The Call
No, not me, but the Instigator, aka Kira, over at the Writing Playground has sold her book to Brenda Chin at Harlequin Blaze!!!! Yay!!!!!!
At Work
Well, I did it. I plunged back into the WIP, after too much time away, and the ideas are coming along. One thing about being uncontracted is that you can spend way too much time writing a book. Too much time procrastinating and gallivanting off in the meadows.
Contracted writers don't have that luxury. They have to write the book. They have to come up with new ideas and write new books and they have to deliver to an agent and an editor on a schedule.
It's easy to say that we'll be more disciplined when we have a contract, but the time really is now. It's the persistent writers who succeed. The ones who write regularly (notice I did not say every day, because not everyone is the same), who move forward and stop revising the first novel they ever wrote (I stopped that a long time ago, but I know people….).
Back to the grindstone then. I'm on deadline. 🙂
The new baby
Monday is such a get-back-to-business day. I'm supposed to be writing a fabulous blog post about books or writing or some crazy yet fascinating aspect of my personal life, but I can't think of anything. So, I thought I'd post a pic of the new baby. We named him Patton, simply because we already have a Nimitz. There seemed to be a theme going, so we went with the flow (after trying out various other names that just didn't fit). Since these two larger-than-life WWII military commanders were such ego-centric characters, their names fit cats quite well. 🙂
Harlequin goes non-fic
From today's Publisher's Lunch:
Harlequin will develop a nonfiction line, launching in 2008, intending to publish in such areas as relationships, health, self-help, diet, fitness, inspirational, memoir and biography, along with nonfiction companions to their successful fiction, focusing on women 35 and older.
Oh dear. Wonder how that's going to work out for them. It's not a bad move, considering how popular things for the older female demographic are becoming. Dove Pro-Age, More Magazine, Christie Brinkley modeling again, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon modeling for Revlon, etc. I'm not yet 40 (getting close) but I LOVE More Magazine (which is aimed at women over 40). I love those Pro-Age commercials with the older, heavier women strategically modeling their nudity. It's about time the retailing world recognized that women don't all come in one age and size. Let's see what Harlequin will do with it…..
The Thrill Is Gone
As I make the rounds of the blogs I've not been reading for the last few months, I've noticed a disturbing trend. Some have gone dark. Not dark the way I disappeared, but dark as in over. POD-dy Mouth, a fabulous blog about finding good books in the mass of dreck that is self publishing, has closed her doors for good. The fabulous and always entertaining Miss Snark has bid adieu to her adoring masses. Squawk Radio, a popular blog by some NYT bestselling romance writers, has pulled the plug. What, or who, is next?
Is the thrill of the blog gone? I don't mean just for the individual posters, but for the readers as well. Blogging was all the rage two years ago when I began, and it was widely seen as a way for authors to interact with their readers. Is that still going on, or have readers become disenchanted by the ease with which they can contact their favorite writer? Should there be some mystery between an author and her public? I'm just asking the questions. I certainly don't know the answers, and I can't speak as an author with a public. Do I hang out on favorite author blogs? No. Some of the authors I like I discovered as a fellow writer going to writing blogs.
I still enjoy the way blogging makes me feel like I'm part of a community, the way doing the rounds makes me feel like I'm sitting at a table and shooting the breeze with other writers. But I can see how blogging can detract from the real business of writers — writing. Ultimately, we are supposed to be typing words into a file that will hopefully become a book. Any other use of our time is extra-curricular. It's necessary for sanity, perhaps, but not strictly necessary.
The thrill isn't gone for me yet. What about you?