Jul 16, 2005 | Uncategorized
I got another toe ring today. Yep, just what I needed. But how can I pass up $5 sterling silver toe rings with Hawaiian designs? I can't, that's what.
You know you've lived in Hawaii for a while when you spend the day at the beach and don't actually get in the water, or even put on your swim suit. Hubby's company picnic was today. I took the swim suit, took beach chairs, took sunscreen, took an umbrella, towels, books, etc. I was prepared. What did I do? Talked on the phone first, then sat under an umbrella with a group of other folks and talked. Oh, and ate a hamburger, various picnic foods, and about 6 mini cream puffs that some lady kept shoving at everyone. Those darn things were good, but holy cow, there went the diet for the day. Just when you thought you were safe, she'd show up with her tongs and cream puffs and there you were with another one. I took the camera, but didn't take pictures. Why not? No idea, except I kept thinking, oh, I've got pictures of water already. *sigh* I love Hawaii.
Wrote several pages yesterday, but cut some too, so not sure how much I wrote since I was in a fog and just editing and writing like crazy. Also figured out where the book is going now, and how to splice what I have now into what I had before. Some of it still has to go, of course, but I think I know what to do. We'll see. Naturally, these ideas come to me right before a busy weekend when I know I'm going to be running a million places. Monday, I'll sit at the computer all quiet and calm and won't have the foggiest clue what to do.
Tomorrow is a critique meeting with my other group. Don't know what to take. I've been taking a different book to them than to the Wednesday group. Better go have a look and see what I need to print.
Aloha, a hui ho!
Jul 14, 2005 | Uncategorized
*sigh* The rigors of being a romance writer, and being blonde to boot. People one sees on occasion often forget that said blonde romance writer also has (almost) an advanced degree in Litrachoor and does, yes indeed, know what constitutes literary prose. It is not pages and pages and pages full of overblown writing. But you try telling that to someone who only sees you as a low-brow hack and see how seriously they take your comments upon their work. 🙂 And even if I am just a low-brow hack, I'm still a reader and I'm telling you that that stuff leaps out at me like a teenage boy on a first date. (No, I am way too old for teenage boys, thank God, but I do remember those dates with octopus-handed young men.)
Women who diss romance amaze me. It's okay not to like it, but you need to know why you don't like it. Is it because you buy into the prevalent (male) attitude that it's trash? Or because you just don't care to read about a male/female relationship that may or may not stray into unbelievability (some of these books definitely do)? If you think romance is all about a woman needing a man, what about Bridget Jones and the chick lit genre? Bridget, who was lots of fun, was searching for romantic love as well as self-knowledge. So's the shopaholic chick. They have more realistic encounters in the dating pool, sure, but they're still looking for love. It's what women do. It doesn't make us less of a person, though the dominant western patriarchal culture would have you believe so. (And I don't mean just romantic love, btw; I also mean acceptance, like the feminine journey in Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, or Susie Salmon's quest for happiness and acceptance in Heaven in The Lovely Bones.)
A great book to read about women and male culture is The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest to Wholeness by Maureen Murdock. Here's the logline from Amazon: A 9 stage process that entails at first rejecting feminine values, making it in the man's world, experiencing spiritual death, and finally turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the feminine. The book is a little kooky in parts, for me anyway. I've never had any dreams like those she describes, though I did once have a Journey dream where I had to help a very old lady get somewhere. Once I got her there safely, she turned into a young and beautiful goddess archetype who rewarded me with knowledge I'd been seeking. That, so far as I can remember, is my only cool symbolic dream. Otherwise, I dream about mundane stuff.
But, back to the book, the chapter on Healing the Mother/Daughter Split gave me some eureka moments. Worth a read, especially if you're interested in why romance novels get belittled so often. (I'm assuming, since this blog is listed on romance writer sites, that most people who read it are romance writers/fans.)
Miss P, if you're reading, get that blog up and running please. I want to read your comments on male silliness in the political world. 🙂
Oh, cute joke heard last night on the radio. Why do women use twice as many words every day as men? Because they always have to repeat themselves. I, of course, took it to mean that men weren't listening, as usual, and we have to repeat what we just said. Men, I suppose, could take it to mean that we can't just say something once. 🙂 I love men, btw. They are irritating, sure, but oh so necessary to this female's happiness. Or at least one man in particular is. 🙂 So don't think I am pitting woman against man in some sort of eternal struggle. Men have dominated written history for many reasons, and for millenia, so taking some of that back and getting respect for feminine values is an on-going process. But we still need the gorgeous idiots. Someone has to mow the lawn, right? [Kidding!]
Progress report: pg 180. 100 pages left. Some of what I have still needs to be cut, like I said previously. I think I know where I'm going with this. Next book, I am going to try to outline ahead of time. I have always been a pantster, but I'm going to try the plotter technique. If I can rough out a thesis, why can't I rough out a novel?
Started Kristin Hardy's Certified Male (Harl/Blaze) the other day. Great immersion into Vegas and that whole gambling lifestyle. Nice mystery. H/H didn't meet for about 30 pages, but it worked. Still haven't picked The Rule of Four up again. Also, started to read Neill D. Hicks's Screenwriting 101. I've had it on my shelf forever, so thought I'd thumb through it. Very good so far! All this stuff applies to fiction. I don't envision myself as a screenwriter, so that's probably why I had't yet read it. Someone gave it to me.
Music: someone in critique had me listen to My Chemical Romance. Not too sure about that. I couldn't understand the lyrics. I promised to try again, though. Their video for “Helena,” with the dead girl dancing, made me think of Tom Petty's “Mary Jane's Last Dance,” starring Kim Basinger. I prefer the Petty.
Aloha, a hui ho!
Jul 13, 2005 | Uncategorized
No, Oprah didn't call me, darn it. But, someone who has been a featured guest on her show did. Mr. Wally Amos, formerly of Famous Amos Cookies, called me on Monday morning to apologize personally for missing our meeting on Saturday. What a nice, classy man. He didn't make any excuses. He said he just plain forgot; he had out-of-town company and got busy with them and forgot until the afternoon that he had somewhere he was supposed to be that morning. We are going to reschedule. He said he made a comittment and he honors his commitments. Like I said, classy guy. Wonder if I can get a recipe…..
I finally called my university yesterday and just gave them their lousy $15. Who needs the hassle? Apparently, though the amorphous charge has never appeared on my account, they've put a financial hold on my activities, meaning I can't register or anything. Sheesh. Fifteen bucks, people. And I've already got all the credits I need, with the exception of this blasted 5 hour thesis, so give me a break. I'm not registering for anything, except the thesis anyway.
The point, however, is that the brief contact with the academic world left me panicking about this thesis. I have GOT to get busy on it. I have 7 pages written. I need at the very least 50. Knowing me, it will be nearly twice that. So, I've decided to give myself a deadline. I have to finish my novel by the end of July. Then, I have to work on the thesis and get at least the first two chapters drafted by the end of August. My mentor wants to use my work on the second chapter for a class he's teaching in the Fall. I've known this for months.
I suppose I need to cut myself off from the ‘net for the rest of the month. I probably won't handle that very well. It is necessary, however, so my blog will be on hold, or only populated by tiny entries, for the rest of the month. Okay, yes, tiny entries. That makes me happier. Progress reports, I suppose.
Quick progress report on my WIP: I have 174 pages. I need 280 – 300. I'm on page 83 in my revision with many pages still to be chopped. This is Debra Dixon's fault. GMC has put me in this position. I can salvage some of what I have, but there are some scenes that are completely irrelevant now. I imagine I will lose 40 pages or so of irrelevant stuff. Not really sure yet.
Aloha.
Jul 12, 2005 | Uncategorized
Submarine trip, (c) Lynn Raye Harris 
Jul 11, 2005 | Uncategorized
Not much accomplished over the weekend. I did begin to read the manuscript of Strong Currents 2, the Aloha Chapter's anthology that's been on the backburner for the past two years or so. I am not an official editor of the book, so probably won't appear as such in the credits, but I volunteered to help the current harried editor. Someone else started out as editor a very long time ago, but I'm not sure what happened there. I think she was an extremely busy person with kids and a job and school, etc, and her time to edit wasn't too much, especially when she also needed to write her own work. Me, I'm just a lazy stay-at-home-with-no-income writer who still has very little time to do these things. But, I love my chapter and want to help!
As if I don't have enough to read, I couldn't resist starting The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason last night. If you remember anything about last year, you probably remember the hype on this book written by two Princeton graduates and lifelong pals. Someone, maybe both of them, is an excellent writer. A sentence in particular that I love: “[…] literature is just an educated man's shell game, three card monte for the college crowd: what you see is never what you get.” LOL, so true! And this sentence on the first page is a beauty: “A son is the promise that time makes to a man, the guarantee every father receives that whatever he holds dear will someday be considered foolish, and that the person he loves best in the world will misunderstand him.” That is poetry, sheer gorgeous writing that is timeless and will probably find its way into the three card monte game at some point in the future.
BUT. (You knew there was a but, right?) I began this book right before bed, lying propped up on my pillows and reading just for a little light entertainment before turning off the light. And you know what? It was easy to put the book down and turn off the light. In spite of gorgeous sentences sprinkled throughout the first 20 pages (I underlined 3, which is not quite usual, especially with pop fiction. It took me 3/4's of the book to underline anything in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, for instance), there was no pressing reason to keep reading. The hooks weren't there. The ending chapter hook for chapter one is that these 4 young men are going into the tunnels to play laser tag. So freakin' what. Ho hum.
I will keep reading, because I am naturally curious about the hype and because someone is, as I said, a good writer. But where's the drama? Shouldn't it appear immediately? Why am I getting backstory (a beginner's mistake for sure) in the first chapter? The prologue is necessary and a teaser, probably, to keep the reader engaged. But chapter one is nothing but setup. Laser tag? I don't care how they got into those tunnels. Get them down there and then tell me about it (assuming the tunnels and this game are important to the book; this I don't yet know). Engage me as a reader first, toss me into stormy waters, yank the liferaft out from under me, and tell me to swim. This is a suspense novel. Where is the sense of urgency?
Okay, I'm bitching because I can, and I do think these guys are talented and will deliver (at least I hope so), but I hope they will in the future cut to the chase a bit sooner. I haven't read that uber-famous novel about a code named after a certain Italian master, but I did once peruse the prologue while standing in the bookstore (I want to read it, but refuse to buy it on principle–how long must you force the masses to pay for hardcover novels when the standard is to move into paperback in a year or so? Do these people not have enough money yet?). Something dramatic happens in the prologue. It ends with a hook. You want to turn the page. I did not want to turn the page after I finished chapter one in this book. I wanted to go to sleep.
I should say, too, that I am a somewhat patient reader (doesn't sound like it, I know). I am willing to give the writer the benefit of the doubt and to believe he or she intends to give me a good story. I will go through pages of set-up with that belief. I get cranky when the set-up drags on though.
Looks like I am running out of time. My kitchen timer has 6 minutes left. Can't believe I've managed to read three NYT articles, read email, read a couple of blogs, and write in my own in an hour. Time flies when you're having fun. 🙂 Aloha.
Jul 10, 2005 | Uncategorized
Yeah, and that means I get to change my mind a million times. Or stand at the Taco Bell counter and try to figure out what I want while my husband taps his foot and tries to rush me because he knew what he wanted before we ever got there. So, I changed my template. The white was getting to be too white, too blah. Pink is so Romance. Who knows what I'll want next week. 🙂
RWA meeting today was good. Guest speaker was a no show. I don't know why. I shall have to suss out this mystery next week. Perhaps his assistant got confused. Perhaps he got confused. Who knows.
The good part was that we have three potential new members, and one visitor who finally decided to take the plunge and join. Of course they have to join National first, which can be a bit daunting for some folks. Still, I think the three today are good candidates.
Lunch after was a hoot. A lot of that had to do with my husband, the non-professional comedian. I dragged him along to swell the audience for our missing guest speaker, so lunch was going to be interesting no matter what. And he was right on cue with the hilarity. I have promised not to bring him again until our end-of-year luncheon in November. Ha!
Not much to say today. I have a headache, brought on by stress. I was pretty embarassed about the no-show since I am the one who is in charge of the speaker program. But, typical to the type of friends I've made over the years in RWA, everyone told me not to worry, it wasn't my fault, and heck we had fun anyway. I love these gals (and guy, since we do have one in our chapter!).
Aloha.
