Mar 28, 2006 | Uncategorized |
I was perusing Romancing the Blog today when I came across a post about paranormals versus historicals. This sentence caught my eye: “How is an author going to know the rules of shape shifting without first doing some research?”
LOL, that made me giggle. You can research that? I thought it was up to the individual author writing the story how this stuff worked. Man, talk about your basic ignorance (me).
But isn't it true that different writers have employed different rules on their vampire worlds, fer instance? Some let them be awake during the day, others are more traditional. I don't know how they decide this, truthfully.
I'm not a big paranormal reader, but I was first on the boat with Linda Lael Miller's vampire romances back in the day. Who could ever forget Valerian??? I admit to not sampling them much today. Heck, I don't know where to start. When Ms. Miller was writing her trilogy (or whatever it turned out to be), they were fairly unique on the market. I was sucked into the first one, Forever and the Night, and read the next three. None got to me as much as Time Without End (Valerian, sigh). I never felt the urge to write them, however, much to my everlasting regret. Still don't. But a lot of folks do.
Do you think paranormals are the new historicals? I'm not sure I agree, though OTOH, I mostly stopped reading historicals a few years ago. Too much sameness and too many damn lectures about the workings of the medieval castle or the Regency ton. (There are always exceptions, or writers who are so brilliant they can describe hay drying in the field and I'll read it.)
I know the writer has to set the scene, and I sure enough did it in Lord of the March, but to the regular reader it gets old fast. I guess it could get old in paranormals too. I read a contest entry that spent 30 well-written pages telling me how the heroine traveled through time. It was nice writing, but boring as heck. If it'd been a book, I'd have skipped to the action.
How do you get past that stuff when writing? Do you imply it and hope the reader follows? Or do you think it needs in depth explanations? I'm in the implication camp, but that's my preference. Do we face the same issues in contemporary novels or do we have it easier because readers are already part of our “story-world”?
[PS I'm off to *gasp* a work-like situation for the rest of the week! Okay, so there's no work involved, but I am required to wake up, get dressed in casual business attire, and be somewhere at 0800 sharp every morning for the rest of the week. This is shocking to my system! Therefore, my posts will probably be somewhat more scattered and goofy than usual. Or not.]
Mar 27, 2006 | Uncategorized |
What a busy weekend! Renee Fleming was fabulous, of course. Mike was tolerable, though he did express a desire to hear her belch (figuring it would be pretty powerful, I guess). Renee was gracious and funny, and she came back for 3 encores, finally performing my favorite aria ever: O Mio Babbino Caro. (Okay, so I'm not a sophisticated opera buff; I just know what I like.) You can listen to a comparison of Renee and Charlotte Church singing this song here. I prefer Renee. Her voice sounds more mature to me. I also like Sarah Brightman's version of the song.
Mike brought binoculars, as usual, and that always makes it more fun. Renee's jewelry could light its own universe. She wears a diamond on her left hand that must be in excess of 10 carats. It was huge. Her gowns are custom designed for her, and she looked every inch the diva in the two feathered versions she wore. As I listened to her sing, I kept thinking of Bel Canto, which I read rather recently and loved. I later found out, through reading Renee's bio in the program, that Ann Patchett listened to Renee's albums and used her as inspiration for Roxanne Coss. Cool.
Though this has little to nothing to do with writing, I did think about characters while listening. As I perused the orchestra with the binoculars, I landed on this girl playing French horn. She looked young, attractive in a European cream complexion way, and totally bored with the singing. I began to tell myself a story about her. I may take it to paper at some point, just for the fun of exploring how she could be listening to, and accompanying, one of the world's top sopranos and be so unmoved at the same time.
The other thing I did this weekend was attend a booksigning by Jennifer Archer. I'll post more on that later, including a picture. Jenny and her husband Jeff are visiting Oahu from Texas. Jenny found out, just the day before her signing, that her book The Me I Used to Be is nominated for a RITA! We had a great time chatting about writing and other stuff. đ
Congratulations to all the RITA and Golden Heart nominees!
Mar 24, 2006 | Uncategorized |
I did go downtown yesterday, and I did take the Alphasmart. First, I went and dropped off my Grandfather clock weights, then I swung by the Blaisdell box office for tickets to the symphony. Tonight is Renee Fleming! Mike and I are going, though he's not a big opera buff. He'll sit through two hours of Renee belting out Beethoven, provided he can have wine during the intermission. đ I am happy to accomodate.
I love going to the symphony in Hawaii. No suits, ties, or evening wear here! We wear aloha attire. Men will come in aloha shirts and shorts or slacks. Women wear mu'u mu'us or dresses or slacks or shorts. Some folks dress up, some don't. Many wear fragrant leis. If you come to Hawaii for a visit, and you like the symphony, I suggest you go. Our pops conducter, btw, arranged the music and played the saxophone in the fabulous George Clooney movie Good Night and Good Luck. The man is a talent.
But anyway. I got out of the house, went to observe humanity. đ I ended up in Barnes and Noble with the Alphie. I had a chai and wrote 1 page. Whoa, was I smokin' or what? I observed an old man with a dangly earring, which I thought was funny. I observed how people hog the tables in the cafe by getting one drink, piling magazines on the table, and then stay there forever. They will even get up for 20 to 30 minutes on end while they go look for other stuff. They'll leave everything piled on “their” table so no one takes it. How annoying.
And, yeah, I sat at my table for a long time after I finished the chai. I was probably there for an hour and 15 minutes or so. Staring into space, typing and hitting the delete key, and perusing the latest RWR and The Writer. No one came through looking like they wanted a table, so I didn't feel too guilty. And I don't get up to go find other stuff. I'll go to the bathroom if I have to, but I come right back. I feel guilty taking a table and then going to browse the store.
Do you go to cafes to write? If so, do you think you get more or less done that way? I think I do less, but then sometimes getting away from the house and its distractions (laundry, cats, dishes, etc) is the only way to get anything done.
[Update: Here is the official Renee Fleming website. Apparently the one linked above is a fan site. It was a great concert. I'll report more in depth later…….]
Mar 23, 2006 | Uncategorized |
Okay, so I got behind the power curve last night and didn't write a post for today. And though it's early here (7 AM), it's noon on the east coast. Y'all think I'm a slacker. đ
I have nothing original to say today. I've got to head into Honolulu in a little bit, so that's on my mind. I'm waiting for the morning rush hour to be over. We have horrendous traffic on this little island, believe me. If I can avoid it, I will.
So, two things. First, the New York Times is reporting on the move to trade paperback originals for literary novels.
“In the last four or five years, it's gotten hard to publish fiction by lesser-known authors, and even by some better-known authors,” said Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic. And when a book fails in hardcover, booksellers often will limit their orders for a paperback edition, making it harder to sell the author's next book. “When you're taking back 50 to 70 percent of the hardcover copies you shipped,” Mr. Entrekin said, “the stores â rightfully so â are not willing to take another chance.”
As the article points out, many folks don't want to spend the $22 in hardcover for authors unknown to them. $13.95 is more reasonable. And, I gotta admit, I'm the type of person who waits for the paperback. Partly, it's the military mindset: we gotta move with this stuff. I don't need hardbacks taking up my weight allowance. Second, $22 is a lot of money, to me, for one book. I ain't independently wealthy here.
Anyway, read the article. The numbers are interesting, as are the thoughts on the review process.
The second thing is another fabulous blog post by fellow Aloha Chapter member Tess Gerritsen. (I know she's much more than a fellow chapter member, but hey, it gives me a thrill to say she's in my chapter.)
When you write, you are opening a spigot from your brain, pouring out memories and thoughts and dreams onto the page. Leave that spigot on too long, without refilling the source of your creativity, and what you get is a drained and exhausted writer.
That's how I felt when I turned in the manuscript for THE MEPHISTO CLUB. Emptied out of all my creative juices. I call it writer's anemia. Real anemia leaves you weak and exhausted and pale. Writer's anemia is much the same — except that the pallor shows up on the page. Your writing loses all color. Your plot feels dead. Your characters wander through the story like ghosts of themselves.
The only cure is a transfusion — not of blood, but of real-life experiences.
Isn't that the truth? (Oh, btw, Tess uses this post to announce she's going to Libya. Whoa, cool!) Often, I can stay holed up in my house for a week, refusing to go anywhere because I want to work on my book. And I feel it at the end of the week. I don't want to be off every day having coffee at Starbucks or haunting Waikiki in search of stimulation, but I do have to be open to life experiences. This week, I gave up my Wednesday night group. I missed it, even though we usually don't accomplish much. I missed the conversation and the bookstore.
So, today, since I have an errand taking me into town anyway, I'll try to meander back home, maybe stop at B&N or Borders. Borders has a balcony from which you can see the ocean (of course it's a cloudy, rainy sky and a leaden ocean these days, blech). I have taken my Alphie and written up there in the past. Maybe I'll try it today. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just have a coffee and a magazine and watch the people. Aloha nui loa. đ
Mar 22, 2006 | Uncategorized |
Yesterday was one of those days. You know the kind, the ones where you keep trying to do several things at once and none of them are getting done very efficiently and youâre getting frustrated and depressed and wishing it was tomorrow already because today isnât going your way. If, in looking back at the previous post, I am considering my husbandâs routine and comparing mine, Iâd say it went wrong at the coffee stage. Too many urgent emails requiring attention (chapter and other business). A couple of phone calls. More emails once the first ones were answered. The worst opening paragraph about Mrs. Dalloway ever in the history of thesis writing–wrote it yesterday, today it sucks. And so many things I need to do that are weighing on my mind like the proverbial sack of bricks.
(But, one good email in which I won a book over on Alison Kentâs site! Yay!)
So, as far as new routines, today not so good. I couldnât beat the old system very well, though I limited the blogging once the email took over my morning. *sigh*
I donât have to read those digest emails, I know I donât, but Iâm the kind of person who doesnât throw things away because I might find a use for it later. Likewise, I canât delete the digests unread because I might miss something I need to know.
And therein lies the trouble. The conversations are driving me nuts. They also somewhat reflect conversations Iâve had with individuals, which may be why theyâre pressing my buttons.
Why oh why does everyone think that the ârulesâ donât apply to them? Why do they argue and make statements like, âIf such and such doesnât like the way I do it, then I didnât want them for my agent/editor/publisher/pal anywayâ?
I kid you not, Iâve been privy to conversations that discussed the personal preference for Bookman Antiqua 14 over the old standard Courier New or TNR 12 and how they didnât think they ought to have to change the font. Me, I think if the editor wants it in Wingdings 20, theyâre getting it that way. To hell with what I prefer. (OTOH, Miss Snark says that writers worry about format much more than agents/editors. They just want it readable. Though, over on Anna Genoeseâs site, if you send it to her in Arial, sheâs sending it back.)
But, I guess what really gets me about the rules conversations is that almost universally, people think the rules donât apply to them. Oh yes, they see the need for them, the reason romance is, for example, generally 3rd person POV, but they think they are the special case in which it doesnât apply. They are allowed to write the only 2nd person romance in the history of mankind while the rest of us must follow conventional wisdom. (This isn't the best example, but hey.)
And, by golly, Iâm not saying some of them arenât the exception! But we canât all be the special case. We canât all trot out Strunk and White and say, yes but it doesnât apply to ME because I know HOW to break the rule. Which, inevitably, is what you hear. And can I let you in on a little secret? Most of the people saying it arenât yet published by a major publisher. Things that make you go hmmmm.
I think it does newbie writers a disservice to tell them they can write the story any old way they want without learning what the rules of grammar or even genre are. Yes, even literary writers have stylistic conventions/rules/whatever you want to call it. How many literary writers do you know that exist in a vacuum? No, they often come from academia or from MFA programs or writersâ workshops. Writing is like piano playing. You donât just wake up one morning and do it. You have to learn it and practice it.
Writing can be shaped. I admit that the rules can also interfere with a personâs natural writing style, which isnât a good thing. Perhaps itâs not the rules so much as the timing of the application of them. If a new writer joins a critique group and takes her first chapter and gets told that you canât headhop and you canât include the dogâs POV, etc, and then sheâs at a standstill because sheâs confused and wary and stuck, thatâs not good. I think the secret is that first draft isnât the place to be critical. But thatâs another one of my peeves.
No, we do not all want to sound alike and Iâm not advocating we do. Slavish devotion to ANY rule is probably a bad thing. But, by golly, if Strunk and White is good enough for Stephen King, itâs good enough for me.
But when is something wrong? When is it NOT okay to write 30 pages of the heroine going about her business before she meets the hero? I believe, btw, that Wendy Wax does this extremely well in Leave it to Cleavage. Iâd never argue with her about when the hero shows up on the scene. I also think Nora Roberts writes limited 3rd POV well (aka headhopping) and that a writer like Susan Elizabeth Phillips can write several pages of the heroine telling her backstory to a dog (Ainât She Sweet). Jenny Crusie writes situational comedy plots that no one else could probably get away with, and Marsha Canham can pack a story with history and still make you read along. (Iâm sure we can all think of examples.)
But when is it not okay? Canât we just admit that not even Mozart was born with the ability to write “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” on day one (or day 1500)? Beethoven wrote the “Ode to Joy” at the end of his life. They studied, they worked hard, they learned the conventions even if they did their own thing. Why should writing be any different?
Okay, so that's my opinion. I'm sure there are folks who disagree. And don't even get me started on people who tell newbie writers that you can't write a chick-lit/historical/romantic suspense because the market is saturated or you have to know SO MUCH to do it well so you might as well not even bother. Grrrr.
Mar 21, 2006 | Uncategorized |
Mike and I had a talk over a bottle of wine this weekend. My hubby is the best, most supportive guy in the world. He didn't say to me, “Go get a job.” He never does. But he did say some other things, like “You're spinning your wheels.” How can he tell? Because, he says, when I'm working on something and I'm deep into it, I'm bouncing off the walls when he gets home (in a happy way). Apparently, I haven't been bouncing lately.
So then we discussed our routines. He has specific things he does at work, from the moment he gets his coffee to everything else that happens in his day. At the end of the day, he makes a list of things that he has to do tomorrow. Sometimes, all goes well. Other times, he gets thrown off by an early meeting or an urgent directive from higher up. He understands distractions, but thinks I have too many of them.
My routine consists of coffee, email and blogs. Then comes the writing (my brain won't leap right into the story; I need warmup time). But sometimes I get sidetracked by massive amounts of email I must answer (chapter business), and then I get caught following the loops, which in itself can be frustrating and time consuming. Sometimes I think I should take myself off digest on these things. Except Chaplink.
Anyway. Ahem. I don't shower at a set time. I like the part about being able to write in my jammies, but Mike says I should get “ready” for work. One writer I know gets up, showers, does her hair and makeup, puts on her jewelry, and goes to her home office (she puts comfy sweat clothes on though). I am NOT putting on makeup and jewelry for writing, though I could be persuaded to give the early shower a try. đ I like being an unwashed unpublished (just kidding, Diana!) but I'll see if washing helps me think better. Ha!
We talked about how long the email/blogs takes. I think it averages around 3 hours a morning. Mike said, “That's almost half the work day gone.” Whoa, I never thought of it that way.
He's right, darn him. He says I should look at my day and set it up with 4 hours dedicated to the book, 4 hours to the thesis (which will be over soon enough anyway, especially if I get off my ass and finish it), and take breaks like I would at a job. I can save the house cleaning/laundry/reading/etc until evening. I should either limit the morning email/blog routine, or move it to evening. Yikes.
Now, I've explained that the creative brain doesn't necessarily work when you force it to. Sometimes, you have to stare off in space. He agrees. But, he says, he wants me to give it a try, see if I can work with a new routine. I think he's right, so I'm trying it. Can't hurt.
I'm also taking a hard look at the “other” things I do. I'm going to have to eliminate or cut down some of them. For instance, my Wed night writers' group (we spend a lot of time talking). Once a week is too much for me right now. I have too many irons in the fire (and an impending inlaw visit, part of which will be spent cruising the islands on the Pride of Aloha). I need to finish this book. I want the thesis done before the cruise. I also have personal tasks that need completing. My husband is understanding and supportive, but I know he'd like it if I could manage to spend time with him and take care of household things here and there. No one likes eating soup or grilled chicken 7 nights a week. đ
Interestingly, PBW was talking about prioritizing recently:
Make the work the first priority. I know I keep harping on this, but the writing has to come first. When you're not writing, someone else is. When you're not pitching, someone else is. When you're off getting drunk in the Tiki bar at Paradise Con, someone else is at home mailing out a submission to your editor, or querying your agent.
Oh dear, certainly makes you stop and think, huh? (I can't believe anyone writes this woman hatemail! I love reading her posts.) Writing comes first (or as soon after coffee and limited emailing/blogging as possible). All else is secondary.
Is there anything you've eliminated to get the writing done? Any routine you've hit on that works for you? Share away! I can always use ideas. đ
