Getting Help

I am addicted to books, I'm saying that right up front. For years, I spent hundreds of dollars on technical books about operating systems and programming for my day job. I finally stopped doing that about three years ago when I realized that I had reached a plateau where the books were simply not advanced enough to help me. The other determining factor, however, was even more interesting to me: I actually prefer documentation available on the computer. If I have it in electronic form, the computer can perform a search instead of me laboriously pulling down book after book, looking for one small description of a reghack I need to do. I never thought I would prefer electronic information to an actual, paper book.

My. How times change.

However, I raise these issues because from a writing perspective, reference material interests me.

First, in the complete antithesis of my day job, I found when I first started out writing, books on writing were interesting but not particularly valuable. What was valuable was actually…writing. And activities such as entering writing contests and doing/receiving critiques. Forming a partnership with another writer to perform critiques was particularly helpful. Over time, you may find critique partners are less valuable (e.g. you've learned where to put your commas) or don't have the time to do critiques in return. Writing contests are no longer useful.

You reach a mid-level plateau. You may even have sold by this time, but you're not burning with success. This is when I've found books on writing to become less of an intellectual exercise and more specifically helpful.

Actually, there's only one writing book that I've found to be helpful enough to recommend: The Techniques of the $elling Writer by Dwight Swain. Get it and read it. You can actually improve your writing if you pay attention. He covers things like:

• Choosing the correct word
  
• Building a character's motivations, reactions, and feelings to create the story's movement
  
• Techniques like how to incorporate a flashback effectively
  

Stuff like that. I'm deliberately staying away from mentioning his "scene and sequel" information that everyone else babbles about because it's always provoked a "well, duh" reaction in me. This book is useful, however, but it is more useful to someone who has already done some writing and is looking for ways to go beyond the basics.

I really recommend this book. I actually didn't buy it for several years because I had bought other books on writing that ended up serving as dust collectors and not much else. So I didn't think that one more book on writing would really help me.

I have a shelf of books that I bought because other writers recommended them. Turns out that the brief descriptions given about the books were all I needed. I didn't need the book itself. It just took 250 pages for the author to describe what others encapsulated in the 250 word concept and description. A lot of books on "how to plot" are like that. Read the blurb on the back, glance through the charts, and you're done. Get the concept and get out.

There is one exception to this which I do go back to occasionally and that is the book on Creating Character Emotion. You don't have to read the whole thing, but reading a few of the examples really does help you understand how to show emotions like anger without just telling the reader that the character was angry. I do refer back to this book to refresh myself on ways to portray emotion, but again, if the book was half the length it is, it would be enough. The author really didn't need to have a chapter on each emotion. Can we say…redundant?

If I had written the book (easy to say, right?) I would not have made chapters on each emotion. I would have made chapters on the various techniques used to portray emotion and then included the example of the emotions that used the technique. That's why I never read the entire book. It started to repeat techniques in the guise of showing how to portray different emotions.

Entirely unnecessary. Which emotion is being portrayed is entirely unimportant. The crux of the matter is how to portray any emotion.

So after a few chapters, I marked which "emotions" were really examples of a specific way to portray an emotion—any emotion—so that I could refer back to the techniques.

The fact that I bothered to go back and mark the techniques, however, shows you that there was some very valuable and interesting information in that book. It is definitely worthwhile reference material.

However, I still have one complaint which circles back to my first paragraph: I've reached a point where I actually prefer my reference material to be online. I wish I could have gotten Swain's book as an e-book. I also wish the character emotion book was available as an e-book.

As far as other reference material: I heartily recommend the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is invaluable although exceptionally expensive. (I got it free for joining a book club in the distant past—otherwise I wouldn't have it, either.) I wish I had it online. It is so much easier to look things up on the computer than to stop and drag out some book. When I get rich and famous, the first thing I'm going to buy is the OED on CD (right after I get the D.R. Field & Brush Mower).

I am always using words that aren't in the standard online dictionaries. I also find most Thesauri to be pathetic. (What the heck is the plural of Thesaurus? Thesauruses? If it follows the Latin, one would think the plural would be Thesauri—and my speller doesn't barf at it so maybe that's right, although it doesn't barf at Thesauruses, either.)

Anyway, I don't use particularly obscure or complex words—just different words. Most are easy, most are words everyone has heard and used before. It's just that these lazy, limited, popular dictionaries and thesauri don't contain them. Although the Microsoft versions seem better than other e-dictionaries I've bought like Websters… Who would have thunk it?

So—that's it. Get Swain. It's about the most help I can offer other writers.

Writing Conferences

The Romance Writers of America conference is being held this week in Dallas, Texas. Unfortunately, I can't attend this year. Or maybe that's a good thing because conferences often depress me. However, my problems aside, I really encourage anyone who wants to be a writer to attend conferences. Particularly if the conference has seminars or classes that can help you improve your writing. Assuming you are open new ideas and don't believe that your writing is so good there is no way it can be improved.

Yeah. Right.

Be aware, however, that conferences can be a bit depressing if your confidence is fragile. When you see all the authors out there and start to realize how great some of them are, and you go back and read your stuff, you may begin to have doubts. You may think you're the worst writer on the planet and will never sell. Or that what you've sold is total dreck.

So you need to prepare to have your confidence shattered and continue writing anyway. Because everything, and I mean everything, can be improved upon. You can learn. If you put enough sweat into it, learn from your mistakes, remain open to new ideas, and don't let the rejections get to you, you may eventually get published. Of course, there are no guarantees.

And even when you're published, you should be aware that you must continue to learn and perfect your craft. Because there is always the second contract you have to earn.

One of the biggest fallacies I see when I talk to writers who attend conferences is the profound belief that what they just heard in class doesn't apply to them. Some writers attend the workshops with an open mind, ready to learn, tempered by the notion that their own writing does not suffer from whatever weaknesses or problems are under discussions. Or worse, they say, "Yes, I understand completely about overuse of adjectives and adverbs. But I have a very lush writing style and that is just my style. So it would be foolish of me to change it—it is perfect the way it is. But other writers should really pay attention to the advice from that class."

Sigh. All styles can be refined. All styles can be improved. Even the most lush, sensuous style can suffer from overwriting and the way too excessive use of adjectives and adverbs. Or infelicitous comparisons, similes, and descriptions.

[ AND TOTALLY BESIDE THE POINT…

And I can't help it, I've got to use Gil Mayo's observation from The Gil Mayo Mysteries on BBC America, about a shampoo called, Maximum Infinity. As he put it: infinity is, by definition, infinite. You can't modify it and make it more, or less, infinite. I don't think that's exactly what he said, but you get the gist of it. And translated into my words: unless you are writing something for some humorous effect, don't be a jerk about it. Watch your modifiers. Understand what the language you are using actually means.

Oh, and if you haven't seen The Gil Mayo Mysteries on BBC American—go watch iti! It's a brilliant show! Of course now that I've discovered it and have become a huge fan, it will probably be canceled. All the shows I like are canceled almost immediately. Just like all the stocks I buy immediately crash and never recover.

Anyway, The Gil Mayo Mysteries is the ONLY show I actually watch on television—not having time to actually watch television on a regular basis. Other than the occasional: Absolutely Fabulous, of course.

So, I adore Alistair McGowan as Gil Mayo and the absolutely brilliant new actor Huw Rhys as DI Kite. Huw Rhys has the most expressive face—he is a joy to watch. He can say more by just rolling his eyes than most other actors can convey in an entire speech. Of course McGowan is perfect as the deadpan, precise Gil Mayo. God, I love to watch those two. This show is fantastic. It is so funny and I even love the small bit before the show begins when the BBC recommends that American viewers may wish to use their close captioning feature because of the accents…What a riot. I always start the DVD recorder a little early to catch that part.

And yes, Huw Rhys is from Wales and has a achingly beautiful accent, but I can't say as I've needed the close captioning feature yet. J I just wish they would have some decent pictures on the BBC America site for the cast. The one group shot has a pretty appalling picture of poor Mr. Rhys.

And lest we forget the women: I'm totally jealous of Jessica Oyelowo as the character of Alex. She is truly gorgeous. Not to mention that her outfits are fabulous and in some odd way remind me of the creations by my favorite costume designer, Edith Head. Sometimes I really wish that well-tailored, good looking dresses that look good on an actual female body with curves would come back into style. It's so rare to see well-constructed clothing with flare. Maybe that's one of the reasons the character of Alex looks so good—she often wears "costumes" that in fact look well-made and good on a woman.

There is something tragically missing from today's gowns—they just lack style. They look good on hangers. They look good draped over a stick figure. But none of them really look well made or good on an actual woman with an actual woman's body. And the more "high fashion" they are, the worse they look. Some just frankly look like someone took a bolt of expensive fabric, basted a few seams along strange-and-wacky bias lines and threw it over the poor, starved woman. Too bad. They just look like an anorexic pile of expensive fabric remnants.

Anyway, this has absolutely nothing to do with writing or conferences.

END OF DIGRESSION ]

Back to writing conferences…

Strangely enough, I tend to disagree with the conventional wisdom about what is useful about conferences. A lot of people go "to make contacts in the industry".

Fine.

Whatever.

Frankly, I don't think that is very useful until you have actually sold your book. If you have, then you need to go to conferences to meet the people who will put your book into bookstores and libraries.

If you haven't published, here's the thing: you can chat up as many agents and editors as you want, but your book is only going to be contracted by one of them if the story and writing are good enough. Your book will essentially sell itself if it is good enough. Until it is that good, you are wasting your time. No one is going to buy anything you write no matter how many drinks you buy for them or how friendly you are.

The only exception is if you are some sort of celebrity. Then your celebrity status may sell your first book for you. After that, if it doesn't do well, you're back to the old "is the story and writing strong enough?"

So, I totally don't believe in the value of networking until you are a published author. Then you need to cast your net about you to pick up contracts in the industry such as librarians and booksellers who may acquire your masterpiece, and nose around editors to see what the trends are, who is buying what, and so on for your next project.

Then, with tears in your eyes, you ask: What about the opportunity to pitch your book to a lucky agent or editor?

What about it? It's frankly a waste of good adrenalin and nervous tension. Because they are still going to read what you submit to them. And if it isn't good enough, it's rejected. They're aren't going to buy it because they met you face-to-face at the conference.

And here's the real secret: if your book is good enough to buy, they will buy it—even out of the slush pile! So you are no better off and if you have a tendency to ramble (the way I do—see above digression) then you are actually better off not pitching in that venue.

Perfect your pitch/query. With the help of a query vetting group, I've reached the point where 99% of my queries net a request for a partial.

When you reach that point, then just send the query letter. If they ask for a partial, send the partial. If it's good enough, they'll ask for the rest of the manuscript. If they like it, they'll buy it. That's the process. Pitching in person just makes you insanely nervous and crazy and for no good reason because you still have to go through exactly that same process. You may possibly get to send your completed manuscript first instead of the partial, but again, if it isn't good enough, all that will net you is a quicker rejection.

So you can be a cool, calm, rational person and send a query to start the process, or you can be a sweaty, tongue-tied person who pitched face-to-face. Both authors end up in the same queue. Naturally, if you prefer to make contacts and pitch face-to-face, then have at it. I'm just saying if this is not your preferred style and you are shy—don't worry about it. In the long run, it's your writing and your story that matter.

And that's it. It's your writing and your story that matter. Not buying rounds in the hotel bar for all the editors at the RWA conference.

This and That

We all think we know how to talk and write. We all think we communicate clearly, get our point across, and any idiot can understand us. And yet… How many times have you said something and then had someone reply or ask you a question that is so, well, on another planet entirely from what you were saying that you just stopped, completely nonplused?

Happens to me all the time. In conversations, e-mails, and my writing, I often feel like I'm speaking a completely different language from everyone else. I read what I've written and it makes perfect sense to me. Or I mentally review what I've said and it seems reasonable and not at all anything that someone else would take issue with. And yet…they do—take issue. Or, they don't—understand. And yet it all seems so clear and just fine to me.

I'm left with the odd feeling that I must not "speak good English". Or maybe I speak some really obscure form of English.

Whatever…

The thing is—I'm in a lot of writers groups and so many of them trash critique partners or say "they just don't have time for a critique partner" or other rather uppity things like that. My answer is: how much time do you have to rewrite? How much time do you have to revise over and over again because you're revising the wrong things because you have no clue what is really wrong?

Sure, it's hard to find a good critique partner who won't just say: Oh, this is great! Or one that won't just focus on where the commas ought to be placed. Or one that doesn't cut you to ribbons when you don't deserve it (versus cutting you to ribbons when you do deserve it and need to pay attention).

But I really think a good critique partner is worth his or her weight in gold. Because every time she wrinkles her nose, pauses, asks a question, re-reads a line, or glances away for a moment, those are places that need fixing. Can you find those places on your own? I don't know. Can you?

Mostly, I can't. Because I know what I mean—I wrote the darn thing. If I didn't know what I meant then not even the greatest critique partner on this planet is going to be able to help me. However, the fact of the matter is: if you wrote it, you understand it. But not everyone else will. What is an English garden to you may be a plot of nameless weeds to someone else. Worse, your English garden may be a loathsome, foully diseased plot to everyone else who reads your description. That's the value of a second opinion—in a word, a critique partner.

Now, it's true. Some really lucky writers have agents and no critique partners. Because the writer's agent is actually working not only as an agent but also as a critique partner. Oh, sure. The agent isn't reading every single word the way a critique partner might, but they are providing feedback to the author such as: This scene didn't work. And what the heck were you thinking when you wrote that the hero's head looked like a peeled cabbage? So someone, somewhere is often providing feedback even for those authors who have no time for critique partners.

For beginning writers: get a critique partner. Develop a thick hide. All those things you thought you were so good at—well, make sure you're not just kidding yourself. This is particularly true if you've written a lot of manuscripts and can't seem to get anywhere. You may be making the same mistakes over and over again because you haven't been able to identify what is wrong. And you have no one to point them out to you. Find someone who is going to be hard on you and listen to what they have to say. Think about it. Think hard and don't just dismiss stuff out of hand because you think the person "just doesn't understand". Or the person "just doesn't get your style of writing". Honestly, think about it.

Everyone needs feedback in order to improve their communication skills. Some reader comments are more useful than others. Many comments are completely contradictory. It's not always easy to sift through everything and figure out what—if anything—you are doing wrong.

The bottom line, however, is that you should always be open to comments, suggestions and new ideas. You have to grow or die. It's your choice.

Brain Dead

Sorry—it's going to be a lousy blog this week. One of our pets developed a heart issue and stopped eating, among other things. She was somewhere around seventeen years old as near as we can reckon. At least we got her seventeen years ago from the animal shelter and she was already an adult at that point, so she was at least that old. So, as you may have guessed, she passed away today and I'm wiped out.

And this incident was the culmination of several similar incidents this week that all seem related to attachments, emotional commitments, and why I'm such a crybaby. All I can hope is that this will someday make me a better writer. (Probably not, unfortunately, because being good at whining doesn't necessarily make others want to read your whines.)

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me because of animals. Two weeks ago, some jerk abandoned four puppies in a bean field about two miles from our house—in the middle of nowhere. We found them when we were out walking. The puppies were starved and covered with various parasites. We feed them and managed to get one adopted before we took the rest to the animal shelter. And at the animal shelter, there were already a variety of animals including two dogs some family said they just couldn't take with them because they were moving, and a lab that some woman brought to the shelter because the dog refused to let her in the house. (Now, why would a dog refuse to let its owner into the house? That really made me wonder.)

And yet there I was at the shelter, trying not to weep and feeling like a complete swine and duplicitous-betrayer for taking those puppies to the shelter—even though it was the best thing for them. They weren't even my puppies and I felt like shit. I still feel like shit, even though we did get one adopted and they do have a chance of adoption at the shelter where we took them.

So what I want to know is how those other people could just abandon their pets? Or abandon a litter of puppies in a field, miles from anyone, knowing that they would probably starve to death. What the hell is the matter with them? Don't they have any emotional attachments to anything beyond themselves?

I never thought of myself as the emotional type. I mean, any story described as "heart-warming" is an immediate turnoff. I can't stand weepy chick-flicks and if a book is billed as "makes you cry and laugh" then there is no way I'm going to read it. I'd rather read a good horror story any day. I've got enough problems without searching for more emotional jerking-around. I HATE to cry.

But I get deeply attached to things, like people and pets. I sure can't just abandon them and yet I see other people doing that all the time. I see spouses cheating on each other. I see families just throwing out dogs and cats down country lanes and I can't understand what the hell they are thinking. And yes, I consider the pets to be members of the family so it seems perfectly reasonable to talk about all family relationships, including pets, in this rant.

The only conclusion I can come to is that others either don't care or they are emotionally wired in a different way. They obviously don't form the deep attachments I'm accustomed to. They don't care if they hurt their spouse. They don't care if a pet dies a long and lingering death covered with parasites, diseased and starving. They just don't care.

And I just don't get it.

Maybe, ultimately, that's why I write. And in particular, why I gravitate toward writing mysteries. Because it is a mystery to me how mankind can be so desperately cruel and thoughtless. I'll probably never really understand it, and in answer to that inevitable question: Haven't you ever wanted to kill anyone? No. No, I have not. I've despised certain people, but I've never wanted to do damage to anyone. I don't know why. I'm not a particularly good person. I have the world's worst temper, however, I generally prefer just to curse a lot and write mean things in blogs. I don't like to destroy things. It makes me feel bad.

Writing, though, gives me an opportunity to try to understand these other people with their otherwise incomprehensible motivations and thought processes. I can develop scenarios where I think people who have these other behavior patterns might commit the ultimate crime. It's a way to try to make sense of the world around me and a way to deal with my oft-times uncomfortable emotions, such as grief.

There are no answers, only more questions: therefore, I must write.

Writing and Editing

So here I am slaving away, editing a manuscript and I'm thinking…how do these other authors produce books so quickly? Not that I can't write the initial draft quickly. In fact, I've written a 90,000 book in two months. But that's just the first draft. And I've even edited manuscripts in just a few months and given the results to my agent. Unfortunately, those results are never what you would call a quality product, however.

Because the thing is, it takes my mind time to go back through it and find all the little things that my subconscious planted but did not "elaborate on" when I wrote the manuscript.

Here's an example from one of my current projects. It's a contemporary mystery called Whacked! In one of the first scenes, the heroine's uncle finds a dead body by a stream running through the back of their property. Now, I had a good reason for that and I elucidated on that reason—which was fine. But after a few months, my subconscious has finally tapped my conscious mind on the shoulder and said, "You know that scene where the uncle finds the dead body? Well, here's the real reason why I wanted you to have the uncle find that body, even thought it was hard as heck to set up that scene and have the characters have decent motivation that made sense at the time."

Without time to allow that to percolate up to my conscious mind, the story would have been okay. It would have made sense. But it would be missing an entire range of meaning and depth which I now hope it will have. Assuming that I can work in all the elements I now see need to be in there.

If I was under a deadline, how would that work? I guess it would have to stand as it was originally, without the added depth.

It puzzles me greatly because I see these big long fat books written quickly by authors like Allison Brennan and I'm thinking: how the heck does she write that so quickly? How does she get the depth?

I have to write the first draft—or even just the first half—and then let it rest. Ideas percolate. I work on something else. I edit for sequencing issues, which is my big weakness. Thankfully, though, the process of editing for sequencing and continuity actually clarifies things and makes the entire manuscript improve in mysterious ways. Through this process, my subconscious hands me things I needed in the first draft but either didn't recognize or just failed to include. I also have to add descriptions, emotions and motivations since I have almost none of those things in the first draft. My first drafts tend to be bare bones action and dialog with occasional spurts of description, emotion and motivation when I feel guilty about not including those elements initially.

After following the classes given by Crusie and Mayer, I'm thinking that Crusie (at least) also has a similar method. She writes and then she rewrites. And rewrites. I'm not sure how quickly she can turn something out, but I get the feeling that her turnaround time is not just a couple of months.

If I had the time, I think an interesting task would be to find out how long an author took to do a particular book. Get that information for several authors and several books. Then compare books that took a year or more to write/rewrite versus books that just took a few months (if that). I'm really curious to see if there would be differences in the depth to the books, or it is really just a matter of how fast a particular author can write.

My personal experience as a reader has led me to believe that the faster a book is written, the more facile and shallow the story. Even stories that have seemingly complex/convoluted plots seem to just lack depth when they are produced quickly. But again, this is just my entirely subjective experience. I also base this upon what vague and incomplete information I have about how quickly certain authors churn out books and my reaction to their books. Completely unscientific.

Nonetheless, I do think that the one thing a writer should do is give herself (or himself) time to properly develop a story and edit it. And edit it. Until it achieves the depth and clarity it deserves.

Now I've got to end this for tonight because I really am working on editing and I'm trying to get a manuscript done so I can send it to my editor.

Happy Trails!

Edit the Manuscript; Lose the Voice

As I mentioned in previous blogs, I just suffered from another series of rejections. So I took the first chapters of several manuscripts I've been working on and ran them by an unbiased (and unrelated) third party. Discovered something interesting. Editing is not always a great and wonderful thing. My "least edited" chapters are the best. By far, the best.

The rejected manuscripts had been edited too much. I tried to make stories that ran around 90,000 words fit into 75,000 words and as a result, I removed most of my voice and almost everything that made the characters understandable: like internal dialog and motivation. I also cut out so much that what was left was confusing.

Yes, sometimes it is possible to take a 90,000 word manuscript and cut it down under 75,000, but only if you actually have unnecessary scenes and a lot of extra verbiage. Or a few extra characters and subplots. If you don't and your writing is fairly tight to begin with, when you cut it that drastically, you are probably going to end up with a mess. I certainly did.

Maybe it's just me, though, because Reader's Digest condensed books seem to read "just fine." But…anyway.

Good Editing

Good editing is mostly structural. You get rid of unnecessary scenes that don't support and advance the storyline. You add in those little clues and red herrings the mystery requires. You reorder your sentences so that events and actions occur in the proper sequence. You fix the grammar.

If you're like me, you also add in descriptions, clarify motivations, and make sure the reader can understand what is going on. (My first drafts often only include dialog and terse action. You do need some descriptions, though, and your characters have to have some thoughts, emotions and motivations. Not everyone can psychically pick up on a character's internal emotional life and motivations the way I can. Of course, it helps that I'm the one who created the characters.)

Bad Editing

Bad editing is where you piddle around too much with how you are saying things. It is okay to substitute a stronger verb for a weak verb/adverb combo, e.g. "he ambled" instead of "he walked slowly." It is not okay to massage your sentences until you lose the original verve and power. That, my friends, is how you lose your voice.

I'm not a big fan of all this voice stuff—I think everyone has a voice. Your voice consists of your word choices and how you put thoughts together. That's it—no big mystery. However, the editing process is dangerous, because you can take all the freshness and life out of your writing by polishing it to death. Removing words. Substituting words. Nit-picking. Deleting sentences you need or watering other sentences down to make them "more acceptable." The trick is to learn when to stop.

Actually, I think the real trick is to realize how to edit. You don't want to change the words, you just want to ensure they make sense in the order written. Check sequence and mechanics. Check for action.

Then let it go.

(Unless you've already edited the holy heck out of several manuscripts and need to put them back together again. In which case, you have my profoundest sympathy.)

Writing Remediation

With the help of another writer, I managed to figure out at least some of the issues keeping me from publishing a second book. A few of my problems are sequencing. There were several variations of this, some easy to fix, others more difficult. The good news is that they are all fixable.

If you've been writing for a while but still getting rejections, you might want to think about what I'm going to say. It's the kind of issue that may make you decide: this isn't my problem. But I urge you to reconsider.

Think about this. You get rejections that say your writing is competent but "not for us". Or, your critique partner marks passages that she says make no sense. But when you explain them to her, the paragraph you have written makes perfect sense to both of you. You think: What the heck was her problem that she didn't understand that? It was clearly written—she's got to be an idiot or had a brain fart or something. And so you move on to correct other things.

These may be symptoms of a sequencing issue.

Sequence issues can be broken down into a few categories. Each category has to be fixed in a different way and that is why you need to be able to separate them.

Attribution

This is this simplest and you can generally find them pretty easily.

Example

Beth and Joan went into the bar. She ordered a drink.

Beth is your heroine. When you wrote this, the scene was in your heroine's point of view so it seemed okay. In your mind, the "She ordered a drink" part is clearly Beth.

Or, perhaps because Joan was the last name referenced in the preceding sentence, you may think your reader will naturally know Joan ordered the drink.

It doesn't matter if it is clear to you as the author. It's not clear to the reader. You actually need to replace "She" with a name to make it clear which woman ordered the drink. Easy. That's a problem most writers catch on rewrites, although the occasional pronoun confusion still slips through at times.

Sequence and Causal Effect

This is much more difficult and it is one which causes me grief all the time. It is what makes others say my writing is confusing. Here is a simple summary of this issue. When humans read and process information, they make assumptions. In an action sequence, one assumption is that the action in the first sentence caused the action in the second sentence.

Example

There was a loud knock at the front door. Glancing up, Tricia screamed when a mouse scampered across the floor.

Interpretation

The innocent reader or critique partner will read this and say, "Huh? Why did Tricia scream at a knock on the door? Did it startle her or something?"

The author is going to reply, "Huh? I can't see what is so confusing about this. There was a knock at the door. THEN Tricia screamed BECAUSE she saw a mouse running across the floor. I SAID that. I SAID that she screamed when she saw a mouse scamper across the floor. There is nothing wrong with that paragraph."

The critique partner is then going to shrug and say, "Well, okay. I see that you wrote that Tricia screamed WHEN a mouse scampered across the floor. I guess it's okay. Maybe you should just replace 'when' with 'because'."

Author said, "Oh, fine. I'll do that."

But that is NOT OKAY. It does not address the problem.

The human brain is going to read the first sentence, which indicates there was a knock at the door. The innocent reader is now waiting for a reaction. The reaction they read next is that Tricia glanced up and screamed. By the time the reader gets to "when a mouse scampered across the floor" the reader is confused. Or the reader is making the assumption that the loud knock startled Tricia and she's a nervous woman who screams when someone knocks at the door. Then Tricia saw the mouse. Or whatever.

You've now lost both your reader and your potential publishing contract.

So that paragraph needs to be rewritten to reestablish the causal relationship between the sentences and the sequence of events.

Corrected Example

There was a loud knock at the front door. The sudden noise scared a mouse out of hiding and it scampered over the carpet just as Tricia glanced toward the door. Tricia screamed at the sight of the rodent running toward her…

You see the difference?

The loud knock scared the mouse. The mouse scared Tricia. That is the sequence and causal relationships. If you change the order around it will be confusing no matter how clearly you write the second sentence.

Too Much Action in One Sentence

This one is also difficult. I have a tendency to try to write economically and densely. When I was a programmer, I'd do anything to save one byte and made the code more efficient. I have a habit of wanting cut out all "unnecessary" words and transitions. I want to pack everything I can into once sentence. Unfortunately, what works with computers does not work with people. We need time to process information. We need to see what is going on. Most importantly, we need transitions if characters are going to move from one place to another.

Example

The carriage came to an abrupt halt. Before Chilton could react, the footmen opened the carriage door and escorted him into the library.

Interpretation

The innocent reader or critique partner will read this and say, "Huh? How did he suddenly get into the library? I thought he was sitting motionless in the carriage."

The defensive author is going to say, "What? I said, the footmen opened the carriage door and escorted him into the library. Obviously, if they escorted him into the library, he wasn't still sitting in the carriage. He's now in the library. Sheesh."

The critique partner is going to say, "Oh, okay. Fine. Whatever. So now he's in the library."

There was just way too much action packed into that sentence without any transitions. The reader couldn't follow along properly. One minute Chilton was in the carriage, the next he's in the library, with no transition or sense of movement in between except that one, paltry word "escorted."

Corrected Example

The carriage came to an abrupt halt. Before Chilton could react, the footmen opened the carriage door. They yanked him out and escorted him up the front steps and through the front door. Then, before he could summon up a protest, they marched him straight down the hall and into the library.

You see the difference?

Now I'm not saying this is deathless prose in the corrected examples. In fact, the writing is still pretty bad, but at least it doesn't leave you with the feeling of having missed something. Or maybe it does.

But at least it's a start and I feel like I've learned something.

An Open Door

Wow, it's already Wednesday. I usually update my blog on Tuesday, but I got sidetracked. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I stumbled onto the train tracks on four separate occasions and got hit. I'm still reeling a little. Mostly because I don't seem to learn. My inability to learn can summed up with a certain bitter poignancy as:

1. I've yet to learn that I'm a pathetic excuse for a writer.
   
2. I've yet to learn how to write real, as opposed to caricature, characters.
   
3. I've yet to learn how to plot.
   
4. And I've yet to learn how to actually write. As in, create understandable prose.
   

As you might already have guessed, I got my first review for my first book this week. It was pretty bad. Oh, not the review—that was very well written. My book is apparently pretty bad. To quote:

It is a shame that Michael and Margaret couldn't have their story told in a more organized and better thought out way. I had trouble following the action, and couldn't quite picture what was supposed to be happening and by whom. The narrative was just too jumpy. The storyline isn't awful, but the author's style needs improvement for me to want to read her again.

So you can see how that relates to numbers 3 and 4, above.

And then, to reinforce this learning experience, I got three rejections which pretty much puts paid to everything I have completed at this point. The rejections covered items 2, 3, and 4, as in:

The writing was occasionally stilted and forced and many of the secondary characters came across as caricatures. …[And] the story felt a bit uneven…

However, as a whole the manuscript lacked the strength and life to continue on in our process.

One issue that I repeatedly found is that you have a tendency to throw multiple thoughts into one sentence making it difficult for the reader to follow.

…however, several of them come across as caricatures rather than fully realized people. This is especially true for Helen and Archer. I didn't connect with the hero or heroine very strongly—especially the heroine. The repetition of ideas got to be a little frustrating and several of the jokes and threads of suspicion fell flat. I didn't buy into the romance and found the writing on the whole to not be as strong…

Okay. I think that about covers it. Looking at those, item number 1 above should be fairly obvious.

Now why on earth would I share this information with anyone? Because of number 1.

Obviously, I have room for improvement. Vast expanses of green field just waiting for me. Lots of ways to make hay. For example, I could fix my prose. Or, I could fix my characters. Or I could correct my prose, my plots, and my characters. I could learn how to write.

But all of those things require that I actually continue writing and don't actually accept item number 1. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe I should say that I accept that I may be the world's most pathetic and awful writer at the moment and I may never be a brilliant writer (because one could argue I have no talent if I can't do a single thing well) but I can be a better writer than I am at this moment.

The only way to become a better writer is to continue writing. Yes, I agree that some people are gifted. Some folks are brilliant with characterization. Some have astounding plots that leave you gasping at each twisting turn. Other writers have such gorgeous prose that you can't help but read them just to hear the melody of their words. So maybe I'm not one of those writers. Maybe I have to sweat and slave over each small improvement. Maybe nothing comes easily. Maybe I have no strengths as a writer, only weaknesses.

Maybe my published book was a fluke. (Perhaps it is a bad fluke, but it was published so it must be at least marginally better than anything else I've written in the last five years.)

But no one said writing is easy and there is always something new to learn. When you stop learning, you're either dead or a quitter. Of the two, I have no control over the dead part, but I don't intend to be a quitter. (I know—I could always kill myself—but again, I'm not a quitter.)

In the end, all the rejections and reviews are doors. You can open them, look inside, and perhaps learn something. Or you can lock yourself out of that opportunity.

So for other writers out there: if you're talented, great! I don't know why you're reading this or how much you'll get out of it, but whatever. For those who are suffocating under a few pounds of rejections, just keep going. That's all. Keep learning and keep going. You can't possibly be any worse than I am. J

That's it for my motivational speech. Now get back to work.

Argument

I almost posted an email on the Crusie & Mayer blog to apologize to them for my incessant arguing when they are spending a great deal of time sharing their writing knowledge, but I refrained because I wasn't sure how that would come across, either. So I'm posting it here, instead.

You see, I argue to understand. The process of arguing lets me think through a new idea, poke at it, come up with exceptions, and then in the long run, understand how to implement or adopt it.

Unfortunately, that is not how that process comes across to other people. This point was vividly brought home to me by a brief conversation with my mother, a few months prior to her death.

"I wish you wouldn't argue about everything," my mom said.
"But I'm not really arguing," I replied.
Mom sighed. "You always argue--you always have. Why can't you just do what we ask for once without arguing?"
"I usually do end up doing what you suggested--I do listen to what you say."
"But not without arguing about it first and by the time you're convinced or do something, I'm already tearing my hair out because you're so stubborn."

That's the problem. I know I seem stubborn because I argue about everything, but I'm helpless to stop that behavior. It seems to be essential for me to process new information and understand how to deal with it. How to make it fit.

To other people, I just seem argumentative and by the time I actually DO do what they say, they already feel like they've lost the argument and any sense of satisfaction is gone (when I do end up doing what they asked). And I'm sorry for this, because I--on the other hand--feel like "things went really well" and that we're all in sync with one another when I do work it out.

Mostly because to me it's not an argument, it's a debate. And I can get all fired up but five minutes later, I'm smiling again and don't have that lingering aftertaste you get with a real argument. That's really the difference between a debate and an argument. You get just as emotional and fired up with both of them, but when a debate is over there are no hard feelings. At least on my part. I can't remember five minutes later what it was about and an hour later, I've worked the suggestion into my mental processes to the point where I'm perfectly comfortable with it.

I mean, like this whole "you can't have characters hiss, sigh, moan, groan, or whatever in dialog when you write." I argued about this on the Crusie/Mayer workshop. In point of fact, during recent years, I actually haven't had any characters hiss/sigh/moan/groan dialog. I use said and reply most of the time. But I still needed to work through that argument because it's the way my mind works and I wanted to work out if there were any exceptions or things to "watch out for".

If I'm not arguing about something, it's because I either don't care about it, and/or I am NOT going to do it (so there's no point in discussing it). A lot of people I work or associate with have never actually realized this, but if I don't argue the point, THAT'S when the other person has a problem with me. Because I'm most likely not going to concede their point or do what they want and I don't care enough about it to talk about it. Silence is not golden nor is it accorde. It is the absence of sound and therefore, an absence of agreement.

So, apologies to Jen and Bob for my incessant arguments, but realize that this means I am taking what you say to heart and trying to work it into my writing.

Why doesn’t my Blackberry work? And other Techno-geek problems…

This one entry in my blog is a techno-geek blog and not a whiny writer's entry or even an entry about writing in general. Sorry. Next week. Or see my previous entry which sort of mashed my techno-geek and writing side together in a very uncomfortable mix.

So. You've been warned.

So. For all you desperate admins out there searching the Internet for help on why some of your users' Blackberry's aren't working…or why some of your users can't publish their certificates to the GAL…or why some of the permissions you've delegated in Active Directory don't seem to work all the time…or other anomalies like that…

This blog is for you.

Why Things Just Don't Work As Expected

Having problems with permissions in AD? Problems with Blackberries? Weird anomalies when trying to reset passwords?

I thought so.

Sometimes being an enterprise administrator for a very large organization is just…depressing. Since we've upgraded to Windows 2003, I've learned that Microsoft is serious about best practices such as not using your standard, mail-enabled/mailbox-owning user account for administrative tasks. And I've grown serious about it, too since I've begun to appreciate security. Now, I'm so serious that I'm thinking fondly of starting the Guido School of Admin Training (with sincere apologies to any existing Guidos or schools already named thusly).

Our Guido School of Admin Training is a very informal school held outside in the nice, fresh air in the alley between two office buildings. There are no formal registration procedures, however you do have to be nominated to attend. Admins just need to show up for class to begin.

What to expect: The instructor, Guido, will shake your hand and then gently haul you over to the nearest wall by your collar. Then it becomes really exciting and lots of fun. With a jaunty smile, Guido grabs you securely by the back of the neck and smacks your face against the wall while saying in a firm tone of voice:

Do
{smack}
not
{smack}
nest
{smack}
security
{smack}
groups
{smack}
into
{smack}
protected
{smack}
groups.

And then, after a slight pause for refreshments:

Do
{smack}
not
{smack}
place
{smack}
standard
{smack}
mail-enabled/mail-box associated
{smack}
user
{smack}
accounts
{smack}
into
{smack}
protected
{smack}
groups.

Now, if you can repeat what you just learned, you receive a diploma and a short ride to the nearest hospital.

Our school guarantees success. For the rest of their life, students will remember what they've been taught, even if they imprinted on Windows NT and never learned any other operating system and refuse to use an administrative account because it's just too much trouble. Even if they repeatedly put a group containing all 8,000 users in their domain (within your AD tree, mind you) into Domain Admins because they thought that would be the simplest way to deploy something, say, a patch. And after they remove the group containing all the users from Domain Admins and they suddenly get a rash of calls about how all the managers' Blackberrys are all broken, they call you to fix it.

If this happens, it's time to send the admin to Guido's school, so just take the bull by the horns and nominate them.

Because now you have to deal with the admincount attribute.

You see, protected groups are special. They need to be special because in the past, fanatical admins have removed critical permissions from key groups instead of simply not putting unnecessary admin accounts into those groups to begin with. After removing critical permissions, these fanatics have lost control of their domain, or worse, their AD Tree or even Forest. Okay, maybe that's not the entire reason for protecting these key groups, but it is certainly one good reason. There are a lot of others and this blog isn't long enough for all of them.

So in Windows 2003, Microsoft helped admins avoid such idiocy by developing a mechanism to put back critical permissions on certain key groups called protected groups. Organizations which follow best practices for administration and security are most likely completely unaware of this secret mechanism and don't need to worry about it. If you follow best practices, it will have no impact on you and never will. You deserve to be worshiped as the deity you obviously are.

For the rest of us, we need to learn this rule: You don't put standard user accounts associated with a mailbox into any protected group; and you don't nest groups into protected groups (because you lose track of what you nested and could potentially nest groups containing standard user accounts into protected groups and elevate permissions that should not be elevated).

If you violate this rule, the admincount attribute will afflict you mightly. (And yes, I used "afflict" on purpose so don't leave me a lot of obnoxious comments about that. It's funny. Laugh, darn you.)

Protected Groups

What are the protected groups? With Windows 2003, they include:

Schema Admins

Enterprise Admins

Cert Publishers

Domain Admins

Account Operators

Print Operators

Administrators (domain local)

Server Operators

Backup Operators

How are they protected?

One piece of the mechanism protecting these special groups is an attribute called the admincount.

• The protected groups have the admincount attribute set to 1.
  
• Any group or user account nested into a protected group gets the admincount set to 1.
  
• Any user nested into a group nested into a protected group gets the admincount set to 1.
  

The only exception is if there is a user account or group from another domain in your AD tree nested into a protected group, like the domain local Administrators group. The group/accounts from the other domain will not be affected. (But that does not mean you should be a knucklehead and use your standard, mailbox-associated user account for administrative purposes in other domains. Come on, grow up.)

Normally, the admincount is not set at all (it is null).

Every fifteen minutes or so, the operating system looks for the admincount attribute. If it finds it, it does some interesting things. It removes inheritance from the object so it will not inherit the permissions it might once have inherited from its parent OU or OU structure. This prevents unfortunate things from happening if you move one of the protected groups out of the Builtin container to a different OU or container where you might have diddled with the permissions it inherits might cause a breach of security or worse. Like a Help Desk person with full control over a user OU suddenly gaining full control over Domain Admins because some knuckle-dragging yahoo put Domain Admins into that OU. Stuff like that.

In addition, if an object like a user account has the admincount attribute set, the system strips certain key permissions granted to that account or group by the schema definition for that object type at the moment of creation. Specifically, most of the SELF permissions. These are the permissions that let a user account, for example, publish a certificate to AD (and hence, to the global address list or GAL if you are running a product like Exchange 2003).

So this could have the impact of preventing a user from publishing a cert.

Or it may break a user's Blackberry if the user happens to be put into a group like Domain Admins, because generally the Blackberry's service account is granted permissions through the OU hierarchy. These permissions for the BB service account are necessary for the service account to send/receive mail to/from the user's Blackberry to their Exchange mailbox. So if the user's account is affected by the admincount attribute, it will stop inheriting permissions from the OU, the BB service account will not get the permissions it needs, and this user will have a brick instead of a Blackberry.

Just a few examples. I've also seen it cause apparent permission anomalies where an admin grumbles that AD is broken or doesn't work well because sometimes they can't manage an object they supposedly have permissions to manage. When I get that type of call, the first thing I check is if the admincount attribute is set on either the admin's account or on the object they are trying to manage. Most of the time, one or the other (or both) has the attribute set and it's time to nominate the admin for my special school.

Because if a user object can't inherit permissions and has some self-permissions removed, how well do you think you're going to be able to manage an account with delegated permissions? How well will an account thus damaged work with inherited and/or delegated permissions? Not well, my friend. Not well at all.

The Kicker

Once a user account ( or group) is "contaminated" by the admincount attribute, it doesn't come clean just by removing the user account or group from the protected group. Oh, no. You have to fix it.

The nice thing about this is that you can always tell when some admin really needs to meet Guido out in the alley. You can just run ldifde and export a file containing all the users and groups with the admincount attribute set to 1. And of course the event logs on your domain controllers will show membership changes to protected groups so if you catch the problem soon after it occurs, you can see exactly who needs that training.

Here is an example of the ldifde command that will provide you with a text file called ac.txt of all users and groups with the admincount set in a domain (in the example, the domain is example.com):

Ldifde –f ac.txt –d dc=example,dc=com –l samaccountname –r "(admincount=1)"

Note: I like to include the samaccountname attribute in the output (it will by default include the distinguished name) because it helps me in other processes—but this is entirely optional.

You might think that the admincount is a bad thing. It is not. It is your friend because it shows when you are not following best practices and are, in fact, endangering the security of your enterprise. So I'm not in favor of turning off this functionality.

I'm in favor of training and implementing best practices that create a reasonable security model based on the use of a separate account for administration. This secondary account should not be mailbox enabled or associated with a mailbox.

Fixing It

Here is how to fix it if things weren't done exactly right in the past. I will warn you, however, that if you have a lot of user accounts affected (as I have had to fix multiple times for multiple domain admins) this can be a somewhat time consuming process, even if you script it up.

Fix Protected Group Membership

First, you must make sure you undo the cause, which is to say, make sure you don't have any groups nested into protected groups. If you do, remove them. There is no point in trying to cleanse things if you leave the source of contamination. Leaving groups nested into the protected groups means at some future date, you will be addressing this same problem again because people forget and put the wrong accounts into "innocent looking" groups.

So remove all nested groups and remove all standard user accounts that are associated with a mailbox. Just leave your agreed-upon administrative accounts which can and should have the admincount attribute set. Naturally, you won't be an idiot and remove all the accounts before you add the new administrative accounts, because you might find yourself suddenly unable to actually add the new admin accounts, particularly if you empty out Domain Admins without putting any new accounts into it, first. (Just an FYI. I know you know these things but I like to state the obvious. It's so satisfyingly…obvious.)

Clean the Groups and Users Removed

Once you have removed any nested groups and innocent user accounts, you can clean them. You have to clean both the user accounts and the nested groups, if any.

First, reset the admincount attribute to 0 (or null) on the nested groups and users. Null is best, but 0 will work and sometimes it is nice to set it to 0 because you then have a historical artifact you can search for later if you have other issues. A 0 will tell you that this user or group was afflicted by the admincount at one point. (Just as you are afflicted by whichever admin did this to the user or group.)

For one or two users and groups, you can simply edit them in adsiedit.msc, which will allow you to reset the admincount attribute. You can also script it up if you wish. (I use a script for bulk cleaning.)

If you are using adsiedit.msc, you should take the following steps:

• Right click the user (or group) and select Properties.
  
• On the Attribute Editor tab, find the admincount attribute. Select it and click the [Edit] button. Click on the [Clear] button (or set the value to 0 if you want the historical artifact). Click [Ok].
  
• Select the Security tab
  
• Click on the [Advanced] button. Click on the [Default] button. This will restore the removed permissions PLUS it will put a check mark next to the "Allow inheritable permissions…" box, which you want.
  
• Click on [Ok] until you close out that user's properties.
  

Unfortunately, as you see, in addition to clearing the admincount, you have to reset (turn on) inheritance for that object (group or user). Finally, you must give it back the permissions that object normally gets when it is first created. These permissions are not inherited, they are defined in the schema for that object and are granted to the object when it is created. If you use certificates, you're going to want these permissions and that's why the [Default] button is so handy. It restores all those things for you.

DSACLS can also be used to restore inheritance and reset an object back to its default "state" by using the /P:N /S switches.

There is obviously a lot more to be said about this, including administrative practices, best practices, and security whys & wherefores, but I'll be here all day if I don't stop somewhere.

There is a relevant KB article, "Delegated permissions are not available and inheritance is automatically disabled" KB817433, but I don't recommend doing the workaround. In fact, I generally don't like referencing that KB article because it includes that workaround and some knuckleheads always want to do the workaround instead of just tackling the problem and fixing it properly.

I recommend doing things the right way so you don't have to deactivate something that is there to help you and prevent you from doing something really egregiously stupid that could cost you the control of your domain or AD forest.

So…enough already.

Good night and sweet dreams.

Life in general

So this isn't my first blog this week, but you probably didn't realize that. I'm a charter member of Romance Writers of America (RWA) and after getting the June issue, I wrote a very different blog. Posted it and left it up for 24 hours and then deleted it, mostly because I'm trying to find ways to deal with frustration and not simply stroke out. I won't bore you with the details of my first post—I was simply upset because I may have trouble maintaining my published author status with RWA even though I actually have published, have an agent, and am working on publishing more titles.

However, the last few weeks have just been increasingly stressful and it makes me wonder why so many people are so determined to make life difficult. It's like they go out of their way to complicate simple issues instead of just doing the easy, straight-forward solution. It's wearing me down.

Like at my day job. I'm an enterprise admin in Information Technology (IT) for a very large organization—we have over 250,000 users and computers, if that gives you any idea. And a very small part of what I do is help roll out national projects. This is a very small part, mind you. Most of what I do is very unglamorous work with domain controllers, directory services, DNS, WINS, and other techno-geek, backroom stuff that no one has ever heard of and doesn't want to know about. In fact, I'm probably one of a handful of experts on a little know mechanism that exhibits itself via an attribute called the admincount on objects in Active Directory (AD) and prevents a Blackberry from working for users affected by this, as well as preventing them from publishing certificates to AD and so on. Like I said, no one wants to hear this stuff, least of all you. (However, I am actually going to publish two blogs tonight and the second one is going to be on the admincount attribute so if you're a techno-geek who is really into this stuff, you can look at that, later.)

But I am telling you this as a way of segueing into this topic of how humans seem to love making it difficult. So, I have this little side effort going on to do a simple deployment of a simple project. And I get it done all across the country until I get to the west coast of the U.S. These guys, in their brilliant arrogance had decided that the rest of us ignorant savages don't know what we're doing and so they can't possibly implement this the way the rest of the country has implemented it already. They have to reverse engineer it because they are convinced they know better. I mean, if they can't be involved in the development of every single project in our organization, then it's just up to these guys to break it apart and change it to suit their whims. It doesn't matter if changing the project may impact the security and expose information that should not be exposed or that another system was tested and granted FDA-approval as medical equipment and therefore should not be changed without changes being properly documented and tested since it might affect patient care and safety. Oh, no. These guys know better.

And so instead of a simple deployment, they refuse to do things the right way. The easy way. And even they have a change management system they insist everyone in their area follow, they are perfectly content to refuse to allow us to use our change management system and not change things without testing in the middle of a deployment. People might say, well, that's just your opinion. No. This is not my project. I had nothing to do with it. I was handed a finished project and told to deploy it and I'm following the directions. I would never assume that I knew better than the developer and that I could change the system mid-stream, particularly since I know that changing any medical system that is FDA-approved is at a minimum just bad judgment.

So that's my example of how people take a simple thing and make it difficult and stressful and why I'm probably going to stroke out.

Because not being content with a stressful day job in IT, I just had to start a writing career, too. And did I pick the easy road to publication? Did I write nice romances for a great company like Harlequin or write really hot romances that could be best sellers for a company like Avon? Heck no. I had to choose the hard road. I had to start out with writing a romantic comedy for the Harlequin Duets line which folded right after I submitted my manuscript (which they actually held for two years because they liked it—but not after Duets folded).

Then, did I learn my lesson? Heck no, again. I then wrote a traditional Regency. Got an agent. Kensington and Signet stopped publishing traditional Regencies. All right—two for two! And did I learn my lesson, yet? Heck no. What did I write next? I wrote a Regency-set mystery which pretty much no one publishes. Well, there are a few, but they are already pretty well stocked with all the Regency-set mysteries they want from their stable of writers and sort of don't need any more. Particularly not stories that are really kind of romantic mysteries set in the Regency period.

Did that stop me? No, of course not. I wrote four of them. But I also wrote a vampire story that has a romance in it, but it's not really hot, sensuality-wise, because I was actually interested in other issues in the story. So I sort of took a well-selling genre and wrote the story least likely to sell. I can hear my agent sighing…heavily and mournfully in the background.

Am I developing a trend here? Am I just making it difficult for myself? Yes, I guess so. I'd like to think I'm not being as arrogant as the guys from the west coast in my day job, but on the other hand, maybe all the other writers are looking at me and pointing their fingers, saying: if she just wasn't so arrogant and would just write commercial fiction in a well-selling genre, she might not have so many difficulties. She just won't follow the rules. Why is she trying to write Regency-set romantic mysteries, especially ones without long, explicit sex scenes and hot, lingering glances?

Except, I thought writers were supposed to write things they might actually enjoy reading. And I'm taking all kinds of writing classes and listening to all the experts like Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (who are fabulous writers and very generous with their time and advice) and my goal is to be the best writer there is. Of Regency-set romantic mysteries. Which may simply be mutually exclusive, especially if I continue to write what the characters and story demand instead of shoving in a lot of long, explicit sex scenes and things like "he stroked the pearl at the very core of her being as she moaned with ecstasy".

(At this point, I'm sure Crusie and Mayer are thinking: hmmm, if she's really listening to us, she wouldn't be writing this junk and she'd maybe be a best selling author by now. Why is she making this so hard? Write a freaking sex scene, for heaven's sake, and get over it. Grow up if you want to be a successful author.)

Okay, I might even write a few contemporary, romantic mysteries which I will consider romantic even without explicit scenes and pearls of anyone's essences. Darn, I guess that's not really listening, is it?

Okay, I guess I am arrogant and making it hard on myself. I really don't know, but I do know if I don't learn to take a deep breath and put it all behind me, I probably will stroke out. Soon.

Presumption

Looking back over my past blogs, I start to wonder who the heck am I to give advice to other writers? It's not like I'm Jennifer Crusie who has an entire class she is presenting on how to write a novel. She's also an amazingly successful and completely obsessed writer. And if you're not subscribing to her class (going on now!) then shame on you—you ought to be. Check out http://www.crusiemayer.com/workshop/ and listen to them. They have a lot of good things to say, although I have to disagree with several frothing-at-the-mouth points that Jennifer makes which I think are just…well, completely wrong. She's an avid fan (rabid fan) of only using either action tags in dialog or a simple a phrase including: said. No whispers, sighs, moans, whatever. And yet. Hmmm. She's wrong.

You see, in point of fact, while I agree with the use (or rather the non-use) of phrases such as: he hissed, "You'll never get away with that!" And I *sort of* agree with Jennifer's claim that it requires there to be a lot of "s's" in the phrase someone is hissing because of the sibilance—in a way, I actually don't agree. I don't agree that hiss requires there to be "s's" in the words being hissed. I just don't care for that particular attribution. I agree with Jennifer that in most cases, you ought to just use a simple: said. It's cleaner and not so melodramatic.

But she is totally, utterly, completely, mind-blowingly wrong about sigh. It does NOT need any sibilance, and anyone who has EVER been a member of a family will COMPLETELY know the exact mood and how it sounds when a teenager turns to her mother and sighs, "Oh, Mom." That is a sigh. Nothing else fits that description. "Said" does not convey it at all. And I'm shocked that Jennifer doesn't realize this because I believe she has at least one child and has been, at some time in her life, a child, and must therefore have either sighed at or been the recipient of a sigh of this sort.

In fact, I'll bet that at one time, she or her mom, in her turn, looked at her husband/child who has once more doing something incredibly stupid and sighed, "Oh, Person's-Name." You know exactly what is going on and exactly what that sighing, breath-letting-out, phrase means. We've all either uttered it or been the recipient of it many, many times. That long suffering sigh. The sigh of a wounded martyr. That guilt-inspiring sigh that is pretty much saying: "Oh, somebody's-name-who has-just-caused-me-a-vast-ocean-of-disappointment-or-shame."

Sighs absolutely do not include nor imply any sibilance whatsoever, and in dialog, there is nothing like that exhaling sigh, that "what am I going to do with you?" sigh, that sigh that we've all heard and felt guilty over and ashamed at after hearing.

So really, even the great writers sometimes get it wrong or make up rules that actually don't work and may have no basis in reality. Which is why I pretty much ignore all rules that don't make sense to me. Maybe it's why I'm not a great NY Times selling author. Maybe I'm just a mediocre hack with a limited vocabulary that doesn't understand that sighs have to be sibilant. Since when? The dictionary does NOT define it that way. A sigh is exhaled air, period. It's not a hiss. (The sibilant part is just completely wrong, if not entirely nut-so and frankly to my ear means there is something wrong with your hearing, but anyway…)

And while I'm on the subject, you actually CAN laugh something, as in: "You old goat!" she laughed.

I have, many times, tried to talk or did talk while I was laughing and gasping for air.

Why is it that authors who make all these rules about dialog tags don't seem to have lived actual lives? Don't they ever laugh while they're trying to talk? Don't they ever turn to their spouse and sigh, "Oh, Whoever. Why? Why did you do that for the hundredth time?"

I could, on a certain level, accept that Jennifer's real reason is that she doesn't want the reader to pause even for a nanosecond while reading the dialog to "figure out" what the tag means. Okay. I can sort of accept that, but really…ummmm, no. I have a brain. I use it. I read. I have no problem with whispers, sighs, and laughs. In fact, it makes me hear the dialog more clearly and understand what is going on. It doesn't make me think the writer doesn't know his or her business. In fact, it makes the story richer.

In the end, I'm afraid if this means I will forever be a mediocre writer and end up (as Jennifer said) in Writer's Hell for crimes against the reading public, then so be it. If the mother in my story looks at her headstrong child and sighs, "Oh, Henry…" Then by God, I'm going to use the word: sigh. And if my character is laughing and trying to talk at the same time (like I do all the time) then by God they are going to say, "Oh, please, quit—you're killing me," she laughed, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Although I swear I won't ever use the word: hissed. Because quite frankly, it's just silly. I'm not writing melodramas.

Promoting your work

The concept of promoting yourself and your work is such a strange one. I've heard a lot of lectures that say women in particular have problems promoting themselves and their work but I'm not convinced it's a gender thing. I've seen just as many men who not only do not promote themselves but actually downplay their contributions. In many cases, this is a result of having high standards and the search for excellence. The guy I work with/for is absolutely brilliant and yet he insists he's a knucklehead and points out dozens of ways he could have done something better while the rest of us are just sitting there with our mouths hanging open, catching flies, and watching dumbfounded as he cuts to the core of extraordinarily complex information system problems and defines ways to resolve them that actually make sense and are doable.

If you set high standards for yourself and look at your work critically, you'll find the flaws and it will never be good enough—never quite perfect. And it is therefore correspondingly difficult to say how wonderful your work is when you see all too clearly the flaws in it. When you wish it was better. And so how can you promote it without feeling like a fool or worse, a foul liar? Well, I can tell you this, no matter what you do, you're going to feel like an idiot. There's no way around that one unless you're just stunningly full of yourself.

Nonetheless, in all fields of endeavor, you have to promote yourself. In my day job, every year I have to write up a blurb about how I'm the Queen of Perfection in the computer field for my performance appraisal. And now, I also have to try to think of ways to make people sit up, take notice of my books and buy them, despite all my absolute conviction that everything I do could definitely be done better.

I'm also sitting here, almost beside myself with anxiety about getting book reviews, particularly real reader reviews. Despite my promise to totally avoid looking at reviews for fear of being forced to face the reality that I'm just a hack whose search for excellence has led her into the outfield of mediocrity, part of me is curled up on my chair shaking with fear at stumbling over some review somewhere that confirms my worst fears. Because I don't want to be a hack. I don't want to be mediocre. I want to be Shakespeare (without a sex change operation or having to use that really weird, overblown language).

So, that's the sum of my fears. And now…promotion. I'm the best thing since Harry Potter, so read my books! How's that?

One of the biggest problems writers face is trying to promote their books. Oh, sure, some of the really lucky/talented/whatever ones actually get a marketing department behind them and get some creative marketing done, but for the rest of us, that ain't an option. And if you write e-books, your options dwindle even further.

Bad Side

Here's the bad side. Reality, if you will. No matter what you write, your task is to get your book in front of someone when they are ready to buy a book. For people with an actual physical hardcover/paperback, you have to convince buyers for bookstores to stock your books. For you, getting that book out there on the actual shelves is going to be crucial. And this isn't all about Amazon. Amazon, while doing amazing things, is actually not selling as many books as say, Wal-Mart and Target. So, it's the book buyers you have to convince.

For e-book writers, it's even harder because you're already pretty much limited to people drifting around the Internet (a smaller number than those drifting through the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target, believe me) and of those, the ones who are actually interested in books, and of THOSE, the ones who are willing to buy an e-book. This is a very small number—unless you are talking about erotica—which seems to go hand-in-hand with the Internet. So you don't have the casual book buyer seeing your cover in the Target check-out line and buying it on impulse.

And to further depress you, most of the advertising avenues, particularly for e-books, are really geared for writers selling to other writers. Rather incestuous, actually, but the ads are in writers magazines or trade magazines sold mostly to writers, and web sites that review romance and other novels that have an audience that is largely…other writers in the same genre(s). Of course, most writers are also voracious readers, so this is not all bad, but it is still like pissing in your own bathwater. It's not getting out there to other people.

And all those online chats, blogs, etc—again—who are you really reaching? A few readers and other fellow writers. I've been on a lot of online chats and the most readers I've seen online chatting is 20. Now I'd be happy to get 20 readers, but that's not going to make me a NY Times bestseller any time soon. I'd say those promotional efforts are a lot of work for very little gain. You spend hours "chatting" with, on average, 4 or 5 other people who may or may not buy your book and are really just Internet cruising hoping to find some free goodies.

Good Side

I'm actually having a bit of difficulty with the good side. Sorry. I'm afraid I'm really more "the glass is most likely half-empty unless I'm wrong about that" sort of person, but it is so easy for me to go on and on about the difficulties you face in promotional efforts.

But if you've got a marketing department behind you, you've got a good start. If not and you have a physical product, e.g. hardcover/paperback, then you'd best start chatting up those Wal-Mart and Target buyers. Chat up librarians. Librarians are your friend. Advertise in mags like Romance Sells which will get you in front of at least some librarians and book buyers.

For both e-book authors and traditional authors with a physical product, think about ways of reaching readers who are NOT just other writers. Sure, if you get the opportunity to advertise in industry rags like Romantic Times, Writer's Digest, The Strand (for mystery writers/readers) and other publications—definitely go for it. Create book trailers on YouTube and wherever else you can get them displayed. Set up a web page on MySpace or the latest web hotspots, and…

Think of avenues that the "normal" non-writing public would run across. Google Adwords, for example, which is what pops up those interesting little website suggestions along the right-hand side of your web browser whenever you Google something. Other web portals do the same thing.

Can you write an article about you as a writer and get it published in a non-writer magazine? For example, if you're seventy and just published your first novel, could you write up your experiences for AARP as a way of expanding your horizons after reaching retirement age? Or, if you wrote a fiction work about rock climbing, could you get an article about the research you did or your own experiences published in an outdoors magazine? It's not rocket science, but it is a bit of work. However, I firmly believe that taking advantage of those other sorts of avenues will pay off.

So that's what I mean—reaching out to audiences outside the normal network of writers. Break outside the somewhat insular community of writers and hard core readers to find new readers who may be interested in what you have to say. It's a bright new world out there with a bunch of people looking for entertainment. Entertain them.

Who knows, maybe you could actually get to be the next Shakespeare?

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

Newton's laws of motion may seem like an odd set of laws for developing plots in writing, but in fact, they not only work for physics, but they work for fiction, too. It's one of those odd ways in which seemingly unrelated fields actually provide some point of reference and clarity for each other. Perhaps serendipitous, perhaps an example of synchronicity, perhaps simple insanity. You decide.

So what are Newton's laws of motion?

The Law of Inertia: An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force; and an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

Story Opening. Some characters begin from what is essentially suspended animation, stasis, or the classic rut. Some external force, be it an inheritance, murder, or just catching the wrong train in the evening has to impel that character into a maelstrom of action.

Other characters may already appear to be in motion, but they are moving in the wrong direction or moving too quickly. In their case, an external force must act upon the character to push them in another direction, or stop/divert their path toward another direction. A U.S. Navy Seal on a critical mission is diverted by the crying of a child, propelling him and the mission into another direction.

Writers label this a number of things. The Inciting Incident or The Call to Action. Call it what you will, it is, in essence, the character overcoming the inertia of their everyday life and starting the story. I actually prefer to think of it this way because it reinforces, to my mind, the essential task you must complete for your story to begin. Your story must overcome the inertia of non-being and become an interesting work of fiction.

• Your character must overcome the inertia of their everyday life
  
• The writer must overcome the reader's initial inertia which translates into a lack of interest in anything the writer has to say. The writer has to hook the reader with the story, pique the reader's interest, and make the reader want to read more.
  
• And the story must overcome the inertia of the backstory, plot contrivances, and everything that must be done to get the story moving and get to the action.
  
• The writer wants to overcome this inertia as quickly as possible, to get the story and the characters moving and get the reader to turn the pages.
  

The Law of Acceleration: The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force action on the body and is in the same direction.

Fiction is about change. Characters are tortured and put through fire until they come out on the other side, wiser and perhaps in the case of a romance, worthy and ready for love. So if your character and story are going to move forward, you need to think about the law of acceleration, i.e. the rate of change of momentum. Momentum of the story, often called pacing by writers, and the momentum of change for the character(s). The obstacles they face, while they cause problems for the character, are what will propel that character—and story—forward.

The character's obstacles, bad decisions, and stupid actions are the forces acting upon them that will accelerate both the story and the character forward to the conclusion. And you want your story to keep on accelerating if you want your reader to turn those pages.

But not just mindless acceleration. The forces must cause change. Endless fight scenes are boring. What is interesting is the character's reactions to those incidents and how they change the character, change the flow of the story, and cause things to move in another, and hopefully, unexpected direction. Ceaseless action can actually decelerate your story. Think about it.

That's why I like the force aspect in this law, because it reminds me that the character is not in complete control. There are forces acting upon the character which will cause that character to react, reevaluate his or her life, and ultimately change. This is the journey or character's arc.

The Law of Reciprocal Actions: To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And finally, my favorite law. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So many writers forget this and it is so critical and basic to any story. Every time something happens to your character from the very beginning incident, your character is going to make a decision and react. And every time your character acts, there is going to be an equal and opposite reaction, which is many cases is going to be exceedingly unpleasant for your character and get them into deeper poo-poo. This is, in essence, the way stories work.

Your character inherits an old house (an action affecting them and propelling them out of their inertia).

Your character makes a decision and acts upon it by moving to the old house (decision/reaction: their reaction to the initial action) despite the fact that the house has a bad reputation.

Your character is confronted by ghosts/horror/mayhem (action).

Every action your character takes results in an equally bad and unexpected reaction in the story events.

And so it goes:

Your character overcomes inertia as a result of an initial action, starting the story cycle.

Then action / decision / reaction --> which leads to another action / decision / reaction cycle because every action results in an equal and opposite reaction in the plot.

And each cycle escalates (remember acceleration) until the final breaking point, the climax, the black moment, the final conflict—whatever you want to call it, which the character finally does resolve so the story can conclude.

Perhaps this appeals to me because it defines what can be sort of literary "airy-fairy nonsense" in more active, dynamic terms that I can relate to like action/reaction, forces driving a character, and overcoming inertia. It seems to make more sense to me and I'm better able to evaluate if my beginning chapter is strong enough to frame the story and get the character and action going if I think of it in terms of overcoming the initial inertia. And if I remember the laws of acceleration and reciprocal action, it is easier for me to keep the story moving. Perhaps it's just synchronicity after all, or some weird kink in my mental wiring.

The problem for other writers is finding ways to think about writing and the process of building a story in terms that make sense to them and help them with their goal of creating a piece of fiction that is interesting, enlightening, and engaging. For some writers, this is an effortless process that does not require any thought. Others plot and plan, write and rewrite, until they get their work the way they want it. Every writer is unique, every process is unique and all that matters is finding ways to illuminate the dark well enough to get where you want to go.

Speaking of Writing Software…

It's true that I'm a computer geek so some of the new Microsoft programming environments are just dead sexy, and sure, only a small percentage of writers use a Microsoft operating system on their computer, much less have upgraded to VistA, or have any interest what-so-ever in anything to do with Microsoft technologies, but I get an RSS feed (another techie-geek thing) from this guy: Tim Sneath who has been talking about Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, and some of the new web stuff and he mentioned this bunch of guys at Vertigo who created this supercool application that I found to be useful for writers. At the moment, it's free.

It's even useful for non-writers.

It's called Family.Show and it's a fantastic graphical genealogy program. I've been fumbling around with it and it is one of those serendipitous things that right at the moment when I was editing some of my manuscripts for submission (Yay! The Wild Rose Press asked for a partial!) I found exactly the program I needed for free. You see one thing I've been doing as a writer is creating a community of characters for my Regency novels. Many of the characters are related and what with one thing or another, I've been losing track of birth dates, physical traits, etc. I've used everything from MS Word documents to spreadsheets to a character database and it was just too difficult because I couldn't keep all the relationships straight. So I had been thinking of using a genealogy program to do it and voila! I get an RSS feed from Tim Sneath on exactly the same day when I realized I needed a genealogy program and guess what? The fabulous guys at Vertigo released this super-easy freebie program to show how WPF works (you can even download the source code—I mean how cool is that? — okay, I warned you that I'm a computer geek).

Here is what I really like about this, as opposed to all the other programs out there on the market. Besides the fact that it is free, of course.

You have little humanoid characters with lines and dates showing the relationships of the people (characters) you input, PLUS you can add pictures! PLUS you can add text (they call it "the person's story") where you can describe things like physical traits, etc. I've been adding at least the following:

• Eye color, hair color, distinguishing marks
• Personality type, dominate traits, bad habits, and general motivation: what makes this person do what they do
• Major issues
• Speech habits, pet phrases, etc.
  

This is just so cool because so many genealogical programs just don't have these free-form text areas and ways to include pictures. It is just so perfect for a writer developing their "stable of characters".

Here are pictures of what I have for Oriana Archer, the character in the manuscript just requested by The Wild Rose Press.

As you can see, I visualized Oriana sort of like the actress Gene Tierney with the really sexy overbite.

If you click on the [Photos & Stories] button, you can add all the information about that character you could ever possibly want (as I show in the next image).

You see—here's the thing. I've used a lot of other software, including writing software which lets you drone on about characters all you want. Some of it even lets you add pictures or whatever.

But what was always missing was the graphic representation of the relationships and that's where genealogy software comes in handy. I'm not saying you have to use this software—even if it is tres chic. What I am saying is that sometimes, when you're developing your characters, the family relationships are important and finding a way to track those relationships can be a challenge.

One note: I'm not sure how long this stuff will stay free, which is why in addition to saving all my characters genealogy in Family.Show "format", I'm also saving it in the standard GEDCOM format which is used by a lot of genealogy programs. That way, if it ever comes down to the wire and I have to buy a real program, I can hopefully import all of my information.

There is one other point I wanted to make about all of this. I really like creating an entire world in my manuscripts—which in my case is a world set during the Regency period in the early years of the 19^th century. But this is also done by Science Fiction writers, e.g. Frank Herbert's DUNE series, Andre Norton's Witch World books, and romance writers like Jennifer Crusie in some of her contemporary romances. Kristina Cook's Regency Historicals also have related characters.

The point is that readers seem to enjoy stepping into this world created by the author and peopled with characters who really do have relationships and family trees. It becomes a real world and readers respond to that. If they like the characters, they enjoy reading about the character's brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins, aunts and uncles. It makes it more interesting and gives the characters more depth, but it also means keeping better track of traits, especially personality traits, so that you don't take a feisty optimist and turn her into a shy pessimist in subsequent novels.

That's where it's really handy to have some way, be it index cards or some cool new program, to keep track.

Anyway, enough for tonight. Enjoy and may all your wishes come true!