I'm Blogging Drowning Here!

Getting on with it

2012-02-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

I have three blog drafts sitting around, and, admittedly, some are no more than a great title and a few words, but some are almost done. I look at them and say 'someday I'll finish that thought'. I have about thirty unfinished 'thoughts' in the form of novel ideas with bits and pieces of research or even a first chapter all filed away on my laptop. Two completed manuscripts waiting for revision, one half of a fantasy duology left to write, and a partridge in a pear tree.... The point is life can be so distracting, especially with a new job and a needs-bouncy-bouncy-all-the-time baby boy, that I forget I'm a writer. I NEED to write. It's an ache in my blood and bones that turns to discontent and then outright depression if ignored.

And when I write? I soar. I feel light and free and satisfied. Like this is what I was meant to do.

Not, I've found, the writing for work that requires I abide by the 'understated' tone of the organisation and get three different approvals for every paragraph posted on the website. I need real writing. The kind that streams from the movie in your head, that sings with emotion, vibrates with your soul. I need to work on my damn book. It's 4:30 am--I've been up since a 3:30 baby feed--but it's taken me this long to psych up for a blog post. Will I even open my manuscript before the baby wakes for the day or I decide to steal a few more minutes sleep? Why do I delay?

Because I need it too much. It's too important. And what happens if I finish that novel, finish those revisions, finish those queries and actually get what I want? What happens after happily ever after? 'Well,' I tell my idiot inner procrastinator, 'there will be more books you can write, book promotion to deal with, a whole host of crap you can't even dream of, basically a whole new world to explore. Get on with it.'

So, I'm signing off to get on with it. I hope you all find the will get on with it too. Happy writing!

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T02:46:00.000-08:00

One advantage of living in Australia is we get the New Year nearly a day ahead of my family in North America, so I can get a head start on my New Year's resolutions. Unfortunately, I can't help them out with the lottery numbers as much as they'd like.

First resolution? Get back into contact, and that means you, you beautiful blog readers! I've been busy with my gorgeous little boy (you can see from the pic how easy it is to be enraptured by his smile), and I've suddenly realized he's 9 months old and it's almost 2012!

Second resolution: slow time. I know it's impossible, but I will try to savor every moment with my family.

Final resolution: don't be afraid of change!

I knew I was taking the tiger by the tail when I decided to start a family, so I'm going to hold on and see where it leads me. The changes are already coming fast and furious; I'd just grown comfortable with being a mommy and making homemade baby food when work has asked me to come back months early and change my career. It looks like (fingers crossed everything works out) I'm going to be melding my love of writing with my training in science and take up the science communications job for the charitable institute where I work. Wow, getting paid to write!

It's exciting, and I've got a lot to learn, but at least I have an excuse to blog more--it builds up my 'new media and social networking skills' as requested for the job description. Best of all, it will be a 9 to 5 position instead of the crazy hours I was putting in before, so I should have more time to spend with my cute little elf boy and still squeeze in some novel writing when he goes to bed at night. I've managed 50,000 words while on maternity leave (in between diapers, feeding, and endless hours of play time and baby related activities), so I'm feeling pretty good about 2011. Here's to an even better 2012!

May all your dreams come true in the New Year, my friends. (Holds up imaginary champagne glass) Cheers!

6 tips for writing with a 3-month-old baby in the room

2011-07-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

1. Learn to type (fast) one-handed.
I'm doing this now while rocking the baby in his pram. It's a trick I picked up in hospital when I was on bedrest and forced to lay on my side for two months. Remember, you can use Caps Lock even when only writing the word "I". Doesn't work for those pesky quotes though. I can't guarantee accuracy either, but you can fix that when he finally passes out from screaming his head off. Which leads me to...
2. Close your ears. Don't ignore the crying baby--rock him, put the binky in his mouth, feed him and making soothing noises, whatever it takes--just don't let it interrupt your thought processes or the character's voices (remember, you're still typing with the other hand during all this). Good training is listening to hard rock while you write and slowly tuning it out. Other tips: baby slings and weight training for your biceps.
3. Use every spare minute. Priorities are the baby's care and play time, food, and and sleep (hah! good luck with that), but when that little guy is dozing, be it 20 minutes or 2 hours, write. There is no time for courting the muse here. Get it done.
4. Keep the muse fed. I said there was no courting her, no gentle routines to entice her into whispering in your ear. What you have to do is chain her to you like a slave.
5. Write notes whenever you're not at the computer, and keep pen and paper everywhere--even beside the change table (with hand disinfectant too).
6. Enjoy that lack of sleep. Sleep-deprivation, like alcohol, makes everything better--at least to you and Hemingway. But if you check your writing the next day and everything reads "feed the baby, feed the baby..." then you might be in trouble.

Forget Plans

2011-04-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge planner. I have lists for everything from what to do today, to next week, and next year, not to mention the shopping lists, birthday lists, etc. From the start of my 3rd trimester, though, NOTHING went according to plan. My baby was due May 20th, plenty of time to finish up some writing projects, especially work related stuff. Well, complications ensued, and to cut a very long and interesting story (which I may revisit in more detail later in this blog) short--I've been in hospital the last two months and the baby is here already!

Meet Max Alexander:

Isn't he the cutest!
Thus, there has been no blog posts and sporadic work on my novel, but at least I finished my grant for work from my hospital bed, while being forced to lay flat on my side and type one-handed with IV's sticking out of me. This impressed all my workmates, so I hope it impressed my boss too.
Now, I'm on maternity leave, snatching one hour bits of sleep between feeds, and generally trying to learn this mommy gig.
I'm not making any definite plans--I've learned my lesson!-- but I want to start blogging/writing again soon.
Hope to see you all around!

Balancing your writing projects

2010-12-08T21:05:00.000-08:00

What do you do when you have too many irons in the fire? In my case, it's too many writing projects while there's a bun in the oven. I have a deadline of May 20th 2011, the baby's due date, but this could be weeks earlier or later because babies aren't as precise about deadlines as editors and publishers.

As an 'aspiring writer' (the kind term for 'unpublished'), you'd think I have all the time in the world to tinker with my manuscript, right? So, so, so wrong. I work full time and have no delusions about finding time to write when there's a newborn in the house. Then after I go back to work, I'm certain my spare time will be spent playing catch up on my career as well as trying to keep up with the baby (and I want to be there as much as possible). So, with a scarcity of writing time available in the foreseeable future and heaps right now (relatively speaking), what do I do first? Here are the current projects to consider:

my first novel (it's actually my third, but the first I really have high hopes for)--currently 130,000 words, fully revised, but it's only one half of an epic fantasy, and I want to complete both parts before submitting to agents, so I can be sure I have the story exactly how I want it and nifty foreshadowing worked in, etc.
a screenplay for a 20 min short, promised to an 'aspiring independent film-maker' friend--currently outlined and at 5 pages (~1/4 done)
a collection of Native American stories, retold for modern comprehensibility, meant for a calendar and an illustrated book featuring my husband's artwork, both of which we plan to self-publish--still in the research stage, but of huge importance to my husband and his art career
blogging and social networking--but I've already cut that back so much there are probably only two or three of you out there still reading this
work-related writing, namely grants to support me when I come back from maternity leave and to fund my child's future--currently at the vague idea stage with the first deadline in February (and this is a real deadline)

Any ideas? I'm currently in the overwhelmed and paralyzed stage, so nothing is getting done.

If I can shake off this freeze reflex (it's not just fight or flight, people--some of us freeze when frightened out of our wits), then, logically, my priorities should be #5, #2, #3, #1, and still-suffering-#4.

Stupid logic.

I SO want to work on my novel right now.

Guess I'll resume staring at my to do list...

Rich and Poor

2010-11-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

I read this great post by Julie Bush and was moved to say something, alot of things, but I'll try to keep my thoughts from going off on too many tangents. A bit of background: Julie writes with raw emotion. Sometimes I steel myself before reading her stuff, knowing I'm going to feel uncomfortable, but that's what I love about her too. This time she made me feel shame, hope, and even a bit transcendent all at once. She was talking about growing up in poverty, not ghettos of South Africa poverty, but the American version, where everyone around you seems so much better off with their shiny new cars and perfect teeth, while you're too embarrassed to even let friends see your house. I know exactly how that feels. I grew up on food stamps, wearing dollar clothes from the Salvation Army, and my house was so trashed you could barely tell where the junkyard next door ended and our place began. Even if my beer-swigging, always-red-with-rage, stepfather had allowed us to bring friends home, I wouldn't have dared.

But Julie has great friends who won't let her dwell, and they told her to write about being rich. Rich and poor are states of mind. She told a story of being a struggling writer, whingeing online about being unable to afford one thing or another, and how a screenwriter in LA looked up her address and sent her $300. Six months later, she moved to Hollywood, paid him back, and has worked as a screenwriter ever since. That guy gave her the money, not because he expected to be paid back, but to show that he valued art and artists...Okay, this is when I started crying. And where I felt ashamed.

My junkyard environment was not conducive to the arts, and I haven't even mentioned to my mother that I write novels on the side. I was told I spent too much time with my head in the clouds, a dreamer. She never expected any of us kids to do anything with our lives. I think she hoped for it, making her life seem less grim in comparison. She's not the reason I went to college, got a PhD, and moved to Australia--that was all for me--but it doesn't hurt that 'I showed her'. And what I'm ashamed of is not so much fearing to talk about my writing dreams with family or colleagues, who'll think I've got my head in the clouds, but of how I talk about my husband's art.

I have always, always encouraged him to follow his dreams, to paint, to enjoy life because it's over too quickly, and I haven't minded being the chief bread winner since I graduated (I'm a patron of the arts after all!), but I never talk about it like that to others. Friends ask how my husband's degree is going, and I say great, and they ask what his plans are, and I say he hopes to teach...It's what they want to hear, but I feel dirty every time, knowing I'm lying. He's severely dyslexic, how is he going to get an education degree to go with his arts degree? He's only sold a couple of paintings to acquaintances, so we can't rely on the art either. I see other people buying houses because they have two incomes, but I can't. Deep down I'm fine with it. I know if things ever got really tough, my husband would get whatever job he could and work hard to help out. He supported me through ten years of college doing hard labor 12 hours a day, so I know he's no slacker. But I made a choice to support a dream, whether something comes of it or not, and I'm not about to tell him to give it up so I can have the same luxuries as my colleagues.

Thanks to Julie, I realized I'm letting others make me feel poor when really I am so very very rich:

I have the best husband in the world, and we're still madly in love after 21 years
I'm going to have a baby!
I have a wonderful brother, several wonderful friends, and two beautiful cats
I have a great job that allows me to support both me and my husband's dreams
I'm healthy, well fed (unlike my childhood), with a spotless house, and I never want anything but chocolates for Christmas because I already have everything I truly need
I'm a writer! To be published someday (fingers crossed)
and all those terrible, strange, beautiful experiences of childhood are fodder for the imagination--it's all good in the end

I'm rich in every way that matters, and from now on I won't be ashamed to support an artist. More people need to. Most importantly, I'm happy, and it's not 'stuff' that makes me feel that way. How about you? What makes you rich?

She's Alive!

2010-11-01T23:02:00.000-07:00

I know my last post was (geez! has it really been that long?) 3 months ago, but I'm BAAACK! Almost in time for Halloween. I've peeked at a few blogs during my absence but haven't commented (bad me), not because I don't still love all of you, or because I've given up on writing (never!), but because I've been trying to focus all my energies on the task at hand, and it's worked--I'm going to be a mummy!!! (That's the Australian version of mommy, by the way). I'm so excited... and sooo sick all the time. Why didn't anyone warn me? Oh, right, they did. After 7 long years of trying, needles, and all the rest of it, I can put up with a bit of morning sickness though.

Now that I'm no longer freaking out about every cramp and strange new sensation, I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting back into that fantasy manuscript of mine. I've been reading George R. R. Martin, so I've stopped calling mine 'epic' fantasy (you could insulate the house for winter with his novels), and I've been devoting some of those sleepless hours in the night to thinking about improving my characters' voices and motivations, so hopefully I'll make some real progress before the little one comes.

Good luck to everyone doing NaNoWrMo! And I will be shambling about my favorite blogs soon to check on you all and say 'hi'. It's so good to be back.

Just peeking out of my burrow

2010-07-20T00:58:00.000-07:00

I only have 863 more blog posts to read! That's what I get for taking two weeks holiday from the blogosphere--two weeks that turned into four or six. I've lost count.

While I've missed you all and the wonderful anecdotes, inspiring stories of writing success, and commiseration among us poor unpublished sods, it has been hugely revitalizing to get away from it all. I feel like I've been living in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains with Old Ben (my cat has a bear-sized temper sometimes), snuggled beneath a blanket with my adorable husband, leaving the cruel world outside and forgotten (except for those zillion calls from telemarketers trying to convince me to change my power company. They even trekked into the deep woods and knocked on my door. The nerve!). It's difficult to emerge from such safe hibernation, but I'm in danger of becoming a hermit, so here I am.

Timid wave.

I finished a massive re-write of 80,000 words, and now I'm 15,000 words into the second half...or the second book. I really haven't figured out where to divide my epic fantasy yet. I want to get it all down and futz with that sort of thing later. For now, I'm all about characters, story, and craft. Everything I write is fantastic or horrible, depending on which day you ask. I have glimpsed brilliance, but it's not all there yet. I'm working on it. No time to talk. I must write! Going back to my cave now...

Introverts, Extroverts, and Agents of Chaos

2010-06-08T01:11:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking: "agents of KAOS" are the bad guys in that 1960's TV series, "Get Smart". At least, that's what I would have assumed if I were you, but I'm a bit strange. I'm really talking about character.

As you might remember from my previous post, I've been busy helping with my husband's art exhibition. Opening night was last week. Since I'd organized this shindig, I couldn't hide in the corner and observe people as I normally would. This poor writer had to be in the thick of things and, you know, actually talk to people.

Some of my husband's friends from art school were the first to show up. The discussion was invigorating, covering everything from artistic technique to symbolism, culture, and even writing! I enjoyed myself and didn't want the artistic jam session to end. But some workmates arrived, and I felt obligated to give them the tour. I was talking and gesturing and trying to convey my enthusiasm for the paintings, and the whole time I felt my energy levels plummet. It wasn't late, so I couldn't blame sleep deprivation.

Finally, an old friend of mine showed up with her two children. It was great to see her, and I wanted to catch up, but her seven- and eight-year-olds weren't as interested in the paintings as she thought they'd be. I think they expected "finger painting". I volunteered to watch them while she fetched placating offerings of cocoa from the cafe downstairs. They headed straight for the stage, playing hide and seek in the curtains. Everything was under control, but then I spotted a gallery owner I'd invited. This was the important business end of things.

The kids looked fine where they were, so I darted over, grabbed my husband, and introduced him to the new arrival. My husband is a bit shy when talking about his work, so I had to get the conversation going, all the while watching the kids out of the corner of my eye. They'd discovered a keyboard I hadn't even noticed on the stage, one hooked up to the sound system with the volume on "high". I tried to ignore the first few notes, which were almost pretty, and I wondered if the boy had had piano lessons. Nope. A few raucous, jangling chords later, I had to excuse myself and charge the stage with a shushing finger to my lips. The boy paused at the intervention of adult authority, but then his sister joined in. I have younger siblings; I've babysat, but this was centre stage in the middle of an art exhibition. "Please don't do that. The sign says you're not supposed to touch..." Everything fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, I'm watching the gallery owner and my husband and hoping their conversation isn't too impaired by the cacophony.

Their mother was back, except she was more interested in the keyboard than the noise issuing from it. I think she's grown filters over her ears. She could read the "do not touch" sign, though, and in her arcane mothering manner managed to get them off the stage...but not before the boy almost broke his neck climbing a rickety stool. I think I need to do some child rearing research before my IVF treatment kicks in. The cats are well trained, nothing the threat from a squirt bottle of water won't fix, but the eight-year-old-agents-of-chaos are a bit more tricky. The girl even managed to spill her cocoa all over her mom, so my friend had to head home before we had five seconds to chat.

At least the gallery owner was oblivious to the circus (she must have kids), and my husband managed to line up an exhibition with her at the end of July. Whew!

But, after the art friends were gone, the evening really began to wear. I was stuck with people who left me feeling as drained as a blood bag in a room full of vampires. I recalled something I'd read about psychological traits: Introverts (like me and the creative art friends) get their energy from quiet time alone and then give it away when they're in groups of people. Thus, the need for a solitary walk in the park later to recharge. Extroverts (like my co-workers), however, are energized by parties and interactions with others. I'd been vampirized!

I usually don't have to worry about energy-suckers when observing from the fringes, but being in the fray made me vulnerable. Still, despite the lack of observational/note-taking time, I did learn a lot about character types. In fiction, there should be introverts, extroverts, and, especially, agents of chaos around to make a scene more interesting!

Facets of Character

2010-05-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

My weekly blog post is a bit late for several reasons (such as preparing for my husband's art exhibition), but the biggest setback was having two days eaten up by a lab retreat at Umina beach. Normally, driving one and a half hours out of the city to stay in a cabin by the beach would be a great thing, but winter is closing in (so no snorkeling) and this was a work get together--which means no free time and no fun.

I spent both days listening to talks, giving one of my own, and engaging in scientific discussions. I was forced to eat too much food, but that's another story. Afternoons were spent in group bonding, which, with icy rain pelting the tennis court, meant board games in the boss's cabin.

There's nothing like the fish out of water scenario to reveal whole new facets of people's character. Most of the group banded together for a game of "Cranium", similar to charades, except people can draw, sculpt, act, or sing the clues. It was a surprise to learn who could sing well and who couldn't even hum. One girl had a talent for guessing, getting "James Bond 'Goldeneye'" from an abstract line sketched on paper. And apparently everyone has seen the dead-body-being-dragged-around episode of "Fawlty Towers". There was lots of laughter, and the fun sides of people (who are normally severe and composed in lab) were revealed.

I was not in the "Cranium" group. Somehow, I ended up playing "Scrabble" with a bunch of Type A personalities, including my boss. I tried to tune out all the jokes and laughter behind me so I could focus on the serious business at hand--winning a game I'd never played before. Yes, odd that a writer has never played Scrabble, but I've seen it on TV, so I at least knew how to set up my tiles.

My boss is a kind and supportive person, and he helped me learn the rules and get going. Cranium is not the only game to bring out different facets in people, however. Once I did start winning, my boss's ruthless side emerged. He was constantly questioning the scorekeeper, making sure every point was properly credited to him, and he insisted that the oddest words were "in the dictionary". Whatever. I like to win, but I don't get crazy about it.

Still, luck was on my side, and I was the first to use up all my tiles, after composing "Zen" and "grout". The points were on my side too--I'd won! No, the boss quickly demanded a recount. Even upside down he could see the addition had an error. OK, he won by three points, and all was right with the world. Calm, friendly boss man was back. I had a hard time stifling my mirth but shared a few rolled eyeball looks with the scorekeeper.

I also saw a whole new side of our usually perky, resident chemist. He lost badly and refused to play again, preferring to sit cross-armed in a childish huff. I smothered my grin and slipped away to my cabin at the earliest opportunity.

There's nothing like competition to bring out people's true character. When you're writing your next story and creating protagonists, ask yourself whether they're the Cranium or Scrabble type and how they react to winning or losing. You'll understand them a whole lot better.

Donate a book!

2010-05-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

Another post already? I know, my head is swimming too, but I just wanted to link to this site where they will donate a book to a needy child, if you leave a comment describing a book that changed your life.

Go on over.
Uhm...that is all. See, this is why I only post once a week, I'm all out of ideas. Hats off to you who do it everyday!

Nature of Imagination

2010-05-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

There's nothing more inspiring than nature. Ask Frost, Walden, Thoreau... even Nietzsche (who I otherwise abhor). Whenever I need to recharge, I take a walk in the twelve acre park right across the street from where I live. There's a million breathtaking sights every day, whether it's a field of crows hunting insects in the green grass at dawn or a sky full of fruit bats soaring across an orange sunset.

As a writer, or maybe because I'm an imaginative person, I tend to anthropomorphize. Give me a teddy bear and I automatically assign him a personality (a beanie bear I got for my anniversary inspired a series of picture books for my niece). I do this with trees too. I have about six or seven favorites I pay a visit to when walking through the park or on my way to work. I don't call them "George" or share my day or anything, but I acknowledge their existence. Sort of a casual nod to acquaintances. There are wise-looking ones, beautifully shaped picture postcard-worthy ones, ones that hold a birds' nest every year, one the possum climbs at night, a long branch where a line of fruit bats dangle... So many trees, so many personalities.

Then last week I was on my way to work and ran across a scene like this:

A massive tree I'd often admired was suddenly on the ground in cedar red chunks and piles of sawdust. The workman were still sawing as I watched open-mouthed. It felt as though I'd stumbled on a murder scene. George!

I wanted to do something, but it was too late. And it's not like you can report arboricide to the police. I know there are reasons to chop a tree down--power lines, too close to a building, etc--but this made no sense. It was a waste. I mourned him for days.

I lost another tree friend last year, which was an even bigger shock at the time. He'd been around forever, and I thought he'd last forever. I take these things too hard. It would be easier to stop anthropomorphizing, but I can't. Instead, I gaze on my favorites a bit longer now, touch their bark, and imprint them to memory...and I buy more ebooks. Anything to save the lives of a few leafy friends.

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. - William Blake (1757-1827)

And don't forget to Green Your Blog !

Did you? It's easy, and the tree they plant for you just might be named George!

Too Much Drama

2010-05-10T23:49:00.000-07:00

Fiction is full of impossible things: magic, international conspiracies, convoluted murder plots in sleepy little towns, Armageddon...but at what point does it become unbelievable?

I know I can accept pretty much anything if I'm introduced slowly. When I first started watching "Buffy", I had no idea that by season 7 I'd be saying "they've averted their fifth apocalypse, and she's died twice, but this time I'm really worried because they're descending into the mouth of Hell, and she's had tearful goodbyes with both her vampire boyfriends, including the one she killed and who came back and got his own show...". Pretty crazy stuff, but I accept it because I was there for the journey.

As long as a book lets me know early on that there are monsters or whatnot, I'm prepared to go further. I don't like being plunged into the deep end.

Whenever I deal with my family, it's like being air-dropped into the middle of the pacific. My childhood was such a drama that I stopped telling the stories to my friends because I think they were starting to believe I'm someone with too much imagination (like a writer). My brother is one of the few people who knows it all--he was right there with me from the start. We share everything. So it was a shock when I call home for Mother's Day and my mom answers using a different name (that wasn't the shocking part--I didn't even ask her what that was all about as I really don't want to know), and she's too busy to talk, so she puts my sister on the phone. My sister, relishing the chaos like some demonspawn, joyously tells me that she knows something bad about our brother but can't tell. "I want to know," I say. There is one more token protest before she spits out that he's having heart problems, a hole in his valve, and the doctor says he can't even climb ladders at work anymore (he does alot of that at work too).

The deep end alright. I hastily research the subject and learn there are medications to treat it and valve replacements with high success rates (although I'm worried about how good my brother's insurance is). Armed with this information, I call him and immediately jump down his throat for not telling me. We had talked for hours on the weekend (he's one of my best friends), and he hadn't mentioned a word! With no way to hide it from me anymore, he becomes doom and gloom. He doesn't want to change his career and lifestyle, yada yada, and I say he'd better because he has a daughter to raise and a family that cares for him.

The admonishments out of the way, I get all optimistic and supportive. There are tears and "I love you's" then I hang up the phone, talk things over with my husband, then call up the computer repair people and deal with that drama (they're going to replace it finally). Next day it's my friend's mammogram scare, my injured toe, antibiotics, an early meeting to decide the course of someone's professional life... Sometimes you just want to scream "stop!" and order the whole world to take a break.

I would never put so many disjointed dramas into one story and one character's life. It's too confusing. A series, where you've had several books or tv episodes to build up the web of interactions and problems, is another matter, but even then you want your various storylines to intersect and form a greater theme.

A character can have dozens of different failed relationships, for example, but it should accomplish something or give insight into the protagonist. Why is he driving these people away? Is there a part of his psyche and upbringing that's causing him to make bad choices? Is this his real problem? (aside from the bad guy and a nuclear bomb to diffuse or whatever)

It's hard to see themes in fiction or real life (and some argue there aren't any), but I believe it's a writer's job to find them, to choose the dramas that fit into a larger, cohesive story and make sense of it all.

As for my personal story, I'd like my main character to always be there for the people she cares about and never give up, overcoming all obstacles to be a published author and showing her beloved brother his name on the acknowledgments page. Love and dedication are the themes I want in my life.

What's the main point of your story--either fictional or real? Do you think story is meant to reveal underlying themes and make sense of it all? Or, do we merely sample the chaos for entertainment, as a means to distract us from our own unsolvable dramas?

Going Luckless

2010-05-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've always been able to feel "the luck groove" as I call it. It's sensing the right time to leave the house for a walk so I avoid the rain and run into an interesting person in the park to chat to yet still make it to breakfast before they stop serving at 10:30. I thrive on that feeling. It's how I win pool games. But I also know there's a universal law that luck never holds. That's why I've lost as many pool games as I've won.

When I feel the needle bump out of the groove and hear that screech like fingernails on chalkboard (those of you old enough to have owned a turntable and seen chalkboards will know what I mean), I choose to lay low. I putter and carry on with activities set in motion when the luck was there. I've been wrestling with a new computer, setting up a home network, promoting my husband's art exhibition, researching IVF, learning to read guitar Tab, and troubleshooting my Western blots at work, but the hardest thing has been keeping my writing and revisions from grinding to a halt. I know its not working. Everything I write is crap.

My writing is too important to me to rely on luck, moods, or the weather. I want to perform whether I'm in a comfy chair with my favorite coffee mug and writing tiara or scribbling with a leaky pen on a bumpy bus ride. I've been good about pressing on through the ups and downs for the last two years (since I fully committed myself to this life), but the last month I've stumbled. I'm not feeling the luck or much of anything. The writing mood starts to build then drifts away. I keep going with the edits, but now everything I've done before looks like it needs to be redone. Have I accomplished anything? Am I the Sisyphus of writing?

I work on my manuscript for at least an hour everyday, aiming for 500 new or revised words. It's agony, but I do it (most of the time). I'm too stubborn to give up. And now, here I am posting again! I've redecorated the blog and put up a photo without a speck of cat hair in sight (it took a while to find one). I'm feeling the first trickles of returning luck, so I hope the writing fever comes back too. If not, I'll learn to do without, because, even when the writing aches, I'm happier with it than without it.

What about you? How do you live without the luck groove? What keeps you going when the writing doesn't work? Are you an optimist or just plain stubborn?

The Anti-Query Contest

2010-04-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've been query letter writing (in an effort to delay revisions as long as possible), and I've stumbled across some helpful resources: Elana Johnson did a terrific and motivating blog series; Nathan Bransford has lots of useful tips; and Query Shark isn't afraid to tell you what agents really think.

I, however, am not an expert on query writing. I'm working on it. If I figure it out, I'll let you know. So why am I posting on this topic? While fiddling with my query, I got side-tracked again and had heaps of fun writing the opposite of a good query: The Anti-Query. Behold...

***

Dear Agent [I didn't bother to look up your name so imagine your name here]:

A Ninja with a dark past, a tortured soul who has tortured many souls but not soles, because Ninjas don't wear shoes, though sometimes they have those funny flats with the cloth bit that goes between the toes; I don't know what it's called, but you must know what I'm talking about, because everyone knows about Ninjas.
Then he goes riding real fast through the desert on a motorcycle (I don't know how he got there, but I'll work it out later) with zombies. Yeah, zombies! 'Cause it's cool. And he loves Megan Fox. He's dating her. Well, he has her poster, which is like dating her, 'cause she's there whenever he has sex. The book's not written yet, but I expect it will be about 10 pages, maybe 12. The ninja's name is Johnny or Bob or he might be a woman. Johnette? Bobette? I don't know. I'm only halfway through the book--that's SIX pages, which is lots of writing. There's no robots in it though. Robots are stupid...unless they're sexy robots. I haven't worked out the ending, but he either gets the girl or a bigger poster.
BIO: I am a 50 year old professor of socio-economic anthropology at Harvard, so I know nothing about Ninjas, and I have never written fiction before, because it's for stupid people, but I do have a poster of Megan Fox, and how hard can it be? I've attached all 6 pages to this email. I will stay online until you get back to me. Buy my book or burn in lakes of fire! I know where you live :[

***

So...I'm pretty sure I know what NOT to do. Just so everyone else can have a bit of query writing fun and to celebrate my having almost 50 followers (wow! thanks guys!), I'll make it a contest. Write the worst query you can and either leave a link to your blog post in comments or email me your entry to lorelclayton(at)hotmail(dot)com -- one winner will receive a fabulous prize! It will be good, I promise.

Now, just to prove that my query writing skills really aren't that awful, here's what I have so far for my last manuscript (not the one I'm working on now). I don't think it's publishable, but I thought I could use it for practice...

Dear [well researched agent's name here]:

Eva Thorne is a human refugee in a city of rude elves and matriarchal dwarfs. After the detective she tries to hire slams the door in her face, she is forced to investigate her brother’s murder on her own. She kicks off her high heels and delves into the muck of Highcrowne society in search of the killer. As a Thorne, she has a lot of muck to deal with. Her family has a sinister history and many enemies. What she discovers brings her up against a powerful slave-trading cartel, dark gods, and, worst of all, her twin sister.

Both her family and the elven authorities want her hushed. She has no money and no magic of her own with which to combat them, but she does have an illegally-freed slave, a senile nanny, and an ex-almost-boyfriend on her side. Even when she loses her job and almost loses her head in a sword fight on the same night, she isn’t deterred. It’s when the nanny goes missing that she really starts to worry.

“Tangle of Thornes” is an 80,000 word stand alone fantasy detective novel. The first five pages and a synopsis are included below this email. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

***
Any suggestions for improving it will be welcomed with open arms and grateful cheek kisses (the sterile internet kind). And don't forget to enter the contest!

Blogfest blood

2010-04-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

I bet you weren't expecting to hear from me again so soon? I try to post about once a week, but I'm back with a bit of bloodshed for Anne Riley's Murder Scene Blogfest. Australia is a day ahead of most of the Western world, so I get to post now! Head on over to Anne's blog "tomorrow" and see everyone else's contributions. They'll be great.

Sorry to disappoint anyone looking for gore, but I'm a bit squeamish about that stuff and tend to show the aftermath in my writing rather than the murder itself. This is a scene from my very first manuscript (so be kind) and I'd love to hear your comments. Here goes:

Shawn felt a premonitory chill. He moved in front of Lori and turned the knob on the door. It wasn’t locked. He slowly pushed it open.

“Maggie?” Lori called.

He put a finger to his lips to silence her.
What was he doing? He had the urge to run away; instead he kept moving forward. He crept into the hall, wincing as floorboards creaked. He looked into the living room where Maggie’s easel sat. She spent most days working in front of it or tending her garden. She was in front of the easel now, sitting in her rocker. He didn’t relax. There was something wrong.

He inched toward her, looking around the room for any sign of what had put him on edge. Then he noticed the plastic ties that bound her arms to the chair. There was no movement. He remembered what had happened to Barney, and he couldn’t go any closer.

Lori reached her grandmother’s side, and her eyes widened. Shawn waited for her scream but heard tape ripping, followed by Maggie’s pained gasp. She was alive. He hurried to them and saw the bruises on the old woman’s wrists and ankles where the ties dug in. Her head lolled weakly to the side, mouth red where Lori had torn off the gag.

“Dave.” Tears glistened in Maggie’s eyes.

He noticed the chair was angled away from the easel, facing the dining room. He looked through the doorway and saw horror laid out on the formal table. Bright red blood, lots of blood staining the white lace, and the remnants of a person. He looked away before it could sink in. Bile rose in his throat. He saw Maggie’s tormented stare and knew she had been forced to watch as her friend was tortured and killed. He turned her chair away.

“I can’t take them off!” Lori struggled with the plastic ties, growing more frustrated. She kept her back to the dining room; she must have caught a glimpse as well. “I need something sharp.”

“Just a second.” Shawn headed for the kitchen, glad to get some distance from that room.

He opened a drawer and searched for something to cut with. He found a paring knife. As his hand grasped the handle, he felt that chill again. He turned around.
A figure dressed in black jeans, windbreaker, gloves and ski mask stood there, calmly watching him. Shawn jumped and pressed his back against the cabinet. The killer was still here.

Thanks everyone who stopped by! Hope to see you later!

It's so frustrating...

2010-04-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

It's so frustrating when a main character is passive, boring and dragging the whole book down with them. The novel I'm reading now never shows the resolution of a conflict. The girl runs away and her protector dispatches the villain off camera. Argh! Why is she even the main character? I'd rather be viewing events through his eyes.

In Nancy Kress's book "Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint", she says you have to decide who you're going to tell the story through. I dismissed her advice at first--I start with a great idea and a main character and I can't *gasp* change it!--but I've seen many instances where it would've been better to axe the main and use the sidekick or the opponent as the focus of the story.

The main protagonist should drive events, make the choices that affect how everything turns out, and preferably be strong. In Stephen King's "On Writing" he talks about how Carrie was never his favorite character because she was so meek and passive most of the time. It was a very successful book, but I don't think it would have been if she hadn't transformed into the evil, scary, exactor-of-vengeance she became at the end. Nowadays, most people's attention spans are shorter (as we are overwhelmed with books, TV and movie choices) and I doubt few people want to wait until the end before the character is interesting. I know I've decided to never buy another book by the author I'm reading now, no matter how it turns out. There's been too much agony along the way.

My feelings on this subject have affected my own writing lately. I've noted where a character behaves more passively than I'd like. I also found one instance where my main was saved by somebody else! That won't do. I'm now rewriting it so, even though people who care about him are trying to help, they can't, and he has to find a way to get himself out of hot water. I think it will make for a more engaging story, so it's worth the effort.

What about you? What really annoys you in books? Do you often find a secondary character more interesting than the main? If you're a writer, have you ever thought about making someone else the main protagonist?

Be Happy Right Now

2010-03-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

I remember when I first started reading blogs, I came across a post by Nathan Bransford that warned writers (who tend to dream about the future as much as they dream about the imaginary lives of their fictional characters) to make life their priority and not sacrifice work or family for their writing. At the time, I thought: what's with the serious attitude? Are you trying to scare us fledgling writers off? You telling us we shouldn't hold out for a dream that may never happen? Well, I'm not listening to you buddy. I want this, and I'm not giving up!

I'm still not giving up--don't worry, that's not the object of this post--but I now understand where he was coming from. Writing and learning to write better takes a tremendous amount of energy and spare time (even time you can't really spare) and there are no guarantees you'll achieve authordom, let alone the success you imagine. I've often been tempted to slack off at work to sneak in a bit of writing time, and I even gave up a sunny potential-snorkeling day last weekend to work on revisions. But I'm learning to balance my writing obsession with my life.

I still scribble book notes at 3 AM like any other writer, because I'm willing to sacrifice sleep, but I'm not willing to sacrifice time with my husband. I read, go to the movies, snorkel (I spent the whole day at the beach a week ago), and I'm about to take a few guitar lessons, not to mention the IVF I'm planning later this year after seven years of trying for a baby...The point is, life has to go on, even while you're writing, and you have to be happy right this minute if you have any hope of being happy in the future.

Natalie Whipple (in her interview at Elana Johnson's blog) said, "You have to make the choice to live as presently as possible, and be okay with things not happening when you hope they will." This is a girl who's fairly successful, represented by Nathan Bransford, and she still goes through down moods where she's frustrated with the slow pace of building a writing career. I love hearing this sort of honesty from writers. I want to know it's not all sunshine and rainbows ahead. I need to know what to expect. I say, "Bring it on", but I know the way I've got to deal with it is to have a happy life on the side.

There is plenty of scientific evidence (wonderfully summarised for lay audiences on TED--I hope that's the right link) that we all have a preset happiness level. One man, a year after winning a $350 million dollar lottery, was just as happy as a paraplegic a year after his accident. What this means to me is I won't be any more content a year after I'm published than I am right now. Therefore, I must enjoy the process of writing, learning, and getting there. Happiness starts right now.

Are you happy? Is your writing stressing you out or are other aspects of your life to blame? Is there anything you plan to do to improve the balance?

-------------------------------

Finally, a shout out to DL Hammons at Cruising Altitude for making me feel happy and loved with the Prolific Blogger Award!

I'm passing it on to some truly wonderful (and prolific) bloggers whose energy and up beat attitude I admire: Elizabeth at Mystery Writing is Murder; Dezmond at Hollywood Spy; Mason Canyon at Thoughts in Progress; and Elana Johnson. Congrats guys! Hope I made you a teensy bit happier ?

Character

2010-03-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've encountered some great posts on characters (All Write with Coffee, A Woman's Write...and others that I can't find again, sorry!). I've ended up typing paragraphs on the subject in people's comments, so I decided this might be a better forum for my long windedness.

A topic that comes up again and again is how much of your self do you put into your characters? I know one of my beta readers is always trying to figure out which character is "me". The answer, of course, is all of them. Even the villains. I'm not talking superficial traits, appearance, habits, etc. (there may or may not be some of that there)-- I mean emotions. You have to feel it to write it.

I often imagine myself with a character's history and present dire circumstances and ask, "How would I feel? What would I do?" Sometimes (like with bad guys that are way meaner than me or main characters that aren't as cool and James Bond-like as I'd imagine myself to be in their shoes) I have to do some method acting. I don't wander around the room muttering like a mad villain or anything, but I use my own experiences of anger or frustration to imagine myself as that person. Same goes for characters experiencing joy or sadness. Nothing like the memory of my old St. Bernard, Bernie, to get me sobbing like...well a girl. Once you're "in character" it's much easier to write their dialogue and actions. That's when they do things that surprise you. It's a great feeling.

Paradoxically, the most important thing a fictional character needs is honesty. Interesting characters do and say the things we hide away in the deepest parts of our subconscious. When someone comes to work wearing a hideous purple shirt adorned with giant polka dots, most of us will keep quiet to avoid being rude, maybe even grasp for a compliment. An interesting character, however, might blurt out, "My god! You're not quitting to join the circus are you? We're so far behind schedule even you're needed." That's a nasty example. Few heroes can get away with saying our worst thoughts.

Main characters need an even deeper honesty. They have to be self aware and show the reader all those internal doubts, fears, hopes, and dreams that the writer and all humanity share. How can you not feel sympathy and care about the fate of a character who has the same fears you do? A woman's child is stolen from their front yard and she's frantically knocking on every neighbor's door asking if they've seen him; you're so angry with your spouse you scream at them until they leave, and then they die in a car wreck and it's all your fault...I could go on, but those examples were getting me depressed. How about a teenager with Down's syndrome who learns flower arranging and gets a job at a local florist where he meets a girl that doesn't look at him with pity but with interest? You may not know what it's like to be disabled, but you do know what it feels like to accomplish something that seemed impossible or to experience the first stirrings of romance. The honesty of those experiences and how they are processed in your character's mind are what makes your story matter to the reader.

The problem with dredging up too much real emotion and honesty from your own experiences is that sometimes your characters come out alike; they're too you. That's why it's important to have different backstories and behaviors so you can hide that underlying "you-ness". Having a multiple personality disorder really helps with this :) Otherwise, you can borrow tidbits from other people's lives, friends, relatives, observation at the mall, people in the newspaper.... It's never a good idea to use their details entirely (a friend might recognize themselves and not like what you did with the character--ok, in my case, it was a relative), rather mix things up a bit. I have this scientist friend who truly believes that gummy bears count as a fruit because they have 10% fruit juice. I thought she was a logical person. Sometimes truth is more interesting than anything you could think up, so use it. However, I wouldn't make my gummy-bear loving character a scientist but maybe a health nut. Someone always exercising and trying the latest organic diets, so when the gummy bear thing comes up it's out of left field. Much more interesting.

Another thing (which I constantly struggle with, by the way, so any suggestions are much appreciated) your character needs in order to be a distinctive individual is a voice. This can be how they speak in dialogue, the length of sentences, vocabulary, rhythm etc., but, when it comes to a POV character, it's also how they think in their head. With some characters, I have no problem writing in a distinctive narrative voice, others end up sounding like me. The only thing I've discovered so far to help with this is to write the character's thoughts down (like a journal) in first person, even if the book is 3rd person. I make them tell me about their life until I start to hear their voice in my head.

Well, that's it. That's all I've got on this subject. What's your approach to writing characters? As a reader, what makes a protagonist sympathetic? And do any of you struggle with voice as much as I do?

Guess what I've been up to...

2010-03-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

Writing! Can you believe it? After months of having to devote extra effort to that pesky day job, I've finally got some free time for the fun stuff. I was so worried my muse would abandon me, but she didn't! As soon as I sat down for a full hour on Saturday, 1200 words poured out. They weren't bad, either. Much better than the sentences and bits of paragraphs I'd gotten down during the Dark Times (aka when I was grant writing). I've also been revising the first half of my book and dealing with those frustrating comments I left for myself: "Needs more threat"; "SHOW don't tell, stupid"; "should give this character a name..." and so on.

I'm 65,000 words in, which feels like alot, but it will be around 130,000 in the end. They don't call it epic fantasy for nothing. I also want to complete the second book in the series, so I know I can finish the story. That means another 130,000 words to go. Plus, I'm working on revisions for my last book and hoping to query Australian agents soon (I should say 'agent' as there aren't many open to new fantasy authors). AND I'm helping my husband get his dissertation on 'Art and Dyslexia' in shape for academic publication. Oh yeah, I thought it about time I did a blog post too.

Can someone out there please help me get organized? I'm feeling overwhelmed with everything that I want to do. Likely a side effect of being constrained with work for so long. Should I finish the revisions of the last book first and get querying, or should I plow ahead with the current epic while the vision is still fresh in my mind?

As for blogging, I have been speed reading people's posts, if not always commenting, but I thought it about time I stepped out of the shadows. Michele at Southern City Mysteries gave me the Beautiful Blogger Award several days ago, and I've been remiss in passing it on. Part of the reason was that I felt so flattered. I thought I needed to live up to the award, so I scribbled notes on a couple of grand topics like memoirs and forgiveness but didn't post any of them (at least not yet). In the end, I settled on the above humble progress report.

To finish fulfilling the requirements of the award, here are seven "interesting" things about me:

I'm quick to anger and quick to forgive

I know all of Darth Vader's lines in Episodes IV-VI

Episodes I-III were SO disappointing

I've become proficient at recognizing dialogue, even without quote marks, as my new Kindle often leaves them out for some reason

Some colleagues were telling ghost stories about weird sounds in the building at night and one guy, in serious creepy storyteller mode, said, "...and then I heard Lorel's laugh, but she was no where to be seen..." And they all shuddered! So, apparently, I have a ghostly laugh.

I wanted to be a veterinarian and did some work study at a clinic, but decided I liked animals too much to see them in pain every day

same goes for why I decided not to become a medical doctor

I pass the award on to some seriously beautiful bloggers: Portio Sisco, whose posts often reflect just how I feel; Niki at Wool'n'Nuts who brightens my day with her beautiful animal photos; Jemi at Just Jemi who is so positive and seems like the sort of teacher I would have adored when I was a child; Heather at Heather's Odyssey, my long lost twin (the blonde version); and finally Crystal at Crystal Clear Proofing who is trying so hard to help all us writers with our poor grammar and spelling--a Herculean effort! I would pass this on to Michele too, who is also a beautiful blogger, but she gave it to me so that's against the rules!

Until next time...Maybe I'll post something about memoirs after all?

Compliments

2010-03-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

Critiques are what we need, what will actually help us become better writers, but we can all use the occasional compliment too.

I feel energized today because my boss told me my grant proposal was the best written and best thought out series of experiments to ever come out of his lab! I suspect he's been taking management classes on how to motivate his employees, but it worked. The slog doesn't seem so bad today and the sun is shining a little brighter (it also took the sting out of him saying that I need to get more papers published).

Artists (be they writers or painters or whatever) thrive on compliments. Maybe it's because we're more in tune with our emotions. I have to critique my husband's paintings all the time, and when I tell him he's done something good--better yet if some random person on the street tells him the painting is good--then he's soaring and far more productive for months afterward. If, however, I have to admit that he didn't quite pull something off then he's in the doll drums for at least a week before he can get the motivation to go back and fix it.

Writers have to put up with a lot of criticism too (for our own good), and we wouldn't get any better without it, but there's nothing like a small compliment here and there. When one of my lovely followers says something nice in comments, I feel great and want to blog and write more. I think that's part of the reason my writing confidence has grown--this wonderful community of compassionate people. It's also why I try to compliment other people whenever I can, spread the love. We know we need criticism, and we expect it when we send something off to test readers or discuss our work in a critique group, but sometimes we just need someone to find one good thing in what we do and say "good job". With that, we can gather the energy to keep going and do better.

So, I wanted to say to all you struggling writers out there (published, unpublished, thinking about it...) good job! Keep trying, don't give up, and hold onto what you love, that's the most important thing.

Has anyone else received a compliment lately? Do you try to find something good to say to people even if you have to criticize some other part of their work? What keeps you going?

The Truth

2010-03-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

The best lies (and fiction) have an element of truth. I think this is what they mean by bringing honesty to your writing and the whole "write what you know" thing. The characters and events may be slightly altered or entirely made up, but the emotions are real, inspired by your own life or elicited by imagining yourself in the same situation as your protagonists.

For example, right now I'm at my workplace, on a Saturday, picking away at by grant in a dark little room when I just know the sun is shining outside. This (combined with the fact that I've been in caves before) makes it very easy for me to imagine an old time miner stuck underground all day, chipping away at hard stone, trying to find some valuable gem that will reverse his fortune and keep his family fed in the winter.

Since I don't want to leave you all in the dark like me (or that poor miner), I will now cast light on all those lies I had so much fun telling in my last post. The truth (in random order and aided by pics my husband enjoyed putting together) is:

#4: I saw a sea lion swallowed by a killer whale.... Lie. My husband saw this, but I've never laid eyes on a whale in the wild. I'll give partial credit to all of you who picked this one, since it is the truth, just not mine.

#5: I won $10K on Deal or No Deal and bought a Mazda2....Lie. While I do love my bright green Mazda2, I didn't win the money to pay for it on a game show. Actually, I still haven't paid for it, so maybe I should see if I can become a contestant?

#2: I was bitten by a shark...Lie. While I wouldn't mind having a cool scar, I prefer to avoid pain. I did see a small shark while snorkeling once; I freaked out and swam the opposite direction as fast as I could (which wasn't as fast as I'd have liked).

#7: My mother chases after rich men...Lie. I wish she had that good of taste! It wouldn't have taken me ten years to pay off my college loans.

#6: I thought I could get by with ancient Greek when travelling in Greece...Lie. I listened to language tapes ahead of time and carried a modern Greek phrasebook. However, there was a girl in my ancient Greek class who thought she could get an easy 'A' because she spoke Greek. There was a lot she had to unlearn, so she had a harder time than the rest of us and dropped the class after a few weeks.

#1: I was Homecoming Queen...Lie. My dyslexic husband was a first string, inside linebacker when he was in High School (in America), but I never did his homework, and I didn't get to accompany him to Homecoming because I didn't go to high school.

Therefore, #3, "I Was a Child Prodigy" is the correct answer. I'm actually quite embarrassed by this. People assume I'm smart and don't make mistakes (which is utterly wrong), but I think of it more as being precocious. I learned to read and studied like everyone else, I just did it earlier. I think I peaked earlier too. Nowadays it feels like my brain is full and can't hold anymore. I have to write everything down or forget it. I worry this means I'm getting dementia earlier too!

So, congratulations Crystal! You were the only one to guess it (although you said it disbelievingly).

Thanks everyone for your encouragement. With a 20% success rate, I need all the luck I can get with my grant writing, so this prematurely demented miner is getting back to work...See ya!

First words out of my mouth...and they're lies

2010-03-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

I have one week before my scientific grant is due at the university research office. One week. You know what I have so far? A two page outline.

Can you hear my heart beating really loud right now?

Moment of panic over. I'll be fine. There's tons of time, and the content of the outline and the gazillion research articles I read formulating it were the hard parts. The writing is easy.

I wish fiction writing was the same. Fiction writers not only have to come up with some great ideas and a believable plot, they have to weave a spell of words that draws the reader in and doesn't let them go until the last page. You can't simply say stuff; you have to say it well. On the upside, fiction is basically lying, which is tons of fun! Thus, I am giddy with delight at receiving the Creative Writer award from the sweet and lovely Niki over at Wool'n'Nuts. Even with a grant deadline looming, I've decided to come up for air and have a little fun.

The rules of this reward require me to post the pic (check), provide a link to the blog of the person who gave it to me (check--and thanks Niki!), pass it on to six other creative bloggers (will do in a second), and, the best part, tell six outrageous lies and one truth about myself. Here I am rubbing my hands with anticipation...

Six Lies, One Truth:

1. I was Homecoming Queen. I think it was because, somehow, I ended up dating the quarterback. He said he liked me for me, but I suspect it had something to do with him being dyslexic and in need of constant homework help.

2. I was bitten by a shark while snorkeling. It was a tiny one, and I lived of course, but I have a scar on my right ankle.

3. I skipped high school entirely and started college at the age of 14. I got lots of local media attention...until a 10 year old started his pre-law degree. Oh, the woe of a child prodigy--we grow up and younger prodigies steal our thunder.

4. I was standing by my dad's boat when, not three metres away, a killer whale rose onto the edge of the dock and swallowed a sunbathing sea lion whole! (btw this sea lion was bigger than me)

5. I won $10K on "Deal or No Deal" and used it to buy my bright green Mazda2 (I love that car).

6. When travelling through Greece, I thought I'd be able to pick up the language no problem; afterall, I'd studied ancient Greek in college. Turns out they're totally different languages. Thank goodness everyone spoke English.

7. My mother was drawn to rich men, marrying one after another, so I was always shipped off to my grandmother's so as not to cramp her style. At least she paid for college.

Can you guess which one was true?

Now, to pass it on to six other creative writers:

Crystal at Crystal Clear Proofing

Corra From the Desk of a Writer

Heather at Heather's Odyssey

Elizabeth at Mystery Writing is Murder

Michele at Southern City Mysteries

Tabitha at Through My Eyes

Tune in next time to learn whether Lorel's grant will be submitted in time, and if there is any truth to her lies...(It creeps me out referring to myself in 3rd person, so, don't worry, I won't do it again)

Writing Prompts and Over the Top!

2010-02-10T18:28:00.001-08:00

Michele at Southern City Mysteries has begun this diabolical new series called Writing Prompt Wednesdays. The prompt was "How tides come crashing...". These things get into my head and I have to write something. It doesn't matter that I don't have time, that I should be doing a million other things, but I can't help myself. So here's the two bits I came up with.

First thing that popped into my head:

Green water crashed against the stone that had once crowned a mountain. Waves wore it down, tides moving in and out, commanded by the moon, thousands of days; thousands of years…until the strange symbol carved into the basalt vanished.
When the last mark was scrubbed clean by sand, the stone cracked, cutting into the Earth, slicing her to bedrock. Darkness wedged its way out, night without stars--and the tides stopped.

That was kinda bleh. I lost interest and went with this instead:

I love the feel of ocean tugging at my legs and crumbling the sand beneath my feet. It wants me to give up the land and come out into the deep to play, like a child begging me to see her toys. I can never say no.

I dive beneath the next wave and swim past muscled guys tossing a ball. It rolls my way, and I pause long enough to toss it back. They smile enticingly, but the ocean is more insistent, sending water up my nose for ignoring her.

I keep going, arms slicing a path through swells, until I’m as deep as the surfers who straddle their boards waiting for the right moment to catch a ride. I’m right where I want to be, where no one can see me. I always choose a beach without lifeguards. As soon as someone notices my head go under at the edge of dark blue water, they freak out, and would-be-heroes push their kayaks into the waves to search for me. They freak out even more when I don’t come up again.

I wish I was a mermaid. People would see a flash of rainbow scales, a flip of my tail then shake their heads, certain they had mistaken a dolphin for a girl. But dolphins don’t have scales. So, in their secret places they would thrill, believing for an instant that fairy tales are real, that Ariel can get her prince. They forget that in the real story her only choice was the agony of daggers in her legs or the agony of a dagger in the heart of her lover. My choice is worse than that.

I can’t become sea foam and live on in the songs of my sisters. The ocean is my sister, and we have a cruel father. No, my choice is not who should die, but who--among all those billions of beautiful, amazing, innocent people--will live.

Ok. Done now. Thank you for the exercise, Michele, but I'm going to have to put hands over my eyes when I'm reading Wednesday blogs from now on, so I don't get sucked in. Just kidding. It's a terrific idea, and I'll be back!

My other item of business is a beautiful and very very appreciated award from Crystal at Crystal Clear Proofing. I've always wanted this one! Thank you! You must read her blog if you want to know more about grammar, punctuation and all that important stuff. And, if you're a writer, you had better want to know.

For this award, I have to answer the following questions with one word. Here goes:

Your Hair? - brunette

Your Favorite Food? - tacos

Your Hobby? - reading

Your Fear? - spiders

Your pets? - none (I am ruled by two cats, though)

Something You Aren't? - male

Where Did You Grow Up? - everywhere

Your Life? - lucky

Your Mood? - energized

Your Favorite Color? - blue

Now, the reason it took me a couple of days to pass this on is that I really wanted to put some thought into my picks and try not to give it to people who already have it (but I fear I may have failed there). The very deserving winners are...

Dezmond - Hollywood Spy

Lynette - Chatterbox Chit Chat

Jemi - Just Jemi

Congrats you guys! And thanks again, Crystal!

Sugar Doll Award

2010-02-07T17:04:00.000-08:00

The lovely Southern belle, Michele, over at Southern City Mysteries gave me the Sugar Doll award. Thank you! It requires me to say ten things about myself:

1. I love Southern accents and slip into one whenever I think about the good 'ol US of A. I have family in Georgia and Arkansas, and I copy my stepdad's accent whenever I'm on the phone to him. I can't help it, and I'm not trying to be rude. He never says anything, so maybe he doesn't notice. That leads me to...

2. I'm bad at accents. If anyone's ever seen "Don't Tell Her It's Me", I'm as awful as Steve Guttenberg was at the start of that movie.

3. I was raised by my great grandmother, so I say "hold your horses" and "are you some kinda wise guy?" like those phrases are still in style.

4. When I was three, I used an old baby carriage to build a house for my cats. When I ran to my grandma saying "Come see my cat house!", she was not amused. I never understood until years later when I learned a cathouse was a brothel .

5. Also because of my grandma, I love the Andrew Sisters and Patsy Cline.

6. I never liked the Lawrence Welk show.

7. I was forbidden to watch The Addams Family. Apparently, the way Gomez spoke French and kissed Mortisha's arm was "filthy".

8. I watched it anyway when Grandma was busy in the other room.

9. My Grandma, Ruth, was the greatest parent and role model anyone could ever have had. She wouldn't even kill a spider, and she nursed people as well as wild animals. I have a photo somewhere of her bottle-feeding a white-spotted fawn.

10. I still miss her.

All right, wiping my eyes now. Back to business. I'm passing the Sugar Doll award on to Elizabeth Spann Craig, Tabitha, Anne Riley, Chase, and Heather. Congrats!

I'd rather be here reading blogs and posting, but I must now drag my sorry, summer cold suffering self back to work (I know alliterations are bad, but I couldn't resist. All the S's go with my sniffles).

Confidence

2010-02-01T22:07:00.000-08:00

I just got the notes on my second manuscript back from Maz, my favorite test reader (she's my fave cause she says nice things without asking for a bribe). I'm 40,000 words into my third book, so I'd forgotten all about that last one. It was amazing, flicking through 300 pages that I barely remembered writing (it's not because I was Hemingway-intoxicated the whole time, I simply tend to focus on the present and forget the past until it makes an appearance).

Maz said, we (can't forget to mention my co-writer husband) had "gained much more confidence as writers.... The writing felt freer and flowed a bit more naturally. I also got the sense you were having more fun with the whole process." A reader can see all that in a book? Yikes! It feels like my soul really is laid bare, and I'm beginning to understand J.D. Salinger's desire to hide his manuscripts in a cupboard somewhere.

That last manuscript was tons of fun to write, with a sassy heroine uncovering a mystery in a fantasy setting of my own devising. It makes me worry a bit about my current WIP, though. I've tried to push myself further, and sometimes I'm nervous about being able to meet my own expectations. I hope that won't translate into writing that makes it seem I'm trying too hard? I don't want the prose to feel forced, but I want to do the best I can to achieve that gleaming vision of the perfect book I see in my head.

When someone gets published (I don't like to say 'if'), they've often written five or six books before that. Or so I've read. Of course, there are some lucky people that make it their first time out. I'm beginning to think it's all about confidence and finding your voice as a writer. Some do that quicker than others.

How about you? How many manuscripts do you have stashed away? How many did it take you to get published? If you're unpublished, like me, have you found your voice yet? Do you feel confident and does that come out in your prose?

As Promised

2010-01-28T17:29:00.000-08:00

Crystal at Crystal Clear Proofing made a new award, which I am happy to accept! It's for cat lovers, and it's easy to pass on, so I can fulfill my promise to do so right away without battling Blogger's hyperlink tool.

If you adore your furry friend (even when they spit up hairballs on the carpet rather than the tile no matter how many times you try to teach them) then take the award and display it proudly!

Strange Customs

2010-01-27T16:52:00.000-08:00

I've long known that scientists are more superstitious than sailors, but I had to share this tidbit, which had me laughing even in the midst of grant writing purgatory.

Cloning is a molecular biology term, which basically means taking a bit of DNA, a gene we're interested in studying, and pasting it into a handy dandy tool called a plasmid. A plasmid is another piece of DNA, but one that we know all about and can control. We then use the plasmid to put our gene of interest into a new situation and observe what happens. This is how we discover if a gene is cancer causing: We put it in normal cells donated from a piece of skin or wherever and see if too much of the gene causes the normal cells to start behaving like a cancer. That's the just of it anyway.

Cloning is one of the most fundamental techniques, but not the simplest. It was the first thing I learned when working in a lab during my last year of college, and it took me an entire year to get it to work. A year. Despite the fact that 20 years have passed since then and all manner of new methods have been developed, cloning is still a pain. It is as fickle and capricious as the ocean and no amount of scientific exactness and planning can guarantee all goes smoothly. Thus, the elusive and unnamed "Cloning Gods" are often invoked.

In Seattle, towards the end of my PhD, my supervisor gave us all seashell necklaces from Hawaii to aid our cloning efforts. There was always the smile and wink about "magic" and "luck", couching it with "it can't hurt"--we were all logical, educated persons after all--but beneath the joking mask was a touch of real belief. You laugh off the Cloning Gods openly but privately whisper, "I didn't mean it." One of my colleagues even wore an aluminium foil hat during sensitive procedures to cancel out "negative thought waves". All in fun. Yeah. Right.

Today, I witnessed a slightly disturbing never-before-seen ritual among members of the secretive Molecular Biology tribe. Not even National Geographic has previously described these customs, so feel privileged. In the throes of cloning woe, a student and two post-docs oversaw the ritual beheading of Barbie as a sacrifice. There was lots of laughter, but many of us said, "Isn't that going a bit far?" --"My cloning wasn't working," the student replied, as though that explained everything. Yes, my anthropologically-inclined readers, ritual sacrifice did not vanish when the blood-drenched steps of the Aztec pyramids were swallowed by jungle centuries ago; it is alive and well in the sterile halls of academia.

There must be some way of using this in my writing? Perhaps an ancient, Dan Brown-esque, cult operating in a pharmaceutical company? Possible. Possible. I'll make a note and stick it in a file somewhere for later. Oh well, back to work. Thank goodness I have no cloning to do.

I Love Awards, Really

2010-01-26T17:33:00.000-08:00

I've received two blog awards in the last couple of weeks from amazingly talented writers (Thank you Michele and Anne!!! ), who also happen to be beautiful people, and I'm not just saying that because they gave me an award. Check out their blogs if you don't believe me, or even if you do--they're worth your time.

But I haven't done my homework. I haven't been visiting new blogs that I can link to and fulfill my award duties. I haven't even been writing for my own blog! Therefore, I will likely be passing these awards on to people who've already won them. I know there are plenty of other wonderful blogs out there that haven't received an award, but I haven't discovered you yet. I'm sorry.

For the Bliss (Happy 101) Award I must list ten things that make me happy:

my husband
dark chocolate
writing
the utter relaxation of snorkelling and exploring an underwater world
take off in a plane, especially if I'm going someplace new
getting lost in a good book, game or DVD boxed set marathon
kittens
chocolate
learning something new
did I mention chocolate yet?

Now to pass it along to some cupcake-sweet people:

1. I know you just got this one Tabitha, but you deserve it for your beautiful posts
2. Anne, because I sense you are both a tough cookie and a sweetheart, and I like both!

3. I surmise from the manly blue colour scheme of Alan's blog that he won't be displaying this pink cupcake, but he's getting it anyway

4. Crystal gets this for making punctuation painless

5. I've recently discovered Lynnette's blog, but I'm enjoying her posts and this definitely will go with her colour scheme

6. Stephanie just finished her book. Congrats to her! She's probably feeling blissful right now

7. This one's for M.J. Here's hoping she'll come back soon and post some more

8. Emma for her infectious optimism and energy

9. I wanted Dezmond to get an award so he knows I really do read his posts every day, even though I don't comment (bad me)

10. Elizabeth really is the sweetest

Finally, the second, Silver Lining Award, which I have long coveted and am so grateful to get, goes to...

See? That was fun. I love passing on awards and plugging other people's blogs...I just don't like making hyperlinks (I know I must of messed up some because cntrl-v was on the fritz, so let me know and I'll fix it). Next time I promise to post about an award as soon as I get. I'll be good, I swear. Please don't leave me off of your award lists!

As I was writing this, I discovered Emma Michaels gave me an award (Thank you!!), and as promised I'm passing it along right this second.

1. Southern City Mysteries
2. Let's Try This Again
3. The Lipstick Chronicles
4. Terry's Place
5. Organized Chaos

My editing window freaked out on me a couple of times, and I lost my link to Blogger, but the lists are done and all has ended well. I have three new awards that I'm giddy over, and I hope I made some more blogger's just as pleased as me. Thanks again Michele, Anne and Emma, and congrats everyone!

Now, I really, really need to get back to work (bad me for blogging on a Thursday when I should be doing science)...

Writing is writing...Right?

2010-01-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

My already deficient blogging routine is going to take a big hit over the next couple of months as I am forced *shudder* to write a scientific grant to fund my research for the next few years.

These NHMRC (the acronym is boring enough, you don't want to know the full name believe me) grant applications are about 30 pages long. No sweat for a writer, huh? But they aren't plot-driven pages brimming over with fascinating characters and zesty dialogue--they are hypotheses, aims, technical approaches, time lines and materials required. The most exciting thing I can look forward to writing is the 'expected outcomes' section. This is where I say how wonderful my idea is and that it will (somewhere down the line in 10-15 years, maybe 20) contribute to the treatment of cancer (maybe). Never ever be definite in science writing: always couch statements with may, perhaps, possibly, if as predicted...

Other ways in which grant writing is the polar opposite of good writing:

1. use lots of jargon, abbreviations and acronyms

2. avoid all adjectives

3. no 1st or 3rd person--use the royal 'we'

4. do not describe the setting (the readers assume everything will take place in a lab)

5. give away the end at the start--never surprise your reader

6. include pictures and diagrams that you cobbled together in Photoshop

7. this is your one chance to write in future tense (we will extract and compare DNA from the cell lines of interest and this may enable us to determine if there is a difference between immortalised cells using the ALT or Tel mechanism of telomere maintenance...) ASLEEP YET?

8. make up new verbs based on jargon: hybridise, polyadenylate, PCR amplify...

9. couldn't think of anything but I like lists with ten points

10. use passive voice whenever possible (cells will be treated...)

I pray my writing skill recovers quickly from this immersion in a nightmare pool of technobabble. I plan to meet my goal of 500 words per day on my current wip regardless, but I'm not sure my brain will change gears easily. Methinks there will be much editing ahead. Thank goodness I worked on my manuscript over the holidays (I'm at 20,000 words, yay!) and came up with a decent outline to guide me during this difficult time.

Wish me luck!

2009

2009-12-31T00:42:00.000-08:00

Summing up the last year seems to be a blogging tradition, so I shall bow to tradition:

I wrote two books in 2009, more than fulfilling my resolution from the previous year.

I hoped to query more agents (only 4 sent out--which were rejected. I decided to retrench before embarrassing myself further), but I altered my plan when I realized I should write more. I think my books are pretty good, but I know they can be better.

I started this blog and met 10 wonderful followers (thank you guys!!) as well as discovered a rich blogosphere that I could access for support and friendship. Probably the BEST discovery of 2009.

My husband finished his Masters degree. I'm so proud of him (off the topic of writing but had to mention it).

I told my boss that I didn't want to run my own lab (it would have left me no time for writing or anything else), which was very scary to admit out loud.

For 2010, I plan to write at least two more books, get good enough to find an agent, and make even more blogging friends.

I hope you fulfilled all your resolutions (at least the ones that mattered) and have a Happy New Year!

What It's All About

2009-12-24T22:51:00.001-08:00

I had a difficult time finding my Christmas spirit this year. I'm not sure why. Fear of the uncertain future and the writer's path I've chosen? One more year gone by without starting a family of my own? I'm the most optimistic person I know, so I've patiently waited for this disquiet to pass.

It happened slowly: a Christmas card from the aunt I haven't seen in a decade cheerily talking about her horses as if a day has not gone by that I haven't seen her; a heartfelt Christmas wish sent by text from a friend across town; me wondering if the Christmas gift for my brother on the other side of the world has arrived yet; drawing green holly leaves and red berries on white paper with brilliant markers...Slowly, that warm glow grew in my heart and spread to my head, to my fingers and toes, and now I feel like I'm floating, like all things are possible. Now, I remember what this holiday is all about--love.

May you all know it, whether you celebrate Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Frau Holle, or nothing at all! Happy Holidays!

Dirty Little Secret

2009-12-22T19:05:00.000-08:00

I'm on holidays now (yay for me!), and, in addition to writing, I've had time to indulge in pre-Christmas sales and revel in a vice of mine--DVD watching. In particular, I couldn't resist buying an entire series for $20 per season (that's Australian dollars, which translates to about $17 U.S. See why I couldn't resist?). Now, this is the embarrassing bit--the series I bought is "Dawson's Creek". Yes, I love a teenage soap. When you stop laughing, I'll go on.

Now, I consider my love of the Creek my dirty little secret because of the way others, men in particular, react. I'm normally the chick who awes geeks with her encyclopedic knowledge of D&D, Warcraft and video games. I was buying "Borderlands" as a gift for my husband and chatting with the guy at EB games about how it compares to Fallout 3. There was nothing he could tell me that I didn't already know from my research, like the groundbreaking random weapon generator (which, personally, I don't think holds a candle to the devilishly brilliant AI developed for "Galactic Civilizations" but that's beside the point). I absorb knowledge without even wanting to sometimes. I don't play video games much, but when I do, it's usually "Sims", where I can create characters with different personalities and watch how they interact (the writer in me at work). Now, as soon as I asked the EB guy for the release date of the latest Sims add on, his smile vanished and I got the "you are such a girl" look. Sims is a girl's game. I got the same look when I asked for the last season of Dawson's Creek at my local DVD store. I HATE that look.

Allow me a moment to defend my forbidden love. First of all, the Creek has THE best vocabulary of any series I've ever watched. I'd never seen 'apotheosis' used in a sentence before and Dawson did it brilliantly. I know they're teenagers with a bigger vocabulary than most adults, but that's how I felt when I was a teenager--I thought I knew it all and was SO much smarter than everyone around me. Wisdom comes when you realize how little you truly know. Second, the show's writers were self-aware enough to make fun of themselves about the language and melodrama. I like self awareness. Third, the show tackled some great concepts (hidden cleverly behind shallow dramas to pull in the audience numbers) like platonic love, forgiveness and our self-destructive natures. When Dawson's mom cheated on her ideal husband and perfect life, she said it was because it was too perfect: "I wanted to want." Wanting to want is a demon I deal with myself. Fourth, I've mentioned I'm a sucker for romance, and I couldn't resist Pacey and Joey, especially since Pacey is like my husband (the cool slacker who is a hopeless romantic at heart). Finally, the reason I wanted to watch it again was the great ending. I love stories with sad endings (there was a bit of that in there too), but happy endings make me want to come back again and again to re-watch or re-read. The Creek has a happy ending.

Now, despite my irrefutable arguments in favor of Dawson's Creek as a storytelling vehicle, I am prepared for the jibes. Go ahead (not that I think any of you wonderful readers would say anything bad, but I support freedom of speech). Better yet, can you find sublime story elements in the basest entertainments? Do you learn from everything you encounter (be it Shakespeare or Dawson's Creek) or find wisdom in the strangest places? I'd like to hear about it.

Sunny day, good food...bad mood

2009-12-13T16:03:00.000-08:00

We had our work Christmas party this weekend, and, well, I was bored to tears. Normally, I love the holidays and the opportunity to relax and chat over a plastic cup of soda, but I was in a 'mood' this time. You know, one of those irrational, every-little-thing-annoys-you moods. This being Australia, we had the party at Centennial Park surrounded by palm trees, ibis birds, and black swans on the lake. I loved the view and strolling with my husband, but this was supposed to be a party, so I went back to the clump of people standing around talking about work--on my SATURDAY.

I wasn't enjoying any of the conversations, and whenever I tried to shift the topic to something a little more interesting, like NOT work, my efforts were resisted. I gave up and lay back on the picnic blanket with my husband, watching the sun move across a cloudless blue sky, wishing I was at the beach--without my workmates.

I tried to enjoy the food, but kept watching to make sure people were eating the coconut and cream cake I baked. Then it was time for the Kris Kringle. My boss has a long tradition of hosting 'The Present Game' where everyone takes a number out of a hat, with the lowest number picking a present out of the pile first. Everyone afterwards then has a choice of picking a wrapped gift or stealing (which is seldom done, since it's so impolite) the present of their choice from someone else. It's best to have the highest number, so you have more gifts to choose from. I had '3'. The one responsible for the hat draw had the highest number. Hmm... Of course this person, who is my least favorite, even on a good-mood day, stole my cinnamon scented candles. I love cinnamon. He stole the candles I got last Christmas too. My husband noticed my clenched fists and teeth-grinding, but I managed not to say or do anything I'd regret on Monday.

The agony eventually ended, and, as I was packing up the car to go snorkeling and wring some fun out of the day, one sweet person (a boyfriend of a friend) sincerely complimented me on the cake. I wished I'd chatted with him more, wished I hadn't been so uptight and had complimented other people's food more, and wished I hadn't felt so angry over candles.

It's amazing how your mood can color every perception and turn even a beautiful picnic into a chore. To relate this to writing, mood and perception is a powerful tool, especially when writing in first person. The point of view character is not necessarily seeing things clearly, and this can be used to hide information (like the cake-lover at a party) from the reader until you want them to stumble across it.

As for real life, my New Year's resolution is to focus on the good in every situation, whether I want to be there or not.

Partners

2009-12-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

My classically-trained artist husband only recently discovered the joys of cartooning. As you can see, he did a great pic of me at work, but it's highly inaccurate. I'm not talking about the big head (though sometimes I do have one) or the red shoes (I so wish I owned) or the typewriter (which I haven't used since 1992). The biggest mistake in this drawing is that he left himself out of the picture.

Clayton is my writing partner as well as my emotional support. He's dyslexic and can't read, but he loves books as much as I do. I read most things aloud to him, including blogs, and, with the rise of text-to-speech software and audiobooks, which he can listen to while painting, he's becoming more well-read than me. I still haven't gotten to the Time Traveller's Wife.

He doesn't understand the first thing about punctuation, but he has an ear for the sound of words, and he's insanely creative. We brainstorm ideas off each other, discuss characters, backstory... Sometimes he comes up with the inciting idea or a plot point, or vice versa. We both realize when something isn't working, and he'll often wake up from a dream with a solution for me. I do the nitty gritty work of putting words on the page, but he helps make them something better. I haven't joined a critique group yet, but I'm not writing alone, and that helps get me through the tough spots.

What about you? Do you work with a writing partner? Or, is there someone in your life who supports and inspires you? How do they affect your writing?

Passing Along the Honesty

2009-12-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

I've already thanked Michele for my Honest Scrap Award, but it doesn't hurt to say thanks again. Thanks! Now to follow the rules and tell you 10 true things about me:

1. I was once socially oblivious. For years, whenever someone asked me about my weekend, I'd tell them. After much practice, I learned to ask, "And how was your weekend?" I've improved so much that now I can listen to my friends, offer support, and not bring up my own self-involved worries until asked.

I like to use Lorel Clayton as my writing identity rather than Lorel Colgin, because if you google my real name you get 10 pages of mostly science-related mumbo-jumbo.

I've lived in Idaho, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and Sydney Australia.

I have 2 passports, which is very 'James Bond' and cool.

I'm almost ambidextrous (can do everything except write with my left)

I'm not afraid of heights, love 'em actually. But boats make me nauseous and eventually comatose.

I audited Ancient Greek as a break from molecular biology in grad school (does that put me at the top of every nerd-ometer or what?)

I'm a sucker for romance and action movies, though I usually don't like the subjects mixed. Also, I played with both Barbie and GI Joe as a child. I wonder if this is related to my pseudo-ambidexterity?

I have a level 80 human rogue in World of Warcraft and not by choice. It's the only way I've been able to stay in touch with my video-game obsessed brother over the last couple of years.

I own a monographed pool cue :)

Now, the hard part. Who can I pass the award along to that doesn't already have it (I'm thinking of you Elizabeth)? I need to get out there in cyberspace more.

Justine Larbalestier's blog--She writes YA, but she's honest, entertaining and her book 'Liar' is so good I wish I'd written it.

The Kill Zone--The musings of these thriller writers can be educational and make you paranoid about a career in writing, even if you're on the NY Times Bestseller list.

Terry's Place--Interesting anecdotes, writing advice, and her storyboards are awesome. She's inspired me to give it a try.

John August--It's screenplays and not novels, but there are some great thoughts about storytelling in general. It's also where I heard about Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (I think. My brain is melting so I'm not sure)

Query Shark--THE place to learn about writing queries. It's enough to frighten you away from ever approaching an agent.

That's it. Like I said, I need to read more blogs and make more cyber-friends...and ask them about their weekend :)

Golly Gee, I better blog now

2009-12-03T16:41:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Michele for saying such nice things about this site! She and Elizabeth have kept the chirping of crickets at bay as I establish my blog cred. Michele's a fellow traveller on the road to being published, and Elizabeth is a sweet, down to earth, published writer who generously passes along her hard won wisdom.

I could go on gushing about these great ladies forever, but they've also inspired me to take a bit of time away from novel writing and blog. Here goes...

READING AND RE-READING

I have hundreds of books stacked double thick on hardwood shelves all around my living room. I read a lot. I even list reading as my top 'hobby' on Facebook or wherever else these things are asked (I'm an utter nerd, I know). I can lend them, but I can never give a book away (or *gasp!* throw one away) because I like to re-read. Some books stand the test of time (all my long-out-of-print Walter Jon Williams stuff for example), but others I've outgrown. Things you enjoyed in your youth can make you cringe now (I once loved Tom Hanks' Bachelor Party, but Cast Away is more my style these days). John August recently posted on this, which got me thinking about how my literary tastes have matured:

I'm less patient. Once able to endure chapters of description, I now prefer stuff to happen!

Character is key. The books I remember decades later are the ones with unique, powerful characters. I identify with different aspects of them now, but I still identify.

My interests have broadened. Used to be I had obsessions where I'd read only Nancy Drew, or Dean Koontz, or only sci-fi or fantasy. Now I'm willing to read anything that's good.

Story isn't as important. I used to equate 'good' with an interesting story, but that's only part of it. I want the experience along the way to be enjoyable, every word, every scene. I want it to draw me in.

What does this mean for my own writing? I'm reading more and maturing faster. And I get harder on myself everyday. I thought my first manuscript was great. I had outside readers who loved it, and I gave myself a few weeks to cool off before editing. Voila done! Right. Another finished manuscript later, I go back to the first and cringe. I can do so much better than even a year ago. Fiddling and improving could go on forever, I know. So, I'm setting a deadline. Once I've written 5 'practice' manuscripts, I'm going to actively push the best towards publication and keep 'practicing' in the mean time. Two down, three to go.

Now, how have your tastes changed and what's your Bachelor Party?

Style Hopping

2009-12-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

I'm someone who gets bored easily. Don't get me wrong, I can lay back and enjoy a candlelit bath and a good book with the best of them, but I need action. I compose huge 'to do' lists and run around like a chicken with its head cut off, because I want the satisfaction of accomplishment. Getting in a morning jog and feeding ducks on the river before I blog and go to work, followed by cooking a great meal, watching an hour of a fav TV show then writing, is my idea of a day well spent. Even my holidays are jam-packed.

The key to a great day for me is variety. It's wonderful if I can spend ten hours writing, but if I don't get in some quality time with my husband (who I'm soppily in love with even after 20 years) and go for a walk, at least, then I feel antsy. Months and years are hurtling by at a frightening pace, but I've noticed that days brimming with variety seem to go on forever. I can slow down time this way. Time isn't measured by numbers on a clock but by experiences.

In terms of my writing, I get equally antsy. I like to try new styles, approaches and ideas. Stretching myself brings a feeling of accomplishment. I've finished two manuscripts, and I'm about 5,000 words into a third. They're each different:

Example #1: The fear he felt around his real dad was very different from the fear he felt around Jason. No telling when it would start. Sometimes, it started right at the beginning, sometimes on the drive home. This time it was after the sun set and a red moon rose into the sky.
“You have to be careful, Shawn. You remember what I said? You’re special.”

“Yeah, I remember.” He kept his voice even, playing along. If he didn’t argue, the episodes passed more quickly.

Example #2: There were three reasons I dreaded this meeting. First, despite the fact that Duane and my brother were best friends, Duane and I…"clashed" would be the polite way of putting it. I was seldom polite, so I called it "hating his guts". Second, during the disbursement of my brother’s will, I discovered that Duane was given guardianship of my five year old nephew. Uncle Ulric was contesting it--the boy was his only remaining male heir--and he would win of course, but I didn’t want to get in the middle, especially when I considered Duane and Uncle equally evil. Although, my sister could teach them both a thing or two.

Example #3: The six year old hung over the side of the boat and trailed his hand in placid water. Beneath the surface, a white form rose into the light. Dead eyes stared at the boy, and he stared back. Ralen’s throat was caked with fire. He cupped his palm to capture the yellowish water. So thirsty. He put the liquid on his tongue but it burned even worse than the air, and he spit it out again. The mouth of the corpse was open now, laughing.

***

The only good thing about being unpublished is that I have the freedom to indulge my desire for variety. It seems that once you're 'out there' you're branded. Your name has to mean something to readers; they want to know what to expect. All right, I'd be happy if anyone remembered my name, let alone thought of it as a brand. Still, it's easier to market yourself if you're consistent. If you must hop styles, as I do for my own sanity, what's the best way to work it into a writing career? Pseudonyms? Don't even dream about it until you're established? If you have to choose one genre/style to focus on, how do you decide? How can this headless chicken choose a niche?

Keep It Short

2009-11-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

I tend to be long winded when I'm musing (thus my usual essay length posts). Today, in keeping with the topic, I will be brief (-er).

A colleague of mine was interviewed by the local news station yesterday and asked to explain his new discovery. He is an MD and notorious in the lab for an inability to say anything plain. I watched the poor reporter grow more and more frustrated as she attempted to wring one usable sentence out of him. Finally, she said, "That's not a news story, it's a bunch of words!"

Words alone do not make a story. In fact, words can get in the way. My colleague was trying to convey every nuance, unwilling to trim it down to the essentials, and nothing was getting across.

My first drafts are burdened with useless adjectives, adverbs, "just" and so on. I'm learning to prune things (though my new problem is finding a balance between conciseness and voice--another topic for another day). "The First Five Pages" by Noah Lukeman, as well as many wonderful blog posts, have been a huge help to me. Lukeman points out that, instead of enhancing, adjectives and adverbs weaken the subject. If you must use an adjective, instead of stringing them together you should choose one, preferably an unusual one.

Descriptions are where I offend the most. Here's an example from a first draft:

She liked his straight, black hair, a raven’s wing, which was just a little too
long but nicely framed his handsome features. She liked his dark brown eyes too,
how they magnetically drew her in.

I've improved it a bit since then:

She liked his raven’s wing of hair, a little too long, which fell shyly
over dark eyes.

There is so much to learn, some days I feel overwhelmed, and some days I feel like a hack. Cool-headed editing can be a blow to the ego. How do you deal with word soup, and how do you keep up your confidence?

Familiar or Exotic?

2009-11-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

I was sweating in 40 C heat yesterday (that's 104 F--I looked it up) with 50% humidity and very high UV and thinking how exotic Sydney still seems to me. It's a world away from the small town in Idaho where I grew up. Even ignoring the differences between a city of 3 million and 30,000, there's almost no mountains to speak of (well, compared to the Rockies) and ocean everywhere. I went snorkeling this morning and saw fish I'd expect to find in an aquarium (touched a giant Blue Grouper-wow!), yet I had never seen the ocean before I was 13. Sydneysiders find that unbelievable: they grew up in the water.

I'm often asked about what it's like to see snow-capped mountains, or better yet, wake up to find snow on the lawn. People are interested in the strangest things. I can go on and on about the cuttlefish I saw in the harbour, but people will say, "You should go to the Great Barrier Reef. Now, that's something." I bet, but it's not right outside my door (meaning a short drive--I don't have a beach house, unfortunately). Travel seems to make an experience special, yet we often ignore the wonders all around us.

I've lived in Australia for over a decade, but I've never been to the Reef or Ayer's Rock (I've met plenty of natives who haven't been either). Likewise, when I was in Seattle I never went up in the Space Needle, and I still have visited the Empire State Building, despite several business trips to New York. Going back to America is going home, so I don't do many touristy things. Plenty of Australians find it exotic, though. I'm always surprised to hear someone excitedly planning their holiday to Las Vegas (I lived in Nevada for several years, so not interesting to me), or--and this is the best one--someone hoping to visit a trailer park and catch sight of people off "Jerry Springer". I've been asked dozens of times if such people exist, and I must sadly nod and say, 'Yes.'

So, when writing a novel, is it better to have a mundane or an exotic setting? My instant answer is 'exotic'. But, the more I think about it, the more I see it's all relative. I recently completed Larsson's "Millenium Trilogy" (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc) and loved it. I'd heard that Salander was an amazing character, and 'they' were right. She stole the show. Part of the reason I stayed engaged in the non-Salander sections was the setting--Sweden. The strange names, unfamiliar justice system, weather, bizarre food, all of it kept me hooked (well, the plot was pretty good too). I kept wondering, though, what do Swedes think of the book? Are there inaccuracies only a local would spot? Are Salander's holidays in sunny locals meant to give Swedish readers a taste of the exotic?

So, should you write what you know? Surely, someone somewhere will find it fascinating. Or, should you crank up your imagination and use a setting that's exciting and exotic to you? What do you think?

Werewolves, Vampires and the Bandwagon

2009-11-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

With a certain werewolf/vampire movie coming out this week, based on an incredibly successful book series, you really have to wonder why is it so popular? It's not a new phenomenon. Werewolf and, especially, vampire stories are resurrected (couldn't help myself) every few years. Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Interview with the Vampire, Underworld... So, why won't they die? (sorry, couldn't help myself again)

I've loved monster movies and creepy stories since I was a child. I particularly remember reading a ghost story where a man fell in love with a mysterious woman who wore a red velvet ribbon around her neck. She would never answer his questions about it and made him swear not to touch it. Overwhelmed with curiosity one night, he removed the ribbon while she was sleeping--and her head fell off. Yuck. That's probably why it stuck with me. I also loved Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ghost, The Mummy, Frankenstein... but why aren't any of them as powerful as werewolves and vampires?

Some people think it's the sexiness, and there are a lot of books with vampire lovers (I'm not complaining, I like to read plenty of them), but that's not really it. It's psychology, and they're archetypes. I do not claim to be an expert, but even to this amateur psychologist it's easy to see why the werewolf's bestial nature is appealing. It is a human made animal again, free to unleash his emotions and desires without thought of consequences. Without thought is the part that's appealing. No guilt. Of course, they're usually the monster of the story for this reason--this lack of self control ultimately has deadly consequences.

Vampires are even more complex. They are a mixture of life (passion and sensuality) and death (well, because they're dead). They are the dark animus or anima, seducing us into danger and ultimately to the grave. You think people would want to run the other way rather than fall in love with them. I don't think vampire lovers are suicidal, though. I think the appeal lies in the personification of Death as an immortal creature, preserved outside of time, eternally young. Embracing the vampire is conquering death and our fears of it. Whoa...and I just thought it was because Edward was hot :)

Of course, when something is successful, you (in this case I mean 'I') might feel the urge to hop on the bandwagon. Vampire books are selling to publishers like hotcakes (as in McDonald's hotcakes, which I can't resist either). Others want to predict the next trend and get in on the ground floor. There's been some hilarious discussion on what will be 'the next vampire'. Zombies are growing in popularity (I think it's because they represent the mindless destruction, wars and chaos everywhere in modern life), but I don't think they will endure as well as the toothy creatures. Zombies are a commentary on culture, just as Frankenstein was a commentary on science and humanity's tendency to play God. They are powerful stories, but people really care more about themselves. Sometimes, we are creatures of logic warring with our emotions (werewolves) or adolescents approaching adulthood, faced with the terror of sexuality and ultimately growing older (vampires). Thus, these stories are universal.

Write one if you feel like it (I don't mean 'you' in particular are thinking of it...more if 'one' wanted to) , but it might be better to keep in mind the deeper concepts these creatures represent and somehow put that into your own story (don't ask me how, I'm working on it). Oh, and a cute guy never hurts.

Curiosity

2009-11-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

I was chatting with my boss's PA the other day, and she wondered how we scientists keep motivated through failed experiments and frustrations. What drives us? I had to say curiosity. Just as a child will ask why until your brain explodes, a scientist asks a never ending series of whys and hows. It occurred to me that this is just as true for writers.

Some of these questions pertain to the real world, like how does a nuclear reactor work so I can have my main character stop the bad guys from blowing it up? Though, my question today was how do they get those thin orange tubes in place to switch a two lane road into a three lane to accommodate heavy morning traffic? Does someone put them there? Do they pop up automatically? I may have a character who works on the road crew someday, who knows. (by the way, I haven't figured it out yet and it's driving me crazy)

Other questions a writer can ask are what if and what's the motivation. What if that road crew guy decided to mess with those lane markings late one stormy night and cause a massive traffic accident? Why would he do that? Is he a terrorist, a disgruntled divorcee, what?

My favorite question is, what will you do when I do this! I love putting my characters into a new situation and watching what unfolds. They surprise me alot, and that's the best feeling. This bizarre 'channeling' phenomenon is an entirely different topic that I won't go into here, but I think it's akin to having a bunch of imaginary friends.

As with a two year old, in science the predominant question is why. Why do we age? Why do we get cancer? More often, it's why didn't that experiment work? Some times there are no answers, at least not with the current techniques and technologies available. So, most of the time I prefer to ask when can I find some time to write?

Art and science are perfect soul mates. That must be the reason I married an artist. [see curious cat painting above and insert shameless plug for husband's website]

This is actually fun

2009-11-08T22:37:00.000-08:00

I spent four hours on Sunday rewriting Chapter 1 of my first novel, and I enjoyed it. I'd been putting off the revisions for ages, wanting to learn more first and dreading going back over old territory. It seems much more enticing to move on to new stories. A writer, however, re-writes. So, I disciplined myself and had at it. I knew the characters better this time around, wasn't afraid to get into the action and ditch some backstory (or save it for later), and had loads of fun. I took a few new directions, which will send ripples into the rest of the manuscript, so I have much editing ahead of me, but it was worth it. I can make this thing better, stronger, faster...

I would have spent the whole day writing, but I made the mistake of taking a break for dinner and watching my recordings of "Glee". It was good. I hadn't seen it before, but I was instantly hooked and had a monster marathon until midnight. To feel less guilty, I called it "research" on high school students. Everything feeds your writing :) Tonight I have to actually write, however. After I watch one more episode.

Holiday Over

2009-11-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

I love Halloween. It's the jack-o-lanterns, the creepy decorations, scary movies, and the candy of course. Now, as the pumpkin starts to look a little shrivelled, I'm suffering my usual post holiday blues. Fortunately, I have my revisions to distract me from it.

I gave myself a week to cool off before reading the latest wip in its entirety. I managed it in a day, and there were few changes needed that I could see. That worries me. Am I objective enough? My co-writer husband was more involved in this project than the last one, so I'm not sure I can entirely trust his judgement either. Test readers are needed asap methinks.

One thing I did notice was that my protagonist comes off a bit snarly. She is, which is what I like about her, but will others like her? There are plenty of fans of "House", so I can hope. I've considered nicing her up a bit, but I don't want to end up with a bland main character, especially worrisome for a first person detective story. Besides, she needs a lot of fire to stand up to the even more snarly people around her. I'm going to keep it as is and, once again, see what my test readers think.

In the mean time, there are a few small edits to make and a new book to work on. I want to really challenge myself with the next one, not only in terms of story and characterization--I want to push my prose. I'm a lean writer, and I hate too many adjectives, but I want to try something literary, something sumptuous. Don't worry, I'm not turning into a snob. Genre writing is my first love, but I'm giving myself an education here, and I can't be too easy on myself. If I do get published and manage to make a career of it, I'm sure I'll have deadlines and promotion to worry about, so this is my best chance to experiment and improve my skill.

Done psyching myself up now. I can do this. Back to work I go. And, with any luck, Thanksgiving will be here before I know it!

An International Mess

2009-10-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Now that I've finished my second book, I'm thinking about new query letters. My problem is, which country should I focus on? I'm from America, and my first book was set in Nevada, so it was obvious that I approach American agents for that one. (I haven't given up on it, by the way, just doing some retrenching and revision before I send out more queries). My second book, however, affords some additional opportunities. It's a fantasy detective story that isn't so clearly American, so I could approach publishers here in Australia (there are few literary agents in this country so it's still the norm to approach publishers) or I could try agents/publishers in the UK, since Australia falls within the Commonwealth. What to do?

This brings up another conundrum I encounter when writing: spelling. I work on two different computers, one set to American English the other to Australian. I'm constantly getting my wires crossed and mish-mashing words. I wrote some screenplays for practice with the BBC writer's room in mind, so those were obviously done with British spelling. "Seer" was done in American, the whole Nevada thing made it simpler to stay in that mindset, but my latest book is the mish mash. I suppose I'll have to do two versions and make sure I send the right one to whoever (if anyone) is interested--America, Australia or the UK.

You should hear my messed up accent (Southern parents, raised all over the Western U.S., college in Seattle where I picked up some Canadianisms, now 12 years in Australia)--I'm even worse off than my manuscript.

Whew!

2009-10-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

Big relief when I finished the first draft of my new manuscript this weekend. I felt so light, I hadn't realized there was a 20 tonne weight on my back until it was gone. My first book was not a fluke. I may be a long way from being published, and I still have lots to learn, but at least I know I have the stamina to keep writing.

There's more editing to be done, plus I'm going back to work on the last manuscript now that I've a learned a bit more from my reading, but for the moment I'm savoring the accomplishment.

Now that I'm no longer looking at the keyboard, I see that Halloween is almost here. My favorite holiday! There are decorations to go up, pumpkins to be bought and cookies to be baked. Off I go to live a little.

Dust Storms and DVDs

2009-09-23T18:46:00.001-07:00

I had organized ages ago to take yesterday off from work. I had some errands to run in the middle of the week and thought I'd celebrate spring in Sydney with a picnic. I have a favorite spot beneath a big tree next to the river, and it also happens to be in the middle of gardens with lush wisteria, cherry blossoms and poppies filling the air with wonderful scents and delighting the eye with colours. It's a yearly ritual for me and my husband, enjoying 30C heat, watching the water dragons and skinks, the birds and butterflies...

Of course this year there was a freak dust storm carrying red dirt from the Outback across the entire city. At dawn the sky was orange and the air so choked with dust, I had to shut the windows. I couldn't even see the neighbor's houses across the street! Thus, my plans for the day were revised, and we watched a stack of rented DVDs instead. The standout of the batch was "7 Pounds".

I'm a big fan of Will Smith, and that movie was probably his best. My husband and I have been studying writing too much lately--in the first two minutes of the film, he figured out the plot and I figured out the backstory. My husband and I really are a great team. It's not that it was obvious, but it was so brilliant we hoped we were right. I'm glad we were. Even though we guessed what was happening, it didn't detract from our enjoyment one bit. If anything, each scene carried an extra significance; we understood the subtext. As a consequence, I was in tears most of the time.

The point I want to make is that it's important to have a great story, an original plot, a twist...but, just in case your audience is spoiled or guesses what's going to happen, make the journey, the telling of that story so good they don't care that they're not surprised. Quality throughout--don't rely on gimmicks.

Still Writing

2009-09-23T18:13:00.000-07:00

I'm very proud that since I dedicated myself to writing [as opposed to a lifelong dabbling in the art] a little over a year ago, my enthusiasm hasn't waned. I'm 200 pages into my new book, and so far it's easier than the last one. Yet, I'm pushing myself to learn new techniques, try different styles and expand my horizons. I've always wanted to write novels, but I have to give credit to screenwriting for inspiring me to do it.

One day, thinking about how I've reached the pinnacle of my current career in science (as far as I'm willing to go anyway) and how frustrated I am with it overall, I started thinking about what else I could do with my life. What would give me my enthusiasm back? I ran across an inspirational article that asked, "What have you always wanted to do? Maybe that's why you've been put on this earth." I instantly knew, for me, the answer was writing. Yet, I had half a dozen stories stalled at the 10-30 page mark, one overly long sci-fi novel written in my teens that was justifiably rejected dozens of times, and I didn't know how I was going to turn that 'calling' into a reality.

My other love is movies and television (not just any television:I'm a DVD watcher and, unable to endure commercials, haven't sat through normal programming for about ten years). Then I had an honest to god epiphany--people write for movies and TV don't they? This inspired me to write a couple of fan fics in teleplay format. I starting reading more on the subject and heard mention of "The Screenwriter's Bible." I devoured it, and the book turned my whole story telling life around. I wrote a movie length screenplay, three episodes of a series of my own conception...and even though I haven't tried to sell any of it yet, considering them all writing exercises, I discovered that I had learned about plotting and telling a complete story. I now applied this to a manuscript that had been sitting around for years and finished it. Admittedly, the novel took a lot longer to complete than a screenplay (I can write an hour long drama episode in a week), but I now had the confidence to keep at it.

Since then, I've read dozens of books on writing everything from novels to plays, as well as screenplays, and I truly believe that someday, with practice and persistence, I will have a novel published. I may even get a screenplay optioned, who knows? Thank you "Screenwriter's Bible"!

Some people start with short stories, but for me it was screenplays. They taught me to focus on visuals, on story in its purest form, uncluttered by prose, and that practice has also helped make dialogue one of my personal strong points. In screenwriting, brevity and clarity and story are everything, and dialogue is the only place where the author's actual words will be conveyed to an audience. Therefore, dialogue has to have a punch, but it has to further the story, chracterizations, etc or be cut. It's wonderful.

Now that I'm focused on novels, I'm learning to flesh out my prose and to take advantage of the ability to hear a character's thoughts, to convey sensations such as smell and touch, areas where screenplays are limited. There is so much to learn and try and do, and I really feel that I'm on the right path.

True Blood

2009-08-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

This post is way off topic, but I'm currently obsessed with HBO's True Blood and must talk about it somewhere. I fell in love with the show upon first watching, read the books in between seasons and came to adore Eric, so when they started building the Eric/Sookie/Bill triangle this year, I got embarrassingly excited. "I Will Rise Up" and "New World in My View" have me itching to write about it. Can I just say, Eric dream scenes = good.

There's the whole debate among fans (and this question is prominent in the books as well) as to whether Sookie's feelings for Eric are false, because they originated after drinking his blood. I must weigh in, saying, first of all, there were some good sparks before the whole bullet sucking scene, and finally--it doesn't matter. As Eric said, 'It's done'. No closing Pandora's box, no going back; the feelings are there irrelevant of where they originated.

I think this is a good point to make when talking about character motivations. Sometimes, things just are, and it has nothing to do with how someone was treated by their mother, a need for attention or whatever. Shit happens. Chaos, random chance, whatever, is a huge factor in the world and is commonly overlooked in our need for meaning. Life is static without change, mutation...and moments of unintelligible upheaval can provide powerful moments in drama: the car crash, the freak storm, the terrorist attack...These chaotic elements mould our characters and make them more interesting, as long as we don't over-analyse and take away their power. These moments show us another aspect of reality: the scary, uncontrollable one. And truly seeing reality through fiction = good.

I have digressed from my digression, so I want to end with one last huff about True Blood. For all those 'it's only the blood talking!' anti-Eric naysayers, ponder this: Sookie's attraction to Bill was influenced by drinking his blood (though there was some sparks even before that); ditto with Eric; more importantly, if the TV series follows the books, Sookie is a faerie and her very presence, let alone her blood, is an aphrodesiac to vampires. She is 'artificially' influencing them as much as they are her! (I put 'artificially' in quotes because it's not: it's only one aspect of her physical charm, same as being a vampire is for the men)

Thus, my conclusion is that Sookie, Eric and Bill are all on a level playing field; they're all using supernatural lures, which cancels that factor out. The chaotic bit is irrelevant, and, in the end, it will come down to each of the characters' choices. Fooled you, huh? We do have free will.

Hibernation

2009-08-20T19:55:00.000-07:00

Winter is losing its grasp on Oz. I slept with the window open last night, ah fresh air! It also feels like I'm coming out of hibernation, recovering from writing my first book, related synopses, query letters etc. It has been anything but a restful sleep, however. I've been reading books on the first five pages (and other topics) to get some ideas for trapping one of those snarly, Tasmanian devil-like agents. All that stuff is percolating in my subconscious along with a chapter 1 rewrite, notes jumping out onto the page of their own accord from time to time.

In order to let my subconscious do its work, I've plowed ahead with my second book and I'm now 70 pages in. Almost 1/3 of the way through the first draft, wow. Sometimes I think it's writing itself. It's very different from my first book, which was supernatural suspense. This one's fantasy detective, with a man-hating/man-loving heroine, and I'm reveling in the snappy dialogue, fast pace and custom built world. There's elves and dwarfs and a few other recognisable species--to make it fun--but all with my own twist. I even have some scenes in mind for another, very different, epic fantasy to follow this one.

I've read that, on average, it is an author's 5th or 6th book that finally gets published. I'm not just going to spew out crap to meet that quota, though--I want everything I write to be the best it can be. It's the only way to learn. Nose going back to the grindstone now...

Onward

2009-07-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

There's still lots of work to do to get my first manuscript in tip top shape with a dynamite query letter and synopsis to back it up. Nevertheless, I don't want this writing thing to be a one off fluke, so I've started working on the next book. I figure it will help me get some distance from the first manuscript so I can accept rejection without personal devastation. I can multi-task, don't worry.

I'm getting excited about the new book (and yet another one I plan to write afterwards). It's a departure from 'Seer', which is a dark, suspenseful story with a poignant mixture of hope and despair. The new book [title to be determined] will be a fast, savvy mystery full of humor--and rude, hairy elves. It's a fantasy-detective story with a sassy heroine. It's gonna be heaps of fun! The 'world' is built, most of the characters even have names, and the outline is 75% done. I'm giddily anticipating writing the first draft: there's nothing better than when you let the creativity flow unchecked.

groan...

2009-07-20T20:35:00.001-07:00

My query letter is horrible. I realized that shortly after sending it out to five agents. Why didn't I see it before!? I took refuge in comforting cliches like 'beautiful girl with a dangerous secret'--uggh!!! What was I--high? I don't even drink so it can't be that. Please, please can I do take backs?

Oh well, I shall return to compiling lists of agents to contact, prime criteria being that they haven't seen my previous stinking pile of a query. In my own defense, queries and novels are very different. I was thinking a query was all Hollywood loglines, but it's supposed to be more like a mini synopsis with personal voice and pizzaaz.

I am now giving myself a crash course in 'How to Hook Literary Agents (aka Fishing for Form Letters)' , and I hope and pray and wish to any higher power that is listening that I get it right this time and end up with a good agent. Or any agent.

Two good reviews and I can conquer the world!

2009-07-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

Maz got back to us and I quote: "I think it's pretty good! Forbidden lerv, attractive settings, strange planets, horror and thriller elements thrown into the mix. The characters are all believable and well written, and the story overall is great, lots of twists and turns to keep the reader interested... I think it's a really great read – and thanks for sharing it with me!"

She had a couple of suggestions (I took them out with '...' so nothing is given away), but I didn't need that box of tissues after all! Yes!!!

I felt on top of the world for a whole day. But, that was two days ago. As I was writing query letters to agents yesterday, fear set into my belly with a sickening motion far exceeding the mere fluttering of butterflies--it was bats. Fear bats in my belly. I felt like begging for mercy in those queries, or turning round and running... But I did neither. I faced my fear and I mailed out two of them today. The other two queries in this round I will email tomorrow... or when I've determined the stellar alignments are auspicious.
Fingers crossed.

She said, 'You're a very good writer.'

2009-07-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

...And there was no 'but' after it! Yes, I heard back from Julie. We had a nice sit down lunch at a local cafe under an umbrella, which was good because it alternated between beautiful sunshine and bursts of chilly little raindrops. Fortunately, my mood wasn't such a pendulum. I was worried I might get defensive of 'my baby' but I managed to be calm and objective throughout. It didn't hurt when Julie had a huge list of things she loved about the book, while there were fewer bits she didn't like. It was great to have an outside viewpoint, and rewarding to see that the subtle philosophy and 'big ideas' that underpin the book got through to her without interfering with the thrill of the story. Whew! Now, just a few more revisions based on her response and we're ready to go! ...Unless Maz totally hates it and I have to wallow in depression for a while.

Pins and Needles

2009-06-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

...That's what I've been like all week, waiting to hear back from Julie and Maz about the book. I've alternated between believing that I'm a terrible writer(and Julie can't even bring herself to finish the first chapter) and thinking that at least I'm a heck of a lot better than the author I'm reading now (I won't name names). The ups and downs are crazy. It's been awful.

Then hint of joy! Julie said she's enjoying it: hating the evil characters, while other characters she wants to see more of in other books; so many scenes are "very visual" and she keeps picturing them... OMG I'm so happy that she's liking it!

I want my readers to feel emotion, to visualise the scenes, to live it, and to see that it's working with Julie is such a thrill. I'm surprised how important it is to me that the book be experienced. Getting it published will be just the icing on the cake, allowing more people out there to read it.

I already have a gazillion ideas for more books. I need time to write! Darn this needing a day job.

Of course, Julie hasn't finished the whole book. Now, I'm really terrified that she'll hate that reversal thing in the middle when everything changes. Oh no, I'm back to being on pins and needles again...

I'm Out There

2009-06-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

I printed out a few copies of the novel, got them nicely wire bound so my test readers can flip through it easily (noticed a few typos and errors after the fact of course), and sent my poor baby out into the world.

Julie, as I planned, got a copy. She said, "Yes! I was hoping to read this. I saw you working on it in the library." I had no idea she was a regular Julie Bond, spying without my knowing. Guess I should have hidden what I was doing better when using the library computer to write during my lunch and tea breaks. Oh well, it was great not to have to twist her arm. Julie is very cool by the way (mild mannered scientist by day--punk/beatnik/hippie by night) and I'm excited to hear her opinion.

The other copy went to a friend of my writing partner (aka my husband) named Maz. She's an actual writer and critic who reviews books, movies etc for websites. I'm utterly terrified to hear what she says. I'm out of Kleenexes and need to buy a few boxes, best to be prepared.

I've also written a query letter and I'm halfway through a synopsis of the book that I can send to agents. It's better if I keep working, rather than worrying about what my test readers will say. Well, I'm worrying too--worrying and working. Excited and terrified too. This is great!

The start

2009-05-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

I consider myself to be just starting out on the road to published authordom (if that's a word), even though I've already spent the last six months writing and re-writing my novel, because it's one thing to fire up your imagination, pour your heart out on the page and wear out your thesaurus creating that manuscript, but it's another to see it in print and in the hands of readers who will appreciate it as much as I do.

The "fun" part is nearly over. Soon the slog to find an agent will begin, but not quite yet. I think the book is great (except on rainy Tuesdays when it's utter trash and I'm crazy for attempting this). I still want to polish the beginning and ending some more--the most crucial bits--because my test audience (aka my husband) thinks it's only 90% perfect when I should aim for 110%, matching the standard of the rest of the book. "You think the rest is 110%?" "Yes." and I beam. I know he's my husband and should be expected to say nice things, but he's actually a cruel, uncompromising critic, and I know he's not being soft on me. Maybe it's his way of retaliating for being asked to do the dishes? Anyway, those final changes will be made this week.

What's next? I'm going to take my baby (aka the manuscript) out of the warm, protective environment in which it was created and send it out into the harsh cold world to stand on its own four legs (I'm thinking of it like a colt, which actually has a chance of surviving in such conditions, unlike a human baby). Am I sending it off to an agent already you wonder? No, no, no. I'm going to give it to Julie and a few other friends to read. Julie first. She's nice and has similar tastes. If it passes muster (oops, wrong analogy, if it stands up without wobbling too much) then I'll give it to one of my other friends, who are mean and cruel like my husband and whose opinions I'll ignore anyway. What am I saying? I'll listen and do yet another re-write!

To blog or not to blog?

2009-05-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

I'm one of those people who resisted the changeover to CDs, DVDs and mobile phones (aka cell phones if you're in North America) until I was sure they were here to stay (I didn't get a mobile until two years ago and I'm still uncertain about this Blue Ray stuff). Other things, like Facebook, I didn't understand at all. Do I really want people to be able to find me? But in the end I always break down and embrace the new. Thus--my first blog!

Why did I suddenly decide blogs were for me? Well, first of all, I read a few and figured out what they were. Secondly, I'm a writer so why not write?

Ok, here I go! ....Still revving up after all. NOW here I go....