writerzblog

Anne Patchett's State of Wonder

2011-08-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

State of Wonder is the story of Marina Singh, who enters the jungle with reluctance but a sense of purpose. Marina needs to find out the details surrounding the death of her co-worker, who preceded her to the Amazon. His death was announced in a letter from the doctor on site, stating simply that he had died of a fever.

The South American jungle she enters is not so much chaotic, but rather a place dancing in perfect step to music only it can hear. The doctor on site, Dr. Anneck Swenson, bends her head to yet another tune. Swenson presents a wall to any purpose other than her own. She is direct yet cryptic, confrontational yet indifferent, rejecting yet needy. Despite Marina's efforts to get a bead on her, she remains slippery to the end.

Marina acts, at every turn, in a way I hope I would act in her circumstance. She resists Swenson's attempts to control her, while she assimilates herself into the local culture with grace and joy. The natives strip her and re-cloth her, braid her hair, offer her the flavors of their world, and she takes it all in with openness and trust. A mirror to her openness and trust is Easter, a deaf boy who lives among them also as a foreigner. Easter hails from a community even deeper in the Amazon, a savage, cannibalistic group who live along an obscure finger of the river. Soon after they meet, Marina and Easter fuse into a single soul. Light, open, loving.

Through a fluke, Swenson learns that the dead doctor isn't dead at all. After imbibing ritualistic hallucinogens, he wandered into the jungle and was taken in by the feared cannibals. Swenson seems to regard this news as little more than a dropped stitch, but Marina and Easter take the boat into the jungle and find the missing scientist. Of course, the cannibals want something in return for the doctor. Recognizing him as one of their own, they want Easter. The confrontation is horrible.

Okay, I was trying not to draw parallels to Heart of Darkness, because the connection is too obvious. But here it is. Here's the confrontation with the inner depths, and Easter, not a creepy Doctor Kurtz, is the one sacrificed. Easter isn't killed, he's delivered to a place where he will dwell, against his will, forever seeking escape. Easter, the embodiment of innocence, is placed in the most primal, uncontrolled tendril of the jungle. Will he be ravaged? Will he transform those around him? I will chew on this for a while.

Marina returns, with her co-worker, to her mid-western existence and leaves us to wonder what she now carries within her from the Amazon and whether it will allow her to return.

Voltaire Gem

2011-06-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

I'm re-reading Candide, and it's just as fresh and wonderful as I remember. What a great little masterpiece. Here's one of my favorite parts:

The man of good taste explained quite clearly how a play could arouse some interest, yet have no merit. He proved in a few words that it is not enough to bring in one or two of those situations which are found in novels or two of those situations which are found in novels and which always captivate an audience; but that a dramatist must be original without being eccentric, that he must be often sublime and always natural, that he must know the human heart and make it speak, be a great poet without letting any of his characters sound like a poet, have a perfect command of his language without ever sacrificing meaning to rhyme. "A playwright who doesn't observe these rules," he added, "may turn out one or two tragedies that will be applauded in the theater, but he'll never be regarded as a good writer.

Fictionalized Life

2011-05-28T21:07:00.001-07:00

I have always written fiction. The first story I remember writing was when I was seven years old. I've had some long dry periods, but I have written fiction my whole life.

I was just thinking about how everyone does...create fiction, that is. If you're a mother, you've been fictionalized by your kids. My kids have created stories of who I am and what I am to them. They're not interested in knowing me. Or maybe they are, but maintaining the fiction overrules getting to know me because the fiction serves a vital purpose in their day-to-day realities. I'm saying that again because it seems so contradictory but isn't. The fiction upholds what they believe to be reality. My younger daughter, especially, uses fictionalized accounts of me to make the drama of her life a tactile experience to herself and anyone who will listen to her. The result is that every time I see her, I feel like a lamb tied to a stake. There are reasons I don't try to see her.

My mother, rather than talk to me, fictionalized who I was to exonerate herself from taking responsibility for the fictional me. I, in turn, fictionalized my mother in an attempt to explain why she acted the way she did.

My conclusion is that all is fiction. We never really know anyone. Where memory is concerned, the brain is a flawed organ.

Lobster Tales

2011-04-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

I always wonder what it will take to be published. The writer's groups and workshop leaders have traditionally been so discouraging. When I outlined the plot of my unpublished YA novel, Giving It Over, someone piped up and said that no one wants to read what it was like in the olden days. The story takes place in 1973, the year abortion became legal, and deals with the subject of teen pregnancy.

Yesterday, I had one of my classic pajama days, lots of tea, lots of cat time, pajamas, maybe a snack and a book. I recently read a review about a new book by Stewart O'Nan. I hadn't read anything by him, so I looked for him in the library and grabbed a copy of Last Night at the Lobster. The book seemed a perfect pajama day book, something that I could read in a day. And this is what I read yesterday.

Last Night at the Lobster was engaging, the handful of characters were well-developed and the pacing was perfect. Yet the story is not a big one, no one's earth is shattered. It reminded me of the sad clown, or Carol Burnett's washerwoman. Last Night at the Lobster is the story of a manager's last day at a closing Red Lobster restaurant. It's just before Christmas, and the restaurant should be packed with last minute shoppers, but a blizzard reduces the dinner clientele to a forlorn couple making their way to an unknown destination. The characters are restaurant employees and customers. The story takes place in this single day.

For Manny, the manager, the story is one of a man who has no control of anything in his life. He's an anonymous cog in a corporate wheel, dedicated, conscientious, and hard-working. With his employees, he's fair, thoughtful and generous. Every action Manny takes is an effort to do what is right, and the result is nothing. If I were to sum up the story's message, it is that integrity is worthless in this day. The corporation doesn't see Manny, the employees don't respect him, the customers represent the ugliness of American entitlement and fling at him their outrage for every minor transgression. Yet he conducts himself with professionalism to the end.

An enjoyable read, but, as a writer, I find myself thinking, if I'd written this book, the workshop leaders and writer's group participants and anyone else I deem to share my writing with, would say, yes, but... Yes. But no one cares about a manager at a Red Lobster. Well, that's rather the point, though, isn't it? Every contact I've had with agents sand blasts the same message into my forehead. The book must be marketable. It must be something an agent sees as a money-making proposition. It must be a worthy project that a publishing house wants to take on, must generate enthusiasm and excitement. How was Lobster pitched? How does a book like this get into print? Engaging as it is, I can't imagine a agent or a publisher doing cartwheels at the thought of how many copies this would sell.

Lobster isn't trying to be a blockbuster novel; it isn't trying to be anything other than what it is, a pleasurable read on a Sunday afternoon. We all have dozens of stories we could tell about endings of things that were destined to be short-lived. But who would publish them? Lobster is a story of our time. It addresses the disposable mindset of American culture and may even cause readers to consider that there are dramas playing out in all kinds of unsuspected places. The subject matter is commonplace. We've all seen, if not eaten at a Red Lobster. I even know someone who managed one a long while back. The recognizable signposts, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, shopping mall, all ground us in the story's familiar setting. I found myself filling with gratitude that I'd escaped the horrors of working in food service or retail. But most of all, I found myself, once again, wondering about the wheels that turn the publishing industry.

The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko

2011-04-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko isn't a recounting of a life through linear time. This memoir stands apart from other memoirs and redefines the genre. Marmon Silko takes me into her private, inner world and shows me how the world looks through her eyes. I've never read a memoir more intimate and personal.

As I read, I fall into the rhythm of her habits and daily routines. I see magic and mythology, the cycles of severe desert weather and the travails of the arroyo near her ranch. I also see through the eyes of a woman who possesses a deep love and respect for the earth and all living things she shares it with.

I've read dozens of memoirs, but this is the only one I've read where, upon completion, I feel as though I know the writer. With other memoirs, I finish knowing if I share experiences in common with the writer. With Marmon Silko's, I know something much more valuable. I know where I share a way of seeing and revering the world.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

2011-04-05T10:42:00.001-07:00

Just Kids by Patti Smith is a rich journey into the relationship between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. More than that, though, the book takes me through a fascinating period of time in New York, when Warhol's Factory was on the wane and the glamor of those days turned to pastel. Even in pastel, the color and excitement jumps off the page. Amphetamines fade and are replaced by pure, natural adrenaline. Hendricks, Joplin and Morrison each sing a tune and flash a smile before joining (or maybe founding) the 27 club. Many more ghosts join the permanent residents of the Chelsea Hotel.

I get to see Smith and Mapplethorpe go through years of being broke. They rise from homelessness to obscurity and eventually to fame.

I wish I knew whether Smith utilized a ghost writer for this memoir. The writing is crisp and full of flavor.

Memoir Reading and Writing

2011-04-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot of memoirs over the past few years. For a while, I even dabbled at writing one, a sort of set the record straight document. While some fiction contains elements of life experience, writing a memoir relies upon one's fiction writing talents. When I read memoirs, I know, for example, that the writer is not remembering past conversations verbatim. Some license is taken in recording details, and I, as the reader, understand that what I am reading is being delivered in a manner to maximize dramatic effect. Memoir differs from autobiography in the delivery. Memoir is a story, autobiography is a recording of a sequence of events.

As I worked on my memoir, I attended some workshops and read some books to help facilitate the process. I learned a few things. First, a great many people believe that their stories are extraordinary and would have a wide appeal. We are right in that our stories are all extraordinary. Every life holds magic and wonder and transcendence. But we are almost always wrong about the wide appeal part. After I swam way out into the middle of the icy lake of my own story, and a little voice whispered, "Yes, Nancy. But what's the point?" It's a humbling event when one can't answer that question. What is the point, indeed. I keep hoping that some day there will be one. In the meantime, the memoir sleeps in a REM stage.

Second, where critique groups are concerned, submitting a memoir to a critique group places an unfair burden on the group. Group members find themselves in a position where they risk criticizing someone's life rather than the content or delivery. Readers can't exactly say that the story is not credible. In the end, I withdrew it as a project from my critique group because I felt as though my readers saw that I was soliciting feedback on a document of uncontrolled self-disclosure, when what I wanted to know was how it read as a story. Asking a critique group to read a memoir just ain't fair.

There's something so pleasurable about reading a well-written memoir, though. Getting lost in a life, and knowing that it isn't fiction is somehow more engrossing. I've read many wonderful memoirs in recent years. The Color of Water, The Glass Castle, Living to Tell the Tale, Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Warrior Woman are some of my favorites. The pair, Autobiography of a Face and Truth in Beauty especially captivated me as a story of a life and then another memoir of a friendship that looked on from a perspective that revealed a completely different story.

I've read many others, some I found over indulgent and bulging with ego. But enough great ones are around to keep me interested in the genre.

A New York Times Book Review reviewer published an article in recent months, stating that memoir is a useless genre. The writer was so scathing and pompous that he implied the only people more naive and boring than the memoir writers are the people shallow enough to read them. I believe that there are a great many stories worth telling and worth reading. Sure, we can flaunt our intellectual prowess by pigeon-holing them: The abused child memoir, The incest survivor, The adopted child, The teen pregnancy, The alcoholic treatment memoir, The coming out as a gay person memoir.. I've read memoirs by people who fit each of these categories. But I'm not jaded enough to believe that stories owning these natures are boring because someone else has told them. A story well-told will always stand on its own and need not strain to circumvent worn trails.

So, I'll keep reading memoirs. And maybe in the quiet of my office, I will keep a silent vigil over my own sleeping manuscript.

Seeking a Clean, Well-lighted Place

2011-03-20T21:08:00.001-07:00

I once read somewhere that a person lives beyond the span of his life up until the point when the last person who remembers him dies. If I am alive, and no one knows or remembers me, does that mean that I'm already essentially dead? Have I lived a completely purposeless life? I was hit with this today when an old friend responded to an email I sent, saying she had no memory of the times we'd spent together. If she'd been a passing acquaintance, I might have shrugged it off. But I considered her to be a close friend during my college years. We've put a lot of miles on the road since then, but still.

I have carried love in my heart for so many people I've known over the years. Just because they're no longer in my life doesn't mean I've stopped loving them. And I remember the times we've had together. No, it seems that I've carried all of this and have always been essentially invisible. Unremarkable. Mr. Cellophane. This may all seem very self-pitying, but allow me a moment of sadness. I've retreated from life, maybe hoping someone would say, "Don't go." No one did. I faded into everyone's past and then from their memories, leaving no trace, no residue, no vapor.

This comes to me now because I've had the colossal arrogance to want to be a published writer. But look! I'm not even memorable in my life. Where could I possibly get off thinking that I might write some memorable fiction? I want to be the kind of writer who walks on nails, the kind who stands on the edge of a precipice in billowy clothes, wind whipping me from all sides, arms outstretched. But I can't find the precipice on mapquest. It's springtime. I should go to Paris. Just get on a plane, take a couple weeks off. Just go. Right now. Who cares if it's crowded? I can sit in cafes, with scribblings before me. Lose myself in the Louvre. Wag my tongue at gargoyles. Visit graves.

I'm looking into the possibility of going to Paris and Florence in December. I've needed to see Paris forever, and I really want to wander the streets of Florence again. How far does a woman have to go to find a clean, well-lighted place?

Answering the Call to Adventure

2011-02-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

Back from my weekend of focused writing, and about all the writing I did was on this blog. The weekend wasn't a loss, though. I spent it focused on the craft of writing, the journey, the inner space.

I started reading The Hero's Journey, which starts with discussion of the call to adventure, which is precipitated by the wasteland. I've told my therapist for the past few months that I feel like I'm lying fallow, or like I'm drifting amid the rich, green silt at the bottom of a lake. I feel broken. Rather than staring at the blank page, I feel as though I am the blank page, empty, silent, not able to do anything but anticipate.

I passed four days of putting it out there, hoping that something would change and allow me to make some kind of a new beginning.

Two things happened.

First, I discovered that Leslie Marmon Silko has written a memoir, The Turquoise Ledge. I grabbed a copy and started reading immediately. Her writing, entering her world, bubbled to the surface some truths about the world that I carry but have never articulated. I love it when I read or hear something that does that for me. She talks about communicating with animals, that birds, snakes, rabbits, all communicate with us all the time. I have always known this to be true and have had many wonderful relationships with beings other than human. She also talks about how the spirit world communicates with us through animals and the elements of the world, clouds, the earth, wind. Reading this, I recalled an instance soon after my mother's death when an animal served as a messenger from the spirit world. Her writing gives me a sense of awakening.

Second, I was contacted by an old writer friend who reminded me of the good things about communing with other writers who have no agenda other than to gain sincere feedback on their writing and offer the same in return. I need to start doing that again and am hoping that he, I and one other writer can resume that connection.

Over all, I have to say that the writer's retreat was productive. Even though I didn't write, I feel supported, if not transported, by that mineral-rich current.

Reading The Turquoise Ledge

2011-02-21T16:51:00.001-08:00

omg. Omg. OMG!!! Leslie Marmon Silko has a new book out...and it's a memoir! I'm already about 20 pages into it and I feel like I'm tonguing the richest, milkiest Swiss chocolate with just a hint of some exotic, magical spice I can't quite name. She has rescued me before, and it looks like she's doing it again.

Defining the Female Monomyth

2011-02-20T13:53:00.000-08:00

The other day, someone asked me if the Harry Potter movies met the criteria for the Dykes to Watch Out For movie approval rating. The comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, has 3 rules for a film to meet its criteria:

1. The movie must have more than one woman character.
2. The women characters must talk to each other
3. About something other than men.

Generally, I have to say that the Harry Potter stories receive a resounding no on this. There is more than one woman/girl. But the girls do not talk to each other in any memorable way or play a significant role other than as supporting characters for the activities involving the men/boys.

This got me thinking, what would a girl hero look like? Would a hero's journey be the same for a girl? Do the masses of books about hero's journey even have anything to do with women? There are tons of books on the subject of the archetypical hero's journey and about archetypes in general, but do they even have anything to do with women? Joseph Campbell said that the women are the ones waiting at home. He contends that the women are not the ones toiling along the hero's journey because they have already achieved the spiritual enlightenment the men must struggle to attain. So, what of archetypes? It seems we do not share the standard archetypes of men. Do we have our own? Are there cultures with stories of the journey women must take?

For we do journey in a much different way. So ours has been to stay at home. Isaac Denisen touched on it when she talked about learning to live in boredom, in a quiet state of waiting while the men go off into the world without us.

Certainly, at this point in history, we women are venturing into the men's world and are met with resistance. In trying to claim a chair at the table, a cube on the floor, a voice in the meeting, we are being subtly beaten to a gory pulp. Like men who beat their wives, the corporate men make sure that the bruises are in places no one can see them. They disregard our ideas, only to reintroduced them as their own. They overlook our participation, even when we lead the way through, and praise the men who play a part. They make us invisible in a hundred different ways, and we feel crushed under it, demoralized and overwhelmed with the futility of it. If we attempt to discuss it, we are accused of having overactive imaginations. If we become more vocal, we are being too aggressive. If we don't speak up, that is our sin. Oh, and when we make a mistake, we get all the attention that was denied us in all other circumstances.

We seem to be in a no-win position. But isn't being invisible something we can leverage? Is invisibility an archetype for women? Women are the ones who operate behind the scenes, in the shadows, ones attending to details, making everything nice, ensuring that things run smoothly. We are the ones never seen, heard or noticed. There's food on the table, paper in the copy machine, coffee in the pot. The systems are stable. The infrastructure is in place.

Being the detail chaser is a job we never chose for ourselves, yet we do it automatically. It's only courteous to refill the coffee pot or the copy machine. In the past, this peripheral supporting role was the only one we were allowed. Now, we maintain that role while simultaneously and invisibly performing other, more critical functions. My experience working in IT operations demonstrates this repeatedly. My worst employment experience ever was at Expedia, but all of my IT jobs have supported this contention to some degree. Expedia is the only company I've worked for that really worked at being the worst employer for women in technical positions. The harder I worked, the harder they tried to diminish me. I digress, but I left Expedia feeling so bruised, so broken and so powerless. I left there months ago, yet I still fall into a ditch occupied by the thoughts about how it could have been different. The ditch is full of lies. It could not have been different because the men hold all the power, and they did not want it to be different.

Was I a hero in this story? No. They won. They abused me until I left. Is there a way I could have been a hero? I feel compelled to find a way through this because it isn't just me. It's every woman I've ever known who has worked in a technical field. There has to be a way through. There has to be a way to be in this field and not be crushed under the giant's foot. There has to be a way to stop being the one who sweeps out the fireplace that doesn't involve being rescued by a prince.

This is my quest. I want to tell a story that meets the Dykes to Watch Out For criteria, makes women the heroes and identifies the elements of the female monomyth.

Writer's Retreat 2011 - Getting Started

2011-02-19T16:30:00.000-08:00

A day into my time on Orcas, and this is the first I've written.

Last night, I had strange dreams which have set the tone for my day. First, I dreamed a cartoon in sort of Japanese Anime-style. The main character was a hero resembling Aladdin. He was being pursued by an enemy and was threading his way along a wooden plank overlooking a lake. As the enemy drew nearer, Aladdin came to know that the only way to escape was to plunge into the water and die. He does so and his will to escape pulls him to the lake's bottom like a sinking stone. As he sinks, he hears the singing of the sirens. They are telling him in their song that he has to give himself over to life; he must learn to see life and be alive. As he sinks, he drowns and releases his hold on trying to survive. In doing so, he is born to a sense of wonder for his life and of all that is living.

Strangely, my readings today have a reoccurring theme and seem to tie in with my dream. In The Hero Within, I keep reading of the theme of the wasteland, and the hero's call to adventure.

"...the heroic journey does not require you to become something greater than you are. It merely requires absolute fidelity to your own authentic path."

Great. How many ways have I deviated from that path? I've cultivated a career that I find unsatisfying so that I can make a lot of money. I've remained stuck in an unsatisfying relationship because I'm afraid of being alone. About the only quest I've been on is one for instant gratification. Food. Drink. Clothes. Car. Since graduating from college, I haven't been able to commit myself to anything. How many false starts have I made, only to abandon them when it turns out that focus and effort is required?

What does this have to do with writing? I'm not sure. Not yet. But this weekend is about exploring and following the flow. I'm going where I'm led. So far, I've had that very bizarre dream, and some interesting reading. I've also gotten caught up in wikipedia surfing on the Fisher King, the Mabinogian, the Grail, Cuhlwch and Olwen, the Book of Taliesin.

No stressing allowed. Just let one thing lead to another and see where I end up. Usually, I get flustered, desperate to accomplish something, and I freeze. This weekend, I am allowing myself to just be with myself and flow. Allow my process to flow and NOT freeze up because I don't think it's going in the right direction. Whatever direction it is going in is the right direction.

Getting Away, Getting To It

2011-02-14T16:31:00.001-08:00

I didn't do it last year, because I was in a fit of writer's angst, but I usually go away for a few days in February or March for a private writer's retreat. A three-day weekend approaches (Thanks George and Abe), and I am heading out to Orcas Island to the Kangaroo Bed and Breakfast.

If the weather permits, there will be hiking. There will definitely be driving around, visiting the sheep lady, exploring art galleries and bookstores. And there will be writing.

I'm a little scared. I haven't had a fiction project in over a year. I have the finished but unpublishable YA novel, the fifty-pages into it second YA novel, some short stories that have never gotten past their premie births and a few ideas to body forth. In spite of the angst, I was executing a plan by not writing for all these months. I wanted to get all the crackling out of my head and get back to a place where I can hear my own voice. All of the writer's groups, retreats, conferences, workshops had seeped into my inner ear and perched there, waiting, just waiting, for the instant I put fingers to keyboard. When the idea of writing entered my head, they would pummel me with a cacophony of loosely-aimed opinions. My fingers would hover, maybe type a few sentences and then still.

Time, I thought. I need time for the noise to fade away.

I'm not sure that they are completely silent, but it's time for me to try writing again, hence the private retreat.

Orcas Island in the off season is a paradise for anyone wanting to spend quiet days in a beautiful setting. The island is virtually deserted, except for the locals, and is loaded with places, alternately, to sit and focus or to be distracted. This will be the third private retreat I've given myself on Orcas. The first year I stayed at the Anchorage Inn. The room was huge, elegant, full of comforts. A huge four-poster bed with down comforters, a wicker rocking chair with soft woolen blankets, a gas fireplace, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water, an efficiency stocked with yogurt, juices, home-made granola and fresh baked coffee cake, a hot tub by the water and no other guests besides me made for a great four-day weekend. I think I wrote four chapters of Giving It Over on that trip. Two years later, I stayed at the Otter Pond B&B. Since I was the only guest, the proprietors gave me an upgrade. I really enjoyed the B&B, but the writer in me was distracted. I couldn't settle into the zone. The static of all the support I was getting as a writer kept pulling my fingers off the keyboard.

In between trips to Orcas, I've gone to other of the San Juans and once to The Resort at Mount Hood. Mt. Hood was a great destination. The Resort was so newly remodeled that it sparkled. I went snow shoeing and ate brunch at a buffet so enormous and colorful it looked like a rose-parade float. I also sat and wrote in front of the six-foot fireplace in the lobby and enjoyed long bubble baths in a deep tub. The writing was somehow not satisfying.

So, the first retreat was the best. I belonged to a small, intimate online writer's group with a handful of people I trusted and respected. Those people stayed with me all the way through the writing of my first novel. I miss them and often wish we could all go back to those days. My self-confidence dwindled over the years. Everything I did to find my way served to obscure the road signs.

Now, more than year away from all writing-related activities, I'm about to see what I can do. I feel like anything could happen. I hope to find that I've returned to days when writing is dangerous, where the edge of the jungle comes all the way down to the shore and eagles are ready to tip their wings and catch an upward current.

Getting to the Last Page

2011-02-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

Some books fly so fast, I can hardly hold them in my hands. I settle my eyes on page one and suddenly find myself at the end. I don't often wade out into a pool of words and turn back without reaching the far shore. I never do so without treading water for a time. Getting half-way through a book is an investment. It's an investment in time, in emotional attachment. From the beginning page, I send out tentacles to embrace a relationship with the characters, the landscape, the cadence of the writer's words. I'm the ideal reader, always starting out with optimism, always poised to suspend disbelief. So, I never turn back lightly.

I'm treading water right now, smack in the middle of Dale Loves Sophie to Death by Robb Forman Dew. I don't turn back because I sense that this entire first half is just stage-setting for something big about to happen. I don't like any of the characters. I don't have sympathy for any of them. The protagonist is a sullen, sickly, delusional, quick to anger rag of a woman. Her children are sullen and damaged and forever skulking about on the periphery. But there's a sense of something building to a crescendo. So, I continue on. Thinking it'd better be worth it.

I bought this book based on Amazon's, if you liked this, you'll like that recommendations. Once bitten.

Half Broke Horses...and Another Thing...

2011-01-29T14:44:00.001-08:00

From a writer's perspective, this book should be read with a mind for voice. The first-person narrative of Lily maintains a distinctive voice, as do the other characters. Think high-fallutin', old west, cowboy drawl as opposed to southern drawl. Walls pulls it off well, and it can't have been easy. That is, she pulls it off in her writing. Walls also narrates the audio version of the book, and in the spoken medium, she doesn't demonstrate the same prowess. The publishers of the audio version would have done better to have hired a professional narrator with a talent for liltin' and truncatin' words.

Review: Half Broke Horses

2011-01-15T12:50:00.001-08:00

When Jeannette Walls' memoir, Glass Castles, came out a few years ago, I and all the reading women I know read it immediately. I don't remember how I heard about it, but there was a buzz in the air that caused all of us to snap it up as soon as it came out and talk about its haunting grace notes for months to come. Walls' story was such an odd combination of cruelty, beauty, survival and love. Born to parents who displayed outrageous neglect, seasoned with underlying love, Walls told her story in such straight-forward, non-judgmental terms that we readers were forced to reluctantly accept her life on her grounds. The crowning irony for me was, after growing up facing starvation and homelessness, Walls' discovery, in adulthood, that her mother owned millions of dollars worth of land in Texas.

Half Broke Horses is primarily the story of Walls' grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Told from her point of view, Lily expresses herself as an iron-willed, fearless, outspoken force. The story of Walls' mother, Rosemary, is also painted into the arid desert landscapes. Like Walls' memoir, Half Broke Horses, presented as a novel, is engaging and portrays characters who are often over the top.

I couldn't help thinking, while reading it, how we daughters spend so much of our adult lives trying to fill out the stories of our mothers. Walls explains how her mother, who can't remember Walls' phone number, is able to recall detailed accounts of her mother's story. Walls also seems to be searching in Lily's story for truths about her mother. This book brings to mind my own meditations on old photo albums of my mother's family, and the stories told by facial expressions and discordant juxtapositions. Our mothers are a mystery to us, and we want it not to be so. We believe that somehow, knowing the truth, understanding the whole story, will set us free, define us or allow us to be who we are. As daughters, we feel made by the women who brought us here. Is Walls going back to her mother's source to understand what could produce a wealthy woman who chooses homelessness on the cold streets of New York City?

We all want to stave off the contradictions. Walls has a gift for turning the contradictions of her life into masterful stories.

Reading and Writing for 2011

2010-12-26T09:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just want to read. When left to my own devices, a weekend alone, I want nothing more than to stay in pajamas the entire time, book or Kindle in hand, cup of tea on the table, cat quietly at my feet. First of all, my cat's seldom quiet. She's always on the wrong side of the door. Second, I say this now because I'm writing this on the cusp of a new year, when the Pacific Northwest is cold, wet and dark. My inclinations are much different when the sun dances across my bed at 5:00AM and smiles on my yard until late into the night.

Last year, I all but abandoned my writing endeavors. I took stock of all the online writers' forums, workshops, conferences, writer's retreats, associations I had tangled around my pen and asked myself what was in it for me. I came up with a big, fat zero. I wasn't getting anything out of any of them. The associations, retreat coordinators and workshop sales people were all anxious for my involvement, as long as I kept writing checks. Of course, they never offered much encouragement for my writing, but such is the station of the contender. At conferences, there was always the big divide between those who were there because they'd made it and those who were they because they wanted to make it, making it meaning being published. Oh, and then there was the category of those who hadn't made it but were there with something to sell that would make other people make it.

Online writer's forums didn't work for long either. There was the small, intimate group I loved for so long. But the woman who ran the group was hijacked by her ego and decided she wanted to turn the group into a real money-making proposition. She also decided that her writing talent exceeded all group members, and we somehow became her underlings. As for Zoetrope, what good did it ever do to post anything there? Most of the people who critiqued pieces there were just trying to reach their quota so that they could post more of their work. I don't know how many critiques I got from people who didn't even try to hide that they hadn't even read my piece.

It got so that I couldn't write without a hundred people in my head telling me how to do it, how I couldn't do it, how I should slant it, how I had nothing to say that anyone wanted to read, how cliched I was. So, I took a break. Some journaling. Not much. A few articles for a dieting blog I write. Nothing consistent there. And I read a lot.

This year, I plan to continue reading a lot. But I want to write too. So much has changed in my life in the last 3 months that I have no idea what is going to happen this coming year. But I will continue to read books like I'm drinking from a fire hose, and those readings I will post here. Then, when it's dark and no one's watching, I intend to pull out my pen and write things straight from my head. My hope is that imagination will body forth the form of things unknown, and the workshop leaders, forum trolls and retreat councilors will no longer be heard over the distance of a year.

2010-05-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

This year has been a sore year for me as a writer. Last August, I left the AROHO conference for women writers, full of excitement and wonder. I walked away from that experience believing that I had taken my writing skill as far as I could without dedicated focus and wide-spread support. So much of the conference was populated by academics or by people who had completed MFA programs. Many talked about finding their true voices during the course of study.

Leaving the retreat, I spent another week, hiking the mountains of Colorado and the red rock country of Utah. Clipping along in my red Rav4 with a cooler full of ice water and an iPod full of the Kronos Quartet, I looked back at my life in Washington from this distance and knew that it was time for me to find a new life.

The question often arises when someone initiates great change: Are you walking to something or away from something? It's a loaded question, because the perceptions are false, the reasoning flawed. Walking away implies that one is a runner, an escape artist, and a failure...someone who is unable to make good with what is there. Someone who doesn't know how to make lemonade. While walking to something sounds more positive. If you're walking to something, you're the mistress of your own life, the creator of your destiny. You are following your bliss. Just like that glass half full/half empty thing. Sometimes having a half empty glass is beneficial. Sometimes it is the part waiting to be filled that holds all the hope and anticipation. Sometimes it is the part already drunk that is significant. Sometimes walking away takes more courage than the idiots who come up with these things could ever fathom.

Driving along the pinnacle contoured Utah highways, I knew that did not want to go back to my job in high tech. While the field does not compensate me as well as it does my male peers, I can't think of anything else to do that will pay as much. I decided to make a huge leap. I would go back to school and spend two to three years in an MFA program. I would sell my house, go someplace new and focus on writing and nothing but writing for the duration of the program. People at the retreat had encouraged me. Do it, they said. There are programs that are fully funded. Go for one of those. Do a teaching assistanceship, they said. It's easy. There are so many programs.

From August to January, I researched programs, filled out a blizzard of paperwork, found people to serve as references, studied for and took the friggin GRE exam, gathered together writing samples and research papers, wrote statements of purpose, paid fees and sent it all off. I applied to eleven programs. The University of Nevada never responded. The rest sent me form letters, saying that the decision had been so difficult but no.

It's May now, and I'm discouraged. Maybe it's time to put away my toys, I'm thinking. My last chance street car has derailed. Maybe I've been making a fool of myself. Give it up. Stop putting it out there. No one wants to read my writing. No one is out there saying that I have promise. I've pulled way back.

This year, I will mostly read and, if I write, I will do so for myself. I want to find out what will come out of me without all those other people's voices in my head. Don't be trite. I don't find your characters/plot/theme/pov/tone believable. Maybe you should add more detail, make it more understated, make it longer, shorter, put it in the future, take it to a new locale. Or the worst, uh, thank you for sharing. What would I write if I were my only reader? What do I want to write? Do I have any stories in me? At this point, I don't know if I'll even write anything.

Wish I felt more positive. Rough year.

Literary Fiction - Dead or Going Down in Flames?

2010-04-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

An interesting pair of articles recently appeared, discussing the topic of literary fiction.

The Death of Fiction?

and

Third Degree Burns

This statement from The Death of Fiction was astonishing:

Back in the 1930s, magazines like the Yale Review or VQR saw maybe 500 submissions in a year; today, we receive more like 15,000.

The rest of this article, I thought was exasperating. The rest of the article is a typical editor's diatribe about how he'd be happy if writers would write things that are more interesting. I think that is bullshit. With that much material to choose from, it isn't that there's nothing interesting or worthy of his publication. He's just overwhelmed. How does one sift through that much material? With 15,000 submissions, the ratio of bad to worthy doesn't change, requiring him to sift through a lot of sludge. But it's not the writers' fault.

All of us know from the time we've spent reading the unpublished work of other writers in writer's groups, that there's a lot of really great writing going on that never finds a greater audience.

The other article, I think, comes closer to touching on the real challenges facing writers. As long as the publishing industry runs the business with an eye for what it thinks will make the most money, literary fiction is essentially dead. I loved the statement that publishers and editors are looking for what will sell millions of copies now, instead of what will still be read a hundred years from now. I found it interesting that the writer says MFA programs also work to produce writers of blockbusters, rather than literary fiction. Do you think that's true? So much for the Fine Arts part of the MFA.

So, these articles seem to beg a question of us as writers. What influences us? Do we write from our hearts or do we allow the marketing trends and publishing house mandates to influence what we write? When we agent shop, are we listening to the things we are told when we are given feedback and setting out to bend our work to meet what they think will suit demand? I have fallen into that trap. An agent once told me that my YA novel would be marketable if I were to change it into a futuristic story. I can't believe I actually considered it. How much does marketability play into what and how we write? Who do we write to when we're writing? These are the things that the second article brought up for me. Good stuff.

New Writing Exercise

2009-11-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

I've been trying out new writing exercises to get me going. For years I did the morning pages in a sort of modified way. I would write for ten minutes, non-stop, stream of consciousness writing. I stopped doing this a while ago because I couldn't see the merit of it. Now, I'm trying something new. I'm doing thirty minutes, and I can do one of two things. I can write about a fiction project or I can do an exercise from a book. Currently, I'm going through the exercise suggestions in Janet Burroway's book.

The exercises are great and are helping me to tap into all kinds of things. The last two days, I wrote about the house where I grew up. It took one day to write about the inside, and one about the yard. but all kinds of other stuff is coming up as well. Memories about toys or grandparents or times I got in trouble.

I got kind of excited yesterday because I was writing about doing something naughty when I was around four. It was one of those things where I knew I was doing something wrong, and I knew I was going to be punished for it, but I just couldn't stop myself. That was the first time I remember that conflicted feeling. I was being bad, and I knew it. And it wasn't that I didn't care. I didn't want to be punished, but I couldn't stop.

I was coloring a bird in my color book, and I drew a purple plume on the top of its head. This plume was a vision that had to be expressed no matter what! It left the page of the color book and covered the bedroom's hard wood floor with its purple, curly magnificence. I knew as I was spreading it across the bedroom floor that I was going to get a spanking. But every time I looked at the bird, it seemed to cry to me to complete it.

See? That's good shit. Who knows what other memories or ideas are in there waiting to be tickled out or mined?

MFA Personal Essay

2009-09-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

Well, a lot's happened since the AROHO retreat. I've decided to go back to school and get an MFA in fiction writing. Yep. I know. A huge decision. But, even in the midst of my lingering self-doubt, I have a core of calm certainty. It's time.

So, I've been researching Universities, got a copy of Tom Kealey's excellent book, The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, added Abrahamson Leslie's blog to my RSS feeds. I'm writing personal essays, studying for the GRE, gathering transcripts and trying to figure out who to approach for letters of recommendation.

I have to admit, that last one is the biggest puzzle. Who can write my letters of recommendation? I've been out of college for twenty years. Plus, I hate to ask anyone for anything...ever.

It's already quite an adventure.

This morning I woke up writing personal statement essays in my head. I actually woke up and wrote out a draft. I'm going to let it cook for a day or two and come back to it. It's another of those things where I want to hit the mark, yet stand out, yet not be like the other 450 essays on their desk. I've been sort of preoccupied with coming up with an approach, and then it came to me. Just be myself. Tell my story of why I'm doing this now. It's all about telling a story. One more time.

Retreats and retreating

2009-08-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

I'm at a retreat for women writers at the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM. It's beautiful here, and the 90 or so women are brilliant and focused.

As with all situations where I am surrounded by talented, passionate writers, I take dips into places of inadequacy. When I compare myself to others, I always come up short. But that place I descend into is a place of forgetfulness. The deeper I sink, the more I lose site of who I am. Of all the things I am, woman, systems administrator, home owner, community member, of all those things, writer is always at the top of the list. That is mine. I own it. I am it. And the idea that anyone outside of me can diminish that truth is a great lie I tell myself.

I came here with a passive goal. I want to retreat from my world of survival, of work, of dinners with much loved friends. I want to do this so that I can get to the writer in me. That writer has been silenced to a whisper over the years. I approach my subjects with timidity. I always let the imagined audience take me off course. Here, this week, among all of these great women, I am on a quest that can only be carried out alone. I can be part of them, but I must stay focused in my determination to refocus.

It's going fast. We're really only on the 2nd day, but we're already on the 2nd day, if you know what I mean. So, I resolve to write a flash a day. I'm going to post them for critique on zoetrope. And I'm going to fucking get on with it! It's time for the old girl to stop whispering.

Routine

2009-07-13T08:23:00.001-07:00

When all else fails, I return to my old routines. When it comes to writing, I have to get going on the keyboard. That old exercise of doing morning pages has always come to my rescue.

Here's what I do. I have a Nokia phone with a countdown timer on it. When I first wake in the morning, before I do anything else, before the night's dreams have evaporated, I set the timer for ten minutes and begin writing. I have years of notebooks of hand-written pages. These days, I'm doing it directly on the computer. Either way, ten minutes, no editor, no going back, just stream writing. Sometimes I just write complaints about stuff in my life. But I like to write about writing. This is a time to write about ideas, formats, what I think about my current writing projects, brainstorm. It helps me to start the day thinking about my novel or a flash I'm working on or to flesh out an idea that presented itself when I didn't have a notebook handy.

After the timer goes off, I read something inspirational. One of my favorites is to have a book of Mary Oliver's poetry next to my bed. I think her work is gorgeous. Her poetry fills me with wonder and gratitude. It makes me feel included in the flow of life.

Wherever I go from there with my day, I will take thoughts of writing with me, whispering on my shoulder.

Getting Unstuck

2009-07-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I haven’t posted anything on this blog in a couple of months! I don’t know why, but lately, the idea of writing anything longer than an inane facebook blurb makes me curl into a ball or fire up WoW.

I just got a new laptop. My first Macbook. It’s the most wonderful thing in my house, well, besides The Princess. I’m kicking myself for not getting one sooner. Why have I been screwing around with Dells all this time? Oh, don’t get me wrong. I still love my little Dell running Linux, even if it is Ubuntu. Everyone should have a computer that fits in her purse. But this Macbook is the bomb.

For one thing, it’s running UNIX in the background (FreeBSD). So, I can open a shell and do whatever I want from the command line. I got so excited that I volunteered to create a whole web page. I love coding with a shell window and don’t understand how anyone can use tools like Dreamweaver.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with writing, or, as this article implies, not writing.

I have a couple of flash ideas in my head, and they’ve been bubbling to the top and taking on different sounds. I got about fifty pages into my 2nd YA novel and thought that the time of wasted time was over. I started rolling on it. Then I screeched to a halt. When I went back to page one and read over what I’d written, I couldn’t keep my attention on it. So, if I can’t even stay interested, how can I expect ANY readers to?

Not only that, but I made the mistake of visiting one of those agent sites, and the agent host was grumbling about how sick he was of books about misfit teens who have paranormal experiences. Other agents chimed in and said, “Us too! Boy are we sick of those!” Er, sorry, but I happen to be writing a teen book about a misfit who has a paranormal experience. Shit. Then they say things like, “It’s okay as long as it’s fresh.” They don’t want things that are off the beaten path, but they don’t want anything that’s been done before. It can’t be “another Twilight,” (I happen to agree that we don’t need another of those) but it can’t be something that’s so different that it’s not a sure thing. Pretty narrow road. Esta, my children’s librarian friend, says that she knows what teen girls want, and they want misfit-teen-having-paranormal-experience novels. I used to think I had a fresh idea, and now I’m not sure. Shit shit shit.

My other novel idea, the one I’ve written a lot of notes on but haven’t started to really organize yet, is the one about five lesbian friends who all find themselves single at the same time for the first time in their friendship. The format of the novel is to bring them together and then give each one a separate thread. The women range from mid-thirties to mid-fifties. Then I read this post from a woman on one of the writer’s forums I frequent, someone renowned for her passive-aggressive critiques, say that she has read that no one wants to read stories about middle-aged women. Er, sorry again, assholes. I’m at that late-middle age stage, and I find it quite interesting to WRITE about middle-aged women. I also like to read about women my age. What am I supposed to do, spend my older years reading fucking chick-lit? Well, I kind of like chick-lit, but, guilty pleasures aside, what the fuck am I supposed to write.

So, the point of this article, which has taken an extraordinarily long time to get to, is this. There are times when it’s an absolute fucking mistake to seek out the opinions of others. When ideas are curling, ride the foam, baby! Stay OUT of agent blogs. They may be helpful in some ways, but contributing to the creative process is NOT one of them. Take them off of RSS feeds and pretend they don’t exist. And spend minimal time in writer’s forums. Do whatever it takes to bolster creativity.

In the spirit of doing things that make me feel creative, I designated this weekend as Truman Capote weekend. I love his writing. I rented Breakfast at Tiffany’s and am reading the story as well. I’m also reading other Capote stories. I rented Infamous, which I like even better in some way that Capote. With both Infamous and Capote, there’s the added bonus of having Harper Lee present.

And, look! It’s worked. I’ve written this.

Juices Going

2009-05-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

I'm caught up in a Flash-a-thon on Zoetrope this week. It's a great way for me to assuage the guilt I've been feeling for not working on my novel lately.

I participated in one of these about a year ago, and it was a rush. Not only was I pushed to write, fast and furious, as many flash fictions as I could possibly get out, but I had the complete pleasure of reading lots and lots of other writers' flashes. I became a fan of so many new (to me) writers who frequent the Zoetrope flash forum.

Feedback is such an important thing for me. I can critique and submit flashes to Zoe and feel a sense of belonging that comes with community. But I think this atmosphere is unique on Zoe to the Flash Forum.

The same just doesn't hold true for the novella wing. I've wondered why this is. Is it because reading and critiquing a piece of someone's novel is more of an investment in time? Maybe it's because reading something from start to finish is difficult, given that writings are posted in digestible chunks. Or that it's unlikely that anyone will read my book from start to finish for the same reasons.

Either way, I'm on the prowl for a writer's group where I can get feedback for my novel.

In the meantime, it's flash, Flash FLASH until I drop.

Don't Sweat It!

2009-04-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

I just read a post on a writer's forum from a guy who is working to outline his novel. He is wondering whether he should write the book, aiming at a specific word count. So many aspects of a novel can be considered prior to writing it. There are volumes of books written about issues like pacing, character profiling, narrative distance, length, genre attributes, formulas. Agents post blogs all over the internet, stating their needs and wants with clarity and volume. Publisher's Weekly posts trends, hot spots and areas to avoid.

There's so much friggin information on the internet about how to reach your target market, find an agent, get published, market your work. Writers are encouraged to grovel and beg, ass kiss, present their souls with humility and sheepish confidence. Queries are to be written with meticulous care, not too humble, not too familiar, not too off beat. We're to follow the agent's instructions and formulas to the letter but must be original, fresh, eye-grabbing. Conform, yet stand out in the crowd. What an order!

All of these mandates, all of these directives are, I think, more of a bitch list of irritants on the part of agents rather than an iron-clad formula for Getting In. Of course, when the time comes to seek representation, it's a good idea to follow the directions on the agent's web page when submitting a query. If he or she wants 3 chapters and a synopsis, do it. But drop the agony. It's boring.

It's easy for me to give advice, even though my first novel has never been published. But there are a lot of people out there who have a novel inside of them, but it never gets written because the writer's head is swimming with all of these rules and judgments. So, here it is. When writing a first draft of a novel, just go for it. Don't sweat the word count or what publishers think or want or look for. Don't worry about what agents think they want. I've come to the conclusion that they only know what they want when they see it. When I think about anything other than the central goal of Getting the Book Out of Me, I freeze up.

Giving It Over turned out to be right on the mark at 55,000 words, which is perfect for a YA novel. I didn't plan that. The story took just that long to tell. With my second novel, I've had the story in my head, but I clouded it with worries and stayed frozen for over 2 years. I kid you not. Every time I tried to write, I just went blank. I found out I was writing to the wrong audience, for one thing. My audience wasn't the prospective agent or the publishing houses or even my critique group. My audience is a gaggle of teen-aged girls...and myself.

I'm writing now, and I'm so grateful for that. I want the first draft to be the easy part. The first draft should be the filled with the pleasure of writing. It should take me back to the reason I started this process in the first place. Getting to The Zone, letting my characters surprise me, spending time with them and finding myself in them, tucking stories within stories. Once the first draft is written, I can give it a tummy tuck and apply makeup.

Writing! What a process! And we so often become our own stumbling blocks to doing it. Why do I have to remind myself so often that I love to write? I'm just as guilty as anyone of spending time on the agent blogs, dipping into PW, taking to heart what other writers tell me. I always come back to the real and enduring reason I write. Because I love to.

Word Watch

2009-04-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

I saw this ad on the margin of my facebook screen today:

--
Washington moms are eligible for a free $10.000 scholarship. Read more.
--

All I can say is I'd hate to get a scholarship I had to PAY for. I'm glad this scholarship is free.

Authonomy

2009-03-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Found this today:

http://www.authonomy.com/

I uploaded the first 9 chapters of Giving It Over and am interested in seeing how this works. Looks like a fresh idea by Harper Collins.

What Literary Figure Would You Like to Be?

2009-03-02T06:32:00.000-08:00

This question was recently posed in a private rooms on Zoetrope. What a tough question, and one with an ever-changing answer.

After careful deliberation, I decided that right now (because this is subject to change without notice) I would like to be Miss Saeki in Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. She's beautiful, tragic, mysterious and full of dignity. As a literary figure, she's what I refer to as "The One Who Knows." The book is full of secrets and mystery, and Miss Saeki sits at her desk, sipping her coffee, quietly watching us to see our reaction.

Err on the side of audacity.

2009-02-18T10:45:00.000-08:00

Right now, I'm celebrating my love and appreciation for Sue Monk Kidd. The Secret Life of Bees is available on cable right now, and I think I've watched it five times. I think they did a great job with the movie, but Kidd's writing is so much richer. Her books are so layered with wonderful symbols that trickle down into the folds and secret places of women. I just can't get enough of her right now.

So, I went to her web page, and she has some great stuff for writers.

http://www.suemonkkidd.com/Reflections.aspx?t=w&i=1

Err on the side of audacity is one of the tips she has on her list of The Ten Most Helpful Things I Could Ever Tell Anyone About Writing

Now that I'm on a role with my 2nd YA novel (I just can't stop writing), she has reminded me of the most important question I need to ask:

What does my character want?

I think I know. Now that she's been ripped away from home and her best friend, she wants to find someone she can trust and feel safe with. Emily will find such people in her new town, but the ultimate journey will be in learning how to trust herself.

A-Muse-Ment

2009-01-28T10:15:00.000-08:00

I noticed that one of the songs on my Kitaro CD is titled Dance of Sarasvati. I looked her up and found this:

Sarasvati is the Hindu Goddess of all arts: music, painting, sculpture, dance, and writing. She is credited with presenting the gift of writing to mankind so that her songs could be written down and preserved. Sarasvati is often depicted on the back of a swan or peacock, and with four arms, with which she plays the lute or drum and bestows jeweled blessings. She is the Goddess of eloquence, and words pour from her like a sweetly flowing river. One myth of this Goddess is that She is a jealous rival of the Goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, and that pursuing wealth alone will assure that Sarasvati's gifts will desert you.

What could be a more fitting muse for a writer?

I don't have delusions of becoming a gazillionaire with my writing. But I do get caught up in the desire to be published. Nothing is a more sure block to writing than getting my muse confused. When my muse becomes a prospective agent or publishing house or even my desired audience, it slows me down and effects the quality of my work. My goal, now that my new novel is starting to live all around me, is to keep a clear, uncluttered channel between me and Sarasvati. Only by doing this can I ensure that the book gets written true to its vision and not true to what I tell myself someone else might want it to be.

So, my imagination should be used to write the book and not to body forth the book's life cycle.

Writing Breakthrough

2009-01-19T22:56:00.001-08:00

I can't say it's been worth it, but this long period of blockage has been more productive than I realized. One of the things about writing that I find so interesting is that it takes place when I'm not writing. Or maybe I'm writing all the time, and just don't know it. So, when I'm blow drying my hair or cooking cauliflower gratin or waiting in a left turn lane, I'm writing. Stories cook, the details blending and maturing, while I'm waiting for the commuter bus or feeding my cat.

I've had what I think is a very interesting YA novel in my head for some time now, and I've been utterly stuck. I know what happens, all the nuts and bolts, but I couldn't write. I just didn't like any of the attempts I made to flesh out the story. They all seemed flat, like a deflated cardboard box. My main character had no soul.

Well, a couple of days ago, she started talking. Her voice surprised me, because she's kind of harsh. Definitely someone who doesn't make friends easily. Can I have that in a main character? Of course, I can. She's on the brink of a journey she can't imagine, geographically and spiritually. Now that she's talking, I can't wait to take her on it.

The Room

2009-01-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

I just read an essay someone pointed me to, and will post the link to it here. I thought this one of the most eloquent descriptions of what it means to be a writer as I've ever read. But then, I appreciate anyone who knows that writing is supposed to be dangerous. Here it is: The Talent of the Room

Resolve

2008-12-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

Generally, I'm not much of a New Year's resolution kind of person. I hate it when I don't live up to my own expectations. But, where writing is concerned, I feel a bit different. Writing can be, I believe, a goal-oriented activity. And goals and resolutions compliment one another.

I have spent the last year writing and submitting flash fiction, spending time in multiple writer's communities and feeding myself an internal dialogue of self-doubt. While flash fiction is fun to write, and the social aspect of a writer's community has introduced me to many interesting people, none of these activities have done much to further me as a novelist. The main thing lacking this year has been the production of much writing. Mostly, I've felt stuck and frustrated. I've spent time and money trying to get to the writer in me. For reasons that elude me, I've settled into a nameless fear.

Now, I've always been a big one for naming one's fears. A thing without a name has control because we can’t cast parameters on something nameless. Finding definition can cause even the most intense fears to dissolve like a snow flake on the tongue. Where this fear is concerned, my efforts to find a name have fallen short. It's time for me to hang it up and get on with things. So, here is what I resolve for the coming year as a writer, in or outside of the presence of fear.

1. I resolve to think of myself as a writer. I will become the enemy of the inner voice that tells me I am not. I will not ridicule myself for taking myself as a writer too seriously. I will not tell myself that I am making a fool of myself every time I share my writing.

2. My second novel shall be my point of focus this year. I will devote two hours a day, at least three times a week, to working on this novel. I resolve to complete a first draft by the end of 2009. I also have another novel in my head, my first non-YA novel. I will allow it to form and present itself and will stop ignoring the characters who are trying so hard to get my attention.

3. I will focus my writing community activity to one group. I have belonged to a small, intimate online writer’s group for several years now. The group used to be such a source of support for me. We've gone through so many changes, which is natural for groups. Being made up of people, the dynamic of a group is a fragile thing. Several of the more active members have fallen by the wayside, and I allowed that to lessen my own commitment to the group. In 2009, I will put my online writer’s group in the center. The group is hosted by MSN, which is discontinuing the service boards, so we’re in the process of moving the group. When we move to the new site next month, I want to consider that a fresh start. I hope everyone else will view it as the same. I also hope we can add new members who will bring their writing and their critiquing energies into the group as well. For myself, I will post my novel for critique, and I will critique whatever the rest of you post. I need other writers to read my work. I want WSE to become, once again, a place where I can depend on at least a half a dozen people to provide me with honest thoughtful critiques. Even though the number of critiques I receive from careful readers isn't strictly under my control, I will do what I can to foster an atmosphere where that can take place.

Nathan Bransford's 1st Paragraph Contest

2008-12-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

Nathan Bransford, a literary agent at Curtis Brown, is holding his 2nd annual 1st paragraph contest, hosted on his blog.

http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/12/2nd-sort-of-annual-stupendously.html

The prizes are either a query or partial critique. Whooeee... I think this is an interesting forum for a contest. All of the posts are public, so we can see the competition, and the comments are also public. The deadline is this Thursday, finalists are to be announced on Friday, and then participants will vote on which finalist will be the grand prize winner.

The Center

2008-11-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

I’ve always loved that Yeats poem, Second Coming. For me, the first three lines epitomize how I see my life when I drift away from my God concept.

Turning and turning in a widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

The poem says so much more, but those three lines, taken alone, I can apply directly to me. The other day, though, they took on a new meaning for me with regards to my novel. I suddenly realized that my story is turning and turning, getting ever further away from the center, the falconer, me. As the distance grows, I lose the story, the voices of the characters. I need to pull them in and hold them close, I need to listen to them breathing and feel their foreheads for fever. I need to know what they had for lunch and how they feel about the upcoming holidays. I’m the center. If I want them to, they will have things to tell me. If I want them to.

I have to look forward to seeing them the way I looked forward to having my daughter here for Thanksgiving. I have to wake up wondering where they are and what they’re doing. I have to want to ask them out to play.

Why No $30 Agent Session @ Conferences - Reason #1

2008-11-24T20:59:00.000-08:00

Agent: Your writing is solid, but the setting didn't quite work for me. It might work if you placed it somewhere dry. Maybe try resetting it in the Mojave Desert, maybe Needles, California in a truck stop under a bill board for grape crush.

Writer: B-but it's a surfing story.

Agent: Right. Keep the sand. The sand works.

Burroway - Writing Fiction

2008-11-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

How did a whole month slip by without my posting anything here? I've started a writing class at the UW, and, along with too many other commitments, I'm letting things slip.

I'm getting ready for the La Jolla writer's conference next week, and, at work, I'm slogging through the stuff one slogs through in my profession.

For my class, we're reading Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway. It's too bad the class isn't going through the chapters chronologically, because I am also reviewing each chapter in the Craft Corner on Zoe. I've decided to post those chapter reviews here.

Chapter 1 - Whatever Works - The Writing Process

Burroway's first chapter prods us into examining writing as habit. It takes on the stance that a productive writer becomes so out of habit more than talent. Hence, this quote:

Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. --Octavia Butler.

I got to thinking about my own habits as a writer. I'm given to fits of feeling blocked. I've spent a lot of time and energy, not to mention money, trying to find ways through block. So now I'm asking myself what my habits are. What's my writing foundation? I realized that I have a lot of room for improvement here.

I do a morning exercise every day. First thing, before my brain kicks in, I do the morning pages. For me, that's a ten-minute, timed free-writing. Whatever's in there when I wake up. I seldom go back and read these pages. Last week, though, I did. I finished a notebook and went back to page 1 to see if there was any kind of flow. Most of it was pure dribble. Worthless rants about hating my job, plans with friends, my cat, thoughts about writing projects. Why do I do this, I wondered. But every now and then, I found a few paragraphs that seemed lyrical to me. Snippets of effortless art, that stuff that comes from the place I wish I could go to at will.

Now I'm thinking that maybe being able to go to that place at will, the place where the words flow, is something I can develop through habits surrounding writing. Maybe it's not some mythical, muse-occupied space where only those more gifted than I can go whenever they choose. Maybe it's a matter of developing better habits.

Burroway states:

Over and over again, successful writers attest that unless they prepare the conscious mind with the habit of work, the gift does not come. Writing is mind-farming. You have to plow, plant, weed, and hope for growing weather. Why a seed turns into a plant is something you are never going to understand, and the only relevant response to it is gratitude. You may be proud, however, of having plowed.

The chapter offers quite a list of ideas and exercises.

She approaches block from the stance of it being a tiresome cliché.

What's called writer's block is almost always ordinary fear. --Thomas Wolfe

Well, yeah. But knowing that doesn't make the fear go away. For me, I have to name my fears in order for them to lose control over me. As long as they're nameless, my fears are in charge. But she goes on to say:

I know a newspaper editor who says that writer's block always represents a lack of information. I thought this inapplicable to fiction until I noticed that I was mainly frustrated when I didn't know enough about my characters, the scene or the action – when I had not gone to the imaginative depth where information lies.

Okay. I can see that. I've conducted interviews with my characters and watched them go from lackluster to vibrant and chatty. It seems they are like anyone else...they just want someone to take an interest in them.

Another time when block settles in for me is when my ego is directing my focus.

There is an almost mathematical ratio between soaring, grandiose ambition...and severe creative block. --Victoria Nelson

When my desire for my work to be published is in the forefront of my mind, my audience automatically becomes all the people I'm sure are poised to reject me. Who wants to write anything to them???

Practical stuff, really. And all of it easily applied. I looked at some of the ideas under the section, Exercises, to see how I could modify my morning pages practice and make it more structured. I spotted several things in the chapter that I think will make my practice of writing more productive.

Synopsis on Demand

2008-09-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

I just wrote a one-page synopsis for my meeting with an agent at the La Jolla Writer’s Conference I will be attending this November. I surfed around, looking for brief instructions. I figured that what I think a synopsis should be and what others think is likely quite different. So, I did what I most hate doing. I asked for directions.

Well, there are a gazillion web pages out there with advice. And I’m betting most of the writing books I have offer some insight into synopsis writing as well. In the end, I went to Nathan Bransford’s blog and found his blog entry on writing a synopsis. He said what I already knew, that there is no one way to write one.

So, here’s what I did. The only instruction for this synopsis was that it be confined to a single page. I prepared a single-spaced page with three sections:

The Story

The Characters

The Format

I don’t know if this is right or wrong, whether it’s what an agent would consider a good synopsis, whether it will make anyone want to read my book. I especially hope it does the latter.

Back It Up

2008-09-21T23:02:00.000-07:00

When I was married (about a hundred years ago), my now former brother-in-law took it into his head to write the great American novel. He had saved a ton of money, so he quit working, rented an office, furnished it with a typewriter, desk and safe and commenced writing. The word, typewriter, should tip you off that this was before the time when everyone had one or more computers and this thing called the internet where we could move things all over the world.

The brother-in-law was a smart guy and took himself and his work seriously enough to ensure he had a backup. He made a copy of his work and asked us to keep it in our apartment in the event a fire or something unforeseen occurred to eliminate the original in his office. I think it was an honest to God carbon copy. When was the last time you saw one of those? When was the last time you saw a typewriter eraser? Or a...well, I digress.

Now, it's so easy to have multiple backups of our work and that ease makes it all the more common for us to not do it. Oh, it's easy. I can do it any time. I don't even need to say that, if you don't back up your work, you should. There are a lot of ways to back stuff up, though. One important factor that still holds true from the brother-in-law and carbon copy days is that it's important to have a copy in some geographic location other than your home. We think of our computers going to sleep and never waking up. But loss of home or office is another angle. So, making a copy by printing it out or copying it to a disposable drive or to a second computer is not sufficient.

If you print your work, save a copy somewhere other than where your computer resides. But there is a much better way to handle copies. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is the simplest and most accessible way of moving documents to a storage place for safe keeping. Most internet accounts include storage space. If not, get a gmail account. Google to the rescue. Gmail offers an easy, accessible, free place to store work. You can access it from any web browser, and it never goes away. The question of whether or not we want Google to have that much information about our lives is another question, but for a quick backup of something, just attach the document to an email and send it to yourself. See? Easy.

Midnight Sun - What a Scam!

2008-09-08T17:00:00.001-07:00

The only thing I hate more than being lied to is being taken for an idiot. Stephanie Meyers discusses on her web page her feelings around Midnight Sun being leaked to the internet. Understandably, she talks of feeling violated and robbed. She states that she is so distraught that she has decided to postpone the book indefinitely.

Okay, that's when I got a little suspicious. This has publicity written all over it. And it's a cheap shot. The publicist who talked her into this stunt should be fired. First, her reaction makes me picture a two-year-old, flinging herself on the floor, refusing to walk another step. Second, it makes me feel manipulated.

I'm not saying that the book wasn't leaked, although I think that's a possibility. I'm saying that Meyers and her publisher are manipulating her readers by withholding. What's the best way to make a teenager want something? Tell her she can't have it. They're creating greater demand. And it's going to backfire.

She's lost me as a loyal reader. This book will show up, and it'll sell like hotcakes because of the controversy and anticipation created by this event. I'll buy it when it shows up in a second hand bookstore, unfettered by any obligation to provide its writer or publisher with royalties.

Who's Telling the Story?

2008-08-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about narrators...the voice of the story teller. I realized something while driving to work this morning. I like conspicuous narrators. The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield's wonderful debut novel, starts out like this:

"All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone, heart, mind and soul, ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won't be the truth. It will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story."

I was instantly hooked. What story will this story teller offer? Can it be trusted?

Memoirs of a Geisha begins: Mine is a story that should never be told.

I find this kind of hook irresistible.

Then there's the frame story...James and Conrad and all the Victorian writers loved frame stories. Some guy in a room with other guys, all in soft, leather chairs, speaks through a cloud of cigar smoke with a brandied tongue and tells a tale so tall, so horrific.

Then there's the collective narrator. Faulkner used this one a lot. A Rose for Emily was narrated by the collective "we." I find myself using this kind of narrator in flash fiction a lot. Not sure why. I like the notion of a story being told by a community or a group. Here's what we saw.

I've been circling around my YA novel for some months now, and the problem is with the narrator. I haven't hit my stride yet because I haven't found a voice for the narrator. I didn't know this until today. I simply knew that I was stuck. But now I know what I'm looking for. I want someone who has a voice like Vida Winter in The Thirteenth Tale. I want someone to begin with something irresistible, like Memoirs of a Geisha. A teen girl, talking to a friend from home, saying, "Sorry I haven't called you back until now. I just didn't know how to tell you everything that's happened here. But, now that I think of it, you're the only friend I have who would ever believe it." Whoopie.

First Sentence - John Cheever

2008-08-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

I was going through John Cheever's short story collection this evening, and I came across this one from O Youth and Beauty:

At the tag end of nearly every long, large Saturday-night party in the suburb of Shady Hill, when almost everybody who was going to play golf or tennis in the morning had gone home hours ago and the ten or twelve people remaining seemed powerless to bring the evening to an end although the gin and whiskey were running low, and here and there a woman who was sitting out her husband would have begun to drink milk; when everybody had lost track of time, and the baby-sitters who were waiting at home for these diehards would have long since stretched out on the sofa and fallen into a deep sleep, to dream about cooking-contest prizes, ocean voyages, and romance; when the bellicose drunk, the crapshooter, the pianist, and the woman faced with the expiration of her hopes had all expressed themselves; when every proposal--to go to the Farquarsons' for breakfast, to go swimming, to go and wake up the Townsends, to go here and go there--died as soon as it was made, then Trace Bearden would begin to chide Cash Bentley about his age and thinning hair.

Whew! Cheever. I wish I'd had you at my elbow in college creative writing classes when that snotty girl with the braces accused me of writing run-on sentences. This story is such a great example of Cheever throwing aside all control. What fun.

Readings and Meeting Other Writers

2008-08-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

I like to think about what this online world has done for writers. I suspect I'm not the only writer who spends time alone with relative ease. I don't turn on the radio or TV to have noise in the room or to hear the sound of someone's voice. Alone time is something writers with families crave. It's something that I guard. Sometimes even The Princess is a little too much company.

So, we have our online communities, people we "know" from the internet places we visit. We know slews of people we've never met. I interact with people every day on the internet. It's easier for a socially, er, limited person such as myself. Not that I don't love a good party or enjoy a day out with friends. I'm just saying that it's easier this way, maybe in ways that shouldn't be so easy.

I work with people like myself as well...people who will send an email to someone who sits on the other side of the room. Sue and I sat next to each other and would IM one another to have a private conversation.

So, who are these people I meet online, and how do I know they are who they say they are? People with little internet community experience are often exceedingly skeptical about the friendships formed online. They think of drooling pedophiles and get-rich-quick scammers and ask how I know these people are who they say they are. "They can say anything they want about themselves, and you'd never know if it's true or not."

It's true. The internet is a place where people can be solidly false or unflinchingly honest. They can create a persona and live out a fantasy existence or take a risk and reveal who they really are. What an interesting place.

But writing communities, although we have our share of screwballs, seem to be a place where we can join together and really work on our craft outside the confines of solitude. We can have our work critiqued or reviewed or just read by a variety of people without ever leaving our homes or seeing anyone face-to-face. If we don't like the way someone comes at us, we can simply delete them and move on...except for the brooders, that is.

So, when it comes to physically meeting other writers, it's wonderful and risky and exciting. I've gotten together with Jen, whom I met on an MSN writers forum. We've gotten together several times over the past 3 or 4 years, and I consider her to be a keeper, someone I will hold dear always. Now, when I think of her, I don't just think of her incredible talent as a novelist. I think of her smile, the hours we've spent jabbering about writing, and the pieces of her life she's shared with me.

Last night, I went to a reading of a writer whose work I love. Kathy Fish read some of her flash fiction at the University Bookstore here in Seattle. It was so cool meeting her and seeing what she looks like, hearing the lilt of her voice as she read the words I've read so many times. Now, I have her tone, her smile and that sliver of her personality I was able to feel in the half hour we chatted. Two other people from the same online community were in attendance, and it was wonderful getting to meet and connect with them as well. Both of them are editors of ezines I just adore. I was afraid I'd drool or burst into hysterical laughter or fall to my knees and beg them to publish me. I did none of those things, though, and they suffered me with grace. So, now I'll never be able to read their posts without picturing them and knowing their voices. It surprises me how much that changes things. For better or worse? Well, neither. It's just different. Not only have I seen and heard them, but I've now been seen and heard as well. That's the part I don't like. I'd much rather see and hear them without them ever seeing or hearing me.

In November, I'm going to a conference in San Diego, and I get to meet my dear friend, Marie. She has read and supported me with my writing for a long time now, and she's also been the recipient of many a whining session as I've gone through things over the past few years. We're going to be roomies at this conference, and I'm so excited I'm afraid I won't make it to November without wetting my pants. We actually talked to each other in the flesh over the phone a week ago, and it was amazing. She has a voice other than her great writer's voice... I mean a vocal voice. Wow.

Getting to know people on line is safe, but at some point, I've gotta just crawl out of my cave and join the physical world. So far, it's been a hoot.

What are you working on?

2008-08-13T22:25:00.001-07:00

I'm working on figuring out what to work on. I'm stuck. It's not the first or probably the last time. But stuck I am.

So, last month, I participated in that dynamite flash marathon and got a handful of new work out. I felt launched, oiled. But then I skipped a beat and lost it like a pebble falling to the bottom of a well.

I have to cut myself some slack because I just started a new job in June, and I'm going through this huge learning curve. But if I wrote as much as I thought about writing, I'd have a series of novels done by now.

I feel discouraged because I've fallen into self-doubt. I'm losing the reason behind writing. A part of me really wants my novels to be published, but I have to tell myself that the goal of publication is not a good motivator. It's quite the opposite.

For example, I have a plot outlined for the current YA novel I'm writing. I'm having some problems, but the story is solid. The book is already written somewhere just under the surface of my skin, and it's beautiful. But here's the problem. The book is about a teen girl who moves to Monroe, Washington with her flaky mother. She's lost, she's lonely, and she hates it here. Then something paranormal happens and her life clicks into place. Then, last week, I finally got around to reading Twilight, that first book in the blockbuster hit YA series. It's about a teen girl who moves to Forks, Washington to give her flaky mother some distance. She's lost, she's lonely, and she hates it here. Then something paranormal happens, and her life clicks into place. Argh!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, there are no vampires or werewolves in my story. But, geeze! Can't you already hear the agents and editors? We don't need another book about a teen girl who moves to Washington, has a flaky mother and is lost, lonely...well, you get it. Where else could I place it, given the great first sentence I've come up with? It was a dark and stormy night. Just kidding.

Then there's the hybrid memoir I've started, written about 30,000 words of and have just realized that the place I thought was a crack in the story is just there to let a little light in. Should I work on that? Again? It feels so self-indulgent. But I like the idea of lacing memoir with pure fiction and playing with ways we try to cast ourselves in the best possible light. Memoir is just begging to be messed with. Memoirs remind me of something my mom used to say, that you can't hit yourself hard enough to really hurt yourself. That whole notion that a protagonist needs to be liked and sympathized with pisses me off. I want to exploit it and write a memoir that has the fantasy, the lies we tell ourselves and shows what I hide when I dress for a party.

Then there's my draft of a book about five lesbians friends who are suddenly all single for the first time in their group relationship. I want to tinker with the ways friendships are so fluid and how the ground can so violently shift when women enter times of change. I have plots worked out for three of the five, and the other two are whispering to me daily, wanting equal time. Do I write, though? Noperoonie.

So, so sum it up, with all this going on, I'm working on learning how to administer an IBM cluster, running SuSE Linux and DB2 in an Enterprise Data Warehouse. I'm learning how to manage Samba mounts and how to format and partition disk arrays. And I'm on the 3rd book of Stephanie Meyers's vampire/werewolf series.

Five Things That Piss Me Off Every Time

2008-08-12T23:01:00.000-07:00

Arrogance in the name of religion.
Arrogance in the name of gender superiority (coming from either direction).
Arrogance of the young toward the old, or the reverse.
Arrogance from the top down or from the gutter looking up.
Arrogance.

Flash-a-thon Winding Down

2008-07-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Someone said that one of the flashathons in the past was a month long. I'd be dead if I tried that. This one lasted 2 weeks, and I was able to keep up the pace for the first week, then I started slowing down. I wrote five new pieces, turned one short story into a flash and submitted two flashes that hadn't been workshopped before. I reviewed 76 flashes and became familiar with a whole bunch of writers whose work I hadn't read before. I also got tons of great critiques and reviews of my work.

One of the many great benefits of the internet is being able to belong to a huge community of writers who read and enjoy each others work. I may not have my novel on the shelves of libraries and bookstores, but I am read. What more can a writer ask?

Flashathon on Zoe

2008-07-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

Ellen Parker initiated a flashathon on Zoetrope's flash workshop page. The deal is to post a flash a day for two weeks. It'll probably kill me, but I'm going to do it. So far, I've done well for one day in a row. I'm committed to writing new flashes, too, not recycling old stuff, although I did try to rework a piece out of my essay, The Dead Files. I won't post it, though. New stuff only!!!

So, a flash is defined, at least here, as anything 1000 words or fewer. Zoetrope has a sort of silly rule that says a flash can't be fewer than 100 words. How can you put a minimum to flash?

Anyway, here's the real kicker. For each flash you post on Zoe, you have to review 5 flashes by other submitters. That's a lot of critiques per day. But, so far, I've discovered some new writers I didn't know and I'm getting to read a lot more of the writers I already love, so it's a pretty good deal all around. And I get a lot of critiques too. So, we'll see how it goes. In two weeks, I'll probably be flashed out.

Literary Fiction vs Indie Films and Music

2008-07-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

Someone on one of the critique forums I frequent wrote an essay, posing the question, why doesn't literary fiction generate the same kind of excitement and discourse that independent films and music do?

Those of us who read small press anthologies and dip into the wonderful assortment of web-zines available right now know that most of the readers are writers. We all know which ones are good, which ones we'd kill to get into, and which ones are so-so. We know which ones are worthy of high-brow literary criticism and which ones are just pure fun. So, why don't people frequent these places in large numbers like the places where indie film and music are offered? What's the difference?

Well...here's a big difference. Listening to music or going to a film is usually a group experience. Sure, you can listen to music or watch a video alone, but you can share the experience with someone else and do it together or with a group. Reading is a solitary experience and can only be shared with other people who enjoy solitary experiences.

My friend, John, and I often read stories aloud to one another. We have our ritual Christmas story night during the holidays and often choose something from my shelves of short story collections and small press anthologies rather than watching something from On Demand. I think it would be great fun to have a party where everyone brings a short story not self-written and we read stories, eat wonderful junk, and drink choice beverages, maybe until dawn. That's what kind of weirdo I am.

Another thing the essay tied in to is the flickering on the horizon about the changing publishing industry. It's going to all change, and very soon. Well, not soon enough for some and too soon for others. Everyone's clamoring right now to guess what's going to happen. We have new devices like the Amazon Kindle and every software developer with an imagination (and that's most of them) trying to come up with a reader that can integrate into other hand held devices. Have you noticed that the screens on cell phones and other hand held devices are getting bigger? There's the wave of Japanese text message storying and just all kinds of stuff. Publishing companies are starting to fear Amazon because it's harnessing technology and forcing them to strain out of their neolithic mind sets. Amazon's also making some pretty monopolistic moves, but that's another story. The thing is, publishing is going to change completely because reading is going electronic.

Every time I say that, someone says, "Well, I'm never going to stop reading the printed word. It's never going away." It may not go away, but it's going to diminish. one writer of this forum said a few days ago that some of her readers of erotic romance say they never read anything but e-books anymore. Right now, romance, erotic romance and sci fi are popular in e-book form, but it's not far off for everything else to click in on this. It will change the way publishing operates in such a way that the Random House or S&S stamp of approval might not carry same meaning it does now.

Everyone's wondering how writers are going to get paid, how will publishers fare, what are new ways of promoting and finding audiences. Right now, e-book publishers pay way higher a percentage in royalties than the New York giants. Sure, they sell the books for less, but it still comes out to more. Pertinent to the essay that prompted me to write mine, though, is how the landscape will change for literary writers. Vanity presses have, indeed, damaged the rep of e-publishing. People have confused self-publishing with e-publishing. So, the question is, how will e-publishers establish a reputation of only publishing quality? I think the answer is that they must continue to be the gatekeeper. Houses with a reputation for publishing only quality works will attract readers who are more discriminating.

I hear such mixed opinions about kids and reading. Ask a children's librarian if kids are reading, and they'll tell you yes, more than ever. YA is a hot genre to write in right now. Teens, especially teen girls, are gobbling up books like crazy. I wish there were an enthusiastic e-publisher of YA, because I'd go that route with my novel in a heartbeat.

The inner struggle writers have between writing literary vs. mass consumption will never go away, but the method writers use to find readers will soon turn a corner that will change everything for everyone, and, once it turns that corner, it will never look back.

Conferences

2008-06-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

The first conference I attended was the Whidbey Island Writers’ Conference. The first year, I didn’t meet with an agent or editor because neither of the works I had in progress felt far enough along for me to discuss with anyone. Also, I was just getting the lay of the land and was learning what these conferences were all about.

My first conference experience was everything I wanted it to be.

First, I got to spend an entire pre-conference day in a memoir writing workshop with Maureen Murdock. I felt so in step with her when I read The Heroine’s Journey because of her friendship with Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell turned my life in a new direction when I met him. Maureen proved to be a sensitive and insightful workshop leader, and the eleven other women (only women signed up for this) just added to the overall experience.

The keynote speaker that year was Sara Paretsky. I was so excited at the thought of meeting her. V.I. Warshawski is my all time favorite sassy female dick.

The official conference began on Friday, and that evening, a local pub and bookstore hosted a couple of great ice breaker events. Conference attendees gathered at the pub over pitchers of beer and an open mic where writers could read poetry or flash fiction or selected excerpts. The bookstore set up tables for board games. One of the games was a cross between creating crossword puzzles and scrabble. The game was played in teams, and agents, editors, and writers of all descriptions grouped together to extend their word play agility. I opted for the bookstore games. Between rounds, conversation flowed in a relaxed atmosphere, free of expectation. Acquaintances were formed that lasted through the weekend.

As I attended subsequent conferences, I noted that, for many of the writers in attendance, the expectation was high. They wanted to be discovered or found. However, there was a not-so-invisible line between those in the professional, established positions and the wannabes. Those who had the coveted power to discover and snatch the quivering wannabe from the dregs appeared to have other things on their minds. They tended to group together with other agents or editors, the established writers formed their own huddle, flashing smiles as they autographed books, only to return to eye-rolling amongst the other real writers. Once I sat down at a table where Robert Ferrigno sat alone. I knew that he and I had come from the same town in California and wanted to ask him several things, like how living in Belmont Shore had contributed to the writing of Horse Latitudes or how long he’d lived in Washington and what had brought him up here. He literally rolled his eyes at me, and answered in monosyllables until a romance writer came over and rescued him from me. “You look bored,” she said. He growled and nodded. Okay…time for me to move on back to the corner with the other nobodies. I learned my place right and proper.

That’s not to say they’re all like Ferrigno. That experience stands out in my mind because he was just so openly affronted by my disregard for his position at the conference relative to mine. I’ve had some great conversations with writers as well. Nancy Kress is a wonderful writer to have at any conference. She’s a great teacher and workshop leader, and she likes talking to writers of all descriptions. I felt as though she honestly enjoyed visiting with us. Sara Paretsky, Steve Martini were also a pleasure to spend time with. My all time favorite writer event was with Leslie Marmon Silko at The Room of Her Own writers retreat for women. That week-long retreat stands alone among events for writers as the greatest thing a writer can do for herself.

After I finished my YA novel, I made two appointments at the Whidbey Island Conference. I wanted to meet with an agent of YA material. And I wanted to meet with an editor of a major publishing house to discuss the premise of my memoir. The agent said that the story line of my book sounded intriguing and asked for a partial. She returned it within the same week I sent it with a standard rejection note. The editor sat with her arms folded across her chest, obviously wishing this morning would end. The expression on her face said, “What.” Not a question. Since I knew from the moment I walked in the room that she felt the entire process of meeting with unpublished writers was a waste of her time, I found myself at a loss for words. Without unfolding her arms, she said to me, “Adoption memoirs have been done before and are boring.” I thanked her for her time and waited for her to thank me for my thirty dollars, which she didn’t.

Overall, the game night stands out as the most productive event I’ve encountered at a three-day conference. The biggest obstacle conferences have to overcome is the tension formed by the fledgling writer’s desire for a break, versus the established folks aloof and guarded posturing.

We can all read Miss Snark. I don’t need to have someone stand at a podium and tell us about all the annoying things we do to cross over. I may be alone in saying this, but I am not the kind of person who excels in acting like a simpering puppy in need of a pat on the head. I don’t like to kiss ass. Sure, I want to be published, but I want it to be because my book is something someone wants to represent and not because I pant and shake like a Chihuahua any time someone with New York connections crosses my path. Maybe I’m still extremely naïve. I do know that getting published is sort of like getting struck by lightening. As a writer who workshops my work, I’ve read a lot of work by unpublished writers, and there’s just a whole fucking lot of unbelievably good stuff out there. There’s also a lot of drivel. I understand the challenge agents and publishers face in finding the right manuscripts. I know that there is a lot of great work out there that will never see a bookstore shelf. Where conference are concerned, though, ice breakers like the game and pub night and small groups where people sit around a table and talk about some aspect of writing with a single professional are the two most valuable activities a conference can offer.

Smokelong Anniversary

2008-06-16T19:30:00.001-07:00

The new issue is out and full of fun, friends and surprises!!

E-pubs, OMG

2008-06-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

I'm seeing so much buzz and fear about e-publishing, as in the Kindle vs. other devices and how is the publishing industry ever going to keep from dying. I think this all started with the recent BEA. I have a feeling this has happened before...I don't know, maybe when...

Natsuo Kirino

2008-06-09T08:22:00.001-07:00

Natsuo Kirino has a new book coming out in July, Real World. I added her to my list after reading Out last fall. I know. The title, Out, sounds like a political thriller about a gay hazing. After reading the book, I never figured out what the title, Out, meant in relation to the book. Must be one of those times when east doesn’t quite translate into west. But the book was fascinating.

I’m struggling to figure out how to describe it. Out is a complex, feminist thriller in the Conradian tradition. How’s that for a description? The book tells the story of four women friends who work the graveyard shift at a box lunch factory. Their personalities are so different I wondered how they ever hooked up, but they work well together. The story takes off when one of them, a sad waif of a woman, steps out of her passivity and accidentally murders her husband during a fight. The women work together under the leadership of Katori to dispose of the body. The narrative is omniscient, giving us a “too much information” view of each character’s thoughts and activities around the events. And Kirino crosses taboos which make us cringe while they compel us to read on.

Even with the omniscient point of view, the story belongs to Katori. She’s the instigator, the one who is both driver of and driven by the events in the story. She has a grim double who haunts her and moves ever closer until they meet at the climactic conclusion.

I see Kirino as a rising star. Her work is deceptively hiding within the current boom of female crime fiction writers in Japan. I predict she’ll trace the same path as Raymond Chandler and remain obscured within this pulp fiction genre until someone discovers her significance. She’s prompted me to do two things. I want to check out other Japanese women crime writers, and I can’t wait to read Real World.

Is E-Publishing an Option?

2008-06-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

Today, I did a little research about e-publishing. Specifically, I wanted to find what firms publish YA and whether they looked like stable businesses or shingle on-a-fireplug operations.

After taking Maya Reynolds’ class about the publishing business, I decided that I may have been too hasty about e-publishing. I lumped it in with all the vanity presses and self-publishing scams as a route that would do more harm than good. But Maya explained that, although she had gone the traditional route, with her book being published by an imprint of Penguin, two of her friends started out by having their books e-published. The e-pubbed authors earned a much higher royalty than those who go through the traditional houses. Traditional houses pay a royalty of 12 – 15%, whereas e-pubs pay an average of 45%. Maya said that, while she was toiling in search of an agent and a house to publish her book, her friends were enjoying royalties from their e-published books. In the long run, they were picked up by traditional publishing houses and ended up being published in print copy at about the same time as Maya’s book.

When Googling the search phrase, e-publishing, I came up with a bunch of questionable hits. The top hit, e-publishing.com, is a business selling services to ecommerce businesses. In other words, it sells internet marketing tools. Most of the sites I found focus on Romance novels. Some offered a mixed menu, but all focused on Romance or Erotic Romance, with Sci Fi coming in a distant second. Finally, I modified my search phrase to be “e-publishing YA” Here are some of the ones I found:

Samhain, - not accepting ya right now. Mostly romance

Ellora's Cave – Erotic Romance

Loose Id – Erotic Romance

Awe-struck – once did YA but not anymore

Wings e-press – Guidelines discourage books with sex (which would rule my YA novel out). I didn’t see anything to indicate that they were a Christian publisher. They may have been just trying to discourage erotica. They also have a problem with anything to do with alternative lifestyles, which I take to mean anything gay. That kind of put me off, and certainly eliminates my other novel in the works. Overall, they are the best option I found for my YA novel…well, the only one, really. They’ve been around since 2002 and have a full staff.

Writers Exchange – This looked like an established publisher. Again, mostly romance, but they publish a variety of genre. They didn’t list YA but had a note on their submissions page stating that writers could query about anything they don’t list. Their web site also has samples of the contracts they have with authors and a lengthy essay about the difference between them and vanity presses. They pay 60% in royalties.

With all of the e-pub sites, I was concerned by the sort of fly-by-night appearance of the web pages and their merchandise. The book covers were the sort of thing you’d find on the cover of an Ellory Queen magazine. Covers offer lots of torso shots and scenes of women being swept off their feet. The web pages all looked like they’d been put together with Frontpage on someone’s home computer. I didn’t see any web pages that looked as though they had been professionally developed.

All-in-all, I’m taking a step back. I think that e-publishing is going to explode in the next 2 – 5 years. It’s not there yet. My guess is that, way after the barn door’s closed, the traditional publishers will realize that this is a viable, low-risk method of selling books and will include it in their fare. It might make getting published a lot easier, but will include a whole lot of material that will never see a marketing dollar.

I’ve got my ear to the ground, though, for that break-out e-publisher who gets it right and bursts free from the crowd with long strides. Someone’s out there developing it right now. I can just smell it.

In the meantime…just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. I’ll continue to shop for an agent via the traditional route.

First Sentences

2008-05-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

We’re told that first sentences are supposed to hook the reader. In a short story, especially in flash, the first sentence is critical. I’ve been going through some of the short story anthologies I love and looking at the first sentences of some of my favorite writers. I’m not trying to make a statement or anything. I just found this an interesting exercise. I can see the differences in style just by looking at the different sizes of the sentences. I would have included Henry James or Garcia-Marquez, but I didn’t want to make this entry too long. Here are some of the ones I looked at:

Raymond Carver:

In the kitchen, he poured another drink an dlooked at the bedroom suite in his front yard.

A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.

Vera’s car was there, no others, and Burt gave thanks for that.

John Cheever:

There is no sense in looking for trouble, but in any big, true picture of the city where we all live, there is surely room for one more word on the diehards, the hangers-on, the people who never got along and who never gave up, the insatiables that we have all known at one time or another.

You may have seen my mother waltzing on ice skates in Rockefeller Center.

The last time I saw my father was in Grand Central Station.

Mary Gaitskill

When he saw her on the way to work in the morning, he ignored her, even though he hadn’t seen her for four years.

Stephanie wasn’t a “professional lady” exactly; tricking was just something she slipped into, once a year or so, when she was feeling particularly revolted by clerical work, or when she couldn’t pay her bills.

The typing and secretarial class was held in a little basement room in the Business Building of the local community college.

Jhumpa Lahiri:

The noticed informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.

Eliot had been going to Mrs. Sen’s for nearly a month, ever since school started in September.

They discovered the first one in a cupboard above the stove, beside an unopened bottle of malt vinegar.

What Led You To Your Novel

2008-05-22T20:08:00.001-07:00

Someone on Zoetrope posed this great question..."What has led you to your novel?"

The first novel, the one I've finished, Giving It Over, lots of things. I was adopted, and I was a teen mother. My first daughter was conceived the same year that abortion became legal. I gave birth to her when I was fifteen. Those elements of my past give me a great interest in adoption, as an institution, and teen pregnancy.

I was grappling with some ideas for a YA novel and had a whole idea formulated in my head, but I couldn't seem to get into it. I don't remember what led me to this realization, but I discovered that my problem resided in the fact that I didn't care about my protagonist. I didn't love her or hate her, so I couldn't breath life into her. I asked myself what kind of character I could care about.

Around this time, Lynn walked out of the mist and started telling me about herself. By mist, I mean that mysterious place where characters come from when writers least expect it. Lynn was fifteen, pregnant, and was living in a house for pregnant girls who were going to give their babies up for adoption. She talked, I wrote. The story was just there. All of the characters were just there.

I get pissed off when people assume that this story is autobiographical because it deals with the subjects of adoption and teen pregnancy. The stories of the girls at Harbor House are not my story. Yet each of the girls is a facet of me in some way. Lynn the whimp, Melody the sassy jr. dyke, Lupita the silent one, Rebecca the hard-assed slut, Jenny the healer. They're all me. They're all teenaged girls who are pregnant and are among the first to make a choice about whether to terminate or complete their pregnancies. They're all part of the big County system that existed to harvest babies before abortion became legal.

So, I almost feel like I can't take credit for that novel because it didn't feel like I wrote it...it was just there, waiting to be plucked from the branches.

The biggest part of me that's in both of my novels is my idealism, or hope maybe. I want to believe that love is a force underneath all the bull shit, and that it can prevail in our lives if we just summon up the courage to let it in.

Self-centered day...

2008-05-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

Ever read the posts on PostSecret and wonder if they were sent by someone you know....

...and that the message is written to you?

Hospital Corners

2008-05-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I took stock of all the pieces I’ve written for the 2^nd YA novel (working title now Hospital Corners). I was surprised to find that I was further along than I realized. I mean, I’ve known that a great many details were in my head. I just had no idea how many of them I’d written down. My goal this week is to type all the pieces that are hand written in all of the notebooks and organize them into some kind of order. Then I need to figure out where the gaps are. I’ll be like Emily Dickenson stitching together her poems, written on little pieces of cloth.

I wrote a partial outline last week, and I need to finish that as well, take it out to the end.

I hope I can get through a draft of this thing before I have to go back to work. Still looking for a day job and, as much as I need to find one before money runs out, I am really digging not working right now.

Giving It Over to Giving It Over

2008-05-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve just completed Maya Reynolds’ online course on Everything You Need To Know About The Publishing Industry, and it was a well spent twenty bucks! Maya broke the course into the three branches of the industry, publishers, book distributors and agents. Her insights and research helped me to regain the confidence I needed to relaunch my efforts to find a home for Giving It Over, my YA novel.

For a while, I’d been thinking that I should just scrap GIO, and chalk it up to a first effort. But several things converged to push my ass off the seat. Maya’s class gave me information about approaching agents, and it offered information on a branch of publishing I had poo-pooed in the past. I want to look into the option of e-publishing. Marie contacted me and told me that she wanted to read GIO again. Out of the blue, she sent me an email saying that she hoped I hadn’t thrown it on the shelf. Okay. Then Papercuts blog had this entry today. Burning bushes.

The Plan:

Give it another once over. It’s been a while since I’ve read it. I am betting that I’ll see it a lot differently now that it’s had time to settle.
Post it on Zoe for a critique.
Look into agents and e-publishers. I tossed e-publishing into the same bag with vanity presses and POD publishers. I thought that going that route would damage my credibility as a serious writer and close doors to ever seeing my work printed or distributed by the biggies. Turns out I’m wrong. I need to give e-publishing a closer look.
Create a package, including a cover letter and synopsis and have those critiqued.
Remember what Maya always says…EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER THAN YOU THINK.

Memoir Reading and Writing...

2008-05-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

I started reading memoirs back when I decided to try writing one. I love memoirs. Good ones seem as though they were easy to write. They seldom reveal how difficult it was to put those words down on paper. My own efforts at writing a memoir have taught me that they are very difficult to write.

The memoirs I enjoy tell stories of lives lived. The good ones offer a balance of story and lessons learned. I do not enjoy memoirs where the author is so full of himself that he just can’t bear to let us go through life without knowing just how great he is. James Frey and Augustan Burroughs are two such memoirists. Their memoirs don’t display people who are learning anything in life. Rather, they present themselves as the ones from whom we could all stand to learn a few things. They’ve landed on this planet with all the answers. Now, if only the rest of us would recognize that. After all, they’ve generously supplied us with their brand of truth.

I read in an article on Critical Mass that Lillian Hellman’s memoir, Pentimento, possesses a questionable story line. However, the writer of the article said that she is worthy of forgiveness because the memoir is written with such beautiful prose. Pentimento is next on my reading list.

Some of the memoirs I enjoyed are:

Color of Water
The Glass Castle
The Woman Warrior
Lucky
The Unreliable Truth
Jill Kerr Conway's memoirs
Mary Carr’s memoirs

My favorites, though, are:

Autobiography of a Face and Truth and Beauty, which must be read together in that order.
Out of Africa, because I adore Isak Dinesen.
Living to Tell the Tale by Garcia Marquez. Either his memoir is a total fabrication or all of his fantastic fiction is based on his real life. I can read any paragraph in that book and see a wholly developed story within it. He's the man!
Reading Lolita in Tehran is a memoir for people who love books. I read it and Lolita and The Ambassador and The Great Gatsby as part of the journey, and it was a wonderful experience.

I feel gratitude for these memoirists for the way they've shared themselves with me, whether the events of the story are fact or not.

I've tried writing a memoir, and it ain't easy. I kept returning to the question of, "What's my point?" Okay, so I’m an adoptee from the 1950s, when adoption records were sealed. I don’t know much about my origins, and never will. So, the theme could be what? Living with the unknown? It’s so not Hollywood. Then again, there is that Hollywood element, because of the circumstances. I was a foundling, discovered when a woman opened her car door one October morning. The car was just a few blocks away from the entrance to Paramount Studios. In fact, you can see the gates of the studio from the apartment building. In the other direction, the Hollywood sign looms above like a voyeur.

The Hollywood sign gave me the idea for writing the memoir as a sort of hybrid. Yes, there’s the story a girl’s life from childhood in southern California through her teen pregnancy and marriage at age fifteen. But what’s the point, Nancy? And beyond? But sprinkled throughout are the fictional stories the girl creates to give herself a sense of origin. These stories are all called Fade to Black, and each one is a flash of how she might have come to be in Mary Couch’s car back on that frosty morning in October of 1957. But what’s the point? And what’s so interesting about what or who I’ve become?

We all think our stories are interesting. When I was working my freelance writing business full time and marketing the heck out of myself, I can’t tell you how many people approached me with the pitch, “I have an incredible story, and I want you to write it for me. We’ll share the royalties.” So many people out there want to tell their story. But what I came up against writing mine is that it is hard to tell a truthful story.

None of us want to cast ourselves in an unfavorable light. We all want to tell the story of being a victim or of prevailing over adversity, where we are in the right and evil oppressors hold decks stacked in their favor. Does anyone want to read a story about a girl who grew up to believe that no one belongs to anyone, that family as we see it is an illusion. That we all must find our own families and sense of place in a world that tells us to be loyal to blood no matter what? Does anyone want to read a story of a girl who has babies very young and then leaves them to pursue her education? Can I ever find the heart and the courage to tell the real story? I left my husband in 1984 to find my own way, and I left my daughters with him. When I left, I watched my husband and mother close and lock the door behind me, effectively keeping me out of their lives. If my daughters were to read this, they would scream that it is a fiction. They believe that I abandoned them. They will always believe that I didn’t want them in my life. Believing that holds up the structure of the myth and drama they’ve created around their own lives.

But my story is my story. I can hear Ginger saying, “It’s always all about you, Mom.” Well, yes. My story is all about me. The good, the bad, but my truth. The things that allow me to get up in the morning and face another day, and the things that haunt me at night. The things that make me dance and the things that make me pull the covers over my head. Life takes a lot of courage, even for the most ordinary of us. No one’s going to knock on my door and say, “I’m your mother. I’ve finally found you.” The UPS truck isn’t going to pull up with a notice that I’ve been written into the will of some famous producer from the 1950s who knocked up the wardrobe girl so long ago. But the fantasies continue. I’m a fiction writer, so the fantasies will continue. That’s the easy part. The truth part is what’s hard. Maybe I’m making it more complicated than it is. Truths are often simple.

2008-04-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

I just signed up for an online workshop on Everything You Need to Know About Publishing. The workshop is presented by Maya Reynolds. I’ve followed her blog sporadically for the past year or so. She’s a consistent great source of information about things happening in the publishing industry.

The workshop will cover the three branches of the industry:

Publishers
Agents
Booksellers

I’ve done some research on my own, but I still feel that I have a long way to go.

On the short fiction front, I’ve been submitting something each day to the e-zines and have started tracking submissions and rejections. I think that it might be a good idea for me to create a couple of databases, one to track short fiction submissions and one for agent queries for my YA novel.

Actually, I am having a total geek-fest today. I started a subversion repository through my web host and downloaded Eclipse. Now, I'm backing all my writing up using this version control software. This was prompted when my laptop sort of wheezed the other day. I realized that I haven't been backing it up. Yeah. Me, not backing something up. So, I tried to ftp the major folders to the server where I have my shell account. The ftp software they use, well, she don't work so well. Then I noticed that they have subversion. Heh, heh, heh. I thought, that's how I'll do it, treat it like a software development project. Well, it is a development project of sorts. So, there's nothing to compile. It's a pain setting it up, but I'll always be able to keep the lastest versions backed up now, and I'll be able to revert if I need to go back to an earlier version. Cool beans.

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…

The Problem Turns Out to be My Head…Again

2008-04-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

I’m having a little problem concentrating. Whenever I sit down to write, I’m all over the place. The one place I’m not is on the page. I can’t seem to go into The Zone no matter how much I want to.

So, typical me, I try to analyze why this is so. If I could just figure out the source of the problem, I could break through and get back to the bliss of writing.

Yesterday in my meditation class, the topic centered around being in the Now. As I was meditating and sat firmly centered in the Now, it came to me. My head, as usual, is the source of the problem. It thinks that it can solve problems by going into the past or effect outcomes by dancing off into the future. Oh, gee, Nancy. Stop struggling with publishers, and write the friggin book. That struggling with publishers part is purely in my head. I haven’t had any real exchange with publishers. Sometimes the focus is on finding an agent. Slow down, partner.

I’ve written one novel, which is now languishing. The YA one. I’ve decided that I need to let it settle for a bit. I think it may have some sex scenes that are too explicit in places for a YA audience, but I’m not ready to turn it into a mainstream novel either.

In the meantime, I have a new novel to work on. The outline is semi-complete. The characters are starting to talk amongst themselves, and I am missing it because my head is spending time anywhere except here and Now. When Marsha said yesterday that our creativity resides in the Now, I thought, Oh.

I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that my head is the source of the problem. It always is. I once heard a speaker talk about it and say that his head is convinced that it can kill him and keep on living. Anyone who understands that, as I did, knows how dangerous it is to let the head be in charge.

Okay, so time to regroup. As always, the answers come when my house is in order. Being here Now, not in the future, not in the past. Here Now. Proceed.

The Meaning of Sun Day

2008-04-25T09:38:00.001-07:00

It’s a beautiful day outside. What am I going to do about it? Here in the Seattle area, a blue sky is something we catch like surfers catch waves. Especially this time of year, we go through our days, waiting for our set. Rain, rain, rain, rain, sun, rain, rain, sun, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, sun, sun, rain…. When the sun comes out, everyone gets perky.

I’m in a complete fit of excitement and stress because there are so many places I want to go while the weather is nice, and I just can’t decide. I want to go somewhere and write. It can’t be too far out there because clouds could roll in at any moment and obliterate the sun. But it can be somewhere away from the sound of traffic.

Spenser Island?
A bike ride to Redmond for lunch and a sit by the fountain?
Bike ride to Snohomish for a sit at Wired and Unplugged?
A jog around the lake and a trip to the pool before sitting lakeside with a notepad?
A hike up to lower Wallace Falls to sit near the roar of the water at the covered picnic table?
A drive to Deception Falls for a walk in the dewy woods and a sit on the bench in a fairy forest?
That bike ride Terri told me about that runs between Gold Bar and Index, where there are flat rocks by the river to have a picnic?
Those cliffs by Deception Pass with a view of the San Juans and all the way to Canada?
That cafe by the water on Whidbey Island with the wonderful lobster bisque?
My back yard?

Okay. Gotta go. Writing to do.

Does It Ever Get Easier?

2008-04-24T19:19:00.001-07:00

Okay, time to break out the big guns. I’m not working at a day job right now and so have all kinds of time to write. But am I writing? I’m doing a lot of thinking about writing, but not much actual work. I have the idea, the outline, the characters are starting to whine, so what do I do?

Here’s the deal. It comes down to making a commitment. I’ve written a novel, and now I know what it takes. I know that a big piece of myself went into my first novel. I’d love to see it published, but, even if it never is, I am so glad I wrote it. The novel was a journey into my imagination and was full of magic. But it’s also a piece of me.

This next novel will command an even bigger piece of me. I already know it. I’m frozen because I am afraid. Can I tell this story? Can I tell it honestly, without regard to the audience? Can I bind and gag my internal editor long enough to let it flow and get it out?

Quite simply, I must.

I need to keep moving. I need to do two things. First, I need to finish cleaning and organizing my house, create a space to write. I realized today that the clutter around here contributes to my inability to concentrate. Or am I just making another excuse? No, I think it does.

I was having my hair done today. For me, hair dressers are all better than the best of therapists, and they’re only about a third the price. So, I was having my hair done today, and I was trying to explain this to her. She didn’t get it, but she listened. I said that to start a novel and not finish it would be like starting to build a structure in your backyard but never finishing it. Every time you go outside, the friggin thing is out there. You have to walk over it every time you go to get in your car. It’s big, it’s messy, and it’s loud. As I was talking, I suddenly had a flash in my head of the clutter of my house. There are papers everywhere. I’ve started to clear it up and organize it, but I haven’t finished. It’s in exactly the same state as the outline of my novel. The outline is well underway but it’s lying in files and in my head like the fragments of paper all over my house.

I told Terri to cut my hair short, and I resolved to go home and move through the tasks in front of me. Debbie Strom always used to tell me to just do what's in front of me. Amazing how simple that is and how well it works.

Boycott Amazon

2008-04-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

Because of the Amazon/Booksurge ultimatum, I have elected to boycott Amazon. Here are some great places where you can order books online and live an Amazon-free life just like me:

Third Place Books
Elliott Bay Book Company (also a great site for book browsing)
Powell's

I know that there are tons of other private bookstores in the country that warrant our business, have userfriendly web sites and will ship books anywhere. These are the ones I know and have used. I am pleased by the thought that Amazon may just be the force that prompts us to return to the small, private booksellers. I know, I'm a daydreamer. Nice thought, though, huh?

Infamous

2008-04-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

I came across a film telling the story of Truman Capote’s research and writing of In Cold Blood, Infamous. The film was excellent and had an incredible cast. Signorney Weaver, Gwyneth Paltrow, Isabella Rossellini.

Sandra Bullock plays a wonderful Harper Lee. The movie is sprinkled with documentary-style interviews. She has two is serious, tear drawing monologues that are the best performance I’ve ever seen of her. She isn’t staged to look beautiful or glamorous, but, of course, she still is, with those clear eyes that will make anyone believe anything she says.

Toby Jones, who has played small parts in so many countless movies, is a picture perfect Truman Capote. The movie is geared to show how the writing of In Cold Blood broke Capote’s spirit, and Jones makes the perfect model for this. He begins light and caricature-like, but finishes as a tragic, broken, but very real figure.

It’s impossible to see this movie without comparing it to Capote, which came out just the year before. I, personally, liked Infamous much more. The cast, the acting, the depicting of the story, the focus on Capote were all better. Both were wonderful, but Jones comes in with no need for a photo finish. Combined, the films show us that there is more than one way to render horrific vulnerability.

But why did they make this movie on the heels of the other? There must be some kind of bizarre Hollywood story behind this. I didn’t know about this film when it was in the theaters. Yet, Capote had excellent press. Strange.

On the Road Again

2008-04-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

Life can turn a corner any time. Mine just did. My contract job has ended, and now I have time to write and read and do some of the things I love to do. I also have to find another job. The challenge is keeping the wolves at bay well enough so that I can write and make some progress. I have millions of things that I could do with this time, and I can’t afford to let fear of the future take over and rule my thoughts and energies.

Ideally, I’d love to find a job that doesn’t take 50 – 70 hours a week of my total focus. The last one did, and my personal life and interests fell off the edge.

While I’m looking for a job, I can also work on the following:

New novel
Queries for agents for completed YA novelSubmit flash pieces and short stories to various pubs
Write flash
Create application package and curricula for teaching writing to WA State schools
Book reviews
Blog

No shortage of work. I want to maintain a healthy daily schedule to include the list items above, as well as exercise and organizing my home. I’ve already started with my office. I have a mountain of paperwork to organize. I can’t use any of the information I have unless I can find it. Once my office is organized, I can revisit things like the information I gathered from the retreat I attended last July in New Mexico. I have contact information for the people who’ve dropped off my radar, and lots of good direction on a variety of things.

I sense that this could be a turning point for me and my career. I can see it as an opportunity rather than a hardship.

24-hour Short Story Contest

2008-04-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve signed up for the 24-hour short story contest, put out by writersweekly.com.

http://www.writersweekly.com/misc/contest.php

The story topic is announced at noon, central time, April 26^th,and we’re off! Only 500 applicants are allowed. There’s a $5.00 entry fee. The 1^st prize is $300 bucks and publication on writersweekly.

Why am I doing this? Because it’s my idea of fun, that’s why. I can’t resist the challenge of writing to a prompt. Being prompted or pushed is sometimes the best way to get something on paper. I love thefirstline.com, which has a quarterly prompt of a first sentence from which writers must create a story. I’ve only submitted one, which was summarily rejected. But I’ve written stories to several of their prompts. I love that they say their inspiration for the first line prompt is from the movie Out of Africa. In the movie, Meryl Streep/Isak Dinesen says that she likes to tell stories but someone must always supply the first line, and it can be absolutely anything. One of her dinner guests concocts a twisty, incongruous line, and she runs with it, mesmerizing them with the way she can create something of beauty from something meant to stump her.

This 24-hour short story prompt will either be a romp or a pile of rubble, as these things to. We’ll see.

Candy Store

2008-04-14T09:09:00.001-07:00

Oh, happy day. I’ve found the candy store.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

This is the place to go for all of those books I’ve always meant to read but have never gotten around to. I’ve always meant to read Jane Austen. I’ve never gotten around to reading Little Women, either. And I can always revisit some old favorites like Jayne Eyre. Good stuff!

I’ve noticed that the Gutenberg project frequently comes up in searches for references from books. For example, the other day, I was googling around to find the passage from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio about the sweet, twisted little apples. Google handed me the Gutenberg copy of the book. Whereas Google’s own online book project hands over only portions of books, Gutenberg consistently provides the entire text.

The Ruins the Movie

2008-04-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

I reviewed The Ruins a while back on this blog and blimey if they didn’t make it into a movie which is showing right here in my own Monroe, Washington!

I’ve never tried to write a screen play and haven’t even thought of doing it, but I love to see how books have been adapted. This one hits the cliché status of book better than. The book wasn’t written for deep thinkers. No one will ever publish discussion topics on it for book clubs. It’s a quick-read horror story.

Nevertheless, in my review of it earlier in this blog, I did present what I thought were a couple of interesting angles. The movie didn’t have them.

Even though I’ve never thought of writing a screen play, I have to admit, I’ve thought about whether or not my novels or stories could be adapted. I can see my novel in my head in a cinematic way. I can’t think of a bigger compliment than to have someone say that they want to invest the time and trouble to make my book into a movie. Well, I guess the biggest compliment someone could pay me at this point would be to publish the sucker. No lack of rich fantasy life here!

I met Robert Ferrigno at a conference once, and he said that he didn’t regret that none of his books had been made into a movie. He was satisfied that the studios had offered, saying that they give him a big fat check while they went off to think about it for a bit. He gets to keep the money whether they decide to get in bed with him or not. That’s movie talk.

I suppose I could live with that too.

Perchance to Dream, Perchance to Write

2008-04-12T08:25:00.001-07:00

I love to sleep because I am mesmerized by my own dreams. I don’t like leaving the dream world where everything is so vivid and seems so real. Memorable people bubble up to the surface from hidden deep pools only to be forgotten by noon. The dream world seems more real and makes more sense to me than the waking one some times.

I think that writing is a world that touches the same place as dreams. Sometimes when I am unable to write, when I feel blocked, I think that it is because the similarity between writing, really going into that zone and dreaming are so close. But going there while awake feels like losing some kind of control over wakefulness. When we sleep, we’re not self-conscious about our dreams. We don’t say, it’s okay to lose control and drop our guard because we’re asleep and this is a dream. Yet we do let go in order to sleep. Somewhere in me, I trust that I will wake if danger comes my way. After all, we don’t have any choice about sleep. We must do it. And to sleep means to dream. Perchance. So, dreaming doesn’t have the same thing to overcome. We don’t say, I’m having dreamer’s block. But with writing, it really depends on what’s going on in my waking world. When I’m stressed about money or work, it’s a supreme challenge for me to let go of the conscious world and go into the zone. In the zone, I don’t see what’s around me anymore. I see the story. So on days when going to the zone would be the greatest relief, it becomes a big challenge.

It’s the most wonderful place in the world when I can let go and enter it. But it’s also a great risk to enter this place. I do not have any control in there. Anything could happen. What if I’m in there with my subconscious, and it indiscreetly blurts out something I’m not supposed to know? There’s no turning back from knowing. Yes. There’s great danger and great pleasure in the zone.

Ya Got Trouble in River City

2008-04-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Has Indiana always been so morally, um, confused?

Indiana has a new law that requires bookstores to register with the government if they sell what is considered "sexually explicit materials." The new law, H.B. 1042, was signed by Governor Mitch Daniels on March 13, and calls for any bookseller that sells sexually explicit materials to register with the Secretary of State and provide a statement detailing the types of books to be sold. The Secretary of State must then identify those stores to local government officials and zoning boards. “Sexually explicit material” is defined as any product that is “harmful to minors” under existing law. There is a $250 registration fee. Failure to register is a misdemeanor.

My first thought was How do you spell unconstitutional?

Who gets to decide what is harmful to minors? And how is this determination made? What about magazines, TV, movies? Is sexual material evil but violence okay? Geeze, Indiana, get a grip!

Then I thought of that song from The Music Man, Ya Got Trouble, and am now wondering if this musical might have been making a joke about something to which I have spent my life being ignorant. Re-reading the lyrics of this song, where the singer warns against the dangers of allowing a pool hall into the town so that he can introduce and promote his desire to start a marching band, I thought, hmmm. Has Indiana always been morally retarded?

Technical Writing or Writing Technically

2008-04-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

Is technical writing really writing? I'm looking for a new day job, a new contract, and I am targeting technical writing jobs. When I was writing a software manual a while back for a major software company in Washington, I asked myself and others whether there would be anything left for the real writing. I found that there was. I always have room for real writing when I am excited about a project. Bottom line...writing is what I do. I read books, and I write about them. I write flash, short stories and novels. I can also write technical manuals, training materials and the like. But are those writing. When I worked at Microsoft, I decided that it wasn't. At least writing there wasn't writing. Every sentence, each keystroke was scrutinized and edited beyond recognition until the work I did became the antithesis of mine. I couldn't claim it, I couldn't see me in there anywhere.

Real writing is mine. I can claim it and see myself in it. The characters are me and not me at the same time. I feel charged and motivated. Even though I am the writer, I can't wait to see what happens next. That's writing.

A Golden Notebook Blast from the Past

2007-07-17T15:18:00.000-07:00

In my online critique group, one of the members posted a quote from The Golden Notebook:

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but second best.

What's really terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do, or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Wow. I need to read that book again. It knocked me over when I read it in the 1980s. I wonder how I'd see it now. That was a great part to quote.

I have a story to tell you about The Golden Notebook. As I said, I read it in the 1980s. Well, some years after I read it, in 1988, I was in college, doing a school year in Italy. I went on a trip to London on one of my school breaks and had many adventures. One of my adventures there was that I met a mysterious French man named Gerard. Gerard was an impeccably dressed Parisian with curly black hair and sharp blue eyes. When we met, he explained to me and my traveling friend, Margaret, that he was a psychiatrist and had been conducting research into the subject of cannibalism.

Apparently, a grisly murder had occurred in Paris, where a husband had killed his wife and then cooked her and ate her. Ew. Well, Gerard was traveling the globe researching any similar wife or spouse eating cases and was gathering all of the information he could on the topic. Quite taken with himself, he went on at length about how cannibalism appears in fairy tales (Hansel and Gretal) and even embodies a sacred Christian ritual of holy communion. At some point, Margaret stood up, announced she was going to bed and abruptly left me alone with the guy. In spite of his morbid mind set, he was awfully cute, and I couldn't resist accepting his offer to spend the following day together in London.

Ever have one of those weird things where a word you would never normally see on a given day seems to crop up all over the place? Well, in bookstore windows, on bus advertisements, sprawling across the walls of the tube station, we found the word, Cannibalism. At each instance, Gerard would solemnly nod his head and tell me in his French accented English, "See? Et Ees everywhere."

After dinner, we decided to attend a theatre performance and found that A Winter's Tale was playing nearby. Shakespeare in London, oh, yeah. So, we rushed to the theater only to arrive a minute after the curtain rose. The theatre attendant informed us that we would have to wait until the end of the first act before we could enter and take our seats. As we stood in the empty lobby with her, I noticed that the theatre attendant had a dogeared copy of The Golden Notebook on her chair. "Oh!" I said, "You're reading The Golden Notebook. I loved that book. How are you liking it?" We chatted, as Gerard lifted the copy off of her chair and opened it to a random page. Suddenly, his eyes opened widely, his finger jabbed at the page. We both looked, and, you guessed it, he was pointing at the word, cannibalism. "Cannibalism!" Gerard exclaimed. "Es thees book about cannibalism?" I couldn't believe it. As you know, The Golden Notebook es not about cannibalism. Neither the theatre attendant nor Gerard understood why I had collapsed in hysterical laughter. Throughout the performance of A Winter's Tale, Gerard was fidgeting to get out of that theatre so that he could acquire a copy of The Golden Notebook. I'm sure he read all 700+ pages of it, looking for clues.

Ah, those days of youth. If you're gonna have a one-night-stand, make it interesting, I always say.

Oi

2007-06-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

I have given myself irreparable damage by finishing The Ruins and shifting to the memoirs of Virginia Woolf. Sweet pain. I think that Virginia Woolf is the greatest woman writer of all time.

I'm reading one of the entries in a collection of her essays about her life for the writer's retreat I'm about to attend at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. I'm so excited about this retreat that I can hardly concentrate.

So, wouldn't you know that after about a month-long dry spell with my freelance writing business, I mean NO business, I am now a week away from leaving for my retreat and all kinds of business is coming my way. I've had to turn down a couple of editing jobs because I wouldn't have been able to finish them before next Saturday. Now, I'm thinking that I should ride the wave as far as I can. Business-related fear crops up. What if I've finally arrived, and now I'm leaving for an extended vacation. Everything's going to fizzle up and die. The, of course, I'll die, and then it won't matter.

I know that I need to cut myself some slack. I need to find a way to get through the dry times without panicking. I guess they're just going to happen. In the meantime, I am scrambling to make as much progress as I can this week and still finish the pre-reading for this retreat, get everything in order, find a caregiver for The Princess and be ready to hit the road this Saturday. ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Huzza.

The Ruins

2007-06-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Ruins by Scott Smith. If you plan to read it, stop here, because I'm about to take a stroll through it.

Reading The Ruins as a writer, got through the first 75 pages and asked myself how this writer managed to get me to follow these people into the jungle when I didn't particularly like any of them.

The Ruins is about four recent college grads on vacation in Cancun, who go off on an adventure to help an acquaintance find his brother. The college grads are comprised of two American couples, Eric and Stacy and Jeff and Amy. Although they have distinct personalities, none of them stands out as a person I would follow on a day trip away from the beach. When their German friend, Mathias, tells them that he must travel to an obscure Mayan archaeological dig to retrieve his lovesick brother, Jeff volunteers himself and his friends to keep him company. And let the foreshadowing begin.

None of the Americans really seem happy to leave the beach. Eric is so hung over, I expect his eyes to start bleeding, Stacy doesn't seem to think about whether she wants to go or not...she just follows Jeff's lead and remains the classic follower until there's...um...no one left to follow. Amy whines about going but then remembers she's been criticized for whining and summarily shuts up and goes. And I follow right along with them, thinking, "They're not really prepared. Do they know where they're going? Should they trust Mathias?" They have a hand-written map, where public transportation only takes them within 15 miles of the spot. The bus ride is ominous, the pickup truck ride to the trail head is stressful, the truck driver tries to warn them, they encounter an entire town of Mayans who try to stop them, and Amy continues to snap photos. At the last minute, a smiling Greek, bearing the gift of three bottles of tequila, joins them.

That the Greek speaks no English is only one of the language barriers the Americans encounter. They can't talk to the Mayans either. And the Mayans are clearly trying to tell them something kind of important. Something like, Don't Step Onto The Hill With The Red Flowering Vine. They do, of course, and that seals their fate. Looking back, I don't know why I didn't predict the end. They all die. There are no heroes, no survivors. Their collective penchant for sniping at each other and their private pools of fear and self-doubt take them straight to their deaths.

That pretty red-flowered vine turns out to be a carnivorous plant with super human abilities. It can mimic them in their own voices and knows just what to say to hurt them better than a kid sister with a crush on her sister's boyfriend. When hunger makes them swoon, it can engulf the hilltop with scents like freshly baked bread or steaks barbecuing. Yep. It's one mean plant. But the two couples, the German and the Greek never really question what it is or why the Mayans feel the need to keep them on the hill at gunpoint. They never try to find a weakness in their enemy. Nor do they work to make a plan to escape. They wait, hoping that the Greek's companions will come for them. Two other Greek men, who don't speak any English, Spanish or Mayan, are their only hope for survival from this situation.

Is there a message here? Something beyond entertainment? The Ruins does break a lot of formula expectations. No survivors, no heroes, no escape plan. They are four Americans, newly graduated from college, affluent, white and ready to begin adult life. By American standards, they are four young people who have the world by the ass. Yet they are not prepared to survive any difficulties. In fact, they are all basically lead to their deaths, whining and longing for another drink.

Another thing that Smith does is he keeps them all alive for an agonizingly long time after their fate is sealed. I kept expecting people to start dying off. But no one dies until more than 3/4 of the book is gone. Once the first one dies, though, Jill comes tumbling after...they drop pretty quickly. The sad part is, I'm grateful to see them go. They're the kind of people you might have a drink with at a tavern and never remember any of their names an hour later.

Okay...since I said at the beginning that I was going to go through the book, I don't feel like I've spoiled anything for anyone. Just thinking it through.

Literary Discussion Groups

2007-05-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

I long for a literary discussion group...someone to read with and talk about books. A group of women I know started a group, but it only met for three months before the women started whining about how it was too much work to do the reading. Sigh.

I could go to the internet and look for a group in Seattle. Surely there must be one that also has enough technical prowess to be able to advertise in a way where I can find them. I came across a blog of a discussion group in Sarasota through an email exchange with a woman I met on Nathan Bransford's blog. The group's reading list is incredible and goes back ten years.

I wonder if the group has remained static in its membership all this time. There must be a core group which has maintained attendance over the years. What do they know of each other's lives outside of their monthly discussions of Kundera or Murdock or Garcia-Marquez? How much could you learn about a person over ten years by discussing nothing but literature?

Ah, lovely pastime...

2007-05-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

Two more rejections from agent queries. How lovely. Now I can check these off my list.

I was ready, though, if they wanted me to send the first 3 chapters. I have decided to offer electronic submissions in the body of an email, as a Word attachment or in pre-shredded format.

Write well, query widely. The problem is, how do I know that I've written well? I am not in a position to be objective about my book. Those who've read it have all raved about it...that is, all except for John, who merely stated that it wasn't his genre. Should I keep having people read it? What's the deal here?

I was in my meditation chamber earlier (my shower) and I thought, maybe this first novel will be something I come back to ten years from now and think, "Wow! I can't believe I sent this out like this." And then I'll see how to turn it into something that sells.

S&S Snafu

2007-05-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Okay...I'm not an expert in the publishing industry as of yet. But I am a techie, and, as a techie, I've been wondering in what ways the internet and technical advancement will change the way books are published and presented.

I don't know about you, but I'm reading more and more from my computer screen. I'm not actually reading novels from my laptop, but I'm reading a fair amount of short fiction and tons of non-fiction from my internet connection. Not only that, but I'm ordering books from Amazon more than anyplace else these days, since they can supply everything in print and lots of things that aren't. And all of my local book sellers are out of business. Oh, I will go to Elliot Bay Books in Seattle or 3rd Place Books. But my Totem bookstore in Monroe closed its doors last year, and I've been hitting that evil "Buy Now With 1 Click" button more than I care to admit. Amazon has gotten practically all of my book and music buying business these days. If you want to make me feel guilty about it, don't. I fully realize what my consumer practices do to the little guy.

Anyway, the point is that I'm using technology more and more to acquire books and music. If I want to find something like a short story by John Cheever or the lyrics to a song sung by Petula Clark, I can find 'em through Google. If I'm doing research, I can search databases my local library subscribes to from my computer at home. I can even access the articles and print them out.

Speaking of Google, the folks at Google have embarked on a Library Project. The goals of the project are as follows:

The Library Project's aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically, books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers.

Is the penny about to drop yet? How about this:

If the book is out of copyright, you’ll be able to view and download the entire book. In all cases, you'll see links directing you to online bookstores where you can buy the book and libraries where you can borrow it.

Now, think the words, Print On Demand...yes, Print On Demand...POD, POD....

So, if the book was first published by S&S, it will never go out of copyright, right? You may be able to borrow it for free from a library, but you'll never be able to download it for free.

So, who benefits here if the book publisher never relinquishes the rights? Just the publishing house? What about the writer who would not get any royalties for a book which is being freely distributed through Google's library? It's not just Print On Demand, it's Download On Demand.

There are so many implications here, and I haven't thought them all through. I'm just blathering here, but my mind is all over this. What if a book, Tammy's Tasty Chocolate Syrup Sculpting Book, went out of print and became a downloadable free, public domain book through the Google library. Tammy spent her $5000 advance several years ago, and S&S doesn't even remember that they published the dang thing. Then, Archie Ballinger, the famous fetish sculptor and confection enthusiast mentions Tammy's book on his enthralling reality sculpting TV program and 3,475,219 people download the book from the Google library for free. S&S doesn't know about the potential money it could have made through print copies, let alone by offering it as an internet download. But it's scratching its head, wondering how to maximize its profits. In the meantime, Tammy has pawned her candy thermometer to buy catfood.

Alternately, S&S retained rights to the work, so, when Archie becomes the tipping point for this work, S&S can offer downloads of the book for a price. They don't sell as many copies as were downloaded in the free scenario, but they make a profit and Tammy experiences an unexpected windfall.

Okay...that's just one scenario. I know there are all kinds of things I haven't considered. And maybe I'm way off base and am missing the whole point. But we be living in interesting times. Yes, indeedy.

Phrase a Week

2007-05-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

As a writer, I'm always interested in word, their origin and understanding how they're put together. Well, I thought you all might be too. There's this thing called a phrase a week, where they'll send you an email explaining the origin of that week's phrase. To sign up for it, just go to this web site:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/a-phrase-a-week/subscribe.html

And give 'em your name and email address. This week's phrase is pasted below:

By and large

Meaning

On the whole; generally speaking; all things considered.

Origin

Many phrases are wrongly ascribed a nautical origin just because they sound like mariner's lingo. This one really is and, like many such nautical phrases, it originated in the days of sail.

To get a sense of the original meaning of the phrase we need to understand the nautical terms 'by' and 'large'. 'Large' is easier, so we'll start there. When the wind is blowing from some compass point behind a ship's direction of travel then it is said to be 'large'. Sailors have used this term for centuries. For example, this piece from Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1591:

"When the wind came larger we waied anchor and set saile."

When the wind is in that favourable large direction the largest square sails may be set and the ship is able to travel in whatever downwind direction the captain sees fit.

'By' is a rather more difficult concept for landlubbers like me. In simplified terms it means 'in the general direction of'. Sailors would say to be 'by the wind' is to face into the wind or within six compass points of it.

The earliest known reference to 'by and large' in print is from Samuel Sturmy, in The Mariners Magazine, 1669:

"Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge."

by and largeTo sail 'by and large' required the ability to sail not only as earlier square-rigged ships could do, i.e. downwind, but also against the wind. At first sight, and for many non-sailors I'm sure second and third sight too, it seems impossible that a sailing ship could progress against the wind. They can though. The physics behind this is better left to others. Suffice it to say that it involves the use of triangular sails which act like aeroplane wings and provide a force which drags the ship sideways against the wind. By the use of this and by careful angling of the rudder the ship can be steered slightly into the wind.

The 19th century windjammers like Cutty Sark were able to maintain progress 'by and large' even in bad wind conditions by the use of many such aerodynamic triangular sails and large crews of able seamen.

Stacking the Deck

2007-05-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

Okay...here's the plan. I am going to create the perfect writing environment for myself tomorrow and dedicate the day to working on my novel. Yes. The novel and nothing but the novel. No tech writing, my freelance customers will have to sit on their thumbs for a spell. No work on my flash writing class, even though I'm falling behind. No searching and fearless inventories. Nada, niente, nuttin. Just the novel.

I will rise early and drive to Seattle. Yes. I can drive now. I replaced the broken iPod and just finished synching it with my iTunes, so it will be okay to get in the car and go somewhere. When I got in my car this morning and the iPod made a screeching noise, I looked at it and saw that it actaully had an unhappy face on it! :( "This is no time to be cutsey, Apple," I thought, as I turned the car off and returned to my laptop. The apple support page for iPod confirmed my fear that I had experienced a hardware failure.

Here were my choices. Cancel my vacation. Don't go to the roomofonesown writer's retreat at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico next month. Just buy a few half gallons of ice cream in assorted flavors and surrender to life's terms in my own small way. Or, I could name this unfortunate event an emergency and bring out the tools reserved only for emergency measures...My Credit Card!

The Nano is not like the iPod, in that it only holds 4 gigs. Who would ever think that my music and my audio books would fill it to capacity? I have about a quarter of a gig left. But I'm almost through listening to Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. I read it when it first came out and was intrigued when I saw that the audio version was narrated by the author. My audio reading list is growing out of proportion now that I'm working from home. I used to get a lot of reading done when I commuted. (Is it reading if you listen to it?) I have four books and a stack of the New Yorker to listen to.

Anyway, this brings me back to my writer's morning in Seattle tomorrow. I will be able to go only because the iPod disaster was averted through the use of the emergency-only credit card.

So, I shall go to the Panama Hotel, order a pot of Earl Grey with Lavender tea and sit at one of their wicker tables with a notebook and work on my novel. There will be no butterscotch for those who let three days go by without working on their novels! Tsk tsk.

Adieu, Miss Snark

2007-05-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it. Miss Snark is closing her blog. I will miss her. I don't know whether she knows it, oh, I'm sure she does, but I not only read her web page, but followed links from her page to blogs of many other writers. She was doing more than just supplying me with snarkly advise. Closing down her blog will be a loss to writers.

Checking In

2007-05-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Just because I haven't been posting for a few days doesn't mean I'm not working on my writing. Esta and I went to a book signing and reading last week at the All About Kids bookstore in Seattle. The list of local writers and illustrators in attendance was amazing.

I picked up a copy of Janet Lee Carey's book, Dragon's Keep, along with a handful of buttons for the web site, Readergirlz, she and other local writers have created for teen girls to have an online reading community.

Also in attendance was Katherine Kirkpatrick, who wrote The Snow Baby, The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter. I met Kirkpatrick at the Whidbey Island Writers' Conference a few years ago. We sat together at the evening reception and chatted for a few minutes. She stood out from the crowd of writers in attendance because she was the only one among them who was able to carry on a conversation on a topic other than herself.

Kirkpatrick has authored several books, which are listed on her web site at http://www.katherinekirkpatrick.com/index.html. Snow Baby looks to be her best work yet. She presented Snow Baby to us with the sense of wonder she must have had as she uncovered each sparkling detail.

No Prudes Allowed

2007-05-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

Okay...I just started reading The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, and I'm having a great time. Such a well-deserved recipient of the Newbery, the book is a fun read. I checked it out from the library, though, not because it won the Newbery, but because of the controversy surrounding the first page. I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for a hen fight.

On the first page of this book, written to the middle-school category (ages 11 - 14), an unfortunate dog named Roy is bitten on the scrotum by a snake. The presence of the word, scrotum, has twisted panties across the nation and caused an enormous stir.

And we wonder why Europeans laugh at us. What kind of a person would object to such a thing? Are there really such puritanical hypocrites who think that children's vocabularies should be censored to this degree? Scrotums exist. They happen, on dogs and humans.

Book Reviews on Web Page

2007-05-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

I finally updated my web page. Yeah, I have a blog and a web page. So, what? But, you raise a good question. Why do I have a blog? And why do I have a web page?

I sort of envision this blog as a place to post information on the craft of writing, sort of a record of a journey. When my first novel is published, this blog will mark the milestones of the journey, for me more than anyone else. I've seen how blogs are used well as a networking tool. Blogs don't work in that regard until after a certain tipping point in one's career, a place where I have yet to arrive.

Likewise, the web page. Vanity, more than anything else, caused me to buy nancycorbett.com. Just as vanity caused me to do a search for hits on my name. I've had several short pieces and personal essays published on line, and I wanted to see what would come up. To my surprise, there are several nancy corbetts out there who return on a google search. There's a New York attorney, a university professor, and a receptionist at a small company who share my name.

The web site, nancycorbett.com, was acquired for a mere $9.95 and is a place for me to put stuff. I have some slide shows of hikes John and I have taken here in the Pacific Northwest. And I have started a series of book reviews. The books I am reading in 2007 will all appear under various categories. It's fun more than anything else. And I'm not freaking out if I don't put every ounce of my strength into it. When it ceases to be fun, I won't do it anymore.

I have a hosting company that's run by a bunch of kids and they do an okay job of keeping everything up and running. Plus, they run on Linux, and they let me create my own shell accounts so that I can do things from a command line, plus, they run MySQL, plus I can do everything I need to do without bothering them, plus they're cheap. Dreamhost also maintains my anonymity when it comes to my domain ownership. So, if you run a whois on me, you can't find my home address, phone number and bra size. Of course, on my business web page for SoftCopy, I do give my email address and phone number, but not my bra size.

Anyway, I finally got around to updating the personal web page and added the latest book review on The Thirteenth Tale. Boy! What a great debut novel! Wish I could have said something to do it justice.

Getting Into It

2007-05-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

I had a particularly satisfying day yesterday, working on my new novel. I've been priming myself for it, noticing I'm afraid to commit. Starting a new novel is like asking someone to go steady with me for a year or so. My head whispers, "what if you can't get this one published either?" Then, "What if this is the one that makes it and GIO stays in the drawer? Keep going." "What if you can't finish it?" "What if your critique group doesn't like it?"

It's endless, really.

Bottom line is that when I write, I'm happy. I love getting into what I call The Zone. I haven't done that, really, since I went through the last round of strenuous edits on GIO.

So, yesterday, I was meeting a friend in Seattle for lunch but had another appointment in Bellevue earlier in the day, so I had some hours to kill. I went to the International District (I don't know why they don't just call it the Asian District) and bought a cute, pink notebook to write in. Blank pages. Pink is not my favorite color, but it seemed somehow cheerful. The pink notebook looked like it wanted to be filled.

On Main and 6ths is an old place called the Panama Hotel. It has the most wonderful tea and espresso area with WiFi, comfortable tables and chairs, pictures of Seattle when it was a baby and beautiful, long-stemmed tulips and calla lillies in vases all around. It also has my favorite bathroom, which may be TMI, but there it is. It's a clean, well-lighted place.

I ordered a pot of Earl Grey with lavendar tea and wrote for nearly three hours without looking up. It's all in there, in me, the whole book. Oh, I know there are lots of corners I haven't turned, things will happen that will shock and amaze me along the way, but it's already in there.

Maybe all types of artists understand this, but I know writers especially understand when Michelangelo said that the form was already in the marble, he was merely releasing it. That's such an elegant way of saying what I find to be the case with my writing.

So, I'm off! My job is to write and to keep the editor chained up outside in the garage until the first draft is done. It's okay. The editor knows the rules. Chains and duct tape. Let her RIP!

Flashquake Flash Class

2007-05-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

So, I'm starting an online course on writing flash fiction tomorrow. I'm excited because three friends from my online writer's critique group will be attending along with me. Marie, the ringleader and heartbeat of our critique group found the class and urged me and a few others to take it.

I've watched her delve into writing flash over the last year, and I've tried it a bit myself. I have a series of flashes which I refer to as the Corporate America series. One of them was published on Salome back in October. And I submitted one to Flashquake and got a note back saying that it was a bit over the top for them. I recently reread that piece and found that it's a bit over the top for me, too.

As with any class, I'm excited and am wondering what I'll learn. I like to give myself over to the process, pay attention to where I feel resistance to it and make an effort to do everything suggested, whether it makes sense to me or not.

I've taken several online courses over the past few years. Some of them have been emmensely helpful and others not so. There are many, many people out there who promote themselves as being qualified to take my money to make me a better writer. Flashquake, though, is known for its integrity as a site dedicated to the art of flash fiction and to publishing an array of talent.

Reading flash fiction, I have found so many writers I admire and have read so many pieces which have taken me into deep waters within a very short space. I like reading flash. It's all over the place in both print and electronic form. When I come across a piece I really like, I do a search for more of their work. There are some talented folks out there writing in this form. They make it look easy, but it's not.

I've seen some debate about the length of a piece of flash. Some say it must be fewer than 1000 words. Many of the publications I've seen ask for under 700 or even 500 words. I've even seen some challenging writers to submit pieces of 100 words or less.

The shortness of these fiction pieces makes them a quick read, sort of like a bag of candy I can dip into and pull out a unique flavor each time. Much fun.

But in the upcoming month, I'm going to try and hone my skills at writing the stuff. We'll see what comes out of my bag.

Books on Writing

2007-05-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

Just about every writer of worth, and some of none, have written books on writing. I don't know how many are on my shelf. Every time I go to a writer's conference, I add new ones of the writers I've met at the conferences, especially if they are good workshop leaders or talented teachers. That's what I thought of Nancy Kress when I met her at a conference. She was personable and a good teacher.

As for books on writing, my favorites are two books by Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones and especially Wild Mind. I have bought and given these books away numerous times. I remember having a writer's breakthrough back around 1990 with the help of these books. A couple of weeks ago, I ran across Writing Down the Bones at a conference and snapped it up again. Going through it is like spending time with an old friend who really cares about my writing. I'm using it to help me keep the conference glow going.

Another book on writing I appreciate is On Writing by Stephen King. King is so good at voice, he even has a great one for himself in this book which is part text on how to be a good writer and part memoir. His mix of self-disclosure and tips on writing could not be pulled off by anyone else. The best way to read this book is in audio format, because King reads it himself. His casual tone feels like he's just taken a seat in my livingroom wingback chair and started talking while I pour the tea.

I owe a debt of gratitude to all of the writers who have contributed books on the topic of writing. They keep me going when I lose momentum.

Dry Well

2007-05-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I just can't get it going. No matter how much I want to write, I just become a wall. There are lots of ways to look at it.

I'm working on something right now, and I can't work on it. Every time I approach it, I go blank. Leslie Marmon Silko calls these stillbirths. I could put it on the shelf, like I have tons of other writings that ran out of steam, but this one seems important. The block isn't because there's nothing there, but because there's too much there. I can feel it, like a knot under the skin, wanting to be released.

When I was a student at a community college, there was a creative writing instructor there whom I just despised. I felt that he had no inclination to teach or nurture his students. His primary face was that of arrogance. Anyone who knows me understands that arrogance is an unforgivable sin with me. I just can't stand it. But I can be arrogant with the big boys myself. It's a manifestation of fear. Anyway, this instructor did me a couple of good turns, in spite of his efforts not to. He introduced me to Henry James. Who would I be without James? And he said that thing about getting to the real story. What he said was this:

No one can ever get to the real story. There's always a story underneath the one you're telling that you can't get to.

Be it through fear, self-delusion, denial, we can't get to the real story. Well, I became determined, dedicated to always try to get to the real story, to be unflinching in the face of my fears, to pick at my denials and to look at things once I put them down and try to tickle out the meat.

I don't know if I've succeeded. But I've always tried.

Now, with the short story in question, The Recipe, I can't seem to shake anything loose. It's all too knotted up. Maybe if I took up running. No, I have to lose 35 pounds first. Can't take that much time. Maybe if I stick my head in the river. No. Headache. Maybe if I deprive myself of WoW. Now, we're getting close. How long could I possibly go without playing WoW?

Writers' Groups

2007-05-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ya always hear that writers' groups, critique groups, are important to developing the writing skills. My critique group is an online group, called Write Stuff Extreme. The group has between fifteen and twenty members, about half of whom are active. Folks post writings of all kinds, short stories, flash, poetry, personal essay, and novels.

The online forum works well and has many advantages.

We are free from the constraints of time. Being online, I don't have to wait until Tuesday at 7:00 PM to present something. I can post a chapter or a story whenever I want.
Participants can critique whenever they choose. The meeting place is open 24/7.
Critiques trickle in but can be read the the poster at any time.
The group membership is not limited to people who are in geographic proximity. We have people from all over the US. Some groups are international. Well, we do have a member who is in China, so I guess we ARE an international group.
We are somewhat anonymous. It's interesting posting work for critique by people I've never met. But something happens when I read a critique delivered by someone in the written form. On one hand, it can create misunderstandings. You can't hear someone's voice, the inflections, nor can you see the body language of the critic. That's a double-edged sword.
I participate from home or wherever my laptop and I are. I can attend the group in my pajamas (and often do).

Over time, we have all gotten to know each other fairly well. And any new arrival will drastically change the dynamic of the group. Being a fairly small group, we have all gotten to know each other's writing and critique styles. New people are introduced through invitation and usually serve to get the air moving around in our small cave.

It's a strange thing to explain to someone who isn't involved in internet community, but I communicate with the people of my critique group almost every day. Most of us exchange something every day. There have been times when I've been disappointed by the critiques I get, usually when it seems like everyone glossed over something I wrote and didn't really say anything useful. Gee, that was good! isn't my idea of a critique. But I've gotten some very strong and helpful things from the group as well. They kept me on course with my novel and ensured that it was completed. I can't ask for anything more than that.

audible.com, i love you!

2007-05-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

In addition to always having a book in my hand when I'm not doing things like working on the computer or driving, I always have an audio book going. I have been a subscriber to audible.com for around 3 years, now. And I always get 2 books every month and the New York Times. Right now, I also get a weekly audio version of the New Yorker. Life is rich.

Audio books are great productions these days. There are some unbelievably talented readers, who manage to make every character voice unique. Some books are read by the authors, themselves. Some can pull it off, while others can't. I've learned a lot about ordering audio books.

1. Never get anything that isn't unabridged. Why would I want an abridged version of ANY book? Sheesh!

2. Don't order anything that's not main stream literature. No classics. The recording quality of all the classics I've ever ordered has been terrible 100% of the time. I have to jack the sound up as high as it will go, and it's still hard to hear. I would love to listen to Dante or Virgil or Fitzgerald or Joyce, but no can do in the realm of audio books. I end up wanting to drive my car off the road and into a ditch, which would be overkill.

Some books may even be better in audio version. I read (can you say you read it if you listened to it?) The Devil Wears Prada and The Nannie Diaries in my car. They had me laughing and crying and driving around the block so that I could listen for just a few minutes more. I listened to 8 books on my last road trip. That's when I first heard the books by Sue Monk Kidd. I couldn't put them down...figuratively speaking.

I actually miss commuting because I don't get as much reading done.

Today, I began listening to Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. I read the book the instant it came out, just as I do with books by all of my beloved living authors. The book is narrated by Barbara, herself. Within the first few minutes, I found my mind wandering.

My mind wasn't wandering because the book didn't have what it took to hold my attention, but because the richness of her language and the closeness with which she holds me to the character's chest sent me to thinking about my own writing. How can I do that? I began thinking about my unfinished short story, The Love Potion. Maybe I should make it 3rd person. Maybe I should go back and put the reader inside the character's, trapped in her time limited body. The whole thing is so expository right now, and I know that this ain't going to fly.

I have a white paper to write, and the customer is justifiably getting antsy. But I really, really need to look at this story. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Internet Trends

2007-04-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Patricia Wood's debut book, Lottery, isn't even out yet, but she's created a buzz that's gotten me to order a copy of it from Amazon nearly 5 months before it comes out. How has she done this? Well, one way is through blogging. I saw an entry on Miss Snark's blog about Lottery, which prompted me to go to Amazon, which led me to Patricia's blog, which...well, you get the picture.

During the SCBWI Conference lunch, I sat at the "YA Why Not" table, where I became the unpopular voice regarding kids and the internet. The general consensus was that the internet is a dark place, populated mostly by drooling pedophiles, and how should we get kids away from it. Eek. My stance was that the internet is a place full of possibilities. We need to make safe places for kids to go, and we can harness the internet to improve our own craft and create a more cohesive community among writers and readers. The three of them looked at me like they wanted me to stuff my sandwich in my mouth to shut me up. What can you expect from people who probably still have dial up...if that?

A group of Puget Sound area women writers have created a great web space for teen girl readers. Readergirlz is a web site moderated by Janet Lee Carey, Lori Ann Grover, Dia Calhoun, and Justina Chen Headley. Their manifesto is all about having serious fun while talking about books. The site delivers all kinds of fun for teen girls. Music, art, videos, and books!

If adults are getting into blogging, imagine where kids are with it. They're always a few steps ahead of us when it comes to technology. A web site such as Readergirlz makes me tingle all over. It's just the kind of thing I like to see. Harnessing technology to create a place for teen girls is so very way cool.

Having worked in the tech field and being a card carrying member of the Anita Borg mailing list, Systers, I am concerned about the challenges women face entering into technical fields. Most of the problems women face in tech fields is so insidious and ambiguous. Yet, if you frequent a women's forum on technology for any length of time, you will find that we face a barrage of prejudice and resistence regarding our presence which we are struggling, ourselves, to address and define. Such a large part of the abuse women endure involves being told that we are over reacting or imagining things, it is not surprising to find that we question, amongst ourselves, the validity of our perceptions. Through the use of blogs, public abuse of women who attain any level of success is prevelant and has received a lot of press lately. The Washington Post published an article today describing all of the facets of this complex issue.

Which brings me back to girls and technology. Women are here to stay in the tech world. We need to stand our ground and not allow intimidation tactics to push us away. Kids are going to find their way through the world, with or without our guidance, and the internet is going to be a part of that path. Girls need to have a place on that path where they don't have to fight just to be there. We writers can position ourselves along that path and make their journey richer.

Writing is Dangerous

2007-04-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

So, what DID I take away with me from the Puget Sound Area's SCBWI conference yesterday? A stack of books, a skosh of motivation and a few good pointers on where to focus my energy.

Justina Chen Headley led a workshop on finding the heart in your story. The workshop was a display of her openness and commitment to baring her own vulnerabilities to tell the story that needs to be told. She spoke of having the courage to get down on paper the real heart of the matters that brought us to the page in the first place. It brought me back to a place I'd been a few months ago. I need to be reminded that writing is dangerous.

About six months ago, I watched the documentary on Bukowski, and the main thing I got from it was the concept of writing being dangerous. According to Bukowski, if a piece of writing isn't dangerous, it's worthless. This prompted me to take take this to my online writer's group and post a challenge that we all write something decidedly dangerous. Some great stuff came from that exercise.

I once had a creative writing teacher in community college who contended that the best stories, the real stories, never get down on paper because we can't get there. I remember making a promise to myself that I would not flinch from writing the real story.

How could I forget, again, about my promise, about Bukowski, about danger? I owe a debt of gratitude to Justina for taking me back to the heart.

SCBWI Conference

2007-04-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the annual conference put on by my local chapter of the society of children's book writers and illustrators (SCBWI). Boy! They should find a shorter acronym. The event was well organized and went without a hitch.

I always feel so inspired after spending the day around such great and talented people. The illustrators gave great presentations, the local published writers were fun and lively. There were some presenters who were very full of themselves, but, overall, it was a positive vibe.

Even while I feel inspired, I get that sense of being a grain of sand in a pile of poppy seeds. There are so many of us, and I'm not the one with any value. That's how I feel. Many on the unpublished side of the fence are practically rabid with hope and need. I'm on that unpublished side of the fence, but I went without an agenda of finding that agent or publisher who would think me wonderful.

I need to observe and absorb right now. While conferences are informative, there is a distinct them and us feel to them. The agents, publishers, editors, published artists and writers glomb together as professionals in a field, while the rest of us stand outside the gate, feverishly wanting inside.

One minute, I think Giving It Over is a great novel. The next minute, I think it's tripe. I can't be objective about it any more. So, what's the deal? Spend money on professional critiques? Oh, yes. There are many people out there willing to take my money. What makes their opinion any better than those of my critique group or any of the other people who've read my book?

Maybe if I just focus on book 2, the geek girl story, I'll be okay. I need to get lost in it. Then there's that short story about the love potion I haven't finished. Yeah. I've definately got stuff I could be doing. Going to this conference is good fuel. And then there's the retreat in June.

Just keep swimming.

Novel Finished

2007-04-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

I completed Giving It Over several months ago and am embarking on that oh-so-fun quest for representation. I've used Writer's Query and the Writer's Market to find agents and have been sending off whatever their guidelines stipulate, one or two at a time. A few have asked to see pages. One agent, whom I met at the Whidbey Island writer's conference told me that she thought the premise of the story was good and wanted to see the first fifty pages. "Now, all we need to know is whether or not you can write."

Apparently, she thought that I couldn't write, because, after reading the first 75 pages of the novel, she declined...as have all others.

Now, I know that agents are busy folks. I have refrained from dogging anyone and asking those burning questions: WTF? and Could you throw me a bone, please?

Whether or not my YA novel ever gets published, I've met many other extremely good, unpublished novelists. I belong to a small, online writer's group, comprised of novelists, short story and flash fiction writers and a few poets. With their support, I finished my first novel and have begun outlining another. They taught me to set aside my fears about never being published and give myself over to the process. Not such a bad deal after all, huh?

2007-04-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

Several short pieceds published since my last post:

Personal Essay – The Los Angeles Journal, June 2005 edition, “Waxworks”

Personal Travel Essay – E-Marginalia, “Getting Touchy in Tuscany”

Short Story – ConteOnline Literary Quarterly, “Pay Me No Mind”

Flash Fiction –Salome on October, 2006, “We Would Like to Honor You with Our Appreciation”

Personal Essay – Edifice Wrecked, Nov, 2006, “The Dead Files”

New Travel Article

2006-01-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

Getting Touchy in Tuscany is now posted in e-marginalia.com, online travel e-zine. Pretty dang cool. This one is part of a contest. Add your comments!

Photos of hikes in Washington

2005-06-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

Watson Lake is one of my favorite hikes. These pictures were taken on a still, sweltering day in July of 2004. But this spot is even more beautiful in autumn, when the ground vegetation turns red, yellow and orange.

New Article Published - Los Angeles Journal

2005-06-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

Waxworks was published in the June, 2005 issue of the Los Angeles Journal. I was thrilled that they published it with artwork. I've reproduced it as it appeared in The Journal on my own web page. They were quite liberal in their edits of it:

Waxworks

This article was written as one of a series. At this time, it looks like this is the only one The Journal intends to publish.

N~

Short Story published in conteonline

2005-05-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

A new online literary journal just issued its first of what will be a monthly publication:

Conteonline

I am proud to say that my short story, Pay Me No Mind, is included in this first issue.