so you have to wait for the next bus. The train runs every 20 minutes, but at rush hour the bus only runs every half hour. That means you're probably going to wait half an hour or more for a bus, depending on the train you're on. But since the bus was running slightly late, the same bus I would have caught with the earlier train was still at the station and loading when the train arrived, so I stepped off the train and onto the bus and didn't have to wait half an hour for the next one, and that meant my waiting time was in the air conditioned train. So, thank you, rude airport tram.

Highlights of the convention, other than the waterfalls, included meeting some really fun people at the Discworld events, ballroom dancing at the Steampunk ball, people at my kaffeeklatsch so that I felt famous rather than sad and pathetic, and a writers workshop that had me really thinking and inspired, even though I was the one supposedly teaching.

Normally, I would spend a day or two recovering, doing laundry, getting groceries, etc., but I have copyedits due September 1, so I must spend the week (and probably the weekend) working. I also have lots of other stuff that must be done in the meantime. I had grand plans to take care of some things in the evening in my hotel room, but I was so tired that I just couldn't concentrate, and that means I have to catch up now.

Days Two and Three

I'm enjoying a little downtime between daytime activities and nighttime activities, so I suppose I should catch up on events.

Yesterday's panel was about Headology and Boffo in the Discworld, looking at the various characters who play mind games with others. The moderator asked me if I had any personal Boffo (you'll know what it is if you read the books), and I went blank, so I claimed I didn't want to give away my secrets. In truth, I'm all about the headology and Boffo. When I was working in PR, I was known as the Client Whisperer, or the Client Slayer, because I had a knack for figuring out what the client really needed, which usually wasn't what they said they wanted, and giving it to them in a way that they were convinced it was what they'd wanted all along.

And then there's Boffo -- the artifice to convey an image. I guess my entire convention persona is pure Boffo. That's why I dress up and put on the glam, and then there's the waist-length curly hair or the fancy hairstyle. I'm deliberately setting myself apart, mostly because even if I wore standard convention attire -- jeans and a nerdy t-shirt -- I still don't really look like I fit in this crowd. I get a lot of "What's she doing here? Did she get lost?" looks. So I go for the extreme in not fitting in, and then I can startle people with the level of sheer geekiness on panels.

There were opening-night festivities in the park yesterday evening, and it was a really pleasant night. Free ice cream, music, games, etc. And then I completely misread the time for the writers workshop reception in the SFWA suite. I'm going to blame my phone, or perhaps my learning curve for the phone, and the way it deals with time zones (it decided that all the events I entered when I was at home were taking place in the Central Time zone). So I thought the 9-11 p.m. event was 7-9 p.m. But I ended up just hanging out there until the event started, at which point it became so noisy and crowded that I escaped after about half an hour with fellow quiet introvert Robert J. Sawyer, and we talked business on the walk back to the convention center, where I ran into other people heading in the direction of my hotel. So I was escorted back to my hotel by Archchancellor Ridcully (my escort was in costume).

This morning I was up really early, but since my phone tells me I walked almost eight miles yesterday (and I was feeling it), I took a shorter walk (only about a mile and a half) and then went for a short swim, sat for a while in the spa, and then did some time in the steam room, which felt good in such a dry climate. Then I had my reading, and people came! There was a cookout in the park for lunch, then I was supposed to help facilitate a discussion about Terry Pratchett's books for kids as part of the children's programming, but the kids weren't really interested, so we bailed early. After that was my autographing, where I wasn't that lonely and pathetic, after all. There were people there! Who liked my books!

Tonight there's a session on social dances of the 19th century, followed by a steampunk ball. I'm definitely going to the learning/practice session, but we'll see how much steam I have left for the ball. It'll feel like it's almost my bedtime by the time it starts.

Fortunately, when my hotel gives us wine in the evening, they also give us appetizers, which includes some really nice soups. The first night, there was a lentil and orzo soup, and last night was a yummy minestrone. So I get something that somewhat qualifies as a vegetable. That might fortify me before I face the evening.

WorldCon Day One

I'm now in Spokane for WorldCon. It was a very long day of travel yesterday, but I did manage to get some rest and though I'm a little groggy, I think I'm ready to take on the convention. I'm just not going to be much of a night owl, I suspect. The time difference is hitting me. I managed to stay up until 10 last night and slept until 7, but by the time the convention will be opening the next few days, I'd already had breakfast and walked about 3.5 miles.

The walking is going to be great this week. My hotel is right on the walking path along the river, so I saw sights like this


on my morning walk. I went down to the upper falls this morning and will have to hit the real falls tomorrow. We'll see if I ever get the nerve to cross that suspension bridge over the falls. I'm not a huge fan of high bridges.


Going in the other direction, the river is a lot more peaceful.


There's even a part of the path that runs through some woods. Yeah, along a river while in the woods, so basically my idea of heaven.


I'm still figuring out the camera on my new phone.

I ended up at this hotel because it was the only one with rooms available for the dates I needed when I booked, but it's working out pretty well. It's across the river, and a rather pleasant walk, from the convention center. They give you free wine at night and free breakfast in the morning, and the breakfast room has English Breakfast tea instead of just regular tea bags. I have a refrigerator and a microwave in my room. Everyone's been very friendly, so it feels kind of like a family-run hotel. And they've done a rather clever thing with the toiletries. Instead of the tiny bottles you have to struggle to get stuff out of, and then you feel wasteful throwing them away when you've only used a little, they have built-in dispensers of shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel in the bathroom, so you just pump and get as much as you want, with no tiny bottles. They do have a tiny container of lotion, which is nice, because it's dry here and I will be carrying it around with me.

My programming starts this afternoon, and there's a reception this evening for the writers workshop. So more details on that later, or follow me on Twitter @ShannaSwendson, in case I remember to tweet.

Hitting the Road/Air/Whatever

It is the Day of Getting Stuff Done, when I take a good, hard look at my to-do list and figure out what absolutely must get done and what would just be nice to do. Fortunately, I have most of the "absolutely must be done in order to leave" stuff taken care of and am down to the "life would be easier if I took care of it ahead of time" stuff and the "it would really be nice if I did this" stuff. All I have left in the "absolutely must be done" category is actually putting stuff in my bags (things have been selected and staged) and some confirming and verifying some travel items (online check-in, checking gate, checking bus/train schedule, etc.). I would also like to have a lot of the red ribbon and gear Rebel Mechanics insignia pins made for the swag table, though I can also bring materials and make them upon arrival, and I would like to have the writers workshop critiques finalized, though my session isn't until Saturday, so that's something I can do in transit or upon arrival. And then I like to clean my house before I travel so it isn't too terrible to come home to, but only the kitchen is a real necessity (for pest reasons).

I'm planning to catch the 5:25 bus in the morning just to make sure I have plenty of time to get to the airport, get through security, etc., for an 8 a.m. flight. That means getting to bed early and calming down ahead of that so I can actually sleep instead of having squirrel brain.

I did finally get a new cell phone. I've joined the zombie hordes and have an iPhone, and I have to say that although there's been a bit of a learning curve, I already love it. I had an obscure model of Android phone, and I never bothered doing much with it. I'm not a tinkerer, so I couldn't be bothered with finding the apps and working with them. I've already really started using the new phone more as a music player. It's nice to hit sync and have my playlists, and it's lovely to be able to plug it in to my stereo to use it as a jukebox instead of having to haul my computer around the house. I tested it in my car yesterday, and that works, too. But I'll probably save that for road trips because it would be more hassle than it's worth for running errands and stopping and starting. Where I'll really love it is when I create playlists for a book, and I can tinker with the playlist and update it instead of making lots of CDs. One thing that was more challenging was customizing ringtones because you can't just use a song as a ringtone, but I found an online tutorial and found how you can do that in iTunes, so I'm back to having my usual Star Wars opening title ring tone.

I have a few other things I need to set up on my phone, but that falls into the "nice if I have time, otherwise I can do it later" category.

I'll be reporting from the road, and if I get around to setting up Twitter on the phone, I may be tweeting phases of my journey. Follow me @ShannaSwendson.

Event-Based Shopping

I have realized that if it weren't for big events like trips, conventions, reunions, etc., I might never buy new clothes. Yes, I seem to have a nice wardrobe and am moderately stylish, but almost all of my clothes/shoes shopping is done with a particular event in mind. I very seldom just decide to go shopping because I want to see what's out there.

And now since I do have an event coming up, I have new clothes. I spent some of my birthday money yesterday buying a bunch of tops at TJ Maxx (I headed out to look at phones but decided that might not be the best idea while I was tired and cranky after dealing with small children, so that may be this afternoon's errand). They're all fairly basic, but this means that I will be wearing almost entirely new clothes next week, and nothing I've worn to previous Worldcons. I may look kind of like the Southwest Airlines commercial where their customer is stylish because of getting two free checked bags while the other person is rotating the same items and mixing and matching because I will be rotating among a couple of skirts, a pair of jeans and a pair of capri pants, with different tops for each day. Now I just need to allocate clothing to events. I've decided that Saturday will be my "casual" day for jeans instead of a skirt because my only programming that day is the writers workshop, and the evening event is the Hugos, which I'll be skipping because awards ceremonies are dull unless you're up for an award.

I've scrolled through the schedule, and it seems like the usual convention rules apply, where the things that sound cool tend to be opposite my own program items. I'm not quite sure how that always seems to work, but it does.

I'm really going to try to be more social for this convention. I like to set myself a challenge for this sort of thing, and this year is a combination of being social and networking. Now that I think of it, I should have made some business cards. I have postcards and bookmarks for my books, but I don't have regular business cards. I have inkjet card blanks, so I guess I'll add that to my to-do list.

For a career PR person, I really suck at publicity. That may be why I'm happier and doing better as a novelist. My PR career would have probably utterly floundered if I'd tried to stay in it. Or I would have gone insane.

I should probably set a goal for increasing my number of Twitter followers, or something like that, but I'm not even sure how to quantify that, and I'd rather have fewer followers who are really engaged than a lot who ignore me. Right now, I seem to have a few who mostly ignore me. I guess I need to come up with the kind of content that tends to spread.

Surviving Kindergarten

I have survived music and art camp. It actually wasn't too bad this year. The kids were a lot easier to control and better at following directions. It was odd that I didn't know most of them, and I know all the kids in that age group who go to my church, since I help with Sunday school for that group. It turns out that another church in town sent a big group of kids to this camp. I did quip to the director that it didn't say much for our kids if the kids who came from other churches were better behaved and easier to deal with.

Someone knew what they were doing in putting together the kindergarten team. Today I wore my "I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and ran away" t-shirt, one of the teen helpers was wearing a Sherlock shirt, and another was wearing a "Weasley's Wizard Wheezes" shirt. So we were the geek squad.

I think my biggest "awwww" moment came with one of the twins in my group. There were a boy and girl who were fraternal twins, and they came with a close friend who seemed to be practically another sister. The three of them stuck together like glue. We have a short snack/recess time on the playground, and the swings are these tire-like things that fit three kids on each swing. The little boy twin approached me early in the recess period, while the other kids were still eating their snack, and asked if I could push him on the swing by himself. "Sometimes I really like being alone," he told me, quite solemnly. I told him I totally understood. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a twin and want alone time. Unfortunately, he barely had any time on the swing by himself before his sister and their friend hurried over to join him. Today he told me that I reminded him of his Aunt Beth. I'm going to take that as a compliment.

I am now really understanding the parents who are excited about the return to school. I saw this piece on having a sense of humor about the first day of school and could relate, even after just a week with kids. It reminds me of my retired teacher parents who talk about enjoying thumbing their noses at the school bus in the morning now that they don't have to go to school.

But I now have just a few days before I head to WorldCon, and the epic to-do list is being pared. I may have been overly ambitious. I do think I'm going to indulge in a new phone, though. My "smart" phone is nearly five years old, and I kind of hate it. I'm thinking of getting an iPhone since I use a Mac anyway. Having easier e-mail access and being able to Tweet on the fly might be a good thing for this trip.

Writing Interesting Good Guys

It's tough out there for a good guy. If you look at reviews and Internet comments, villains, antiheroes, and bad-boy protagonists are the most loved characters, while the good guys are considered boring. But I believe that good guys can be just as interesting as bad boys and villains if you do it right, and considering the amount of fan mail I get for my good-boy heroes, I must be doing it right. So, here are some tips:

1) First, you have to love these characters, yourself
You can't expect readers to love a character you, yourself, find boring. If you don't love your good guys or only consider the nice boy to be a foil to the bad boy you find a lot more interesting, then you need to start over and create a character you do love.

2) Put just as much development into the good guys as you put into the bad guys, and make sure that shows on the page
For the cases where the writer doesn't necessarily dislike the good guys, I think laziness might be the culprit. It's easy to assume that a good person is automatically sympathetic, while it takes a lot more work to make a darker character sympathetic. That means that the bad boy or villain gets an extensively developed -- and described -- backstory, usually showing some kind of trauma, loss, or other negative experience that led to the character going bad, while the good guy is just good, for no apparent reason that's given, or else is shown having an idyllic life so that he was always good, without any challenges. So naturally, the bad boy is going to be seen as a lot more interesting and sympathetic. It seems to me that you need just as much explanation for how a truly heroic character became that way. It's not a normal human impulse to rush toward danger or to put other people ahead of oneself. It's also become something of a cliche that good arises out of privilege and evil arises out of hardship, but if you look at the real world, it's often just the opposite. While there are desperate people who turn to doing bad things or who never had good role models, a lot of the bad done in the world today comes from privilege. That's where you get spoiled people who expect the universe to revolve around them and who feel entitled -- that's where the snarky, swaggering "bad boys" often come from. On the other hand, going through hardship can make a person more empathetic and more likely to be able to look out for others. Get wild and crazy and mix it up a little in your fiction instead of going with the cliches. Think about what makes all of your characters tick. Flesh out all your characters, giving them traits, quirks, and flaws. Which brings us to …

3) Remember that good doesn't necessarily mean "perfect"
Even truly good people can have bad days. They can get impatient, lose their temper, be snarky, or get into bad moods. Heroes can have flaws. They might be slobs, eat junk food, be shopaholics, be shy, be disorganized, have tempers, etc., and when they have flaws, they're more interesting and easier to relate to. Good people can also have a sense of humor. They don't have to be humorless killjoys. They can have fun. They can have quotable lines.

4) Show, don't tell
This is one case where that age-old advice really applies. If you tell readers that a character is good and heroic -- and especially if the character considers himself good or heroic -- you'd better follow through in showing that person's actions to be good and heroic. Otherwise, the character looks like a Mary Sue or a hypocrite. In today's culture, a hypocrite may be even more despised than a villain who owns his or her villainy. It works even better not to tell anything at all. Just show the character's actions and let readers draw their own conclusions. Or if you really want to tug on readers' heartstrings, have the other characters put this person down and think the worst of him while you show him being awesome. A good rule of thumb is that what you show should always be better than what you tell, whether you're telling in narrative, through the character's own viewpoint, or through other characters' perspectives.

5) Give them goals
Quite often in fiction, the villain drives the story. The villain's the one with a clear-cut goal, and the hero's goal is mostly to stop the villain. That can make the villain more interesting than the hero because the villain is being proactive and the hero is just being reactive, which seems more passive. Even if the villain's goal is what forces the hero to act in the first place, let the hero be smart and at least a little proactive and come up with a plan for stopping the villain rather than just reacting to each thing the villain does. The hero can also have a positive goal, something he wants to achieve aside from just stopping the villain. For instance, if the villain is a tyrant the hero wants to overthrow, the hero should probably have a plan for what comes next, a vision for the society that will be created.

If you put this much effort into all your characters, it will elevate your story. They say that your hero is only as good as your villain, but I think your villain is only as good as your hero.

Kids in the Dark

I survived day two of Music and Art Camp. These kids really aren't that bad compared to some other classes I've had, but it's still exhausting. I usually spend my mornings sipping tea while catching up on the Internet, and instead I'm herding children from activity to activity, pushing them on swings during recess, dancing with them during movement time, marching around the room in tempo during music games, and singing with them in choir, which also involves a lot of standing and sitting (from kindergarten-sized chairs). Today, though, I was smart and took a little break during one of the activities. They have snacks for the volunteers, and I had a Snickers bar before I turned into some evil version of myself.

Then a power transformer down the street blew during closing time, so we had all the kids in a windowless auditorium with the power out. But they were pretty good and we just kept singing. The power came back, and we had most of the kids gone before it went out again, so we just took the remaining kids into a foyer that gets natural light to wait for their parents. A hundred or so kids singing a capella in the darkness was a rather nice moment.

I have copy edits back on the latest book, and I still don't have a title. Ack. I'll have to check with my agent to see how quickly she needs the finished book because with WorldCon next week, not a lot will get done this week, and my time at WorldCon is better spent mingling and promoting, then when I'm done mingling I have no energy or brainpower left.

Not that I have energy or brainpower left now. I think I may go do some shopping and take an item or two off the to-do list. I've realized that I've already worn most of my tops to past WorldCons, and while I don't expect that everyone remembers everything I've worn, if you've only seen someone a couple of times and every time they're wearing the same thing, that might be noticed.

Upgrading

This is going to be a busy week, since I'll be spending Monday through Thursday mornings doing music and art camp at church. I'm herding kindergarteners around, getting them from one activity to another. You wouldn't think that would be too taxing, but I'm utterly beat. This group of kids seems relatively easy, but I'm pretty much going non-stop from nine to noon, and I generally do all the activities with them, so I'm getting a workout. I'm seriously contemplating a nap this afternoon because I'm not sure how much good I'll be otherwise.

I'm glad I took a weekend off to celebrate my birthday with my parents. We didn't do much, just sat around and read and watched TV, but sometimes that's what you need. I took care of a bit of tech support for them and came out of it with a new-to-me TV. I'd been thinking about getting a bigger TV, since I have a nine-year-old 26-inch HDTV, but since I'm also hoping to move in the near future (once we get past the current housing bubble in this area -- prices shot up once speculators noticed an increase in demand) I didn't want to buy anything without knowing what might fit in a new place. But my parents got a new TV and offered me their old 32-inch TV. It's a nice little upgrade. Once I get the right stand for it and a new HDMI cable, I'm planning to put my old TV in my bedroom, replacing the 13-inch tube TV I had in my college dorm room. Since they went all digital and I had to get an adaptor in that room, I'll have HD in there, and I'll also put my old, pre-BluRray DVD player in there. I don't watch TV in my bedroom often, but next time I'm sick, I can watch TV in bed. It might also be nice on snow days to stay bundled up and watch movies while looking out the window at the snow. Or if I want to do an at-home staycation, I can replicate the hotel room experience, since about the only time I watch TV in bed is when I'm staying in a hotel.

But I think most of that work will have to wait until I get back from Worldcon, unless I get impatient. I don't have room for a traditional TV stand. What I have now is a child's table I bought as unfinished furniture and spray painted, and it holds the TV with the VCR and cable box sitting on top. With the flat panel TV, I'll need a shelf for the VCR, cable box, and DVD player. What I may do is see if I can find an even smaller table or stool that will fit under the current table to act as a "shelf." But I don't really have time this week for finishing furniture.

Other highlights of the week ahead: choir practice resumes, I need to do shopping and errands before my trip, I have some promo stuff to prepare, I have critiques to do, I have convention work to do, and I need to get some research reading done so I can brainstorm the sequel to Rebel Mechanics.

Guess which of these might happen today. Yep, reading that counts as "work" may be about all I'm up to doing.

WorldCon Prep

I just realized that I'm only about a week and a half away from WorldCon -- I checked the Spokane forecast and saw that they actually have a forecast for the first couple of days I'll be there. It looks like it will be refreshingly cool for me, and I'll need to bring a sweater. Highs in the upper 80s and lows in the upper 50s. I also have a lot to do between now and then, which will be even more fun because next week is Music and Art Camp at church, so I'll be tied up (depending on the kids I get, possibly literally) all morning Monday through Thursday.

I need to finish knitting a shawl, get some promo stuff prepared (final assembly will wait until arrival for easier transport), take care of shopping and preparation errands, do some FenCon PR work, critique the writers' workshop manuscripts, and maybe do some book research.

If you're going to be at WorldCon, or know someone who will be, I've been given a KaffeeKlatche session, which is an informal meet-and-greet around a table, presumably with beverages. You can sign up in advance for these, and so far I have one person signed up for mine. Sign up here so I won't feel sad and pathetic. I flounced enough about not getting recognized enough to get programming, so it would be really awful if I prove to be a nobody, after all.

And if you want to know what else I'll be doing, here's the rest of my programming.

I'm currently frantically re-reading/reading a lot of Terry Pratchett books in preparation for all the Discworld items. I imagine I'll have a slightly controversial take on the most dangerous person in Discworld, but I think I have textual evidence.

In other linky news, here's that blog post I had a flake attack about yesterday. I had it written in my head, which was a good thing considering I mixed up the due date with the posting date. This is what happens when I mix promo time and writing time.

Incidentally, I'm still open to doing guest posts or blog interviews, so if you are a book blogger or know one, give me a shout. Goodness knows, I need all the help I can get.

One of Those Days

It's being one of THOSE days. It started last night when a bad allergy attack hit right before I went to bed. I took Benadryl so I could stop sneezing enough to sleep, then slept hard for ten hours. Which meant I woke up two hours later than I planned. Then I checked my e-mail and found a gentle reminder about a guest blog post I was supposed to do. I hadn't forgotten it, but I'd marked it on my calendar and misinterpreted what I'd written down as the posting date as the date it was due. Panic! So I got that written and sent in time. Whew. And then I was planning to shoot my video, so I got all made up and dressed and was just about to start when they suddenly started the monthly alert siren test. One of the takes of my video shoot was interrupted by an "unknown number" cell phone call.

But I think I finally got a good take or two for the video. I could probably do better with more time, but it's probably silly to go too far overboard, considering the ones I've watched of other authors are mostly them just talking to their laptop cameras, and I plan to get a little fancier than that.

I have way more material than I can use for this one video, so I wonder if doing more like these and posting them to a YouTube channel would be a good promo tool. Would people be interested in that kind of thing? I'm way more into text and generally skip videos. I'd rather just read the information. But I know I'm not most people. And I do have that broadcasting degree I may as well use.

Now that I have makeup on, I suppose this is a good time to leave the house for errands, etc. I need to return library books, get my tires rotated and restock on day-to-day tea. It's a shame to waste a full makeup job. Though I might be overdressed for the tire store.

Characters, Emotions, and Other Issues

The to-do list was supposed to shrink, not grow! But I remembered stuff I'm supposed to be doing in the next two weeks. And then there are the simple projects that have taken on a life of their own. I had to adjust my plans for the week when I finally looked at the fall ballet schedule, since classes start this week. We've always had class on Tuesday nights, and I assumed that was the case, only to learn it's on Thursday now. I'd planned to go visit my parents on Thursday so I could stay a couple of days with them and come back Saturday in time for a meeting/get-together. So now it looks like I'll either skip the first week of class or go to my parents' house on Friday and come back Sunday morning, skipping the meeting. I like to have at least a whole day to hang out with my parents without having to travel, so I want to spend two nights. It's just a case of figuring out which event to skip.

In the meantime, I'm going into video production mode. My book is part of one of those subscription box things, and they've asked me to make a video for subscribers. I've watched some of the things other authors have done, and it looks like most of them just chat a bit on their webcam. I may escalate it a wee bit. I don't have time to do a full-scale production, but beware the person with a TV news degree and a Macintosh. The last time I made a video, we got the insane safety briefing video for FenCon. I think I'll be myself this time rather than playing a slightly deranged flight attendant.

On another note, I've found a couple of articles that have fit in with thinking I've been doing about characters and the way they're portrayed. First, there's this essay about the recent live-action Cinderella, getting into the concept that what's really radical about it is that it plays the story straight, without deconstructing it or questioning it. I think that explains a lot about why I loved it. Yeah, I like putting twists on familiar tales, but I think even when I'm twisting them, I'm keeping the heart of the original in mind rather than really deconstructing them. I'm not doing anything crazy like making the villains heroes or showing that the heroes are actually the ones to blame.

Then there's this list of stupid characters that now seem to be in every movie (language advisory -- the writer seems to think that profanity makes his point stronger). That would explain why I don't see a lot of movies these days, and especially explains why I didn't bother with the latest Terminator. To quote a passage from the article: "In 1984, Kyle Reese was wiry, desperate, and had PTSD flashbacks thanks to growing up as a feral child in the middle of an irradiated robot apocalypse. In 2015, Kyle Reese is a swole-up supermodel exchanging good-natured jabs with an aged robot dad who represents the waking hell of his entire childhood."

I think a lot of my problem with recent movies -- and even a lot of recent TV -- is that the characters aren't allowed to have normal human reactions to what they go through. Yeah, heroes are supposed to be better and braver than the rest of us, but that doesn't mean they don't have normal emotions. They just don't let those emotions stop them from doing what needs to be done. They still get scared, hurt, and angry. We care more about them if we see them getting scared, hurt, and angry, and we're more concerned about their outcome.

I've also noticed that "kickass female character" trend -- the woman portrayed as awesome and filling out a checklist of "awesome" traits who ends up playing very little role in the actual story. She's kickass window dressing instead of useless window dressing, but she's still more scenery than she is pivotal.

And now I think I need to bring my BluRay of the original Terminator with me to my parents' house to watch on their new big TV. And maybe Aliens. I seem to be in a mood for 80s science fiction action movies all of a sudden.

Ghostly Roommates

I finished the book! And then I collapsed. There was brain melting in front of the TV on Friday night, then a lot of lying around on Saturday and a movie night in front of the TV that evening. More lying around on Sunday. Which means today is Get Stuff Done Day. I need to clean the house, catch up on some business stuff like bookkeeping, start coming up with some promotional ideas to give all my books a boost (the new one seems to be vanishing into the ether, which is rather alarming), and start getting ready for WorldCon. Eep.

The towering to-do list just makes me want to curl up in a corner and ignore it all, but I suppose I really must be an adult about it.

Saturday night's movie was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which I loved on some levels but also found a little frustrating. It started so well, then petered out in the last quarter or so before tacking on an ending that was nice but that seemed to come abruptly out of nowhere because of the petering out. Stan, my ghost, is totally falling down on the job for not dictating guaranteed bestselling books to me (I know the stuff I write can't possibly have been dictated by Stan. It's not his style).

Oh, and in case you're new and don't know about Stan, Stan is my imaginary ghost who gets blamed for anything I can't find. I figure that if something isn't where I expect it to be, someone must have moved it, and since I live alone that must mean I have a ghost. He must be very fond of 80s music because those are the CDs that tend to disappear, and that makes sense because this house was built in 1984, and I have the wallpaper evidence that it was initially a very 80s bachelor pad. The target homeowners for these houses were airline crews, as we're very close to the airport and the floorplan seems designed for roommates, with both bedrooms being "master" suites and two living areas. So I made up this whole backstory of the swinging 80s bachelor airline pilot who died tragically and now haunts this townhouse, moving my stuff around.

But that movie made me want to write some kind of ghost romance. I'm not sure how it would work, though, and it's not like I need more story ideas at the moment, given the number of fictional universes currently running around in my head. Maybe I should just write the chronicles of my life with Stan, which would not be a romance, more like the story of a not entirely peaceful coexistence. How's this for a title: "If You're Going to Mess with My CDs, At Least Alphabetize Them"?

But that's a project for later. I have Stuff To Do today.