Girlfriends Cyber Circuit Presents Alyson Noel

I had a big breakthrough yesterday in figuring out the other main character for The Nagging Idea, and now I think I know what makes him tick. It's fun to feel things starting to fall into place. It's like learning a Mozart choral work, where there are all these complicated things going on that don't seem to have anything to do with each other, but then once you've got your part down, it suddenly seems to snap into place with everything else, and then you can't imagine why it wasn't obvious from the start. Or maybe that's just me (I think I was annoying the people in my section last night at rehearsal when I started giggling madly after suddenly getting how it fit together so that this part that had seemed really hard became really easy because obviously that was the only way it could go).

Those who've been around here a while may remember me talking about a book called The Anatomy of Story and pondering the author's assertion that the characters needed to not only have a psychological failing (a character flaw that mostly hurts themselves) but also a moral failing where they're actually hurting others in the way they insist on doing things. This may be the first book I write where I actually have some element of that. We'll see if I can pull that off.

In the meantime, I'll talk about other people's books! This must be a big book-release phase because I've got another Girlfriends Cyber Circuit author on tour, Alyson Noel. The last time I went to New York, I went with Alyson and her husband to this really cool swing club where she knew the bandleader. So now I guess it's my turn to play hostess in a virtual cyber sense to talk about Evermore, the first book in her new Immortals series.

Sixteen-year-old Ever used to have two parents, a little sister, a dog, and a nice house in Oregon. She used to be a varsity cheerleader and go to school dances. But that was before the horrible accident that claimed the lives of her family.

Now Ever blares the Sex Pistols through her headphones and hides under her hoodie in class. She doesn’t need to listen to hear, or see to know. All she needs is to touch someone to know their entire life story, not to mention always seeing their auras and hearing their thoughts. She’s been branded a freak at her new high school in Laguna Beach as she goes out of her way to avoid human contact, but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste.

From the moment Ever first looks at Damen, she feels an instant recognition. He is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy, and he holds many secrets. Damen is able to make things appear and disappear, he always seems to know what she’s thinking—and he’s the only one who can silence the noise and the random energy in her head. She doesn’t know who he really is—or what he is. Damen is equal parts light and darkness, and he belongs to an enchanted new world where no one ever dies, and nothing is as it seems…



And now, the interview:
Was there any particular inspiration behind this book?
Well, a few years ago I lost three people I loved in five horrible months, and just when the dust began to settle my husband was diagnosed with leukemia and it felt like my entire world was crashing down. A year later, when he was in full remission, I wrote SAVING ZOE and CRUEL SUMMER, both of which explore the subject of grief and unavoidable change. But when it came time to write my next book, I realized I wasn’t finished exploring those themes though I wanted to do so in a much different way, by giving the story a paranormal twist and pushing the boundaries between life and death, and EVERMORE just came pouring out of me.

What, if anything, do you have in common with the heroine of your book?
Despite the fact that I’m not currently 16 years old or psychic, I totally get how Ever feels in the world—sort of jolted, misplaced. That’s exactly how I felt when I was her age.

Being able to read the thoughts of others and know everything about them makes life difficult for Ever, but I think there might have been times when I was a teen that I would have wanted to do that. Would you have wanted that kind of power as a teen, and what would you most have wanted to find out? Or is there something you really wouldn't have wanted to know?
As a teen, I definitely would have wanted that power, but now—not so much. As Ever says, “Sometimes even your best friends can think some pretty unflattering things, and not having an off switch requires a heck of a lot of forgiveness.” Though I’m sure I would’ve just squandered that kind of power back then. Using it primarily to peer inside a certain boy’s head, instead of, you know, getting answers to a test or something truly useful like that!

This is your first novel with paranormal elements. What led you to delve into the world of the "woo-woo"?
You know, I’ve been fascinated by all things paranormal since I was a kid—seriously, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST was my favorite cartoon—so I’m actually kind of surprised that it took me so long to write one of my own. But I’m so glad I did because writing this series has been an absolute blast, allowing me to delve into all sorts of mystical things I’ve always been curious about. I took a three day psychic development seminar with world renowned medium, James Van Praagh, and went under hypnosis in a past life regression with bestselling author, Dr. Brian Weiss—all under the guise of “research” of course!

What are you working on now?
I recently finished BLUE MOON, the second book in my IMMMORTALS series, that’ll be in stores on 08.04.09, and I’m about half way through the next book in the series, which, for the moment I refer to as UNTITLED BOOK #3, though I’m sure the title will change! And then there’s UNTITLED BOOKS #4 & 5 following that!

Is there anything else you'd like to say about this book or the process of writing it?
Not only is this my first foray into the paranormal, but it’s also my first stab at writing a series, which I’ve found to be completely different from writing a stand-alone. And since I’ve never been any good at goodbyes, it’s been really nice to just settle into this world I’ve created and hang out with my characters a little longer than usual.

(I think that's the main reason everything I write seems to turn into a series.)

For more info, visit Alyson's web site. Or buy the book from Amazon.

Judging an Idea

I've got another reader question about writing that's pretty timely, considering this is where I am right now in the writing process: Can you tell when an idea is powerful and has the potential to be great, and when it's just a silly idea that probably isn't worth developing, or do you need to develop the idea to its limits in order to know?

On a purely non-scientific level, I often judge ideas by the "tingle test." The best ideas are the ones that make me stop and go "oooooh!" and I get tingly all over. It's like time comes to a stop. I remember that I was three steps from the top of my staircase and froze when I got the first inkling of an idea for what became Enchanted, Inc.

But that sort of thing happens with a lot of ideas, not all of which pan out. The lasting ideas are the ones that haunt me, that I find myself thinking about at odd and random times, or that take over my brain to the point I can't really concentrate on what I'm trying to work on.

On a more methodical level, you can put an idea to the test by doing the usual things you'd do to develop a book. Think about what characters would be involved in this idea. What conflicts are inherent in the idea? What kinds of things might happen?

However, not being able to think of characters, conflict and events doesn't mean it's not a good idea. Books generally don't spring fully formed from your head so that you just have to transcribe the first thing that pops into your brain. The idea is only a spark. You'll probably have to do some work to develop even the most brilliant idea. You'll have to develop characters, determine their conflicts, plan events, etc. You may even need to do research on related or relevant topics. (Mind you, this probably only works for those who are plotters. If you're someone who just writes without any planning, I have no idea how things would work. You probably just have to start writing.)

I sometimes think of my brain's "idea center" as like those hopper things they use to select lottery numbers, the ones where the balls pop around like popcorn until one comes flying out. I have all these ideas or idea fragments flying around in my head. Every so often one comes to the surface, where I play with it a bit and develop it a bit more, and then it goes back into the hopper. Sometimes two ideas will collide and merge into a bigger idea. When it's time to write the book, the idea will come flying out of the hopper like a winning lottery number. For instance, when I first came up with the idea for my series, what struck me was the thought "Bridget Jones meets Harry Potter" because I wanted something with the magic of the Harry Potter series, but in a more adult setting, with the working world instead of school. That was all I had for a while. One day when I was playing with the idea, I thought it would need to take place in New York. I had another idea fragment in my head that was inspired by my first trip to New York and the way I responded to the city, with the sense of being a small-town southern girl in the city. That seemed to fit this idea. Then later I was thinking that my small-town girl would have to learn about magic somehow. The standard fantasy plot is that she would discover she had magical powers, but I thought that was kind of a cliche and it would be more interesting to maybe go the opposite direction and have magic not affect her at all. Still more facets of the idea came to me when I started doing research, and then more when I was discussing the idea with an editor. It's one of the best ideas I've ever had, but the initial idea took a lot more development before it could become a book, and it was more than a year and a half from the time I got the initial idea to the time I started writing the book.

So I guess the bottom-line answer is that there's no sure-fire way to know an idea is good without doing quite a bit of work. In general, I'd say the best ideas are the ones that excite you because then you'll be willing -- even eager -- to do the work that it takes to develop them to their maximum potential and you'll be excited enough about the idea to stick with it until you've turned it into a book. You probably have something if either you're willing to spend a year thinking about the idea or if you can't wait to start writing it -- and then actually finish it instead of losing interest. That's the real acid test of an idea for me, if I start writing it and then find myself not caring all that much.

Something else to consider is how unique and marketable your idea is. Take a look at the appropriate section of the bookstore, browse Amazon, do a Google search or follow the deal reports at Publisher's Marketplace to see if there's anything on the market that sounds like your idea. But don't get too excited about your idea being either too similar to existing books or totally unique. As long as your story isn't exactly like something else, especially something recent and famous, it's mostly about execution, and a really interesting take on even a tired subject can be successful. At the same time, if there's absolutely nothing like it out there, that could be a sign that there's no market for that thing. On the other hand, you could start the trend. The important thing to find out is whether or not there's something too similar on many levels, how recent it was and how successful it was. Something that bears a striking similarity in too many ways to something recent and famous or to something that just about every publisher has already published their version of probably won't be very marketable at this time. Ditto with something along the lines of something that recently bombed spectacularly (but give it time, things will come back around). The most marketable concepts are those that put a new twist on something familiar that is currently successful, but don't get too hung up on how marketable an idea is if it's really haunting you because you never know, and it really is mostly about the execution.

It would be nice, though, if there were some kind of idea-vetting flow chart or Internet quiz that could tell you right away whether or not the idea was a good one. I've gone so far as to write a whole book proposal before realizing that the idea was fundamentally flawed (and that I didn't care what happened to any of the characters).

Now, any more questions about writing?

Character Histories

In case anyone was wondering, according to a test that's been going around among my friends, I am officially an Uber Cool Nerd Queen. Sounds about right.





I think I've got the preliminary research down -- the stuff I need to develop the characters and plot the book. The delving into German web sites may come later when I'm writing the actual book and need more specifics.

I'm going into the character development phase, and this is going to be more complicated and involved than usual for me. I generally focus on where the character is now, with just enough background to make the character make sense. When I come up with background, it's often reverse engineered to explain why the character is the way he is. For instance, I didn't even realize Owen had a backstory until I was almost done writing the first book. I just knew he was terribly shy, but I didn't know why. In a way, I think that was for the best because it didn't really matter in that book, and when you know too much about characters, there's a temptation to throw in all the stuff you know, even though it doesn't matter. I've woven in a bit of it and planted clues in the other books, and that's mostly what book 5 was supposed to be about, but it wasn't something I thought about before writing the first book.

But in this case, the situation the main characters are in at the beginning of the book is kind of complicated, and to depict them where they are I need to have a really strong sense of where they've been up to that point. That means really getting into their heads at various places in their past -- not just a biography, but really understanding what it was like for them and how certain events affected them. Then the real challenge once I've done all that work and thinking will be to leave most of it out of the book itself. I need to know it to depict the characters the way they are at the time of the story, but readers will only need to know a tiny amount. One of the clues of a less-experienced writer is the urge to put everything in the book, often in the first chapter. I've critiqued or judged a lot of manuscripts where the first chapter is essentially all the character development work. Sadly, a fair number of books get published with that stuff. It seems to be pretty commonplace in romance, where the first chapter often seems to involve the hero staring out at sea/his lands and thinking about everything that's happened in his life to bring him to that point and then the heroine riding in a carriage while thinking about everything in her life up to that point, you know, the "After her father lost his fortune she had to become a governess, and then she worked for a cruel employer so she was understandably nervous as she approached the imposing gates of Whatever Hall" scene. Except usually it's longer than that. There's also a temptation with difficult characters whose current behavior may not be stellar to try to excuse or explain it up front -- she's a bitch because her parents abused her and nobody loved her, he's a jerk who hates women because the woman he loved betrayed him. While there may be an explanation for the behavior, excusing it up front can make it seem like the characters themselves are making excuses for themselves. But not giving any explanation can leave the characters appearing unsympathetic, so readers don't care what happens to them and don't get into the book.

All this is why I may end up putting more time into the thinking phase of this book than I do into the writing phase of it. (In other words, Mom, you're not going to see pages for a while, so chill. And, yes, I am working, even if I don't have something tangible to show for it.)

The Subconscious Strikes Again

Well, it turned out that I needed the chocolate for Friday Night Lights. For Battlestar Galactica I probably needed valium. I think that was the most intense hour of TV I've watched in ages, and supposedly the next episode will be even more intense. I love Friday Night Lights, but the problem is that it's almost too realistic. They manage that slice of life feeling, and shooting on location makes it even more real, so it's almost like we're snooping on real people, and then the things they go through are not just things I can imagine. Since I'm from a small Texas town, some of those things are what I have gone through or seen people go through. Except, in my town, it was often the band boosters who had the power (though they never would have dared confront the band director), and there were years when the football team mostly existed to provide a performance venue for the marching band.

I mostly got through Friday night, both the depression and the intensity, by flipping over to the show tunes channel during commercial breaks. A little Spamalot during the mutiny helped a great deal.

In other TV notes, just as a reminder to those who are interested (Mom), Chuck is back tonight. Supposedly, it's a 3D episode. At one point I had a pair of 3D glasses from a really cheapo touring production of Starlight Express, where the way they handled the race scenes was to lower a screen over the stage and show a 3D film of the race instead of actually doing the races (though I imagine building the tracks out into the auditorium would be nearly impossible in a touring production). I'm just not sure if I still have the glasses or where I might have put them. Even if you're an "everything in its place" person, it's not like there's an easily remembered, obvious place to put away a pair of 3D glasses. 3D doesn't always work on me, anyway. It just gives me a headache, and I already have a headache (thanks to yet another drastic weather change), so I may listen to Chuck tonight instead of watching intently.

Meanwhile, my subconscious continues to amaze me. Once I decided to use a particular area where I used to live as a setting, I had a vague recollection of my German teacher in fifth grade telling us about some local legend in that area that had some similarities to the Nagging Idea. A little Googling turned up one thing about how yet another very famous legend may possibly be based on something that happened in that area, but that wasn't the one I was originally thinking of. But then I found the story my teacher had told us, and it turns out that it involved the castle over the village next to where I lived, and there was even a name involved in that story that's similar to what I'd been thinking of naming one of my characters. So, I'd decided on the setting mostly because it was familiar to me and I have photos of it, and it turns out there are two legends linked to that area that have things in common with my story idea. I'm mostly using the real-world setting as a basis for an imaginary fantasy setting, but it's cool when things fall into place like that. It means that it really might feel like the kind of thing that could happen in a place like that.

And now that I've done some additional research, I'm wishing I could go back for a visit. I found out things about the area that I didn't realize were there when we lived there, and now I want to see them. Plus, it's not a really famous touristy area. Most of the info I've found has been from British newspapers, with articles on how it's odd that Brits don't visit this place more often. The official tourism information I've found is only in German (which could be why Brits don't visit more often). I'm pushing my ability to decipher German to the limit. I can navigate the country, even using a map written in German (except in cases where the map happens to show a completed Autobahn where they're still shoving dirt around, but that's hardly my fault). I can read a restaurant menu. I can even generally figure out historical markers and other info like that. This is going to require a good dictionary.

Ah, the things I go through for my art. But the Nagging Idea is making me kind of tingly, with that "Oh, yeah, this is it" sense, and I really want to do it justice. I want the book to be as good as the idea.

I did learn from my research that they've closed the American garrison in that area. That's like hearing they've closed down your hometown. It's a little upsetting. Not that I know anyone there, but I did go back once as an adult, and now it's weird to think that it may not be there anymore. I don't know what they did with the buildings, if they turned them over to the civilian city and if maybe the houses are just available to anyone or if they're being torn down.

Girlfriends Cyber Circuit Presents Diana Rodriguez Wallach

I actually got praised for doing something really well at ballet class last night -- and then I promptly messed up the next thing I did. It doesn't look like ballet will be a viable fallback career if this writing thing doesn't work out. In writing news, I think I've settled on a setting for the Nagging Idea, but the danger of doing location research is that it makes me want to travel (and in this case, it also makes me homesick for a place I used to live).

Before I go dig through old photos and wear out Google, I've got another Girlfriends Cyber Circuit guest author, Diana Rodriguez Wallach, author of Adios to All the Drama.

Mariana Ruiz thought she left her summer fling in Puerto Rico, that is until she finds Alex sitting across from her at the breakfast table. Living two doors down from her visiting old flame isn’t easy, especially given the unresolved sparks still lingering for her locker buddy Bobby—and they don’t exactly go unnoticed.

Her best friends are little help as Madison deals with her IM-only “boyfriend” and Emily sinks into secret mode after her parents’ recent breakup. The only relationship that seems to be working is her estranged aunt Teresa who’s tying the knot on New Years with Mariana and her cousin Lilly as bridesmaids. But the last wedding detail left unplanned is who will Mariana kiss at midnight?



Now the interview:
What was the inspiration behind this book?
Well, Adios to All the Drama is the third book in the series. So it was inspired by the two books that came before. However, the first book in the series, Amor and Summer Secrets, was initially inspired by a conversation with my agent, Jenoyne Adams. She had mentioned seeing a recent increase in interest from editors seeking multi-cultural novels, and she asked the infamous question, “Got any ideas?” I didn’t. But by the end of our conversation, I had pitched the story for what became Amor and Summer Secrets.

Part of the inspiration was derived from my first trip to Puerto Rico after I graduated from college. I met my relatives there for the first time, and I got to see where my dad grew up. I wanted to share some of those experiences with my character while showcasing that the stereotypes about Latinas are just that—stereotypes.

What (if anything) do you have in common with your heroine?
Well, clearly I gave my main character, Mariana, my ethnic background. There aren’t a lot of Polish Puerto Ricans out there. So that’s a dead giveaway. And many of the experiences that Mariana faces while coming to turns with her multi-cultural identity are similar to my own.

Additionally, the town in Puerto Rico where Mariana’s family is from, Utuado, is the same town where my dad grew up. And I gave Mariana’s father, Lorenzo, some biographical tidbits from my dad’s life. But the story is entirely fictional, as are the character’s personalities.

How does this new book relate to the previous books in your series -- could readers jump in here, or should they read the earlier ones, first?

I would definitely suggest reading the others first. While each book is a story in itself, there is background information needed to full appreciate each tale. And I think it’s important to see how Mariana grows from the first book Amor and Summer Secrets to now the third book Adios to All The Drama. The stories are a direct continuation. So each book picks up exactly where the last left off; and by that I mean the next day.

What was the biggest drama you faced as a teen, and how big does it seem now to you, in retrospect?
Physics. Wow, do I suck at physics. You have to take into account that I was in the National Honor Society, and I’m a typical Type-A overachiever. As a teen, I wasn’t used to having to work hard for anything. And then along came Level 1 Physics. It was the first time I was actually studying and still failing tests. I fought with my parents constantly—screamed, stormed out, the whole works. They eventually got me a tutor, and it still didn’t help. I seriously thought I had a Physics-specific learning disability, because I could not solve those word problems for the life of me.

Ultimately, I insisted on being dropped down to Level 2. My parents weren’t happy (hence, where I get my overachiever gene) but the decision saved my sanity. It was the first time I stood up to my parents, did what I thought was best for me, and was forced to realize that it was okay if I wasn’t good at something.

Now, when I meet a physicist, I give them the Wayne’s World “I’m not worthy” wave, because I truly know their brains work on a level completely separate from my own.

(That's one drama I was spared, and boy, was it potential drama, as my dad was the physics teacher at my school. But I had to have two years of Spanish to get into the college I wanted, and the only Spanish II class was at the same time as the physics class.)

Do you have any writing quirks or habits?
I’m not a morning person—at all. So I usually don’t start writing until the afternoon, and consequently I don’t turn off my laptop until midnight. Overall, I wouldn’t say I’m very ritualistic, but when it comes to the first draft, I almost always write at the desk in my house and listen to music on Comcast TV (either the ‘90s channel or ‘adult alternative’). For revisions, I’m more flexible. Since I live in Philly, I’m a slave to the seasons, and often a victim of cabin fever. So when it’s warm, I’ll work on my patio. And when it’s cold, I’ll move to a coffee shop.

Chocolate: dark or milk?
Dark, always dark. And it has less calories.

What are you working on now?
I am hard at work on a new young adult story. It’s a complete departure from my Amor series—lots of spies, suspense, fight scenes and, of course, a love triangle. I’m really excited about it. Plus I get to travel because I’m setting some scenes in Europe. And the main character is a lot of fun to write. She’s much cooler than I am, all about girl power, and her dialogue is very punchy. I hope to have it ready for the publishing world soon!

For more info, check out Diana's web site. Or buy the book from Amazon.

And now I think it's time to start chocolate loading so I can watch Battlestar Galactica tonight without feeling the need to slit my wrists.

One More Harry Potter Thing

The ice appears to be on its way out. My porch and sidewalk are almost clear, but the driveway was still a skating rink first thing this morning. I may be able to leave the house today!

After posting about my notebook/journal collection habits, I've started using one of the nice leather-bound journals to record the books I read. I'd been keeping that list in a spiral notebook, but since the point of keeping the list is being able to refer to it later, and since spiral pages tear out so easily, keeping it in a nice journal book makes more sense. However, the journal I first unwrapped to use for that purpose turned out to be something different. It's not just a blank book. It seems to fit into some kind of daytimer system, or maybe it's meant as a diary. It's not date-specific, but each page has a blank for the date at the top, then most of a page of blank lines. There are perforated notches on the top corner of each page, so you can tear them off to show which page you're on, I guess (though it also has an attached ribbon bookmark). The really odd part is that the bottom inch and a half or so on each page is a separate section. On that is a grid of little squares, three down and eleven across, and that section is perforated separately, so you can detach that part from the page. I've never seen something like that, and it didn't come with instructions, so I have no idea how that's meant to be used. Has anyone seen anything like this before, and can you explain it to me? I'm sure it's some kind of organizational/planning system that will change my life, so I don't want to miss out.

A comment yesterday reminded me that there was one more thing I liked about the Harry Potter series that I forgot to mention. I like the treatment of good vs. evil and nice vs. nasty.

Spoilers ahead!

On the cosmic level, Good and Evil were white and black, absolutes. You were either opposing Voldemort and what he stood for, or you were at least passively allowing his ideas to prevail. A recurring theme in the series was that it wasn't even okay to side with the bad guys to save your own life, that there are causes worth dying for and that evil must be opposed, no matter what the personal cost may be. Saving your own life by betraying others means that the rest of your life will be worthless, as shown by the fate of Peter Pettigrew, who betrayed his friends to save his own life, and then spent the next ten years as a rat and then who spent the rest of his life after that as an abused flunky, only to be killed by Voldemort, which was the fate he'd been trying to avoid in the first place. On the other hand, those who were willing to die for their beliefs managed to gain some benefit from that, such as the power that came from Lily's sacrifice for her son.

But on a more earthly level, there were a lot of shadings. For one thing, being on the side of cosmic Good didn't mean that someone was necessarily nice. Snape may have been vindicated as having been on the good side all along, and he was a hero for the cause at great personal sacrifice, but he was still a jerk who held petty grudges, showed favorites as a teacher and who was quite a bully -- yeah, he had some reason for hating Harry (not that it was Harry's fault), but he tormented Neville just because he could. I liked that Rowling didn't fully redeem Snape. She vindicated him, yes, but he never saw the error of his ways, never apologized for his behavior, and he never changed. Sirius and James were shown to have been bullies as kids, and Sirius was still a hothead who got his priorities skewed at times. Lupin was an emotional coward. And then on the Evil side, there were still people who had positive impulses. Narcissa Malfoy saved Harry's life (and thus saved the day) because her love for her son was greater than her allegiance to Voldemort. Again, she wasn't really redeemed because she never recanted her belief in the things that Voldemort stood for. She just had other, personal priorities that happened to be positive and good.

So, you could be Good and still be nasty to people you didn't like (even people on your side), and you could be Evil and still be nice to people you cared about. And disliking someone personally doesn't mean that person is evil.

There was also the fact that mistakes didn't have to be permanent. Good people could screw up and redeem themselves, and evil people could see the error of their ways, repent and join the side of good (more Christian symbolism). On the minor side, there was Ron, gifted with the Deluminator that would always allow him to find his way back. There was Percy the Prodigal, who rejected his parents' teachings to pursue his own ambition, which meant he ended up working against the side of Good, and then he came back into the fold at the critical time. There was Snape, who joined the Death Eaters, then turned his back on them and went to work on the side of good (though he still had to deal with the consequences of his earlier actions). Dumbledore had toyed with the ideas Voldemort later represented, and he was able to recognize his personal weaknesses to avoid that temptation again. Even Voldemort had the chance to face what he'd done and accept that pain, and he could have been saved.

I suppose you could say that I liked that Good and Evil were absolute, but that there were still nuances within that.

I finished my amateur Shakespeare yesterday, so now I have to think about how that applies to the Nagging Idea (or even if it does). I also have some research to do.

Revisiting Harry Potter: What I Loved

I think I really impressed my agent with how on-the-ball my blog readers are. Y'all had given me the heads up on the screenwriter announcement long before the film agent forwarded the Variety article to my agent. In fact, my e-mail to my agent asking if she knew about it arrived just before the film agent's e-mail. I had known they were in talks with a screenwriter, and I knew who it was. I just didn't know that it had become a done deal. Even though it was an announcement of something I already knew something about, seeing the announcement was really exciting. I never imagined there would be something about me in Variety! It pretty much distracted me the rest of the day.

Now, though, it's back to reality, even though it's sort of a snow day. All the school districts around here are closed because we got a fair amount of rain last night while the temperatures were in the 20s. It's still not above freezing, but the ice seems to be melting where the sun is hitting it. Unfortunately, my front porch and front walk don't get direct sunlight, so it's like an ice rink out there. I just got an e-mail saying there would be choir tonight, but I will wait to see what conditions are like before I go. If the walk is still icy, I'm not going anywhere, and after the melting, if it goes back below freezing after dark, it could get really ugly. The icicles are pretty, though. I have a tile roof, which means the icicles are perfectly spaced along the eaves.

So, now that I've criticized the Harry Potter series, I'll talk about what I liked, and I'll have to narrow it down to a few big things. I was probably predisposed to like it, since I love whimsy, I love things that butt the magical world up against the real world, and I've always had a thing for books taking place in British boarding schools. But here are some specific things I particularly loved about the series (and there will be spoilers here for the whole series):

I loved the detailed plotting, the way something that seemed like nothing turned out to be major later, like the way there was all that talk in the very first book about how impossible it would be to break into the bank, and then in the last book they had to break into the bank (and I wonder if that was planned all along, or if all the talk about how impossible it was became an inspiration to make the characters have to do it), or like there was a throwaway line in the fourth book when Ron makes a wisecrack about how it's too bad Draco's mother loves him (because she wouldn't let him go to the more far-away school), and then Draco's mother's love for her son turned out to be the deciding factor that was the turning point of the whole thing. That really gave a sense that Rowling knew where she was going with the series and had a plan. It also meant that each time I re-read the earlier books, the most recent book would have changed my perceptions of them, so it was almost like getting an entirely new book.

I loved the characters and the way the children grew from 11 to 18 over the course of the books in a fairly believable way. Our three main characters seemed like real kids. They may have been good and brave and managed to save the world from bad magic, but they also complained about doing their homework, got into the kind of silly spats real kids get into, went through growing pains, had teachers that were out to get them, dealt with bullies, learned to realize that their favorite teachers weren't necessarily the best teachers, and a whole host of things that were easy to relate to. One of my tests of good fantasy characters is if they'd be interesting to me even if you took the magic out of the mix, and I think these would be. I've already talked about how Hermione is basically me from that age, but I also had a lot I could relate to in Ron and Harry. I even liked the adult characters, and the fact that their relationships to the kids changed as the kids got older. I think the fact that the adults were real characters and not just Charlie Brown "Mwa mwa mwa" people may have been part of the reason these books went so far beyond the child/teen audience. They were books about people of all ages that just happened to be told through a child's perspective.

I liked the sense of innocence. The kids may have been expected (especially as they got older) to do some pretty adult things (like saving the world from bad magic), but socially, they were allowed to be kids, something that's pretty rare these days. These were teenagers to whom a kiss was a big deal. There wasn't any peer pressure for rainbow parties (Mom, you don't want to know), sex, drugs or heavy alcohol use -- the kinds of things a lot of young adult authors throw in to try to make their books "relevant" or "contemporary." Rowling didn't even attempt to be edgy. I think that's going to prove to be a good call for the potential timelessness of the series. Although she ended up placing them specifically in time in the last book with the grave marker giving actual dates, there's a sort of timelessness to the wizarding world, and by making no effort to give the kids "contemporary" touches, I think she kept the books from being something that will seem dated ten or twenty years (or more) from now. In fact, future editions could even change the dates on that grave marker, and it wouldn't really have to change anything about the rest of the series.

I must admit to cackling with glee when I got near the end of the last book and realized that it was turning out to be the most overt Christian allegory since The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, especially given the over-the-top fear response to these books by certain portions of the Christian community (what I have sometimes called the East Texas Taliban). I'd had a sneaking suspicion things were heading in that direction from the start because I'd noticed a lot of symbolism and imagery, but I wasn't sure how much I was reading into it because of my own worldview. And then, just to make it very clear, Rowling admitted to it all in the big NBC interview. I love the validation of the fact that fantasy is not automatically anti-Christian. So, yeah, I found it highly ironic that all those religious groups were burning something that actually was in support of their beliefs. I'm equally impressed with the way that I think you can still enjoy the series on the surface level without taking the theological approach.

Most of all, though, I loved the sense of community that built around these books, and I'm not talking about the fandom factions online, the wizard rock, the conventions, or any of that stuff. There was just something cool about reading something at the same time as a lot of other people. I had jury duty the Monday after the release of the fifth book, and that created an instant bond as so many people in the jury pool room were reading the book. I've been able to get into conversations with airplane seatmates about these books. Just before the release of the last book, I was in the middle of a re-read of the earlier books and had one with me when I took the train downtown. Half the people in my car were reading one of these books, and when the train stopped abruptly between stations, someone commented that it looked like the Dementors had stopped the train, and the whole car got a chuckle out of it. How many books are there where you can make an offhand (and even a little obscure) wisecrack relating to a book, and everyone around gets it? Wouldn't it be lovely if books could permeate society like that more often? If reading a new book on release day became as big a deal as seeing a movie the day it comes out -- and more often than just one or two series?

Newsflash: The Enchanted, Inc. Screenwriter

Since it's been announced in Variety, I suppose it's safe for me to announce this:

They've hired a screenwriter for the film version of Enchanted, Inc.!

The screenwriter is Steven Rogers, who did the screenplays for P.S., I Love You (oops!), Stepmom, Hope Floats and Kate and Leopold.

Although I did have issues with the parts of P.S., I Love You that I was able to watch, I loved Hope Floats and Kate and Leopold. In fact, I got a lot of inspiration for the way Philip, my former enchanted frog guy, would act in modern New York from watching Kate and Leopold, and Hope Floats was one of the movies I watched in my inspiration/mood-setting "retreat" before I wrote Don't Hex With Texas. It would seem that he gets both small-town Texas and odd or magical stuff in New York, so I think he's a good fit.

Now, before anyone gets too excited, hiring a screenwriter doesn't mean the movie is definite. It's just a step in the process. But it is a step along the way.

If you want the official details, here's the article in Variety.

It's also on Sci Fi Wire. And MovieWeb. And a number of either science fiction/fantasy or film-related blogs. It seems like there's a lot of discussion about similarities to Enchanted or concerns about it being Sex and the City meets Charmed. Anyone who cares to comment at any of these blogs based on having actually read the book is more than welcome to do so.

Revisiting Harry Potter: The Criticisms

First, I'd like to wish my parents a happy wedding anniversary!

I don't know if it's a case of "cold and rainy, yay!" or if I really am starting to recover from the January groggies, but I was up and at 'em way earlier this morning than I have been lately, and I'm even moderately alert. It's a good thing I hit the grocery store yesterday, as we've got ice storm warnings now. It's hovering right at freezing and is raining, with the temperature dropping. Judging by the speed of the cars on the road going past my office window, I'd say the roads haven't iced up yet (and if they keep going this speed after it ices up, it will be highly entertaining. I may make popcorn.).

So, as I mentioned, since Christmas I've been re-reading the entire Harry Potter series, and since I never discussed the seventh book at all, I'll address the whole series now. That means there will be spoilers for the whole series, but I figure that since it's been a year and a half since the last book came out, if you care, you'll have read it by now.

I think I was more critical in this read-through than I have been in the past, especially in the earlier books that I'm more familiar with. I'd read criticisms about the writing, and this time, when I wasn't necessarily so caught up in the story that the words themselves became invisible, I have to admit that I noticed that the writing was a bit clunky in places, especially once things got to the point that they quit editing because they were rushing the books into production. I would say that the writing in the third book is the strongest because she had obviously grown as a writer since the earlier books and she was still being edited. For the most part, I would say that Rowling's writing style is mostly invisible -- the words don't get in the way of the story or call attention to themselves, and they exist purely to tell the story. However, she has a few bad word habits, like having an obvious "pet" word in each book and using it repeatedly. It's one thing when it's a minor word like "just," but when it's something like "comprise" (and it's not even used correctly), it starts to jump off the page. Especially when it shows up about three times per page.

The biggest plotting weakness is a danger for either first-person or tight, sole-viewpoint third-person narration, and that's the tendency to indulge in a lot of "telling" near the end of the book, when the hero learns everything that was going on in the background all along by someone telling him what was happening. There's a lot of what I call "Shawshank Redemption" plotting going on, where all the events make total sense in the initial context, so that they don't jump out as clues the first time through, and then you find out what was really going on, and all those seemingly innocuous things take on an entirely different meaning in that context. Unfortunately, that tends to lead to a lot of "My evil plans, let me tell you them" scenes. The absolute worst was in the fourth book, where we had about a chapter of Voldemort telling Harry everything he'd been up to during that book, the previous three books, and for the ten years prior to the books starting. And then Harry got back to Hogwarts and we got another chapter or so of Barty Crouch Jr. telling everything he'd been up to during the entire book (a scene that was more interesting in the movie version, largely because it involved David Tennant bouncing off walls and feasting on the scenery instead of the book's monotone recitation). I suspect even Rowling realized she'd fallen into a pattern because after that she brought up the link between Harry and Voldemort so that Harry got glimpses into what the villain was up to throughout the book and we didn't need the recitation of evil plans, but then she fell into the pattern of having a chapter or so at the end of each book with Dumbledore explaining to Harry everything that had really been going on, or, as in the sixth book, getting someone else to tell the whole story.

The third book handled this best because the revelation of all the stuff that had really been going on was more of an active scene. There were more people involved, with even more people showing up throughout to change the scene and add their input, and the scene kept shifting on its axis, so that it went back and forth between who you thought was good and who you thought was bad, as well as constantly changing who was in control of the situation. As a result, there was a lot more going on than Harry listening to someone explain the whole plot. It was dynamic rather than passive, and Harry got to actually play a role in doing something and making decisions.

I really like the sixth book. It's pretty fun to read because of all the character stuff going on, but it struck me on this read-through how much it's essentially Harry Potter and the Book Without an Actual Plot. The through-line plot that actually drives the ongoing story of the series is kept as mostly a sub-plot and most of the action takes place in the distant past, with Harry observing Tom Riddle's life story. Nothing much really happens in the present, plot-wise, until the end, and that's where the only real action in the book is. Otherwise, I guess it's Harry Potter and the Raging Hormones, which is fun to read if you love the characters, but that's a lot of pages without much story momentum. So, I'm torn on that book. I wonder if there might have been a way to deal with the trials and tribulations of being a teenager while still telling more of a story. Then again, the school stuff was always my favorite part of the series. Yeah, bad wizard taking over the world, big scary snake, blah, blah, blah, but are Ron and Hermione ever going to get over their individual issues, fears and pride and admit that they're crazy about each other?

This sounds like I'm being very negative, but this is really the first time I've acknowledged that there were things I didn't like about this series. I have generally been a raving fangirl blind to its faults. Tomorrow I'll get into the things I liked.

And now it's a return to Amateur Dramatic Hour. There's a Shakespeare play that provides a lot of the inspiration for the Nagging Idea, so I need to read it, and I've found that the only way for me to really follow Shakespeare and get any meaning out of it is to read it out loud. I'm not really trying to act it full-on, but I am trying to get some characterization and inflection into it.

The Ghost Torturer

I allowed myself a delightfully lazy weekend when either the mountain cedar pollen levels or yet another drastic weather change (or maybe both) gave me a bad case of sniffles. I retreated under a blanket with a pot of tea, some books, a bottle of Benadryl and the TV remote. It must have worked because I feel a lot more awake and alert today than I have in ages. I even got up reasonably early, early enough to have a phone chat with Mom and to go drop off my recycling and do my grocery shopping.

I managed to finally finish my Harry Potter re-read. It took me almost a month, though I'd been waiting for appropriate reading conditions to finish the final book. I'll be posting my thoughts on that later this week. Meanwhile, I started reading the books I'm judging for the Romance Writers of America Rita Award.

Note to people trying to write anything that's supposedly romantic: It really, really helps if I can figure out why these people like each other, beyond just the fact that they're hot and they stir each other in a way they've never felt before. All the hot sex in the world doesn't come across as romantic if there's not also some affection and if I don't get the sense that these people actually enjoy being around each other when they're not in bed.

Or maybe I'm out of touch with the genre, since I don't think I've read a genre romance that was published in the last twenty years in at least two years. I'm spoiled by fantasy or mystery with a romantic subplot and by Georgette Heyer.

Stan the 80s Bachelor Airline Pilot Ghost had a busy weekend. First on Saturday afternoon he managed to cause a big ruckus. I was upstairs in the office on the phone with Mom when there was such a loud clatter from downstairs that Mom heard it and suggested I go check to see what it was. I walked through the whole house several times before I realized that one of the things stuck in my kitchen tools jar on the counter had apparently shifted, which knocked the top off the hot-air popcorn popper, which knocked something else over. I'm not sure how/why the initial thing moved to set off the chain reaction, and the noise seemed louder than you'd expect from those few things. So, I blamed Stan.

And then that night, I finally found my Songs for a New World CD. It's been missing for more than a year, which hadn't been a problem when I had my old car because I mostly listened to it in the car, and I'd taped it to play on the car's tape player. But the new car only has a CD player, so I'd really been missing it. Last night, I had this odd burst of insight, reached behind some books on the bookcase behind my desk, and there it was. The odd thing is, I had searched that bookcase when I was looking for it. I guess Stan got tired of it and brought it back, or else he decided it was the lesser of many evils with all the bad show tunes he's been subjected to lately.

You see, I discovered quite accidentally that I now get the digital music channels on my cable service. I know I didn't have them before, but now they're suddenly there. My cable company is really bad about letting their customers know when they're getting cool new stuff. I only found the music channels because I thought the "music" button on the menu worked like the "sports" button, where it gives you a list of upcoming programs in that category, and I was looking to see if there would be a Live at Lincoln Center anytime soon. But instead, it took me to the music channels, and they have a Show Tunes channel. It's very eclectic, with some classics, some stuff I own on CD and some stuff that's obscure even to me. And not all of it is that good. Whoever does the programming there is really into the Broadway version of Young Frankenstein, as something from that show has played every time I put that channel on, and while I'm sure that's an entertaining show to watch, the music doesn't really work out of context as something to just listen to. Ditto with Spamalot. Hilarious show, but not all that great musically (at least there I'd seen the show and could insert appropriate mental images). Avenue Q has good music, but it doesn't work that well out of context when you can't see that it's puppets. One of the singers sounds disconcertingly Henson-esque, and it's rather upsetting to hear someone who sounds way too much like Kermit singing about sex. And then there's Xanadu. Oh my. I can't believe they made a musical out of that, and I can't believe the way they seem to have done it. I will confess that I own the movie soundtrack album. It was a major part of my seventh grade year. That album replaced the soundtrack from Grease as the record you went to your friends' homes after school to sing and dance to. But we were living in Germany at the time, so we didn't get the movie until much, much later, and we had no idea what the movie was about. We'd made up our own idea of the story, based on the songs and the pictures from the movie on the album cover. And then we saw the movie, finally, and were all, "What the heck was that?" But the Broadway show apparently incorporates other Olivia Newton-John songs, like "Have You Never Been Mellow," so they're pulling more of a Mamma Mia than a Disney musical where they write new songs to incorporate into the existing soundtrack. From the sounds of things, for whatever reason, it seems like some of the singers are using funny "character" voices instead of straight singing, and out of context that doesn't really work.

As a result, I seem to have driven my ghost so insane that he returned my decent show tunes CD so I'd have something else to listen to. Now I wonder what else I could get him to cough up for me. There are at least two more CDs I haven't found in a while ...

Girlfriends Cyber Circuit Presents Teri Brown

I had my regular ballet teacher back last night, and I felt like much less of an idiot in class, but today I'm very, very stiff and sore. Ouch. While I sit around and moan, I've got a Girlfriends Cyber Circuit guest. Teri Brown has one of the most clever concepts I've seen in the novel Read My Lips.

Serena just wants to fly under the radar at her new school. But Serena is deaf, and she can read lips really well—even across the busy cafeteria. So when the popular girls discover her talent, there’s no turning back.

From skater chick to cookie-cutter prep, Serena’s identity has done a 180…almost. She still wants to date Miller, the school rebel, and she’s not ready to trade her hoodies for pink tees just yet. But she is rising through the ranks in the school’s most exclusive clique.

With each new secret she uncovers, Serena feels pressure to find out more. Reading lips has always been her greatest talent, but now Serena just feels like a gigantic snoop….



And now the interview:

Was there anything in particular that inspired this book?
My niece is profoundly deaf and after she was diagnosed, my mother-in-law became very active in deaf advocacy. She used me as a sounding board for her ideas and the seeds of Read my Lips were planted during that time.

Do you read lips, yourself?
No, I don’t read lips, but my niece does, very well. My launch party was at the Washington School of the Deaf and those kids were fabulous at lip reading, as well. And I would love to be able to do that! As a writer, I love to listen to people talk in coffee shops and restaurants. Some people call it eavesdropping, but I call it research!

(I had some hearing issues as a kid, so I kind of read lips, but I generally also need auditory cues. I have a habit of watching people's mouths when they talk, and I can put that together with what I hear to figure out what they said. I can't usually just read lips without the sound, but it drives me nuts when the sound and picture aren't perfectly in sync on TV, and I'm really bad about not making eye contact with people who are talking to me because I'm more focused on watching their mouths. My hearing is fine now, but it's a habit. It also comes in handy at noisy parties when it's hard to make out what people are saying).

Something that could be seen as a weakness ends up being the key to your character's rise in popularity. How do you think that could apply to something less extreme than deafness for other kids?
I think it’s all about viewing your talents and weaknesses differently. In accepting them all as part of your unique self.

What, if anything, do you have in common with your main character?
Like Serena, I’ve always felt like a fish out of water , especially in high school where I was both too smart and too rebellious to be successful at it.

Do you have any odd writing habits or quirks?
If leaving everything to the last minute is an odd writing habit or quirk, then I have them in spades! Other than that, not really.

What are you working on now?
I have several proposals started but at the moment, I’m working on a book that’s very different and very special. I don’t think I’m going to say anything about it right now except that it is really stretching me as a writer. Which is a good thing…sometimes.

Is there anything else you'd like to say about this book or the process of writing it?
This book was a labor of love. My Mother-in-law, who is partially responsible for the newborn hearing screening law here in Oregon, died of cancer before the book was finished and sold. I dedicated the book to her, but it wasn’t the same as having her here to see it.

For more info, check out Teri's web site. Or you can buy the book from Amazon.

And now my house is driving me nuts, so I think today is a housework day. If I can make my body move.

More About Jerks

I've been thinking more about that Jerk With Layers vs. Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy idea, fine-tuning it in my head. I guess I started thinking along these lines when I realized that some of the criticism I get from editors for my work is that it isn't "edgy" enough, and what's really hot right now seems to involve the dark, tortured characters. I don't think I could write a truly dark, tortured character if I tried (unless I was doing a parody of the type), but that doesn't mean all my characters have to be incredibly nice, knight-in-shining-armor types. So I started a mental list of characters I really like, those who get me emotionally involved in various books, movies or TV shows, and then when I found some who weren't the nice guy, knight-in-shining-armor types, I tried figuring out why I liked them and how they worked. I think I could pull off a Jerk With Layers as a way of having a little more edge without going all the way to Dark and Dangerous.

Then again, the Depression era was known for fluffy comedies and making Shirley Temple the Queen of the Universe, so maybe my time has come and darker heroes will go out of vogue. Still, I don't think it would hurt me to expand my horizons and at least dabble in writing some different kinds of characters.

I have realized that I'm having trouble coming up with good examples of Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy characters who are not villains. It's possible that some of that is due to the fact that if I like a character, I tend to classify him as a Jerk With Layers, since I don't like bad boys. Most of the Dark and Dangerous types I see people swooning over are villains (or come very close to being villains), and it's more the fans who seem to see them as sexy than the writers trying to paint them as tarnished, tragic romantic heroes. Because I tend to be anti-bad boy, there's a strong possibility that I just avoid things with bad boy heroes (which is why I don't read a lot of paranormal romance). The only Dark and Dangerous heroes I can think of are House (my initial example) and Kara Thrace (Starbuck) on Battlestar Galactica. I consider that someone is dark and dangerous instead of just a jerk when his/her behavior is really self-destructive, to the point that it will harm even their allies. House's behavior has at times harmed personally or professionally just about everyone who tries to get close to him, and Starbuck is so screwed up that she actually avoids anything good or healthy and she outright tries to hurt anyone who gets too close to her. I'd say that the behavior of the Jerk With Layers is like a scab on a wound, while the Dark and Dangerous type has gone beyond wounded to damaged, with the wound festering and scarring.

In the romance world, the "healed by love" plotline is popular with the badder types, which may be another reason why I avoid books with those types of heroes. While I do believe that love can be a powerful healing force, I also believe that it takes more than finding a good woman to love for someone that damaged to turn into a good guy and loving suburban husband and father (I've seen that mockingly referred to as the "magical hoo-ha" story, where sex with this particular woman has all kinds of transformative properties). On the other hand, I think the Jerk With Layers could be changed through a good, healthy relationship, because most of the time all he really needs is a boost of confidence, and someone showing him unconditional love and accepting him can do a lot toward allowing him to lower the facade and be himself.

But then there are a lot of other factors that come up in trying to classify characters. Is inner pain and turmoil essential for a Jerk With Layers? I'd kind of consider Han Solo to be a Jerk With Layers, as he mocks others, is sarcastic, is sometimes even crude and rude, and he acts like he's greedy and selfish, but then he's reliable in a crisis and always there for his friends, even to the point of self-sacrifice. He does have moments of sincerity. But I never got the feeling that his Jerk layer was masking any kind of deep, inner pain. Then again, that character was about 98 percent Harrison Ford's personal charisma and about 2 percent a character who was actually developed in the script. I suppose the pain or insecurity doesn't have to be major or traumatic. It could merely be something like growing up in a tough neighborhood where earnest and sincere would get you beaten up, or, in Han Solo's case, the fact that he worked with criminals and thieves, where it would be dangerous to give them any ammunition by revealing his true self.

Most of the examples of Jerks With Layers I initially thought of were sidekicks, and this character type does work well to balance a more earnest hero (that Trickster archetype). It can be a challenge to make the Jerk With Layers sympathetic enough to be a hero. I thought of Dave (the Bruce Willis character on Moonlighting), and then Shrek in the movies was suggested. I've been trying to decide if Mal on Firefly fits this. My initial impulse is to call him a Jerk With Layers rather than Dark and Dangerous, but then that's largely because I like him and I don't like Dark and Dangerous heroes, so I want to call him a Jerk With Layers. But I think it holds up when I think about it more. He seems to want to be a Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy, but he never quite gets there because he can't seem to help being basically a good person. Given the choice, he'll do the right thing, even if it costs him. I think if he'd gone off alone instead of forming a crew around himself, he could easily have become Dark and Dangerous, but even though he snarls sometimes at his crew, I think he knows he needs them.

Perhaps the Jerk With Layers hero needs to be part of an ensemble rather than a loner hero because we need to see that interaction with the people he cares about to see the layers. It's also probably easier to get away with in TV or movies because the personal charisma or history of the actor can give a difficult character a halo effect, and you can't rely on that in books. If we know and love the actor from other roles or if he is very sexy, attractive, charismatic or obviously having fun with the role, we may be willing to cut his character some slack. I think a lot of the villains/dark and dangerous types that fans swoon over owe their popularity to the incredibly sexy actors who play them rather than to the writing. Snape in the Harry Potter books is a snively jerk who really needs to grow the hell up and get over high school, but in the movies he speaks in Alan Rickman's voice, which changes the picture entirely. On paper, I'm sure the character of Guy in the BBC Robin Hood would come across as a social climbing stalker, but he's played by Richard Armitage wearing black leather (I'm sure I'd like the actor elsewhere, but I must admit that the character does zero for me, which I get the feeling is a very unpopular opinion).

You'd definitely have to do "showing" rather than "telling" to get across the Jerk With Layers because any internal monologue on his part to describe his inner pain could easily come across as justification for his own bad behavior. I suppose you would have to introduce him with his good side showing and then show the facade sliding into place or else introduce the reasons why he might be a bit of a jerk at the same time you introduce the character. That's the way Ron was introduced in the Harry Potter books. We see right away that he's surrounded by older brothers who've distinguished themselves, that everything he owns is a hand-me-down and that two of his brothers have made him the victim of their practical jokes, so by the time we see his defensive sarcasm and prickly sensitivity to criticism, we totally understand it.

I'm still wrestling with my Nagging Idea, and I've decided that since this time of year is terrible for actual writing, I may as well go with the idea generation since it does seem to be a good time for thinking.

Dealing With Difficult Dialogue

I'm managing to gradually get an earlier and earlier start on the day by setting my alarm clock (this is the only time of year when I seem to need to do that on days when I don't have to be somewhere). I still hit the snooze button for a while, but I still get up earlier, and I think the alarm going off in the first place is helping me reset my internal clock.

I have another reader question for this week's writing post, though I'm expanding it to cover a broader topic.

How do you deal with characters who have unusual speech patterns -- especially if there's a possibility that those speech patterns could be annoying to readers?

It's good when characters have distinct voices and have their own ways of talking. They may have accents or speak in a dialect, they may not be native speakers of whatever language predominates in your story, they could stammer or lisp, they could be hyper and run on at the mouth, they could fall heavily into technical jargon, they could have unusual catch phrases they repeat all the time. Those things are good, up to a point, but they're also the kinds of things that can bring a story to a screeching halt if readers have to stop and decipher it or that can turn off readers if they find the book just too annoying to get through.

The short answer is that you want to give enough of the distinctive speech to establish the character and give the proper flavor but not enough that it detracts from the story. Here are a few ways I've thought of to do that:

1) Remember the context.
Characters and the way they talk don't exist in a vacuum. They may alter the way they talk depending on circumstances. Other characters may also react to them, and that will change depending on the circumstances. The excitable technical expert who has to explain how the watch was made before he can give you the time has to interact with other people who may or may not put up with that. If he's the technical expert for a law enforcement team and seconds count, they're going to interrupt his hyper, long-winded explanation for what he's found and force him to get to the point. If he's already provided the vital clue for solving the crime and saved the day, the others may indulge him and let him explain at length how he found it. Depending on what else is going on in their lives, other characters may or may not feel compelled to complete sentences for a stammerer, cut off a long-winded person or correct a non-native speaker's mangled idioms. That gives you an excuse to show just enough of that speech pattern before cutting it off in time to avoid being annoying. For a movie example, think about the Joe Pesci character in the second Lethal Weapon movie, who would go on with, "Okay, okay, okay," and then some jabbering. The other characters were always interrupting him in mid-jabber, so we knew he was a jabberer, but we didn't have to spend a lot of time listening to him.

2) Don't forget about point of view.
The viewpoint character who's listening to this other person is going to have different perceptions. For one thing, if the viewpoint character speaks in the same dialect or language, he's probably not going to notice the language quirks. A Scotsman isn't going to notice all the "dinna ken" type stuff the way a non-Scotsman would. His brain is going to understand that as "don't know." Likewise, if all the characters are speaking a foreign language, you can assume that the book is the subtitles and you don't have to throw in random untranslated words.

With the potentially annoying speech patterns, the viewpoint character may hear the start, realize the other character will be babbling for a while and tune him out to think about or notice other things, tuning back in when it gets to the important stuff. That's another way of giving a hint without subjecting your reader to the whole thing. You could also have the viewpoint character mentally translating the other character's difficult to understand dialect or jargon.

3) Use just enough to get the point across.
It may be important that a character speaks in a particular way, but you never want a reader to have to read the dialogue out loud in order to decipher it. Pick one or two words or phrasings that will get the point across and use them consistently, then only add more in places where it's really crucial. If it's important to the plot that there's a communications breakdown, then by all means make that little part difficult to get through, but do that sparingly. If your character is a hyper babbler, establish that, then work around it (using the above methods) except for any particular scenes where there's a reason to have the hyper babbling.

4) Watch TV
You can get a good feel for how to handle different speech patterns by watching TV. A TV series has a limited amount of time to tell the story, so they can't waste it on extraneous stuff, and they also need to make the characters distinctive while making it possible to understand the characters, since you can't go back and re-read the dialogue if you don't understand it. Watch how they work in just enough speech quirks to make the differences clear without eating story time. This is especially good in any kind of "team," show, where they bring in people with different areas of expertise, like the computer expert, the scientist, the foreigner, the highly educated person, the tough guy, etc., who all have distinct ways of expressing themselves. Usually, the team leader will demand that the technical experts speak English after they spout a line or two of jargon, and they'll cut off the babblers to make them get to the point or finish sentences for hesitant stammerers. The foreigners will use just enough foreign words or mixed-up idioms to remind us that they're foreign. We're left with the impression of lots of jargon, babble, stammering or dialect, but when you really look at it, there isn't all that much.

I'm still collecting questions, so keep 'em coming!

Loveable Jerks

I think I may have figured out part of my lethargy when it comes to work: I'm somewhat lacking in motivation because I'm not entirely sure what could become of anything I might be working on. I have two projects on submission or about to go on submission, and any of the things I might work on now would fall under the option clause if I sold those projects, so I wouldn't be able to turn around and sell any of the things I'm working on anytime soon. Plus, the projects on submission are first books in potential series, so if those books sell, the next thing I'd work on would be the sequels. So, almost anything else I work on now would be a worst-case scenario project, something to have handy in case what's going out now doesn't sell. It's good to have that kind of thing so there's not a huge gap if the worst-case scenario does come about, but it's hard to get enthusiastic about working on something with that in mind. I've also been distracted by a new idea taking shape -- well, not an entirely new idea, but one I got last fall is really taking form in my head now. I suppose that since nothing I'm working on is on any kind of deadline, there's no harm in taking some time to play with the idea that's at the top of my mind at the moment. There's a reference I need to look at to develop that idea a little further, so I think I'll walk over to the library this afternoon to get it.

Meanwhile, one thing the bad case of The Groggies has been good for is thinking. I may not be able to put words together in a coherent way without a great deal of effort, but I have been able to do a lot of thinking/analyzing. One thing I like to think about is the things that really draw me in as a reader/audience member and why I like those things. One thing I've realized lately about myself is that while I still have zero interest in the Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy as a character, I do seem to have a soft spot for the Jerk With Layers.

I think this character type falls somewhere between the Nice Guy/Best Friend/Boy Next Door and the Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy. Like the Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy, he uses somewhat anti-social behavior as a defense mechanism to protect himself. And like the Nice Guy/Best Friend/Boy Next Door, he's got a soft, mushy inside and is someone you can absolutely rely on when times get tough. In fact, he may be even softer and mushier inside than the Nice Guy because he needs that harder outer shell to protect himself.

The Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy may also have a soft, mushy inside that he protects with his hard outer shell, but the difference between the Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy and the Jerk With Layers is that the Jerk With Layers isn't actually bad or dangerous. He's just a bit obnoxious and seems to be insensitive. He'll make the wisecracks, pick on people, find ways to get under their skin, may even be a bit of a verbal bully. He may act like a womanizer or a player. He may act like he doesn't really care about his job and may seem to be lazy. But there's a line he won't cross. He doesn't actually do anything all that bad or wrong. He may talk a big show about his conquests, but you'd be totally safe with him (and might even have to tackle him if you want to get something started). He stays on the good side of the law. And while he pretends to be irresponsible, he's actually pretty reliable and will be there for you. When the situation calls for seriousness, the goofing off stops, and in those moments of rare sincerity, he's almost like another person. That's when you realize that the jerky behavior is a carefully cultivated defensive maneuver. If he acts like a jerk and you think he's a jerk, then he's won. If he acts like a jerk and you still manage to like him, that's a bonus. But on the other hand, if he tries to be a nice guy and you don't like him, he comes out as a loser. So, obviously, it's safer to act like a jerk. I think another distinction between the Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy and the Jerk With Layers is the potential for change. The Jerk With Layers is a nice guy underneath all along, so all it takes for him to really step up and reach his potential is gaining the confidence or the trust in someone to drop the act and be himself. The Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy really would have to do some kind of turnaround and really change in order to be redeemed.

I've realized that a number of characters I'd been mentally classifying as the Nice Guy/Best Friend are actually Jerks With Layers. I guess I just saw past all the defenses and saw the nice guy beneath, then disregarded the jerk aspects. For instance, as I've been re-reading the Harry Potter books, I've realized that Ron is probably more Jerk With Layers than Nice Guy. Yes, he's mostly reliable and basically decent, but he can be rather obnoxious. We realize through the course of the books that he's actually very insecure, but he masks that by being a jerk. Another example might be Chase (remember him?) on the early seasons of House, where he wasn't so much an outright jerk as he was an apparent slacker who let others assume he was a spoiled rich kid playboy. On the other hand, I think House himself comes closer to Dark and Dangerous Bad Boy because I don't think his jerky exterior is actually a facade. He really doesn't like people, he really doesn't want to follow the rules, and he really is rather self-destructive. Chase was able to change merely by dropping his jerk facade and really being the person we got occasional glimpses of. House would have to do a major personality turnaround to change. I suppose Rod in my books is another Jerk With Layers. Now I wonder if I could pull off writing someone like that as the primary hero rather than as a secondary character.

I guess I've been thinking in these terms because the major characters in the Nagging Idea would both probably fit into this type (male and female). With this idea there are also two vastly different ways I could go with it, and I'm not sure which is best, so I may have to start out writing it both ways and see which way clicks.

Introverts Unite!

Oh, man, I seem to have had the kind of weekend I need a weekend to recover from, since I'm still dragging and groggy. It wasn't that crazy, just a party and a wedding, but I think I maxed out my introversion when combined with the January agoraphobia, which means I used up all my emotional energy reserves. At this time of year, just leaving the house requires an act of will that is draining. I have fun while I'm out once I get past the leaving-home phase, but then that means I'm more tired than I usually would be afterward. And the extreme introversion means that social occasions are tiring, even if they're fun.

One of the most life-changing moments I've had in understanding myself was the first time I took an official Myers-Briggs personality assessment. It was at a professional conference, and they gave all the attendees the official test. I was really surprised when it showed that I was pretty extreme on the introvert scale. I'd been thinking in the more common usage of the term and because I'm really talkative and generally pretty bubbly and outgoing, I thought that meant I was an extrovert. That meant I didn't know what was wrong with me when I looked forward to quiet evenings at home and wasn't the life of the party.

But in this sense, the introversion/extroversion scale just comes down to where you get your energy. Some draw their energy from being around other people. They go out and interact with people to rev themselves up. Those are extroverts. Then there are people who need to be alone to recharge their batteries and who use up their energy in interacting with people. Those are introverts. Being an introvert doesn't necessarily mean you're shy, quiet or not particularly social. It just means you need a certain amount of alone time in order to be social. Introverts are more likely to have a few close friends than a huge social circle, and when someone reaches that close, trusted state, being with that person can be almost as good as being alone and isn't as draining as being in a crowd.

This isn't tested on the Myers-Briggs, but I think I'm also pretty high on the empathy scale, in that I tend to pick up on and even mirror other people's emotions. I have this odd quirk with live theater, where if the actors are really into their performances, I'll cry, no matter what the actual emotional content of the show is. It's almost like I'm picking up on their emotions, and the tears are my outlet. I'm more drained from situations where the people around me are stressed, which is why I'm less and less fond of the RWA national conference. So many people there have this idea that this event is absolutely crucial to their future careers, and it's exhausting, even if I have no expectations for my own career. There are more people at a WorldCon, but I don't find that nearly as tiring because most of the people are there just to have fun.

I think weddings come in very high on the stress scale, so they're tiring for me. With this one, I also helped set up and clean up, and then had to do some emergency assisting with finishing the cake. Then I provided the "something borrowed" when the chain on the bride's necklace broke right before the ceremony, and I happened to be wearing a plain gold chain in the right length. That's my one piece of "real" jewelry, and it's a lucky piece in that I won it in a promotional drawing at a jewelry store. So now even if I'm not married, my jewelry has been.

And now to maybe take a walk and then pump more caffeine into my system to see if I can make my brain function.

Zap!

I felt like I had the magic touch yesterday, or else my electric personality was showing. Everything I touched shocked me. I don't have that problem at home, but in the grocery store, if I take something off the shelf, I get a jolt. It's worse if I pick up a can or try to open the refrigerator case. Yesterday, I went through the store going "Ouch! Ouch!" Then my car got me, and I even managed to get a jolt from my car key. Some of those shocks were pretty severe, and my fingers were tingling up to the first knuckle. I felt like I could shoot lightning bolts out of my fingers.

We've got some pretty good TV coming up. Battlestar Galactica starts again tonight, for the final run of episodes. As much as I love that show, I'm kind of glad to see it coming to an end, mostly because they're doing it on their own terms because the story is coming to an end. That's something that happens very seldom on American television. Either the series isn't an instant hit and gets canceled before the story's told, or it is a hit and it gets stretched out long beyond its natural lifetime. I think this particular series would suffer if it got stretched out indefinitely, so it's good to see it coming to an end with the end of the story.

We also get Friday Night Lights back on network TV tonight. I've heard good things about this season from its satellite airing, but I'm not sure I'm in the mindset to get back into it.

Sunday night, Masterpiece Theatre is doing Wuthering Heights. I have to admit that I don't really get the appeal of that story. I don't see it as all that romantic, but I'll be interested in seeing how this adaptation works. I suspect I'll get inappropriate giggles because I'll be thinking of the Monty Python skit of Wuthering Heights in semaphore, with Healthcliff and Cathy waving flags around. After that, they're going on a Dickens binge, though some of those shows must be from the vault, since one of them is a very nice production of David Copperfield starring a wee little pre-Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe as the young David.

I've got yet another busy weekend ahead of me, so I hope it's a little warmer. Today looks like a good curl-up-with-a-book (either reading one or writing one) day.

Notebook Madness

I did drag myself out to choir last night (we're doing Mozart, yay!), but then that must have exhausted me because I slept very, very late this morning, and it was deep sleep, not just lying in the warm bed, daydreaming. I gave up on work that required much thought yesterday because I'd catch myself thinking of something else while typing, and as a result I'd have two words merged -- the start of the word I was typing, but the rest of the word would be what I was thinking. And I didn't even notice I was doing it until I re-read what I had just written and couldn't decipher it. So instead I did more "active" stuff like putting away laundry and doing some sorting/cleaning.

One think I've realized in the early stages of this ongoing sorting/cleaning/decluttering project is that I really like notebooks -- large and small spiral notebooks, little bound books, journals, etc. I've bought a few for myself (mostly the spirals because I can't seem to resist cute notebooks on clearance at Target), but I get a lot of them as gifts. That's a pretty standard writer gift. I have a nice journal-type book I got from my publisher, I'm pretty much guaranteed to get at least one in any thank-you goody bag I get for speaking at an event, and I have this really cool one I got from my agent that's hand-made, including the paper itself.

Oddly enough, most of them remain entirely empty. I have used the spiral notebooks, as the small ones are what go in my purse to take notes at conventions or to have handy for random thoughts that occur to me while I'm out and about. But most of the nice bound journal-type books are still blank. I'm not sure what to do with them. I seem to have inherited my grandmother's tendency to keep nice things "for good." That is, some things seem too nice to use for everyday purposes, so you put them aside to save them for something special (which doesn't ever seem to come about). I don't keep a journal other than a blog. I got a one-year diary when I was in second grade and I still haven't finished it. I do all my brainstorming type writing in spiral notebooks that I get at 10 for a dollar. It just seems like a really nice, leather-bound journal should be used for something deep and profound, like writing poetry (which I also don't do). I really can't imagine writing my grocery lists in a notebook with hand-made paper.

I got a nice quill and ink set as a thank-you gift for speaking at a library, so maybe I'll learn to use that, and then write in the hand-made book with that, if I ever get a deep thought. Maybe I should start keeping my "books I've read" list in one of the nice bound books instead of in a spiral notebook. And I will institute a moratorium on buying new notebooks.

Love is on the Screen

I managed to get up a bit earlier today, and yet I'm somehow not at all ahead of schedule. I think I'm moving more slowly, or something, though I have done two loads of laundry, which could have something to do with it. I still could go right back to sleep, and I suspect it will take a force of sheer willpower to get me to choir practice tonight. I did finally get to actually writing yesterday. Even though this is technically a rewrite, the first scene was going to be entirely new, so it was like starting a new book, and that's a pretty scary part of the process, coming up with that very first line, that very first scene. But I wrote the first scene, and I know it needs some tinkering, but it's written. Yay!

It's time for another rant about romantic comedy films. Yeah, I go on about this a lot, but that genre is kind of my guilty pleasure. I certainly do love movies with spaceships, swordfights and explosions, but there are times when nothing will do but a good romantic comedy. Sadly, finding the "good" is something of a challenge.

Normally, Turner Classic Movies is a good source for good old movies, but I actually found one I couldn't manage to watch, for various reasons. I stumbled across Theodora Goes Wild about ten minutes in, and then only made it through about half an hour. The idea was kind of intriguing, but it was painful to watch. A nice, small-town girl who played the organ at church and lived with her elderly aunts somehow wrote a steamy novel that became a huge bestseller (there was a scene with a scandalous uncle, so I'm guessing she either wrote down his stories as her novel, or she published his diaries as her novel). I came into the movie as she was visiting her publisher in New York and was rather disconcerted when the publisher insisted on introducing her to his wife, who was a big fan, and the illustrator who'd done the cover art was really intrigued by her because she didn't fit his idea of what the author of that book would be like. She'd written under a pseudonym and was trying to keep her real identity a secret. He then more or less started stalking her to figure out who she really was, and that was when I had to turn the TV off. I find the "courting by disrupting someone's life" plot to be creepy, and I didn't think him showing up in her hometown and standing in front of her house, whistling loudly, was a grand romantic gesture. On top of that, he pretended to be down on his luck and in need of a job (it was a Depression-era movie) and she couldn't reveal who he really was and how she knew him without revealing to her aunts that she'd written a steamy novel, so the aunts hired him as a gardener and let him stay in their garden shed. Then he started whistling loudly and constantly, even late at night, which kept the aunts awake. I thought that was too rude to tolerate in the supposed romantic hero. Plus, the sound of it was driving me insane. I'm not sure why they thought making the audience's ears bleed was a great idea.

Then there was P.S. I Love You, and my goodness, but that was horrendously awful. I first tried to watch it on HBO OnDemand but barely made it through the pre-credits sequence that I think was supposed to show us what a wonderful relationship this couple had, but it was pretty dysfunctional. I suppose it's a personal hot button of mine, but I hate relationship loyalty tests, where someone makes it as difficult as possible to put up with them, and then when you can't take anymore, they go into "I knew you didn't really like me" victim mode. The whole opening scene was this woman being a raging bitch to her husband, then when he got angry about it, she challenged him to go ahead and leave her, and then when he stepped out the door, she cried and was overjoyed when he came running back and he swore he'd never leave her. So I was predisposed to hate the main character and sort of thought the poor guy may have been lucky to die young. However, the cast was pretty interesting, with Harry Connick Jr., Jeffrey Dean Morgan, James Marsters and Gerard Butler, so I thought I'd give it a try again. I've tried various times when it's been on any of the various HBO channels opposite something else I was watching, and I've flipped over during commercials. I still haven't managed to watch that movie long enough to get through a whole commercial break. I even flipped back to Snuggies commercials. Just about every scene is utterly painful. Hillary Swank may have a couple of Oscars, but she has zero comedic timing. They committed the unforgivable sin of making both Gerard Butler and Harry Connick Jr. unappealing. It was fun getting to see James Marsters with dark hair, American accent and being the nice guy best friend. The only scenes I could get through were the ones with the friends -- Lisa Kudrow, James Marsters and a blond chick I think was supposed to be Hillary Swank's character's sister. That was a fun bunch of characters, and I kind of wanted them to make a break for it and escape to a better movie. I haven't read the book the movie was based on, so I don't know if the problems stem from the book or the movie, but I must admit I wasn't crazy about the other book I've read by that author, and I could see patterns from that book in this movie. I suspect I have a very different view of the world than this author does.

Then I had a pleasant surprise. I was intrigued by the idea of Til There Was You when it first came out because I'm a sucker for "people fated for each other don't quite manage to meet until the right time" stories (although I'm not a big fan of Sleepless in Seattle), but then the trailers that consisted mostly of Jeanne Tripplehorn falling down a lot and the really bad reviews turned me off. I finally caught it on HBO and it wasn't at all what I expected. The mistake was that they were trying to pitch this as a romantic comedy when it was neither all that romantic nor all that funny. It's really more about people having to get their acts together before they're ready to have a decent relationship. In a way, it's the anti-romantic comedy because it was mostly about the woman needing to get over her romantic comedy ideals about relationships before she could quit waiting for prince charming to show up and really live her life. On that level, it really worked, and I enjoyed the movie. It just would have worked better if they hadn't bothered trying to force it into the comedy mold by throwing in all the pratfalls. The falls seemed to be mostly to keep the main characters from seeing each other until the happy ending, but they were unnecessary because one of the things that I liked about it was that it wouldn't have ended the movie if they'd met earlier because the whole point was that their previous moments of passing by each other didn't mean anything until they were at a point of being ready to meet. My other complaint was that the movie was apparently sponsored by the tobacco industry. There was more smoking than in your average 1940s movie. The fact that the hero and heroine both smoked seemed to be presented as a clue that they were perfect for each other, even before they met, and they were always complaining about how nobody else smoked anymore, yet almost every time they asked someone if they minded about them smoking, the other person turned out to be a secret smoker. I was hacking, wheezing and getting itchy, red eyes just watching it.

January and February seem to have become the big release period for romantic comedies, either because most of them suck and this is the dumping ground for bad movies or because they're going for the Valentine's Day date/single women hitting the theaters because they have no Valentine's date crowd. There are actually a few coming out that I'm interested in, so I may make a rare trip to a movie theater in the coming weeks and shall report to spare others the pain and misery or to tell which ones are safe.

And, memo to movie producers: people falling down a lot isn't as funny as you think it is. You need to have more than people falling down a lot for a film to be considered a comedy.

Winter Bear Brain

Well, what do you know, there is a Facebook for Dummies. I suppose I'll have to check that out, but it's very low on the priority list, as at the moment I have nothing much to promote, other than, I suppose, to nag that people who've bought the first book really need to get all the rest.

After an afternoon of back-and-forth brainstorming with my agent, I believe we've found a title for submitting The New Project. Which will likely be changed by the publisher when/if it sells, but even a published author at least needs a working title to submit a proposal. It's funny, but we started off with all these complicated titles and ended up with two words, one of them "the." Short titles are good, unless you're going for a particular effect with a longer title, because they can be printed larger on the cover and are easier to remember. If the book comes out and after everyone's read it, I'll have to share my dad's title suggestion, which was hilarious.

I have all these grand productivity ambitions, but it's hibernation time for me, which means that it takes me at least an hour to make myself get out of bed in the morning, which then gives me a late start. That is valuable thinking time, but I need to be doing more work. I haven't been feeling all that great, and that doesn't help matters. For the most part, it's just January, and I'm part bear, I think (hmm, has that come up in any of the were-whatever books, where because of the animal influence, the person tends to want to sleep a lot in winter? I suppose that wouldn't make for a very exciting book if that person were the hero, but it could be highly entertaining in a sidekick who drives the hero crazy. Or it could be a villain's weakness. Would dragons hibernate?).

I'm sure I could think of plenty of clever and witty things to say, but I need to write today, so I'm going to go do that.

Social Networking Failure

I think I'm going to start the actual writing part of revising the NaNo book. I've worked out the first few scenes, and I suspect that there's no point in planning too intently what happens later on until I've got the feel of those first few scenes. It's almost going to be a complete, from scratch rewrite, though there are a few scenes I think I'll be able to salvage. Meanwhile, I'm still straining my brain to come up with a good title for The New Project (which may need a new code name). This is less of a quirky comedy, so the pun-type titles I've been doing won't work, but it's also not deadly serious. It essentially has a lot of the hallmarks of a classic epic fantasy, but in a different setting and a lot of twists. So, I need a title that gives some of the flavor of the epic fantasy, but with a clear signal that it's also different. And this is when yet another neighbor is doing some kind of work involving very loud power tools that operate exactly in the frequency range that seems to make my bones reverberate. I'm starting to have vivid fantasies of remodeling my house extensively and connecting the power tools to amplifiers.

I suppose eventually I will have to tackle the backlog in my inbox, which seems to be mostly Facebook notifications. I have a shameful confession here: I seem to be utterly clueless about social networking.

I get blogging. I started on LiveJournal, because that's where so many of my friends already were. Then I had to get a Blogger account to be part of a group blog I used to participate in, so I thought I might as well copy and paste the same blog there (I've been informed that it's the site that isn't blocked as often by corporate filtering protocols). And then I heard about this newfangled MySpace thing, and every author had to be there, so I got an account there and started posting my blog there. I resisted Facebook until I met some people professionally who use that as their primary personal communication. So, I set up a profile and arranged for it to get my LiveJournal blog feed.

Perhaps because I started there, I get LJ. It makes sense to me. You post and people respond, and the responses go in threads, so it reminds me of Usenet (ah, I used to LOVE Usenet). The friending doesn't have to be mutual, so I can friend the people I want to follow, and people can follow me without me having to follow them, which is nice when you're kind of a moderately public figure and the idea is to have a lot of people following you. I almost never make a friends-only post, so you're not missing much if I haven't friended you back, and the only friends-only posts go to an even tighter filter for people I actually know on some kind of personal basis. I can use LJ for promo type stuff to stay in touch with readers, but also for keeping up with my actual friends.

Blogger I guess I understand, but I don't respond to a lot of comments there because I don't get many and because they don't thread, which I find annoying and frustrating. I'm sure I'm not using the full extent of MySpace. As many friends requests as I get, and with it being mutual friending, it's pretty much useless for really keeping up with people. There are a few people who use the messaging there to stay in touch, and I guess that kind of works, but it's more of a pain than just using e-mail. Blog commenting is a real pain, probably because they make money off of page hits, so they make you go through as many pages as possible. I have it set up to require approval on all comments, since I was starting to get a lot of icky spam, so I'll get an e-mail telling me I have a comment to approve, then I have to go to the site to approve the comment, but I can't reply right then and there. That requires going to the blog page, and then that brings up another page or two. So I have to really, really want to say something to reply to a MySpace blog comment.

Facebook utterly terrifies me. There are so many little applications, and I can never tell what they actually do. It seems like the only way to find out what they do is to accept them, which bugs me. So I only seem to go there when I get a message from someone I know that I have to reply to or when my in-box gets full of notifications I need to deal with. I haven't really publicized myself there, so while I do seem to be getting some reader friend requests, my friends there are mostly the sf writers clique, friends from the regional con circuit, local friends, people I knew in high school and my best friend from fourth grade. I think there's a way to group friends into clusters, but I haven't found any documentation about that. Is there some kind of Facebook for Dummies resource that explains the stuff you can do there? I understand that there's some kind of status update feature, since I've seen the parodies of popular books or TV series presented Facebook style, but who has the time to update what you're doing at every given moment? Most of the time, I can't even remember to add a mood to an LJ post.

At any rate, I am not ignoring you, personally. I'm pretty much ignoring everybody. I also have a policy of only commenting when I have something to say, and I'm trying to spend less time online and more time writing, which means that figuring all this stuff out and what to do with it is very low on my priority list at the moment. Now I have to return to my title brainstorming. And couldn't you know, just when the metal cutting stops, the city landscaping crews go to work on the corner behind my house with weed whackers and leaf blowers.