Jan 1, 2006 | Uncategorized
There were so many things I wanted to talk about this week, and naturally I got caught doing other things that seem to only make more and more demands on my time than I really can spare. It's my fault, though. I say I can do this and that, and then I realize it takes me away from what I really need to be doing (writing!) but I'm committed to it and can't back out. Curses for that Southern lady upbringing!
Anyway, checking out the blogosphere and working on my own resolutions for 2006. Mike and I decided to stay home, which is kind of rough because last year was rough (see previous post), but I really just wanted to be here when push came to shove. We watched the sunset at the beach, then continued to sit as the sky turned from orange to pink and scarlet. The few clouds stood out in purple 3D relief, Venus appeared, and a sliver of moon that looked like a cuticle grew brighter and brighter as we sat there. I longed for a single flower to toss into the waves, but there were none around. Finally, as we headed for the Jeep, I saw a flowering bush and stopped to pick one.
“I want to put it in the ocean for Miss Kitty,” I said.
“Okay,” Mike said.
“I know you think I'm crazy. It's silly, right?”
“No, I think it's wonderful. You're wonderful.”
Is it any wonder I love this man?
So we tossed the flower into the ocean and watched as it washed up on a crescent of sand.
“What's it mean when it comes back?” I said.
“I don't know,” Mike replied. “But it'll go out soon. The tide's coming in.”
I will do things better in 2006. Via Alison Kent's blog, I clicked to this mantra by J.A. Konrath. The dude is cool, and wise as well. I read an article about him in Writer's Digest a couple of years ago, and I still have it. I remember thinking that he seemed like a guy who deserved his success. Even better, he gave me hope that I had a chance.
I've also been following Miss Snark's Crapometer this week. I love that woman, whoever she is. She's taught me more about synopsis writing than all the articles I'd read previously (though Lisa Gardner's synopsis workshop is a close second). Miss Snark reads 1000 word synopses and makes comments. I think it's the reading of them for myself, however, that REALLY demonstrates what works and what doesn't. Some make your eyes glaze over. Others make you want to read the book. Some confuse the hell out of you. Miss Snark doesn't do this all the time, though. Mostly, she dispenses wisdom and snark from her anonymous digs in Brooklyn, ably assisted (or accompanied) by her poodle, Killer Yapp. If you want to be a writer and you DON'T read her blog, shame on you.
Though it's New Year's everywhere else, we're still waiting in Hawaii. Two more hours, roughly, until the ball drops or the surfboard falls or whatever. It's sort of strange. For years, I was ahead of my mainland friends because I lived in Europe. Now, I'm behind. Everyone's gone to bed and we're still waiting. More time to hone those resolutions, I guess.
Hauoli Makahiki Hou.
Dec 31, 2005 | Uncategorized |
No, I'm not going anywhere! But, it was one year ago today, on New Year's Eve, that my wonderful, sweet Miss Kitty breathed her last. I loved that cat so much, and I can still get choked up over her demise. Just ask Mike. 🙂 Like Dave Letterman once said, “I'll sob like a drunk at a wedding.” Yep, no problem, I can do it. Just let me think about those last few moments in excruciating detail…..
No, I'm not recounting it, except to say that making the decision to end another living creature's life, and then being there while it's done, is not something I think I can ever do again. That was, so far, the WORST day of my life. And I am fully aware that if I can say that putting a beloved pet to sleep was the worst day I've had, I'm still a lucky person. No doubt there are infinitely worse things that can happen in a life.
Still, it wasn't good. But, almost like it was meant to be, Nimitz came into our lives on the very day we revisted a place we hadn't been since the day Kitty died. And he does so many things she did that I find it amazing. Things that no other cat of mine has ever done. He's a special little guy, and whether he was sent or whether it's just all a cosmic coincidence, I don't care. He fills a hole that was left when Kitty went, a hole that Thumper couldn't fill. When Thumper goes, I imagine he will leave a void that can't be filled by Nimitz. And maybe, like with Nimitz, we'll find another cat who needs us just when we need him the most.
Hauoli Makahiki Hou. Happy New Year.
With aloha for reading this sometimes scatterbrained blog,
Lynn
Dec 26, 2005 | Uncategorized
Merry Christmas, everyone! We've had a bright, green, sunny Christmas day here in Hawaii. After talking to family all morning, we put on shorts and went to Don Ho's Island Grill for lunch. Then it was off to the movies (we changed into jeans–gets cold inside the theater) to see King Kong. KK was sold out, so we opted for Syriana. Glad we did. George Clooney hits another home run. Fabulous movie.
When the movie was over, we went to Waikiki and strolled along the beach. Waikiki was packed with tourists, but we had fun anyway. Mike took pictures for a Japanese couple who wanted to pose together in front of the Sheraton, and we sat on a bench and watched the waves roll in. And now we're home, winding down and wondering if we should go see Munich or Memoirs of a Geisha tomorrow….
Dec 21, 2005 | Uncategorized |
Romance author Susan Gable has been posting some good information over at Booksquare. For instance, earlier this week, she talked about Harlequin's new word counts.
…the latest news is that many of the longer lines (referred to in the romance community as the Long Contemporaries – lines such as Superromance, Silhouette Special Edition, Silhouette Intimate Moments…) are being shortened, in general by 10K words.For example, the Superromance line, which I’ve been writing for, used to have guidelines of 80-85K. That gave the writer room to create a more complex story, with more subplots and secondary characters. The line will now be 70-75K.
A good place to see how this breaks down is at Angelle Trieste's blog.
Today, Susan has posted this over at Booksquare.
A follow-up on my last post about Harlequin cutting words from their longer lines — I received information from the Senior Editor of my line (Superromance) that basically what’s going on is a change in HOW we count words. Instead of using the old standard of ms formating for the 250 words per page method, we arenow moving to the new computer word count method. That means that my last Super, which was 340 formatted ms pages or 85K on the dot for the old method (I’m one of the long-winded writers who pushed to the edge of the alloted space, bigsurprise (g)) and is 71K-ish by the word count function in Word, is exactly on target for the new range of word count.
Okay, so how many of you are as confused as I am? When I wrote my first novel, waaaaay back when, I used computer wordcount because I was too ignorant to realize that isn't how it was done. So a manuscript that clocked in at 120,000 words was actually much longer when done the 250 words per page way. I had 800 manuscript pages at Courier 12, so in fact it was probably MUCH longer than 120,000, but I can't remember because it was a long time ago and that book is not on this computer. (If I formatted it properly, then that's a 200,000 word novel, or the equivalent of 2 single titles–yikes!)
I think I would prefer computer count. It's easy. Hit a button and voila, there you go. Writers are always confused, in my experience, as to how to count words. Someone in my Wednesday night group has a mss that's 420 pages in TNR 12. She has believed for several years that this is a 100,000 word mss (she never used computer count, just estimated by pages without realizing that 100K refers to a Courier 12, 250 words per page mss). When we took three random pages and averaged the words, then multiplied by the number of pages (a method recommended by Leslie Wainger in Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies), it was far longer than she'd thought. Long enough to scare her because as we all know, romance publishers aren't going to buy a 150,000 word novel.
No one is confused by computer count, however. Hit the button, get a word count. It would certainly standardize things for writers. On the other hand, you still need a standard mss format because how does an editor know that the Bookman 11 she's looking at is really 80K? Let's get some approved proportional fonts and go to town! I know that some writers submit in TNR 12, and Harlequin seems open to that anyway, but other publishers might not be. It's confusing!
I'll probably keep doing what I do, which is write in TNR 12 and then frequently change to Courier 12, 25 lines per page, just to see what it looks like. I also use computer count, but not as my final count. I aim for the standard pages per designated word count, which is what I'm checking when I switch the mss to Courier.
If Harlequin really means computer count, and they aren't actually chopping words off the lines, then more power to them. Make it easier on everyone by letting the CPU do the math. 🙂
Dec 16, 2005 | Uncategorized
Yep, the merry season is swinging into high gear and I must scale back some activities to accomodate others. 🙂 Add in a bout of infection that required a course of antibiotics, and I have my hands full. Tomorrow night is the big Christmas party in Waikiki, I still have boxes to pack and mail, Christmas cards aren't done, and Mike's birthday is next week. Whew! So, probably no regular posts from me until after the holidays.
Mele Kalikimaka and Hauoli Makahiki Hou!
Dec 12, 2005 | Uncategorized
It's like I've lived in a vacuum or something. One day, I wake up and realize that something has been going on around me and I wasn't even aware of it. How did I miss this George R.R. Martin thing?
I've seen the name, sure, but I barely ever gave it a thought. I couldn't pull a title or cover from my mind even if a million bucks were on the line. According to this article in the NYT, the first novel in this series came out in 1996. As I've said before, I used to love fantasy, and then I got soured on it. Robert Jordan did more to piss me off than anyone. Finish the freaking series already, dude!
I stopped reading somewhere in the vicinity of the 8th Wheel of Time book when I realized that no one was going anywhere or doing much of anything for 600 (roughly, since I've blocked the memory) pages. IF the man ever finishes, I may read the rest of the books. But I was not waiting at the bookstore for the 11th on the day it hit, nor do I plan to buy it. In fact, when I finally succumbed to the madness and bought Book 10, thinking I'd just get them all so I could read when he finally finished–a moment of sheer lunacy on my part, I admit–the one I bought was a first edition. No, I did not seek this thing out; it was still on the shelf in the bookstore some two years after it had come out.
But I digress.
Meanwhile, crowds have been lining up for hours on Mr. Martin's publication tour to hear him read. “It's unlike anything I've ever seen, except for hosting events for rock stars,” said Carolyn T. Hughes, an events coordinator for Barnes & Noble at Astor Place in Manhattan, where Mr. Martin read in November. “There were 500 people.”
Crowds are lining up, people are salivating over the next book, and I missed it all. Didn't Jordan used to command that kind of attention? Just goes to show you, you piss off the readers, you stand in danger of losing your exhalted place. No writer is above his audience. On the other hand, the success of Mr. Martin proves that huge whopping fantasy tomes are still very much in demand, in spite of my personal disappointments. And that's a good thing. Readers still want a good story and writers still strive to create them. Just when you think a genre is saturated or done to death, someone comes along with a new idea that changes everything.
That's pretty much what keeps writers writing. The thought that maybe it's my idea that will spark that renewal, that enthusiasm among readers. Isn't true for most of us, but you never know who will be the one. Keep writing and dreaming. It might be you.
