Life in general

All afternoon, I've been sitting here thinking about two things: dinner and this blog. I didn't have any new thoughts this week about writing, other than how really, really difficult it is to cut something that was originally 94,000 words down below 75,000 words, particularly when you think your editor may not want to acquire it no matter how much work you put into it, but…anyway. I'm just depressed because my editor recently rejected one of my manuscripts and I'm now trembling in angst that she may hate the one I'm working to cut down now, too. I'm just so unworthy and pathetic. And I'm really finding that there is truly very little fat to cut in this latest manuscript and I'm desperate.

So enough about writing. My mental anguish does not need any more exposure.

The other thing was dinner. Because everything I want to eat is really bad for you and I'm starting to get sick and tired or tired and sick of paying attention to what I eat all the time. But I did give up margarine and go back to butter. I mean, what is the point? I hate margarine. There is no margarine on this planet that actually tastes like butter. Only butter tastes like butter and I've pretty much had it with the healthy thing, anyway. Especially since I've managed to gain weight, anyway, despite my best efforts not to do so. (Although I called my doctor today and he said my thyroid is a little low so maybe I have an excuse—unless it meant it's physically dropped to a lower portion of my anatomy, which wouldn't surprise me since every other part of my anatomy has also dropped a little lower.)

Let's face it, you're going to gain weight no matter what you eat unless you don't eat at all, or exercise. The key is really exercise which is just no fun. I'm substituting an hour of gardening and mental exercise each night and figuring that's good enough. Be that as it may, I actually gained close to ten pounds on the South Beach Diet, thank you very much, and it really burned me because our food bill went up by over $100 extra dollars a week to buy the stupid food, and we didn't like the food, and I religiously ate the junk and I didn't like it. And I gained nearly ten pounds on expensive crap I didn't like anyway.

I would have been much, much happier eating my normal diet supplemented by Hostess Twinkies and cupcakes and I probably wouldn't have spent as much or gained as much weight, since I actually don't snack on a normal basis.

Now, here's the real thing. I'm thinking—is it worth eating a lot of junk you don't like and that costs a lot, to extend your life…say how long? How much more "life" are you gonna get out of eating stuff you don't like? An extra year?

Okay, let's say you get an extra year after spending, say 85 years eating things you freaking hate and being miserable because you can't eat what you want to eat. Are those going to be happy years? Are you going to be glad about that? Or are you facing 85 years of misery every time you sit down at the table?

And what about that extra year, anyway? Do you get to be 17 again? 30? 50? No. You get to get another year of drooling, utterly desperate horror sitting around in an old folks' home watching random static on a broken television, waiting to die. You get that year from 86 to 87, or 99 to 100, not that year from 40 to 41 or even 60 to 61, when, let's face it, you could at least wipe both your own mouth and your own bum. When you had at least a shred of dignity left to you.

So. Are you saying you really want that extra year of life after having denied yourself everything you've ever wanted to eat?

I gotta tell you, that package of Twinkies is looking pretty damn good to me at the moment.

Almost Published

It's getting closer--my first book, Smuggled Rose, comes out May 3.
I'm trying not to get too excited about it though, because it will be months before I see anything like a royalty check and it's only out as an e-book for the first few months. Sigh. So I won't even have a paperback to hold in my hot little hands until the fall.

Anyway, so now I'm trying to decide what to do for promotion--how to get to the reading public. I mean, I doubt anyone is searching the Internet for Amy Corwin, books by Amy Corwin, or Smuggled Rose. It's interesting to me that most of the hits I do get are from folks looking for more information on...roses. Which is cool because for several years I was the newsletter editor for my local rose society. I'm thinking about writing a few articles about the history of roses, anyway, to put on my web site because some of the most frequent queries I see are "red roses" and "the history of red roses". It sort of dovetails with my book, anyway, because when we first meet Margaret Lane, the heroine, she's smuggling roses from France into England. Avid rose collectors will do anything to get new roses. Really.

In fact there are several documented cases of customers getting into fist fights at nurseries and/or auctions of new roses when there weren't enough roses to "go around" and someone really wanted that last bush.

Anyway, there are obviously still people out there interested in roses and I'm glad I already have some content related to that between my two sister sites.

The other thing I'm considering is developing a newsletter to go out quarterly. I want to make it a good newsletter, though, and not just "hey, I've just sold this manuscript and the book will be available for sale on blah, blah date". I don't generally subscribe to newsletters because frankly, I get enough sales chatter as it is.

No--what I want is to do a newsletter that somehow relates to what I write, which seem to be Regencies and Regency mysteries. So initially, I'm leaning toward content about the Regency period. I've got a lot of original source material that is way out of copyright and fallen into public domain, so maybe something like:

• Recipes from the Regency
• Articles about gardening in the Regency (and of course, ROSES)
• Regency Fashion tidbits
• Fun Regency Slang (a la Regency Word of the Day)
• And links to a serialized novel -- this last one would also be available if folks sign up for it as a weekly e-mail so by the end of, say, 25 weeks or so, you'd have the complete novel. A sort of freebie. After that, I may also do some short stories or other things like that.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking. I want to make it something that folks would actually want to get. Even if they never read my book, I want to make this fun.

That's about it--I'm just brainstorming here and hoping for the best.

If you have ideas about what you'd love to get as a newsletter, I'm totally open to suggestion. :-)

Spring is here

This old house could use a lot of work including a new kitchen, but at this time of year, I really don't care. I spend most of my time outside, anyway and if the floor in the kitchen is a little spongy under the linoleum and the cupboards are in danger of falling off the walls...well, we can work on those another day.

I just love this time of year. It's not too hot--yet--and the azaleas are blooming, the dogwoods are blooming, and the air is fragrant with wisteria. If I had a complaint it would be that the daffodils have already come and gone--I love them. They are so cheerful and grow so well and have such a lovely scent. Besides roses, I think daffodils may be my favorite flower. Some years when I'm having trouble with mildew and blackspot on the roses, I think daffodils really are totally my favorite flower. No fuss, no muss.

Even our old lab seems to like this weather although he doesn't seem as impressed by the azaleas as I am.

I could just sit outside for hours and stare.

Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer

I may have mentioned that Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer are doing a wonderful writing class online as a blog. I really recommend reading through it and subscribing to the blog. You can't go wrong if for nothing else than sheer enjoyment. There is just so much material there and they are a riot--very fun to read. I'm looking forward to getting their first collaborative effort: Don't Look Down. It should arrive any day now from Amazon.com. I bought myself a treat as a psychological boost after doing our taxes last weekend and finding out that we owe a lot--and the depressing realization that after the election, the taxes will only shoot higher. (Darn. I'm totally bummed out again--where the heck is that package from Amazon.com?)

Anyway, the thing I like about Crusie and hope I will like about the Mayer and Crusie team is that even if the plot is outlandish, the characters seem very warm, very likeable and very real. The heroine isn't some gorgeous, thin creature with no personality and no quirks and the guy has his own set of weirdnesses. I like that, which is probably why I can't get onboard with other authors like J.D. Robb or James Patterson. Now don't get me wrong--both of those last authors are great--at least I'm told they are. And they are certainly prolific and extremely popular. I've just never been able to get past the first chapter of either of them (or any of the other various personas adopted by them--I don't know what it is, but I can't read them and there is nothing I can do about it. Sorry.).

Crusie is a strange one for me to like because she mostly writes romance, although she sometimes throws in a little suspense or murder as a sop to those of us who feel that no book is complete without some sort of mayhem. It's Crusie's funny, quirky characters, though, that really grab me. And her sarcasm, of course. Let's not forget that. I'm deeply into sarcasm and misanthropic characters.

For folks who have read my blogs, they will remember me spending several nights fussing over descriptions. Worrying and fretting about what makes descriptions work--or not work--for me as a reader (and as a writer). Stuff like that. For me, Cruise's descriptions work because they are totally in character--or in the character of the characters. If the scene is in the hero's point of view, anything he describes, including the heroine, is described as he sees it--in his words. Nothing fancy or poetic, unless he happens to be a poetic kind of guy. Although for the record, none of her heroes has been a poetic kind of guy--at least not in any of the books I've read. Same for descriptions in the heroine's point of view. They are realistic and they are in keeping with the heroine's personality. (Although to be honest, I think the heroines are thinly disguised versions of Jennifer Crusie, which is okay by me because I like her and I like her heroines. What's not to like? Oh, and I liked Bob Mayer when I met him, too, so I fully expect to like his heroes, which I also expect will be lightly disguised versions of him. It's all good.)

And somewhere lost in the preceding paragraph, my folks, was the key. Although I seem to have temporarily lost it in the muck.

So...whatever. I've been reading another book, The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, and he somehow manages to write entire sections in the character of the, uh, characters. The tale is mostly told in what you might consider first person, as journal entries first from Ralph Trilipush (the Egyptologist) and then as letters from an Australian Detective--also in first person. Somehow, the author Arthur Phillips manages to actually stay in character when writing these sections, so they have an entirely different feel, syntax and vocabulary. I don't really know how he accomplished this because it would sort of be like Claude Monet painting a picture in Van Gogh's style. Or me trying to write something, well, poetic and very literary and totally not in my voice. Anyway, unlike me, Monet could probably have done it, but he would have had to suppress his own style and work in an entirely different one. But at least he would not have had to cut his ear off, although he might have wanted to do so after forcing himself to paint in someone else's style.

Whatever. The bottom line is that is makes for extraordinary reading and totally blows me away. Crusie and Mayer manage this feat it in small patches by making sure any observations, dialog and descriptions in a character's point of view stay in that character's vocabulary and style. But to write an entire book like that the way Phillips did? Amazing.

I am in awe of what other writers do.
The thing is, though, you can't let your awe of other writers stop you from writing. Even if you are convinced you are a terrible writer, you can't just quit. Only quitters quit. The rest of us learn something new every day.

Gimmes

A very famous writer once said that if you are a serious writer, you should be paid for your writing. You do not give your work away for free any more than a doctor would offer free surgery to "advertise" or promote his work. Actors don't work for free unless it's a charity benefit or something similar. If you give away your work for free, you are devaluing it.

I can understand all of that, and it makes sense. If you are a writer, that is your career and your profession and you expect to make a living wage at it. At least you'd like to make a living wage. If you give away your work for free, how can you make a living as a writer?

There's the dilemma.

With my first book coming out in May (yay!) I'm looking at things to offer and tempt my readers. One of the things a lot of authors offer is a newsletter, and one of the things they offer in their newsletter and/or through their web site is "free" reading material. A serialized novel, perhaps, or short story. An excerpt, etc. With the expansion of the Internet, there has been a growing feeling of entitlement to free material, particularly the written word, and the offer of free reading material to hook more readers feeds into this.

Which brings me back to my original source that said: if you give away your writing for free, you are devaluing it and making it harder for you and other writers to actually expect to be paid for their efforts. Obviously, extrapolating this into some science fiction future where no one gets paid for writing and all fiction is either subsidized (a la public radio--you could have public fiction, I guess) or simply given away free by people who just like to write, is taking it too far. I don't see us ever really reaching that point--at least I don't think so. But there is some truth to the assertion that giving away your fiction for free devalues your writing. Either you think the material you are giving away is sub-standard and not publishable anyway (so why not give it away) or you have so much time on your hands that you don't mind working for no pay. If the quality of the work you are offering is sub-standard, will it really get you more readers, or will it ultimately drive readers away because they'll think you're the worst writer who ever lived?

I don't have any answers at this point, except I'm not sure that offering any of my fiction for free is a terrific idea. I work two jobs: my day job and my writing job. I put in a lot of hours. I want to be paid for my work and I don't want to offer people sub-standard stuff just to feed their need for Internet freebies.

On the other hand, I want to give readers something. Some incentive to go to my web site, read my newsletter (that doesn't exist yet) and hopefully, buy my books. Excerpts are okay as newsletter teasers, although I have to say, most of the excerpts I've read have had an effect on me that was not intended by the authors. Most excerpts have made me decide not to purchase the book. They are either boring or overwritten in some way that turns me right off. Very few (I actually can't think of any) made me purchase a book. The thing that always makes me purchase a book is the teaser/blurb on the back of it. So I really don't know that offering an excerpt is such a terrific idea.

This really is quite a dilemma. I'm leaning toward including Regency period non-fiction items in a newsletter, like recipes, bits of historical news, and that sort of thing. I want to offer something to my readers. They deserve something particularly if they spent their hard-earned cash to buy my book and slogged through the entire thing and didn't blow chunks or throw it against the wall. It would be nice if the books itself was sufficient, but these days, well, everybody wants more. Or at least I guess they do.

As a reader, I actually don't want more. I'm perfectly content with buying the books I want to buy and leaving it at that. I frankly don't want to know more about the author, although I will search out additional books if I like a particular author. I don't subscribe to newsletters or anything like that, but then, I have time management problems and I'm afraid to base too much on what I as a reader do or don't do.

Anyway, this bears a lot more thought and I'd be interested to know if other readers and writers like newsletters and have any expectations about free fiction. It's a big question mark.

Mistakes to avoid in writing

None of the things I'm going to mention will kill your writing career, nor are they spectacularly insightful. In fact, they are things I heard a hundred times when I was still trying to find a publisher. Most are just common sense and will probably make you go...well, duh.

All of them made me go...well, duh, when I heard them, but the problem was, even though I knew them intellectually, I didn't know it right down to the bones. My creative side completely ignored them.

These are so obvious, you're going to laugh until you stroke-out, but here's another secret: you can read all of these and nod your head sagely, but until your creative side absorbs these lessons, you may have a rocky road ahead of you. My road has certainly been rocky and is still strewn with boulders the size of houses.

So...drum roll...ta da! Here is what I wish I had really understood when I started writing.

Write what you love.
(Didn't I warn you about 'well, duh'?)
Now I'll explain this. Back a million years ago a new writers organization formed called Romance Writers of America. They let folks who yearned to be writers join. I yearned to be a writer, so I joined. At the time, I read mostly mysteries and science fiction. And Georgette Heyer. No other historical writers. I just liked Georgette Heyer. Oh, and then I found a used bookstore and got a few nice Harlequin contemporary romances that were written by British writers and mostly set in England.

So sure. I read romance, right? At least in my mind, I did. I liked it. I expanded into gothics, which I really liked because it was like...a mystery with a happy ending (i.e. heroine gets the rich guy who turned out not to be the murderer even though she suspected him for like...the entire book). Cool.

Now, folks who read romance should already be thinking...well, you're not reading any romances written in the 90's or this century. And you're not reading any American authors except a few gothic writers (i.e. Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Dorothy Eden, Virginia Coffman, and Barbara Michaels--those were it, and I have no idea if in fact they were from North America or the U.K. I actually didn't much care for any other romance authors, although to be honest, I didn't try that many).

But I insisted I could write romance and I tried to write romance. Even though I have never read a romance written in the last 20 years. I went to a RWA conference and had no clue who any of the authors were--even the huge big names. Okay, I admit, I must have, like, lived in a cave or something, but I'd never heard of Julia Quinn or Nora Roberts or any of them. (I'm still fairly clueless about the big names in the industry--quite frankly, I have no idea.)

By now, you're probably thinking: this woman is completely clueless. You would be correct. But then again, years ago I met Isaac Asimov in the formal gardens behind the Governor's mansion in colonial Williamsburg and knew exactly who he was and got to shake his hand! I was so in awe, I completely forgot to take his picture. So anyway, it shows you where my head was at.

So, I tried to write romance. Not only that, I tried to write historical romance, because I absolutely adored Georgette Heyer. I had no freakin' idea that absolutely no one would publish a sweet historical anymore. I didn't even know the difference between traditional Regency (Heyer's genre) and Regency Historical. When I found out that what I wrote was traditional Regency, I also discovered that this genre is no longer being published and that the only historicals being published are Regency Historical, which are another kettle of fish (they are very sensual and the male/female relationship is the prime focus of the book).

Thankfully, a smaller publisher, Cerridwen Press, decided to give traditional Regencies another chance and is publishing me. (My first book comes out in May! Yay!)

But the moral of the story here is that I should have been more aware of current genres, what was being published, and written something that I not only love but that is actually still being published. I was lucky that Cerridwen is giving me a chance, but you really can't depend upon that kind of luck.

I was stubborn, however, because I knew that romance is the biggest category of fiction so I refused to give up the idea that I would write romance.
Anyway, we've beaten that dead horse into a puddle. So what else?

Target your book for a specific market, preferably for a specific publisher.
If you want Avon to publish you, then read Avon books. Your job, should you chose to accept it, is to write a book that "feels like" the other Avon books you have read. Each publisher's books have different things they go for, so you really can't just write a sort of "generic book" and send the same version to all publishers. Of course there are exceptions to this for some big breakout book, but the exceptions are fewer than you might think.

This point was brought home to me when I finally got a publisher. All of a sudden, I knew exactly how to tailor my book to fit the line. This is sort of a catch-22 for writers because you don't know what publisher will eventually buy you, so how do you tailor it?

You can revise your manuscript before you send it out, however, and match it as well as possible to the "feel" for a specific house. This is more difficult if you have an agent because chances are good they will take your MS and submit it to multiple houses and there shall be no tailoring. Oh well.

How did I change my manuscripts once I had a publisher? (I have to add, this was like a weight lifting off my shoulders--I mean all of a sudden, instead of trying to guess how I should frame my story, I knew! Eureka!) The following is only relevant for my publisher, but it gives you an idea of how it affects your manuscript.

I write stories for the Cotillion line of Cerridwen Press. They are traditional Regencies, which is a romance, so there does have to be a romance and it needs to be the major plot, but it is not so intensely focused on the male/female relationship. You can explore the society around them and have other elements of adventure/mystery, etc. (You can see why I liked this, due to my fascination with mysteries.) There is no explicit sensuality, which worked for me because as a writer, I'm find I'm not so intensely focused on just the male/female relationship.

So anyway, now I know that: my stories have to stay under the 75,000 word mark (tough, but I can do it with a lot of editing). Knowing that, it becomes very easy to edit out those scenes which make you go...hmmm. Oh, come on. You know know what I mean. You write something and then when you go back, it stops you. You go...hmmm. Then you read it again and the writing doesn't seem that bad to you and you decide after reading it a third time that it really is okay and you leave it.

Honey, I'm here to tell you that anything that makes you pause and anything that makes you even think, hmmm, has got to go. For me, trying to stay under 75,000 words alleviates a lot of the agony of deleting scenes or lines that make me pause, because I'm looking for places to cut anyway.

So, what else? I know the style. I know the heavily sensual won't cut the mustard (whew) so I can cut down on those elements.

If you want this in brief, I know how long my manuscript can be, how to format it for my publisher, what their "house style" is for grammar and punctuation, and I know what elements I can and cannot include. Because what I write fits so well into the Cotillion line, this has been enormously freeing and a huge weight off my shoulders because now I can write what I want, and my manuscripts fit within the "house parameters" for that line. I don't have to try to layer in sensuality, lush descriptions, and other things which just don't seem to fit with how I write and which therefore have an unpleasantly "additive" feel to them when I do try to add them.

Of course, we shall see if this is still working out for me when I get their decision about the second manuscript I've submitted to my editor.

The bottom line for other writers is that houses vary on everything from the length of the manuscript to levels of sensuality. Avon, for example, likes very sensual stories with very lush descriptions. They also like fairly dark stories (at the moment, anyway). My writing is totally inappropriate for Avon--it just doesn't mesh with their current lines.

So bone up on what your target publisher is doing these days and what sort of stories they like to see. Your goal is to send them a manuscript that fits within their line so well that they can't pass up the chance to publish you. But if the publisher you "want" seems to publish things you can't stand to read or stories that are not like the ones you like to write, I would politely suggest that maybe you're looking at the wrong publisher. If you try to shoe-horn your book into a style foreign to you, it will always just not seem right.

Delete anything that makes you go: hmmm
I already sort of explained that above. When you edit your stuff, you'll find those sections or sentences or even just a word that momentarily stops you. When you find them, after reading them a few times, you'll think: it's okay. I can get away with that.
Not.
No.
You cannot get away with it. Believe me. Just delete it. Maybe save it out to a file if it is some amazing piece of verbiage, but delete it from your manuscript. If it makes you go hmmm, it will make an editor stop reading and reject your book. Editors are busy, tired people. Occasionally, they are looking for a reason to buy you. More often, they are looking at a reason to stop reading your submission, stamp it with REJECTION, and move on with the futile hope of eventually seeing what the top of their desk looks like again.

My editor found every single place where I thought I can get away with that. I ended up having to delete every blessed one. It would have been much better if I had just deleted them in the first place. I knew better, I just didn't want to admit it.

Your opening line and first page must grab the reader. Once grabbed, you cannot let go.
Yes. Published authors can get away with anything. Published authors often have to edit their book so heavily that the third chapter becomes the actual first chapter when it is published. However, editors know that a published author can probably "pull this off" later in the book so if it is a little slow to start, they know the pace and story will improve and the editor will keep on reading. Although after a certain amount of time, they may stop reading even a published author--it is not all just roses and wine.

This leeway is not granted to unpublished authors. If your first sentence is boring or you think it's a shocker that is bound to make the editor sit up and take notice, well, think again. The editor will read the first line, snicker, and stamp it with REJECTION.

I sat in on a session at a writers conference were they randomly read a handful of manuscripts. Out of this random sampling, several started with the line: Sex sells. Several started with the heroine putting on her wedding gown in front of a mirror and suddenly deciding she can't go through with it and running out of her own wedding. Several started with the hero having a pounding headache.

In other words, out of this random sampling, most were not unique at all, and the ones that tried to be the most unique ended up being the most common (and unfortunately laughable). And the editors totally hated it when the opening line was meant to be a shocker/attention grabber. They had heard all of those "shocking" lines before, ad nauseum.

What to do?
Don't try to be cute or shocking.
Open with the predicament. You know what I mean. Either your hero or your heroine is about to plunge into a problem. Open with your main character (even in a romance, one of the pair is going to face more difficulties than the other and it is really more that character's story, so start with him or her). You want to: open with your main character; show where they are; what they are doing; and why they are doing it. By the end of the first page, your readers should have a pretty good idea of that character's circumstances and what the first problem is that this character is going to face. The faster you identify the problem, the better.

That is what is going to draw the reader into the story, i.e. understanding the character's motivation and sympathizing enough with him/her to hope that the horrors faced by the character will be overcome. That is what keeps the reader reading.

Of course then you have to keep them reading. So you have to delete all the hmmm parts. Tighten it up. Don't drift off into byways and highways, unless it's literary fiction or you just don't give a darn.

Man, I thought I had some other things, but my mind has just gone blank so I'll end here.
Good night and hope for the best.

Eureka! Well, okay--maybe not

Over the past few years, I've been struggling mightily with descriptions in my writing and leisure-time reading. I couldn't figure out why I dropped so many books during the first few pages or at the latest, by the third chapter. Then I had this long, long business trip to San Antonio and read two books back-to-back and figured it out. Okay, I tried to read the first book, couldn't take it and by the third chapter I dropped it, and with a heavy heart and large sigh, I went into a bookstore at the airport and bought a safe bet: a book by a male author.

So sue me.

I know. Who would have thunk it? Me, a U.S. citizen and female author, admitting that there are only two groups of authors I can be almost sure will not make me drop the book by the third chapter: British authors and male authors. Don't get me wrong, there are some U.S. authors who are female that I can be relatively sure will write a story that gets a grip on me and won't let go...but if it's an author unknown to me...I get damp palms when I pick up a book--particularly a suspense--by a female author. I know very few that I will be able to finish.

However, this is purely subjective. What I am going to so reflects my personal taste, if not reflective of my own personal problems. However, I did get some insight into descriptive styles which is interesting, at least to me. I recommend that authors and readers pay attention since it will enable them to determine which books they will like or what style they prefer to pursue. I should also say that the descriptive style I don't care for is the most popular style in fiction today so that is something to think about, too. Particularly if you are an author with any sort of ambition to be on the NY Times Bestsellers list.

Basically, it boils down to point of view (POV) issues and poetic descriptions. For me, if I'm reading something in the hero's POV and he's just met the heroine who is fabulously good-looking, he is more likely to wonder: hmmm, I wonder if I can get into her pants and if she's good in bed. He is not likely to think: hmmm, what a lovely maiden with teeth like pearls and eyes that shimmer like the night over the ocean.

I don't know of any men, even poets, who are going to think something like the latter statement unless they are actually sitting down to write poetry (gag). (Sorry, I'm not much into poetic poetry--I'm more into smartass, clever, snarky poetry.)

Didn't I warn you that this was my own personal opinion? There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with you if you prefer the more poetic version (well, perhaps not my poetic version--which is admittedly bad). That is the vastly more popular style in fiction.

So let me give you some actual, concrete examples (and please forgive me, authors, if you recognize your work--I'm sorry and groveling at your feet).

Poetic Style
(This example isn't too, too poetic, but is shows two of the issues that made me stop reading the book. I'll point them out.)

Carly's eyes widened as she looked at the ancient door. The holes between the slats were big enough for her to step right through. Dan might not be the most outgoing man she'd ever met, but he'd kept her from a nasty fall.

"Used to be the town icehouse," he said, opening the cellar door. "During Prohibition it was the local speakeasy. Now it's the archive for the paper. They cut another entrance to the first floor around the corner, but this way is easier to get to the basement."

She looked up at him with hazel eyes that flashed gold in the unshielded overhead light. "Thank you."

Okay. Eyes that flashed gold? Whatever. But just whose POV is this, anyway? It started out in Carly's POV. Is she seeing her eyes flashing gold or did we just jump POV to good old Dan? And does that sound like something a man would be thinking? Maybe--I don't know, but...well, okay, I don't know but it doesn't feel right to me and it irritates me. That sort of thing will make me stop reading. It did make me stop reading.

So this had two flaws for me. First, when you are in a character's POV, she is not going to be thinking things like: She glanced up at him with melting, deep blue eyes. If the heroine is thinking that way, then I really don't want to read anything more about that character unless it is that she is hacked to pieces in the next scene.

Second, is the man--specifically this character Dan--really going to be thinking those thoughts? Not if he's the guy I think he is. I mean, look at that bit of dialog: short, choppy and to the point. So that description of her that follows just doesn't sound like him. And that is the biggest flaw for me with so many writers. Authors write descriptions that are supposedly in a character's POV, but it is not how that character would really be reacting or thinking. At least, to me.

Plain Style
I don't know what to call the "other" style. I associate it with male writers, a few women writers, and British writers (who seem to avoid inflicting poetic descriptions on their readers--or at least when they do--the character is thinking in a way that sounds like they might actually, really, think that way). You know, that previous sentence sort of sounds bad and U.S.-centric, so I apologize.

Here is another passage, by a male author. You'll see what I mean.

The photograph was a black-and-white glossy, eight-by-ten, framed and glassed. It was a Hollywood-style glamour shot that I associate with film stars from the 1930's and '40s. Full length, professional lighting.

Marlissa Dorn wore a black gown that accentuated how she would look if a man were lucky enough to see her naked: long legs, sensual symmetry of hips, breasts full and firm enough to resume their natural curvature once free of the garment's constraints.

The gown was black but glittered with sequins. She stood with hip canted to one side, her opposite hand held at eye level, a cigarette between her fingers. The woman was leaning against a black grand piano as if taking a break from performing.

I glanced at Chestra and studied her face for a moment as she sat at the piano and continued to play. I returned my attention to the photo.

Marlissa's cigarette was freshly lit. The smoke formed a lucent arc with the same curvilinear contour as her hips and breasts. She was staring through cigarette smoke at the camera, her hair combed full and glossy to her shoulder, head tilted in a way that emphasized the intensity of her gaze and the dimensions of her perfect face.

Her eyes were shadowed, I noticed. It added an exotic, smoldering effect.

Note that this is written in first person and it is entirely within keeping with the character's (the hero's) POV, attitude and style of talking. This was an interesting book for me because the author managed to pull off writing parts of it in third person POV when other characters, notably the bad guy, were the POV character, and first person POV when the hero was the POV character in the chapter. It was smooth and the characters always stayed in character. When they described something, it was described as that character really would think or describe it.

You can be poetic if your character is poetic, but the problem for me, particularly with popular suspense novels, is that the descriptions "thought" by characters do not seem to be "in character". It's like the author is putting words into their mouth (or head). And the words are always so...smarmy--at least to me.

Like I said, this is all purely subjective. If you like the first example--I think that's great and you are in very good company. It is currently the most popular style and is heavily used by top authors including luminaries like Allison Brennan, Nora Roberts (aka J.D. Robb) and James Patterson. Now, who wouldn't like to have their success and write like them? That's why I've made a point of saying this is purely subjective.

On the other hand, there are solid writers who use the plain style, including oddly enough, Georgette Heyer. She has fantastic descriptions but if you read them, they actually use very plain language and are always in the "voice" of the character doing the describing. Other authors? The writing team of Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Randy Wayne White. Charles Todd. Lindsay Davis. Sue Grafton. Lauren Henderson in MY LURID PAST has one of the most amazingly erotic almost-have-sex scenes I've read in a long time and although I didn't particularly care for the ending (is it really a happy ending when the heroine drags the hero down to the level of taking drugs so they can do so together really a happy ending?) the writing is superb.

So you can see, the actual styles cut across gender lines to some extent, but I would say that for the most part, romantic suspense written by women will use more poetic language, particularly in describing the heroine. Mysteries tend not to use the poetic style. Suspense and crime fiction written by men tend not to use the poetic style.

If you are writing, I strongly urge you to consider which style you prefer and hone your skills. If you're a reader, it pays to know what irritates you so you can avoid buying books you will never finish. There is no right or wrong. There is only subjective taste.

And of course there is the fact that the plain style is obviously the only correct choice because it is the one I prefer. ;-)

Editing is Scary...

There's nothing like getting your first batch of edits to make you feel like a complete fraud. I mean, you tell everyone you can write and have the nerve to send out your manuscript(s) to everyone on that assumption. But then you get your first edits from your editor and suddenly, you realize how much you don't know. Or perhaps it's that you discover other people now realize what you don't know. It's really scary.

My editor sent my first batch of edits to me and she was really nice. She marked passages she loved so that I would know she didn't think the entire thing was utter drivel. And I remember that she liked it enough to recommend the publisher buy it, and the rest of the staff at my publisher liked it enough to agree.

But now I'm looking at all my errors and places where my story time line got way out of whack and I'm thinking: What was I thinking? How could I have missed this stuff?

First, there are all the comma errors. Granted, the grammar book I'm using has a copyright date of 1948 because my dad used it to teach English at his first job, but gosh. It's pretty bad when every sentence has a correction to remove extraneous commas. Obviously, I'm comma-challenged, or maybe that's comma-obsessed since I have too many commas instead of not enough commas.

What really makes me feel completely unworthy, however, is my editor's blithe statement to "do what you need to do to make the chapter end here and begin a new chapter". This gives me pause. A great deal of pause. Because I don't know the formula for creating a chapter ending and chapter beginning. This lack makes me feel completely incompetent as a writer. Wouldn't a real writer know how to make a chapter ending and chapter beginning?

I sort of never think about it when I'm writing. I end chapters where there seems to be a break of some sort or when I'm just plain finished with a scene. In other words, when I write, I don't specifically think that I'm writing the end of a chapter and I don't specifically think about it when I'm writing the beginning of the next chapter. I begin at the scene beginning and I end at the end of the scene.

The good news is that after I got over the shock of realizing that yet again I had gotten uppity and over-confident when I thought I could write...I studied a few chapter endings. Then I looked at the place where my editor wanted a chapter break, and the break was pretty much already there. I just had to formalize it (if you want to put it that way). At least I hope I've done it properly and that she will agree.

Then, I moved on to the tougher stuff where I basically lost track of the time line and character locations. This turned out to be due largely to my own insecurity and need to please. You see, a lot of agents and editors were interested in this manuscript, but they all wanted various things changed--mostly to make it darker and sexier. Unfortunately, instead of telling them that what they wanted would not improve the manuscript and in fact messed it up, I tried to do the changes. With each change, it went more and more into the toilet.

Luckily, my editor recognized there was still gold in the manuscript. She asked for changes before she bought it, but the irony is that the changes she wanted brought it back to the original form. If I had had more confidence as a writer, I could have avoided making changes that did not help in the first place.

The scenes that are messed up are messed up because of trying to insert stuff that really didn't belong in the book (i.e. steamy sexual encounters) or wasn't true to the characters. When I tried to bring the book back to a more consistent state, I ran into some temporal difficulties that I'm still trying to straighten out. I think I'll get most of it done this week, however.

Isn't it odd that during this single phase of editing, I'm realizing how much I don't know and how much I instinctively know as a writer? That's actually presents a difficult dilemma. How do you know when something really is wrong because you don't have enough experience in your craft, and how do you know when you should stand your ground and Just Say No?

For me in this particular case, I should have held firm on making the characters do things they really would never do; things that simply were not in the characters' characters. :-) But I do need to work on comma-control and writing shorter chapters. Which is funny because as a reader, I love shorter chapters. As a writer, I have a tendency toward run-on sentences and run-on chapters.

Well, you never stop learning, and thank goodness.
And thank goodness for smart--and patient--editors.

Why Regency?

When you're a writer, you often get asked questions which make you think about your creative process. This can be a good thing because it forces you to be conscious of the decisions you are making. Recently, someone asked me why I had chosen the Regency period for my books. Like many of my decisions, there are multiple reasons and going through them all helps me understand my choices and do a better job writing within my chosen framework.

So…why did I choose the Regency?

First and foremost: I love Georgette Heyer. Maybe that wasn't clear. I love Georgette Heyer. I wish I could write like Georgette Heyer. In fact, if I had never read a single book by her, I'm not sure I would have wanted to be a writer. Hmmm. That may be too strong a statement. I might still have wanted to write, but I'm not sure I would have wanted it so badly. Between Heyer, Saki, and Wodehouse, I had no choice but to become a writer.

Oh, wait. I didn't even tell you what the Regency is. It's a time period: the early years of the 19^th century, from around 1811 to 1820, when King George III of England was not quite competent and a Regent in the form of his son, George IV, sort of ruled in his stead. Most books set during the Regency period are also set somewhere in the United Kingdom. Such books are also commonly referred to as "Regencies" with a sort of artificial division between traditional Regencies and Regency historicals. Regency historicals focus very intensely on the romantic relationship between a man and a woman and are generally very sensual (hot). Traditional Regencies—while still romances—often are less intensely focused on the romantic relationship and include a "broader view" of Society in general or other elements such as suspense, mystery, or adventure. Georgette Heyer, for example, would be considered to write traditional Regencies. As far as publishers are concerned, the Regency period is somewhat extended to include from the late 18^th century through about 1825 or so, and the focus has shifted toward Regency historicals and away from traditional Regencies.

For my purposes as a writer, I was interested in this period for several reasons (Heyer not withstanding).

I knew I wanted to move into writing mysteries: romantic mysteries with a bit of adventure. The Regency period was right before true law enforcement agencies as we know them today existed, so you could have private citizens and inquiry agents assist in, or conduct an investigation into a murder without some of the convoluted reasoning authors need for contemporary mysteries which don't have a law enforcement person as the main investigator. Sir Robert Peel became Home Secretary in England in 1822, and he is the one who helped rework many of the existing British laws and created the Metropolitan Police Force in London in 1829 (hence, London police earned the nickname of "peelers"). If I set stories before 1829, I have a lot more freedom in terms of conducting a murder investigation (or rather, my characters have more latitude in conducting a murder investigation). There was also the lovely organization known as the Bow Street Runners, which through the mists of time has assumed an attractive patina of romance.

As a gardener, the first half of the 19^th century brought about absolutely amazing developments in horticulture, particularly rose hybridization, which is another love of mine (hence, my first book entitled "Smuggled Rose"). All the explorers running around brought back plants from all over the world and experts were busy creating new hybrids… I won't bore you by going on about this, but it was a truly remarkable period of time. Science was exploding by leaps and bounds. Even germs were eventually invented, and we learned not to drink from the same glass as someone else. How cool is that?

Anyway, the period is close enough to our time to be recognizable and yet far enough away to be quaint and romantic. Men were men (and the sheep ran scared—but not too fast). People occasionally bathed. Duels were outlawed, but still occurred conveniently enough to give a few heroes—and heroines—some early morning angst. There were smugglers and aristocratic French refugees. The Napoleonic wars. Adventures which were romantic when they took place in the 19^th century, but would be just stupid, scary, or too darn serious if they took place today.

I am also interested in freedom and a person's place within Society. Regency Society had more "social rules" which are fun to play against and provide a bottomless source for comic escapades that simply would not work in our modern society. As you might guess, because I am interested in the interplay between personal freedom and Societal restrictions, my stories tend more toward traditional Regencies than Regency historicals.

There is also the fact that my heroines can have hordes of servants, wear fabulous long dresses and jewels, and spend their days writing subtly insulting letters to each other while eyeing the footmen. What's not to love? No e-mail. No Internet. No computers. No cell phones. No explaining away why they couldn't just pick up the phone and call the police (although they could send one of the footmen after a Bow Street Runner).

Yeah, that's the ticket: the Regency. A kinder, gentler period for romance and murder…

Hurry Up and Wait

This publishing business...well, what can I say? Everything takes for-ever, except what they expect you to do.

First, you spend years (or for some people, months) sending out queries and the first three chapters of manuscripts trying to get a nibble, a bite, or even a rejection letter addressed to you--specifically--instead of Dear Author. Even rejections take obscene amounts of time (mostly because the editors are dealing with many hundreds of authors while you're just dealing with a few editors or agents--or are hoping to deal with a few).

Then, you get a nibble, send in your complete manuscript and wait again. Maybe as long as a year. If by some miracle, they decide they are interested in your feeble attempts to write, you wait for a contract. When they finally send it to you, they expect it back like the next day. High priority.

Waiting begins again while they think about everything and tear your work to shreds. Then they ask for revisions (unless you're perfect, and some are, but then, I also think there are aliens among us who are secretly snickering at us from behind their latex, hominid masks). They ask for revisions and you've got to get the revised version right back, right away. After another period of waiting and wringing your hands, you may even get another round of revisions or just final copy edits, which have to be shipped high priority, right away back to them.

Hmmm. Okay. So anything you have to do, has to be done like yesterday, almost before you were even aware it had to be done, but anything they have to do can take weeks, months, even years. Has anyone ever heard of a reasonable timeframe, or is that reserved for those aliens in the face masks?

And folks wonder why authors feel like being a Wal-Mart greeter might really be a great job after all. In fact, that may be my new goal in life. To be a Wal-Mart greeter. Or maybe be the guy who mows the lawn along the highway. Something with no deadlines.

'Cause I'm sitting here waiting for my edits for my first novel which is due out on May 3, and it's like Feb 20, and I'm like...uh...okay, when am I going to get my first edits, because it goes: first edits, I do them and send it back, copy edits, I do them and send it back, and the book comes out. I just have this horrible feeling I'm going to get the edits and have like 24 hours to get them done, and believe it or not, I actually have a day job which consumes 40-60 hours a week, and I've got some business trips scheduled...

Okay, so my schedule isn't important, but I'm one of those crazy people who, when given an assignment, actually starts work on it immediately because... If I finish early, I can set it aside, because invariably, I think of things I need to change or add, and this gives me time to change or add those things I think of. :-) Or...if I run into difficulties, I have time to straighten them out. I do not like emergency situations foisted upon me by others simply because they could not manage their own time and give me my assignment so I have a reasonable amount of time to work on it. Their emergency should not become my emergency.

I can say that because I deal with emergencies every day, mostly created by people who didn't think before they clicked "OK" as in: OK, go ahead and delete all the user logon accounts including my boss and his boss, because I'm an idiot admin and thought I was deleting my dog's test account when in reality I was deleting the entire organizational unit containing all the really high muckety-muck's logon accounts. And even though the system asked me TWICE if I wanted to delete it and all the things (i.e. user logon accounts) it contained, I clicked "OK". So now, no one can log in and get their e-mail and my boss is complaining.

Yeah. I fix stuff like that all day for people who should know better, so you can understand why I'm a little...anxious...to get to the editing portion of this publishing process, so that I'm not sitting up at the last minute trying to edit my manuscript after a long day of fixing idiot admin mistakes.

Here I am, sitting here, fretting. I love my editor and don't want to piss her off, because she's the first person who really got me and my writing, but I need to get those edits. If I e-mail her, will she feel like I'm bugging her? Will she hate me? She asked me to do some "pre-edits" to cut the manuscript down further since we were bumping up against the limit on number of words and I sort of didn't do such a great job and only cut about 1,500 words, but I was already down to the bone. The original manuscript was 100,000 words and I had already cut it down to 75,000 to fit the 75,000 limit. It was almost to the point of rearranging sentences to eek out one more word here and there...

So you can see, I really don't want to push her, having failed to significantly cut down the manuscript the last time she asked me to do something... But...I need those edits. It's almost the end of Feb. In March I have a week long business trip with long days, so we're talking 3 weeks left in March. Then April. That's it--it's released May 3. I have to squeeze the main editing/revisions and copy edits in March and April. WAAAAAAAAH...I'm sitting here crying, feeling an emergency slithering up on me like an alligator crawling out of the sewers...

Novels and Writing

I may have talked about this before--I'm not sure, mostly because I'm on travel and am scatterbrained. Anyway, it's snowing here in Chicago and I can't get to the bookstore, which is a real bummer because one of the big bonuses for me when I travel to Chicago is to get to bookstores. They are the highlight of my pathetic life.

So, anyway, I've finished two of the three novels I brought with me and one of them...I think I've read before. I bought it recently because it looked interesting (I always buy books based on the blurb on the back cover--I generally don't "follow" specific authors--I just read the back and hope for the best). Anyway, when I got about 7/8th through the book, I had this feeling that I knew how it was going to play out, and I had this vague sense of deja vu.

Which got me thinking about a previous thing I had read about literary fiction versus "commercial fiction" or, the stuff they force you to read in school, versus the paperbacks you pick up from the bookstore voluntarily. Although I do pick up a goodly number of paperbacks which were once commercial fiction (maybe 200 years ago) and are now considered literary fiction. I have no idea how they "decide" when something that was commercial is now old enough to be literary. I'm wondering, for example, if Agatha Christie or Georgette Heyer will be considered literary in another 100 years or so.

Anyway, the point is, someone said somewhere that literary fiction is stuff you remember while commercial fiction is stuff you don't. Except, I have no better recollection of literary junk I was forced to read, than I do of commercial junk I've read. In fact, I think I remember some of the commercial junk, better. In fact, I know it. Because the books I remember the most clearly are: The Ghost of Dibble Hollow, The Ghost Rock Mystery, and Swiss Family Robinson. All of which I read when I was 7 and remember very clearly. I think my mind was empty enough at that point to have room to remember these stories. Thereafter, as teachers filled up the vacant spots, I started remembering less and less of what I read.

Today, I'm lucky if I remember a vague "feeling" associated with a book, or a scene with two characters, whose names I've forgotten, doing something I've mostly forgotten, but I remember what I thought they looked like and a certain setting and/or picture stopped-in-time of what they might have been doing. I never remember names. I also never remember plots, which is how I end up buying books multiple times unless I take careful notes about what I've read and have not read. I tend to remember even less about literary fiction, although I do remember I despised Madame Bovary, thought she was the stupidest woman I'd ever heard of, and she totally deserved what happened to her--although I can't exactly remember what happened to her or what she did in that book to deserve her fate and my contempt.

What is the point of this, other than to prove I have no memory of anything? Well, even a reader with a terrible memory walks away with something from a book, even if they can't remember the characters, the plot, or the ending. Or even the author's name or the name of the book. The reader may even walk away with a couple of things: a feeling/mood, and perhaps a few snippets like still picture or perhaps a small "trailer" like clip.

Which leads me to a point some other author made--about the most important things you need to do as a writer. Create a feeling. That's critical. If you're really good, you create a series of feelings like laughter, tension, perhaps sadness (although I tend not to like books which "pull at the heartstrings" or have sad parts--I especially tend not to re-read them, but that's just me) and finally, leave you with a strong emotion.

And readers will only bond with the character(s) and get strong emotion if they understand the character's motivation, and that motivation makes sense in terms of the story. The heroine can't be too-stupid-to-live. The hero can't be a jerk--at least not all the time. They have to have flaws, weaknesses, and recognizeably human emotions. This is not easy. Some writers are so talented that by the end of the first paragraph--sometimes with the first sentence--the hero/heroine has hooked the reader, and the reader has bonded with them. Once this happens, unless the writer stumbles badly, the story will flow and something--perhaps just an elusive emotion--will stick with the reader.

How the writer accomplishes this is nearly impossible to describe. I have thought on it deeply, and it is difficult because there are many ways to accomplish this, and the methods are all, generally, combinations of writing techniques and not just one single, beautiful thing that a writer could master easily. Word choices, descriptions that are neither over-the-top-excessive nor completely lacking--stuff like that is crucial. Character actions and dialog that is precisely right for that character and only that character--that could never be appropriate to any other character also helps.

Lots of stuff like that. Which is completely unhelpful if you are struggling to actually climb to this pinnacle of perfection. But if you want to learn--read. Read the best authors and as many authors as you can. See what works for you as a reader and then break it down. Try to identify techniques that you--the writer--can master and use within your own, personal style of writing.

The hardest thing is to realize that what works for one author and one reader, will not necessarily work for another author, or some other reader. The best-selling authors have figured out what works for them and the majority of readers.

Personally, I prefer a book that leaves me with a strong feeling of happiness and satisfaction, where all the ends are wrapped up, and the characters have gotten their just deserts--which hopefully includes two of them bonding for life. Although I'm also happy if the wicked get what they deserve. That is part of the appeal of a mystery, where the crooks/murderer's get got or at least punished severely, unlike real life where there is often very little satisfaction or sense of justice. If a book leaves me very happy, I may remember the author's name long enough to actually look for another book by him or her.

Other readers may prefer books that tug their heartstrings and make them cry. They will search out authors who can do that.

So, you need to know what you are aiming at if you want to hit anything at all.

The second important thing is to create at least one really memorable scene, picture, snippet, action clip--whatever you want to call it. Something that will stick in a reader's mind. For me, this is most often the scene which encapsulates the core conflict. The scene where the major problem in the book is revealed and the hero and heroine, or hero and villain, square off. That scene must be strong and it must be clear. What is at stake? What will happen if the hero wins? What will happen if the villain wins? This is what will make the book something a reader will remember, or it could just turn the book into a vaguely nice experience that is completely forgotten after the last page if the core conflict is weak or muddy.

In fact, I would postulate that if you can create a strong, pivotal scene, the preceding and succeeding scenes can almost be mediocre (they really can't be bad) and you can still have a successful book. Although if the rest is just sort of mediocre, you really will need a good ending to tie everything up--you can't just totally depend upon that one, great pivotal scene if the story's ending leaves all the plot lines loose, flabby, and sagging over their belts.

So...as I re-read this prior to posting, I'm thinking it's all idiotic rubbish and completely unhelpful, but like I said, it's snowing outside and my brain turned to mush hours ago.

Writing to Improve

Writing Descriptions...
I’ve written in the past about how to develop a description that is effective and doesn’t just annoy your readers. Mostly, I’m studying various aspects of writing because I want to improve my own writing so that someday, I will be picked up by a big publishers and sell a billion copies.

Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that I will never write in a way which will make me a best-selling author and it is tearing me apart. Why would I say this? Well, because out of all the best-selling authors, most of them write in a way that sets my teeth on edge. There is one hugely successful author who writes books at a rate almost no one can match, and will soon have movies made from her books, etc, and I’ve tried several times to read her books and could never get past the first few pages. What is really weird is that I never knew she was this big-time, awe-inspiring, fabled author until maybe a couple of years ago (I would be like...N—who?) and I would pick up her books and just couldn’t read ‘em. What is really weird is that she writes in several genres under different names, and not realizing this, I had picked her up in her various incarnations (all unknowing) and couldn’t read any of her stuff under any of her names and didn't even know they were all written by the same person. I had no idea they were all written by her until years later, after I had already decided I would never buy any more books by X, Y and Z.

Anyway, the point is she is this awe-inspiring, best-selling author and in most of the writer “how-to” stuff I’ve read, they all hold up examples of writing either from her, or very similar, as “this is what you should be emulating”. The writers I absolutely love are not best-sellers. In fact, one of my very favorite authors is having problems getting her books published in the U.S. simply because they don’t sell so well here (although they sell very well elsewhere).

So my dilemma is: do I try to write in my way, which is not the best-selling author way, or…will I always be a low-level author? Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the comments: “If you’re looking for passion, this isn’t your book” kind of comments because I don’t have my characters jump into bed or spend their time gazing at each others’ crotches. I believe there CAN be passion and love without the writer going into detail about that and I don’t force my characters into anything. If they jump in bed and describe it, fine, but if they don’t due to…whatever circumstances…then I’m okay with that, too. It is not a requirement for a story and I find it alarming that this seems to be the sole deciding factor now as to whether a book is good or not. Really depressing.

More importantly, I don’t like all these perfect heroes and heroines. I don’t like excessive descriptions or flowery junk. In fact, I almost prefer to have no descriptions of the characters at all, because as a reader, I build up what they look like in my head anyway, and it is almost never how the author describes them—which means descriptions make this jarring sort of double-layered effect in my head. That’s why I keep obsessing over descriptions.

Here is a description most people adore:
Her eyes betrayed her, flashing a green fire reminiscent of lightning over a stormy sea.

Why don’t I like it? It stopped me cold. Lightning at sea is blue-white, not green unless you're talking certain circumstances and then it's this sickly sort of baby-poop yellow-green which is not particularly attractive. And why do all heroine’s have green eyes, anyway? (In my first book, I tried to toe the romance line and actually had a heroine with green eyes, before I grew totally fed up with it and stopped having ridiculously over-the-top beautiful characters in my later books. Never again. Probably. Desperation does make you do sad things, though.)

And what does this poetic description have to do with anything? Nothing. Does it say anything about the man who says it? Is he a sailor? No. It reveals nothing about him nor does it seem like something he would naturally be thinking. He’s probably thinking, “Damn, she looks pissed.”

As I try to improve my writing, I’m actively looking at these aspects. I’m finding that very rarely are flowery descriptions or overly gorgeous characters appealing to me.
However, lest you think I abhor all descriptions and attractive characters, not so! Here is part of a description I love and can find no fault with:

Miss Charing was a rather diminutive Brunette. She had a neat figure, very pretty hands and feet, and a countenance which owed much to a pair of large dark eyes…

The major difference is that there is an amused quality to this that appeals to me, and it is the sort of thing you can imagine the other characters actually thinking. I know of no one on this planet who would think, when seeing a pissed off—but beautiful woman— Her eyes betrayed her, flashing a green fire reminiscent of lightning over a stormy sea.

I can’t even imagine a poet thinking that—unless he was sitting down trying to come up with something…poetical. Most people when seeing someone’s eyes “flash” are thinking of ways to get the heck out of there. In fact, most men, when confronted by a woman with flashing eyes, are going to be searching for the nearest exit to avoid a scene. They are not going to be standing around reminiscing about lightning over the ocean, even if they happen to know what that looks like (and apparently this one didn’t).

I’m not bashing the author who wrote this (God knows, they are making more at writing than I am and doing a better job of it—and are vastly more popular and romantic) but I am…well…I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m trying to figure out how to improve my writing and NOT get slammed about it not being sensual enough, or romantic enough. (You’re right. I’m not romantic. I can’t stand that stuff and I loathe Valentine’s day unless it means winning the lottery and getting a new computer.)

There has got to be a way to improve my writing that doesn’t make me want to gnaw off my arm. However, I do know one thing, I’m going to try to write descriptions that sound like what someone might actually think under the circumstances. If it works, it will be a miracle, but it’s the only improvement I can think of at the moment.

Oh, and since I've a book coming out, I should add that it is absolutely wonderful and perfect, and anything I talk about like trying to improve my writing is just gilding on an already perfect work of art. Artists are never satisfied with their works of art, even though they are absolutely wonderful by anyone else's standards. It's romantic, too. Really. Even without the explicit sex. They DO kiss--several times in fact.
(Just shoot me, now.)

Writing: How-To

Okay, so the title is sort of misleading. I have no idea how to write; I'm learning as I go along. There is a pair of writers, however, who do seem to know how to write and are in the process of writing tutorials for other writers: Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer. They are hosting an online writing workshop for the rest of us knuckle-dragging, arse-scratching hominids who are barely able to speak in comprehensible grunts much less write. Hey, don't get insulted, I'm referring to myself. I have no idea what you look like.

Anyway, Crusie and Mayer are doing a much better and more expert job at dispensing advice to writers than I ever could and I really, really encourage you to drop me like a slimy, rotten potato and rush on over to http://www.crusiemayer.com. You don't even have to sign up, and if you're into RSS feeds, you can get their material force-fed to you that way. If you're puzzled about any aspect of the current lesson, you can e-mail them and perhaps get an answer posted to the site.

You can't say I never gave you anything. If you don't take this opportunity to learn something from two people who are undoubtedly experts in the field of writing, than shame on you.

The Crusie/Mayer workshop is also very interesting from a "how to go about starting" this writing gig. I've been struggling with trying to write more quickly and yet more better. (You see what I mean? More better?) Sorry. Anyway, I've worked with some writers--and have done this myself--who outline and then write. As they write, they are constantly going back to earlier chapters and smoothing them out. By the time they finish, their first draft is what for others might be the third or fourth draft.

On the other side of the fence are those who may or may not do a lot of up-front outlining and who rip through their first draft, just writing until it's done. Then they go back and smooth it out, juggle chapters around, and fix everything.

To use Mayer's summary: the first bunch frontloads the work and the second bunch backloads it. If you frontload, you work a lot of stuff out in the beginning and edit as you write so that by the end of the "draft" you have very little editing or rewriting to do. Most of the work is done in the beginning: up front. If you backload, you do very little work in the beginning and work on getting the story down on paper (or rather, into the computer). Then comes the massive editing, rewrites, etc, so most of the work is done on the back end of the process, after the first draft is done.

I've been trying to decide which technique results in the fastest production. After trying both, well, I think they both take just about the same amount of time. But there are pitfalls to each approach. Mayer didn't really go into the pitfalls, but I can tell you the following based upon my own experiences. Hopefully, this will "add value" to what you can learn from the Crusie and Mayer workshop.

Frontloading Your Work

• For folks who are "pantsters" and like to write and discover their story along the way, trying to develop the outline, do all the research, etc, may kill the story for them. They may find by the time they finish the outline, they are no longer interested in actually writing it. For these folks, backloading may be the better solution.
  
• If you are given to extreme fits of anal behavior, frontloading can be the La Brea Tar Pit of writing techniques. Consider:
  
  * You may spend far too much time on perfecting the outline, instead of just finishing the outline (which no one is going to see but you, anyway, so it doesn't have to be freakin' perfect) and actually starting to write the story itself.
  
  * You may spend far too much doing research because it's fun. Do only what is necessary for the book. Don't dive down rabbit holes just because they're there.
  
  * Even worse, when you do start writing and polishing as you're writing, remember that you actually do need to move on to page 2. Do not get caught in the trap of endlessly nit-picking and editing what you previously wrote so that you never write the next bit or finish the book. You do want to actually finish a first draft, and remember that this is a first draft and does not have to be p-e-r-f-e-c-t because you actually can edit it again when you are done with the first draft. No one is going to force you to immediately send it out to an agent/publisher (unless you have a contract and the manuscript is due tomorrow--in which case I wonder what you are doing here, reading this, when you should be working...).

There are probably many other cautions, but by now you ought to see the point. If you're inclined toward perfectionism, frontloading can be seductive and yet infected with all sorts of little hard-to-cure, easily transmitted nasties.

And yet, least you think backloading is a dream come true, let me enlighten you.

Backloading Your Work

• For a "pantster" who wants the story to unfold from the mysterious depths of their mind, constantly delighting them with the brilliantly unexpected twists and turns, backloading may seem like The Answer. Sort of. It can also be the best way there is to write crap. Because if you're the sort of person who is over-taxed and in a hurry, you'll finish that draft and may be tempted to just do a few passes through to edit it, get tired of reading the blasted thing, and then send it out.
• Because you've backloaded, you may not have thought out the plot and you may find there are major temporal holes in the thing or that you need to move chapters or chunks around or, gulp, delete entire sections. Some people cannot be ruthless with their own writing. Think about it. If you've written this absolutely amazing scene, but it actually is not needed by the story, are you able to cut it out? Even knowing that you'll never, ever be able to use it? Because let's face it, that scene was written for those two characters in this specific book, and it would never work with any other characters in any other book. So it's gone. Dust. History. Fried with Round-Up. Can you do that? Really?
• In a similar vein, are you going to get bored with all the editing and end that phase too soon? Because remember, you were the one who got bored if you wrote an outline before you wrote the book. How many times can you go through the book to fix it, now that it's written? And now that your prose is down there on the paper (or computer screen) is it deathless or does it just seem that way? Are you able to overhaul it if it needs it?

I've outlined and then written stuff slowly, editing as I went and almost didn't finish the story because I kept going down rabbit-holes, so I know how that goes. In an effort to cure that, I've written from the seat of my pants, just blasting it out, and then faced the horrors of massive edits including cutting out my favorite scenes, and getting so tired of editing, editing, editing because of all the flaws in the first draft that I have been known to (gulp) send things to my agent prematurely just to get them out of my face.

I've been on both sides now. Neither is pretty or easy.

However. I have to agree with old Bob (sorry, Bob, I think I'm actually older than you are, so my apologies, old boy) that frontloading may actually, in the long run, be the most effective. Because it means less wasted effort, editing while material is fresh (as you write it) and if you can control yourself, you may actually finish. And what you end up with is pretty darn good so there are fewer rewrites at this point. There will, of course, be rewrites when your agent and editor get a-hold of it, but that's to be expected.

So, on the whole, I think frontloading may be marginally better. Maybe. The jury is sort of still out on that, though, and a lot depends upon you and what sort of weaknesses you have.

Now, the question is, what is your process going to look like?

Intelligence, Hope, and Writing

Recently, I read an article by a very famous author who mentioned how important hope and perseverance is to any writer. I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, she used a scientific study to illustrate her point, and I was suddenly reminded of my days as a biology student and how easy it is to think you are testing one thing, when you are in fact testing something else entirely. The study she mentioned in her article was fundamentally flawed.

Of course, the problem could have been in how the study was described, or in the author’s interpretation of it, rather than a flaw in the design itself. I have no idea what the actual thesis was under evaluation or how the test was framed. All I know is how this author described it and her conclusion.

What was the study? Two groups of rats were thrown into tubs of water. Group A was thrown into a tub of water that contained nothing but a lot of water. Group B was thrown into a tub of water that contained a small, submerged island. If Group B swam around enough, they could find the island and stand on it, thereby being able to rest and breathe.

When the two groups of rats were thrown into another vat of water without an island, low-and-behold, Group B kept valiantly swimming around, looking for that darn island. Group A pretty much just gave up.

Now the conclusion this author came to was that if you have hope and start from a positive place, you’ll keep going long after the others have given up. This is really critical for a writer because sometimes it takes a lot of rejections over long years before you finally get find the right editor and get published. And you’ll go longer if you can find and treasure any encouragement along the way—sort of like those submerged islands.

However, what this test really showed had nothing to do with hope or even the beneficial effects of positive thinking upon perseverance. It was really more about learning. Maybe even intelligence.

Group A learned very quickly that the faster they gave up, i.e. stopped swimming, the sooner they’d be rescued and put back into their nice, warm cage with food and water (assuming they wanted water after this). Who the heck wants to stand tip-toed on a submerged island in a bucket of water, gasping for air, when they can be removed and put back in their nice cage? Group B never learned this because they were given a crutch to lean on, er, an island. They never learned that if they just pretended to drown, they’d be taken out of the cold, nasty water and put back in their nice habitat.

In effect, what this proved was that you’re stupid to persevere. The faster you give up all efforts and hope, the sooner you’ll be back in your nice, old rut where you can grow fat, dumb and happy until the end of your days.

So is it better to be smart or is it better to be hopeful?

If you’re a writer, it’s definitely better to forget about being smart, because being smart just means giving up before you waste all that time, effort, tears, blood and sweat over something which may never pan out and which will probably not grant you the luxurious living you know you deserve, anyway. And even if you do succeed, do you really need all those reviewers hacking your work apart with snide comments about how your work has degenerated lately?

Mankind did not get where it is, however, by just giving up. Stupid or not, all of our great strides forward and all of our works of art, including literary, were made by people who, like Group B, never learned any better. Or if they did understand how futile their efforts might be, they decided to just keep on swimming anyway and hope to find that little island. And they were willing to drown to do it.

While the test itself was flawed (at least how it was described by this author) and did not support the author’s argument, the author was still right. If we are going to accomplish anything at all, we have to keep working at it despite all the naysayers and evidence that says we are idiots just wasting our time. Is writing really more a waste of time than, say, watching television each night?

Every one of us has a dream, something we’d like to accomplish in our very short lifetime. While striving to attain that dream may not be the intelligent or sensible thing to do, it is the important and hopeful thing to do and it brings out the best in us. We would attain nothing, be nothing, create nothing if we did not continue in the face of adversity to go for the gold.

So, strangely enough, even though that famous author used the wrong example, she was still…right. Maybe not so intelligent, but certainly hopeful.

Ultramobile Gadgets and e-Book Reading

It occurred to me that as an extension of my previous post about progress, e-books, and Sony's new e-book reader, that folks might like to actually SEE what I'm babbling about, without having to search the web.

It is my belief that no one wants to carry around a backpack full of gadgets that only do one thing. You can get a cell phone that also lets you read your mail (awkwardly, but you can) and listen to MP3s. Or you can get a good MP3 player like an iPod, but now you're carrying a cell phone AND an MP3 player. Then there are e-books. Are you going to carry around a third device just to read books?

Hmmm.

What if you could carry around a cell phone and a second device that was like an itty-bitty computer that would let you: read your email; play mp3s; watch videos; do your homework/office work on standard applications; and read e-books. And it's in color.

Hmmm. No brainer?

Well, everything is a tradeoff.

Sony's e-Book reader is not sexy, is locked into their store, is B&W although it can--in a clunky way--play MP3s and display B&W jpgs. On the other hand, the battery has good life--it could probably exceed my 10 hour mark, and you can--with some messing around--download PDFs and read those, as well as html. It's also under $400. Oh, and let's not forget that the screen and text resolution are amazing, so it is a pleasure to read on the device. A picture of it is at the left.

But, isn't there anything else available?

What else is is there? Ultramobile PCs. Two of the sexiest are the OQO model 2 and Sony's VAIO Ultramobile. Both are basically very small PCs. Sony's also includes two cameras (yes, two). Both the OQO and Sony UMPCs have optional high capacity batteries which will bring the battery life up to 8 hours for the OQO and 6 hours (or more) for the Sony. They run a regular operating system with regular applications. You can use a full-sized bluetooth keyboard and mouse with either one, to basically give you a computer--and there are super-cool foldup bluetooth keyboards you can take along with you, if you want. However, both also include a very tiny, thumb keyboard if you don't want to carry the extra piece.

Both have large hard drives and a decent amount of memory (RAM). They can run MS Vista if you're inclined toward Microsoft's latest OS release. But they are much more expensive than a regular e-book reader...however...if you could buy one of these and NOT buy an MP3 player, portable DVD player, laptop, and e-book reader, wouldn't you come out ahead, anyway?

Well, whatever. The downside is that they both cost over $1,200. But they will do everything your laptop can do--and if you are into IP telephony--you can use it for that, as well. So you could very well get away with one device, or at least your cell phone and this device to: play mp3, watch videos, read e-books, do your work/homework, do emails, surf the web, or anything else you want to do.

Plus, they are really, really cool.

(Quit laughing.)

In case you doubt me, here are some pictures...

First, Sony's Vaio UMPC. It's got two cameras and 4.5" display. It weighs 1.2 lbs, and is 5.91" x 3.74" x 1.50". It has 512Mb RAM (there may be a 1GB version soon) and a 30GB hard drive, which means lots of room for books. Builtin wireless networking and of course bluetooth for big keyboards and mice.

If you don't like the Sony, there is the OQO Model 2. The model 2 weighs 1 lb and includes a 5" display, a 60GB hard drive and 1GB RAM (memory). Okay, it doesn't have cameras (much less TWO cameras like the Sony Vaio) but it has a much larger hard drive and more RAM, which means better performance. The Vaio is reported to be a little less snappy, but I haven't played with one so I can't confirm that.

Of course, you get all the standard jazz of wireless connectivity, a ethernet connection, bluetooth for external keyboards/mouse, and you can run all your standard software.

With both UMPC, you can download and read e-books from any source you choose (they don't lock you down to one e-book store). You basically have a computer in your pocket.

While these devices might not be the ultimate--they are certainly worth looking at, because they mean you *might* be able to reduce the number of things you have to carry around with you. And you know what? I might just give up my MP3 player in exchange for one of these beasties because I would have the power to do it all--almost.

Ah, power.

Is this the future, or at least a step in the right direction? Maybe.

Why e-books and Sony's new e-book reader missed the point...

Since I'm about to be published first as an e-book and then as a trade-sized paperback, I've been doing a lot of research into e-books, marketing and promotion. I've also been looking at e-book readers.

I've come to the conclusion that everyone has missed the boat. That's why the e-book market--with the exception of erotica--just hasn't performed up to everyone's expectations, and why it is so difficult for an author to make a living writing for that market. Which is really too bad, because if you could make a decent living at it (instead of around $300-$600 a year if you publish 2 e-books in a year...which is another topic).

There are a lot of reasons so I'll just go over the obvious ones.

First, a little background. Although it seems like everyone is getting into the e-book market these days, it is not taking off the way anticipated and the additional e-publishers are just fragmenting an already very small and very fragmented market.

The e-book thing started valiantly enough with erotica and boomed, but when you think about it, it was because it was aimed at a tightly focused audience and offered several advantages specific to that audience:

1. You could get the material anonymously and read it without people knowing you were reading erotica. That's probably the biggest factor.
2. The Internet had already exploded with sites catering to the clientele who would also be interested in erotica, so they were already using the Internet.
3. The audience was into instant gratification when they were in the mood.

So, erotica and the Internet seemed made for each other and it continues to perform well. (Uh, sorry...no pun intended.)

However, book publishers and the computer industry kept looking for the next "killer app" which could net them a lot of money. They looked at the erotica market and thought...hey, maybe the kids growing up today carrying around computers will want to read e-books--maybe if we get in on the ground floor, we'll make a lot of money.

This never materialized the way folks thought it would, and in fact, the computer industry no longer talks big about the anticipated explosion in the e-book market. The devices kids are carrying around do not lend themselves to reading e-books, even if the kids wanted to read them. There are no convienant, cool, devices kids or adults can carry around (like the iPod) that make reading fun.

I don't think things are totally bad, but I do think there have been major mistakes made and until they are corrected, things are not going to improve very much. Let's face it, everyone is trying to get into the e-book market these days, and for most authors, you're going to be a total success if you manage to earn $300 on an e-book. That's a far cry from being published by a traditional publisher. Even the smallest publishers who offer advances generally start with an advance at least around $1,000--and that's a very tiny advance. You'll probably earn $3,000 all told, which is 10 times as much as you'd earn with one e-book, and that's if you publish with a teeny-tiny traditional publisher and do no promotional work, and no extra stuff at all. In other words, you're better off with a teeny-tiny traditional publisher than an e-publisher--unless you're writing erotica.

Let's look at this more closely. I'm going to take myself as "typical of a reader" because on the whole, I think I am.

Mistakes the Industry Has Made

1. The reader wants the same experience reading an e-book as they do reading a regular book. This is Sony's biggest mistake with their new e-book reader. The fact is that if a reader wants the same experience as reading a paperback, they'll get a paperback. Well, duh. Why buy a very, very expensive black&white device (that costs as much as 60 paperbacks) that only supports one "store" which has a very poor selection of books? You're totally locked in (what else would you expect from Sony, anyway--since they are famous for trying to shackle their customers.) I'd rather buy 60 paperbacks--reading all of them will take me about 3 years, which is probably longer than the Sony e-book reader will last--and I can get my books from any sources.
2. Until an e-book reader has a batter life of at least 8 hours, forget it. You don't need batteries to read a regular book. I read a lot on planes--in fact--that and the beach are two places where probably more books are read than any other place. And both locations are e-book unfriendly. Most flights I take are at least 1 hour, but more like 2 hours. You add in the time waiting at the airport, and you're already talking 3 or 4 hours. Trying to find an electrical outlet in an airport is not easy. So my laptop and most e-book readers are going to run out of juice and leave me...yep, leave me to waltz into the airport bookstore and...buy a paperback. And at the beach? I've yet to find a beach with electrical outlets. A day or afternoon at the beach is more than just a couple of hours. So again...if I carry an e-book reader, I'm going to be left with nothing to read after the batteries die. So why bother?
3. You can read a paperback while your plane is getting ready to take off. You can't turn on either a laptop or an e-book reader until they let you use electronic devices. This is dumb, but there's nothing I can do about it. (There has never been any evidence to suggest that our consumer electronics wreck havoc with the airplane's electronics--so not being able to use our stuff is just silly...but that's a topic for another blog.)
4. I already spend too much time at the computer. I work on a computer all day, then I'm on the computer at night writing fiction. I'm generally on the computer about 12 hours a day. When I take time off, I actually don't want to be sitting at the computer. A book gets me away from that, although I only read about 15 minutes each night in bed before I go to sleep, since when I'm not on the computer, I have chores and exercising to do.

Those are just a few of the drawbacks. But, the thing is, there are some bright spots. Everyone is getting into book trailers these days. Someone a lot smarter than me must have noticed this. There are some things that e-books and e-book readers could do that traditional books could not deliver. I'm not sure how this would play out, but I definitely think that we need to think about the e-book strengths if we want that industry to really take off.

What could be done to seduce people into buying e-books?

1. Offer content and experiences you can't get in a traditional paperback. For me, it occurred to me when I was working on a trailer for my upcoming book, Smuggled Rose, that my heroine--Margaret Lane--plays Beethoven in several scenes. Why couldn't the music she plays be part of the e-book? Make it multimedia. Include pictures (if appropriate) and music. Not quite a movie, but a little more than a traditional book. A few extras. The nice thing is that since I write mostly historical fiction, it opens up the whole idea of giving the reader more information about the era, including popular music, (introduce kids to classical music painlessly!) art, interesting historical snippets, architecture...even with modern fiction, the possibilities are enormous. Even just including links that the reader could click on that would take them to interesting and related sites (assuming wireless connectivity is available). That might even make reading an e-book on a computer a more interesting experience, too.
   
   I'm actually not sure how that would work out, because I still want the book to be a book and you don't want to turn it into a video, but creative folks a lot smarter than I am should be thinking about this. I see it more as "options" readers could indulge in--e.g. a link on the page where Margaret is playing Beethoven--that would let the reader click and hear the music, if they wished. If not, they could simply continue reading.
   
2. Create an e-book reader that is usable. That means it must have at least the following features:

• Color. Why even create a device without color these days? At a minimum, you want to be able to see the pretty cover of the book...
• Good Battery Life. 8 hours minimum. Make it 10.
• Flexible. I should be able to download content from anywhere, any bookstore on the Internet and my computer, as well. I should be able to read everything: html, pdf, lit, and all those goofy e-book reader formats.
• Lots of Room. It must hold 100 books, minimum. I mean, why not? Storage is cheap.
• Multimedia support. That's right. I want to be able to play mp3 and some videos, as well as read. I will NOT carry multiple devices, including iPods, etc so I can listen to an MP3 and then read. In fact, I want to be able to listen to my MP3s while I read.
• Wireless and USB support. Yeah. How else am I going to download content?
• Browser. Again, I want to be able to browse the Internet and download content. Duh.

Which brings me to UMPCs. Ultramobile PCs. Those tiny little full function PCs which are about the size of...Sony's e-book reader, except a lot more functional. You can read whatever you want on them because they run a regular operating system. You can even get bluetooth keyboards and a mouse if you want to do e-mail or write your great American novel on it, when you're done reading. I'm particularly fond of the OQO model 2 at the moment. http://www.oqo.com/products/index.html

The only big problem is battery life is still not that great, but they are a computer. In fact, as soon as the OQO 02 comes out with the Vista operating system on it, I'm buying one. I travel a lot and I'm soon to have a published e-book. I want one device I can use to read my book, get my email, update my website, and write while I'm traveling. I can't do personal stuff on my laptop given to me by my office, so I don't want to carry two full-sized computers around with me (plus my work Blackberry, and my personal cell phone). But I could live with my Blackberry, my personal cell phone, my work laptop, and the OQO 02.

In the meantime, e-books will continue to be the red-haired stepchild of the publishing industry...