Most hilarious thing found in a blog this week

Nov 8, 2007 | Uncategorized | 2 comments

VAPID – Virginal Angry Prudes in Denial. Used by Lynn Viehl to describe the people who got Wal-Mart to put wrappers on romance novels.** ROFL!

In fact, the whole post — where a vampire shows up at an editor's office to protest the portrayal of his kind in romance novels — is hilarious. Go read The Vampire Smythe and have a laugh.

**She's also the coiner of SOILS, Sisters of the Immaculate Love Scene, which describes romance authors who bitch about too sexy sex in books today. 😉

Who’s your Mac daddy?

Sep 18, 2007 | Uncategorized | 8 comments

Please excuse the mess while the author of this blog is forcibly dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Apple. Hubby insists.

I am on a very cute MacBook and hubby is buying an iMac to replace the desktop. It's different, and there's a slight learning curve, but it's pretty intuitive. So far, not too upset, but things look different. And my home network is refusing to cooperate, not because of Apple, but because we were switching to DSL from cable. The phone company sucked me in and lied about the money they were going to send me. I may have to send the DSL modem back with a note about where they can put it, but we'll see. 🙂

In the meantime, hope everyone is writing and getting lots done! I hope to be back to normal soon!

Negativity

Aug 7, 2007 | Uncategorized | 6 comments

Sometimes it's hard not to be negative in this business, especially when you can get hit with rejections and setbacks on an almost daily basis. Keep going, wisdom says; don't give up. If you give up after 20 rejections, number 21 might have been the yes. You'll never know if you give up.

But I'm not really speaking about specific negativity here. I was thinking about negativity in a general way, and how it can affect the creative life, because of a conversation today. My parents, God love them, are negative people. They are glass half empty people. The sky is falling people. Better the devil you know kind of people. I have, unfortunatly, internalized some of this stuff. I often stick with the devil I know because I'm afraid of taking the leap and getting a worse devil.

My hubby, otoh, is about to take a big leap. It's scary, but I support him. My parents, when I told them, were beside themselves with the possible negative outcomes of this leap. It gave me a headache. It made my stomach hurt. And I started thinking about how negativity affects our lives.

You can cut negative people out of your life (unless they're your parents and you love them) and I have in the past. Just stopped hanging out with someone who was a downer. Stopped meeting her for coffee or lunch, stopped accepting invitations from her. I stay in contact with her, but I feel much better for having taken myself out of her poisonous presence. She was a sweet person, but poisonous. For every positive thing that happened, the potential negativity outweighed it tenfold in her mind. You can only take so much of that before it seeps into your skin like a miasma.

How do we see past the negativity, take the leap, and keep going? It's hard as hell. But I realized, listening to my parents talk, just how much I have that voice in my head that tries to stop me. But you know what? You gotta put that bitch in a cage and keep going. It's the only way.

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself

Self-Pity by D.H. Lawrence. Maybe a good poem to tack up on the wall next to the computer, eh?

So how do you deal with negativity, especially the internalized variety? What do you tell the negative nellies when they start to get you down?

RWA National Conference

Jul 17, 2007 | Uncategorized | 11 comments

How was it? It was a whirlwind. Meeting people, going to parties and gatherings, having dinners with friends, workshops, banquets and awards ceremonies. Holy cow. This was my first conference, but it won't be my last. I even managed to write, believe it or not. One night, when I'd finished dinner with friends but my roomies were still out, I sat down and started typing an idea on my Alphasmart. I still don't know how many pages I wrote, but I think it's pretty good stuff. We'll see when I download it to my computer whether I'm deluded or not. Probably deluded, since lack of sleep was a serious issue. 😉

I finally got to meet several online people! I met Allison Brennan, who was there with her mother. They are absolutely adorable together and so sweet and nice. Allison also gives a fabulous no plotters allowed workshop which was one of the better ones I went to. 🙂

I met Carla Cassidy and Kathy Carmichael finally, after knowing them for many many years. They are wonderful women and I'm honored to have known them for so long.

I met Nalini Singh in the coffee shop! After flying as far and as long as she did, she still recognized me and said hello. We sat together for a little while before she had to get ready for lunch with her agent (or editor, I can't remember which).

I talked with the dynamic and lovely Jane Porter, a fellow Aloha Chapter member who shares my bittersweet love of Hawaii. She still travels there frequently, and I do envy her that.

I met so many other writers that I can't name them all! I spotted Nora Roberts walking through the coffee shop one day, and attended a chat session with her that was fantastic. The best speech I heard was by Sherrilyn Kenyon, who is a doll and so inspiring. Lisa Kleypas gave a great speech as well and I picked up an armadillo keychain before I left Dallas in honor of what she said. 🙂

I also sat in the bar at least twice with the fabulous Heart of Dixie women, including the very talented Linda Howard, Linda Winstead Jones, and Beverly Barton (that “very talented” designation applies to all three). Kelley St. John and Rhonda Nelson, also immensely talented and sweet, were there the second time we gathered.

One of the most fun things I did was have a reunion with people I first met in Hawaii. Morag McKendrick Pippin, Carol Burnside, and Sally Sorenson are all so wonderful to sit and talk with for hours on end. I'm just sorry I didn't have more time with them!

Oh, and I met Stephanie Tyler and Larissa Ione and got an ARC of Riding the Storm, their Sydney Croft release. In fact, I got tons of books and had to ship home a Fed Ex box of them. And how could I nearly forget that I met Loribelle Hunt!? She was in front of me in the coffee shop line (are you spotting a theme about writers and coffee?).

Whew, and now I have to wind up this post and get to work. Because, as Nora said, I have a job to do. 🙂 I'll post more conference tidbits later, and maybe even think up a contest or two. 🙂 If you went to conference, what was the most important thing you learned? If you didn't go, what did you do while the rest of us were suffering from lack of sleep and, in some cases, serious jet lag?

Focus

May 25, 2007 | Uncategorized | 5 comments

The problem with having a stay-at-home job is focus. It's so easy to run downstairs for a bottle of water and end up tossing in a load of laundry, folding what just came out of the dryer, and thinking of at least two people you need to call for some reason. What was supposed to be a 2 minute trip to the kitchen becomes a 40 minute detour.

I'm not usually too bad at focus, when the story is humming. When it's not, well, I can think of a lot of things I need to get done. Add to that the guilt of needing to organize the house and get everything put away, and focus becomes an issue.

On a bigger scale, I have trouble with focus in that I want to do so many things and spread myself thin. Concentrating on one thing means I will become more accomplished at it. A master of a particular thing rather than a jack-of-all-trades.

My goal is to become a master. Focus is the key. It will take effort, of course, just like getting those muscles back into shape. One day at a time.

How do you deal with focus? Are you a pro at it? If so, what's your secret? 🙂