Modern Myth Makers

Indefinite Hiatus

2010-08-08T21:22:00.000-04:00

Hello all,

It is my unfortunate duty to announce that at this time the Modern Myth Maker blog will be going on an indefinite and possibly permanent hiatus. The archives of the site will remain up for anyone who is interested in going back to review previous posts, but at this time there are no plans to resume posting new material. Many of the myth makers blog on other blogs around the web and plan to continue posting at those locations, but as a group, the Myth Makers will no longer maintain their web presence (at this time, at least).

We, the Modern Myth Makers, would like to thank all the readers of the blog and the friends we made on the site over the last few years. We have enjoyed interacting and chatting with all of you and we hope that you will seek us out on our other web haunts.

Thank you, all.

Summer's here and School's out!

2010-05-24T11:54:00.000-04:00

We're going to take the summer off here at Modern Myth Makers. But we won't be lolling about with cabana boys (/sob!), instead, we'll continue to do the writing thing (and if there happen to be cabana boys with fruity drinks, who help us "focus"... I'm just sayin).

You can follow our individual blogs to get the skinny on what we're up to, and we'll be back in August with blog entries a plenty!

See y'all then. :)

Moving through May

2010-05-10T09:13:00.000-04:00

climbing the mountain
rocks slip, not enough water
and then snow begins

------

And we're back to the mountain image! I wonder if I'll see a mule along the way?

Here's an update of the month's writing progression: slow. My stated goal was to work on revisions, on making a particular ms better than the first draft. However, I don't have a lot of experience in the revision process, and so a good part of the current progress is finding a method that works for me. Let me tell you that that "finding a method" is all sorts of frustrating!

As an example, I have found that working on any chunk larger than ~100 words at a time doesn't work well. (Okay, okay, doesn't work at all, forget the well.) That small word window means that it will take me ~550 sittings to work through the ms that I have on the table. 550! Just makes me want to give this up and become a shrimp farmer someplace other than Louisiana.

Such a drastic move would involve more financial solvency than I have at the moment, so I'm staying put and counting down the revision sittings. For now.

Maintaining Full Time Critique Partners

2010-05-03T05:39:00.004-04:00

The perfect mesh of a full-time critique partner, a CP outside of a critique group, is a mix between an accountability partner, a cheerleader, a boot camp drill sergeant, and a critic who isn't afraid to call fie on the prose: There for the long haul, ready to celebrate the baby steps, demand weekly progress toward those all-important career goals, and shred mercilessly the pages and chapters they get.

Most full-time CPs take on one or more of those tasks and expect, as they should, reciprocation. It's a relationship of giving as well as requesting, and it requires a contract of commitment, and a promise of dependability. There's nothing quite like meshing with someone enthusiastic about writing and dedicated to the craft who can jump into those multi-hat-wearing roles when their time permits.

So what can be done to keep these long-time crit partners happy? To make sure that the relationship stays nurtured? Here's my list! Keep in mind these depend on what the established working relationship is, and are in no particular order:

1. Set a turnaround schedule. If the fastest I know I can crit and send back a chapter is a week, (this means I can do a read as a reader, then spread out the more analytical work over my lunch breaks during the day job work week so I don't bite into my own writing time in the evening), then I say so. Make an arrangement for the max number of pages expected weekly or monthly on either side--get at least that much done, and if it's exceeded, more's to the better!

2. Be there in times of crisis. An agent contest coming up on a blog that your crit partner wants to enter? Be there, double-checking her entry as much as needed until she's happy with the submission. A request from an agent or an editor? Virtual martinis all around and a last readthrough of the synopsis and/or pages for a final spit and polish. Wanting to tie the muse up with bungee cords and throw her over the tallest cliff? There's the time for an encouraging email, virtual chocolates, and a picture of a LOLcat. Crises, one should keep in mind--are not every day or every week. Just the big events. I try to give as much notice as possible with these--and I suppress my normal critique chapter request for the week in leiu of the timely entries.

3. Keep the lines of communication open. This is so, so crucial for keeping and nuturing a CP...lack of emailing and informing of delays can break this kind of business-friend relationship. So can habitual delays. If I'm going out of town for a week, I send a note to let my crit partners know in advance. If I wind up in the ER and can't get the pages critted on time (as happened a few weeks back), I can't predict that, but I let my crit partners know as soon as possible the cause of the delay and when my revised turnaround time will be. Keep the email flowing and your crit partner in the loop instead of dropping the ball on your return crits and falling off the face of the planet.

4: Cheer them on! If my crit partner shares minor or major victories, I'm right there with a happy dance, too. If they've got a strength in their manuscript that stands out, or a scene that makes me chuckle, I'm sure to let them know. The road to publication is long, and a good pat on the back can soothe the sting of rejections and necessary revisions and serve to brighten up the day of the person on the other side of the computer monitor. Likewise, if I've achieved something with my manuscripts I'm sure to tell them, because chances are it wouldn't have been possible without them!

5: Stay current, stay educated. This means sharing the good blog posts and the announcements for the classes or conferences that you know will be perfect for your CPs, based on their interests and strengths as much as their weaknesses. I've begun to work through books on craft and writers' journeys with one of my CPs, and we'll use the opportunity to help each other to grow and improve. This is an encouraging process as well as a constructive one--building each other's writing foundation up and up and up toward success.

How about you, fellow writers? What qualities do you look for in a career crit partner? How do you maintain the relationship?

First and Goals: May 2010

2010-05-01T12:00:00.005-04:00

Giveaway Friday

2010-04-30T06:03:00.001-04:00

I'm glad I have my fellow Myth Makers to remind me of my responsibilities, otherwise I would have cleanly forgotten my giveaway Friday, which happens to be today.

It's been a surreal kind of week, or maybe it's just been really post-modern, so I'm offering one of two choices, and will briefly give the skinny on each.

First up is The Future of Freedom, by Fareed Zakaria. The best parts of this book were the gentle irony that pervades, and the equally gentle approach to the question: is democracy a good thing? Another really cool part is where he discussed the dichotomy that can exist between democracy and freedom. Who knew that they weren't one and the same thing?

Next up is One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The best part of this book was the rich and sensuous word weaving. Talk about amazing! As for what it was about, briefly it is about a man, a war, and a generational history. But what it's really about is how humanity dreams.

If you're interested in getting a copy of Zakaria's book, leave a comment on what democracy means to you, and if you're interested in getting a copy of Marquez's book, leave a comment on why you wouldn't wait for Godot. A random (losely defined) pick will grab someone.

Mailbag Monday: April 2010

2010-04-26T12:00:00.008-04:00

Though we have a lot in common, each member of the Tri Mu has a slightly different take on writing, publishing, books, and life in general. On the fourth Monday of the month, we'll take a question submitted by one of you and each give our opinions on the issue.

This month we are answering two questions. Tetewa asks: What series would you like to see brought to the movies? And LSUreader asks: In which genres do each of you write?

Kalayna Price's Response: The genre question is easy, so I'll start with that. I am currently writing two Urban Fantasy series, the Alex Craft novels and the novels of Haven. I dabble occasionally in other genres, though most still retain a fantasy base. As always, I have a super secret project (a new one, as the upcoming book GRAVE WITCH was my super secret project for a while). I work on this ssp when I have time, and this particular story is actually in a new(ish) genre for me.

As far as which book/series I'd love to see made into a movie? Wow, that is a hard one. Anytime I hear one of my favorite books is headed for the big screen I get a little nervous. Books don't always translate to other media well. So, in the form of an 'opt out' of the question (and because of morbid curiosity) I'm going to say my own upcoming Grave Witch novel, just because I'd be curios to see what Hollywood would make of it. Not that I'm holding my breath. ^_^

Tori Pryer's Response: The movie question is a tough one. You see, I love to read and I do read a lot. I almost never think "Wow, this would make a great movie." When I read, I tend to visualize the characters, the scenery, and the action. I hear the dialogue and the other sounds. All of this is amplified if the author is good at her/his job. I don't need a movie director to bring the action to life. When a book that I do like is made into a movie or TV show, I compartmentalize them. If I view them as two separate entities, I enjoy them more. All of that being said, I would like to see Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons made into a movie because I love the character of Charlie Kate and I would like to see her brought to life. Plus, the book is set during World War II and I like to see that time period on the big screen.

As for genre, that is easy. I mostly write romance. Once we get to subgenres, I turn into Vert. I've experimented with historicals, paranormal, and contemporary romance. My current WIP is paranormal, but that doesn't mean that I won't experiment with a new subgenre the next time I write something new.

Sarah Templeton's Response:
(series to movie)
Well, I don't know about movies, but I'm currently looking forward to George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series that's hitting HBO. I've been staring at his blog for months and months and months watching all those updates and scoping out the upcoming cast. The series is far too complex for a movie, but it'll be stunning as a multi-episode show. Just thinking about it makes me all happy... ^_^

(genre)
I'm currently working in paranormal romance and sci-fi. I also love to play in fantasy and steampunk, but those projects are further down the rabbit hole and on the back burner for the moment as I focus efforts on querying.

Haricot Vert's Response: For series, I'd actually like to see the Belgariad books by David Eddings brought to the big screen, although I don't know that I'd go see it once it arrived (the orcs from Lord of the Rings freaked me out incredibly, so I know I'd have an issue with Torak and his followers).

Wow, the genre question is kind of tough. I'm still figuring out which genre appeals to me most writing-wise.
So far, I've attempted quest fantasy and technofantasy, and at the moment I'm working on a science fiction piece (revising hurts so much!). Whatever keeps my interest, that's what I'll write.

How do you feel about this? Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments.

Have another question you'd like the Modern Myth Makers to answer? Just ask us in the comments and we'll try to respond in a future month.

Bonus Post: A Writing Prompt

2010-04-23T12:00:00.005-04:00

Pass the Plot - Scene 2 (Bryony)

2010-04-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

This week we have a guest author, code-named: Joshinator. :)
------

Bryony's nose was filled with the sickening smell of the dead. It was
only the third time he had smelled it, the smell of power unleashed,
the smell of death. Bryony tried desperately to think back, when was
the last time he had seen water? While his mind was occupied his
hands stayed busy; there were things he needed but he didn't want to
look at where he got them from. A pack, mostly intact, some canteen's
empty, and the rest of the enterprising foot soldier's medic pack
joined some rations, a half turn of rope, and a short sword. The
prize though was a slightly dented container, also from the prepared
foot soldier, and one sniff told Bryony all he needed to know.

"You, sir, were a Saint." Bryony toasted his fallen comrade then took a
swig from the bottle. Almost instantly the worldly pains faded away
replaced with a sort of warm fire in his belly. "My, my, you were
prepared for anything." Bryony looked at the corpse fondly; the whole
field didn't look that bad any more, sure there were some dead people
there but there were dead people everywhere these days.

A chill howl cut through the liquid courage.

"Ravegers." Bryony cursed. There had been a stream a few miles back. He needed water now, and not just to drink. The pack went on his shoulders, and wincing Bryony started limping off. Ravegers would be happy to eat the dead, even the residue of magic wouldn't stop them long but they prefered their food to be a little fresher.

Would that Edits were as Habit-Forming as Words

2010-04-16T10:00:00.001-04:00

With the notable exception of pantsing my way through my rough drafts, I'm very into planning. I am a big fan of the idea that it takes 21 days to make a habit. The Franklin Covey system and I go way back. I like SMART goals and spreadsheets and timetables. My planner is color coded in addition to being prioritized by type of task. I'm a huge planning nerd.

I was talking to someone about writing the other day and I happened to mention NaNoWriMo. We were talking about getting over the two-page problem. (You know, where you never get more than two pages into a story because you get stuck trying to make it perfect or your idea just runs out of steam after those first few moments of inspiration.) The reason I always recommend NaNoWriMo to people with the two-page problem is two-fold.

That's how I got over my own two-page problem back in November of 2006.
NaNoWriMo, falling in November, is 30 days long, giving you more than enough time to turn writing daily into a habit. (If you recall from the first paragraph, I firmly believe habits take 21 days to form.)

Not only did NaNoWriMo get me into the habit of writing every day, it got me into the habit of writing whenever I had time, of keeping a notebook on me for sudden moments of inspiration, and of expecting writing sessions to yield at least a thousand words rather than just two little pages. I found my writing style through NaNoWriMo, which just happens to be perfectly compatible with the program.

Other people have to work a little harder during November, being that they're not complete and total pantsers capable of banging out 1000 words in 15 minutes if hyped up on enough coffee and leftover Halloween candy. I spare brief moments of sadness for those poor unfortunate Wrimos. And then, you know, I have to get back to work, because there's likely a word war I'm supposed to be paying attention to.

But, Nikki, you might be thinking, it's April. Why are you talking about all this now?

An excellent question! You see, I have a problem. NaNoWriMo gave me the perfect way to form a writing habit. I have yet to find anything that helps me form an editing habit.

My style of editing is meticulous, with many methods and tools layered on top of each other. It can't be accomplished in the same fast-paced, no sleep, go-until-you-die-and-then-get-up-and-go-some-more fashion as my writing. I've tried it. I ended up completely burned out and almost decided to give up writing altogether. I also didn't get through the revisions, so, other than being a nice lesson in what I can and cannot do, the exercise was quite pointless.

Since getting pregnant, I've fallen off the wagon with regard to my writing. I spent my first trimester basically living the life of a newborn. Wake up. Eat something. Throw up. Gee, that was exhausting. Go back to sleep. Repeat for three months. There was not a lot of writing. There was definitely not a lot of revising. And now here I sit on the other side of it, completely out of the habit of working at all with no spiffy internet competition to help me get back on track.

I suppose I could try Script Frenzy, but I have no real interest in writing a script and I feel like that would just slice another month out of the very limited time I have left to get my current WIP completed and queried out.

And so I guess I shall have to get back into the habit the old fashioned way, just trying to remember to do it every day until I don't need the reminder anymore. It would be nice, though, if editing was even half as much fun as playing with shiny new words.

April Update

2010-04-12T06:00:00.001-04:00

yellow pollen spores,
grab your antihistamine!,
drifting on the wind

--------------

No literary allusions here, just a small hommage to the natural wonder of spring.

How's the writing coming along? Are you making inroads into your monthly goal?

My stated goal of April has yet to be touched, although I am doing well at the unstated goal of daily writing. I think the reason for the goal not yet getting off the ground is that although I tried to be slick and disguise the whole revisions bit, I was not slick enough.

However, there is still time, and I think I have a secret weapon. I'll let you know how things go.

Pass the plot -- Scene 1 (Bryony)

2010-04-07T22:02:00.001-04:00

The air was hot and still. The sun was a round ball of fire in the sky and the absence of any clouds made the heat even more impressive. No birds sang, in fact there was a lack of noise so profound that it was almost a sound in and of itself.

Bryony stank, even to his own nose. He was sticky with blood but he refused to let his mind dwell on that fact as he made himself methodically go through the torn bits of clothing on the other corpses near him. Somewhere in the carnage was a medic's bag. If Bryony didn't find the bag and the supplies within, the wounds making him dizzy and weak would foul and then he would die. Bryone did not want to die.

The silence jangled his taut nerves. The battle magic wouldn't fade for days and until then, no animals would come near the site. His skin crawled with the desire to leave the area; he didn't know for certain how long he'd been unconscious and there was a small chance that the opposition would return, although he had no idea why they would do that.

It wastn't the medic, but Bryony came across a fellow foot soldier who had had the foresight to pack an emergency kit. It was too bad that the dead man didn't have the foresight to leave the battle once the tide turned. It was also possible that the man didn't get the chance to choose; things had happened so quickly. There weren't a lot of supplies in the kit but this was enough to tend to the worst of the holes and slashes leaking essential fluid. Using more rags, Bryone replaced the soaked makeshift bandages and sniffed the air for water.

Free Fiction Friday: March Winner

2010-04-02T16:04:00.001-04:00

The mighty number generator has spoken, and the winner of March's Free Fiction Friday is:

Stella (Ex Libris)

Congrats Stella, and thank you everyone who entered! Stella, please write us at Contests(AT)themodernmythmakers(DOT)com and let me know if you would like a copy of Bone Crossed or Moon Called and where you would like the book shipped. Thanks.

Happy Friday everyone!

First and Goals: April 2010 (Really This Time)

2010-04-02T12:00:00.007-04:00

Okay, so we got a little silly yesterday, it being April Fools' Day and all. But we really do plan to work a bit this month, so here's the real First and Goals post for this month.

At the beginning of each month, we Modern Myth Makers will be posting our writerly goals for the coming month, ~~in an effort to motivate ourselves through the threat of shaming in a public forum~~ by giving each other, and all of you, the opportunity to encourage our progress.

NL Berger's Goals: I met my goals last month! Huzzah! Woohoo! Yippee! *Ahem* Sorry about that; it's been a while since I've felt productive. 16 weeks, to be precise. Moving on. I need to pick up my pace if I'm going to get this book done before the baby puts in his/her appearance in September. This month, I will revise not one but three chapters and post them on the OWW site for review. Which, of course, also means that I'll do 12 reviews on the OWW site, in order to earn enough points to post three chapters.

Darlene C. Goodman's Goals: I don't remember posting goals last month. I don't think I did. Well, I guess I lived up to expectations! Woot! I did plot nine new scenes and start writing them, but what I have written is unsalvagable crap. I also wrote a very short story in a violent fit of depression and, dang, it's shiney. April's goal is to find a story that I actually want to write. Maybe about phoenixes, maybe about angsty teenage girls, maybe about rocks on the beach. My muse needs a fix.

Tori Pryer's Goals: Alas, I fail. I did not finish the short story. I am not meant to be a pantser. Therefore, I've chosen to plot it first. I know more stuff about the villain and the heroine and the hero. I have a scene list. I will write the short story, I just didn't do it this month. I read TDC and I've started making notes about the manuscript.

For April, I plan to break TDC into chapters and to start re-plotting it. If I get lucky, I would like to re-write/edit the first chapter. I will continue to work on the short story in my free time. Oh, and I'm doing the monster short for Script Frenzy

Sarah Templeton's Goals: I finally burned myself out on revisions last month. I need to write fresh words, and work on a new project. No rewriting, no tweaking, just fresh, muse-refueling words. So I'm taking on a 50k challenge with some other RWA PROs starting this month--and I'm writing a new project. I'm also letting my inner artist out to play: I'm designing steampunk jewelry for some costumes I get to wear in May. Gonna be a busy but freshly creative month designed to stimulate the brain cells.

Haricot Vert's Goals: For March, I said I would mangle a fairy tale. And I did. I survey the damage, and... yup, mangling definitely took place. So for April, I will clean up after myself, and see if there is anything coherent and cohesive amidst all of the verbal blood and gore.

What about you guys? What are your writing goals for this month?

Pass the Plot Scene 13

2010-04-01T23:41:00.000-04:00

“Father” Nara let the word drift over the mind feed. The link between the two of them formed and expanded. “You called.” Her panic subsided. She needed to take action.

“The hull it is interfering with the explosives. We need to magnetize it so that we can destroy the ship.” Captain Denett’s sounded in her head. Nara was on her feet within seconds. There was a comp panel next to the door. If it hadn’t been destroyed in the fire fight or by the Kloquin, she would use it to fix their little problem.

She opened the door to the comp panel. “A keyboard. How primitive.” She whispered. The Galadrians for all their robotic technology had been rather old fashioned when it came to computers. It was certainly a good thing that she was fluent in Galadrian. She let her fingers fly over the keys. One code. Then two. Then finally the third and final code was entered into the keyboard.

Nara opened her mind feed. “Father, I’ve magnetized the hull. Set the thermal charge and meet me at port 60178. I’m sending you the schematics.” The diffuser that her father set should have spread through the ship now. Any fully technological beings would be compromised. The door hissed open when Nara pressed the button.

“Nara, listen to me. I’m going after the Princess. If I’m not there in exactly five minutes, I want you to leave this ship. Do you understand?” The words coming over the mind feed were sterner now and more fatherly. They didn’t match the image of the man running through the corridors of the Galadrian ship. She saw doors and comp panels flashing through the mind feed.

Nara fought the urge to panic. She didn’t want to leave the ship without him. She didn't know what was going on o the other ship. “But Father….” Nara had spent the last six months being careful not to acknowledge her relationship with him.

“Don’t 'but Father' me. Go.”

Nara ran to the port and climbed aboard the transport and started the engines. Her father was going after the Klox princess on a ship that was going to explode. The panic rose again in Nara's throat. No. No, she wouldn't let herself get lost in fear again. Nara tore her mind away from her father’s task and focused on her own. She would be piloting the transport without guidance from the home ship. She needed to remember her training. She flipped one switch. Then two. Then a third.

The doors to the transport opened. Nara didn't look up.

“Nara. Let us leave now.” The voice came from over her shoulder. It was familiar. Very familiar.

Nara turned .“Father. It can’t be.” She breathed the words. It couldn’t be her father. Her father was searching for the princess. She could almost feel the vibration of the flux capacitor in his hand. This thing in front of her was not her father.

“We must leave quickly.” The thing that wasn’t her father spoke again.

Nara stood. Her hand twitched against the transport phaser. It wasn’t set to stun. It was set to kill. She didn't wait to see what would happen. Instead, she drew and pulled the trigger. The thing that wasn’t her father fell. The image that it had been projecting failed and Nara was able to see the princess that had been her friend for the first time as she was supposed to be. She was beautiful. Purple skin. Flowing orange hair. Coal black eyes. Eyes that were glassy in death.

Nara had killed her. She’d killed the last ruler of the Klox. The droids no longer had anyone to protect. The Galadrian ship would be safe now.

She opened her mind and sent the words over their newly developed connection “Father. Hurry up. It is time to go home."

First and Goals: April 2010

2010-04-01T12:00:00.020-04:00

At the beginning of each month, we Modern Myth Makers will be posting our writerly goals for the coming month, ~~in an effort to motivate ourselves through the threat of shaming in a public forum~~ by giving each other, and all of you, the opportunity to encourage our progress.

NL Berger's Goals: I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I've decided that, now that I'm having a baby, I don't need to do the whole writing thing anymore. It was just filler, fluff to make me feel worthwhile during the years when I wasn't living up to my potential as a baby factory. Because, really, you just can't be a wife and a mother and a novelist all at the same time. No one really does that (not well anyway). So, while it's been fun these past few years, I'm giving up the writing game. No goals for me this month.

Darlene C. Goodman's Goals: I'm starting a new project this month. It's a lit fic novel about a rock on a beach and all the people who pass by it on their way to the water. The beetle scene makes me cry just thinking about it.

Kalayna Price's Goals: I have recently come up with an idea for a super sexy book called THE SECRET LIFE OF PIGEONS. This month will be devoted to research to really get in the head of my characters. To do this, I will be selling all of my belongings and moving into the park so that I can be with the pigeons at all times. I will try to live just like a pigeon, from sleeping, to eating, to refusing to fly away from passing cars but instead waddle slowly with my head bobbing while the car blares its horn. It will be great. I think this will be the big one for me. But, as pigeons don't have internet--or a written language--I will have to leave this blog. As such, this will be my last post. Thanks guys, I really enjoyed blogging with you! Come visit me at the park some time.

Tori Pryer's Goals: I've been keeping secrets from you guys and I think it is time to come clean. I've secretly been finished with not one but two books and I've been querying them and through that process I've met a man...and well, I plan to go to Vegas this month so I will be a bit too busy to write

Sarah Templeton's Goals: This month, I intend to write four books, learn a new language, design my official website, and handsew fifteen steampunk outfits which I will wear over the course of three days next month. I will invent 101 new ways to enjoy the blissful taste of Thin Mints (Although some will be theoretical. I'll run out of cookies long before 101) and I am going to finally canoe fearlessly down a river--even though I can't swim.

Haricot Vert's Goals: My goals are small this time around. I will revise 2006's NaNoWriMo manuscript, edit it, polish it, and then query it to at least 7 agents.

What about you guys? What are your writing goals for this month?

Bonus Post: A Writing Prompt

2010-03-29T12:00:00.009-04:00

On occasion, there comes a Monday or Friday when no TriMu is scheduled to blog. The calendar is just tricksy that way. But never fear, dear readers; we will not leave you with nothing to read today! We've decided to do a collaborative post, a brief response from each of us to a writing prompt. We hope you enjoy.

Today's Writing Prompt: Someone who is not your boss but is above you in the business organization overall is making your professional life a living hell. You've tried filing a grievance, asking for guidance, even confronting him/her about the issue. Nothing has helped. In fact, things are getting worse. You've decided there's only one thing for it: he/she has to die. All that's left now is figuring out how to do it...

NL Berger's Response: I peered around the soft wall into the cubicle, so nervous I felt like my tongue had glued itself to the roof of my dry mouth. She was sitting with her back to me, white wires from her ear buds curling down from her ears. Her head continued to bob in time with whatever music she was listening to. I nearly sighed with relief, catching myself just in time. She hadn't heard my approach and I certainly didn't intend to give myself away now. Not when I was so close.

There were papers strewn all over the desk in front of her, scattered in the kind of disarray that screamed "I'm in the middle of something urgent!", but I wasn't fooled. She hadn't moved a single one of them or made any notes in almost an hour. Besides, I was pretty sure at this point that she couldn't actually read anyway.

The façade was carefully constructed to get her out of lunch with the boss. The plan had worked, but she hadn't bothered to check, to realize that she was alone in the office now with just me. I was pretty sure she didn't know anything about follow through either.

I crept into the small space, a thin dagger clutched tight in my right hand--giving myself, a lefty, the perfect alibi. Hopefully. I could hear the faint pounding of the music blasting in her ears now and the violent rhythm seemed all too appropriate. Two more steps on silent feet and her reign of terror over my career would be over. Forever. My heart hammered in my throat but the fingers clenching the dagger never shook. I took that as a sign that I was doing the right thing and lunged forward.

Darlene C. Goodman's Response: What? Doesn't everyone have an assassin on retainer? We don't need to know how it's done. Just slip a 3X5 card with the name and email address into a particular planter in a particular park in a particular suburban neighborhood and the deed gets done.

Tori Pryer's Response: Accidental computer electrocution.....Or so they think. The programmer steps into his cube and turns on his computer. A hot cup of coffee in his hand. He places his hand on the mouse. The desk jostles. The coffee spills. A charge runs through his body. His heart stops. The coroner declares it an accident, but was it? You be the judge.

Sarah Templeton's Response:
Once upon a road quite dreary, while he peered through windshield smeary,
Over on the wint'ry side and shoulder of darkened icy road,
While he squinted, nearly blinking, foreboding sense came a-sinking,
As a grenade came a-clinking, clinking (Oh, the blood - Red snowed!)
through the moonroof, it flare-ed, tripping (Oh, the blood - Red snowed!) -
On a dark, midwinter road...

Haricot Vert's Response: It's all about habit. You always, always, turn on your radio each morning without fail; walk in, sit down at your desk, put your fingers on that little knob and turn it. Oh yes, habit is the key. But so is going above and beyond the call of duty. Because who in their right minds actually reads those MSDS sheets?
...And we'll all crowd into the office as the paramedics take you away, because we're so worried about you, dearest...

Anyone else in the mood for some creative stretching exercise today? Post your own responses to this writing prompt in the comments!

Pass the Plot: Scene 12

2010-03-28T12:24:00.000-04:00

Nara's distress overwhelmed the mind-feed and Captain Denett pinched the bridge of his nose. "Help is on the way," he shot back, unable to resist pushing just the slightest edge of encouragement to his daughter. The Garid-corpse laden images flickering over the connection winked off as her blaze of panic dulled to a low pulse of well-warranted fear.

If she'd made it past the Ensign ranking, if she'd had better training in emotive control, he'd be back on the Galajax waiting for a report, unaware something had gone wrong. Instead, Captain Denett picked his way through a minefield of more Garid and human bodies, cursing the Galactic Legions for his inexperienced crew. He was Captain. No one but the infiltrators should have seen death. He'd have to send funerary transmissions to a dozen worlds when this was over.

He cursed anew, taking shallow breaths to minimize the stench of rotting death that reached in to curdle his stomach. The Garid weren't the only threat in the stars. He'd been so sure, and he'd sent Nara over unprepared. Xenobiological expertise would help little against robotics. No. That would be his specialty.

He should have known. The Kloqin could change their biometric signatures, masking their cybertronic profiles. The perfect spy. The perfect soldier. Why Eloin had chosen a Garid biosig . . . But it didn't matter. He was Captain. He should have known.

And Captain Denett would spend the rest of his stardated days atoning if his arrogance cost his daughter's life. He sent reassurance over the neural pathway again, locking the transmission to her frequency. Nara would know the mind-feed transmissions onboard the Galajax weren't shipbound. She'd learn his secret. And hers.

A squish of crushed flesh sounded behind him. Lifting his taser, Captain Denett rolled his eyes. "I thought you Kloqin were supposed to adapt." He whipped the contacts toward yet another cybertronic menace. Its humanoid frame jerked, sizzled, its glimmering eyesockets flaring like ball lightning. The electric shock fried its circuits and smoke poured from its fingers. Twitching, the robot dropped its weapon and crumbled among the other bodies. "How many times do I have to take out the idiot sneaking up behind me before you figure out--"

The last of its power diminished, the Kloqin's cloaking field dropped.

"Oh."

The captain's feet were in motion before his taser recovered the charge. Clanking at his heels and in full AI mode were four bodyguards of the Princess of Klox. It didn't take a mechanical engineer to figure out that the royal in question was Eloin.

He jerked around the corner and slammed a diffuser into the metal door as it closed. The robotic beings would power down when they came in range of the device. Spinning, he smiled broadly. They'd chased him right into the interior hull.

"This last one should do it." Captain Denett set his third thermal charge, his grin fading when the light failed to activate. He cast a look back at the diffuser. No, it was far enough away. Something else was wrong. The interior hull was null-magnetized. This far into the Garidic cruiser, technology wouldn't work. Which meant the diffuser . . . He rapped his knuckles against the steel bulkhead, desperately willing his brain to beat out a plan. "Nara, I need a hand."

Mailbag Monday: March 2010

2010-03-22T12:00:00.006-04:00

Though we have a lot in common, each member of the Tri Mu has a slightly different take on writing, publishing, books, and life in general. On the fourth Monday of the month, we'll take a question submitted by one of you and each give our opinions on the issue.

This month's question: Do you write your novels in chronological orders, starting with the beginning and writing the first introductory chapters and go along, or do you write in not such a strict order, and maybe go back to write the beginning after you are done with the middle?
Submitted by Stella

NL Berger's Response: I always start out thinking I've begun with the beginning. Invariably, though, as I write along, I come up with a new, better beginning and I go back and add it. (Oh, the joys of being a pantser!) Sometimes that means I cut the beginning I originally wrote, and sometimes it means I just add to it. Also, I tend to skip through the middle of the story, just sketching out a few scenes here and there to get general idea down, in my rush to write through to the climax. I do always make myself go back and flesh out the middle and firm up the beginning before I get to the very end though. I like to actually be done when I get to end. Of course, all that applies only to the first draft. Once I get to revisions, all bets are off...

Darlene C. Goodman's Response: I typically write in chapter order from beginning to end. I have tried skipping around, but I simply can't work up the inspiration to go back and fill in blank areas after I've already moved on. This tendency is really bad during revisions, because that usually means I do a series of complete rewrites from the beginning.

Kalayna Price's Response: I (almost) always start out intending to write in chronological order. I'm a plotter, so this typically works fairly well for most of the book, but occasionally, if I just can't make a scene work, I will skip it and jump ahead. As I'm working on a first draft, unexpected turns tend to crop up so once I get to the second draft, there are always scenes that have to be added between other scenes. So, yes, chronological--and no. ^_^

Tori Pryer's Response: Well, the answer is that I try to write them from beginning to end. By the time that I finish the first draft, I think that I'm done. That I've written all the scenes that I can write and that there are no others to write. Unfortunately, when I read it again, I find that I'm not done. That there are missing pieces. I have two first drafts that I completely re-plotted. Some scenes get to stay. Some scenes go. Some new scenes are written or rather to be written. I've not completed the process yet, but I'm slogging forward with it. I will let you know how it turns out.

Sarah Templeton's Response: 2:30 in the morning is my muse's favorite time to decide a random scene from later in my current WIP must be written. I acquire coffee, and then I write my manuscript out of order. But I don't recommend it. It took me a whole week to get the events from one of my WIP's into the correct timeline. The next time, I won't slap them all down in the same document but instead separate my scenes out into individual segments. (I know, a lot of folks are cringing right now. It was nerve-wracking.) Sometimes, when the muse attacks, I don't even start at the beginning, but I do go back with a narrative summary outline to make sure the random scenes have a place when all's said and done.

Haricot Vert's Response: The way I write depends on the degree of planning beforehand. If I have an outline then I write wherever I feel, and check off the areas of the outline as I go. If I'm feeling my way through the process then I usually write from beginning to end. However, if I'm using that method and I hit a now-what? moment, I have no problem writing (and then this happens but I'm not sure exactly what it is but the characters have to get to x/solve z) and moving on to the next part. In editing, or later in the story, the answer to the parenthetical pause usually comes to me and then I put the solution in another set of parentheses with a link back to the original parentheses.

How do you feel about this? Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments.

Have another question you'd like the Modern Myth Makers to answer? Just ask us in the comments and we'll try to respond in a future month.

I'll have a Good Story with a Twist, Please

2010-03-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

I don't know about you, but I read the books I buy over and over again. If I've got a few hours to kill, or it's a rainy afternoon, or I wake up thinking about a character from a story I liked, I grab the book in question and dive back into it. Sometimes I'll just read a key scene or two -- my favorites or maybe the ones that got stuck in my brain and sent me hunting for the book in the first place. Sometimes I start at page one and read all the way through to THE END. Depends on my mood, I guess.

Reading a book the second time is very different for me than my first pass. So different, in fact, that I usually read everything twice right from the start, just to get the full experience. The first time through, I get completely caught up by the action. I plow through the story, desperate to find out how it all ends. The second time, I don't worry so much about the plot, because I already know what's coming. The second time through, I notice all those little details I missed during that first, very rushed, experience.

Now, because I read things over and over again, my favorite books are ones that offer me something new on the second reading, something that I couldn't have gotten on the first go around even if I had been reading carefully. I like stories that have a good twist, something that not only takes the plot off in a new direction, but also colors everything that came before it once you know the secret.

I want to give examples here, but I think it would make for an unnecessarily long blog post if I started pasting in excerpts from entire novels. Plus, I don't want to spoil things for folks if they haven't had the pleasure of reading those books yet. However, a solution popped into my head in the shower this morning (as it seems all solutions do) and I think I've got some examples I can use now.

And now I shall reveal to you all my bumpkin side. I listen to a lot of country music. I could blame this on my residence in South Carolina -- it's tough to live here and listen to anything else -- but the truth is that I've been listening to country music since long before I relocated to the Deep South. And, as with novels, my favorite songs are those with a twist, a line somewhere in the song that changes the meaning of every line that came before it, so that you end up enjoying the song in a completely different way the next time you hear it.

Don't worry, I'm not going to give you pages and pages of song lyrics. Just a few snippets here and there.

The first is a fairly new song, the one that was playing and got me thinking about this idea today in the first place.

Pray for You, performed by Jaron and the Long Road to Love, written by Jaron Lowenstein and Joel Brentlinger
Haven't been in church since I don't remember when
Things were going great 'til they fell apart again
So I listened to the preacher as he told me what to do
Said you can't go hating others who done wrong to you
Sometimes we get angry but we must not condemn
Let the good Lord do his job and you just pray for them

Chorus:
I pray your brakes go out running down a hill
I pray a flower pot falls from a window sill
And knocks you in the head like I'd like to
I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls
I pray your flying high when your engine stalls
I pray all your dreams never come true
Just know wherever you are, honey, I pray for you

The song goes on from there, with more examples of this guy's special brand of prayer for his ex and how much better he feels now that he's found his way back to the church, but I think you get the idea.

The second starts out sounding a bit more like a stereotypical country song. Man watching a woman dancing with another man, lamenting about how she used to be his. Oh, boy, it's another breakup country song. Um . . . or not.

I Loved Her First, performed by Heartland, written by Walt Aldridge and Elliott Park
Look at the two of you dancing that way
Lost in the moment and each other's face
So much in love you're alone in this place
Like there's nobody else in the world

I was enough for her not long ago
I was her number one, she told me so
And she still means the world to me, just so you know
So be careful when you hold my girl

Time changes everything; life must go on
And I'm not gonna stand in your way

Chorus:
But I loved her first, and I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she'd find you someday
But it still hard to give her away
I loved her first

I think this is now probably one of the most popular father-daughter dance songs at weddings.

And for my final example, I give you the chorus of one of my favorite fun songs.

Cleaning This Gun, performed by Rodney Atkins, written by Casey Beathard and Marla Cannon-Goodman
Chorus:
Come on in boy, sit on down and tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter, do you now? Yeah we think she's something else
She's her daddy's girl, her momma's world
She deserves respect, that’s what she'll get, ain’t it son?
Hey y'all run along and have some fun
I'll see you when you get back, bet I’ll be up all night
Still cleanin' this gun

Seems like a fairly benign conversation between a father and his daughter's date. Until you realize that he's been sitting there with a gun in front of him the whole time. I feel like all those questions got answered with a good solid "Yes Sir".

So there you have it, a few examples of the type of twist I'm talking about. Now if I could just figure out how to write twists like that into my novels, I'd be all set . . .

Pass the Plot 3, Scene 11

2010-03-17T09:00:00.001-04:00

Bitter defeat coated the back of Nara's tongue, making her swallow convulsively. This was the end.

Even as she threw her body to the side to avoid the laser blast, she knew it was hopeless. One Garid drone she could deal with. The idea of sneaking through a Garidan raider filled with them had been daunting enough, but that was what she was trained for.

This was something else. She was surrounded by armed enemies of unknown origin -- who had just managed to silently kill her entire boarding party while she stood less than a tharspan from them. Victory was out of the question.

Hell, survival was probably out of the question.

Laser fire erupted throughout the shuttlecraft and the surrounding bay, Eloin and her minions all trying to catch her as she slid across the floor. They're not as quick as drones, thank the moon, Nara thought, relief flooding through her chest. A Garid drone would have cut her down before she'd even finished thinking about running.

Nara fired over her shoulder without looking as she scrambled for a door on the far side of the room. She didn't have a hope in hell of hitting anything that way, but the idea was just to throw off their aim long enough to get herself out of here.

The doors in front of her slid open and Nara dove through, not caring what waited on the other side. Storage closet, warp drive chamber, or escape hatch -- it didn't matter so long as she put a wall between herself and Eloin's creatures.

She spun as she fell through, shooting the control panel next to the opening. The doors slammed closed and sparks rained from the locking mechanism.

Safe. For the moment.

"Nara, don't make this harder than it needs to be," Eloin called through sealed door. "If we have to chase you, you'll get all messed up and then I won't be able to use your body."

Nara shuddered at the sound of that and turned around, facing her new surroundings.

A scream lodged itself in her throat, stopping her breath. She scuttled backward toward the doors, regretting the moment her back hit them that she'd just locked her only means of escape. She blinked slowly, hoping that when she opened her eyes, the sight that met them would be different. Hoping that the mangled remains of cybernetic-enhanced bodies -- some of them human, some of them not -- would no longer be littered about the room, soaking in thick puddles of blackening blood and purple Garidan acid.

No such luck. Eloin had been busy during her brief stay aboard the raider. Every Garid drone in sight had been ripped to shreds, and, judging by the pile of corpses cramming the door on the far side of the room, possibly every drone throughout the rest of the ship too.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Nara toyed with the idea for a moment as she surveyed the wreckage of the conversion chamber. Then she remembered Eloin's threat about using her body.

No. No, Eloin was definitely not her friend.

Nara forced herself away from the wall and started picking her way through the remains on the floor. She needed a better weapon, a way out of this room, and backup. Lots of backup.

A Pathetic Blog Entry

2010-03-16T11:18:00.000-04:00

How is writing like falling downstairs?

Last week, I met with the TriMu for pizza and Woodchuck at a local eatery. It had been raining, and I was mentally composing an email when I started down the short flight of concrete stairs at the back of the resautant. In the immortal words of the old-school Batman TV series:

KERPOW!!!!

I hit the stairs, bouncing my tailbone down each one. My laptop, in its backpack, flew out to the side as I tried to slow my fall with my arms (thankfully, I had slung the backpack over one shoulder instead of wearing it properly, or else it would have crunched under me and this would have been a different kind of blog entry). My first thought was, my back is broken. My second, my laptop is broken. Neither turned out to be true, but I am somewhat angry with myself for worrying about the spasms of pain in my backside and spinal column more than the computer. Sigh. My priorities need some reevaluation, I guess.

Anyway, the pain and swelling on my tailbone seemed to disappear in a day or two and I had a fine weekend with no problems at all, even with a long ride in a car and a 6 hour movie marathon. No worries.

Then Monday night hit and I hurt again. It was as bad as it had been when I hit it first. Icing my bum all evening did little to dull the pain. I don't know what happened that day, but it was like my brain finally cought up to the fact that I bruised my tailbone, four days later.

So, what does all this have to do with writing? Nothing at all, I just didn't have anything to blog about. ;)

Not, gonna cut it, eh? Alright. Hold on, let me figure something out.

How about this? Some ideas come like falling downstairs. They hit you when you're thinking of something else, slapping you flat on your back and leaving a mark that sometimes flares up at odd times. Good enough? Or do you have a better answer? ;)

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 10

2010-03-10T16:11:00.003-05:00

"Ellie?" Nara stared at the woman before her. "What's going on?"

Lieutenant Eloin shouldered a laser cannon twice the size of the drone, Darrew's, old weapon. Ellie's gaze shifted to a point above Nara's right ear and slipped out of focus. "I'm doing what I was programmed to do." She pulled her focus back onto Nara's eyes. "My people will rise again."

"The conversions don't take as long as they used to, I see. They've gotten you already, Ellie." The other woman raised a thin black eyebrow. "Wait a minute." Nara swore. "You were one of them all along! You and Darrew together!" Nara placed her hand in the small of her back and made a fist. She hoped her crew would get the clue that they should figure out where to hide before the laser cannons started firing.

"No, not together," Ellie said. "He never knew what I am. I had his links connected to my colony's sensory node, but the surveillance only went one way." Her lips curved. "Malkur always liked to put his colony comms in the forehead, for convenience. Fool. It was always so fun to open Darrew's ship's comm when he was, shall we say--too busy to talk."

"So you're not a Garid?"

"No."

Nara eyed the cannon on Ellie's shoulder. "Why haven't you killed us yet?"

Ellie's smile widened. "You're the only one left."

Nara glanced behind her. Pinpoints of purple light met her eyes, making her squint. Five purple-skinned humanoids with LED eyes blinked at her, all fingering giant cannons like Ellie's. And Thompson, Jennings, Schmidt, and Graziano lay at the creature's feet, eyes wide in shock, blood dripping from mouths and noses and ears. Nara swallowed bile and turned back to Ellie.

The laser cannon was trained at Nara's chest.

Motivations and Results

2010-03-08T22:25:00.002-05:00

plop! cold and wet snow
down the back of my jacket
i hear trees giggling

-----

Sarah threw down the gauntlet the other day by offering up a 12 day writing challenge. Surprisingly, I made it through. /ponders this miracle. I even carved out a daily window seat in time, in which to work on this challenge.

It is a weird experience to be successful at something like this. There were a couple nights were I had no idea what to write, but I wrote anyway. I tried to wrap up each night so that its effort could stand alone, even if I continued the idea the next night. I played with characters I had met before, and introduced myself to others that I had only seen through the mists of being half-asleep.

Maybe that is what motivated me enough to continue the challenge each day, the idea of playing.

What motivates you to continue, whether writing, revising, querying, etc.?

On Writing Sequels, and a WINNER!

2010-03-05T12:32:00.004-05:00

There was a time when most books stood completely on their own. The writer had characters, a problem, and a story, and by the end of the book that story was told, the problem solved, and it was time to say goodbye to the characters unless you reread the book. That was it. The end.

In most genres that isn't the case anymore. When querying genre fiction, it isn't even necessary to say the book is a first in a series. That is assumed, so you better have an idea for a second book.

Right now, I am still celebrating and promoting the release of the second book in my Haven series. At the same time, I am preparing to send the second Alex Craft novel off to New York. One sequel I started after the book was already in print, the other I started before I even received my revision notes on the first book. One I knew what readers were saying about the book, the other I didn't even know if the setting was going to remain the same. One of those probably should have been easier than the other, right? But which one? The one where I felt pressure to fix what people didn't like and try to preserve what they did? The one that could change drastically if the first book had a major change? Okay, no. Neither was easy. In fact, I would say for both series it was harder to write the second book than the first. After all, you want the second book to be better, stronger, and more entertaining than the last. That's a tall order.

My advice from the trenches?

-Write the novel for you and for your characters.
Reviews on the net can reveal issues that truly are problems. But, at the same time, opinions are just opinions. I noticed that with any book, if you read the reviews, what one person loves someone else inevitably hates. So don't get caught up in reviews. If something resonates, take it as helpful critique, but write the book that needs to be written. Trying to incorporate everyone's opinion just makes a person insane.

-Keep good notes.
Okay, yes I wrote this character, but that doesn't mean I remember every detail about him or her. And yes, I remembered that happened in the first book--okay, I forgot, but I sort of remembered somewhere in the back of my head. Some sort of reference sheet is a must to keep facts straight.

-Don't wait for lightening to strike, get out there with your kite and tie that key to it.
People loved the first book, after all, that's what you sold and earned the contract with. But now you have to write a second one??
With my Haven series, I have a pretty clear idea of where I'm headed with the series. I don't have all the details worked out but I have an idea where I want the series to end and several things which have to occur before my characters can reach their happily ever after. My Alex Craft novels are a little more vague as far as long term planning goes. Also, hands down, I think GRAVE WITCH is the best book I've written to date (but, of course, I plan to top it--I'm not yet done with the second book in the series or with the third book in the Haven series.) It can be paralyzingly terrifying to sit there thinking you might not have another great book in you. When plotting the second book, I honestly had the thought (on several occasions) "What if I can't do this? What if I let everyone down?" That is counter productive and totally unhelpful.
You can't sit around waiting for a great idea to hit you (at least, not after you have deadlines to worry about.) It might mean starting the first draft while still searching for that magical element that will take the book from 'eh' to something you can't wait for people to read, but, as they say, the muse comes to those who are at the keyboard ready to write. And, while lightening rarely hits the same spot twice, if that daily return to work is your kite, you are far more likely to get a jolt.

And with that, it is time for me to head back to my own writing. After all, I have a manuscript which I need to make sure sparkles before it is time to send it off!

------------
Before I head out, it is time to announce the winner of the signed copy of TWICE DEAD. The random number generator has spoken, and the winner is:

RAELENA

Congratulations! I have a stack of items that need to be shipped in the next few days, so if you can shot an email to contests(AT)themodermythmakers(DOT)com with your shipping address and who to make the book out to, I can hopefully get the book in the mail at the same time as I ship everything else.

Well, that's it for today. Have a great weekend everyone!

Pass the Plot 3, Scene 9

2010-03-03T11:59:00.001-05:00

"Thompson, Jennings, Schmidt, and Graziano come with me. We're going to take Shuttle 2. We're on full alert. Shuttle 1 has been compromised. I repeat we are on full alert." Nara grabbed the old-fashioned shotgun and loaded it with two shells. She tucked the blaster and an extra battery pack into the holster at her waist. She didn't check to see if the others were doing the same. Sixteen years in military school preparing for a command in the Interplanetary Navy and she had been fooled because of her lack of experience in male-female relations. Well, Nara wouldn't be fooled again. Trust was a commodity to be traded just like rubies from the Nekoajn mines.

She pressed in the code to open the doors to Shuttle 2 and they butterflied open. "Thompson, you're on the wheel. Graziano, you have the comm. Schmidt and Jennings, you are security." She settled into the navigator's chair and felt Thompson slide in beside her. Nara looked over and saw the other woman's cheeks were tracked by tears.

"Kirk's tribbles." She swore under her breath. Thompson had been engaged to Hanna and Hanna had been on Shuttle 1. "Thompson, if you need to be reassigned, please speak up now."

"I'm fine, ma'am. Just fine." Thompson tilted her chin back. "I welcome the opportunity to carry out this mission." Anger laced the other woman's words. She pulled on the headset in front of her and spoke into the microphone. "Shuttle 2 preparing for takeoff from the Galajax 400. Please open the airlock doors."

Nara nodded her head and turned her attention back to her duties. She could spare a round from the blaster if Thompson turned out to be a liability for the rest of the crew. She turned in her chair and faced the others.

"Blasters out." Her words came out in a whisper. Nara swallowed and took a deep breath. One moment ticked by. Then two before she found her voice again. "Remember, the only way to destroy a Galadrian ship is to take out the head. Preserve your rounds and battery power when possible. Take aim at only those that look like the head of the colony."

The others nodded and Nara turned back to the vid screen. They were being pulled into the Galadrian ship. The vid screen went black and the shuttle was silent. No hum of the engine. No low of the atmosphere machine. Utter silence until the shuttle clunked down on something metal.

Nara stood and pulled her blaster out of her holster. The other members of the crew followed suit. Her heart beat faster and faster. She didn't want to die today.

The doors butterflied open. "Welcome to the Galadrian Rose, Nara."

Free Fiction Friday: Twice Dead, by Kalayna Price

2010-03-01T12:53:00.006-05:00

Due to a little mix up, this post didn't actually go live on Friday, so it's sort of Free Fiction Monday now, but that doesn't sound as good so I'm declaring it Friday in my world. (I have a very casual relationship with time under the best of circumstances.)

Kita is adjusting to her new liquid diet -- an adjustment she rather resents. Not that everything was chocolate and sunshine before (though both were possible before the sexy but infuriating Nathanial sank his fangs in her business). Kita's ability to shape shift into a kitten when her peers shifted into lions and tigers complicated her life, to say the least, but getting stuck in one form -- that of a human shaped tick, a.k.a. a vampire -- sucks, literally. Her adjustment period is violently interrupted when she discovers a headless corpse during a party for a visiting vampire council. But, the headless dancer won't be the only corpse she encounters.

Kita's involvement draws the attention of the Collector, an ancient vampire with an inclination to acquire two things: power and oddities. As a pureblood shifter turned vampire, Kita ranks high on the collectability list -- not a safe place for anyone who values her freedom, and Kita is not the only one on the list. But with the body count rising, there is more at stake than freedom. A killer is slithering through the underbelly of Haven's vampire community, and with the supernaturals dealing in unnamed favors, it's a bad time to be a kitten who can't slip her skin.

The TriMu and I discussed it and we decided that maybe we're not the best candidates to present a review of this book. We all think Kalayna's a genius and love her work unconditionally, which kind of makes objectivity a challenge. I mean, I could sit here and ~~gush in geeky squealing fangirl fashion~~ extol Twice Dead's virtues as a supportive critique partner, but then I would feel a little silly.

Outside the TriMu, some folks over at Fictionwise, where it' hanging out near the top of the Dark Fantasy charts, seem to like it too. People on goodreads have been enjoying it. It's getting good reviews on Amazon as well. Oh, and Mandi over at Smexy Books gave it a 4/5 this weekend while this post was busy not showing up on the internet.

So it's not just us. We love it, others feel the same, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it as well.

To win this book, leave a comment on this post including the following information:

1) Your name
2) How you found us
3) A question for us to answer in our next Mailbag Monday post

~~Comments will be closed at midnight (Eastern) on Sunday, February 28, 2010 and the winner will be announced on Monday, March 1, 2010~~ Comments will be closed at midnight (Eastern) on Thursday, March 4, 2010 and the winner will be announced by Kalayna on Friday, March 5, 2010.

This is just my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other members of the TriMu. Also, I didn't get this book for free. I bought it with my own money from the bookstore, and it's not an ARC or acquisition reviewed for compensation.

First and Goals: March 2010

2010-03-01T12:00:00.010-05:00

At the beginning of each month, we Modern Myth Makers will be posting our writerly goals for the coming month, ~~in an effort to motivate ourselves through the threat of shaming in a public forum~~ by giving each other, and all of you, the opportunity to encourage our progress.

NL Berger's Goals: The write a little something every day goal didn't work out so well for me last month. It's too general for someone with my ~~intense self-diagnosed OCD~~ somewhat detail-oriented nature. So this month, though my writing schedule still isn't back on track at all, I'm setting a specific goal again. Just a slightly smaller specific goal than I tried in January. In March, I will write, revise, and polish the new scene I'm adding to chapter 1 of my WIP and will finish the revisions of chapter 2. I will also do enough reviews for OWW to post chapter 2 for critique.

Kalayna Price's Goals: Well, I have a book due April 1st, so my goals for March are pretty straight forward: have a publishable draft by the end of the month!

Tori Pryer's Goals: February was not a complete failure, but neither was it a complete success. I did not meet my goal of having a short story complete though it is started. I did not start editing TDC. I lost a lot of time to the day job and some to my Olympic obsession, but mostly to the day job. I can and did turn off the TV. I can't turn off the day job. This month, I'm working on the Artist's Way. So my goals for the month of March are to finish the short story, work on the Artists Way, and begin editing TDC.

Haricot Vert's Goals: I could blame the Olympics for my writing goals failure. ...In fact, I do blame the Olympics. Never mind that they started February 12, and that I didn't even watch as much of them as I wanted. Yes, now that I have a scapegoat, I can admit that February wasn't the kindest to my goals. But March will be better, in part, because I am changing my goals. I will, this month, mangle a fairy tale. What this entails is re-imaging the story while keeping to the language. Maybe the tale will be recognizable at the end. Maybe I'll even post bits and pieces here.

Sarah Templeton's Goals: I can sit around and wait for things to happen only so long before letting the muse spur me down a different path altogether, so this month I'm letting the big stuff simmer on the back burner and moving on full-tilt at the side projects. Well, as full-tilt as one gets with a day job and a really nasty cold/flu thing trying to defeat my immune system. (Yes, the clause placement is intentional: I'm betting this particular strain came from a coworker.)

What about you guys? What are your writing goals for this month?

But Why Her?

2010-03-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

Confession time: I didn't complete all of my writing goals this month -- I got through the novel manuscript and spent a whole week on that synopsis, queries, and contest entries instead of throwing it on paper and sending it out in less than a day, as I'd expected.

Yeah, you can stop guffawing now; I get the point. Another case of high hopes and crushing realities. Lesson learned, bemoaned, bechocolated*, and noted: I cannot "expect" a synopsis and query blurb to pour onto the paper like a caramel fondue.

Regardless of how delicious that goal may sound in my head.

By February 28th, I was supposed to be through 13k in revisions for my steampunk novella--and here I sit, still re-outlining and tightening scenes without counting words. Why? Because one day last month, during a lovely day of simply making sure my character headed out in the direction I wanted her to go, one of my critique partners asked me: "Why her? Why would the bad guys approach her over anyone else? What makes her unique?"

Which is the same path of evil, diabolical questioning she had the nerve to pose toward my last manuscript. The catalyst for my major revision round at the beginning of this year.

I hate it.

I hate it because she was absolutely right. The motivations I had for the bad guys weren't strong enough, the backstory for the character was iffy, and it just fell flat on the page. She was absolutely right then, and she's absolutely right now: I'm missing something crucial.

Until that motivation drives to the forefront of my inner editor's attention for the next round of novella revisions, I will work out the issue in notes and strengthen other scenes more thoroughly. That way, when I figure it out, I can immerse myself in flowing manuscript instead of broken prose.

*Bechocolate: Verb: To delicately sip an indulgent pint of hot cocoa and marshmallows (most likely with a thin mint cookie in the bottom of the mug) in an effort to sweeten the bitter taste of disappointment.

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 8

2010-02-24T21:31:00.001-05:00

Lieutenant Eloin felt a pop and a wrench somewhere midway between her chest and back. It didn't hurt afterwards but by the emptiness she knew Darrew had made one last error. She readjusted her weapon. His was one less loose end to tie off.

“How far do we have left?”

“We're making the last approach, so maybe three minutes.” The navigator was intent on the manual adjustments to bring the shuttle into a synchronous orbit.

Eloin smiled. Malkur was good but his sensors were old. This close to his ship, all he would be able to tell was that there were life forms aboard. Closing her eyes, Eloin gave the subvocal command that woke her second self. The air suddenly ran with flavors, nervous sweat from one of her seatmates, cabin air recycled too many times to be taken for fresh, and hints of hot metal coming from the propulsion devices.

Time unfolded as she fired her weapon, head shot after head shot. The navigator was the first to slump against the restraints, and by the time that the beige shirted security officer reached up for his comm link there was no signal coming from his brain to tell his mouth what to do next. Due to the decompression bullets, there wasn't much left of his mouth anyway.

The bodies were still warm as she checked each one, spitting into the ruined faces. Just enough to keep them warm and flexible, just enough that Malkur wouldn't know what was going on until it was too late. The navigator went back to adjusting the trajectories and velocities.

“How long do we have?”

“We're on a drift approach, Heiress.”

“Everyone check your gear. When we get over, I need two decoys; the rest come with me to the reactor chamber. Once there you will defend until the last.”

It had been so long since she had used the power, but the new drones moved just as they should. Her essence wouldn't last long but it would last long enough. Through the nav viewscreen, Eloin saw the landing tube extend. Anticipation prickled the skin at the back of her neck, driving away thoughts of the years that she had drifted from ship to ship, with each new assignment hoping that this would be the one.

Humans were useful and even fun sometimes, but nothing beat the thrill of the hunt. Malkur was one of the few left out here, dully fighting even though he had to understand that his age was turned to ashes behind her own people's rising phoenix. The shuttle jarred to a stop and the connectors met with a muted thump.

“Let's move out.”

Mailbag Monday: February 2010

2010-02-22T13:00:00.005-05:00

Though we have a lot in common, each member of the Tri Mu has a slightly different take on writing, publishing, books, and life in general. On the fourth Monday of the month, we'll take a question submitted by one of you and each give our opinions on the issue.

This month's question: Do you ever feel overwhelmed with all the details of a story that need research? How do you handle that?
Submitted by Susan

Kalayna Price's Response: A lot of my research is done before I start writing as I world build and create characters. My early brainstorming process is very organic as tweaking the world changes what the characters can do/how they think/ what they want and changes to those same things in the character may necessitate changes to the world. This is all pre-writting and nothing is set in stone, so I don't usually get overwhelmed--I just sometimes get over excited as I research 'cool' stuff and try to figure out how to make everything fit. A date in which I have to start writing puts a cap on how much of this pre-writing/brainstorming I can do. Once I start writing, I do run into more points that need to be researched. If these points are huge 'omg, this could change how the story plays out' (rare) than I stop and do the research, but only for that one point--no side tangents. If the research is needed just for details, I leave myself a note to come back to it in the second draft. It is far too easy to get sucked into researching every little thing and losing your writing time. Doing a lot of the big research before I ever start the novel, and once I start, not stopping at the tiny things, is how I avoid getting overwhelmed.

Tori Pryer's Response: Research what research....Unfortunately, I tend to start writing and realize that I don't know enough about the backstory or the setting or the history. This is a bit of a problem when you write historicals or books with what I like to call historical elements. You can't fake the past. It happened. You can't fake a location (though plenty of people have tried). When I'm writing, I will put a note to myself saying things like "How many men were needed to crew a B-24?" A little note to remind myself to fact check. Yesterday, I reached a point in my current WIP where I could go no further. So I will likely spend an hour or so tonight figuring out enough of the details that I can move on. You can't get bogged down in the details though. If you do, you stop writing. I promise you that this has happened to me more than once. Also, if you have to stop writing to research, set a timer. You can lose hours to research.

Sarah Templeton's Response: Absolutely. And the overwhelming mountain of research doesn't get any lighter when you're making up your own worlds either, if you're not setting them in a contemporary location. For my science fiction novel, I have a handful of 3-subject notebooks chock full of world-building information, technological gizmos, and myths that no one will ever see. Once I discovered OneNote, keeping track of research was easier -- you can divide your notes into endless categories and search on a dime, which is a relief when you can't remember what you're supposed to be remembering while revising. Two points of advice: 1) Organize your notes. Don't just fling it all on stickies--transcribe it in an orderly fashion when you can. And 2) Beware the tangent. I set a timer to keep myself on one topic and if I finish early I can flit around in the research books like the info junkie I am.

Haricot Vert's Response: I'm in the middle of Overwhelmed right now. At first it seemed harmless enough; I was in revisions and figured a little world building would help me fill those pesky plot holes. But then it snowballed, as I realized that I was having trouble with cussing (for example) because so much of cussing is either based on religious ideals or moral deconstructions. Which lead to exploring the mythos and the theology of the world I was working with. Which lead to realizing that I needed to do something similar for the other five or so worlds that had direct links to the first world. /eye twitch Which puts me here and now.

My solution? I'm going bit by bit, taking notes and trying not to world jump. The other spheres will be there when I arrive, so there is no need to panic. This is what I'm telling myself anyway. :) Again and again and again.

How do you feel about this? Feel free to add to the discussion in the comments.

Have another question you'd like the Modern Myth Makers to answer? Just ask us in the comments and we'll try to respond in a future month.

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 7

2010-02-17T23:40:00.000-05:00

Malkur watched the small ship carrying the boarding party hurtle toward his vessel. Five, the drone had said. Five was not nearly enough, but it was a start.

His weary gaze flickered away from the static filled screen to the control panel under it. With a thought, he commanded his ship to extend a docking tunnel and provide the party an adequate location to board. He could hear the buzz, the soft whine of a connection as he communicated with his ship. The ship responded slowly, far too slowly. He was getting too old. His people had been forgotten too long. Had been peaceful too many decades. The conversion process nearly perfected the body, but those organic components which were left still aged, still deteriorated under the burden of time.

No, he had waited far too long this time. His people needed new bodies. They needed a new injection of life. And the Galajax could provide the quickening his people needed.

Over three thousand fresh bodies, all ripe for conversion. Most were colonists, true. Soft, stupid, they were vermin fleeing a dying world, looking for another they could spread over like a plague as they lived out meaningless, short lives. The conversion would purify them. They would do. His people would be reborn.

But the crew . . .

The crew truly interested Malkur. Not all of them, but the hapless drone he'd planted had reported on several crewmen who might be useful. Who might be able to infuse new technology and ingenuity in his people.

Perhaps I'll even allow some to remember themselves. To become one of us instead of simple vessels. Malkur's ancient lips cracked as he smiled, an expression long absent from his haggard face.

Yes, it had been too long. But now things would change. And perhaps it was time for his people to do more than survive. It was time for them to thrive.

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 6

2010-02-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

The light on Nara's wristband flashed a frantic tempo and the comm on the wall pinged with Captain Denett's impatient voice. "Ensign, I could really use your expertise outside."

"Kirk," Nara swore, watching the tall drone's body turn a sickly purple--down to the roots of his carbon-copied blonde hair--then dissolve before her eyes. Stooping, she retrieved the chip formerly embedded under the skin of Darrew's forehead then crushed it under the heel of her boot. "Sir, I'm switching to Priority Delta." A physical sweep of encryption descended into the hallway and Nara shivered. The buzz of the private communication channel weaving around her body remained the only thing about space travel capable of setting off her claustrophobia.

"What's wrong, Nara?" Captain Denett spoke casually on the private line, knowing no one else could hear.

"We've already been infiltrated." Her voice came out shaking. The sight of the dead man's fast-decaying body twisted her gut harder than she'd expected. Darrew had no longer been Darrew. He'd been a sleeper agent for the enemy. And judging from the aggressive punch of dark-laced energy trying to hack into the web of energy playing over her skin, he wasn't the only one.

"Daughter-mine, your inability to follow direct orders is exhausting."

Nara sighed and shouldered her laser rifle, heading for the shuttle bay. "You knew." The Garidan hacker pressed harder into the connection and Nara felt her father slide a fourth layer of protection over the conversation.

"I am the captain." He paused and Nara caught a mental image on the line of a smothered bout of frustration before he continued. "I can handle the ones on board, but if I lose an entire boarding party because of you, we'll be discussing your court-martial when you return, where everyone can hear it. Is that understood?"

"But I'm not the one who--" She sucked in a breath to stifle her protest before he gifted her with another stint in the brig for whining. "Yes, Captain." Nara punched the code on the wall console to disconnect and ducked into the zero-G transport instead of the full-sized shuttle. "Solar shorts, Ellie, this was one away mission you shouldn't have screwed with."

Gravity generators weighed too much; for practicality's sake the tiny "zip-ships" could only claim their nickname by omitting everything except life support and a hydrogen-class turbyte engine. A super-charged engine Nara hoped would be fast enough even now to arrive in time to save her crewmates. Her father ought to be court-martialing Ellie. By leaving the Galajax's only xenopsychologist behind, the lieutenant had pretty much guaranteed at least one solar burial in their future. On the other hand, if Nara hadn't found Darrew, she wouldn't be walking into the other ship with her rifle set to kill.

As the pod blasted a path through clouds of green smoke, Nara's palm closed over her nostrils. Not for the first time, she wished the air circulation unit hadn't been forgone in the design. The darn thing smelled like Terran fish heads rotting on a summer beach.

A Lack of Focus

2010-02-15T00:28:00.004-05:00

"Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration"
--"Four Quartets" by T.S. Elliot

I'm starting to think that I have allowed myself too easy access to distractions. Email, chat, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube, all contribute to mental over stimulation and lack of focus. If my muse rebels against working on a particular page on my manuscript, then it is so very easy to jump over to check gchat and see who is talking to me or to facebook to see who has posted a pithy status message. I waste not only time, but mental energy bouncing around the Internet.

So, I'm now trying my hand at rationing my media usage and giving my mind long swaths of computer-free time to remember how to focus again. I have my AlphaSmart word processor which is great for Internet-less writing, and I might even drag out a good old fashioned pen and paper. I've also purchased a bunch of books that I want to read.

How do you avoid getting distracted?

Positive Thinking

2010-02-08T06:05:00.004-05:00

echoes of old words
nascent shapes of words unborn
mix on the threshold

---

When Dalida sings "Paroles," that is beauty. When Miriam Makeba sings "Pata pata," that is beauty. When Cesaria Evora sings anything, "Sodade," for example, that is beauty.

Is it wrong that when I feel particularly low as regards my own progress towards darn goodness (I really don't aspire towards greatness or anything like that) at the craft, I remind myself that even those three pearls of music making had to practice as well?

TWICE DEAD Available on Kindle! and A CONTEST!

2010-02-06T18:14:00.000-05:00

(This post x-posted from www.kalayna.com)
Well, the kindle version of books usually takes longer than the print version to become available, but in a strange turn of events, the kindle version for Twice Dead has shown up first. So, if you have a kindle, you can read Twice Dead HERE.

To celebrate the release, I'm running a week long contest here on the blog. Here is what I'll be giving away:

Three lucky winners will get your choice of one (1) of the following items. (I only have one of each available, so this will be a first picked, first choice kind of deal)

-$15 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card.
-Twice Dead Promotional Mug

-Twice Dead Promotional Notebook

To enter, simply write a review for the first Haven novel, Once Bitten, and publish it somewhere on the web. Then leave a comment in this post linking to the review. You can review the book on your blog, on Amazon/B&N/BAM/Borders, Goodreads, Library thing, etc. If you have previously reviewed the book, feel free to link to that review. (If you are reading this at a remote location, you'll need to visit my blogger blog to enter.) Each review linked will give you one entry in the contest. If you also mention the release of Twice Dead, you will get one additional entry.

The contest is open until Sunday, February 14th at 11:59 pm. I will use a random number generator to choose three winners, who will be announced Monday. I am willing to ship internationally, so this contest is open to anyone.

Have a great weekend everyone!

_{(**note: this is the first time I've had mugs or notebooks printed, and they have not yet arrived. When they do, if the quality is sub-par, I will offer an alternate prize.)}

Multitasking

2010-02-05T12:14:00.016-05:00

First off, where did January go? Did someone borrow several days (weeks?) of January from my calendar? I could really use them back--I'm not ready for February. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I have a choice. We are already five days into February. Hard to believe, but true.

Why do I feel the need to beg for a longer January? Mostly because I have deadline looming in the not too far future, and I'm not ready for it. Most of this is due to the fact that I've been doing a lot of multitasking lately. A whole lot.

All of the Tri Mu have our own preferred ways to work on projects (perhaps we should discuss that in a mailbag monday one of these days), and a couple of the Tri Mu actually like to have several projects running at once. (Weird, I know.) Me? I'm most definitely not one of them. I prefer to focus on one project and knock it out fast in huge chunks.

That is apparently no longer an option for me.

Revisions for one book, first draft of another, and promo for a third? Can I run and hide now? Apparently not.

So, *lifts wine glass* (wait, it's only noon) ahem *lifts water bottle* here's to multitasking. May I conquer this many-headed beast.

Happy Friday everyone!

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 5

2010-02-03T12:38:00.000-05:00

Nara stood behind the security console in the secondary shuttle bay, an old-fashioned Earth shotgun braced against her left shoulder and trained on her target. "Whoa there, Colonist. Where do you think you're headed?"

"Nara? I thought you went over with the first boarding party?" Darrew leaned against the side of the shuttle craft, hiding his weapon behind the curve of the deflector shielding.

If Nara hadn't caught a glimpse of the cannon when he'd first come into the room, he might still have retained the element of surprise. She shifted her finger from the guard to the trigger. A click rattled around the shuttle bay, announcing that her weapon was pumped and ready to fire.

"Yes, that was the plan, but then Ellie sent me to make sure you were safe in your cryo unit before we left. She worries, you know." And she'll use just about any excuse she can find to keep me off an away mission. Still, it was just as well that Nara had gone looking for him. She wouldn't have overheard his transmission to the raider if she hadn't.

Darrew laughed, the teasing hint of rebelliousness Ellie had found so charming lighting up his expression. "I guess you found me out. I was going to try to sneak over to that other ship with the second boarding party once you guys cleared it." He shifted his weight -- probably looking for a better grip on the rocket launcher he was still trying to hide. "Is it really a Garidan raider?"

Nara stepped around the console, making sure her feet were firmly planted with each step. The gravity in this section of the ship was still holding steady, but if they took another knock . . . She didn't want to risk missing when it came time to shoot.

"Yes, it is." Nara measured the distance between them in her head. Too close and the buckshot wouldn't spread enough to do enough damage. Too far, and he'd be able to move before it hit him. This would be easier if Garid drones didn't move so damn fast. "I imagine they're busy converting the boarding party as we speak."

Another two steps ought to do it.

"Converting?" Darrew looked around, his eyes lingering on the shuttle bay doors and the airlock. "Come on now, Nara, you don't really believe those silly old wives' tales, do you? I mean, they can't really still be out there, converting people into drones." Incredulity tinged his tone. He focused on a point on the wall just over her left shoulder, his gaze turning a little glassy. "Earth has recorded no evidence of Garidan activity in this sector in 106.73 years."

He shifted his weight again, and this time she felt the weapon in his hand hum to life, a subtle change in the vibration of the air. If she hadn't had her sensory nodes turned all the way up in preparation for boarding the raider, she would have missed it.

A spray of antique buckshot mixed with a few super burn pellets and two drops of laser acid exploded from the barrel of Nara's gun. Darrew dropped like a stone, wiring and metal plating exposed and melting now that the pretty face the drone had hidden under had been ripped to shreds.

Nara rushed over to the security console, engaging a max level containment field around what was left of the body. "That's because we keep destroying the evidence whenever we find you."

Brandon Sanderson Giveaway Winner!

2010-02-02T10:01:00.001-05:00

The wise and powerful random number picker has slated commentor #3 as our winner for January's Free Fic Friday.

And that means.......congrats are in order to RKCharron!

Please send an e-mail over to contests (AT) themodernmythmakers (DOT) com with your mailing information so I can drop your copy of the wonderfulness that is Warbreaker off at the post office this week! :D

Thank you all for entering our first giveaway. We hope to see more of your comments as you stick around for more blog posts, our weekly story arc, and additional free stuff!

The Dark Side of a Rewards System

2010-02-01T12:02:00.000-05:00

Rewarding yourself for meeting goals is a great concept for a writer. Your muse will be tickled by goodies you shower upon him or her, your inner editor will be smarmy with "I told you we could do this", and your self-image will shoot up as you relax with whatever pasttime you have chosen to gift yourself. However, if you don't meet your goals, you don't get the reward. *gasp!* You wouldn't want that, so you push yourself to succeed. It's a great concept.

But is it working?

Most of the time the rewards system is broken, flawed. I was crazy guilty of taking advantage of my rewards last year, but I suspect I'm not the only one who has fallen prey to temptation. In 2009, I rewarded myself for a job poorly done, for goals half-accomplished, for alternative goals, for goals met far beyond the deadline I'd set, and prematurely for goals "to be accomplished". And all I did was reinforce negative behavior.

So what's wrong? Aside from "good enough"-itis and "the real world ate my week and my mood is foul so I need something to pull me out of my funk" excuses, we could be setting the wrong rewards:

"I'll buy it anyway": If you have the money set aside for something that you intend to purchase anyway, this is not the right kind of reward. For example, if you're an avid reader and there are books you intend to purchase, and you pre-make that purchase, you can say "I won't read this until I meet my goal" all you want. But you ARE going to break down and read it before you've accomplished that goal in its entirety.

"I'll play this game/read this book for [set time here]": If you are obsessed with video games, this is not the right kind of reward. For example, if you're addicted to Facebook games and allow yourself 15 minutes to play for every hour of writing time, but you DON'T set a timer or you habitually state "Just 5 more minutes!", this is a bad, bad, bad, bad reward. You will lose hours into games, miss out on valuable writing time, and feel guilty over succumbing to the lure of the game. Likewise if you are an avid reader and a good book will suck you inside its pages and steal the rest of the day.

"I'll go to this movie with friends": If you schedule a movie theater timeslot (or any other event) and have no intention of cancelling that appointment, this is not the right kind of reward. For example, if you've already purchased tickets, it's almost impossible to back out of the arrangement, especially if it's a costly event. No one likes to say to their friends, "I'm sorry I can't go see X-Men 15,021 with you this weekend even though we've been planning it for months: I only spent 18 hours on writing this week and I'm 10 pages short of my goal." So we don't, especially if said friends are non-writing friends, and especially if the non-writing friends don't "get it".

"I'll clean the bathroom": If you don't get real enjoyment out of cleaning, this is not the right kind of reward. This is an obligation, same as your movie-date. For example, if you look at your office and the idea of ripping through mounds of unkempt paper is enough to give you hives, you'll be more likely to throw the goals in the trash than a single wad of misplaced tissue paper.

What are good rewards, then?

*Things you will feel real disappointment in missing out on or real excitement in the act of working toward, but not feel tempted to reward yourself with "because I've worked hard and deserve it". Accomplish your goals as stated, or let the reward shift back to the next time you have a goal to meet.

*Stepped rewards that require multiple elements in order to really enjoy the "big picture" reward. Right now, I have a stepped reward that allows me to buy new costume pieces for the Steampunk World's Fair in May. I have 4 major goals and money set aside. If I miss one of my goals, I still have a closet of clothes to rummage through, but I might not get the spiffy lace ruffled Victorian jacket I've been ogling since last summer. And I reeeeally want that jacket, because without it, and the skirt, and the boots, and the belt - I'll just be cool. Not SUPER cool.

*Things people (friends and family) hold hostage and refuse to reliquish, no matter how piteously you beg. ("But I got through 5 pages today, that's more than zero! You can let me have my PS3 controller back...please?" "Is 5, 10? I don't think so. *whip crack* No goals met, no rewards, sucka!")

*Time spent with friends that isn't premeditated. Meet your goal, THEN schedule your reward meetup time.

*Timed rewards. If you can train yourself to use the timer truthfully (and not effectively "snoozing" on your allowance of reward time) this can be a fabulous way to make yourself stick to your rewards.

*Mini-rewards for those incomplete goals. If you must reward yourself for effort instead of endgame, promise yourself a smaller reward. This then becomes the "if I almost make it, and I'm happy with my achievements, I get this instead of the big thing over there" and leaves the big shiny reward for your major accomplishments. Just make sure that you don't make the small rewards more appealing than the big ones!

This whole spiel doesn't apply to everyone. Some of us are rockstars in the self-discipline department. The rest of us have to work harder, set more meaningful rewards, and keep those goals of ours manageable in order to allay frustration.

The moral of the story?

Don't go to the dark side. You won't be taking out Alderaan - you'll only be hurting yourself, your self-esteem, and your willingness to meet your goals in the first place.

Don't reward yourself for a job poorly done, for goals half-accomplished, for alternative goals, for goals met far beyond the deadlines you set, or prematurely for goals "to be accomplished". Don't reinforce negative behavior. Be tougher on yourself. If you don't meet your goals regularly, make them more realistic. If you meet your goals far in advance, step them up to give yourself more of a challenge. And perhaps most important of all: Be honest with yourself.

First and Goals: February 2010

2010-02-01T12:00:00.011-05:00

At the beginning of each month, we Modern Myth Makers will be posting our writerly goals for the coming month, ~~in an effort to motivate ourselves through the threat of shaming in a public forum~~ by giving each other, and all of you, the opportunity to encourage our progress.

NL Berger's Goals: Well, my January goals were a total bust. A classic case of that whole "Man plans, God laughs" thing. So I'm setting a much lighter goal for February. At this point I'll just be happy to get back to writing a little bit every day. So that's it for me. No target word counts, no revised pages plans. Just some kind of progress, every day for the next 28 days.

Darlene C. Goodman's Goals: I didn't get my timeline in, but I did break through the chapter 13 jinx and start a series arc narrative summary document. For February, I want to finish my series arc.

Kalayna Price's Goals: Well, I knew last month's goal of writing 90k in a month was ambitious. Unfortunately, I didn't meet it. (Next time. Next time) So, February's goal is to finish my WIP and start on the second draft.

Tori Pryer's Goals: Well, I finished the first draft of my WIP. That was the biggest goal. I think I accomplished it even though I wound up combining my new draft with the second half of my old draft to do it. I finished the new ending last night. For the month of February, my goal is to write a World War II short. If I can, I will begin editing the WIP that I just finished.

Sarah Templeton's Goals: My muse is exhausted. She and my internal editor (who's still hopped up on caffeine and poking away at the intriguing gray squishy bits inside my skull) had a busy, busy month. Together they accomplished and then swarmed past my goals. Page 200? Try 1 and 3/4 full revisions, 2 new chapters, and a major revamp of motivation. This month I'm swinging my focus around to agent submissions--synopsis and query letter time!--and revisions for the first half of a steampunk short I drafted out last year.

Haricot Vert's Goals: Right then. So I had plans to expand the scene list completed in January (yay for achieving a goal!), however now that February is staring me impudently in the face, I am backing down from those plans. Instead, my goal for this short, stumpy, month is to write each day. *fist bump with NL*

What about you guys? What are your writing goals for this month?

Free Fiction Friday: Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson

2010-01-29T12:00:00.002-05:00

That's right, the new tradition has begun: The last Friday of each month in 2010 is Free Fiction Friday!

When I emerged after just 3 days victorious in my reading of Warbreaker I had to subdue my excitement long enough to wait for today to roll around so I could share this with you. So I've been wiggling for over a week here, biting my tongue and, while amazed that I still have one, I can now report that this -- is win. I wasn't going to review a hardcover for my first freebie of the new year. But I'd feel like I wronged the readers here if I deprived you of a chance to pick up a copy for yourselves. Moreso if I neglected to inform you about something you can't put off reading any longer. Without further ado, I present my ~~fangirlish squeals of happy~~ review of ~~the latest brilliant installment of my Sanderson collection~~ Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker:

After bursting onto the fantasy scene with his acclaimed debut novel, Elantris, and following up with his blockbuster Mistborn trilogy, Brandon Sanderson proves again that he is today's leading master of what Tolkien called secondary creation, the invention of whole worlds, complete with magics and myths all their own.

"Warbreaker" is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn't like his job, and the immortal who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as "breath" that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using "breath" and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

It takes a truly excellent book to take me that extra step past "fun". Sanderson put this one together in an approachable way that made me smile, sniffle, and sit up straight with agitation as my eyes are led to the next page turn. Very few books these days make me get a giddy little lump of joy in my chest while reading, but the worldbuilding, dialogue, and twists between these covers do just that. Warbreaker even appealed to the musician in me, which in truth may heavily color my opinion of the book--the descriptions of color stoked not only the visual side of my overactive imagination, but also the auditory--a wonderful treat of the senses. Sanderson brings politics and religion back into play, at turns playful and at others serious. Between these covers waits a whole new world with customs, rules, and a pallet of characters so distinctive you'll be standing in line for whatever Sanderson serves up next. (Or going back to read Elantris and the Mistborn trilogy, which are also, if I might add, full of win.)

My two-fold regret regarding Warbreaker is simple, really, and has nothing to do with the book itself: I was sad that I must a) sleep for at least 3 hours each evening (and I do not wake to that with the skill of a Lifeless--I shamble like the classic zombies of old), and b) return to the day job after my lunch hour. Hindrances which are required for continued livelihood. Both of which involve NOT reading this book. Should you acquire this for your reading list I urge you to make the following appropriate preparations: Begin on a decadently long weekend and hook up an IV of saline (among other necessary nutrients, lest you become dehydrated from drooling in awe of the words).

So now that I've got you primed for the amazingness, to win this hardcover, leave a comment on this post with the following:

1. Your Name
2. Tell us how you found us.
3. Leave a question for us to answer on our next Mailbag Monday.

Just three quick things, post by midnight EST on Sunday, January 31, 2010. Winner will be heralded with parades on Monday, February 1, 2010.

Disclaimer: This opinion is mine alone, although I sincerely hope you share it once you get a chance to pick up the book. The reviewed novel was purchased by myself from a physical bookstore, twice, (so I can give one away to one of our lucky readers!), and is not an ARC or acquisition reviewed for compensation.

Pass The Plot 3: Scene 4

2010-01-27T16:37:00.005-05:00

Darrew stumbled against the wall as the ship jerked beneath his feet. High alert lights flashed through the corridor, washing his vision in a strobe of red. He ducked into his and Ellie’s chambers and locked the door behind him.

They are coming. A tiny smirk curled his lips. He ran his forefinger over his left eyebrow. A beeping broke the silence.

“I’m alone,” he spoke the words into the empty room.

“Finally,” a voice, soft as a whisper, emerged from the comm implant. “That female causes us too many false alarms.”

“Well, you should have put the comm somewhere else, then.”

“Where exactly do you suggest?” The voice answered.

Darrew grunted. “It won’t matter now. She’s on her way to you with a boarding party.” He snapped the cover off his cryo bed. A fat, hand-held smart matter rocket cannon lay folded in the stasis sheets.

“Good. How many in the party?”

He grabbed the weapon and cocked it. It hummed to life. “Five that I know of. Most are eager young cadets.”

“Excellent.”

Darrew tapped glowing blue buttons on a wall computer panel near the door. A map of the ship schematics flashed into view. Shuttle Bay 1 showed a launch in progress. “Be careful of one named Nara. She’s a bit of a loose cannon.”

“Don’t worry, the conversion will take hold of even the most obstinate soul. Remember what you once were?”

“I remember nothing before my enlightenment.” Darrew’s voice took on an emotionless, mechanical tone, but his steel-grey eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath and shook his head to clear it.

“Exactly,” The voice replied.

“What do you want me to do from here?” He located the second shuttle bay on the schematic with his little finger.

“Just keep us updated on their progress.”

“Will do. Over and out.” He rubbed his forehead to turn off the comm. Shouldering his weapon, he burst back into the flashing lights of the corridor.

Mailbag Monday: January 2010

2010-01-25T12:00:00.008-05:00

Bonus Post: A Writing Prompt

2010-01-22T12:00:00.011-05:00

On occasion, there comes a Monday or Friday when no TriMu is scheduled to blog. The calendar is just tricksy that way. But never fear, dear readers; we will not leave you with nothing to read today! We've decided to do a collaborative post, a brief response from each of us to a writing prompt. We hope you enjoy.

The TriMu has a new snuggly mascot to add to the ranks. Grab your popcorn and your tissues:

Late morning January 2, 2010, Sarah's aunts were on their way to decorate the reception hall for her brother's after-wedding feast. During the journey they discovered an open cat carrier sitting on the side of the highway. And there, in the 8 degree weather in the snow and ice-bound north, pressed back against the far wall into a shaking ball was Sage. Sage is a gorgeous long-haired purrbox of black and orange, once well-fed, declawed in the front, litterbox-trained, spayed--an average 3-yr-old indoor cat by all accounts--but with bruises and a tendency to flinch away from fast hand movements, both symptoms of whatever happened in her former life. The poor, half-frozen, terrified, abandoned kitty (people, it was EIGHT DEGREES outside) was acclimated in stages to the weather as she was quaking in shock. She was a "plus one" for Sarah's brother's wedding and found herself the subject of much affection during the reception. Finally, late that evening, she managed a bite of food and began to come out of her shock. Sarah, being a sucker for a good heartbreaking tail (ah-ha-ha) and hardship cases (which is almost a requirement for pet adoption into her family), brought it home to SC and determined that Sage must live in TriMu Tori's house. After a clean bill of health and a round of shots from the vet, this soft, cuddly tag-a-long has been rechristened as Gypsy Sage (for her heart-stealing ways) and is thriving in her new, warm home, and good, healthy food.

Today's Writing Prompt: Detail the event(s) leading to Gypsy Sage's bid for roadside assistance.

Darlene C. Goodman's Response: Gypsy Sage lived in a happy home populated with a human mother, human father, human boy, human girl, iguana girl, and a tasty family of mice in the dark space under the porch steps. One blustery winter afternoon, as Sage batted one of the mice children around in a playful and loving manner, she heard an awful moaning and groaning echoing through their middle-class subdivision.
Sage could not understand human speech, but if she could, she would have been just barely able to recognize a single word, a single word that sent chills into the hearts of Sage's family, neighbors, and the English-speaking mouse struggling under her paw: "Brrraaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnssssssssss!"
The mouse, hearing the danger, yelled at Sage, "It's a zombie holocaust you idiot! Run away! Run away!" But she didn't understand English, so she ate the screaming creature, putting him out of his misery.
Her human boy raced to her side and stowed her in a cat carrier. Then he ran. His whole family ran. They ran over the river and through the woods, but when they got to Grandmother's house, she came after them with a knife and fork. "Brrraaaaiiiinnnnsss!"
Gran got mom. Mom got Dad. Dad got the girl. The girl got the iguana. The boy, when faced with the terror of battling his entire family of zombies, realized the need to protect himself. He dropped Sage in her carrier. The family attacked her, and he ran. But he had not taken into account the surprising resourcefulness of the zombie iguana, who did not let him get fifty paces.
The human zombies, not being as resourceful as iguana, could not get the carrier open, so they left Sage there, freezing in her cage and went after new prey.

Tori Pryer's Response: Gypsy Sage was an ordinary kitty growing up in the ordinary Welsh city of Cardiff. One day, through no fault of her own, she wandered into what appeared to be an ordinary blue police box. She got a bit of shock as she entered. The police box was bigger on the inside. Being a cat and not a silly human, she took it in stride and spent the next few years travelling through space and time with a timelord. She especially enjoyed New Earth and its inhabitants. One day, she was a bit too curious and absorbed some energy from the police box/spaceship. The timelord felt that it was unsafe for Gypsy Sage to travel with him anymore and placed her in a place where he was certain that she would be found. He stayed and watched from a distance as Gypsy was retrieved. He planned occasionally to come back to check on Gypsy in between trips through time and space. *Recommended viewing BBC's Doctor Who

Sarah Templeton's Response: It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Tori needed a cat for Christmas and Santa got lost. He stopped for directions up North (It's Santa. We'll talk realism some other time.) and her carrier fell off the sleigh, right into the home of the Abominable Snowman. *gasp!* Luckily, she was rescued by a pack of rabid squirrels (That's redundant, I know. All squirrels are nutty. But just for fun, let's not do revisions on the writing prompt today.). After a week's journey, the squirrels were hungry and wrenched open the carrier, but, once again luckily, my aunt's oncoming vehicle scared them away in the nick of time.

Anyone else in the mood for some creative stretching exercise today? Post your own responses to this writing prompt in the comments!

Pass The Plot 3: Scene 3

2010-01-20T22:57:00.006-05:00

"Holy Kirk!" Nara swallowed hard and stared at the vid screen. Green smoke billowed from a large wheel shaped craft. To think that she'd been bored. "Is that what I think it is?"

The captain gave an almost imperceptible nod. Fear and latent memories rushed through Nara. She took a deep breath and whispered, "You know what this means, Captain."

"Yes." One word. One word to share centuries of fear. One word.

Nara shifted her weight and stood at attention. "Captain, I would like permission to board her." She spoke so that the others on the bridge could hear.

"You have my permission, Ensign." The captain turned to face Lieutenant Elion. "Lieutenant, I would like you to pick a crew and accompany Ensign Nara on this mission."

The other woman narrowed her eyes at Nara and then snapped off a salute to the Captain. "Yes, sir. Permission to leave, sir."

"Granted. And take the Ensign with you."

The other girl turned and left. Nara followed.

"Ellie, I'm sorry." Nara whispered as soon as the doors had closed behind them. "I know that you and Darrew had plans tonight."

Ellie shrugged her shoulders. "With that off the starboard side…"

Nara shivered. "Kirk's Bald Head, this is bad news for the Confederation."

"Yes."

"Ellie! Thank the moons that you're safe!" A deep voice rumbled from behind them. "What is going on? They've ordered us to our cryo chambers."

Nara turned. Darrew. Her breath at the sight of the tall, blonde man advancing upon them. He was Ellie's kryan. Never hers. She forced a friendly smile onto her face.

"Darrew! Why didn't you follow Captain Denett's orders?" Ellie crossed her arms over her chest. "All colonists must be in their cryo chambers until the danger has passed."

"Then, there is danger. Liam said that there must be." Darrew stepped closer to Ellie. "Are you ok? As soon as the ship lurched I came to look for you." He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder and Ellie visibly relaxed.

Nara looked down, letting her gaze linger on the rubberized corridor floor. "Ellie, we have to go. Soon."

"You go to chambers without me. Tell Scott, Jacobs, and Hanna to suit up. They'll be going with us."

"Yes, ma'am." Nara's gaze lingered a moment on Darrew. "Don't be long. This is the first time in a score of Earth years that they've been seen."

Nara let her mind drift back to the terror that waited on her. Xenopsychology would be of no use if they struck first.

Working and Listening

2010-01-18T00:00:00.003-05:00

I'm reading through Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, a collection of her ponderings on art, writing, and spirituality. L'Engle is most famous for her middle-grade novel A Wrinkle in Time. I came across a passage in the early chapters of Walking that felt like a good way to start off my writerly year.

"When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew; Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

But before he can listen, paradoxically, he must work. Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer. . . . Someone wrote, 'The principle part of faith is patience,' and this applies, too, to art of all disciplines. We must work every day, whether we feel like it or not, otherwise when it comes time to get out of the way and listen to the work, we will not be able to heed it."

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 2

2010-01-13T06:03:00.001-05:00

"Minor difficulties." Captain Denett put his hand up to his face and massaged it. Having a hydroponics malfunction was a minor difficulty. This was in a significantly different class. "We have to have those messages changed." He shook his head. "Yeoman Silva, please make a note."

Nervous laughter spilled out of the bridge crew, most of them focused on the emergency lights blinking on their consoles.

"Yeoman, also make a note that Ensign Nara is still not on the bridge. Include the date and time stamp. Either the comm system is glitching or the Ensign is disregarding an official summons."

"Sir, the comm system is perfectly fine within the Galajax. It's outside that I can't reach." Protesting, Eloin looked up from her console, eyes wide.

"Relax Lieutenant, I'm not disparaging your system. Can we at least get a drone out?"

"I'm still working on that, Sir." Eloin dropped her eyes and spoke rapidly into her throat mic, relieved not to be on that side of the Captain's radar.

This was the problem with a new ship crew: Inexperience. The books said it was a good thing, that fresh crews were full of innovation and enthusiasm. If Captain Denett had a universal kroner for every time reality crashed through pedagogy... he would still be in this type of situation, he was a deep space kind of man through and through, but he would be a much richer man.

"Where is that Ensign?" With effort, he kept his tone mild.

As if conjured, a tall slim woman with space regulation close cropped hair stepped through the doorway that irised open with a sigh. She paused, staring riveted at the screen showing the open view of space.

"Ensign," the crack in his tone got her attention, "while I know that we are ferrying people to a colony world, this still is not a pleasure ship. So the next time that I send a summons, I expect you to treat it like it is at least in the top 10 list of your priorities."

Red flooded Ensign Nara's cheekbones and ears, but she only nodded.

"Good. Now what does your specialty in xenopsychology tell you about this?"

Captain Denett waved a hand at the screen that had drawn the ensign's attention.

Newness All Around

2010-01-11T06:05:00.001-05:00

shake the crystal ball
...The inspiration that flows from chaos and making change
snow flakes swarm like bees buzzing
...Give rise to ideas - blooming fields on the horizon
dream of spring honey
...And I wander through the flowers, intoxicated

--

It's a new year, and either the tail end of a decade or the head end, depending on your point of view.

I'm working along on my goals for January (the public one here on the blog, and the secret one in my head), and hope you are too.

The Enemy

2010-01-08T00:38:00.001-05:00

Time is my. It is always my enemy. I battle and war against it every single day trying to meet deadlines and cram each valuable minute with as much productive work as possible some of which includes writing. I started this year with good intentions and I still intend to finish well, but darn it, I'm going to have to fight for every second of writing time.

Things that are demanding my time

My job – I know, I know. Lots of people have demanding jobs and still manage to make the writer thing work. I fully intend to be one of those people, but for the last six months my job has been intruding on my writing time more than I'm comfortable with. Not complaining, my job is challenging and there are a lot of positives about it. I just wish that it would restrict itself to nine or ten hours a day instead of the twelve or thirteen it has been taking lately
Non-writing friends – You know, I love my non-writing friends. They keep me connected with the rest of the world, but darn it, they seem to think that I should spend time with them. Time that could be used to write.
Family – This one could be worse. I'm not married nor do I have kids. Still, family is family and my parents want to visit. They have expectations and needs that I must meet or attempt to meet. Yes, I know I'm an adult and I need to get over this, but I haven't managed to do that yet. Maybe, this year.
Cleaning – Ok, I've given up on this one for the most part, but when the lack of cleaning becomes something that the health department would frown on, you just have to do it. My house is currently at that point. So cleaning is in my near future.
Exercise/Being healthy – Exercise is good for you, but like everything else, it is a time suck. I know that I need to exercise. I know that I need to eat correctly. It is still a time suck.

Sigh….There has to be a way to balance all these things. There just has to. I must find it I've built a very careful schedule for the year. I've included catchup days and given myself relatively modest daily writing goals because I know that I'm busy, but somehow I can't seem to even find time to meet those goals.

So, I'm curious how do you do it? How do you balance your life and your writing?

Pass the Plot 3: Scene 1

2010-01-06T11:41:00.002-05:00

Nara leaned against the thin field separating her from the vast void of space and stared at the thousand points of reflected light beyond. She'd spent her whole life wanting to see the stars, but after months on the Galajax XXI, the stars still seemed as distant as they ever had from her bedroom window.

The band on her wrist lit up, and she ripped her eyes away from the stars.

"Now what does he want?"

There was no telling, but she'd best not ignore his summons. Pushing away from the window, she let her feet carry her down corridors she'd walked hundreds of times over the last few months.

She was in the west quadrant corridor of the Galajax when the ship lurched. She stumbled, falling into the wall.

What was that? The ship had never lurched before. In fact, she'd never even been able to feel the fact the ship was moving. Only the ever changing locations of the stars outside convinced her the ship was really covering any significant distance. She climbed to her feet, but her legs felt strange under her, like the gravity in the corridor was slightly off.

"Well, that's certainly weird." Not that she had time to think about it. The band on her wrist flashed again. "I'm coming, I'm coming. Hold on to your moon-shorts," she said to the band--which thankfully, could not transmit her words.

The gravity in the corridor was definitely off, but she managed to shamble and trip down the hall. She'd just turned the corner when an electronic voice crashed through the ship.

"Attention all passengers: the Galajax XXI is experiencing minor difficulties. For your own comfort, please report to your chambers and activate the cryo settings. All passengers will be revived when all difficulties have passed. All crew report to your stations. Immediately."

Looking Back, Looking Onward

2010-01-04T20:05:00.001-05:00

Okay, so for my first post in 2010, on my way into my sophomore year of stepped-up writing dedication, I'm going to take a quick peek back at nine things I learned during my freshman year of this part-time hazard to my social life. But before you get to the list, I want you all to stick your head out the window or the door and take a deep breath of air.

Done?

That right there, cold as it may have been (sorry northerners - I just got back from up there and I don't envy the fog on your glasses preventing you from reading the rest of this post), is a lungful of oxygen from the best year of your life yet. Sure, 2011 will be even better, but why waste the time middling along for another day? Get a headstart on Fantastic. Get a foot on the threshold of your dreams. And get ready to bash in the door to success in 2010 -- before the world expects you!

Okay, pep talk done. Here's the list:

9) The best laid plans are a waste of time. Emergencies come out of the woodwork, critique partners run into crunch time, old friends drop by for the weekend, major events get planned and your presence will be required in all capacities. Lesson learned, but steps to help myself cope with said lesson are still far from reach. I had no contingency plans in place and I got further and further behind until I just had to toss some goals completely out the window. I'm trying to add some sliding time in for these dealings so my goals don't get railroaded again -- hopefully I will be able to report success in 2011's January post.

8) Setting realistic goals takes trial and error. Far more of the latter than optimal. I found my average slow range and began using it to gauge my goals late 2009. That's also what I'm using now to determine reasonable deadlines.

7) Muses love snuggly warm showers but despise chilly tile flooring. For my birthday (it's coming up later this month, folks) I want a waterproof notebook. So many of what I thought were brilliant ideas somehow got lost between the tub and the bathroom door.

6) Pitching to an agent is not as terrifying as I thought. Wait, no. Still terrified. But I don't regret the experience and I now have a better idea of what's expected and how to present a query in pitch form.

5) Every aspect of the writing process comes easier when not counting words. I found out early December that when I'm not fussed about my word count, I'm in the meat of the story, much more connected to the inner workings, instead of the outer influences. Yes, I did NaNoWriMo again and I made it at a steady pace. But after NaNo, the moment I let go of the numeric stressor, clean words began to fly.

4) 15 minutes of Morning Pages a day keeps the muse happy, healthy, and calm. For the first time in a couple of years now I set my morning pages aside. For the month of November, I only worked on my word-count projects. Then, come December, I lost almost a week of sleep to Manic Midnight Muse Madness (quad-mu?). The words came and they didn't stop flying onto the page. They didn't always make the most sense at 2 in the morning, but they were there. It was about a month's worth of 15 minute playtime for my muse . . . for the sake of my health I now know better than to deny her playtime ever again.

3) Accountability begins at home. I have the hubby's support and goal reminders, but we're still working on the whole "do-not-disturb during writing time" lesson.

2) When all else fails, call a TriMu. As writers we all go through rough patches of doubt and worry. As people we all go through up times and down times. Friends tell us the hard, honest truth; give us a look when it's time to stop whining; catch our silly, you-should-know-better mistakes before we humiliate ourselves; teach us something new every day; and remind us that a break is in order to catch our balance. I can't finish a recap of 2009 without raving about the stunning ladies who alternate posts with me on this blog. I'm intensely grateful that I met and am able to work with such talented professionals and steadfast friends.

1) There is nothing more beautiful than spending the entire day writing a story your heart is desperate to share with the world. I had an opportunity to take a couple unpaid weeks off of my full-time job to work on revisions for my novel. Those two weeks were nothing short of fantastic, and memories of those two weeks are going a long way to fueling my need to become a full-time writer someday.

New Year, New Decade . . . New Blog Schedule?

2010-01-01T12:01:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone and welcome to the new and improved Modern Myth Makers blog!

Okay, I know the blog doesn't look any different, and there are no new people . . . but I promise we have big things planned schedule-wise. Today marks the start of a new year and of new plans.

You might have noticed that the blog updates get a little, shall we say, sporadic, from time to time. (Or maybe you didn't notice, in which case, please look away. There was no previous sentence to this paragraph.) There are many reasons for sporadic updates which include (but are not limited to) looming deadlines (the writing comes before the blogging), real life interruptions (it happens) and just a plain lack of topics (do you realize how hard it is to think up something new to talk about every post? And most of us have other blogs we post on as well.) So, to help combat these distracts, or at least to lighten the load a little, and hopefully to also make things even more interesting for you, our readers, we are switching things up a bit.

Here is the plan:

~~jeer~~

Pass the Plot

check it out here

Free Fiction Friday

Mailbag Monday

-All other Monday and Friday's will be scheduled blogging days.
So, what do you think? Are you game? To start things off, scroll down to see the first goals post, and check back often because big things are happening here with the Modern Myth Makers!

Happy New Year everyone!

First and Goals: January 2010

2010-01-01T12:00:00.010-05:00

At the beginning of each month, we Modern Myth Makers will be posting our writerly goals for the coming month, ~~in an effort to motivate ourselves through the threat of shaming in a public forum~~ by giving each other, and all of you, the opportunity to encourage our progress.

NL Berger's Goals: Oh, we're starting a new year and a new way of doing things on this blog and it's all fresh and exciting and . . . I'm already feeling a little behind schedule. I'm playing catch up this month to account for some setbacks during the last few months. This month I plan to make it through 160 pages of intensive revisions of WIP #1 and get at least 48k words of the rough draft of WIP #2 written out.

Darlene C. Goodman's Goals: My goals will seem slackerish compared to the rest of the TriMu, but that is my usual technique for success. Aim low and exceed expectations. ;) Anyway, the thing I need to do in January is create a working timeline for my WIP so that I know where all my characters are in relation to one another. This should include motivation arcs as well. I want to make sure I not only know what a character is doing and when they are doing it, but the all important why.

Kalayna Price's Goals: I'm feeling overly ambitious at the start of this brand new year/new decade--or maybe that is not ambition. Maybe it is terror in a "OMG are those my deadlines?!" kind of way. So, my ambitious/terror stricken goal for this first month of the decade is to write the first draft of my next WIP. Yup, the whole thing. That's only 3k a day . . . no days off or bad days. No problem, right? (Gulp.)

Tori Pryer's Goals: My goal for the month is to finish my manuscript!!!! Also begin plotting a world war II short.

Sarah Templeton's Goals: My goals have become a little skewed in light of recent events but I'm going to try to get back on track here. I have a novella to outline by the end of the month and at least 200 pages of layered revisions to work on for one of my novels. I have to dial back the hours due to the day job hitting the busy season (leaving me exhausted at end of day and occasionally stealing hours anyway) and getting back from the holidays and my brother's wedding leaving a lot of housework for me to accomplish in my (cough) free time, so I'm back to aiming for my minimum of 20 writing hours a week. Wish me luck!

Haricot Vert's Goals: Character profiles and then a complete scene list for a short. This can happen in 31 days, right? Right??

What about you guys? What are your writing goals for this month?

Seasonal Update

2009-12-25T03:01:00.000-05:00

black amidst dark green
wild hunter awaiting prey
the cat's in the tree

She likes the christmas tree, and doesn't care a wit that it's plastic. Silly beast.

The project mentioned before got slowed down a lot by other writerly concerns, but I still have hopes that it will be done before January 1. I do want to start the new year with a clean-er plate than it currently is.

Any things that you're in the middle of finishing?

Oh, and by the way, Season's Greetings from us to you. :)

A New Game Plan to Avoid Moral Victories

2009-12-14T21:36:00.002-05:00

Now some of you may know that I'm a football fan. A huge watch-whatever-game-is-on football fan. I've watched a lot of not-so-good football teams play tough against really good teams. The fans and the commentators always say "Well, they played tough. The [INSERT LOSING TEAM HERE] can grow and learn from this. That was a real moral victory."

Bah, I say. A loss is a loss is a loss is a loss. And losing is no fun. It is hateful. It makes you want to cry and pout. Although I do not recommend doing it on national TV. The commentators will make fun of you. See this poor guy as an example.

How does this relate to writing? Funny you should ask. I've had too many moral victories as a writer. I've got to stop saying "At least, I wrote today. That's something." Or "I've got two first drafts. That is more than I had before." This is not the kind of thinking that a successful writer has. I've been writing "seriously" for three years, but I've not sent out a single query letter. I have had the "Wait until next year mentality" for far too long.

No longer will this be the case. I'm changing my game plan.

I'm giving myself deadlines and am making myself publicly accountable for those deadlines.. I'm stating here that this is what I have to do this year. Look for regular scoring updates throughout the coming year.

Game Plan for This week: Write 6,000 new words.

Game Plan for the Rest of the Season:

Finish a 90,000 word first draft of TDC by the end of January
Plot MLTM – World War II short during the first week in February
Write a 10,000 -15,000 word first draft of MLTM by the end of February
Read and EDITS the first draft of TDC by the end of February. Make Notes
Plot GL in April..
Complete the first pass of Revisions on TDC by the end of May
Submit TDC into the Maggies and other contests as time permits.
Read and EDITS the first draft of MLTM during the first week of June. Make notes.
Complete first pass of revisions on MLTM by end of June
Complete second pass of revisions on MLTM by the middle of July
Query MLTM by the beginning of August.
Complete a first draft of GL by mid October.
Complete second pass of revision for TDC by the end of September.
Cry and send my second born novel into the big bad world. Query TDC during the month of October.
Plot as yet unidentified novel during October.
November 1^st – NANO BEGINS!!!!!

Pre-emptive seasonal haiku

2009-12-11T06:25:00.001-05:00

hyacinths in snow
spring's head eating winter's tail
an icy blue sky

It's coming down to the end of the year. I have a project that I'm trying to finish, and amorphous projects politely waiting in the wings for brain space to be freed.

What about y'all? Is there productivity, or a frenetic spinning of wheels?

The Revision Game, Part one--2nd drafts: The Big Picture

2009-12-09T23:57:00.000-05:00

(x-posted from my blog)

On my blog last month, Cher asked me to go into more specifics about how I revise novels. I didn't get a chance to post on the topic during the NaNo challenge, so I thought I'd delve into it now. In parts. Yes, I'm breaking it down that much.

Those of you who won NaNo last month are hopefully still racing toward those magical words "The End" (or maybe some of you have hit them already). But what do you do after you reach those words?

Personally, I close the file. Then I don't open it again for at least two weeks (if at all possible). During that down time I work on other projects, write a short story, talk to my neglected husband, read as many books as I can without my eyes rolling out of my head, whatever--the point is to let the dust settle on the story I just finished. (**Note: I highly recommend still writing something while letting a first draft sit. It takes about 3 weeks to form a habit, so if you slip out of the habit of writing, you have to force yourself to the keyboard again.)

After letting the first draft sit a while, I've found I can return to it with much more objective eyes. Once the dust has settled, I read the draft in its entirety, just to see what is on the page. I also make notes as I'm going along. Not in-line, nit-picky notes, but big picture notes. Reading a first draft can be painful, and it's sometimes hard not to jump in and start fixing stuff right away, but it is important to read through the whole book. I usually run into some scenes that make me cringe with how bad they are, but I also run into scenes that go unexpectedly well, or where I laid a foundation for a plot element I didn't even plan to work with but now I see where it could fit and make the story so much stronger.

By the time I finish reading, I typically have a lot of notes. Things like: Such-and-such character is flat or goes through an abrupt personality change in chapter X; ABC plot line totally dropped; XYZ scene lacks tension; and so on. For the most part, everything I list in my notes affects the book as a whole or at least several scenes. So, my second draft is focused on fixing the issues in my notes.

This is the big stuff. I'm not going to slow down and make sure all the dialogue and descriptions are perfect at this point. I'm just going to work on the big issues.

Mostly fixing these issues are about asking myself questions and implementing the answers. Character has a personality problem? What is their motivation through out the book? What are they thinking? What do they need/want? Plot line was dropped? How can I weave it back into the chapters? Scene not working? How else can I get from point A to point B? What is the worst possible thing that could happen at this time? Can it happen? (ect.)

If I didn't work this way, if say, I polished chapter 1 until it was 'perfect' and then I got to chapter 11 and realized 'hey this is a cool plot element, let me work it in early to set this up better' or 'huh, this character doesn't work. She hasn't been acting at all in character' I would have to go back to the beginning and I would lose a lot of the work I did. So, big stuff first. Second draft (for me) is all about making sure the story is being told.

Okay, I think I've rambled on enough for one post. Check my blog later for part two (3rd drafts: Scene by Scene).

Happy Hump day everyone!

Making Up For Lost Time

2009-12-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

Deadlines are a tricky thing. You set them, you remind yourself of them, and hopefully you meet them. But life is complicated and tries to derail you. You have to prioritize and reprioritize and pick and choose your battles with the calendar.

Time management can sometimes feel kind of like balancing a ball on your nose while juggling knives and dancing on a balance beam.

On occasion, you drop a knife. (Hopefully said knife does not land on your foot or end up clipping an innocent spectator . . .) Falling a little behind in your time management is okay; mistakes happen and life gets in the way. You buckle down, devote a day or a week or whatever you need to really focusing, and get back on track.

Sometimes, though, you drop all the knives, the ball bounces right off your nose mid-step and lands under your foot, and the next thing you know you're down on the mat, staring up at the ceiling.

You're so far behind that you can't catch up with a little extra diligence. It's just not physically possible. Crap! What do you do now?

My answer: you catch up with a lot of extra diligence.

I'm in this position now. I have this glorious three-book-a-year plan with writing timelines and revising timelines and querying timelines and everything designed to overlap beautifully. A key component of that plan, however, is that I get the first 50,000 words of my winter project written during NaNoWriMo.

The problem: I did not win NaNoWriMo this year, and I'm not even keeping the 36,000 words I did write. I'm scrapping it and moving on to a whole different project. So now I'm 50,000 words behind schedule. That's not something I can make up in a day or two.

I suppose I could shift my deadline. It is my deadline, after all. One of the benefits of being an unpublished, unagented, aspiring novelist is that the only person I report to is me. But because all of the timelines are wrapped around each other, moving one deadline means moving them all. And I don't want to derail my whole year just because I spent November working on an idea that turned out to be a dud. Dud ideas are bound to happen and I need to work around them.

So instead of a few days or weeks of extra focus, I'm going to try to spend the next few months making up for that lost time. I spent the morning going through my goal tracking spreadsheet, tweaking the next three months. I cut out a few of my days off. I raised the bar on my daily goals by 1000 more words on writing days and 5 more pages on revising days. If all goes according to plan, I'll be back on track by the end of March.

It'll be harder. It'll take more dedication and effort. But I'm creating time here. That ain't easy.

Tuesday Morning at the BookaPlex

2009-12-04T22:56:00.002-05:00

The 'ping' was either Mom's breakfast toast or a new email. Anteriyuma Snapdragon Cooper, just "Snap" to her classmates, swiped her thumb across the fingerprint-resistant screen on her ComPlex cellphone. "Wicked-nova!" she stared at the bright display. The five-star review for the newest Zombie Paradox book had just zipped to her Inbox. "Marra Thneed's book got front line POD billing!"

"I take it you're off to the BookaPlex this morning," Mom said, scraping a healthy measure of grape jam over a piece of hot sourdough. "Vampire's Den Eleventeen?"

Snap rolled her eyes. "Zombies, Mom. Zombies. Vamps are SO 21st century." She sniffed the air and shifted from foot to foot. The smell of roasting caffeine was tempting, but Mom didn't have the caramel flavoring in the cabinet like the BookaPlex's café. "I saved up for the paperback. And I figure I'll grab some coffee with friends."

Mom spun around, butter knife still in hand, and a drop of jelly oozed into a pockmark in the beige linoleum at her feet. "Your father and I make sure you have perfectly good coffee at home. Why do you insist on squandering your allowance over there?"

"For the third time this week, Mom. It's not the coffee, it's the company." Snap waved her cellphone at Mom and snagged her Plastic from the holder by the back door. Shoving the card into her back jeans pocket, she added, "I'll be back for dinner." Snap bounded down the back stairs and onto the sidewalk, hiding a grin at the lingering image of her disgruntled mother with her hands on her hips, hair sticking up like she'd shoved the knife in the toaster instead of just the bread. Mornings.

The BookaPlex was bustling with activity, and Snap spotted her usual crowd by the periodicals. "Mere!" Snap waved her phone and the little plastic cartoon doll hanging from the phone's keyring lit up as she approached. Mere's friendship doll lit up in response and Snap's best friend barreled across the café area with arms outstretched and twin braids bouncing over her shoulders.

"It's out! Have you read the reviews? Oran42 said it's the best one Marra Thneed's ever written! Ever! How do you beat that?"

"I know!" Snap's sneakers squelched against the polished floor as she jumped into the air for a high-five. "You get your copy for the signin'?"

"Five more minutes. I've been nursing my hot chocolate and checking out the mags." Mere pointed to where two of their other friends were sitting, thumbing through the latest news on the BookaPlex's rental touchscreens.

Only Sasha waved in their direction; Toby had his headphones on, his eyes closed, and bobbed his head to the latest issue of what Snap knew had to be Music World.

"Be back, Mere." Snap scampered onto the thick pile carpet that filled a good third of the rest of the BookaPlex. She weaved past the bargain table, stepped around shelves of hardcovers and audiobooks, and made a direct line for the PODs. Two were empty, and she dove for the door, slipping inside with a quiet 'snick' of the latch.

"Good morning," the machine chirped at her with a friendly sort of voice.
Snap loved that voice. It meant she was going to get a brand new, hot-off-the-presses book before she'd even finished her cup of coffee.

"Will you be using paper or Plastic today?"

Snap swiped her card through the reader and tabbed through the printing and shipping options on the screen. "Not electronic, not mailed to my doorstep, I just want plain old . . . " she mashed the button with a grin, "paperback."

"Please make your selection."

Snap typed in the title and wiggled her fingers in the air before pressing down on the cover image with barely restrained glee. A preview of the text sprang to the screen and she thumbed through it, already more than happy with the book about to be in her hand.

"Would you like to make any other purchases today?" A list of related titles came to the forefront of the screen, each sporting their own preview. The list based itself on publisher marketing and her own previous purchases.

Snap thought about it. She 'could' print off a copy of Nosereaper. And maybe get something for her brother. She stared down at the card in her hand. Not today. The holidays were around the corner and she would have them all shipped instead, pick up a stack of hardbacks her parents had been drooling over. Besides, the new Ed Riley wasn't even out yet and Mom would want that for sure.

"Leticia McEllen's Faeries and Peacocks is 20% off today with your purchase of Zombie Paradox Four."

Snap thought harder. She chewed on her bottom lip, sighed once, and finally pressed "No."

"Please verify your identity by placing your thumb on the scanner," the machine chirped. When she did, it said, "Thank you," adding in her own voice, "Anteriyuma Cooper."

Snap's cellphone pinged as the receipt hit her Inbox. "Wicked-nova! Zombie Paradox Four is so mine!"

"Your book will be ready in - 30 - minutes at the front desk. Please be aware that if you do not pick up your purchase in the next 24 hours, it will be shipped to your home address. Have a book-tastic day!"

Snap grinned and stepped down from the POD. Already a line had formed for the machines, most of them teens like her. Someone asked, "Printing?"

"Printing!" Snap waved the receipt still gleaming on her cellphone screen at the boy in line. "Coffee time," she murmured to herself and trotted off to join her friends.

Coffeehouse Ramblings

2009-12-01T00:14:00.001-05:00

Ok, I should have probably entitled this post "observations of a 31 year old in a college coffeehouse while feeling old", but that seemed like a really long title so I backed off of it. Tonight was the last night of the National Novel Writing Month and I hosted a Write to the Finish Line Write-in. I finished my 50K at around 9ish and didn't leave the coffeehouse until 11ish. That left me nearly two hours to people watch. Now as you know, I'm a writer. Some of you may not know that the word writer is a synonym for an "observer of life." It is also a synonym for nosy, but I like "observer of life" better.

Below are the things that I learned.

According to the two twenty year-olds sitting next to me, Isn't it Ironic by Alanis Morisette is now an oldie. This made me sad…mostly because they're right. Jagged Little Pill is still one of my favorite albums and it is one of the first CDs that I purchased for myself. I remember buying it with my hard-earned baby-sitting money and driving to myself and my brother to tennis lessons while the songs from that album climbed the chart. Those kids in the coffee shop were probably 5 years old while I was listening to that album. SAD!!!!
Some people think they can plan out their lives. Sitting directly across from me (conveniently enough for observation purposes) were two boy wonder medical students or would be medical students. I'm not sure which. One of them proceeded to describe to the other in detail the life that he wanted to have. My favorite quote. "I told my girlfriend that if we were still together in my second year. We should just go ahead and get married and then we'll have a few years together before we have a kid if she wants to." He wins for least romantic proposal ever.
Same medical students. Another great quote. "One of my classmates is 39 years old. I don't want to be old like that before I find my passion." Deluded, deluded boys. I say better late than never.

That concludes my coffee shop observations for this evening. I think I will go grab my cane, my Ensure, and my arthritis medicine, and go to bed now. Good night!

Process Story RE: The Process of Writing a Novel

2009-11-23T09:00:00.002-05:00

Last Wednesday, Kalayna posted about her writing process (crossposted here and here) and as a writer with the opposite type of process, I thought I'd expand on it.

(Turnabout is fair play!)

Kalayna has a very detailed pre-writing and writing process. I have no pre-writing process and a completely scatterbrained, I'm-sure-there-is-a-method-to-the-madness-in-here-somewhere writing process. You guys all know I'm a pantzer; we don't need to into that again.

But I have a really detailed revisions process. I revise in seven different waves. This process first came into existence with Aundroma, because I revised the first book so many successive times, each time looking for different things as I learned more and more about craft, that the waves just kind of happened. That very haphazard experience formed the basis for revising as I do it now. With Familiar, I think I finally got my revising method down to a solid process.

Wave 1: Macro-edits After the initial crazy first draft writing phase is complete and I've let the story rest for about a week, I read through the whole thing again and look for major plot holes, scenes that I meant to include but forgot about in the frenzy of writing, characters who appear out of nowhere or disappear with no explanation, and subplots that never resolve. I don't do any line editing in Wave 1. All I do is identify these major problems, make notes to myself on existing scenes detailing the changes that will need to be made, and write any new scenes that have to be inserted into the story.

Wave 2: Highlighting With Familiar I tried out the EDITS system, as taught by Margie Lawson and I am totally hooked on it. If you can get into one of her classes, do so. EDITS is fantastic. I go through my whole manuscript and highlight all of it using the EDITS technique. I do end up doing another round of reading through the manuscript at this point (it's hard to tell whether a sentence is yellow or green or blue without reading it) so I do also end up making some more notes to myself during Wave 2, but that is not the focus. It is important, I think, to note that I don't analyze the highlights at this point. All I do is read the sentences and classify them. Analyzing comes later, in much smaller chunks.

I call Waves 1 and 2 my second draft. This part of the process takes about a month. At this point I stop working with the manuscript as a whole and work waves 3 through 6 on each scene before moving on to the next scene. I won't look at the manuscript as a whole again until Wave 7.

Wave 3: Scene edits At this point, I break the story down into small chunks, usually scenes or chapters and go through a really detailed edit. This is where I look at the EDITS highlighting to make sure all my colors are balanced. I go through all those notes I made before and fix the random little issues. I make sure the flow of the scene works, that the tension is right, and that the story is moving the way I want it to.

Wave 4: Micro-edits Once I've got the scene just the way I want it, I start really drilling in line by line. I'm looking at this point for repeated words, excessive adverbs, passive voice, grammar issues, etc. This is also the phase where I start reading the text aloud, because I catch a lot of errors when reading out loud that I miss when reading silently.

Wave 5: Critique I am blessed with a fabulous critique group that meets once a week. I try to bring 10-20 pages to critique every week. I recommend every writer find a critique group. A critique partner is a must, but a group, in my opinion, is better. By getting multiple perspectives, from writers all over the board when it comes to genres and career levels, every scene gets filtered through a slightly different lens, which gives me a better overall view of what works and what doesn't. I don't always make the changes my critique group suggests, but they are pretty smart, so I go with their advice more often than not.

Wave 6: Scene polishing After the pages go through the group--assuming the group doesn't read them and tell me they just don't work at all and they need to be rewritten--I make whatever adjustments need to be made and give it one final look, making minor tweaks here and there. After that, barring a major story change occurring to me during the revision of later scenes, the scene gets locked. I put it in a separate file and don't look at it again until Wave 7.

Waves 3 through 6 make up the third draft. Now, assuming I've made it through the whole manuscript without going totally insane, we're back to working with the whole text once again for the last wave.

Wave 7: Final polishing After putting all these pretty revised and analyzed and critiqued and polished scenes back together into a manuscript, I have to go through the whole thing again on an overall level, just to make sure the whole things flows together right and that the overall plot arcs in the right way. If I'm lucky, I don't catch more than minor tweaking and transition smoothing here, maybe a balance here and there of the scene/chapter breaks.

Theoretically now my manuscript is perfect and lovely and ready to send out to agents and such. I try not to look at it again after this point, but I don't usually succeed at that. Invariably, a random little quirk here and there will occur to me and I'll open the document and make a quick change.

So that's my process. What about you? What's your process?

I Love the Smell of Libraries in the Morning

2009-11-20T12:29:00.002-05:00

I'm a book buyer, an avid reader of fiction. I still do my research at the library. From dusty old books. Because they're tangible. The physical connection to the book is one of the reasons I love them. One more note to my overactive brain that says, "Cool. We're reading now. Shut everything out but just this one imaginary world, time, person, people, creature. Immerse yourself. Because you deserve it."

Books have been my alternatives to movies for a long time, first for the price difference and second for the lack of a screen, though the former is leveling out at an astonishing rate as the price of a paperback goes up a dollar a year. Increasingly, I've been entering physical bookstores and can't find the book I'm looking for since they refuse to carry it. Sure, I can order it through the physical store, sure I can order it online, but when I want a book NOW to read NOW and can't find it because it's not carried in the store hey -- a short walk away from this bookstore over here is a movie theater. It's lunchtime, and matinees are just $7. Which is $0.99 to $1.99 cheaper than the book I would have bought...big screen, here I come.

If they do have it in stock, the bookstore wins every time. Because you know what's NOT cheaper than a book? New eyes.

(Insert severe train-jumping veer to the left here. Weee!)

I squint at a screen innumerable hours a day. My eyesight is wretched--still steadily declining from the negative 7s and ousting me from the range of some formats of laser surgery. My morning and evening commutes, and bathroom breaks, are about the only time during the day when I'm "unplugged". I'm a technical writer, copy editor, graphics designer, and software quality assurance technician during my day job. I write fiction at a computer in the evening, I watch TV with my husband at dinnertime, I exercise to an assortment of cheap fitness DVDs and the Wii Fitness Trainer, and I even record my steps on a handheld game thingymabob. The last thing I need is another screen. I've resisted the smartphone, though the Droid is like a homing beacon calling to my inner Star Wars obsession. (In that every time I hear about it, the iconic Verizon "Can you hear me now" is replaced with "Where could he be? Threepio! Threepio, will you come in?") Procuring a smartphone at this point would likely sign the remaining usefulness factor of my eyes away.

The eReaders theoretically have a format that's book-like, and won't induce further eye deterioration. I'd be inclined to acquire one as the competition wears on, but only if I can, say, back up the data elsewhere in case the thing blows up, be able to redownload without repurchasing my purchases (via CONVENIENT activation/inactivation of licenses or somesuch), and limit my access to simply BOOKS from the thing. I've recently discovered I do too much from my laptop/desktop computers, and to that end I can't sit there and read an ebook for hours on end like I can with a physical book. This has nothing to do with eyestrain. There is simply too much going on.

Online, I can't shut out the world.

Nothing tells my brain to enjoy the book, immerse myself. Instead, my brain goes, hey, go check your email! Go update the latest version of this eReader software! And while you're there, go read the replies on your twitter! Go see the latest publishing news! Go work on your own book! (Thankfully that last one does in fact occur despite the other distractions around me. But at that point I actually have to disconnect from the internet to keep that kind of work going longer than 15 minutes.)

Do you have too much screen exposure? What steps of physical separation do you have to take to get a moment of peace or get back to work? How do you get away from the monotone electronic buzz that flits through our lives every hour of the day?

....Do you even try?

The Process of writing a novel

2009-11-18T23:58:00.000-05:00

Not long ago, I asked for writing questions on my blog, and this is one I received. ( X-posted)

Cher asked: What process to you go through during the writing of a novel? Also, something that keeps popping up is the use of scenes and sequels. I'm a little confused about the differences. I understand the functions but when I look at other's writing I can't point out which is which. Any suggestions or examples?

My answer: There are a couple different ways I could interpret this question, so if I don’t hit on what you are really asking for Cher, please let me know. (*Disclaimer* this is the process that works for me and I am not claiming it will work for everyone.)

Anyway, my process for writing a novel goes something like this:
I start out with brain storming sessions where I figure out my world and my characters. I tend to work with pen and paper in this stage, and the result is typically a mess. I rarely start with plot ideas, so this is truly just figuring out who I’m dealing with and what the world around her is like. My world and my main character tend to develop simultaneously. As I figure out what interests me about her, I learn about what the world around her must contain, and as the world fleshes out, I learn the rules and the pressures that will have shaped her. It is very organic—thus the mess. Once my idea start to solidify, I tend to write down the major rules to my world so I don’t forget. If I’m lucky, during this process, other characters and a plot have emerged, but not always.

The next step I take is what I call ‘post-it note plotting’. Basically, I write down every idea for a scene I have, in whatever order it hits me, on a post-it note. Then, once I have a whole lot of such scene ideas, I try to arrange them into a coherent plot. I blogged on this process a few years ago if you’d like to see a picture of a complete post-it note plot arc.I used to do this on actual post-it notes which I then stuck to my wall, but these days I use a program called scrivener which has an amazing outline/post-it note feature.

Now that I know the structure of my plot, I transfer the scene list from post-its to my computer. (Obviously, I now skip this because I use a program these days.) I then take this scene list and flesh it out into a full and fairly detailed outline. I have yet to write one of these the same. My first outline was based on time. Night one: list of scenes of occurred on that night in order. One outline I structured based on key points such as ordinary world, inciting incident, rising action, turning point one, ect. and listed the corresponding scenes under those points. I’ve written outlines broken down by chapters. I tend to go with whatever feels ‘right’ in my head at the time I’m organizing. It’s very trial and error for me. As you’ve probably noticed from my early posts this month, I didn’t actually go through any of the stages I’ve mentioned for this year’s NaNo novel—that is one reason it is stalling out at times. I’m a plotter and I like the road map, even if I don’t follow it. (Oh yes, I should have mentioned that. Despite the fact I write very detailed outlines, I still deviate from them as I write, but they do let me know where it is I think I should be should I get stuck.)

After all the pre-writting stuff, all that is left is to sit down and write the novel. (Easier said than done, right?) Once I start writing, my only processes to to write one word after another. I know that doesn’t sound very helpful, but it is true. In a first draft, my concern is to get the story down on the page. I don’t consciously focus on scene and sequel, or the heroes journey, or any of the writing rules I’ve studied. I just write the story.

I’ve taken numerous online writing courses, read dozens if not hundreds of writing craft books, and sat down and picked apart my favorite novels for how and why their writing worked for me. As I sit down to write a first draft, it is my hope that all the information I’ve gained has merged with my subconscious and my inner story-teller so it will be applied without my conscious effort as I write. Also, with any luck, my pre-writing plotting has already dealt with things like character motivation and logic issues, so they are already in place when I write.

Once the first draft is finished and the whole story is on the page, I start worrying about consciously applying writing principles. I evaluate the story as a whole and by scenes. I’m condensing what is actually a whole lot of work into a couple sentences, but I’m not really sure how to explain revisions. There are Macro story edits where I evaluate logic ensure I have rising tension through out the scenes, that characters grow, that I don’t drop story threads, and such. Then there are more micro edits where I look to ensure each scene serves a purpose to the story (or better yet, two or more purposes) as in, does the scene progress the plot, show character development, create tension, ect. and does the scene start and end at the correct spot. (As in, not too far before or after the main purpose and action.) Then I go to the very micro edits where I evaluate the flow to sentences and my word choice. After all this and some polishing, I send the manuscript out to my critique partners so they can poke holes in it. After more revisions, the MS then goes to editors, who poke even more holes in it. Yet more revisions, and then I have a very tight book which (hopefully) won’t have any holes left for readers to find.

So, that is my whole process, from idea to polished manuscript.

As far as your question about scene and sequel in particular, I have read books and taken classes on the subject, but I have the same issue you have Cher. I understand the principle, but I can’t tend to pick them out unless there is an obvious ‘rest’ beat. By the way, that is how I tend to think about scene and sequel—scenes are ‘action’ beats where the character is actively taking action to achieve a goal and sequel I translate to a ‘rest’ beat when the character is reflecting/planning/deciding what action to take next. The important thing to remember is to keep ever increasing tension in the story. Even in a ‘rest’ beat, the end result is the decision to take action (always better when the decision is between two bad choices.) Make sense? Like I said, I don’t consciously write thinking “okay, this is a scene. Now this one is a sequel.” I just tell my story, and hope that I’ve assimilated enough of these principles that I follow them subconsciously.

For more about writing craft, here are books and classes I highly recommend:
Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham —This is a great book both about the structure of single scenes, and the structure of scenes throughout an entire book.
Goal Motivation Conflict by Debra Dixon —This is an amazing book to help make sure your characters are moving forward logically and that you throw the right things in their path.
Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King —This is a micro editing style book—I love it. (This is also part of the grand prize package for the NaNo competition)
Margie Lawson Teaches several amazing classes, in particular the EDITS class, which help you break down your scenes and really see what you have on the page.
Mary Buckham Teaches an amazing class called POWER PACING. I highly recommend it. She is also the co-author of the craft book Break into Fiction.

Have a great hump day (okay, so it's almost over. I hope you had a nice one then.) If anyone has questions, feel free to ask!

Ambidextrous

2009-11-09T09:00:00.001-05:00

I'm a pantzer. I've discussed this before. I write by the seat of my pants. I don't plan things out in advance. I don't outline. I, on occasion, allow myself to jot down ideas for a future project in blurb form, but I usually only glance at them once before I start writing, just to point myself in a vague direction of the idea.

That is not to say I have not tried to plot. I have. It just doesn't work for me. I've talked on my blog before about how I'm getting more and more plotter-ish, but I don't think it'll go any further than it has. I like the freedom and the thrill of pantzing too much.

In fact, during this year's NaNoWriMo, I set an all time pantzing record for myself. I came up with my idea for my current project approximately 10 hours before the event started.

I've noticed something funny this year though. Perhaps it's been going on for a while, but because I'm more involved with other Wrimos this year than I have been in the past I'm just now witnessing it, but I've seen a whole bunch of people trying to mess with their method. I've seen pantzers try to bang out and then stick to an outline. I've seen dedicated plotters pick up a shiny new idea and try to just run off with it with no direction in mind at all.

I applaud them for their bravery.

I fear for their sanity, even more than I do for every Wrimo's sanity. (And I fear for us all a great deal, trust me.)

But I wonder if they will make it. Will those panzters trying to plot get a few weeks (or possibly days) into November and then suddenly toss the outlines out the window and take the story off in a whole new direction? Will the plotters giving pantzing a shot break down and take a few writing days off to outline and world build and character sketch?

Or will the event reveal an ability they never knew they had? Will they come away from it able to write both ways from now on, like a right-handed person who breaks their arm and has to learn how to do everything with their left as a result?

NaNoWriMo has always felt to me like a pantzer's paradise, but I know plotters who swear by it too. It really is all about getting out of your own way and letting the words rule the day. I've often toyed with the idea of using NaNoWriMo to experiment with writing in a different genre than I usually do, but it has never occurred to me to try a whole different writing style.

What do you think? It's too late for me to try it this year, but is it something to keep in mind for next year? Or are these plotting pantzers and pantzing plotters even crazier than I am?

Also, are you one of the switchers? If so, how's it going for you? Has it made you nuts yet? Have you given up and reverted to your familiar form? Or is it working for you?

Rewards for NaNoWriMo?

2009-11-06T12:01:00.004-05:00

It's NaNo, and I'm not having any trouble keeping above a daily 1,667 word count because I've had a set daily goal all year long. It feels like a tiny boost compared to last year's uber-challenge. As of last night, I was already up to 12,226 words! So if I want a real challenge, I have to spice things up a bit.

This month, I will:

Write 50k words from beginning to THE END of one or two versions of the story driving into my skull.
Complete four steampunk rings and post completed pics up on my blog to show off the finished results.
Give up my Saturday morning writing time in leiu of "Husband Appreciation Time". This is prime hours for me productivity-wise, but the hubby is so supportive and awesome regarding my writing efforts that he should get a medal. (In leiu of medal I'll be popping something in the slow cooker on Saturdays and watching a movie with him...hehe!)
Increase my baking to 2 loaves of bread a week (yum!) to have extras in the freezer.
Stock up on frozen baggies of homemade slow cooker soup.

My rewards? At 25k I get to start using the WiiFit Expansion pack in my daily exercise routine. At 50k, I get to hit the bookstore for Cherie Priest's new novel: Boneshaker. And for the first two weeks of December I get to avoid writing altogether while my prose stews -- time enough to binge on the new Sims 3 expansion pack, whittle down my TBR pile, and busy myself with holiday craftiness.

What are your rewards for meeting your goals this November?

The Joy of Index Cards

2009-10-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

Index cards are one of the best inventions ever! Let me tell you why.

1. You can use them to jot down ideas and even whole paragraphs when you don't have time or space to expand them in your ms, for example, if you're in a meeting or at a stoplight. Then when you go back to writing, there's your idea waiting for you.

2. You can do quick character profiles that you can use later when you hit a plot snag and can't remember exactly what trait would cause your character to say... stick someone into the attic rather than the freezer. Instead of pulling up a file, grab the index card with the attributes.

3. Portability. A desktop is heavy, a laptop can be heavy, and there may be too many people sardined next to you on the train for a notebook. Index cards can be held in one hand and written on by the other hand, then slipped into a pocket.

I've given three reasons why I love to have index cards to hand. Are you a fan? Tell us why they are a staple. Are you not a fan at all? Tell us why you eschew them.

...Did you catch it? Hope not. :)

NaNoWriMo Resources

2009-10-29T23:31:00.001-04:00

NaNo begins at Midnight Saturday evening. That means if you haven't gotten geared up yet, it's time to get your trackers together! In this post I've collected a handful of my most common favorite resources for NaNo, as well as a handful of 2009-specific resources.

The 2009 Report Card
My favorite goodie is this modded spreadsheet by Cameron Matthews (based on the report card by Eric Benson). It features space for you to enter your word count and helps you calculate all kinds of statistics about your noveling experience such as your overall mood, best writing location, and how long it'll take you to meet your goal based on how many words per hour you've put in so far. Handy graphs, too! This version is for Office 2007 but you can run it in compatibility mode with 2003 with no problem.

I was also able to track down two new Open Office versions of this spreadsheet here courtesy of NaNoWriMo participant laebrye and here courtesy of NaNoWriMo participant Atalanta. Keep in mind that's available through the NaNoWriMo forum.

(And if you use these, folks, don't forget to say thank you!!)

The Novel Worksheet
New this year from Cameron Matthews, this workbook takes you through the whole process to publication: From NaNo draft to Final draft. The spreadsheet workbook is configured to allow you to set your own deadlines and anticipated page counts for each phase of your process. Everyone's process is different so it won't work for all, but I can tell you one thing: it will work for me!

(Note: This is only for Office 2007. You can use it in compatibility mode with Office 2003 - but it's looks like some things won't reference correctly.)

Official NaNoWriMo Workbooks
Available in PDF downloads from the Young Writer's Program website, the geniuses over at NaNoWriMo have put together awesome workbooks for elementary, middle, and high school students. But you know what? They're terrific for adults too! So share with your favorite creative young person or use them yourself. Each workbook talks about storytelling elements and provides exercises to stoke your brain engine.

Word Count Widgets and Meters
Aside from the official NaNoWriMo widgets designed for your blogs and other webpages, you can customize status bars at these fine sites:
HTML Meters
Language is a Virus NaNoWriMo Word Meters

There are probably others, but since servers get so slammed during November, I try to steer away from anything offering updated images with hosting. A simple coded slider works wonders.

Write or Die
Yes, I know that I've already talked about this wonderful tool of reckoning. But Dr. Wicked has recently released a new DESKTOP version. It's $10. Go buy it and crank your productivity!

(self-quoted endorsement: You can achieve similar results without Write or Die by procuring a monkey/little sibling/ever-supportive significant other, setting an egg timer offline and scribbling in a frenzied haze of glory. When you get stuck during your time limit, your previously procured moral support device/person/creature must mock you until you begin writing again. Kamikaze mode for the pen and paper edition should also involve a cattle prod. A little electroshock encouragement never hurt anyone. Right? Beuller?)

Seventh Sanctum
THIS is the place to go when you're stuck. I don't recommend it for figuring out the nitty gritty of your novel, but I highly recommend it for a brain boost (and a good chuckle). Find a generator that suits you (Mecha Namer? CatGirl Generator?) and click the button to douse your brain in a bizarre idea that just might point you in the right direction. Just looking at all the generator names is enough to get my fingers moving sometimes.

Happy writing, everyone! And for the Daylight Savings Time crowd: Go ahead, rejoice that November 1st has an extra hour of writing time. Use those precious minutes wisely, and aim high! You can do it!

Do you NaNoWriMo? A contest and Prizes!

2009-10-22T17:33:00.000-04:00

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner. This will be my fifth year participating in the challenge, and this time, I've decided to do something a little different. This year, I want to invite everyone out in the blogsphere to NaNo with me. As a good hostess, I'm giving out prizes to those who join me in the challenge. These prizes include free books and a mention in the acknowledgments of my upcoming release, TWICE DEAD.

Interested in learning more? Check it out over at MY BLOG

I hope to see you there! Write with abandon!

Character Interview -- Gerrit

2009-10-16T11:05:00.005-04:00

For some reason I thought that Gerrit would have chosen an out of the way spot, perhaps a dingy hole in the wall with bad lighting and people looking around furtively. Instead he chooses a quick-eats place, with lots of light and lots of people; I guess he's taking advantage of group cover. We get our trays and food and sit at a table against the wall.

I pull out my recorder, but he stops me.

"It's less conspicuous if you just use a mic attachment." From a jacket pocket, Gerrit pulls out a small black cylinder attached to a long wire. "I'd have used wireless, but somehow I don't think you are quite there yet."

He's mocking me, but the mockery isn't malicious, at least I don't think it is.

"Okay, it looks like you should be set. Start the interview, except you can skip the name and place of origin questions, if you don't mind."

Obediently, I click on the recorder. The break in the ritual discomfits me; maybe that's why he did it. "How many scams were you running?" I figure to get right to the heart of the questions, and hopefully get a point back in my favor.

Gerrit looks up and then back to me. "Good start. Let's see..." His voice trails off as he thinks. "Zero. I wasn't running any scams."

"Well, you certainly weren't on official business for all of the jobs." I allow myself a direct stare and a raised eyebrow.

He holds up a finger. "True. I had 3 jobs running, besides the 9 to 5. Jobs, mind you, not scams." The finger wags at me for emphasis and then he takes a bite of his salad. He fills his mouth yet manages to chew without looking like a 2 year old. While he eats, his gaze meanders around the room and comes back to me.

"Can you tell me what the ... jobs were?"

Gerrit shrugs. "Why not? They're over and done with aren't they?" He eats another forkful of greens and reds. "I was running papers from the Tenir embassy, I was trying to catch Donovan with his pants down, and I was committing planetary treason. It's a great game out there; you should try it."

"And at the same time you were working as an intelligence agent for the interplanetary government?"

"I know!" The glee takes his voice up a couple notes.

"What would have happened if you had gotten caught?"

"But there's the rub;" He leans towards me. "I didn't."

"But you got caught in the end, though, didn't you." I force myself to keep the accusation inside. No sense in opening that particular can of worms. "Okay, granted you didn't get caught. However, in the event you did, let's just speculate, what would have happened?"

Another long look around the quick-eats. "Peons." He gives me his full attention. "If the first, then nothing more than a slight reprimand. For the second, perhaps a short suspension." A pause. "But if I had gotten caught with Reynor, it would have depended on the spin. I think I could have gotten away with it." A shrug, tossing the thought out as if it didn't matter. "And if I couldn't work the crowd, they would have killed me."

"Isn't that a bit harsh of a punishment?"

"_I_ think so. _They_ consider it a necessary example making, a refining of the workforce, if you will." He waves his hands in large slow arcs. "It's all about control."

"And you don't like being controlled?"

"They can't control me." His hands are still. "I've given them opportunities, but they don't even see them! It's no wonder that they couldn't," He stops short, and I'm glad to see there are some things he takes seriously.

"Back to something you mentioned before, this being a 'great game.' Is it all just a game?"

"Not just a game. The only game worth playing."

He gives me the first smile that I've seen on his face so far. It drifts over his face, and is so open that I find myself blushing.

"Then why did you call Thytira?"

The smile is gone. "I wanted to turn the game and needed help to do it. Thytira's a straight shooter, a good one to have as back-up."

"You felt you needed back-up?" This was getting interesting all of a sudden.

"Normally no, but in this case, yes. I'm not straight enough to turn a game like this on my own." He shrugs, acknowledging the truth. "It's one of my flaws."

There is a soft beeping from the inside of Gerrit's jacket. He pulls out a slim rectangle. "I have to go. But thanks for taking the time to talk to me." He stops me when I reach to unhook the mic attachment. "Keep it, it may come in handy another time."

A very different sort of man. I'm almost sorry he's dead.

The IMAX experience, RE: Phoning It In Or Watching It All Unfold

2009-10-14T16:45:00.001-04:00

Nikki posed a great discussion Monday, and as a writer on the opposite side as her experience, I thought I'd expand on it.

Unlike Nikki, who is a listener, I am one of the 'watching the action unfold' type of writers. (Which, considering I'm also a painter, probably isn't all that surprising.) I visualize my scenes, watch them play out, and then try to match words to what is there. When I'm lucky, these scenes take place on a full 3d IMAX screen in my brain. When I'm not so lucky, it's more like watching reflections in a recently churned mud puddle. My mind's camera pulls in and out (often discarding details I'm not paying attention to) and can jump right into the character's head and see the scene through her eyes (though in all honestly, even though I write first person, I usually see most scenes--especially action scenes--in 3rd.)

While I can push my camera into my characters' heads, and even hear their thoughts, I can't question them the way Nikki describes. A character interview is an exercise in futility for me. Imagine myself sitting across from a character and them answering questions? HA!

If I want to know anything about my characters beyond (or usually in the past) of the here and now, I have to crawl around the cutting room floor and watch the clips of forgotten footage detailing their pasts so I can understand their current motivations. While this can be highly entertaining, sometimes I do wish I could just scream "WHY??" and get an answer.

My characters are blithely ignorant of me (or perhaps they just ignore me.) When a new main character appears (not one who walks onto the screen of an already playing story, but a shiny new idea) it is often like being only half awake. Maybe I'll hear snatches of dialogue or get a couple second long images of something really cool, but everything is fuzzy around the edges, and it takes time to tune in. For me, there is never a grand entrance where a character walks into my mind and just tells me her story (though that sounds terribly nice). No, the characters move into my brain, paint their setting on the walls, and then act out their story without breaking the fourth wall.

I've said before that this or that character 'isn't talking to me', but after reading Nikki's post, I realize that means something slightly different to me from her definition (though the end result for both of us is the same.) What I mean is that the curtain call has gone out, but the character has not shown up on stage, or he does show up but has pulled a prima donna and is leaning against the backdrop, pouting. Nikki, I get the feeling, really does mean her character stopped talking. Again, same result, different experience.

I'll wrap up with that, but I also want to expand on Nikki's questions: When character's make a first appearance in your mind, how does that initial introduction tend to go? Do your characters talk to you? Or are you only an observer? Also, I'd love to hear more people chime in on if they are listeners or watchers. Anyone out there both? Maybe you see some scenes and are told others. Something else entirely?

Happy Hump day everyone!

Phoning It In Or Watching It All Unfold

2009-10-12T12:20:00.001-04:00

I've always been kind of fascinated with how other writers come up with their stories. Not the incredibly impossible "where do you get your ideas?" question, which I don't think anyone can actually answer with anything other than "everywhere". More, once you have the idea, "how does a story take shape in your head?" How does it go from the random light bulb flicked on by the muse to something coherent and beautiful filling up the pages?

In my experience, there are two types of writers. Those who have the story told to them by a character (or sometimes by a few characters) and those who watch it like a movie playing in their head and just scramble to get it all down on paper.

I am a listener. A character moves into my head, plunks down on a squashy old sofa, and then proceeds to ramble endlessly about their life. They call me up, chatting away until the cell battery dies about random, sometimes incomprehensible things (which will sound familiar to any of you who've ever talked to me on the phone) and I struggle to take dictation, snatching at every word in case it turns out to be important later.

As with anything else, there are plusses and minuses to being a listener.

On the positive side of things, I never have to worry about what a character was thinking when something went down. I don't usually struggle to figure out what a character would say or do in a certain situation. (If I am struggling with that, I know I'm really blocked and it's time to break out the meditation.) I don't have to worry about figuring out their backstory or analyzing their wants and needs. They're there, in my head. I just have to ask them.

Oh, yeah, the character interview is my best friend.

On the other hand though, characters tend to be very self-absorbed. They don't notice what other people are doing unless it directly impacts them. They also don't stop to smell the roses very often. Or notice what's out the window next to them. Or pay much attention to the scenery at all. If you're familiar with the EDITS system, this means that I get a lot of yellow, and struggle to find even the vaguest hint of green.

At times when I'm begging for green and despairing my overabundance of yellow, I'm jealous, horribly, irrationally jealous, of the watchers.

Watchers see the scenes in their head like a movie. A couple of my critique partners are watchers and when I listen to them talk about the way they work through a scene, I am struck by that crazy the-grass-is-always-greener (oh, no pun intended there!) kind of envy. Their stories don't come in as a monologue over a sometimes crackly connection. They see it all in full-color, high-action cinema form.

Again, there are plusses and minuses though.

Setting? Check! Action and stage direction? Check! Dialogue? Check! Internalization and motivation? Um. . . not so much. Unless they're lucky enough to be watching a movie with a voiceover at the time. (Those are kind of annoying in real movies, but I imagine must be very much appreciated in muse-movies.) Watchers have to work at the whys. They have to look at the reactions and puzzle out the backstory to find out what's really going on. "What were you thinking?" is a popular question, I imagine, in the character interview.

I say that to my characters a lot too, but usually shouted in a frustrated, you're-killing-my-plot-with-your-damn-antics! kind of a way. The watchers probably sound more curious and interested when they say it.

So what are you? A listener? A watcher? Something else entirely that I just haven't had the benefit of encountering yet?

Dialoguing It Out

2009-10-02T21:24:00.002-04:00

I am a solitary type of writer. A hermit writer, if you will. And yet, even hermits need to go trading goatskins for matches and toilet paper (this hermit has a delicate bum, thank you very much).

Away from the metaphor a bit, and moving to reality, there are times when I need to talk about my various attempts at scribbling to other people not already in my head. Those are some of the most difficult conversations!

A lot of the difficulty stems from the fact that they aren't in my head. The people I'm talking to have no idea of the chunks of backstory I'm dealing with, and they don't immediately understand the motivations of my characters. But why should they?

I'm asking them to talk about characters who don't exist outside of my grey matter. When I think of Taliesin, I know exactly how she puts her hand on her hip, and the tilt of her head. I know which of Absinthe's jokes made Dace laugh even when he is angry enough to ask for his key back. How can people _know_ what I'm talking about?

Part of me concludes that I just shouldn't dialogue about these things with the uninitiated. The more sense-filled part of me admits that if I can't dialogue about these things with the uninitiated, and make them understand where my characters are coming from, if I can't get them to love Simon and his complaining as much as I do, then do I really know my characters as much as I think I do?

What do you think? Let's chat.

A writing soundtrack

2009-09-30T11:31:00.004-04:00

I know I've posted on the topic of music before, but well, I'm a massive consumer of music so I'm going to talk about it again. I'm not a fan silence (unless I'm trying to sleep) so if you run into me, you'll probably find I have wires running from my ipod to my ~~brain~~ ears.

Now, as a ~~musicwhore~~ consumer of music, it is a bit of an understatement to say I have a large music library. My tastes are diverse and I can get a little itunes happy once in a while, so I'm pretty sure if you hit shuffle on my library the auditory experience will be the equivalent of living inside a schizophrenic's brain. (Side rant: Shake to shuffle is NOT a feature on the ipod nano--it's a menace. Anyone know how to turn it off? /rant)

Recently I've been on a Darkwave/Industrial kick. I have a manuscript due, uh, tomorrow, and I have a good power mix playing that has been great for this last push of revisions. Here are a list of the bands in the mix:

The Cruxshadows (of course)
The Birthday Massacre
Ayria
Emilie Autumn
I:Scintilla
One-eyed Doll

So what are you listening to? Do you have a 'soundtrack' for certain activities?

Practice Your Pitch In Unexpected Places

2009-09-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I was on vacation with my husband and his family in the Catskills. The trip was very nice, and I had a lovely time. And there are some places that are just too scenic not to be inspiring. I love mountains. Mountains are my favorite places to vacation. (Other than cruise ships, that is.)

But I'm back from vacation and Moonlight & Magnolias is only a few days away. And I have plans to pitch my current urban fantasy project there. I've been polishing my manuscript and fine-tuning my pitch for weeks. And this past week, I got some unexpected practice.

This is the first time since I started writing full-time that I've been introduced to a large number of people. Invariably, when you are plunked down in a small talk situation, people ask what you do for a living. And for the first time, I decided to answer the question with "novelist". I might not have had anything published yet, but writing novels is what I do after all.

This, of course, led to that terrifying question "so, what do you write?" I've posted before about the benefits of contests like TwitchWeek for coming up with the one-line answer to this question. But sometimes you have more time than that to talk, and the dilemma becomes how much information is too much. You never want to tell someone interested in your book "it's complicated" or "it's a long story" or "it's hard to explain". At the same time, you don't want to launch into one of those boring, long-winded, why-don't-we-just-sit-down-and-I-can-recite-you-my-entire-manuscript-verbatim explanations.

And then my opportunistic side took over: What a perfect opportunity to try out that two-minute agent pitch I'd been working on!

After all, there was no pressure here. These people were just random people I met at a vacation resort. The odds were pretty slim that they were in any way involved in the publishing industry. But if I could take people with only a fleeting, polite curiosity and get them really fascinated in under two minutes, how much better prepared would I be for someone who started out interested?

Several people glazed over and zoned out well before my pitch was done. But not everyone. And by the end of the week, I was much more comfortable with talking about my book.

Interview with a Character

2009-09-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

I would like to preface this by saying that I'm not insane even though it may seem like it from the following post. As a writer, I've always found it helpful to interview my characters. I find out a lot about their speech and thought patterns that way. This, however, is the first time that I've ever done it in a magazine article kind of way. I got the idea from NL's friend Lindsey.

Austin Lowell saunters through my front door into the living room. He stands on the tan linoleum of what is supposed to be my foyer, wearing his dress blue Navy Uniform. He's a good looking man with dark red hair and piercing green eyes. He holds his white cover in his hands and his legs are slightly splayed apart. He's the very image of the confident US sailor. I smile at him and welcome him to my home.

I've met him before. We spent a whole month together back in November 2007 -- the first time that I attempted to write his story. He doesn't know this though because this is Austin before he meets Carly McKissick, the woman that will change his life forever. This is my rebellious, flirtatious Austin who doesn't know that I'm about to torture him. That is probably a good thing. He may not be so forthcoming otherwise.

"Good evening, ma'am." His drawl is deep. I hear the echoes of generations of Southerners in that drawl. I think about the sound and tone of his voice. If he were in one of the gospel quartets that used to visit my little Baptist church, he would be a baritone.

"Won't you sit down?" I direct him to the brown suede chair in my living room. It is the newest piece of furniture in a house that is filled with hand-me-down furniture from my mother, aunts, and grandmothers. Still, most of the furniture in the house was younger than Austin. Significantly younger. The Austin visiting me today is only 24 years old, but he was actually born in 1918—much earlier than my furniture's manufacturing date. Having characters that were born before your furniture's manufacturing date is one of the risks of writing historical romance.

He settles in to the chair and I sit across from him in the floral monstrosity that was a gift from my grandmother. "Thank you for coming by Austin." I say. "I have a few questions and would really appreciate your answers."

"You're welcome, but I really don't know why you need to talk to me." He flashes his white teeth at me and leans in a bit, twirling his white cover in his hands.

I'm not sure how to answer his concerns. Is he even aware that he is just a figment of my imagination? I decide not to test the theory. "I just want to know a few things about you."

"Such as?" He reverses the direction that he was spinning his hat.

"Well, tell me a little bit about your past" It feels like cheating to begin the interview this way, but I don't care.

"I was born and raised on the Rocking L ranch in McKinney TX. My parents died when I was five and I was brought up by my Gramps and my Uncle Howie." Austin rattles the sentences off as if they had happened to someone else.

"You don't seem very connected to the story. Why?" I already know the answer, but I want to hear him tell it anyway. I want to see what he is willing to reveal.

He looks down at his hat and stops spinning it. He slowly places it on his knee. He keeps his gaze downward. "The past is the past. Nothing can change it now."

Apparently, he is willing to reveal nothing. Nothing about the fact that his uncle virtually kicked him off the ranch when he was 18. Nothing about the fact that his uncle's fiancé had been the daughter of the biggest landowner in the area and was only a few years older than Austin.

I don't push and switch gears with the next question."What about the future? Do you know what you want to do when you get out the Navy?" I tap my pen against the paper. As a writer, I've often wondered about soldiers and sailors in the middle of a war zone. Do they think about the future? The conclusion that I've come to is that it depends on the soldier or sailor. I wondered what Austin's answer will be.

"I don't know really." His lips compress into a tight line and he pulls on the hem of his jumper.

This interview is not going well. He doesn't seem to want to open up and talk. I need to find out something that he is passionate about and fast. I look down at my notes and I remember that I'm a romance writer. I should ask him about women.

"What do you think of women?"

This gets his attention and flashes me those clean white teeth again. "What do you think I think about women?" He laughs. "I love them. Any size, any shape, any age. I love being around women."

"Why?" I can't resist asking.

He leans in towards me as if he is going to tell me a secret, his expression serious. "Women." He pauses again. "Women are a God's gift to man. Created so that we wouldn't be alone. They come in all shapes and flavors. They can be strong. They can be delicate and gentle. They can be feisty and flamboyant. They're beautiful. They're soft. They're flirty. They're beautiful." He lips quirked upwards in a half smile. "Did I mention that they are beautiful?

I can't believe that any man could love all women so I ask the inevitable followup question. I "Have you ever met a woman that you don't like?"

He doesn't answer the question. I know that he won't. He's a gentleman. I try another track to get the information that I need. "What traits don't you like in a woman?"

"Dishonesty." He answers quickly. He looks shocked. I guess that he's told me more than he wanted me to know.

I jot down my observations. "So you don't like all women?"

"No. I suppose not." He leans back in his chair and looks at his knees.

I need to know more information. "Tell me about the Navy. Do you think you're going to make it a career?" I tweak the question that I'd asked earlier.

He looks up and smiles. "I don't know that I'll live that long. War is coming. I've been in since '37. The last year, there've been a lot of changes. Especially since Roosevelt started the draft." He pauses before continuing. "For all intents and purposes, we're already at war."

"Really." I don't say more than that.

Austin pounds a fist against his leg. "I know I know. There's been no formal declaration of war." He sucks in a breath and lets it out again, "For the last six months since I transferred from Pearl, I've been doing escort duty. My ship, the Tuney, has been guarding the armaments shipments that we're sending to Britain. Lend-Lease Act, my Aunt Petunia." He sounds like he wants to say something stronger. "We might as well have declared war on Germany. The Jerries have been doing everything they can to sink us. "

"How do you feel about that? Entering the war I mean?" I lean in a little, hanging on his every word. I don't want him to know about the war.

"It isn't like we've been given an option, ma'am. That's for the boys in Washington decide." He picked up the white cover in his hands again.

His answer surprises me. In my eyes, Austin is and has always been for the war. I think about my next question and decide to push a little. "Surely, you must have some feelings about it. What do you think of the isolationsists?"

"A lot of boys died in the Great War. Just like them, I'd hate to see that happen again, but…." He trails off and then looks at me with those emerald green eyes before starting to speak again. "I'm a petty officer in the Navy. What this means is that I take orders. I'm in charge of a whole lot of young men. It is my responsibility to see that they get home, safely. I suppose that it would be a whole heck of a lot easier to do that in peace than it is in war. But, I'll do what I'm told." He crushes his hat in his hands. "I'll tell you this though. Part of me worries that if we don't take them on now in Europe. In 20 or 30 years, we'll be taking them on in our own backyard."

I decide to conclude the interview and I stand. "I've got enough information for now. Thank you for your time."

He stands too. "I've been pleased to meet you ma'am." He holds out his hand.

I take it. "I've enjoyed talking with you as well. I hope that we can speak again soon."

He nods and shakes my hand before turning and walking out of my door, but not out of my life. I'm going to enjoy giving this young sailor his happy ending.

Apples all over the Place

2009-09-18T10:27:00.002-04:00

I had another blog planned out... but I decided not to post it today. It feels unfinished.

So instead, I'll introduce a character from a story idea that I'm playing with, and natter on about how she is messing up my carefully arranged ideas. Her name is less important than her description, so she'll go by "the ambassador's daughter" for now. :)

Here's where I was with her and her motivation. She doesn't want to be known as someone's kid, she wants to be known in her own right. So she goes against convention and puts in a bid for personal recognition (= she works against the interests of both her father, the ambassador, and her home planet). The thing that could potentially get in her way is an accusation of "wanton behavior."

And here is where the first snag trips me up. I was planning for her to utterly ignore the accusation because point of fact, it impacts her father moreso than her (cultural details of the planet's social infrastructure), and she is so focused on her goal that small things like this are unimportant. But if she ignores the accusation, then her motivation for hiring my main character to find out who is behind the accusation falls flat. Which means that my storyline starts out contrived, which irritates me (since I poke at that issue in my critique partners' writing, I can't really let it slide in my own writing, now can I?).

The fix is for her to be deeply affected by the accusation's consequences. However, if I change the situation so that she has to pay attention, then the actions of my bad guy (the one doing the accusing) have to be modified as well. And if he changes his actions, then a beautiful chunk of plotline has to be radically changed.

And this is where the second snag surfaces (don't laugh now): I already feel overwhelmed by the amount of players in this story idea and their wants and needs; I really don't want to add more complexity to this idea.

But I don't think I have a choice... Because darn it, this idea is cool, and I should at least give things an honest go.

(Okay, go ahead and laugh. :) I know the effort not to is making your nose hurt.)

Knitting a Novel

2009-09-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

You can't just fall in with any group of writers and form a critique group. You have to have common ground to work from. You have to have other things in common, besides writing, so that you can understand where your partners' perceptions are coming from. At least, you do in my experience.

When it comes to this critique group, we have lots in common. Of the many things, in addition to the obvious writing thing, we all knit. (Well, I shouldn't say "all"; Sarah doesn't knit. Yet.) Yes, you heard me correctly, we knit. And not just in our private homes either. No, we have been known to engage in this completely granny-ish activity in public. In cars. In subway trains. In meetings. In restaurants even.

I'm new to the TriMu; I have no idea how knitting became a group activity. In my mind's eye, I have a fuzzy image of a poorly planned outdoor NaNoWriMo write in on one particularly chilly November day. The original TriMu sat there, plotting and trying desperately to keep typing away, even though they shivered so badly that they couldn't hit the right keys. ("Hey," they told one another bravely, "it's Nano -- it's not like you were going to write anything comprehensible anyway!")

"F-f-fingerless g-g-gl-gloves!" a Mythmaker shouted through chattering teeth. "What we need are fingerless gloves!"

At this point, I'm assuming someone had some spare yarn handy or maybe an extraneous sweater got unraveled for a good cause, and another of them happened to have a set of knitting needles on them for reasons at which even my whimsical imagination cannot guess. And thus a craft habit was born. As I said, I don't know how exactly it all went down. By the time I joined the TriMu, knitting was already the thing to do, and I was taught the craft as part of my induction.

I like how I say "induction" there, as though there was a formal ceremony and the TriMu didn't teach me how to knit in Tori's living room while we watched the California Raisins' Claymation Christmas Celebration last December.

In any case, we "all" knit. (It's only a matter of time for you, Sarah.) And as I was sitting on a train last weekend with my most recent knitting project, it occurred to me how very like knitting writing a novel can be.

Finally! I can hear you all thinking. She had to get to the point eventually.

You start out with a pattern, a plan for what you're going to knit and what stitches you're going to use to make it look the way you want it. This sounds suspiciously like an outline for writing a novel. As a pantzer, I don't hold with that kind of nonsense, but I do at least go into a new writing project with a vague idea of what I'm starting up. So maybe you don't always start with a pattern, but you at least sit down with some vague inkling as to the shape of what you want to knit. I'm fairly certain most knitters don't sit down thinking they'll knit a sock and come away with an afghan. I'm sure it happens that way sometimes, just like novelists sometimes sit down to write a romance and come away with an epic high fantasy trilogy. . . Not that I've ever done that. ;-)

So you have your pattern and you get your yarn and your needles and stitch markers and what have you together and you start off with the knitting. And maybe while you're knitting, you decide you like the way something might look if you tweaked the pattern a little here and there. Or maybe you make a mistake (this is something I never do. . . *innocent whistle*) and end up liking the way that new "pattern" looks and so you just go one with knitting it that way instead. Or maybe you make a mistake that you don't like the look of and so you sit there and spend an hour or so unknitting. Which is a lot harder than it sounds, by the way, so much so that unknitting is something I actually never do. (Incidently, why do we never notice these mistakes at the time we're making them? Why is it always rows and rows later that we realize them?)

Or, put another way, you get your research materials and notecards and word processing programs and what have you together and start off with the writing. And as you go, you might come up with a smoother way to make that plot you outlined earlier work or the characters might go off in a direction you didn't expect but really love or you might get six or seven chapters in and decide that your main character needs to die and someone else should be telling this story and so you have to go back and rewrite it all.

Or, put still another way, you work the craft, whatever it may be, and gradually make the project your own.

And then the project starts to really take shape. Your fingers get used to the pattern of the stitches and you get into a rhythm and rows (or words, as the case may be) just start to flow off your fingertips. There may still be tricky moments, mind you. You might have to sneak an extra stitch in here or there to make up for dropping one somewhere else, just like you might have to throw in a line of dialogue you didn't anticipate to set up the big twist at the end that you didn't see coming before. But the point is that things are starting to tumble and if you just keep going with it, everything will work out.

And before you know it, it's time to cast off. Time to type "THE END". You've finished. It might not be what you set out to do, but who needs more socks anyway? Epic high fantasy trilogies are so much warmer.

Return of the Negligent Tri Mu

2009-09-08T21:39:00.006-04:00

Hi everyone out in the blogsphere. You probably noticed I have been, well, rather absent of late. (And don't tell me if you didn't notice. ^_~) I have missed about, uh, four of my scheduled blogging days, which doesn't sound so bad until you realize that means I haven't blogged here in almost two months. I have no excuse, so I will offer none. I will just apologize, and offer up this unscheduled post to tell you (or tease you with what I'm not telling you) what has been going on in my corner of the writing world.

If you follow me on twitter, you probably know that I just recently returned from Dragon*Con. I had an absolutely marvelous time. I got a lot of books signed by writers I admire, ended up on stage with my favorite band (The Cruxshadows), and I was sat on a panel with the amazingly talented Charlaine Harris about Writing Strong Female Protagonists. (Also on the panel, not to leave them out on the name dropping, were several other amazing authors in my genre [and a couple outside it] including Stacia Kane and Laura Anne Gilman.) I had a great time on the panel, and it was unreal to be up there with all of those accomplished authors.

The day before I left for Dragon, I received a wonderful email from editor. It included a mock up for the cover of my next book--which is stunning! Unfortunately, I can't share yet. But I have received approval on my title. The next Dark Haven novel will officially be titled TWICE DEAD. It will be released in February 2010, so check back for more information and I'll get the cover up as soon as they send me the final design and I have approval to post it.

Another very exciting event occurred that same Wednesday before I left for Dragon (it was quite a crazy day.) I'm not ready to divulge details yet, but check by my blog later this week for more information.

Well, that is it for this impromptu post. I should be back blogging on schedule in my appointed slot next week. See you then, and Happy Tuesday readers!

Found a Peanut

2009-09-04T22:47:00.003-04:00

Well, actually it's more of found a plot hole and kinda filled it, but that doesn't scan nearly as well.

Here's how the story went. I had an idea, spawned from a monthly challenge back when we had monthly challenges (Or was it a holiday challenge? I don't remember and it doesn't matter. What matters is that there was a challenge and I had this great idea.), but it got stalled due to technical difficulties. The idea persisted, however, and I figured what the heck, let me ride it (= write an outline) and see where this baby goes.

The snag happened once I took my protagonist off-planet and sent her to a different planet. I knew what I wanted her to do on the planet, sort of, and I knew she had to go there, but once she got off the transport, I was stuck. Hit the wall. Ran out of gas. Had no change to make the call (for those who are anachronistically minded).

I was wallowing in this hole, getting my clothes absolutely filthy, but unable to pull myself out, when out of the... gray matter(?), a new idea burbled up: what goes on on this planet? It felt like a digression, a tangent, if you will, and yet I had no where else to be so I spent some time working on backstory for the planet. (Yeah, that sounds SO stupid when I type that, but let's continue on.)

This backstory turned out to be just what I needed. I still haven't any idea what my protagonist does once she gets off the transport, BUT I have so many new possibilities to pick from. Talk about going from famine to feast!

So. In conclusion. The peanut was not rotten. It was roasted, lightly salted, and a delicious blend of crunchy and chewy. Yum!

Do Not Skip Ahead

2009-08-31T09:00:00.002-04:00

I've been having a little trouble lately reining myself in. I finished a first draft recently and there's a huge part of me that just wants to query the heck out of it, even though it's nowhere near ready for submission. I know better, and I will restrain myself, but every time a "perfect" opportunity shows up on my radar, I have to talk myself down.

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite agents opened back up for submissions on a very limited basis. And she's asking for Urban Fantasy.

And then I saw mention of a contest that looks oh so very cool.

New agents with an interest in my genre are popping up left and right.

And urban fantasy is on the rise.

Look hard enough, and "perfect" opportunities will just jump out of the woodwork at you.

Except that they're not "perfect", because my manuscript is not done. As I have to remind myself every single time I see one of these tempting blog posts or tweets or news articles, trying to query right now would be bad for me.

Why? Well, there are many, many reasons. And don't worry. I'm going to list my favorites here! (Admit it; you were worried I was just going to say that and run, weren't you? Okay, maybe you weren't, but I'm going to list them anyway.)

Agents and editors say it all the time. "Do not query your novel before it is finished!" I literally see someone tweet or blog about this at least once a day. Sometimes as often as ten or twelve times a day. With so many "unspoken rules" and "unseen observers" in publishing, breaking a rule that all the gatekeepers are shouting at the top of their internet lungs on a daily basis just seems like a bad idea.
I know, in the logical side of my brain, that my WIP isn't ready to be seen by anyone outside my critique group yet. So why would I send out a query that would just make me afraid that someone might request the manuscript? What would be my plan really? I query, and then when I get the request, I scramble and try to force myself through the revisions in the amount of time I could reasonably pass between receiving the request for a full and sending it? In today's instant gratification, technology on demand world, how much time is that really? It's not like I have the US Postal Service to blame for a delay if the agent asks me to email them the file. How much time would I really be able to buy myself then? A few hours? A day? A weekend? Not enough, no matter what kind of excuse I came up with.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I did manage to buy myself a few weeks so I could crash through the revisions process. It can be done. I've seen it done recently to marvelous success. Some people are capable of that kind of thing. I envy those people, because I am not. I know it would show in the manuscript I sent out, and then, when I got the inevitable rejection, I would always feel like I blew a great opportunity. Sure, I could revise it and requery, but I think agents and editors are probably inclined to look even more critically at a second submission. Why raise the bar for myself needlessly?
In business, they say "dress for the job you want". As an unpublished novelist, I don't want to put anything less than my absolute best work in front of industry professionals. I'm sure, as a newbie, I'll still make a ton of rookie mistakes. Adding an extra one that I know about just seems silly.

But knowing all of that doesn't stop me dreaming. It doesn't stop me seeing a "perfect" opportunity arise and saying to myself "Oh, if only my novel was finished, I know that would be just right for me. . . Well, they only need a query letter and the first five pages to start with. My first five pages are pretty good. Maybe I could just submit and then revise like mad crazy, just in case I make it to the next round?"

No! Stop! Do not pass Go; do not collect $200 in imagined royalties. It can be hard sometimes, letting a "perfect" opportunity pass you by, but that's the name of the game. When the manuscript is ready, there will be other opportunities out there for me, opportunities that really are perfect. Until then, though, I just have to keep restraining myself, reminding myself.

Do not skip ahead.

Creative Nurturing

2009-08-29T13:33:00.003-04:00

There's some stuff in the office fridge that has reached the "Do Not Feed After Midnight" and "Do Not Get Wet" stage. You know the species. The kind that turns green, sprouts arms, yells "Feed me, Seymour!", and shrinks away from the tiny yellow bulb in the upper right corner. The kind that runs and hides on trash day. Every trash day. For a year.

If you love writing, or painting, or singing, or whatever art form calls to you and you're not out there, doing it, as often as possible, you'd better prepare for the aforementioned monster. This beast lays the guilt on thick, ruining your art-free day, accidentally trampling on your self-esteem with its raging. You think, "I'm not cut out for this; I'm never going to be an artist, so I should just give up!" and the nudge persists, changing from gentle urging in clear, plaintive tones to insistent, constant nagging. And raging! Oh the raging...Stifling headache? Let the creativity free!

You give in.

The muse-turned-uncouth-monster can react in many ways.

1. The Binge. A tumultuous session of art-binging is satisfying but unsustainable. This practice creates a vicious cycle. You will be blissful on the days you give yourself up to the art - and yelling at yourself for the rest of them. Pace yourself.

2. The Dance. This is the not-quite-what-I-want sequence of steps. You prance around what you really want to do with everything and anything but that to which you must eventually succumb. Avoid the inevitable. Don't let your muse samba alone.

3. The Chair. Like a pro-wrestling smackdown, a man's soap opera, you take the ring and assail yourself with a round of hurt - berating yourself for ever wanting to give art the time of day. Ever. Beating it with the folding chair, into submission, until it's quieter than a mouse nomming on the ceiling tiles and attic insulation. And just like in wrestling - that move will come back to bite you.

4. The Pretender. You decide (*snort* You decide? Your muse totally decided for you, silly human...) that you're going to give art another chance. Your muse believes you as you sit down to work and promptly stuff her in a pretty genie bottle, mosaic glass. You quickly reverse your position and abandon the art in Perfect Storm splendor. That bottle won't hold the muse-monster for long. Whiplash hurts. Brain whiplash is twice as bad.

5. The Leaf-On-The-Wind. You display a rare patience with that creative creature that threatens to eat the right half of your brain. Repetition, contemplation, dabbling in the medium of your choice - your real desire - calms the storm between your ears. You recognize peace, but soon allow yourself to be swept away by some newfangled thing that promises you even more happiness. Don't listen to the anti-creativity temptress. The crash landing can be disastrous. Muses can't die. Not really, not forever. But they can take an inordinate amount of time to recover - and it itches.

I am and have been guilty of each and every one of these offenses against the muse, but I am lucky enough to be once again back on track with music and writing to fuel my journey. (And also a brain. Brains are vital to this process.)

Daily cultivating of your imagination garden, your art song, is the only way to sooth the agony of artlessness. Creative nurturing tames the soul.

Break a Rule

2009-08-26T23:04:00.003-04:00

The ubiquitous they like to comment on the way things should be done. These armchair humans try to tell the world how to run itself according to the they philosophy. For example, they say, "never run with scissors." I say what if you have to cut someone's hair that got stuck in the ceiling fan and that person is getting really dizzy and might hurl at any moment? I say run with the dang scissors. They say, "don't chew with your mouth open." I say, how's anybody going to see your purple tongue after you eat a grape jolly rancher if you don't? They say, "never pet a burning dog." Okay, well, maybe I can go with that one. Don't start petting, grab the garden hose first. The point is, there are exceptions to every rule. Come to think of it, I think they say that one, too.

They also have a lot to say about writing. "Don't let your characters think too much." "Make sure every word advances the plot in some way." "Never begin your story with characters waking up in the morning." "Never make the romantic male lead a pimply red head." The thing about all the they philosophy is that as a general rule, they are right. A lot of the they statements about writing are good things to know. But some rules were meant to be broken. There they go again.

I say let your characters think for a change. It's not often that people do that particular activity, so it might be refreshing. Let some of your words be there just because they are beautiful, whether they do anything or not. Wake your characters up with a tsunami wave in the middle of the night on page three and see what happens. Let that red head get the girl. She'll buy him Clearasil anyway, and everyone will live happily ever after.

I say, go ahead, break a rule.

Goads and Goals

2009-08-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

Right then, I'm here writing a post when I should be doing my daily writing exercise. It's a procrasteling, but sort of a necessary one. When I get published, it would be a good thing were I to have an established web presence: le voici.

November is slowly getting closer to rising on the horizon, and it is an extra piece of dried pine to the hearth that is my writing. Currently the flame is sleeping, occasionally turning over and giving everyone a start, then calming back down, disappearing into the coals of my mind.

One of these days, if I don't punk out, the fire will get used to being fed, and will be crackling more than sporadically. Until then, having NaNoWriMo is a good way of keeping me alive, so to speak.

Which is another reason for the daily writing exercise: How am I supposed to pop back into the actuality of writing 1800 words a day if I'm currently averaging 100 (yes, I''m being generous)?

Fellow followers of the craft, let us continue on! Using whatever tools motivate us in changing intangible thoughts into visible words. :)

There's No Crying In Baseball

2009-08-17T09:00:00.001-04:00

Some of aspiring novelists have very lofty goals for their writing. They seek to be international bestsellers, crafting works of fiction that the whole world will read and recognize, that will integrate into pop culture and be remembered for centuries to come.

If those are your goals, that's fine. To each his own. (Cicero. Now there are some words that endured for centuries. Twenty of them.) Those are not my goals though. I mean, don't get me wrong. If one of my novels ends up that way, I'm not going to say no. It's just not where I see myself going.

Truthfully, at this point I would be psyched to have a real publishing house offer me just about anything to publish one of my novels. Just having my words go into print and show up on the shelf at the bookstore would be amazing.

In the end, I think my goal is to be midlist. To make enough from my writing that I can support it but not enough that people sit in their living rooms with their critique groups and bitch about how crap my work is. (Not that I've ever done that. . . *innocent whistle*)

But beyond the money or the publishing, I will now confess something that has long been one of my most desperate goals: I want to make someone cry.

Yes. I just said that. I want to make someone cry.

I am one of those people who is very susceptible to the emotive content of a story. I have been known to sob at the movies. To blubber at the end of books. I have even teared up while listening to the radio. That last one is dangerous while driving. I don't recommend it.

And I want to be able to do that to someone else. I want my writing to draw them so far into the story, to make them care and invest so much of themselves in the character, that when something sad happens, they really feel it. And they weep. Maybe they don't bawl like a baby, because they're not like that. But they get misty-eyed and possibly there's a sniffle. That would be awesome.

Ladies and gentlemen, mission accomplished! The other day, a fellow member of the TriMu (who I will not name here; she can out herself if she wants to, but I don't want to embarrass her, in case she never reads for me again) read the first draft of my latest project and called me to tell me she cried at the end.

Victory is mine! (Points to whoever comments the origins of that one first)

Schizophrenic Characters and Other Nonsense

2009-08-10T16:30:00.000-04:00

To paraphrase the rest of the Tri Mu. “Schizophrenia is not a flaw you should cultivate in your characters.”

Unfortunately, I did this in my current WIP.

In truth, Austin (the name of my hero) didn’t have schizophrenia so much as he had bipolar disorder. In five pages, he went from morbidly depressed to confidently flirty. Hmmmm….No logical jump in between the two either.

Writing is hard. Writing characters with a consistent and believable personality is even harder. As writers, we have people living in our heads (or chickens as the case may be). We know these people. They may or may not talk to us, but we know them. We know their age, their favorite colors, what they like to eat and what they would rather not eat. Some of us have spent years building a world for them to reside.

If I told most of my non-writing friends and family what happens inside my head, they would stage an intervention.

But we know our characters almost as well as we know ourselves. We know who we want them to be and who they have been in the past. So sometimes we know them better than we know ourselves. Prior to editing my first draft, I knew Austin and I loved him. He was flirty and genial. The perfect foil to my sarcastic and slightly depressed heroine.

But somewhere along the line I decided that I had fallen into the perfect hero trap. That he was too perfect to actually exist and that if I were ever going to sell my novel, Austin needed flaws. So I gave him one. A fiancé that died in a tragic accident that he caused. I amped up the guilt and the depression. It was great and I loved the scene. But then, I had to get the heroine and the hero together on the same page and well, it didn’t work.

Flashes of Austin as I knew him before kept coming through onto the page and by the second time I wrote from his perspective, I’d lost the guilt and depression over the dead fiancé.

I knew that I had problems so I let the Tri Mu read what I had completed and even, they agreed that Austin had a mental stability issue. (Thus, the quote at the beginning of this post.)

Characters don’t like it when writers tell them what to do. In this situation, I tried to tell Austin to be depressed and guilty. He disagreed. Non-writers say “You’re the writer. You get to tell the characters how to behave.” Maybe other writers can do this. I can’t. I guess that I’m a character driven writer. I don’t create the character to suit the plot. I create the plot to suit the character. I will have to accept this about myself.

I’ve decided to resort back to my original Austin. He’s happier now that I’ve decided to do this and the words are coming to the page again. And he’s not perfect. He never was, but don’t tell him I said that.

Pot on the Fire

2009-08-07T20:55:00.000-04:00

Hi again! Vert here.

I was wondering what to write about this week, and Vikki brought the mule to mind. She was asking about revisions and updates on the process, which made me consider where I was, writing-wise, in the first place.

I find myself, these days, thinking more about what I want to do with the writing. Do I want to put more organized time into it? Do I want to shelve it completely for the next couple years and come back when I have more focus?

I look at the writing that I have been doing in the past 3 or so years, and I think, yeah, there are good parts in here, but do I really want to invest myself so deeply in what might end up encouraging schizophrenia?

Those are more mental questions than Vikki knew she was stirring up, perhaps.

I know that I enjoy the creative process that writing is. Even the process of revising has its small joys and victories.

...Maybe, for now, I will content myself with that, and write on...

Working Through It

2009-08-04T12:01:00.000-04:00

It's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks for the TriMu. We've had a lot of writerly stuff going on and that's taken its toll on us all. (See Sarah's post from last Friday for more details of the tragic brain explosion.) I've also had some personal stuff going on that's been dragging my brain off in ten thousand other directions, none of which involves a familiar.

But through all of that, there are still things that need to be done, other projects that cannot be abandoned in light of our having other things to do. Deadlines are deadlines and even self-imposed ones must stand or the whole system falls apart.

So even though I was feeling tired and burned out and my Muse wasn't speaking to me, I kept opening up my WIP every day and pounding away at it. The words came with painful slowness, needing to be dragged kicking and screaming out of my imagination and forced through stiff wooden fingers to grind past the keyboard and onto the page.

To say writing was difficult for the past few days would be the understatement to end all understatements.

And then, as it always does, something lovely and amazing happened. I was sitting at my laptop yesterday, at a ridiculously late hour of the night (or a ridiculously early hour of this morning, if you want to get technical) because I was still several thousand words away from my goal for the day, when my Muse snuck back into the room.

She stuck her arm through the doorway, waving a white flag fashioned out of either a crumpled paper napkin or an Armani handkerchief. (I'm not sure which as I was tired and getting a little bleary-eyed.) She even offered to bring me a caffeinated beverage if I would just let her play with the familiars again for a few hours.

Two hours later, my word count goal for the day was met by over one thousand words and now the last few chapters of the book are sitting right on the edge of my brain, just waiting for me to let them fly out onto the page.

The morale of the story? Even when your brain is 'sploded and you feel like you couldn't string together a coherent sentence to save your life, keep writing. Write your way through it. It's the only way to get past it.

Or, as Kalayna says, the Muse comes to those waiting at the keyboard.

Aside: As the Brain 'Splodes

2009-07-31T17:55:00.000-04:00

Nothing provides me with a wellspring of glee so much as dipping pen to paper and forming words on a page. Novels, short stories, poems, or general world-building -- as long as I'm creating, molding, weaving, bliss is mine.

The instruments of my happiness in the writing endevour are firstly my brain, which recognizes the true joy of building and spinning tales from the ether, and secondly my muse, a whimsical mind sprite who graces me with her presence from time to time in the form of Brilliance (which my inner editor assures me is all in the mind of the writer).

A couple of weeks ago, needing a break from relentless editing, I delved into the realm of a new short story and decided to play there for a while, spinning it on the pottery wheel of my earstwhile brain. The brain was pleased, as was my muse, who clapped her hands in fiendish delight as the words tumbled out onto the computer screen.

But brains, like muses, are fickle creatures. Possibly in reaction to a looming zombie threat, my brain decided to pull a garden gnome on me -- it split for better pastures. Oh sure, I got postcards with big glossy pictures and fluffy, loopy text: "The plot's here, wish you wrote this well!" and "This is your brain on books." and "Viva l'Existance!" I got tales of how my brain was feverishly editing elsewhere, working for someone else, enjoying the greener grasses. I got a lot of pictures of blue phone boxes and fireplaces, which are apparently all the rage in the travelsphere these days. (They never appear on Expedia or Priceline - I can only assume they're so popular the tickets go as soon as they appear on the sites.)

The messages became more obscure as the week passed - something about harsh labor conditions and no regrets. The last photo I saw of my missing gray matter was on the back of a lunchroom milk carton, just moments before the news broke -- "Brain declared DED". Depleted, Exploited, and Dead.** The shockwave of my brain's explosion had killed three innocent pencils and twice as many trees. I was in shock. That was ALL? Just how depleted was my brain when it went, anyway?

So this week I set about reborning a brain for myself. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, it takes a lot of clay, paint, precision, and a well-ventilated oven. Once the process is complete, it looks quite brain-like. And once you stuff it with polyfill pellets no one's the wiser.

Except for my muse. She popped in rather tentatively Wednesday, just to make sure my mind had returned, and made it quite clear she despised the echo, found the lighting dreary, and would have demanded HER money back for the decorative travesty. After declaring the whole place positively unfit for her dwelling, she vanished. Usually she makes a ruckus on departure, screaming and ranting about some injustice or another, but this time there was nothing. Only silence.

Sometime between Thursday and this morning she returned with piles of designer throwrugs, a tiffany lamp, a papasan chair, and a pack of popped corn. This afternoon, I checked back to see an outrageous, expensive wardrobe had found a home, along with her favorite pet quartz and several pounds of chocolate. (Apparently the fact that I can no longer indulge in solid chocolate does nothing to stop my muse from flaunting her personal stash.) Yes folks, it looks like she's here to stay.

Now me, my muse, and my brain return to our regularly scheduled Plan Hours. Will we meet our word count goal? Will we ever finish our short story and return to the enduring tale of StarStones? Tune in next week for another installment of "As the Brain 'Splodes"...

**And remember, kids, don't loan out your brain to timelords.

A New Procrastinateling

2009-07-29T14:02:00.004-04:00

A few months ago, I blogged on the procrastinatelings that inhibit our ability to write or work on novels. One in particular, blogging, has not plagued me this summer. In fact, I have been so remiss in my blogging that I wonder the TriMu keeps my ugly mug up on the sidebar.

Although I have not been hounded by the blogging procrastinateling, I have met with a new one, so powerful, it ripped me away from my assigned blog days. The dread procrastinateling has a foreign and exotic sounding name--noveling.

Yes, friends, my novel (and those of other members of this group, but I'll let someone else blog about that) has invaded my brain to the point that the first thing I think about when I wake in the morning is that I actually want to open up Chapter 7 and rip into yet another scene revision. The last thing I want to do when I sit down to my computer is blog.

So, this is all you get for now--a brief recognition that, yes, I am still alive. And now it's time to feed my happy new procrastinateling while he is with me. If the past is any indication, he won't be here long.

Taking a Sounding

2009-07-24T10:38:00.002-04:00

Today has snuck up on me. Well, not really. But I have had a hard time finding a topic to blog about for this week. Sure I could continue my meta musings (not to be confused with similarly named fiber product), but... frankly, I didn't feel like it. :)

So instead, I will meander briefly on the subject of dimensionality. Every character, place, scene even, needs depth in it. As a reader, I only have a certain amount of attention to spare for elements that are shallow or superficial. Therefore, as a writer, I owe it to my putative readers to make sure that my elements don't come off as cardboard cut-outs.

That being said, I also have to make sure that I am not just producing collages for the senses, without underlying activity.

Is it a balancing act? Will I get better at it as I go? I have no idea really. I hope so. :)

And since, in order for me to get better at introducing depth without inducing the floundering response in my critique partners and beta readers, I need more practice at the craft, I'll end here, and head back to other writing activities, in this case, exploring the Mongol lifestyle.

See you next time!

Letting Art Imitate Life

2009-07-20T08:44:00.000-04:00

I spoke back in June about paying attention to the reality around me and injecting that into the lives of my characters. I really think there is no better research opportunity in the world than a cruise. So many people from so many places in such an odd circumstance, where the mundane parts of reality are gone and all you have left is the real stuff about them, the people they are when they don't have ten million other things going on. Plus, cruises are fun.

Unfortunately, there are some less than fun experiences in life that can be good sources of research material too. For example, last Thursday night, on my way to meet Tori and Darlene for our weekly dinner/write in/social hour, I was in a car accident.

First, I'm fine. Thank you in advance for your concern, but there's nothing to worry about. No one was hurt. My car is totaled, and that is sad, but both I and the other driver are uninjured and that's all you can reasonably hope for in a car accident.

I did notice something in the aftermath of the accident though, something that made me very happy. (Well, it made me happy later, once all the shock and adrenaline and general freaking out was past and I was capable of achieving "happy".) I had a little video recorder running in my brain the whole time, taking notes about everything that happened and everything I thought about, with the express purpose of using that information in a future novel somehow.

It made me happy because it means that I've now turned looking at life through a novelist's eye from a habit into an instinct. I didn't consciously decide to take detailed notes in my head of how the scream that came out of me when the airbags deployed sounded or what my thought process was when I finally worked up the courage to look at the damage to my car. I just did it. It was automatic and effortless, like breathing.

Now I don't have a project in the works just now that involves a car accident, but you can bet there will be one in my future. And when that project comes along, I'm reasonably confident you'll see the following little scene in there somewhere:

"I'm fine" I told the paramedic who'd come to check me over. "I broke a nail and I scraped my arm on the airbag, but I'm okay."

I confirmed that I didn't need to go to the hospital and signed the release. I listened politely while he told me where the nearest urgent care was in case I changed my mind, knowing that I wasn't taking any of it in and that I probably wouldn't need to go anyway. My injuries weren't bothering me and I was pretty sure they weren't going to.

What was bothering me was that I'd actually listed a broken nail as an injury. And I'd given it top billing, no less. Oy!

Yes, that actually happened, just like that. Yes, that is exactly what was running through my head at the time. I advise everyone who writes to start running that little video camera in their head; you can't pay a Muse for that kind of stuff.

Meta Musings_4

2009-07-10T09:03:00.000-04:00

If you have someone who figures they are going crazy because they hear voices, and there is no one to make a diagnosis of either demon possession or schizophrenia, what happens when that person meets another person who makes the voices stop?

Gale (we met her a little while ago) hears voices. And they aren't talking to her at all. They're talking about politics and succession, and killing people who get in their way. Sometimes they talk about sex. Obviously they have nothing in common with her and the village wherein her family lives, but their voices are so loud that they are all she can hear. The voices of everybody around her are reduced to moving lips and pantomime.

Gale has been hanging on to her sanity by working with the dye pots. It is a job that she knows by heart and she finds herself again and again when she is putting colors on fabric.

Loren is a traveling story collector. He bumps into Gale as she is on her way back to the dyehouse after bathing, and she notices the temporary absence of all thought but her own.

She discovers that when she is around Loren, the voices are quiet. The conversations continue, but they are outside of her hearing. However Loren is a traveller, so after collecting stories, his plan is to leave.

Is this enough of a motivator for Gale to leave her village and travel with him?

Aside: FullTime DayTime Jobber, HalfTime NightTime Writer Part Deux

2009-07-06T07:35:00.002-04:00

Shhhh...I know I'm sneaking a post in, and late, but don't tell!

The Plan hours for the first week and a half were a blessing. I made progress on a chapter that I hadn't been able to move for over a month. I penned scenes for a new short story on my "off Plan hours" and got in exercise every day (because, as you may or may not know - exercise is AWESOME for creativity). I posted my blogs on time and let myself get wrapped up in my galaxies.

Last week, however, was a little rougher. It started out well, but I came down with a cold which led to the inevitable "sick day". And since I had a dr. test run on Thursday to make sure I wasn't dying of the dreaded "John Hurt" moment, that meant I felt even worse for the rest of the week. I edited Friday because of my wonderfully supportive TriMu (helping me out of my "after anesthesia funk"), but I could barely convince myself to move on Saturday except to do major research on what I now can and cannot eat.

Yesterday was better. Whether that came from feeling better from eating food that didn't kill me or the calm, cool acceptance of the fact that I'll never be able to look at a strawberry/peanut butter M&M or ice cream or yogurt or pizza ever again - I don't know. And really, all that mattered was that I felt good enough to get out and socialize again - and write. Edits happened slowly, but it made me feel like the whole week wasn't a waste.

So now I'm back to the Plan - with a new diet and a new determination for progress. I doubt I'll make up my lost ground, so there's no way I'll make my September deadline - but this isn't about guilt for lost writing time or sadness over missed self-imposed goals. This is about shaking off the perfection and making progress.

On Wearing Whore-Red Lipstick and other Stylistic Choices

2009-06-29T17:43:00.004-04:00

Horrible kinky curly perm. Big bug shaped glasses. Flannel shirts. Pearls. Tapered jeans. Horizontally striped shirts. Colored jeans. I could go on and on. These are the bad, bad fashion choices that I shared with the world as teenager. Why did my mother let me walk out the house in those clothes? Why didn’t my friends tell me that I looked hideous? Probably because they all looked equally hideous at the time. However, if I made those same choices today, I would hope my friends would stop me.

Writing is like fashion. Choices that worked in the past no longer work today. In the 1970s, the hero-heroine rape scenes were “fashionable” in romance writing. Writing a hero-heroine rape scene today would be the equivalent of wearing MC Hammer pants or 1970s leisure suit -- something that you should try to avoid at all costs.

Once upon at time, it was ok to have your characters look in the mirror and describe themselves. These days it is considered a cliche. To be sure, there are exceptions to this rule. A writer can do anything if they do it well. It’s sort of like pairing vintage sunglasses with an ultra modern outfit or wearing a vintage jacket with anything. To steal the words of Tim Gunn from Project Runway, “Make it Work.”

Then, there are what I call the “should-nots.” This is where a good critique group comes into the equation. Your critique group/partner are the fashion consultants of the writing world. They are the people that say “No sweetie, that works for Nora Roberts. It doesn’t work for you. You should not do this.” Let me give you some examples of a fashion “should-nots” that I’ve seen in my life. The floral "house dress" and curlers in public. (Can you tell I'm from the south?) The college student wearing the pajamas and house slippers in walmart. (I am guilty of this one.) And the most recent and possibly worst. Drum roll please. The short, tight pink satin and black lace number worn with hooker heels by the large woman who walked into the grocery store ahead of me on Sunday. I could see her butt cheeks. It was very, definitely a “should not.” Someone should have told all of these people that they should not be wearing those outfits. Critique groups/partners have a responsibility to prevent their critique partners from making a writing “faux pas” like overuse of adverbs (which in my opinion is liking someone wearing Tammy Faye Baker makeup), overusing to-be verbs, overusing commas, em dashes, and other puncutation, excessive head hopping, etc. Stylistic choices that could annoy the reader.

I hope that the TriMus will be my writing fashion consultants and tell me not to wear that leisure suit rape scene or backless tank top head hopping. I also hope that they will be my real fashion consultants and remind me that perms, tapered jeans, flannel shirts, and bug-eyed glasses are very bad ideas should I ever consider them again.

Meta Musings_3

2009-06-26T07:30:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Joel. He is tall and looks gaunt in the face, as if he never got enough to eat as a child and still feels the lack. Under his signature brown and gray robes, his arms and legs are full of viney muscles and veins. He has a slight hunch to his upper body, and walks with a long staff.

Joel is old, and has survived the intrigues of court by cultivating the attitude of indifference plus increasing deafness. He is the Assistant to the Archivist, and has seen countless Archivists come and go. Joel believes in the power of history like others believe in the power of a god.

What will take this man from the rolls of paper and make him an active participant in history, instead of just an observer?

The inciting incident is the theft of some botanical texts dealing with the myths of plant warriors.

The Inconvenient Muse

2009-06-24T16:11:00.001-04:00

I had my eyes closed. I’d recently gotten back from a strenuous two hours of hooping, and now I was lying on three inches of memory foam. My brain had already begun drifting on the waves of sleep, and then there were words.

Initially I ignored these words, but they had changed the current of the waves, dragging me closer to consciousness. I was tired. I was comfortable. It had been a long day.

But there were words.

So, after the words charged through my mind a second time, I peeled back my eyelids, rolled over, and fumbled for a pen. Once captured on paper, the insistent words were trapped, unable to bug me, and I slept.

That is how my muse chooses to show herself sometimes. At inconvenient moments—close to sleep, in the shower, operating a vehicle—my muse will appear, dangling a clever snatch of dialogue, the perfect description, or the missing piece of plot. Not all the time, mind you, but every once in a while. It’s why I keep something to write with near my bed. Because, while the muse might have been kicking me in the head last night, when I woke this morning, I’d not only forgotten what the words were, I’d forgotten I wrote them at all until I stumbled over the handful of paragraphs this afternoon.

It happens like that sometimes.

Typically, the muse comes to those who are at the keyboard, already working. But, once in a blue moon, she shows up with no warning at all. Often she picks what seems like random and inconvenient moments, but take heed of the words she leaves in her wake. Write them down. They are not all gold, but they tend to be slippery suckers. If you ignore the words, they may drift back where they came from, leading to a frustrating, and many times fruitless, search.

Ever know you thought of something, figured something out, stumbled on the perfect idea/phrase, but not be able to remember what it was? Terribly frustrating. So, bad timing or not, record the words.

Anyone else have an ill-timed visit from the muse recently? Did she leave you with good words?

Feeling Twitchy?

2009-06-22T17:05:00.003-04:00

Today two of the agents at BookEnds, LLC started a pitch contest on Twitter. They're calling it Twitch* Week and if you want more details, click here.

There have been several of these types of contests over the past few months. The Knight Agency did their Book In A Nutshell pitch contest a few months ago. Colleen Lindsay over at FinePrint Literary Management did a Query in 140-Characters or Less contest on her blog back in January. (Our very own Darlene got a nod in that one!) These contests are all over the place if you keep your eyes open.

I love them.

There are a number of skills you must have to be successful in publishing. First, most importantly, you must be able to write. Some people will quibble over the degree of skill you must have here in order to be published, but I think we can all agree that, to at least some extent, you must be able to string together various words in a form which conveys some semblance of a story. I'd like to think you need to be able to write really, really beautiful prose in order to be published, but the cynic in me is forced to admit this isn't always the case. (The self-doubting pessimist in me is secretly glad!)

Also, because the days of over-the-transom submissions have pretty much passed, you must also be able to write a good query letter. People hem and haw over the nature of the query letter system, but right now it's the name of the game. If you want anyone in publishing to look at your manuscript, you have to sell it with a solid query letter first.

Another skill you need is the ability to pitch, succinctly and yet still coherently. Some people call it the elevator pitch, the quick little plug for your book that you could communicate to someone in the time an elevator takes to reach its destination. It's a very important skill. As writers, we attend conferences and conventions and the like and try desperately to get thirty or so seconds with our choice editors and agents so we can convince them that our book is their next big thing. It's also a skill that very few people tell you that you need when you set out to be a novelist.

I realized the lack in myself of this particular skill almost right away. Here's how: once I started telling people I was a "novelist", the following conversation invariably took place:

Me: I'm writing a book.
Them: Oh, wow. What's it about?
Me: *blinks blankly, twice, before taking a deep breath* Well, you see, there's this guy. And he thinks his life is. . . but then this other thing happens. . . and then he finds out this. . . and he has to do this. . . and this. . . and there are these other people -- they're the bad guys -- who want to do this instead. . . so then they. . . *voice trails off as previously interested person wanders away into a wall with a glazed over expression*

Oh dear, I would think. I need to come up with a better answer to that question.

Contests like this week's Twitch Week do just that. When you can only explain your story in 140 characters (actually 123 for this one, since you have to add the @reply tag in there somewhere) you learn to boil your plot down to its bare necessities while struggling to hang onto its unique voice. The first time I entered one, it was like an epiphany, a lightning bolt striking my brain. So that's what my book is about! I get it now!

Several of the Modern Myth Makers are participating in Twitch Week. I've already entered two of my projects. What about the rest of you out there? Anyone else feeling twitchy???

*For those who don't get it right away, I think the idea behind the name is something like this: Twitter + Pitch = Twitch

FullTime DayTime Jobber, HalfTime NightTime Writer

2009-06-19T12:10:00.004-04:00

Working full time and stuffing in enough writing/editing time in to feel like an actual writer is quite difficult for me. I don't know how people manage it successfully. Except that they've had a lot more practice at it than I have. At times, I feel as though there's so much to be done with the bills, paperwork, and housewifely cleaning that I don't have enough time for me, let alone the myriad of characters plunging around in my gray squishy matter. And if it's this bad now, how in the universe am I to cope when I have kids? Fretting like this does me no good, serves no purpose. So the hubby and I had a chat over budgeting and longterm future goals. An agreement and compromise was born. The Plan.

The Plan involves a more rigid schedule during my weekdays to help me find both destressing time and writing time. During the weekend it's more fluid, to allow me to write during my best part of the day and be home administrator as needed. The Plan involves only one social outing a month (for the time being). I keep my critique meetings Sunday afternoon but I lose my TriMu meetings on Wednesdays and instead take on choir rehearsal. The daily schedule builds in time for my Morning Pages (The Artist's Way), plotting and planning time, and THREE hours of writing time after dinner.

A Typical Plan Day:

Morning Routine
AM Commute - Morning Pages
AM Break - Daily Writing Goal Spreadsheet
Lunch - Blog Reading/Composition
PM Break - Calendar, Email Reply-To List
PM Commute - Vent, Rev Up Blocking
After Work Routine
The 3 Plan Writing Hours
Before Bed Routine

The hubby has declared that I may continue to read all the publishing blogs and articles I would like - but not during my Plan hours. I may no longer research for my "agent wish list" nor submission guidelines until I have completed this latest editing run-through of StarStones. (Yes, by "run-through" I mean complete rewrite of several chapters, and pokey fixins of others.) No more work on short stories or smaller subs during Plan hours until this is done. Now, I can still scribble on the outskirts of those hours, but unless I meet my goals on the bigger work - the shinies and short stories get taken away. So I guess I better bust tail and get on it, huh?

Our priority goal?

To allow me to finish this run-through of StarStones by September 1st.

The Plan's 2009 Schedule:
September 1: Latest StarStones revision complete
September 2-7: Revision of query letter, research of submission takers, and the mailing of the first official query
September 8-30: Preparation of material for the October writer's conference
October 1-4: Writing Conference
October 5-23: More revisions
October 24-31: Pre-NaNo Plotting Week
November 1-30: National Novel Writing Month
December 1-31: Short Story Bonanza

A 2 hour session of new writing consisted of a 15 minute prep/outline, then writing for 15 fast minutes, exercising for 5, etc. until time was up. A 2 hour editing session would be a straight word binge. Until I do a week of the new 3 hour sessions, however, I won't know the flow. So expect the next update about this fulltime day job halftime night writer Plan to cover how I've managed to make it work for me.

Help! My Hero Sounds Like an Old Maid Aunt!

2009-06-15T15:47:00.002-04:00

So, I’ve been reading the first draft of my historical romance and I’ve discovered a bit of a problem. My hero is a bit of a wuss.

Yes, the HERO of my romance novel is a pansy.

This is not something that you want to happen. Let me give you an example of this. This is a line from my hero’s POV “He wasn’t overly fond of lascivious overtures made by women of dubious honor.” Lascivious overtures. Dubious Honor. Great phrases for an old maid aunt. Not so much for a hero. I’m reasonably certain that this is something that I have to fix.

Revisions….They bring great joy to the writer. If I’m honest, this is my first real attempt at revisions. I’m not sure how to do it so I’m rewriting. I’m re-plotting, rewriting, re-crafting, rebuilding my characters. I wonder if I’m the only person that has to do this.

So how do you revise?