Cynthia Reese

Oh, the agony

2010-12-06T05:50:00.000-06:00

My mama is spinning in her grave like a chicken on a spit, and Martha Stewart is clutching her chest, moaning, “This could be the Big One!”

Before I launch into this story, I should preface it with this: there is no “right” color of Christmas lights. I know that, in my head at least.

However, in the South, if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, and that’s how it was at our house when I was growing up. My mother, may she rest in peace, had dozens upon dozens of “rules” that she applied to life. I had no idea just how many rules she had (and that she had inculcated in me) until I got married to a perfectly nice perfect stranger to my family’s ways and traditions.

Some examples? Sheets aren’t on a bed properly unless you have neat little hospital corners. A present isn’t properly wrapped unless you can’t detect a smidge of tape (that one alone nearly sent me to therapy.) Don’t use the same utensil in the jelly jar that you just used in the peanut butter jar. Don’t get crumbs in the jelly. Never wear plaids and stripes at the same time.

There are also strict rules about which way the toilet paper goes on the roll, and how you fold a napkin, as well as a whole canon on the proper way to handle thank you notes. But if you think those were a lot of rules to learn, Christmas outstripped them all. Yep, you could fill an entire set of encyclopedias just on Mama’s Rules About Christmas.

The one absolute immutable law, though, dealt with lights. Christmas lights were to be dainty and small and, well, white. Preferably NOT blinking, but she could take the blinking as long as they were white.

The way she taught this law was simple. From the earliest age I can remember, if I ever admired multi-colored lights as we were driving by someone’s Griswoldville, she’d tutt her tongue and hiss, “Looks just like a jook-joint.”

For those of you not from my neck of the woods, a jook-joint is slang for beer joint, and the worst sort, the kind that the bartender might have to break up three fights in one evening alone.

Fast forward to now. The Kiddo and The Husband had long planned to string Christmas lights along our front fence. It never occurred to me to tell them to get white lights. I just sort of, er, assumed that they knew that. I mean, The Husband has been married to me for how many years? Yes, 20. And never a colored light has been lit on our hill.

But what do we have on our fence? Rainbow hues of lights. Brilliant, garish lights – that, gasp, blink. Yes, my Mama is spinning in her grave. But she was a mama, too, so here’s hoping she can understand that I had nothing to do with it.

And they crawl back out

2010-12-01T05:08:00.001-06:00

All over the world this morning -- okay, this afternoon -- writers are crawling out of their caves, blinking, yawning, stretching. They mumble something like, "Gee, where'd all the leaves on the trees go?" and "Got any more turkey left over from Thanksgiving?"

Yes, it is the NaNo crew, coming out of its annual hibernation. Hats off to all of you who managed to do it, who managed to plug your ears and forget about November being the kickoff for the insane rush of holiday madness, who managed to turn thought into kilobytes.

Now if you'll just tell me how you dispatched your internal editors, I'll use the scientific method to see if I can replicate your results on my own Internal Editor, AKA the Demon Muse in Stilettos. She's been busy muttering things like, "Ya didn't even have to cook the turkey, so what's up with the no-writing biz last week, huh? Care to explain THAT?"

But enough about my long, ongoing battle with the evil twin of Fran. In addition to death and taxes, Evil Twin Fran is a certainty, unless I can get her sidetracked on the possibility of doing a makeover on me or on closet organizers to manage an impossibly large collection of feather boas.

No, I'm sympathizing with that time warp that NaNo writers are experiencing right about now. I've had to do massive writing projects where turnaround time consisted of days, not months, and upon surfacing, I found the following to be consistently true:

1) I have lost all track of time and season. It's true. If my crash writing episode happened to fall during a season change, I was as confused as a bear after his first hibernation session. You go to sleep and it's fall, and you wake up, and the crocus buds are poking out of the snow. (Not that we have snow down here in Georgia, but you know what I mean.)

2) My spoken language skills have regressed to grunts and moans. It's as though I'd drained all language skills into my writing. Even a two-word sentence that sounds anything more complicated than "Me want" is often beyond me at times like that.

3) I get the mother of all colds. Doesn't matter that I haven't been around human beings besides immediate family for the better part of a month; the first day I venture out into the world, it's as though I was Bubble Boy and the bubble burst. It must have something to do with stress and the immune system.

4) I never want to see a computer again. OK, this is short-lived, but for a day or so, the urge to surf the web or tweet or do ANYTHING that remotely involves a keyboard? It's dead, dead, dead.

5) After 48 hours, the relief I feel at finishing turns into euphoria and a huge burst of self-confidence. I'm at my mountain-top, shouting, "Huzzah!" (Yes, I know, that's so not a cool exclamation, but I've always wanted to say it.)

So it's okay, my NaNo friends, if you grunt with surprise at the lack of leaves, and you wave your hand in the general direction of the Kleenex box. I'll know exactly what you mean.

Nope, the printed word's not doomed

2010-11-30T05:18:00.001-06:00

Technology is terrific, isn’t it? At least when it works.

I don’t have much time to read these days, at least not the “sitting down and turning the pages of a book” kind of reading. That’s hard for a girl like me, who used to scarf down three or four or even five books a week back when life was saner.
As a kid, I’d always read at least two books at a time – that way, if Mama confiscated one book when she caught me reading instead of doing my chores, then I’d have a back-up. I also learned, by sheer necessity, that if I were going to read at my house, I needed to speed read.

But even speed readers need time to finish a book. Way back when my to-do list started pushing my reading time out the window, I realized that I was cranky and grouchy and just plain hard to live with when I didn’t ingest the printed word.
So I picked up an audio book from the library to listen to in my car. Back then, the books were on cassette tapes (yes, I do realize that tells you that I am old enough to have driven a car with a cassette tape deck.) It took me a little while to get used to the weird transition of having someone read to you – it’s not as passive as TV, but I did miss the interaction with the printed word.

But at least I was “reading” after a sort, and doing it during a time when I wasn’t accomplishing much else. I hung on through bad narrators and shredded tapes, because at last I was getting my “fix.”

Fast-forward through CDs – much better than cassette tapes – and onto to the lovely, lovely leap of an iPod and free downloads from the library. No more CDs to worry about, no more having to leave the story’s characters hanging off a cliff – now I could just unhook my iPod and take it in with me, to listen to while I folded clothes or cooked supper or vacuumed. (Ha, you say, that’s a lie, because we know you hate to vacuum.)

I’d noticed though that sometimes in the downloading, though, that the last little bit of a chapter would get chopped off. No problem. I could usually figure out the last little bit as I listened to the first part of the next chapter.
But then I outlasted my odds. I came to the end of a book, and bam! The last little bit, when I was supposed to find out whether the guy was going to get the girl, it was all gone.

That just about drove me crazy. Still, I can’t knock the fact that I’ve gotten loads of good books – complete books with no glitches – downloaded from the library. I guess, though, that tells me that the printed book will never die, as at least it doesn’t require batteries and the page isn’t dependent on kilobytes cooperating.

Not Dead, Just Buried

2010-11-29T05:09:00.002-06:00

Nope. I'm not dead. Just buried.

I know the blog-stage has been darkened for a bit, and this is not even a proper blog post in and of itself.

But it's been a crazy roller coaster ride, what with me getting used to the new dayjob, and the holidays, and trying to find my way.

We've all got the same 24 hours in a day. We may not have the same amount of money, we may not have the same amount of talent, but we've ALL had EXACTLY 24 hours in the past day. That being the case, I'm really wondering what I blew my 24 hours on, because I honestly can't see that I've done much besides survive.

Sometimes, though, you get a gold star for just surviving, just treading water until the Coast Guard can scoop you out of the murky deep. And that's how I've felt lately. Sooner or later, though, just surviving isn't enough.

I read something once that made me realize how useful priorities were in making life decisions, no matter what those decisions involved: family, money, time, stuff. I believe it was a Dr. Phil book.

I'll roughly paraphrase here: say you wanted to go to Miami, and you started from DC. You're tooling down the interstate, and you take a wrong turn. Instead of going down I-95, now you're heading west. You go about two miles down that road, realize what you've done, and say, "Self, I've got to turn around."

Now a flashback to your dreaded word problems in math class. Just how far off course have you strayed? Nope, it's not just the two miles ... it's the two miles down the wrong road, the two miles back to the initial wrong turn, and the fact that you could be at least four miles further along your path and closer to your goal if you hadn't made the wrong turn in the first place.

The thing about priorities is that they make you ask this question: Is this choice leading me closer to my goal? Or further away?

Theoretically in a perfect world, we'd never choose a priority that takes us away from our goal. But we aren't computers. We don't make calculated choices. Our choices are steeped in emotion -- which is not all bad. We don't even, sometimes, recognize that whatever the choice is DOES affect our priorities.

But it's back to those 24 hours in a day. Like my "stuff" in my closets, only so much can be jammed into those 24 hours. I have to figure out what I want to get accomplished long-term. And then I have to be disciplined about using my time wisely.

That's what I'm doing now -- my brain is busy cogitating the top three things I want to get accomplished in the next year. After that, I'll be able to give a flint-hearted, cold-eyed stare to a decision and say, "Yup, that's gonna help me get there," or "Nope, that's taking me west when I wanna go south."

Fore!

2010-11-22T05:18:00.000-06:00

I'm tossing again.

Back when I first started claiming home office expenses related to my writing on my income tax, I had a lightbulb moment of why my house was so cluttered. In order to claim expenses, you have to provide what proportion of your home office is of your total heated square footage, right?

So I did. And I was aghast to find out that my heated square footage was about 1, 100 square feet. No wonder I was walking around piles of stuff with no home. I joked with The Husband that I had 3,300 square feet of junk crammed in 1,100 square feet.

Maybe we don't have quite 3,300 square feet of junk, but we have way too much stuff for such a little house. So since then, I've been going through spells of decluttering, with the hope of one day getting down to a Zen-like bareness.

To that end, I checked out a book from the library called IT'S ALL TOO MUCH, by my hero of decluttering, Peter Walsh, the guy from CLEAN SWEEP.

It's more of the same message -- you can't put three cubic feet of junk into one cubic foot of space -- but I like the way Walsh puts it. Sometimes I'm so dense that I have to hear the same message in about a million different permutations before it really sinks in.

His big push is that form should follow function. A person or family should decide what the mission is for a particular space, and then subtract out everything that doesn't promote that mission.

It was so basic and fundamental a principle that I put the book down and tackled the top of my bureau, a no-man's land of stuff that didn't really have a home. And I thought, as I did it, about life and writing.

Why is it that we tolerate so much clutter in our lives -- not just real, physical clutter, but "issue-type" clutter? We tip-toe around it and make what my mom used to refer to as "pig-paths" around the heaps. We can't do A because someone's feelings might get hurt, and we can't accomplish B until we accomplish A. We need X, but first we have to stop doing Y, just so we'll have the money or the time or the space for it.

Same thing in writing: it was such a lightbulb moment, a better way to look at it than the "kill your darlings" old saw that writing teachers always talk about. Instead of looking at your darlings, or as Peter Walsh calls clutter, your stuff, look at what you want to accomplish. What's keeping you from it?

So hopefully from now on, as I'm writing a scene or a chapter or a book, I can look at the purpose of a scene, the mission of it. What's that purpose? What am I hoping to accomplish? What do I need to get rid of to make that path clear?

In the meantime, I am back on the tossing wagon at home, so if you're hanging around my house, consider yourselves ordered to duck!

Beyond perfection

2010-11-18T05:19:00.002-06:00

The Kiddo has a Perfection Complex. I know this because I have to avert potential thermo-nuclear meltdowns on more occasions than I would like. She thinks she needs to make a 100 on every test. She thinks her hair has to be perfectly straight and glossy every day. She thinks her clothes need to match not only in color, but also to the exact temperature of recess -- never mind that recess is clocking in at 72 degrees, while school drop-off is clocking in at 39 degrees.

I swear, we don't push her. We don't nag. We don't even fuss. We don't have to. She beats herself up far more severely than we ever could.

But her perfection complex is not completely value-less for me. It provides me with a continual life lesson for me and my life and my writing.

When I was in middle school, I never worried about grades. I got what I got, which except for math were usually pretty good, at least a solid B.

Then a fateful moment occurred. A fellow student who had eeked out an A- was bewailing her grade. I glanced from the 83 or so that I'd scored on the same test and asked what the big deal was.

"My mama says that an A- is nearly a B, and a B- is nearly a C!" she explained.

I looked aghast at my 83, which was indeed numerically cheek-to-jowl with a C+. Quietly I folded my paper, tucked it in my messy book bag and vowed never again to have a B, save for math which came with a lifetime exclusion from any such blood oaths.

Fast-forward to high school. By then, even with a C in math (hey, that was a miracle for me, believe me!), I was making honor roll. Most of my grades were in the mid-90s.

That memory of the lowly station of an A minus, though, haunted me. If A minus was cheek-to-jowl with a B, then a 95, was neighbors with an A minus. That would not do.

My grade inflation slowly ratcheted upward, where no grade below a 98 in any subject save math would satisfy me. Oh, yes, I know. I was a tightly wound child.

It was college that saved me -- a psychology lecture on the Bell Curve. Suddenly I realized that statistically I was an aberration. Most people would fall within that heretofore hated C grade.

It was a lightbulb moment for me. No, I didn't start slacking and earning C's. But I stopped beating myself up about it so badly.

That's why seeing The Kiddo go down this same road is so painful for me -- especially when she started down it so much earlier than me.

Writers in particular can be just as severe on themselves. They kick and scream and wad up paper and let their internal editors convince them that any word they put to paper or commit to kilobytes is worthless.

Remember this, however. For most of the world, the prospect of writing a brief note to a teacher or a boss is only slightly less terrifying than having to speak in front of people. If you are a writer -- even a greenhorn newbie who still leans on adverbs and the passive tense -- you are already head and shoulders above most of the world.

So I give you the same advice that I give The Kiddo and myself: be kind to yourself. Be forgiving. Cut yourself a little slack. If you're doing the best that you can, it's all you can do ... and all anybody can expect of you.

Unfathomable attraction

2010-11-17T05:04:00.002-06:00

So just what IS the attraction of the UnDead?

Vampires and zombies have been so common for these past few years on deal announcements for book sales that I know someone out there thinks they're sexy -- lots and lots of someones, actually. My hat's off to any writers who can pull it off, that transformation of stinky zombies with falling off body parts or blood-sucking bats with legs into the guy you'd just die (pardon the pun, I just couldn't resist) to have a date with.

When I first started seeing the announcements, I thought, "Hmm, this is the new chick-lit fad." But vamps and the zombies that followed closely on the tails of their sexy black capes have hung around a lot longer than lattes, high heels and gripes about the workplace.

It's not that I'm judgmental. No, not at all. It's kind of like the "yawn" I feel when I see the blond-haired surfer god that some of my friends would drool over. Give me Pierce Brosnan over the newish James Bond fellow any old day.

Same thing with the UnDead. I simply cannot wrap my head around a concept like loving up on a dead-ish body, at least not long enough to suspend my disbelief and get into a book to give it a fair shake.

All of which makes this an amazingly good thing that I am not an editor -- boy, the sales I would have missed these past few years. And it seems that vamps and zombies have taken hold of the general population's consciousness, kind of like great white sharks did back in the JAWS days. For instance, a digital traffic sign in Arizona was reprogrammed by a zombie lover recently to warn, "Caution, Zombies Ahead."

I am reminded about the wisdom a furniture store owner shared with my parental units many years ago, about how he chose his inventory. "I pick a quarter of what I absolutely love, a quarter of what I absolutely despise, and the rest?" he said. "It's stuff I feel 'meh' about."

If editors chose it the same way, then they've certainly hit the jackpot with vampires and zombies ... and I would appreciate anyone who could educate me on the finer points of what makes the UnDead irresistable.

Forward, MARCH

2010-11-16T05:35:00.001-06:00

Lots of folks are hopping on the NANO bandwagon this month, and I wish them well. The whole spirit of NANO is to write a novel (or at least a good start) during the month of November, which requires you to fire your internal editor (or at least give her a month-long vacation if she's like my internal editor and won't be fired).

I've written the first draft of a novel in a month -- a full length, 80K word novel, so I know it can be done. Frequently the best approach for me in writing IS to write in a blitzkrieg session, getting it all done down in a month. Only then do I go back and tear it apart and revise it.

This month, though, it just doesn't seem doable, so I'm standing on the wharf, waving goodbye to all those aboard the NANO ship. I wish them bon voyage, but, what with a new dayjob and getting settled into a new dayjob schedule, I've just got too much baggage to go trucking across the gangway onto Good Ship NANO this year.

Still, I highly recommend it. Even if you can't do NANO in November, with the rest of the nation, take a look at your calendar, pick the least busy month (preferably one with 31 days), and set that aside for YOUR NANO.

The thing about writing, the thing that I've experienced first hand many times, is that the process of writing a novel bears a striking resemblance to walking in thigh-deep muck. As long as you keep moving, you're fine. The going can be slow, your steps frequently inelegant, but progress is assured.

Stop, though, and you sink. What's more, the mud locks you in a body cast sometimes so tightly that not even Houdini could break free.

I experienced that with every single novel I started way back before I finished my first one. I'd get to a place where I was full of doubt about where to go next, and I'd stop -- usually about Chapter Three. There, my poor project would die a death of starvation and neglect.

I'm not saying I march through the muck all the time now. In fact, I feel that muck clinging to me just now, as I've had to stop writing to adjust schedules and routines with this new dayjob. Maybe then, I'm preaching more to me than you.

Whatever the case, I know if I'm struggling with something, at least one other writer is also battling the same demon (those demons are fantastic multi-taskers.). My faint hope? That it will be of some use to you, O Struggling Writer, that I, too, have to point a stern finger at myself on occasion and bark, "Forward, MARCH!"

Money, Money, Money

2010-11-15T05:15:00.001-06:00

The one thing The Kiddo loves more than spending money? That would be making money.

The Kiddo has always been a saver, and a strategic spender: she spends other people’s money and saves her own. She’s probably got a career in politics ahead of her, no?

Her usual standard operating procedure is to put most of her money in the bank, while leaving a little mad money in her piggy bank at home. But sometimes the piggy bank oinks out a red alert signal.

Such is this case this weekend. The Kiddo wound up falling in love with one of the new “jelly” watches that all the kids are just in love with. It’s a great big man-sized watch, encrusted with rhinestones and graced with a red and black rubberized “jelly” band. She picked red and black because, unlike her dad, The Kiddo likes the Georgia Bulldogs … but she was quick to point out that it was our high school’s team colors, too.

The only problem with her watch (besides the fact that I say red and black DON’T go with everything) was that it absorbed all of her mad money. That being the case, The Kiddo quickly launched a fund-raising campaign.

Before breakfast on Sunday morning, the child had already drafted a menu of awesome opportunities, designed to part pocket change from whomever might wander past. Examples?

Well, she’d sweep three rooms (no carpet, as she hates to vacuum) for 50 cents, six for a buck. She’d trade five minutes of raking leaves for three dollars (she hates raking leaves almost as much as she hates to vacuum.)

A back or shoulder rub for a minute and a half (strictly timed) would set you back just two thin dimes – and she hooked you with free five second samples. Do you have only a dime to spare? No problem. She’d write you a very short story for just ten cents.

If you were of the female persuasion, you could have your toenails and fingernails painted for just 20 cents – you can tell that she likes painting nails, right?

The artistic stuff was the high priced items. She’ll draw a picture of your face for a dollar, and even two people for the same price. But if you wanted your wiggly pet tarantula in for a portrait with you? That will be a buck and a half, thank you very much.

I remember doing much the same when I was her age. I wonder if my mom and dad got as much of a kick out of it as I did when The Kiddo approached me with her first five-second free shoulder rub sample.

So far, she’s got a quarter out of me … that would be for the blue-light special shoulder rub she gave me – 50 seconds of pure bliss for the princely sum of 25 cents. I hope as she goes through life, she won’t forget her willingness to work hard to earn money – and to realize that some things are so fun (those fingernails and toenails, again) that they don’t even seem like work.

The Times, they are a changin'

2010-11-08T05:06:00.000-06:00

Except for the early dark evenings, I never mind saying goodbye to Daylight Savings Time, especially not this year.

Not only did I get an extra hour of sleep (or goofing-off time, actually, as I didn’t REALLY sleep), but this year, because Standard Time starts so late, it’s barely more than a month before the days start getting longer.

I’ve long had a running feud with the otherwise sensible Benjamin Franklin – or his ghost, more accurately – because he decided that fiddling with the clock would make us think we had more time.

Maybe back in the day when the sun ruled the way people lived, Franklin’s idea would have merit. But now? With Wal-Marts open 24/7? And each Wal-Mart having more lights than two or three football fields? Nope. Thomas Edison’s light bulb made Daylight Savings Time pretty much useless.

In years past, the time change was not something that netted a whole lot of discussion from The Kiddo. She just took it at face value that the grown-ups in the household knew what they were doing.

This year, no such credit was extended. The Kiddo needed an in-depth explanation about what the time-change was all about, why we did it, how we knew when to do it, who told us what time we should set our clocks to … in other words, the works. She sounded a lot like she does in the backseat whenever I’m mumbling about where I should turn if I’m in an unfamiliar area. Her question then is, “Mommy, are you sure you’re not lost?”

Getting to stay up an hour later did mollify her a bit Saturday night. Still, she kept stopping in her playing and coming to ask me, “Now, the reason I can do this is because of the time-change, right?” It was again as though she didn’t quite trust the grown-ups in the household to get the rules right.

I let her stay up because I knew that the Sunday morning after we bid adieu to Daylight Savings Time is the only morning that I ever wake up early, night owl that I am. I wanted her to sleep in, in the vain hope that if I did wake up, nothing would keep me from rolling over and indulging in a little lie-in. After all, it’s the only day of the year that I can honestly escape being called a slug-a-bed for sleeping late.

Indeed, I did wake up early, the early light bright and shining on my face at 6:45. The Kiddo slept like the log she was impersonating and seemed quite disappointed that the whole time-change ordeal had gone by painlessly for her.
Over our Sunday morning pancakes, she scrunched up her face and asked, “So Mommy, when do we get the REAL time back?”

Leave it to The Kiddo to think of Daylight Savings Time as the “real” time.

Cold and writing do not mix

2010-11-05T05:06:00.003-05:00

Let’s face it. I am strictly a sub-tropical variety.

I thrive under conditions with balmy weather, with temps hovering around the 85 degree mark, clear skies, white puffy clouds, and the gentlest warm breeze (I don’t like drafts at ALL.)

Any hotter, and I can tolerate it. Not happily, but I can tolerate it.

Any colder? Forget it. My feet turn into size 4 foot-shaped ice blocks. Forget that old wives tale about keeping warm if you keep your head covered. Me? I must have warm feet to feel any smidge of metabolic activity.

And if it’s below the mid 50s, with a gray sky and a chill wind? I start exhibiting definite signs of hypothermia.

My intolerance to cold has generated all sorts of responses over the years, from the mild eye-roll to the gnashing of teeth as my own teeth chattering disturbs someone in their peaceful enjoyment of the thermostat set on 68 degrees in the summer time. In my previous dayjob, I always took a big ugly fleece jacket that I zipped over whatever suit blazer I was wearing. The hideous thing evoked all sorts of teasing, as I wore it year-round: indoor climes of hot-natured office staff generally hover in the mid to upper 60s.

The Husband and The Kiddo are both hot-natured, and I have learned how to wrap up just short of looking like a mummy in order to survive their ceiling fans and preferred chilly temps.

When it comes to writing, it’s almost impossible to think creatively while one is shaking uncontrollably. So as I wrote the book that wound up being my first sale, I would wrap up in warm fuzzy socks and a big old jacket that The Sister had accidentally left at my house.

But then my computer became so old that I couldn’t upgrade the browser any more, and I moved operations to my laptop and my bedroom. There, ensconced in layers of warm fluffy blankets, I wrote in comfort. Not so for The Husband, as the light from the screen kept him awake.

So I cleaned out the office of all the detritus that had landed there upon my abandonment, and it’s a great place to write. Except for my cold feet. And my cold body.

I’m now in the midst of plotting the stealthy retrieval of the aforementioned big old jacket from The Sister’s house, because it was warm enough to thaw my brain, but light enough in weight to allow me more freedom of movement than a mummy, and of course, it also led to a sale. The combo of warmth and good luck is hard to beat!

Lies our English teachers told us

2010-11-04T05:03:00.000-05:00

We writers learned from an early age to revere our English teachers. After all, our English teacher was the one teacher we could count on to beam at approval when presented with our work.

I for one couldn’t count on that during, say, algebra, or ye gads, chemistry. My history teacher gave essay exams, so I could count on a beam on occasion from him, provided I didn’t confuse any dates. My high school Spanish class was the last class of the day, in a room with no air conditioning. That, combined with the sedative effect of conjugating irregular verbs, lulled me into a slumber so many times Senora sent a note home, so no smiles there.

But my English teacher … ah, I could count on her. When everyone else groaned about essays and themes, I hid a secret smile. When the rest of the class seemed completely flummoxed at the prospect of diagramming sentences, I could diagram a compound/complex sentence complete with gerund phrases and appositions.

So it is with a heavy heart that I tell you the truth. Many English teachers lie. Well, not lie, exactly, but certainly teach you habits that don’t translate into marketable fiction. And no, I’m not talking about how they crooned over THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE as a wonderful example of literature.

Thus follows a list – not a comprehensive one, but a good start – on the lies your English teacher (may) have told you.

Never write a fragment. This sounds like a wonderful command that should always be obeyed. However, try writing dialogue in complete sentences, and at once you’ll discover that your characters sound like stuffed shirts. Even in the narrative, a judicious use of a fragment is sometimes required.

Never end a sentence with a preposition. You remember the old grammarian’s favorite comeback after you ask, “Where’s something at?” She will (and I confess, I do this, too) invariably snap, “Behind the at!” and then cackle maniacally. But such a rule leads to some mighty convoluted wordsmithing. For instance, your character is asking, “Which bin should I put this in?” and suddenly, from the dusty recesses of your brain, you remember Mrs. English rapping her ruler at such a question and correcting with, “In which bin should I put this?” Like I said, you listen to Grammar Grouch and your characters will sound like stuffed shirts.

Adverbs are our friends. If there was one thing I wish my English teacher had told me, it was that the exact opposite is true. She had the right idea, of course: we need to use description and crisp imagery. But the beams that I got from Mrs. English came in response to essays and compositions larded with the hateful –ly family. I had no idea, when I first started writing toward publication, that adverbs were inferior crutches used to prop up lazy verbs.

So there you have it, just a few of the misguided notions that English teachers might possibly have let slip over the years. Yes, they were technically correct, but alas, when it comes to fiction writing, sometimes you have to bend the rules.

Honey-darlin' and other atrocities

2010-11-02T04:03:00.004-05:00

One thing I had to get used to when I was writing for the Non-Southern World?

Having my characters call each other by name.

I know. For you Above-the-Mason-Dixon-Line folks, this sounds kind of weird. But we Southerners don't always refer to each other by name. In fact, about the only time we do is when we want to indicate that little Sarah Mary-Kate Johnson or William Joseph Baines (usually referred to as Billy Joe), is in hot water up to their eyelashes.

The rest of the time? Lord bless us, but we fall back on endearments.

Each Southerner, you'll find, has his or her particular pet "fill-name" for anybody younger than 16 or so -- and sometimes younger than 60. (Hey, when you get to be a certain age, you experience a lot of those "Some-timers" moments.) A common one in the south is Sugar.

We get teased about this quite a bit, us calling every man, woman and child "Sugar." But down here, it's an efficiency method, not meant to be sexist or insulting. We can concentrate on what you're actually saying, rather than trying to frantically recall just what your name is.

You have to remember that, at the same time we're carrying on this conversation with you, we're also juggling a double-handful of etiquette rules and regulations. For instance, most every conversation requires some reference to a person's mama, and how she's doing, which requires us to recall at an instant whether (a) someone's mama is actually still on this earth and (b) whether the person is currently on speaking terms with her mama (in the south, never a given, although we do revere our mamas).

This is generally covered by another short-cut, a simple question of, "How are all the folks doing?" Such a short-cut can backfire, as in the situations where we are treated to the wholesale discussion of someone's horrid sister-in-law's daughter's antics and Great Aunt Mabel's hemorrhoid surgery. It can even touch on how Buster, Big Willie Joe's bird dog, is sorrowing away since Big Willie Joe has had to take a night shift job and is no longer able to go bird hunting.

When you start bumping around someone's family tree, the limbs of said tree are apt to knock you a bit loopy. Thus, rather than accidentally insulting someone by calling her the wrong name (God forbid the dreaded sister-in-law), we just resort to Sugar.

I could have sworn I didn't use this method, that I never called anybody by a nickname that hadn't been earned by some cute little action he or she'd done while still in diapers. However, in the wake of my classroom volunteer experience, I was dished up a nice plate of crow.

Nope, I didn't call all the little people "Sugar." I called them "Sweetie." Boy, girl, or spotted giraffe, didn't matter. They were all Sweetie to me.

And I understood then the use of such an endearment, either Sugar or Sweetie or some other similar name (I've been called Honey, Darlin', Sweetie-Pie, and even Sugar-Foot, and those are just the ones I can easily remember). It wasn't just a memory device. It was another time-saver, a contraction of language.

What we might start out saying would be: "Be sweet as sugar and do X, Y, or Z for me." We Southerners have all heard that from our mamas or our grandmothers or some person acting in a parental way. Pretty soon, as slow as we talk, that got to be way too time-consuming, and it was truncated to: "Sugar, would you ..."

Translated? That meant, I'm going to assume you're going to be sweet as sugar and do X, Y, or Z, and if I call you that, you'll hopefully live up to your name. Since Southerners are always asking people to do something for them (not commanding or demanding), and since we're always juggling an arcane set of rules and regulations about social deportment, the use of the blanket endearment was born.

Back to my problems with writing. I went to the Wal-Mart School of Dialogue, where I soaked up dialogue and regurgitated it on the page. That gave me authentic Southern dialogue, complete with all the honeys and darlin's and sugarfoots that people might (and did) insert into their conversations.

Of course, when non-southerners like my critique partner Tawna Fenske or my editor would read such lovely appellations, they recoiled in horror. How COULD I allow my hero to be so sexist as to refer to my heroine as "darlin'" or "honey" or "sugar?"

It took awhile, but I learned that (a) either Non-Southerners have the thinnest skins in the known world, or (b) we Southerners, for all our hospitality, can be a bit dunderheaded. Since I"m Southern, I'll just blame myself and do a search and destroy with Word's find command on all my "sugars" and "darlin's" and any combination there-to.

First Day Jitters

2010-11-01T05:01:00.002-05:00

I write this BEFORE my big day ... my very first day of my new dayjob, after I've been out of a dayjob since August. I cannot tell a lie: I'm a puddle of nervous jelly.

Firsts are always hard for me. I always dreaded the first day of school, the first day on a job, the first time I had to do anything new by myself. Over the years, I've made a conscious effort to turn that negative energy into something more positive. Sometimes it works and sometimes, well, it doesn't.

Authors have a lot of firsts, just like anybody else. I still remember the weeks following my first sale -- I was a complete noodly wreck when it came to how I should approach something as simple as a talk with my editor. Should I call her? Should I email her? If I called her, was first thing in the morning better, or should I wait until after lunch?

No worries -- my editor turned out to be a complete doll who exchanged emails and jokes and was just the absolute dream editor a newbie writer could have ever wanted. I've been really blessed that both the editors I've worked under were open to me calling them up and saying, "Uh, dumb question, buuuut ..."

Then of course came a whole series of firsts: my first book on the shelves, my first book signing, my first book club talk, my first you-name-it. I got myself through those "firsts" by telling myself it wouldn't all be fresh and new the next time, that I would know what the heck I was doing.

Errrr ... not true. Everything changes. And everything stays the same. That feeling of nervous jelly -- the idea that you are a complete and total fraud and that if your editor/publisher/readers ever take a good look at you, they'll figure it out? Well, it's a friend for life -- or maybe I should better classify it as a long-lost relative that attaches itself to you and won't shake loose. It's you -- but not you, if you know what I mean.

The one thing that I've learned over the years is that "firsts" of anything are just plain nerve-wracking. Knowing that, I give myself lots of prep time, so I won't do what I did on my first day of teaching 20 ga-jillion years ago -- leave the house without brushing my teeth. Yep. I forgot to brush my teeth. Lucky for me, it was just pre-planning, so the only people I subjected to Gorilla Breath (freshened with Doublemint gum bought in a hurry at a convenience store) were my fellow teachers.

I'm hoping that my first day, which I'm experiencing as you read this, turns out okay. And I'm SURE hoping that I remembered to brush my chompers.

Welcome to the bouncy season

2010-10-29T15:19:00.002-05:00

And so begins the “bouncey” season.

The Kiddo came home this Friday before Halloween with a sackful of candy and a wiggly body bouncing with excitement. It wasn’t just the wind-up of Red Ribbon Week (with its opportunities for her to go to school as a rock princess and a scary witch), but Halloween.

Halloween officially kicks off the holidays – and it gives the carte blanche to kids everywhere to eat tons of candy from then until the last Valentine’s Day sucker is gone. I swear, retailers have gone in league with dentists, and between the two have created a Faustian pact.

Even though I let The Kiddo eat her fill of candy for the first 48 hours after Halloween, and I dole out small judicious amounts every day after that, we never seem to get finished with the Halloween candy until just in time for Christmas – which brings more candy. We don’t get through with THAT candy until Valentine’s Day … and that supply lasts us until Easter. You get the picture. Summer is about the only time her poor tooth enamel gets a break (uh, no pun intended).

But the excitement is more than sucrose-based. Halloween also signals that Christmas is coming at us with the unforgiving speed of one of those oncoming locomotives in math word problems. The Kiddo realizes that she has to make the very big, very important gift decision: what is the one BIG gift she wants for Christmas?

Oh, just so many reasons to bounce.

Years ago, I had the pleasure of knowing a woman who had all her Christmas shopping done by Halloween. (No, she is still alive and well as far as I know. I did NOT dispatch this paragon of virtue to the great Boutique in The Sky.)

Me? Christmas shopping? Isn’t that something to be done after Thanksgiving? You’re not considered a slacker unless you’re in Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve buying something besides batteries, right?

But I have learned that if I don’t take advantage of all The Kiddo’s excess energy, and focus it with laser-like precision onto the one gift she might like, she’s going to be bouncing from one big gift idea to another all the way up to Christmas Eve. And we all know that Santa’s elves need some lead time to get those special orders onto the sleigh.

So even though it’s not even Thanksgiving, and my body is resisting all impulses to the contrary, Christmas-time, it is a-coming. That being the case, I’m geared up for the bounces.

Different (can be/is/might not be) good

2010-10-26T07:51:00.004-05:00

Back when I was teaching a million years ago, I had this cute little poster (that has long since gone the way of Goodwill), with a group of stodgy penguins standing apart from one obviously doing-a-jig penguin in a loosely tied, striped necktie. The caption? I just gotta be me.

I thought about that this morning as I sent off The Kiddo to school. It's Red Ribbon Week, a week dedicated to teaching drug abuse awareness and helping kids hopefully make the right choice. Each day, the kids can dress up as something ... today it was Dress Like a Rocker and Rock Out to a Drug Free Life.

All weekend, The Kiddo has been planning her outfit. She's been looking up (with my help, of course) pictures of Madonna and the girl-bands of the 1980s. She was thrilled with her ensemble -- black glittery leggings, a hot pink tank-top - black net tutu skirt combo, gobs of jewelry, her hair twigged up in a Bam-Bam ponytail and decorated with a long glittery scarf. I even helped her finish off the ensemble with a plenteous amount of purple eyeshadow.

(And no, I didn't get a picture. Had to do the makeup and the hair and that meant we were lucky to get out the door on time. I'm praying that I can get one this afternoon.)

But when we pulled up to the school, The Kiddo hesitated. Most of the kids she saw climbing out of cars were wearing the usual kid-camo of tee-shirts, hoodies and jeans. "Mommy, are you sure it's rocker day?" she asked.

"Yep."

A long silence ensued from the back seat. Finally, in a very quiet voice, she announced, "I'm gonna wait to see if anybody else is dressed up."

A backwards look into my own experience of these particular types of dress up days told me that the tardy bell might ring before she saw another kid with her daring. "I tell you what," I told her. "If you get in there, and you are the only one dressed up, you can always call me and I'll bring you a change of clothes."

That was enough of a guarantee. She hopped out of the car and headed up the walk to the door. It's 9:11 as I write this, and so far, my cell phone and the house phone has remained silent. I think I'm past the danger point.

What does all that have to do with writing, or for living, for that matter?

Different can be/is/might not be good.

Take your choice, because every permutation of that sentence is spot-on true. We writers want to know the exact "rules" of a genre or a sub-genre -- the exact mix of romance to mystery in a romantic suspense, the right time-span between The Meet and The First Kiss in a romance, the proper amount of sizzle in an inspirational, the maximum amount of tell we can have before we're no longer showing, the genre that is selling now, so no agent or editor will immediately single our way-too-different query out and file it in the round file.

Like The Kiddo, we want to blend. We want to swim along in schools of similarly-colored fish so that we don't stick out. And while that camo will protect us from getting laughed at by agents and editors and the publishing biz, it also keeps us hidden from agents and editors and the publishing biz.

It's the old saw about risk: the risks are in direct proportion to the rewards. Your way-out-there idea? Yeah, it might get laughed out of an agent's office -- maybe even fifty agents' offices. But then again? It might be the Next Big Idea.

So rocker-up, like The Kiddo did this morning. Go on out there and dare to be different. Just make sure your mom's at home and able to bring you a change of clothes if worst comes to worst.

A-Mazed

2010-10-25T05:11:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I spat in the face of my directionally-challenged self. So what if I can't tell north from south, if you don't even have to spin me around to disorient me? I didn't care. The Kiddo wanted to go in a corn maze, and I was going to take her.

Admittedly, the first maze of the afternoon set me up for some false confidence. It was easy-peasy, whereas the Phase 2 Maze was anything but. Filled with dead-ends and endless loops, the maze led us around our elbow to get to our nose.

But the sun was high, and way above the corn stalks were scaffold platforms with event staff making sure nobody got terribly lost, so we soldiered on.

I thought about a lot of things while we plowed through the trails in our very slow trek through the maze. I thought about what a terrible lab rat I'd make. I thought about aliens and Mel Gibson and crop circles. I thought about what a fabulous setting a corn maze would make for a television show like CRIMINAL MINDS, where a killer lurked in one of the dead-ends of the maze. (You can tell, can't you, that my claustrophobia was setting in toward the end, huh?)

But mostly I thought about something I've long been convinced of. The big decisions in our life are pretty much already decided by the time we get there. No, I'm not talking about pre-destination or anything like that, and I truly believe that no matter where you are in life, you can do a 180 and go the other way.

Still, every turn that carried me deeper into that corn maze was preceded by a turn before that one. And it's like that in life. The little decisions I make, decisions like, "Oh, I won't write tonight," or "I'll write that errand on my to-do list later," well, those are the very decisions that make the big decision ahead of me almost a fait accompli.

For instance, say I choose to NOT write an errand down on my list, thinking that surely I'll remember it. But of course I don't, and then at the last minute, I have to do it in a very inconvenient, inefficient way. That in turn steals the tiny sliver of time I have to write, which then puts me further behind on my goal to finish the current project.

Before we enter the Big Rat Race called Life, then, we need to think like a well-educated lab rat. What do we want? The cheese, of course. And when do we want it? ASAP. That being the case, whatever our priorities in life are -- and for me, that's my family and my writing -- we need to be single-minded and let every decision guide us closer to those things.

How do you handle life's little decisions? Do they stack up like bricks and wall you in? Or are you able to jump over the walls they build before you're completely boxed in?

How to make the lightbulb moment a long-lasting light source, and other lies I tell myself

2010-10-21T04:52:00.001-05:00

My Twitter friend and fellow writer Julie Weathers asked me to join in with an impromptu blog tour about my process. I've written about my writing process before (it involves Excel spreadsheets, chapter outlines and plotting out the wazoo.)

But since I'm on a mission to achieve both World Domination and to turn the pantsers of the world into plotters, I'll wax eloquent about it all over again. I'll try to take it from a slightly different angle -- more about how I turn an idea into a workable novel that I can then rip apart.

Take for instance, the story behind WHERE LOVE GROWS, my second pubbed book. This story is just so incredible that few people actually believe it. It says something about writers that they hear it and INSTANTLY know it's true.

Writers will tell you that there's no shortage of good ideas. But really, the trick is to take those good ideas and tweak them into something unique. It doesn't have to be a totally new wheel that you invent ... just a SUPERIOR wheel to those currently in the Bedrock City Tire Emporium.

The story germinated from a single irritant, yes, like a pearl does from a grain of sand annoying a poor old oyster. The Kiddo, then three, was in love with Kenny Chesney's music, especially SHE THINKS MY TRACTOR'S SEXY. I would pick her up from daycare and she would want to hear that CD ad nauseum. Don't get me wrong: I think Kenny's a pretty cool dude ('specially from the neck down), but every day? The same CD?

Shortly before I applied hot pokers to my eyes to see if THAT torture was more entertaining, my mind made that weird leap it sometimes does.

What kind of girl would think a guy with a farmer's tan, who makes a living driving a tractor, is sexy?

My writer's mind noodled that thought through the 100-gajillion times I listened to the song. You have to admit, Chesney's lyrics will create vivid images in your mind, and already I had a vision of a few scenes called for in the song. But a farmer? As a hero?

Then, NPR ran two different stories on Morning Edition, one about this ew-inspiring leafless vine called the giant dodder vine, and the other on crop insurance scams. The dodder vine, at first, didn't do a thing for me, except make me glad I wasn't a tomato in Texas (where the dodder vine actually lives.)

But then I heard the crop insurance scam, and I thought, Hmh. That would be a neat job for a hero, a crop insurance investigator.

My brain stubbed its toe on one problem, though: male investigators were more than a little cliche.

I kept working at that problem in my head. That's how I do things: once presented with a problem, I chew on it until I get it solved.

So picture this. I'm driving in from work, The Baby Kiddo singing "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" at the top of her lungs in the back seat, the insistent beat about to drive me out of my mind. Not to mention, I'm still worrying the twin problems of how to make a male investigator un-cliched, and how to make a farmer sexy.

I pull up into the garage. The song's still playing. My brain makes another leap. "Bet that farmer was never into crop insurance fraud." It was like nuclear fission after that. Farmer - crop insurance fraud - weird vine - make the GIRL the investigator.

The big pix in place, the huge leaps leapt, I started in on my usual process. For brevity sake's I've done it as a list.

- Write a movie synop -- if it won't hold together for the few minutes long enough to tell a friend about a movie, it's doomed to fall apart like overcooked pasta left too long in a pot of warm water.

- Write a character arc synop -- this is a longer synop, one where I take the characters through their growing pains. After all, if my farmer doesn't learn and grow, just being sexy won't be satisfying for my fab female investigator. Likewise, the fab female. Spunky's fine, but it's got a short half-life.

- Write a chapter by chapter outline. No big, just a sentence or two summary of the major plot points.

I'll send these off to my CPs (Tawna Fenske, for one), and they'll poke about a thousand holes in it, and then I'll fix it, and then I'll start writing. And yeah, I pretty much DO stick with my revised chapter outline, along with my Excel spreadsheets that I use to be SURE there aren't plot holes or loose plot threads or under-done character arcs.

Why, yes. I HAVE been told I'm an anal OCD woman. Thanks for the compliment!

Oh, happy day!

2010-10-20T05:09:00.000-05:00

I have a biiiig announcement -- no, not a book deal, but something just as important to Reese Family, Inc.'s bottom line.

I. Have. A. Job. Offer.

A good one. With a good company. Making what I was making with my previous employer.

Oh, and did I tell you the BEST news? The office? It's five minutes from my house.

Of course, my REAL office would be mostly in my car, but that's something I've grown accustomed to over the years.

I HAD planned to write about how the job hunt process was remarkably similar to the Great Agent Hunt, especially after Jeffe Kennedy had announced her very interesting post today about the same thing. I trust serendipity, trust timing, and after my good news this afternoon, I can't ignore such big smoke signals in the sky. Maybe someone somehow will get some encouragement out of what I have to say.

Before I embarked on this job hunt, I hadn't actively pounded the pavement for a job since 1992, during the middle of another recession. It was hard then -- nobody would believe an ex-teacher would STAY an ex-teacher. I looked, on and off, for about a year for a job, but I was able to be picky then. I only applied for the jobs that sparked my interest.

The job changes I've had since, for the most part, were jobs that sort of fell in my lap. I never was out of work between them. And then .. boom. Right outta left field, I found myself without a job, without insurance, WITH a family who depended on me.

I cried. And I don't cry that often. The Husband says that I'm the sort of person who would join the cockroaches after thermo-nuclear war, scrabbling out from under the wreckage, saying, "OK, let's make the best of it." But this just socked me in the gut.

But like the roaches, I soldiered on. I found a job opening or two, and I read them, and I thought, "Huh. Sounds like something I could do. I'll apply." Repeat, repeat, repeat.

In the real world? No response means no for prospective employers, too. The most discouraging times were when I'd sent in my best polished resume and my best cover letter and my best list of references, and I'd wait for a call to interview ... only to have a silent phone, and a few days later, see the job posting quietly disappear from the website.

That's remarkably how it was with me pre-pubbed (or even post-pubbed) and writing. I'd think I nailed it, only to, at best, get a "meh" response.

Like Jeffe points out in her blog, the query letter is your cover letter, the resume your partial or your synop. The request for more? Well, that's the interview in job-hunting terms. And the competition? It's just as stiff. One job that I applied for had over 100 applicants -- and it had only been posted on ONE website for two weeks. I felt like a winner just getting an interview for that one.

The one thing that I kept holding onto throughout this process is the fact that so much of the time, either in writing or job-hunting, agents, publishers and prospective employers are right when they shrug and say, "It's not you, it's me." Just as I don't ever want to write for a house or an editor or an agent that feels tepid about me, I didn't want to work for someone who was just using me to fill a hole. I wanted them to love me, to feel excited about me. And if they didn't feel that way, then that wasn't where God wanted me to be. Same with you -- DON'T sell yourself short.

These folks? They like me, they really, really like me! Fingers crossed that everything works out -- for you in your publishing dreams, and for me in my prospective dayjob.

Some unexpected wrinkles

2010-10-19T05:01:00.001-05:00

You know how I blogged about straightening out my office so that I could house my laptop? Well, it's been marvelous for my work ethic -- amazing how much more business-like you feel in an upright position as opposed to a semi-horizontal one with your covers up to your chin.

But it has had one unexpected development that I didn't plan on. I now have company. Scads of it. Loads of it.

Yes, my lovely, loving family wanders in and peers over my shoulder. They share. They talk. They converse about their day. They ask me, "While you're on the computer, could you look up ..." They remind me that the water is boiled out of my beans. They remind me that the beans haven't even made it out of the freezer yet and INTO the water. They make dire predictions about the fate of the universe if I don't get up and liberate the beans from the deep freeze and plunge them into said boiling water.

In the spirit of Linda Grimes, I have done little to make things hospitable for them. The one extra chair in the room is the way station for The Kiddo's puppy blanket that we never finished, and I haven't made any effort to provide additional seating.

But that's okay. My fam, they're understanding. They bring their OWN chairs. Or they simply pull up a square of carpet.

Maybe it's the proximity of the room near the heart of the house -- kitchen as the right ventricle, living room with flat screen, left ventricle. Or maybe I just look more alert and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed sitting up at a computer.

All I DO know for certain? It's flat driving me crazy. And now that the cat has gotten into the act, well, I may be shopping for a strait-jacket sooner than I thought.

Yep, the cat. The other day, when I was blissfully alone, hard at work searching for gainful employment, in walked Max. He was not taking no for an answer. He sat by my chair. He stretched one paw and tapped on my thigh. He cleared his cat throat and gave me a polite, "me-row?" which I ignored the first dozen times. Then when I tried to take his picture, he abandoned "kitteh haz huge appetite" wide-eyed appeal, and instead went for the brass tacks -- the fierce feline stare.

With Max, that makes a full count of the household census laying siege to my sanctuary. What IS a writer to do?

Mad as a Hatter

2010-10-18T05:01:00.000-05:00

Although I am mad as a hatter right now, I'd sure like me some mad hatting skills. It would get me out of a hole that I dug for myself last October.

Last year, The Kiddo dressed up as a witch for Halloween. Shortly thereafter, in a move to fend off masquerade ideas that might generate nightmares (that would be zombies, ghosts, vampires, and anything to do with spider webs) and prove to be as hard to find as her last year's witch's costume, I suggested an easier disguise: a cowgirl.

I sweetened the deal with something I knew The Kiddo wanted - boots. She really had her eye on a pair of stiletto boots that were pictured in my Cinderella of Boston's catalog. I did not totally disabuse the notion. I figured we could find her some moderately heeled boots, put her in a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, stick a straw hat on her head, and presto, a cowgirl is born.

Fast-forward to October 2010, past August and my job layoff, past September and the end of my severance pay. The witching hour was upon me, and The Kiddo reminded me of my almost (well, it seemed that way now) Faustian bargain. Boots? Gulp. Well, at least, I thought, the jeans and a shirt that would do were already hanging in her closet, and the hat should be relatively easy.

Ha.

Thanks to The Kiddo's very generous grandparents, the boot were the easiest part of the whole deal. They picked up the cutest little cowboy boots you ever did see, and -- bonus points -- the boots fit me. They'll look great with a pair of my jeans once The Kiddo outgrows them.

So I started trying to find a "cowgirl" shirt. It developed, after much time on the web with The Kiddo, that a "cowgirl" shirt was a red gingham shirt. I finally found one, for a modest ten bucks, and then The Kiddo confessed that she probably wouldn't be caught dead in it as of November 1. Retreat, rethink and forward march.

We found a tee-shirt and denim vest combo that she said she WOULD wear after November 1. I may go ahead and order the gingham shirt just in case it's cold, and then force feed her into it a couple of more times this winter just to get my Return on Investment.

Onto the easiest part of the costume, the hat.

Only, of course it wasn't. The millinery acquisition process had as many provisos and caveats and ixnays as a treaty of peace must. First of all, the hat had to be WHITE. No villain headgear for The Kiddo. And second, it couldn't just be any sort of hat. It had to be a tightly-woven straw hat that looked solid (I've since learned, along with far too many other arcane details, that such a hat is called shantung) or wool felt. Third of all, she wanted one WITHOUT sparkles but WITH discreet decoration: turquoise beads would be good, or concho shells or anything that ran the price up to obscene limits. There were also limits and provisos about the shape of the brim. AAAACK.

I can't seem to find any hat that would actually fit her beautiful little head for any price less than $20, and all the ones I've found for that garner only a thumbs down.

The Kiddo took matters into her own hands today and began googling hats. She found the perfect hat: a 35 buck hat that is exactly like the one George Strait wears. Never mind that she doesn't know George Strait from a hole in the ground -- whoever he is, The Kiddo opines, she thinks he has extremely good taste in headgear.

No, I am not buying the child a $35 hat. I might if I knew she would wear it more than once -- the boots have been a spot-on investment, as they are almost inseparable from her feet. And yes, there are some who might argue that $35 is a terrific deal on a Halloween costume. In other, flusher, economic times, I might agree.

Not now. So that means I am looking for a cowboy hat (child hat size 6 and a half) that is white or very light, that we can add some beads or turquoise or fake concho shells to, and that is very, very cheap.

Somewhere the devil is laughing at me and saying that if I'd let The Kiddo go as a mummy or a zombie, I could have used old sheets ripped into strips.

Great pictures on the radio!

2010-10-15T05:00:00.001-05:00

Confession: For years, I was a free-loader.

I listened to Georgia Public Radio for a huge chunk of my childhood and all of my adulthood, and I never picked up the phone and called in a pledge.

And it wasn't as if I wasn't getting something out of it, either. I can't tell you how many ideas I've gotten off National Public Radio programs like All Things Considered or Morning Edition. Wait -- I can tell you one thing: the idea for my book WHERE LOVE GROWS? Yep, it came to me in a lightbulb moment after I heard two programs at two different times on NPR. One was about crop insurance fraud (who knew?) and the other was about a weird parasitic vine that had no leaves (eww! Stuff out of B-Movie plots!).

Yeah, I know, you're thinking NPR really stands for Nerdy People's Radio, and sure, you could be right. But don't turn your nose up at it before you take a listen. It's a great resource for writers.

Number one, it's got a wealth of information, and much of it is available on-line in archive format. Whether it's info to help you flesh out your research or warm and fuzzy human interest stories which give you insight into what makes people tick, NPR is terrific. I get story ideas there all the time -- the latest one after I heard a profile about a guy who works for the FDIC and comes in to take over failing banks. Did you know that bank takeovers almost always happen on a Friday? So if you see a lot of strange suits in your bank on a Friday afternoon, get really suspicious.

But more than the info, it's the delivery that will help you improve as a writer. Radio has to rely on creating word pictures, even in this digital age where you can go to the website and look at an accompanying picture. I've learned more on showing and not telling from NPR stories than almost any other kind of writing. The writers create such strong images, and I examine those images to see what makes them work. Then I try (very hard) to use those techniques in my own writing.

Back to my confession. Even with all the value that I got out of NPR -- a book deal, for gracious sakes -- I'd never plunked down my money. Don't get me wrong. I always INTENDED to. Somehow, though, I never did.

Then just before last Christmas, The Kiddo was watching GPB TV, our state's public TV station, in the morning before school when a fund-raising drive came on. Apparently, the network was short on funds because people like me sat on their hands.

The Kiddo looked up at me and said, "What's that for?" in response to the fund-raising drive. So I explained that public didn't necessarily mean free, and that it was folks like us who made it possible for her to watch CURIOUS GEORGE in the morning.

"You mean WE give them money?" she asked.

Color me embarrassed. I hemmed and hawed until she got out the basic info that I was a free-loader. And then color me twice over embarrassed because she announced:

"That's what I want for Christmas, Mommy! Can we give money to them like we give to the ASPCA?"

So I did. It wasn't much, my pittance of a donation, and this year's donation during the Fall Membership Drive wasn't much, either. But hey, when I see or hear "brought to you by viewers like you," I know that it really is me and The Kiddo who help out.

This is my state's time to do the Fall Membership Drive. So be better than me and don't be a free-loader. Go to GPB's website (or your own public radio/TV network) and give what you can. Who knows? What you hear on NPR might give you the idea that will turn into a sold book!

A whole lotta ma'ams and sirs

2010-10-14T17:01:00.001-05:00

My friend Tawna Fenske just does not understand the importance of adding "ma'am" or "sir" to yes or no. She, being the Yankee she is (okay, Pacific Northwesterner, but anybody above Virginia can technically be called a Yankee) sort of thinks it is an insult.

Yankee-types do this, making the wrong-headed assumption that being told "ma'am" is the equivalent of being carded in the chain drug store where you've sneaked to buy your beer or liquor on the faint hope that the other Baptists won't see you buying fermented fruit of the vine (or hops.) They think either being carded or being addressed as "ma'am" is a slight to one's age.

They couldn't be further from the truth. In the South, we have highly complex rules of "ma'ams" and "sirs." The rules are so convoluted that it's hard for me to pick them apart to instruct my wonderful Yankee friends all the ins and outs, rather like a native of Beijing trying to explain the Chinese culture to round-eyes.

So here goes my feeble attempt. Proper Southerners say "ma'am" or "sir" when:

You're addressing anybody that is obviously more than 18 and at least five years your senior. (Oh, pooh, you can tell. And if someone isn't quite at the five-year mark, they'll blush and say, "Aw, you don't have to call me ma'am!" You cease and desist, and no harm done.)

You're addressing your parents, even if (the shock of it!) said parent isn't quite 18 yet.

You're addressing your parents' parents, your parents' neighbors, your parents' boss, or anyone who bends down from the waist, cracks a fake smile and asks, "Well, sonny, how old are you?"

You're addressing someone in authority, even if said person is younger than you. By authority, I mean anyone who can make your life even temporarily miserable by saying no or yes when you strongly desire the opposite answer. That includes the return clerk at Wal-Mart, the whipper-snapper state trooper with not a hair of fuzz on his face, or the painted-up tart in the government office.

You're addressing a teacher -- whether it's yours or your child's or even your child's child, even if she's wearing blue jeans, T-shirt, and flip flops and has some mighty weird new-fangled ideas from that teacher college she went off to.

You're addressing a person who might possibly be giving you money for a good or a service. (So yes, it is feasible that you could say "yes, ma'am" to a clerk, and the clerk could say, "yes, ma'am" right back at you, and nobody would go away offended.)

You're addressing someone who is clearly better educated than you are.

You're addressing someone who is clearly LESS educated than you are.

You're addressing a preacher or his wife. Assistant pastors and youth pastors don't count, not until they get promoted up.

You're addressing a doctor or a doctor's nurse. Doctor's nurses actually are smarter than the doctors (well, most of the time) and at the first sign of disrespect, they can lose your chart and make your life immortal torment. A well-placed "ma'am" can avert such travesties.

You know you're in the wrong.

You're in ANY doubt about whether you SHOULD say, "yes, ma'am."

You're addressing anyone with a weird, Yankee-fied accent, because we Southerners love to see Yankees squirm, and what with all of our time being so prim and proper, we've gotta get our licks in somewhere.

So as you can see, down here in Georgia, we're pretty much "yes, ma'am-ing" and "no, sir-ring" all over the place, except the kids who are less than ten and have been corrupted by MTV and the Disney channels, which is pretty much all kids. These types drive us older Southerners slap-dab crazy with all their "uh-uhs" and "Hmh-huhs" and other various grunts and groans that bear no resemblance whatsoever to a very simple "yes, ma'am" or "no, ma'am."

But since we were the same way (without MTV or Disney to be our parents' scapegoat), I guess after about age ten, it will finally take. I'll keep you posted, ma'am.

Power of pink

2010-10-13T04:53:00.001-05:00

The Kiddo's hairdresser (and a friend of mine) was giving away free hair extensions today after school in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. Yes, the extensions are bubblegum pink. I hesitated for about a millisecond before I let her do it, mainly because I figured The Husband would have a heart attack. When it comes to most things, he's the Traditional Southern Dad, using the Traditional Southern Dad's motto: If my dad wouldn't allow it, I shouldn't, either.

I told the ladies at school that I might have to bum up a couch after The Husband got a gander at the hair extensions ... and The Kiddo was as jumpy with excitement as a cat in a rocking chair factory. She wanted, like any kid, to see the resulting explosions.

What I hadn't bargained on, though, was The Husband's temporary lack of observation skills. Usually, he pounces on anything different. The Kiddo danced and spun and bounced in front of him, and, while he knew SOMETHING was up, he didn't know what. Finally she just about had to point to the hot pink streaks in her hair.

He acted all cool and nonchalant about it then, trying to cover up how unobservant he'd been. It reminded me of the the trait that ALL writers must have: being a nosy busy-body that latches onto any and every change.

Now I'm not saying that nosy busy-bodies are inherent writers. I'm saying we writers need to be sure we develop that trait. Whether it's eavesdropping in Wal-Mart (the better to develop our dialogue, m'dear), or staring at some wildy-patterned, definitely What-Not-To-Wear pants (the better to dress our characters, m'dear), our powers of observation have to be honed.

One thing that mission does is make wait times far less boring. The other day, while I waited in our local Department of Labor office, I turned my attention to the scuffed walls, the various people crowded around the tables, their dress, their attitudes, the expressions of exasperation on the staff's faces. I did it intentionally, because I wanted to be able to mine that experience later on, whenever I had a character unemployed.

Don't just stop at the sights and sounds, though. My CP Tawna Fenske is great about pointing out where I can beef up my scene building with the other, less obvious, senses: smells, tastes and touch. She reminds me to layer in an almost wrap-around experience.

Of course, this could be just another writer's justification for being the aforementioned nosy busybody. Even so, isn't that its own reward?

More than words can say

2010-10-12T05:06:00.001-05:00

If you're a regular reader of this blog, and you aren't yet convinced that I was a weird kid, you must have been a weird kid, too -- weird, like me, in the nicest possible way.

We lived waaaay out in the sticks, and the library was too far for us. Ergo, I read a lot of books that probably I shouldn't have, including my mom's stash of Cosmopolitan. (Which is why I don't have Cosmo in my house. But really, they actually did have some pretty interesting serious articles beyond those bared-breasted cover girls.)

One book that I read, though, has served me well over the years. It was a book club edition that my mom didn't order but got anyway, because you know how those slips of "not this month, thank you" never get logged before the book-of-the-month gets mailed. It was The Body Language of Sex, Power & Aggression, by Julian Fast.

Writers, you need to read this. PEOPLE, you need to read this. It's a thin little book, and the format is all Q&A. Fast takes real-life types of questions and answers them with anecotal info or results of studies that he knows about.

What's that got to do with writing? If you want to show instead of tell, everything. Instead of just appending "nervously" to "he said," how can you show a character is nervous? Fast points out in one question's answer that the hands often give away nervousness and anxiety.

Same thing with showing the developing romance between characters. How can we get away from all those meaningful (but repetitive) gazes? What are some flirtatious gestures that our heroine can make toward the guy who will wind up as her one true love?

Back when I read the book, of course, my biggest kick was gluing a teacher to one side of a classroom. Yep, if you lean forward in your desk while a teacher is on your side of a classroom, then lean back when she wanders toward the other side, you will soon have her glued to your side of the line. And yes, I did it. But hey, I don't fall for it whenever I'm teaching, so I guess I learned from my devilment!

I'm not sure if the book is even in print, and certainly there are more recent books on body language, but don't forget this tool in your writing. Read up on body language. It helps introverts like so many of us writers read the human population better, AND it helps us communicate more vividly. That's a win-win in my book.

A clean well-lighted space

2010-10-11T05:02:00.003-05:00

I envy people who are instinctively neat. You know, those folks who strike the balance between slovenly slob and OCD freak? I tend toward the messy end of the spectrum, as much as I wish it weren’t so. I was reminded of that this weekend when my sister helped me tackle a project I’ve been putting off for awhile.

Every house has at least one room that is a magnet for junk, or at least the stuff you don’t know where else to put and haven’t yet consigned to the junk heap. The room in my house that had been tarred by that brush was my office.

Years ago, the office/study was one of my favorite spots in the entire house. It’s a tiny little thing, but when we first moved in, it was home to all my books, thanks to a wall of built-in bookshelves, and a drop-leaf secretary.

Fast-forward fifteen years, and even after purging a great many books in a quest toward Zen-like bareness, the room bore little resemblance to the place I wrote my first complete manuscript. While you could tell it was sort of an office, the old computer was as obsolete as a dodo bird (it still ran on Windows 95), and in corners were jammed bits and pieces of detritus that was part and parcel of life as the Reeses know it.

An automotive vacuum that didn’t really work? Check. The box of stuff from my dayjob office while I await a new dayjob home? Check. The boxes of leftovers from my personal copies of my books? Check. Usable space and a clean, orderly study? Eh, let me get back to you on that.

My sister had heard my whining and my complaining about this place – and also the whining and complaining of The Husband, who was tired of me working beside him as he tried to sleep. The light from my laptop screen did not a sleep inducer make.

So this weekend The Sister took pity on me and popped the whip. Me? I took one look at the room and threw up my hands. “I don’t even know where to start,” I said.

She shoved the defunct auto vacuum cleaner in my hands. “This. Outside under the garage now.”

And that’s how we did it, piece by piece, decision by decision on each piece of junk, paper, file folder or obsolete hunk of technology we came across. Is it like I want it? Not on your life. Am I typing this on a computer that is not shining in The Husband’s eyes? Oh, yeah.

As usual, I’ve come away not just with a more organized space, but a larger life lesson. Decisions don’t make themselves. People make them, even when they’re busy NOT making them. And so often, the things we put off, whether it’s clearing out an office or deciding what to wear, are choices we’re intimidated about making. By the end of the night, though, I was a pro at giving a piece of “office treasure” a callous glance and saying, “Toss it.”

Patience, grasshopper

2010-10-07T05:01:00.000-05:00

The one thing (beyond some modicum of innate talent at stringing words together) necessary to make it in writing?

Patience.

I was telling this to the group of eighth graders I mentioned in an earlier post. I could see their eyes roll. I could hear the switches tripping off in their brains as they decided, "yep, another grown-up telling me to hang tight." (Or whatever kids say these days to indicate patience.)

But now that I am a hundred fifty eight years old (that's the age I give the third graders I'm helping when they ask me how old I am), it seems pretty clear to me that the thing that separates the goats from the sheep, the wheat from the chaff, is patience.

Patience has helped me realize what I don't know -- and boy, I don't know a lot. (Please don't tell The Husband this. He's under the impression that I am a near genius, or at least he thinks I think I am.) By being patient, I've learned, more than anything, that I have to ask questions.

Patience has helped me forgive myself time and again for not being the perfect writer, capable of writing the perfect novel on the first try and in the perfectly short period of time I'd like to crank out said perfect novel.

But more than teaching me what I don't know and helping me forgive myself for my ignorance, patience helps me endure the very nature of the publishing beast. That's hard to comprehend in the age of microwavable frozen rice (yes, check it out, it's in your grocer's freezer. Amazing that 20 minutes is too long to wait for rice. Now we have to nuke it.)

Molasses in the winter moves at the speed of light compared to publishing's meandering, poky pace. Without being able to white knuckle the hurry-up-and-wait aspect of the business of writing, I would have given up a long time ago. I would have never been published the first time, much less three more.

Show me two writers, one a phenomenally talented but impatient sort, and the other not-quite-so talented but infinitely more patient, and I guarantee you, the patient one will win out. Agents and editors don't appreciate fidgety types any more than your third grade teacher did. In writing and publishing -- just like life -- patience is indeed a virtue.

Finding true posterity

2010-10-06T04:57:00.001-05:00

I have achieved true fame.

Nope, it's not that I've won the Pulitzer. I haven't hit this week's NYT Best Seller list. Oprah hasn't asked me to be on her series finale.

But all the same, I AM somebody.

Today I found out that an eighth grader is doing a report for her English class. The assignment? Write about a Georgia author.

The author?

That would be yours truly.

Ahem. I'd like to thank the academy --

Oh, wait. That's for another honor altogether, isn't it?

In all seriousness, I am a bit swimmy-eyed at the thought of myself being the topic for some student's English paper. It isn't often that romance authors are considered serious enough authors to be the topic of a paper, and kudos to her teacher for not exhibiting any prejudice or bias just because I'm one of those "trashy romance writers."

I suppose I am more than a little sadistic in taking glee from the idea that some poor innocent kid is slaving over a word processor, writing about me and my books and my writing and how it relates to Georgia. But then, I am a former teacher, and they don't allow you into any self-respecting school of education if you don't get a buzz off giving a pop quiz. Twisted, yes, I may be, but in the nicest possible way.

Perhaps this is the first wave in romance authors getting the respect we deserve. So what if we don't end our books in bleak desperation, a la Flaubert in his MADAME BOVARY? We give value for the money, a happily ever after on demand. So hopefully somewhere there's another English teacher who is assigning a student a paper on some other writer -- and hopefully that teacher will let the student go ahead and write about an addicted-to-HEAs romance author.

Until then, well, I'm just basking in my new-found fame. I just hope the student's dog doesn't eat me.

Yes to the elephant, no to skinny-dipping

2010-10-05T05:11:00.001-05:00

A cousin of mine sent me an email the other day titled Bucket List. Since she recently crossed one of her bucket list items off (driving from California to Georgia), I opened it. It had a list of things that I was supposed to check if I'd done it. Color me surprised that I found several on the list that I couldn't put an X by.

Since I'm in full confession mode in the wake of my handwriting post, I figured it might be interesting for you to see just how sheltered I've been, and yet I still consider myself a writer. Seems to me that my education needs to be furthered a bit, don't you agree?

Here's the list.

( ) Shot a gun
(  ) Shot anyone
(x) Gone on a blind date
(x) Skipped school
( ) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Alaska
( ) Been to Cuba
( )Been to Bahamas
( ) Been to Europe
( ) Been to Las Vegas
( ) Been to Mexico
(x) Been to Florida
(X) Been to California
( ) Been to Maine
(x) Been on a plane
( ) Been on a Cruise Ship
(X) Finished reading books you started
(X) Sang Karaoke
(X) Paid for a meal with coins only
( ) Made prank phone calls
(x) Laughed until some beverage came out of your nose
(X) Read the Bible completely through
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Made snow angels
(x) Danced in the rain
(X) Skipped Rocks
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
( ) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X) Watched the sunrise with someone
( ) Stayed out all night.
(x) Blown bubbles
( ) Gone ice skating
( ) Gone skiing
( ) Camped out under the stars
(x) Seen something so beautiful that it took your breath away
(x) Are or have been married
(X) Have children.
( ) Have Grand Children
(x) Have / had a pet
( ) Been skinny dipping outdoors
(x) Been fishing
(x) Been boating
( ) Been water skiing
( ) Been hiking
( ) Been scuba diving
(X) Been camping in a trailer/RV
( ) Flown in a small 2-seater airplane
( )Flown in a glider
(X)Been flying in a helicopter
( ) Been flying in a hot air balloon
( ) Been BUNGEE-jumping
(x) Gone to a drive-in movie
( ) Ever sneak into a drive-in movie
(X) Done something that should have killed you (could have)
(x) Done something that you will regret for the rest of your life
( ) Been to Africa
( )Taken a train ride
(X) Ever ride an elephant (nope, the pix with the elephant isn't me -- I was about 7 when I rode a pachyderm.)
(x) Ever eaten just cookies for dinner
(X) Ever been on T.V.
( ) Ever steal any traffic signs
(x) Ever been in a car accident
(x) Had a nickname

(x) Name ever been in the local paper
(X) Ever been to Asia
( ) Ever been to Australia
( ) Been sky-diving
( ) Driven/ridden in a car going more than 100 mph
( ) milked a cow
( )went to summer camp
( ) plucked a chicken

Favorite drink: Iced tea
Tattoo: Nope
Do you drive a 4-door vehicle: Yep
Favorite number: 7
Favorite holiday: Thanksgiving
favorite dessert: apple pie and ice cream
Where do you see yourself  in 10 years: Seeing my daughter start college, maybe a full time writer

So of this list, what surprised you the most about me? What have you done that I haven't? How have you mined those experiences to use in your writing? Share a few stories in my comments trail, and if you'd like, consider yourself tagged to use this in YOUR blog!

Exodus of the eggplant

2010-10-04T05:02:00.002-05:00

It may be another 20 years before I attempt fried eggplant again.

I am not one for batter-fried vegetables. Give me my tomatoes ripe and sliced, my squash stewed or stir-fried, my okra stir-fried, and my eggplants … well, my eggplants, I’m just not sure about.

My family did not share my antipathy for batter-fried veggies. Hot grease and flour or any kind of batter could only improve a vegetable, in their opinion. I can remember plates and plates of the greasy stuff, passed down to me as though it were some rare delicacy.

I also remember the disgusting grease in the frying pans that had to be discarded afterwards, and it was my job to dispose of said grease. After all, my legs and my back were the youngest and most flexible.

When I got married, I chose a country-boy, more’s the pity for him, because so much of my limited cooking repertoire is not country-cookin’. While my hands can make a mean pan of lasagna and a fairly good fajita, I fall short when it comes to staples such as butter beans and batter-fried veggies. In fact, in 20 years of marriage, I can’t remember any time that I have ever previously tackled fried eggplant. Too much mess for way too little payoff.

But along came a sale on eggplants for a dollar each. And I thought, “Self, that’s a purple veggie, and The Kiddo should be eating purple veggies, at least according to the guilt-inducing info sheets her school sends home.” And then I thought, “Eggplant parmesan – I’ll do it like I do chicken parm, and she WILL eat it.”

Thanks to my favorite cook Alton Brown, I learned that I must first salt and purge the eggplant to get rid of the nasty bitterness. So I prepped the sliced eggplant, let it dry, rinsed all the salt off, and then took the slices through a one-way trip through flour, egg, and a combo of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. Into the hot grease they went, and out came a plate full of fried eggplant. I skipped the sauce and presented the plate a la my mom: as though it were a rare delicacy.

The verdict?

The Husband: “These have got too much salt. Why can’t you skip that fancy stuff and just cook southern?”

The Kiddo: “I like the crunchies. Can I just eat the crunchies?”

Hmh. I have since discovered via Alton Brown that eggplants don’t have that many vitamins anyway. That, combined with the lack of enthusiasm – hey, I wasn’t expecting a standing ovation, just a, “Wow, Mom, you batter-fried veggies!” Well, the combination may just render it another 20 years before I batter-fry eggplant again. In the meantime, I have a plate of leftover fried eggplant in my fridge. Any takers?

The old permanent record

2010-10-01T05:07:00.000-05:00

Remember the worst threat, the equivalent of thermo-nuclear mutually assured destruction, that teachers would pull on their students years ago?

"It will go on your permanent record!" I remember hearing more than one of my teachers shriek at a particularly recalcitrant student -- usually a strapping boy who'd been held back a time or two.

Funny how we never got to see that all-powerful folder. It was tucked away in a file cabinet, but the threat of even the smallest single dark blot upon it was enough to keep me in line. The one time I did see a tiny bit of it was more than enough to make me never want to see any more of it.

I don't know why it was out where I could see it. I don't know why I was left alone with it. All the same, I didn't see much -- just the edge of a standardized test report that purported to diagnose my IQ. I can't remember how old I was or what grade, but I do remember the cold feeling of shame that lodged in my gut when I saw that my IQ was only 108.

Now, of course, I know that my bona fide learning disability of dyscalculia probably kept teachers from getting an accurate picture of my IQ -- and that IQs are notoriously hard to quantify anyway. But for years I was ashamed of how my permanent record had proof that I was just average.

Even if the IQ test was spot-on, and I am only of average intelligence, so what? I've done okay with the little gray cells that the Lord blessed me with. I've used what I've got to my best advantage.

Of course, that's wisdom gleaned from four decades on this planet. I have to wonder, though, how much I bought into that quick peek into my permanent record, and how I allowed it to limit my choices. Did I turn down the opportunity to go into pre-med because somewhere in the back of my mind was the niggling fear that I was "just average" and "just average" wasn't good enough to cut medical school?

It occurs to me that perhaps there were other things -- whether it was from teachers or parents or grown-ups or my friends -- that were written on my mind's version of my permanent record in indelible ink. Were they true? Surely some of them, but not all. Could I have overcome them? Most likely. Few flaws are fatal.

What about you? What are some beliefs that you bought into that you've come to realize weren't quite true? How did you come to the realization? How long did you take to stop believing the bad stuff and how did you purge it from your permanent record?

A writer with bad hand-writing?

2010-09-29T05:05:00.000-05:00

A few confessions:

1) In first grade, the highest mark I got for penmanship was FAIR. Never good or excellent (unlike the little red-headed girl next to me.) Just FAIR. I learned to hate the word fair.

2) I wrote so much in long-hand, and so many notes in college on that teeny-tiny college ruled paper, that by the time I graduated college (to become a teacher), I had handwriting that resembled a doctor's. It was BAD.

Can you imagine my terror upon realizing I had to (a) write on the board for those lovable scamps I called students and (b) write notes home to said lovable scamps' parents?

So one of my first assignments to myself as a teacher was to learn how to write again. My handwriting still leaves a lot to be desired, and I envy anyone with a nice, crisp print or a beautiful cursive hand -- someone, say, like Nicole Ducleroir, who tagged me for a hand-writing tag.

Showing off my handwriting is right up there with me putting a pix of me in my yellow bikini on my blog (yes, I still have my yellow bikini, yes, it still fits, and no, I don't wear it anywhere in public, unless you count The Sister's hot tub as public.) But for Natalie, I will grit my teeth and expose my shame.

Write down (by hand!) on a piece of paper the following:

1. Name, Blog Name
2. Right handed, left handed, or both?
3. Favorite letters to write
4. Least favorite letters to write
5. Write out "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
6. Write in CAPS: BABOON, SPLENDOR, ONOMATOPOEIA, FLIP-FLOPS, HUZZAH!
7. Favorite song lyrics
8. Tag 7 people
9. Whatever else strikes your fancy (Me, I have supper calling, so no more silliness for me tonight!)

It was interesting, this assignment, that I had to confess my least favorite letter to write -- that would be C. Yes, the C that I write my name with. My "c" leaves much to be desired, aesthetically speaking, and it's one of the letters I'd like to improve on. Also, I'm a Georgia girl, and Georgia girls' "c's" ought to resemble the Coca Cola "c."

And now my tagged victims:

Tawna Fenske
Linda Grimes
Julie Musil
Anne Gallagher
Nelsa Roberto
Lola Sharp
Jessica Lemmon

A message from The Professional Muse Society

2010-09-28T04:56:00.000-05:00

Cynthia's Muse, here, with an important request from The Professional Muse Society.

Ya know, it's not in my job description to actually get in here and write blog posts for her. It's not in my job description to write anything, actually, but ya know how it is, working with these creative types. They go all moody on you and then ya gotta endure it, like my Uncle Art has to endure his hemorrhoids.

Cynthia, now, she's not so bad. It's not like she listens, or anything, but then ya can't have everything, now can ya? At least she's not snappin' her fingers at two in the morning and saying, "abracadabra," like I'm some sort of genie in a bottle. I've had writers like that, and they are a pain in the tuches.

When I got assigned to her, eh, way back in 2003, I told HR it was never gonna work. Me? A fabulous dresser who never shows up in public without my nails done? Working with a Georgia girl who'd never been to the 212 area code? Who didn't even own a pair of stilettos? Plus, there is the issue of the lack of clothing space for my wardrobe. Been here since 2003, and I still don't have the walk-in closet I need for my feather boas.

But that Cynthia, she's got the work ethic. You'd think she was a little Puritan straight from the Mayflower, the way she goes at it. Half the trouble with her -- or maybe it's more like three-quarters, cuz ya know fractions weren't ever my forte, except when I'm figuring sales prices at Bergdorfs -- is that she won't let me do my job.

She works, works, works, writes, writes, writes. I tell her, "Honey, take a break. Have some fun. Go play. Go get a wardrobe that doesn't look like it comes from the Lands End school uniform catalog, for gracious sakes. And by the way, get your nails done -- maybe a nice French manicure?"

But, no. Who am I that she should listen to me? I'm just a muse that's been doing this way before Cynthia was holding out for three packs of paper and blue Papermate pens for a Christmas present.

People, ya gotta listen, especially you writer types. All work and no play? Not effective. Ya gotta scoot off and play a little -- catch that sale at Macy's, go get ya hair done, try on some sparkly shoes -- so's we muses can work our magic. I speak on behalf of The Professional Muse Society -- hey, I heard that snicker about PMS, ya little pipsqueak -- Excuse me while I chase this shmendrik off this blog. I'll have to finish this advice in another blog post.

Silly Business

2010-09-27T05:02:00.001-05:00

Curse you, Robert Croak.

Mr. Croak, it turns out, is the guy who invented Silly Bandz, those shaped rubber-band bracelets that every kid is going nuts for these days. And by every kid, yes, that does include The Kiddo.

She has almost a hundred of the little suckers, and the only good things I can say about them are at least they don’t take up much room and they aren’t that expensive (although, I could get her a thousand regular rubber bands for the price of two dozen Silly Bandz, so maybe that’s not quite an accurate observation.)

Trust me, if you want to see a teacher steam, just waggle a Silly Band in front of her.

If the pesky little rubber bands would stay put on a child’s arm, it would be one thing. That’s way too much to hope for, not when kids can string them together in long necklaces and have protracted haggling/trading sessions that would make the brokers on the New York Stock Exchange look like amateurs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud that Mr. Croak found a way to make a living during this recession. And I’m glad he has made a success out of a few cents worth of rubber band materials. I’m not begrudging him his pursuit of happiness.

I’m begrudging him my pursuit of SANITY.

I strictly forbade The Kiddo taking the little sapsuckers to school. Hey, I was a teacher, and I know how hard it is to keep a kid’s attention on math or reading even without the latest fad. I could see in two quick blinks of an eye the aggravation Silly Bandz could cause.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. The Kiddo started in at once on the, “but everyone else wears Silly Bandz!” and “I promise, promise, promise that I won’t play with them at school.”

My response was to give her the steely-eyed, “I’m no fool” look and to drag, from somewhere deep, deep inside me, yet another, “no.”

“But, please, please, Mommy,” she begged me, “just ASK the teachers and you’ll see that it’s okay. We can wear Silly Bandz.”

So I did. After the aforementioned steam stopped hissing, the teachers were able to confirm my earlier suspicion: Silly Bandz weren’t quite the devil incarnate, but they sure beat the stuffing out of studying place values and main ideas, and as such, didn’t exactly complement the Three R’s. In fact, the principal had just handed down a No-Silly-Bandz policy.

I do wish Mr. Croak all the success in the world. But first? Could he serve a time-out of sorts? If I had my druthers, I’d stick him in a classroom replete with 25 students loaded to the gills with the silly sapsuckers and tell him that he needed to teach a lesson on independent clauses. If he managed to get the concept across without confiscating his rubber swag, why, then he really would have earned my respect.

Symbolically speaking

2010-09-23T04:50:00.001-05:00

Mouth the words "high school literature."

I'll bet, if your high school lit courses were anything like mine, the words evoked THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, MADAME BOVARY, Hemingway and ... symbolism.

I was a puffed-up little peacock about writing back then. When my English teachers talked to us about writers using symbolism in their works, I rolled my eyes to the point I nearly had to pick 'em up off the floor.

"Symbolism? Ha!" I thought. "Writers just write. It's all these English teachers and professors who start saying Hemingway is using Christian symbolism in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. Hemingway was probably too drunk to even think about symbolism."

I held my tongue, got an A and moved onto college, where I waded through still more swamps of symbolism. Sure, I could see how poets use symbolism. But writers of prose?

It was a movie which actually showed me the power of symbolism. SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY is a particular favorite of mine, although the book was more of a mixed bag. For those of you who haven't seen it or read the book, it is about an abused woman who fakes her death to escape the clutches of her husband.

In the movie (not the book), the life she escapes is one of wealth and privilege. Her husband is OCD about things being tidy and neat. The setting for the house is ultra modern, with cold, spare lines. But the house she escapes to is old-fashioned, with romantic frilly touches.

I remember seeing those two settings, remember how the power of that hit me. It was the juxtaposition of the two styles of homes that underscored the life she'd left -- cold and sterile -- for her new life -- warm and soft. It just drove the point home in a simple, non-verbal way.

That's when I realized that the objects and situations in a character's world could echo the plot. And really, isn't that what symbolism is? A shortcut of sorts?

So do I use symbolism in my romance novels? You betcha. In THE BABY WAIT, there is one situation that I use symbolically, and I had to break a rule to do it.

My two characters, a man and wife, are literally stuck in a traffic jam. Now, in every writer's seminar you will ever attend, they warn you against having two characters in a car talking. But in this case, I used that traffic jam to symbolize where they were at that point in the plot -- stuck in transit, not anywhere close to where they wanted to be.

Most of the symbolism that I use is very brief -- an object, a place, a song. It's got to be subtle, or else it's overkill. All I want to do is to create an echo.

So now do I think Hemingway used symbolism? Oh, yeah, I think he did. Now what about you? Do you use symbolism?

A Gibbs Girl

2010-09-22T04:55:00.002-05:00

I admit it. I love television.

I know. So many writers pooh-pooh television, saying that it shrinks our brains and hampers our creativity. But give me a well-written drama, and I can learn so much about writing and pacing from it.

Say ... NCIS.

I further admit that I am a Gibbs girl, myself. I love me some Gibbs -- Gibbs is one of those characters that appear at the top of my "If I were ever stranded on a desert island" lists. He'd probably hammer me into the ground by the end of the first day, but by gosh, he's nothing if he's not competent. Give the guy a case of toothpicks and a piece of innertube, and he could probably build a raft.

NCIS is one of the few television shows that The Husband and I will watch together. The Husband's non-ESPN tastes run to sit-coms, which I file under breaches of the Geneva Convention. Most sit-coms turn on pratfalls and abject humiliation, and I never got past the stage where I just empathized so strongly for the poor blighted character that I had to walk out of the room at the moment of their humiliation.

But NCIS, somehow or another, caught The Husband's attention. It has to do with several factors. One, it's not a particularly gory show after the first five minutes -- unlike some of my other fave TV show -- CRIMINAL MINDS or CSI. Two, it's got comedy in it, and if you want to keep The Husband's attention, you'd best keep his funny bone tickled.

As I write this, both The Husband and I are rather tickled at the prospect of the season premiere of NCIS. I've waited a long time to see what old Gibbs will do following last season's cliff-hanger -- and if his dad makes it after facing down a gun held by a revenge-bent woman.

I try to remember that I need to bring just that sort of balance to my own writing -- some choke-you-up tender moments, some shoot-em-up action sequences, some belly-laughs. What a good writer is doing is constructing a roller coaster that will take the reader on a ride. NCIS and other good shows like that help me remember that.

Or at least, that's what I tell myself about why it's worth 45 minutes a week for me to speed through the DVR'd version of NCIS. It could, of course, just be a fatal weakness for Mark Harmon.

Does your main character need Prozac?

2010-09-21T04:56:00.000-05:00

We writers can talk about motivation and backstory and character development until the cows come home. (Why, yes, I often do!) We can string together long paragraphs of introspection and volleys of dialogue in our efforts to "show, don't tell." (Oh, my, guilty as charged.)

One thing I can easily forget, though, is that a character's mood and outlook on life is probably one of the most important factors in making motivation make sense.

I was thinking about that as I read over two chapters that I've been working on in my current WIP. Both are from my heroine's point of view, and both take place by the same stretch of quiet river. In the first, when the river is a welcome refuge, my gal feels the cool river breeze. Later, though, as the scene goes on and when things go bad, that same river only feels hot and muggy and smells of dank fish.

My fingers hovered over the delete button as I read over those shifts. For a few minutes, I was convinced I needed to fix this. It showed a lapse in continuity, surely.

But I think I've talked myself out of it. After all, in real life, we don't always see things the same way, day in and day out, or even within the span of a day.

Think about how you view something as simple as a ringing telephone. If you're trying to avoid a call, your Great Aunt Zelda, say, whom you just know is going to draft you for bridesmaid duty, every ring creates knots in your stomach. You know how tacky your Great Aunt Zelda is, and her granddaughter, the bride-to-be? Well, her having been married three times already and still insisting on a church wedding and a white dress just says everything you need to know.

If, however, you're fully expecting Publisher's Clearinghouse peeps to call for directions to your house when they stop off with that big check, that r-r-riiiing is as beautiful as anything the New York Philharmonic could perform.

Of course, you can take this too far. If your character views anyone who shares even the most benign "good morning" as a Little Mary Sunshine, perhaps her next stop ought to be on a shrink's couch, with her hand out for a Prozac prescription.

The cool graphic that went with this blog post was purloined from JojoVanB's photobucket -- and trust me, it's better than Prozac to wash the blues away!

Writing: easier than harvesting sand spurs?

2010-09-20T04:55:00.001-05:00

I don't think writers truly understand the fear non-writers have for creating words. I have some idea -- if you want to turn me into a puddle of jelly, all you have to do is to demand the answer of 112 divided by 4, or the product of 36 and 9.

But just as math-geared minds think, "Pfft! Of course that's 28, and the product is 324," we writers go, "Pfft! A 200-word essay on the importance of being earnest? Easy-peasy."

(Of course, I'd actually groan, because whoever heard of being able to explain the importance of being earnest in just 200 measly words?)

I taught a lesson on writing to a group of third graders last week, and this fear was brought home to me all over again. Not only were these kids terrified to put something down, but they were also terrified that their ideas weren't good enough.

The Sister, a teacher of some 20 years experience, nodded sagely as I conveyed this. "I'd rather spend all day pulling sand spurs* out of a patch of grass than I would write a paragraph," she admitted.

What? This was news to me. My sister is a smart woman, extremely capable, one who graduated cum laude from college. When I pressed her for more details, she said, "Well, I'm just afraid that the commas will all be in the wrong place."

Commas?! Commas?! She's letting mechanics get in the way of a wonderfully creative mind? She's letting grammar grind her to a halt?

Okay, I have an additional confession to admit. I never minded grammar. I, in fact, loved diagramming sentences. I loved it so much that I never got called on to diagram sentences on the board because the teacher saw that I wasn't terrified by it, and therefore I deprived her of her buzz. (OK, that's not fair, but that's how I saw it in high school.)

But even so, not everything I write is perfectly grammatically correct on the first pass. That's what revision is for. A grammar check is the final polish.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in grammar. I will hunt you down over the loftily uttered, "between you and I" mistake (prepositional phrases take an objective, not nominative, pronoun), and subject-verb errors leave me itching.

But until you get the framework done, until you get the blank page filled, I'm not going to worry your little head about conventions or grammar or mechanics. Then, once I know what you're trying to say, I'll help you say it better and point you toward a grammar handbook.

Yeah. That's when you worry about commas.

*Sand spurs defined for Yankees: Sandspur or sandbur is a grass plant that produces a sticker that can really get under your skin, as so aptly defined by the University of Florida IFAS Extension Agency.

Why you should never judge a book by its advanced buzz

2010-09-17T05:01:00.000-05:00

I admit it. I am a contrary demon. Whatever everybody else likes, I turn up my nose in complete disdain. Later, I'll get hornswaggled into trying whatever it is, only to find that, for once, everybody else was right. It's happened over and over again: E.T., pine nuts, Hemingway, and ... Joshilyn Jackson.

When GODS IN ALABAMA first came out, it was one of those books people just gushed about, like THE KITE RUNNER or WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. "You've just gotta read this," they'd say. I'd make some excuse and go on my merry way. I'd feel guilty about this every time I was in a bookstore, and on one occasion in Barnes & Noble, I picked up the book, flipped it over, read the back cover, read the first page, and went, "Meh. It can't be THAT good." And back down on the big round table it went.

But then destiny found me. My library's supply of audio books had gone pitifully thin, and I was left with, you guessed it, GODS. I groaned and checked it out. But I was hooked by the time I got home -- hooked so much that I had a "driveway moment" where you stay in your car long after you've parked it, just so you can listen to what's blaring out of your speakers.

The book is about one Arlene Fleet, who has sworn to God to repent from her fornicating and lying and to never set so much as a pinkie toe back into Possett, Alabama -- as long as God will do one teeny-tiny thing for her: Keep the body hidden.

The body? Well, that's one of the gods in Alabama that Arlene talks about on the first page of novel. Arlene may have repented technically, but ONLY technically. She has a right-up-to-the-limit relationship with her boyfriend Burr, and she pulls all sorts of stunts to avoid lying -- like buying a laptop she doesn't need or want just to be able to tell her won't-take-no-for-an-answer Aunt Florence she doesn't have the funds to go back home. She'll return the laptop ASAP -- after she's told Aunt Florence. And the bit about not returning to Possett? Well, for all her traveling north to Chicago, it's clear that Arlene has never truly left Possett.

Arlene has a lot of demons to face, demons she wouldn't tackle at all if Burr wasn't insisting on being introduced to her family and the girlfriend of the boy she left under the heaps of Alabama kudzu wasn't hounding her. But before you know it, Arlene is waving hello to the Alabama state line.

The book is a tightly paced mystery, and Jackson is marvelous at creating a flawed hero that you root for. One of the reasons I was so long in reading it was that Arlene is supposed to be a murderess. How can I root for a murderess?

With Jackson's deft touch, I do. Jackson makes the south come alive -- warts and all -- and presents it in the unflinchingly love and honesty that only your best friend can match when she tells you, "You can't wear that dress. It makes you look as wide as the side of a barn." The thing I love best about her work -- beyond the clever mystery, beyond the wonderful characters, beyond how she keeps you guessing -- is Jackson's marvelous way with setting. Even in a Chicago Wal-Mart, Jackson paints a picture of the south and its customs and shows us what Arlene, a true southerner, has given up when she accepts her self-imposed exile. That's the moment that Jackson won me over -- that scene where Arlene breaks down into sobs and is comforted by a woman with a soft accent that reminds her of all she left behind.

I was the one who suggested this book for our BOOK HUNGRY on-line book club, and I'm eager to see what the rest of our members thought of it. You can, too! But first, if you haven't read GODS IN ALABAMA, I'm here to tell you ... you've just gotta read this!

Karla Nellenbach
Patty Blount
Abby Mumford
Elizabeth Ryann
Kelly Breakey
Alyson Peterson
Vanessa Noble

At the mercy of the food police

2010-09-16T05:06:00.001-05:00

I am a self-admitted bad cook. Okay, not a terrible cook -- I can bring water to a boil without scorching it -- but I'm definately an uninspired cook.

That's the real reason I have 31 meals pre-planned that I use on a rotating basis. What? Me come up with something creative in the kitchen? Sorry, all that creative energy just got expended on my main characters!

We eat okay, but nothing to write home about -- or to write to school about. So imagine my panic when The Kiddo divested her bookbag of one (1) weekly food survey.

It was a chart, and The Kiddo was to fill it out with what she has for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The point, of course, is to teach healthy eating habits. But, oh, my, I'm about to get busted for enabling The Kiddo's Lucky Charms addiction.

Luckily The Husband in a stroke of complete serendipity prepared a grilled cheese sandwich for The Kiddo for breakfast yesterday morning, and supper was chili and cornbread, so I looked good, if I do say so myself.

This morning, though, The Husband said, "Now that they're checking meals, you need to cook healthier stuff." He proceeded to fry the child an egg.

It's not that I'm loading The Kiddo up on deep fried chicken tenders and french fries (I don't.) It's just that ... well, vegetables that I can afford bore the stew out of me. What is there in the frozen foods department besides baby limas, green beans, and turnip greens that are fit to eat? I've tried frozen carrots (yech), frozen broccoli (double yech) and the brussels sprouts are pretty much hit or miss.

Couple that with The Kiddo's strong propensity for noodles, and sometimes the only vegetable on the table will be the chopped up garlic that I used to season the pasta sauce (I know, I am a bad, bad mommy.) She likes salads (as long as they're caesar with no hint of carrots), but my grocery budget sometimes won't stretch to the arm-and-a-leg price tag on romaine lettuce.

I miss fresh summer squash and eggplants and sweet potatoes. Those are the interesting veggies. They also tend to be the expensive veggies that The Kiddo, most conveniently, won't touch a morsel of. Sigh.

Well, maybe the lack of those Happy Meals will make up for the lack of veggies? But if the food police come and arrest me, will someone bail me out?

A new generation of plotters

2010-09-15T04:47:00.002-05:00

After a 20-year hiatus, I found myself back in a classroom.

Two decades ago, I was a very young, very SHORT teacher trying to teach 150 kids art and spelling, whether they aspired to more than drawing a stick figure or could spell more than C-A-T. I thought I'd failed those kids (and in a way, I had), so I left the classroom. I was determined to dig ditches before I ever darkened the door of a classroom again.

But you can't NOT be a teacher if you're a parent, and I am first and foremost a parent to The Kiddo. Teachers are so swamped these days that often at least a quarter of the teaching of content subjects is left to the parents. I'm not saying teachers intend for that to happen. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. But I can assure you that I've been mighty proud of all those education methods courses I toiled over in college. They've come in quite handy as I've shepherded The Kiddo through her elementary school career thus far. I honestly don't know how parents who don't have that background knowledge do it.

Between that homework-at-the-dining-room-table time and my previous successful (if I do say so myself) stint as a college English instructor for remedial students, I realized that I wasn't a half-bad teacher. I realized that I loved showing people how to do things. And the thing I especially love? The high that won't quit? The moment the lightbulb dings on for your student, whether she happens to be a 50-year-old returning college freshman or a 9 year-old Kiddo who finally understands the difference between conduction and convection.

In the midst of my job-hunting, I counted up my blessings, and one of them happens to be a defunct teaching certificate. In order to renew it, I'll need some time with the books (10 professional learning units or six semester hours of college courses), but it's doable.

But was it right for me? Would I be okay in a classroom? Would I even like dealing with whippersnappers all day long? Or would it be an utter failure like I thought I'd experienced two decades ago? The questions led me to volunteer in The Kiddo's school. No, I'm not in her class, but Tuesday was the first day that I served as a sort of reading coach to a third grade class.

And you know what? I had a ball! I learned a lot about classroom management from the teacher I was with, and I got to try out the skills I'd been honing on The Kiddo on a new crop of unsuspecting guinea pigs. They didn't seem any more the warped for it.

On Friday, I get to teach a writing lesson. Imagine! Me! Teaching third graders about writing! No, I'll spare them the lectures on deep POV and conflict (for now!). But I'm rubbing my hands together in glee at the prospect of turning the lot of them into -- gasp -- a whole class of plotters! Linda Grimes and Tawna Fenske will probably organize a protest!

Leaky sinks and romance

2010-09-14T04:55:00.001-05:00

Romance often begins by a splashing waterfall and ends over a leaky sink.

The ubiquitous Anonymous said that, and I have to agree. Yes, I'm a romance novelist, and yes, I believe in Happily Ever Afters, but this marriage business is hard work. Take it from me. Or no, take it from The Husband, who has suffered many, many indignities from me over the past 20 years. (Don't worry. He's repaid them all in full.)

The marriage started out all rainbows and puppies, as all marriages should. But pretty soon, I was letting him see my washed-out hosiery as it dripped-dried over the tub, and he was belching at the table without bothering to even say, "Not bad manners, just good vittles."

(Okay, so for the first year, he was probably belching from the indigestion he garnered from my poor cooking. I'm letting the belching slide.)

That is not to say that I don't love The Husband, and I surely hope he still loves me -- in spite of my bad cooking and my messy house and the fact that I tend to get welded to a laptop at an alarmingly frequent rate.

But romance ... ah, romance. We have traded it in (pretty much) for a good working-in-tandem partnership that makes sure all the big bases are covered.

And you know? I know what that's worth. It's priceless. Give me a man who will call me up and remind me to pick up the dry cleaning or totally understands my propensity to forget mailing off bills -- yes, give me that over a Romeo who will whisper sweet nothings and let the errands slide. I'm a pragmatic sort of gal.

I didn't realize that my preferences really slid to this even in literature. I want my relationships gritty. Real. Honest. I'm currently reading a perfectly lovely book (whose title will go unnamed because I don't want to slam the author). The problem? The love interest is just too perfect. Too romantic. Too understanding. In my head, I'm thinking, "OK, when's the other shoe going to drop?"

And of course with my comic-book-violence imagination, I'm thinking, "He'll turn out to be a cross-dressing ladies' man with three wives."

The hero hasn't revealed any size XXX negligees in his closet, and it doesn't look like he will. I think it's safe to say that this is a "perfect" gentleman.

Still, too much perfect romance in a novel, at least to me, is like too much cotton candy. Eventually? As my wonderful Aunt Lou used to say, "Well, now, after awhile, ya just get a bait of it."*

What do you think? What's the perfect balance of real man vs. Perfect Man in a romance novel?

Bait - south Georgia slang that means enough, a surfeit, up to your gullet.

A conversation with my muse

2010-09-13T05:06:00.001-05:00

Triumph!

No, I've not found gainful employment, but it's an ill-wind that blows no good. I have instead experienced productive un-employment.

Last week, I managed to turn an episode of insomnia into the final, successful push to creating two new or newly refurbished chapters in my current WIP. It was a particularly rough battle, as I had to take the old chapter's direction and turn it 180 degrees -- which is about as easy as doing the same with an oil tanker headed for an iceberg.

After I'd managed to rewrite the old chapter, I knew I needed to create a brand new chapter. The chapter is a critical one, where the heroine has to come to the realization that she's a whiny brat who has been dancing around a problem -- and yet, that realization couldn't be full-blown. It is supposed to be a turn in the right direction, but just that: a turn.

But I kept finding a million other things to do. I'd tell myself I needed to hunt down that gainful employment. Or wash another Mt. Everest of dirty clothes. Or save money by baking my own bread. Or cut my toenails.

Uh, yeah. It finally occurred to me, just before I reached for the toothbrush and the Tilex to start scrubbing my bathroom floor's grout again, that I was procrastinating. And the reason I was procrastinating was because I was afraid.

Afraid of what? you might ask.

Well, for one thing, afraid I couldn't pull off this miracle. Do you ever have moments like that? When you're afraid your characters have way too much growth ahead of them to get from Point A to Point B?

In the early, hazy, euphoric days of a Bright Shiny New Idea, everything looks so easy. I have these sorts of conversations with that Demon Muse in Stilettos and Feather Boa:

DMiS&FB: Yanno, ya might wanna think about how the lightbulb actually goes off for 'er. (Yeah, I know. My muse talks in a very thick Queens' accent, a la Fran Drescher. Come to think of it, she actually looks like Fran.)

Me: (waving my hand in a dismissive gesture) I've got it handled. Right now, I want to think about how the two first meet.

DMiS&FB: (tapping the pointy toe of her platform stiletto) Ya put it off, ya gonna be sorrr-ry.

Me: I'm not putting it off. I'm just not crossing bridges I haven't reached yet.

DMiS&FB: (popping a wad of chewing gum as she stares at me in disbelief.)

Me: What?!

DMiS&FB: Nuttin'.

Me: No, I know that look. C'mon. Say it.

DMiS&FB: (flicking her feather boa) Ya don't think about that lightbulb moment, ya won't have a bridge to cross.

Me: You're mixing your metaphors.

DMiS&FB: Hey, honey (she holds up her hands, palms outward, and then frowns in concern as she scrutinizes a possibly damaged fingernail. She beams in relief, then returns her attention to the matter at hand.) I'm no writer here. I'm just ya ordinary muse, albeit with spectacular fashion sense, which is more than I can say about you and your hot mess of a wardrobe. But if I can see there's a problem, there's a problem. And there's a problem.

Of course I didn't listen to her. I didn't listen to her until I got to the bridge and realized, "oh, bleepity-bleepity-bleep, she's right." I didn't tell her.

But she must have known, because the other morning, I woke up at 3 AM, couldn't go back to sleep, and at 4 AM, got up, hauled the laptop to the living room and began writing. I built that bridge word by word, while she looked over my shoulder and popped her gum enthusiastically.

She was, of course, in feather trimmed mules and silk jammies, while I was in a T shirt and yoga pants. While she's pleased with my progress on the writing front, she's still threatening to submit my name to WHAT NOT TO WEAR.

The art of parenting a worrywart

2010-09-10T04:59:00.000-05:00

In the 18 months that I waited for The Kiddo's arrival (from the first adoption paperwork to the Chinese nanny putting her in my arms) I imagined a lot of trials and tribulations about parenting. I thought about the baby barf, the exploding Spaghettios, the temper tantrums.

Control freak that I am, I developed a plan for every eventuality that I could imagine. The one thing I did NOT plan for?

Worrying.

No, I'm not talking about a mother's worrying. That is The Mother's Lot, and I accept the old truism that being a parent is having your heart walk around outside of your body.

I'm talking about The Kiddo's worrying.

She has always been a worrywart. In a weird way, that makes my job easier. She worries about everything, from getting into trouble, to making bad grades, to what people will think about her clothes. And yes, she is only nine. And no, she does NOT get it from me. (OK, the clothes bit, maybe.)

Earlier this month, her school let loose its annual cookie-dough fund-raiser. Last year, I had no faith in The Kiddo's ability to sell $14 tubs of cookie dough, but I had underestimated her worrywart ways. She wanted that Mega Party. And she was going to get it.

She got it, and a ride in a limo, and a special lunch. So this year, when the fund-raiser got underway, I saw that they had sweetened the pot. Now if you turned in $50 worth of sales early, you were entered into a drawing for a stuffed animal.

She needs another stuffed animal like she needs a hole in her head, but she had the sales. So I let her -- and lo and behold, the child comes home with a stuffed starfish named Patrick that is nearly the size she is.

The next drawing level was $100, and she had that many sales. But The Kiddo was completely uncertain about whether she could count her previous sales or if she had to start from scratch after the first drawing. I told her, her father told her, a family friend told her, her aunt told her, all of us told her that it was cumulative sales.

The Kiddo worked herself into a complete froth. She didn't want to enter the drawing if she wasn't absolutely SURE that she was eligible. I asked, "What's the worst thing that could happen?"

Ten minutes later of boo-hooing, and I realized afresh that personal humiliation was a BIG deal for this child of mine.

We finally got her convinced that it was cumulative sales, and she went to bed. At 11 o'clock, though, she was still awake, still worried. "Mommy, I don't want to enter the drawing," she told me.

I prepared to go back over old ground. But first, I asked a wise, wise question. "Why not?"

"Because I might win, and my friend really, really wanted the M&M stuffed animals and if I win it, then she wouldn't get it."

Facepalm. "Okay. Don't enter. Go to sleep."

This morning, when I was driving her to school, I tried to talk to The Kiddo about reducing her worrying. What, I asked, would help her not worry so much?

"Oh, that's easy," she said. "I just need to know everything."

I did a quick double-take in the rearview mirror as I headed for the Daytona 500 we call the morning drop-off line. "Everything?" I asked.

"Well ..." Her face scrunched with concentration. Even in this, she wanted to get it exactly right. "Not everything, everything. Just all the answers to all the questions that I need to ask."

Boy. I wouldn't worry, either, with such knowledge at MY fingertips.

A master's degree in human nature

2010-09-09T05:04:00.000-05:00

Somehow or another, I have managed to get on every known telemarketing list for online colleges and work-at-home schemes. I really feel for these folks, who are just trying to make a living themselves, but the answer is no. They want to sell me a master's degree in something besides human nature.

I've done more than a few talks with young writers, and they always ask me, "What can I do to improve my writing skills?"

I'd tell them to live a few more years and get some life experience under their belt, but the nation's young, fed on a continual diet of fast food and 30 second commercials that already seem too long for them, aren't the most patient demographic group. So that's when I dust off Plan B: Get a master's in human nature.

They ask, "How?"

And I say, "Get a job as a reporter at a newspaper."

They don't want to hear that any more than the life-experience deal, but it is true. I cut my teeth in professional writing as a reporter covering everything from a man who got struck by lightning to a highly publicized body in a suitcase.

The crime stuff, that was interesting. Criminals are notoriously dumb (which is the reason they get caught 99% of the time), and it's fairly easy to write a humorous story when the defendant gets caught in the midst of a commercial transaction of weed right across from the sheriff's office (true story).

But it was the features that taught me more about human beings than anything else. I wrote stories on everything you could think of: old houses, old people who lived in new houses, people who rescued dogs, people who collected dolls, people who had alligators in their pools, people who found weird things with metal detectors. I wrote about childhood sweethearts who had grown up and married and had been married for 50 years. If it had a smidge of a story to it and it could fill up column inches, and if I could figure out a photo to go with it, I wrote about it.

It taught me a valuable lesson: every person has at least one story to tell. Beyond that, it taught me the differences in people's speech patterns, in the way they sit and talk and walk, how they see the world. It showed me all the different things that make people unique.

And that can be boiled down to one thing: the element of surprise. I never failed to learn at least one unexpected thing about each person that I interviewed. I might not have used that in the story, but it made me walk away with the knowledge that no one is exactly who he appears to be.

I hope that I bring that richness to my own characters. It's not that I seek to make each one annoyingly cute or quirky. I just hope to make them rife with the contradictions that make them, well, human.

Galloping Zebras

2010-09-08T05:01:00.002-05:00

My imagination is so wild that it doesn't just gallop like a runaway horse. It gallops like a zebra across a savanna. I guess that's a main ingredient of a writer's personality, but honestly, sometimes I wish I could find the off-switch.

For instance, about a month ago, a young man with a foreign accent showed up at my front door with some lame tale about wanting to talk about cultural exchange. I'd opened the front door after a hasty glance had me thinking that his vehicle was my dad's.

I stood there, listening to him trying to inveigle his way into my living room, and all I could think was: strange man with a weird story, no local connections, no contact information and a knapsack. Presto-change-o, I had the guy transformed into a serial killer with a murder kit in hand on my doorstep.

It turned out that he was just a guy after a quick buck (that I found out after I'd reported the strange incident to my local sheriff), but still. I was on full-alert for weeks, and whenever I'm by myself at home, I make sure that all the doors and windows are locked. This in a town where nothing of any great import has happened for the 20 years I've been here.

It's not just on my front porch. I can find sinister danger anywhere. This past weekend, I took a family friend to the ER. Imagine the prickles up and down my spine when a pair of corrections officers escorted an orange-suited jailbird in shackles (handcuffs and leg irons) into the neighboring treatment bay. With only a polyester curtain -- and one that didn't even stretch to the floor -- between me and Mr. Jailbird, I was most interested in the outcome of the guards' debate over whether they should double-shackle him to the bed. (Eventually they did.)

In my poor beleaguered brain, I already had the guy picking the locks, waiting for the opportune moment and then grabbing the handiest hostage (that would be yours truly) by an ankle and charging out the double doors to freedom.

I'm sure the poor inmate was sick with the stomach flu or just needed a break from the ennui of confinement. Probably the last thing on his mind was playing the villain in the drama unfolding between my ears.

At least it's all grist for the mill. I've filed these scares away in my brain along with dozens of others (who else can see a Wells Fargo truck in front of Wal-Mart and worry about being caught in the crossfire of an imaginary gun battle?). Who knows? One day maybe one of them will wind up being the seed for a best-seller. Now that's a zebra I'd LOVE to imagine.

Life is a wiggle

2010-09-07T05:04:00.000-05:00

On a collection of Chinese fortune cookies, I saw a funny one: Life is not a struggle. It's a wiggle.

Again, I don't believe in fortune cookies or horoscopes, but that one did make me laugh.

It also made me think about a conversation that The Husband and I had -- and have had several times in various permutations. What really rules our life's fate? Destiny? Or decisions?

The latest conversation has revolved around a decision I made 20 years ago to get out of the classroom. At the time, it was the right decision for me. Then, fifteen years ago, my teaching certificate was up for renewal, and I made another decision: not to renew it.

Now, here I am, strongly considering going back into the classroom. So, did I waste 20 years? Or did it take me 20 years to become a stronger teacher? Or did I just take a really long, really convoluted detour?

The Husband is more than a bit of a fatalist. He grew up a country boy, and country folk tend to be very serene about their life's lot. Whatever will be will be, and no matter how you fight it, you can't really change where you're going to end up.

Uh, yeah. The Husband is saying a LOT of I-told-you-sos lately.

I, however, have a different philosophy in life -- well, at least until now. It's the little decisions that in effect make the big decisions for you. My decision to believe I was a flop at math (hey, how I was I to know I was dyscalculic?) and my disastrous experience with high school chemistry led me to another decision: don't change the major from education to pre-med, even though I was fascinated by all things medical.

Would I have been a terrific doctor or pharmacist or therapist? I'll never know. Would I have grown into a champion teacher had I stayed in the classroom? I'll never know that, either.

One thing getting out of the classroom did for me, though, was it gave me an education in real life. I wound up (by another freak small decision) working as an editor/reporter for a small chain of weekly newspapers, and the feature stories I covered gave me more insight into the human psyche and condition than any MFA program could have.

If I had stayed in the classroom, yes, I probably would have been just a decade from retiring with a pension (sob!) instead of looking for a job, any job with benefits. But would I have The Kiddo? Would I have four published novels?

Yanno, I don't think so. I like to think of life as a marble on one of those "trees" on a platter, the one that diverts all the au jus from the roasted beast? Wiggle the platter a hair that way, and the marble rolls along a branch that forks this way or that. Wiggle the platter the other way, and the marble sees a completely different side of the tree. And sometimes a sudden jerk knocks the marble from one side to the other without the benefit of gentle rolling at all.

Where will I be in 10 years? I don't have a clue. But I can tell you this -- I'm a wiggle away from a fantastic future.

R.I.P., Tweety

2010-09-06T04:54:00.001-05:00

I killed Tweety.

Yes, me. I am the horrible mother, the terrible, no-good, horrible mother, who shattered poor Tweety.
Well, his likeness on The Kiddo’s favorite drinking glass, anyway.

I can’t remember when Tweety came into our lives, but I suspect it was sometime when we were making that slow and ponderous leap from sippy-cups to real drinking glasses. His smiling face and fluffy yellow body graced both sides of a glass that was easy for little hands to hold, yet big enough for me not to have to be on a constant run to the kitchen for refills.

Tweety had found a nest in our glasses cupboard, and he was The Kiddo’s go-to drinking glass. My mother would have (and frequently did when she was alive) rolled her eyes at the idea that I was allowing a non-matching drinking glass on our dining room table. But another bit of her sage advice was to “pick your battles,” and yanno, Tweety just wasn’t a battle I wanted to waste my time on.

Over the years, The Kiddo had given up on many of her hold-overs from baby and toddlerhood: by the time she was five, she no longer asked to eat on the Strawberry Shortcake plate she’d gotten for her birthday, and the colorful Princess cup she’d gotten from someplace had been likewise left in a catch-all cabinet.

Tweety, though, was still a perpetual favorite. Until today.

Today, as I was loading dishes, I reached over The Kiddo’s Tweety glass that she had left on the kitchen counter (per my instructions – the rule is, no eating or drinking except in the dining room or kitchen) for another glass.

The plain glass slipped from my hands and crashed down on the rim of Tweety. I heard the sickening crack of broken glass and I knew.

With all the will in me, I took a look at Tweety’s carcass. There was no saving him. “Oh, boy,” I said to The Husband.

He took in the situation and said, “Now you’ll catch it.”

I called The Kiddo in the kitchen with the news, and she wept for her old friend. “But where will we get another one?” she asked as I held her and mumbled, “I’m sorry, so sorry” about a million times in her ear.

I confessed I didn’t know, but that I would look. Tweety came from an antique/collectible shop to begin with, and I suspect he’ll be hard to replace (yes, I know, my mother would be tsking and telling me we shouldn’t have used such a glass in the first place.)

But then, The Kiddo’s tears dwindled and she headed back to the television program she’d been watching. A few minutes later, I heard her laughing, and spied her from a discreet vantage point. Her tears still wet her cheeks but a big smile graced her face.

Yep. Tweety will be missed, but maybe it was time to let him go anyway.

Fantastic Fingers

2010-09-03T04:59:00.001-05:00

Can you imagine insuring your fingers for a million bucks EACH? Guitarist Jeff Beck did, according to an article on Time's website. He'd cut off the tip of his finger as he chopped carrots, and after the digit's tip was re-attached with no problems, he reportedly decided he needed to insure against more carrot-catastrophes.

As a writer, one of my biggest fears has always been that something will happen to my hands. I type, therefore I am, right?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Why couldn't she just dictate her stories?"

Bwhahahaha.

That evil laugh wasn't me, by the way. That was The Husband, who claims that I cannot tell a story, a joke or even recount my day.

It's true. I am the world's worst oral story teller. I get all long-winded, with a whole bunch of hems and haws and going backwards and forwards just to make sure you have the complete picture. I use a lot of analogies, and that in particular drives The Husband bonkers.

Give me a piece of paper or a computer keyboard, though, and my hems and haws dissolve. Yep, I am the exact opposite of 90 percent of the general, non-writing population.

Back when I taught remedial English to college students, they'd practically break out in hives when they were faced with an essay (which was a lot in my class.) The only way I could convince them that they could write was to sit them down and make them tell me a story that I busily and as unobtrusively as possible transcribed.

Then I'd clean up the notes I'd made (my handwriting is as bad as my oral-story-telling skills) and read back to them what they'd just told me. "See?" I'd say, tapping the paper. "That's all I need."

Poor students. They'd look at me like they were waiting for a trap to spring. "Nah," they'd tell me. "That's too easy."

Speak for yourself, I'd think. I've long been envious of good oral story tellers.

In 2003, when The Kiddo was a baby and I was an editor/reporter for a chain of small weeklies, I was loading The Kiddo in my car's backseat when a friend of mine unwittingly slammed the car door shut -- with my hand still on the jam.

I will admit I said a few choice words, because, man, it hurt.

But the thing that got me was how scared I was that I'd broken one or more of the 27 fingers in my paw. I remember standing on the sidewalk, cradling my hand, my heart thumping in my chest. I nearly dissolved into a puddle of relief when all five of my fingers worked as advertised.

I know writers who have broken BOTH hands while on deadline and miraculously managed to dictate the rest of their books. Me? Well, according to The Husband, I'd be using Word's Find And Replace feature to search and destroy all my hems and haws.

So what's YOUR biggest body-part-fear when it comes to writing? What accomodations would you have to make if you lost that body part?

The Perils of Pauline and other ways we tempt readers

2010-09-02T05:02:00.002-05:00

I learn so much from The Kiddo. I think that's a real blessing that parents have -- seeing the world through their children's eyes.

Take, for instance, the lesson she taught me about chapter hooks.

The Kiddo has been glomming Trixie Belden, and to encourage her to read silently (and thus get hooked on reading as a means of battery-free entertainment), I've let her "talk" me into allowing an extra chapter at night, if she reads it to herself.

Usually, there's no problem, as Trixie will have gotten herself into some scrape or another. The Kiddo will leap on the book and eagerly read away, eyes wide, lips compressed, looking for all the world as though she's been strapped on a roller coaster. You can always tell when Trixie's out of harm's way, because then The Kiddo will settle back.

But the other night, I glanced at the clock and saw it was later than usual. So after I got to the end of the chapter that I was reading aloud, I closed the book. The Kiddo didn't argue.

"What?" I asked, amazed. "No begging? No pleading for just one more chapter?"

She yawned and shook her head. "They didn't tempt me to read any more," she confessed.

I pondered on that comment for several days. That is exactly what a chapter hook is: a temptation to read just one more page to see how things work out. It reminded me of the old black and white silent cliffhangers I've seen bits of in documentaries. The films were designed in serial fashion so that they could part kids from their nickels week after week.

Of course, we have to be a trifle more sophisticated in our cliffhangers. Today's smart readers will catch on quickly that we put Pauline in peril just to get them to flip the pages.

I've been thinking about what makes ME stay up until 2 a.m. to finish a book. Here's my sucker-list.

1) Short chapters. This one sucks me in every time. I'll have consumed another chapter (and gotten snagged by another chapter hook) before I know it. I actually use this in my own writing, because I prefer to limit my chapters to a single scene or two at the most, and that usually isn't sustainable for more than ten or twelve pages.

2) Heroine in hot water. Yep, I still fall for Pauline in Peril ... she may not be tied to a railroad track with a locomotive about to flatten her, but if she's in danger and I care about her, I'm going to at least read the first few pages of the next chapter.

3) An unexpected plot twist. If the story zings off in a way I didn't anticipate, you can bet I'll read right on, and who cares if the clock's struck midnight?

4) A fast-paced plot. We can knock Dan Brown all we want, but he understood how to keep the reader flipping those pages. He programmed readers to expect the plot to move ahead in blitzkrieg fashion, and they wanted to see what came next.

Again, today's readers are too sophisticated for a whole series of Paulines in peril, and if you end a chapter with a heroine in hot water, it better be real trouble, not something that is easily fixed. Otherwise, even the most unsophisticated reader realizes that you're just pushing her buttons to get her to read on, and she'll know, instinctively, that you never intend for your heroine to be put in harm's way.

My advice to myself? Shake all those strategies up in a bag and use them randomly, so that the readers never knows what you're going to hit them with next.

Pleading with plastic wrap

2010-09-01T05:06:00.001-05:00

I wish I could think of knots and plastic wrap in the same way.

When I was little, I'd often accompany my dad on errands in his big white 60s-something GMC pickup that the family had christened The White Elephant. He'd pull up somewhere, a parts store, a hardware store or the like, and hand me a roll of knotted surveyors twine.

"Here," he'd tell me, "I need these knots out of this twine. Otherwise it won't hang straight when I use it to lay a foundation out."

I would go at that job with the tenacity of a fire ant. While my dad conducted his business, I'd be clawing and scratching and tugging at those knots.

It taught me patience and persistence and focus, traits that have served me well as a grown-up. It also kept me out of trouble, which was probably the entire reason I was given the knot-detangling job in the first place.

Because of that early experience, I've had a huge respect for knots. I will not cut a knot. You ask me, that's the ultimate in quitting. Nope. I'll hang in there, set my jaw, and keep at it until I have liberated the two ends of string.

Plastic wrap has never evoked a similar respect.

For years, I banished plastic wrap from my house. The Sister could not understand it. She said I could outfit Pharoh's army in my supply of zip-top bags, which I admit, I have an inordinate fondness for. What's not to like? They're easy to use, quick and convenient.

Unlike plastic wrap, which clings to you like the stink of a skunk. It sticks in all the wrong places, and, even more aggravating, doesn't stick to what you want it to stick to. And yet, with enough of it, you could probably bind and gag a person to the point she couldn't get free -- always my fear when getting too close to a roll of the evil stuff. I can just imagine that plastic slithering out of the box, up my back, around my wrists and tying me up.

The old axiom holds true, though: you can save money or you can save time, but you can't save both. Right now, while I'm job-hunting, money is in short supply but time? That I have.

So at the grocery, I picked up a roll of my nemesis to wrap about 10 pounds of pork chops that I got on sale. And this morning, I declared war.

I wish you could have seen me and the plastic wrap. For awhile there, it looked as though the plastic wrap, the devil's own invention, was going to win -- I was going to lose all my religion, and the pork chops were going to remain nekkid.

But I remembered those knots that I tackled in the cracked vinyl seat of The White Elephant. I got mad. I shook my finger at the blasted roll of plastic wrap.

"I will not let a piece of polyvinylidene chloride whip me!" I vowed.

Maybe it was my tenacity. Whatever it was, I managed to get all 21 pork chops wrapped and tucked in the freezer -- without contaminating the roll of plastic, dropping a pork chop or smothering myself. That's progress ... even if I still don't much like plastic wrap.

(Note: the cute picture of the Plastic Wrap captive? It came via Rubyreusable.Com, and is the brainchild sculpture of Mark Jenkins.)

Clean-sweeping the old WIP

2010-08-31T04:58:00.001-05:00

I loved that old, now-axed show CLEAN SWEEP on TLC. It gave me hope that one day I could de-clutter my house. But of course every time I get in the middle of a de-cluttering project, it's some sort of immutable law that either (a) a neighbor will show up uninvited or (b) some medical crisis will break loose and you have to leave your pulled out clutter in situ for days on end ... in which case, clause A of the De-Clutter Law comes into full play.

The point is, of course, that everybody's junk looks the absolute worst when a person is elbow-deep in it. It looks hopeless. You've got all of it pulled out, bright and unforgiving daylight shining down on it, instead of having it tucked away in the shadows. You can't ignore it. You can't pretend it isn't there.

And what's worse? Once the junk's gone from the place it was, and you see the floor that held it, that floor's not bare. It's covered with dust bunnies and scuff marks and stuff you really don't want to ponder about. (OK, YMMV, as you may be a stickler for moving your junk and vacuuming under it, whereas I will vacuum around it. Don't care what they say, that edge cleaner on my vacuum doesn't really clean the edges.)

If I could avoid collecting the clutter to begin with, I wouldn't have this problem. But it's not always possible, because well-meaning family members WILL give you another tea pot or mug or thingamabob for the collection you didn't really want to begin with but that now is the instant answer to their gift-giving quandaries. The only thing I can do, then, is to ward off my increasing tolerance for piles of clutter in my life.

I was thinking about all this as I continued tearing apart my WIP. I am in the middle of a chapter that is pivotal to the whole book. It goes in the exact opposite direction that it needs to go in, and thus I am gutting it like the trout it is.

At the moment, the chapter is one hot mess. I keep cutting and cutting and cutting, until I think, "Gee, it'd be simpler if I just start from scratch." But then, just as I am about to highlight the entire last half of the chapter and hit DELETE, I see, sheesh, that there's some dialogue that would be PERFECT for the new chapter.

So I've got little scraps of dialogue in the midst of a lot of blank lines, and I am trying to build the chapter around those scraps.

It will happen. I still remember having to do a massive revision the first time, thinking, "I can't do this," as I cannibalized the old manuscript for the new. And then there came the tipping point, the realization, like a six year-old on a big two-wheeler, that, "Whee! I'm doing it! I'm doing it!"

I know it will come, that tipping point. I'm holding out for it -- that, and a lovely Godiva truffle, or if I can't have that, a Snickers miniature. But in the meantime? Pshew. There sure are a lot of dust-bunnies in this WIP.

Jim Dandy isn't feeling so dandy

2010-08-30T05:06:00.001-05:00

Cynthia’s grits bag, here.

Yes, I know, I’m usually content to hang out in the back corner of Cynthia’s fridge, right behind the sweet salad cube pickles and the jar of mushrooms. But enough is enough.

I’m feeling ignored. Here I am, a grain, a warm and nourishing hot cereal, the staff of life. And Cynthia pretends I don’t exist.

I’ve seen those looks she gives me. It’s all regret and remorse and “I don’t have time for you.” She lets her gaze skitter right over my blue and white Jim Dandy label and fix firmly on the butter that she’s reaching for.

Butter that, by rights, should be melting on ME, not some whole wheat bread in the toaster oven.

Talk with her about it? Talk, you say? That’s a laugh. You know how we grits bags are. We’re the strong silent types. You get as much out of us as you would out of Gibbs off NCIS. We’re all about the sticking-to-the-ribs business, not the warm and mushy stuff.

Although, I have to admit, we do the warm and mushy stuff pretty darn tootin’ well.

It’s not like I’m hard to fix. You start some salted water on the boil, go away, take a quick shower, come back in, and dump a cup of me in there. And then, while you stir me for five minutes – just five minutes – I’ll give you an absolute free gift of a facial.

Sure, I pop a little, and I splatter sometimes, but that’s why you’ve got long handled spoons and oven mitts in the kitchen. See? I play well with others, especially a good sharp cheddar cheese.

And then you switch me off, and I show you how I can finish cooking all by myself while you spend 20 minutes primping and preening and doing whatever it is you do to make yourself presentable to the rest of the world. Grits, see, we don’t care about stuff like that. We are plain and unassuming and don’t require a whole lot of gussie-ing up.

(Although, in the interest of full disclosure, lots of people seem to be ashamed of us and dress us up worse than a pink-dyed poodle. We are, however, best when we stick to our roots.)

Stick, you say? You’re saying that my propensity for sticking on plates and on pots may be why she’s not reaching for me in the morning? Sticking is what I DO. It’s who I AM. I stick to your ribs. I give you complex carbs. And fiber. And vitamins. I am sticking with you through the thick and the thin of the day.

And besides, if you don’t lollygag over your plates and the grits pot, but go right then and rinse them, it’s no problem. I know when I’m not wanted, and I make a graceful exit.

Which (sob) is what I’m thinking right now. I should emigrate to someone else’s fridge, someone who will love me and consume me and value my contribution to her day. Because (sob), it’s embarrassing when the Gibbs of the grains world breaks down in public.

Facing the mom brigade

2010-08-27T05:02:00.003-05:00

It is 2:22 as I write this, and in -- ye gads -- 38 minutes, I need to be out of my yoga pants, out of my THE STORY NEVER ENDS tee shirt that was my sole recompense for stepping in and rescuing a desperate conference organizer and agreeing to speak to a herd of only slightly interested teenagers about writing.

I need to be OUT of these and IN something presentable that wouldn't get me aired on TLC's WHAT NOT TO WEAR ... and most importantly smiling (but not too dementedly) at the elementary school teachers and (whisper this) the other moms when I pick up The Kiddo.

The Husband usually has this afternoon pick-up duty, and he could care less what he looks like when he picks up The Kiddo. He has no idea how merciless women can be on each other. They rival vultures when it comes to efficiency in picking things off the bone.

So, since I have been job-hunting, I have been getting up in the morning, showering and putting on make-up, and instead of something dry-clean-only, I put on a cute casual outfit and take The Kiddo to school. Then I come home, presto-change-o into yoga pants and T and job hunt on the internet. Thus, every afternoon, I have to rip off such comforting duds and pull back on my protective haz-mom gear.

Dr. Phil would have a field-day with this, I'm sure, plumbing into the dark recesses of my inferiority complex about getting laid off. But honestly, it has zip to do with that. I'm absolutely petrified of the professional SAHM. This is the creature that always pays for yearbooks the minute the notice comes in, sends gourmet goodie bags for all holidays including St. Patrick's Day and remembers to never, ever send anything with nuts as a class birthday treat.

Speaking of birthdays, this creature sends out cute little birthday invitations to the entire class BY MAIL a month ahead, inviting the children to frolic at some exotically themed party. Before you ask, yes, The Kiddo goes to public school. Do you think I'd be idiot enough to send her to a fancy private school where I'd never measure up?

It's not that these moms don't mean well. They do. They're wonderful, and a great resource. Ask them for anything from a Kleenex to an epi-pen and they'll pull it right out of their handy absolutely-this-season's big designer tote slung casually over their shoulder as though it doesn't weigh 15 pounds. Me? I'm lucky if I have a spare Band-Aid or a dusty Life-Saver in the recesses of my tiny purse.

Always before, though, I had the excuse of being a "working mother." They'd forgive so many of my many, many lapses because I worked.

But now? It's becoming clear to me that I am NOT cut out to be a professional grade SAHM.

Take for instance the other morning when I was running late. I'd noticed a rank smell in the car that I couldn't place. It had been mild the night before, horrid the next morning. The Husband commanded me to open up the trunk, which I did. Voila! A bag of garbage that I had no recollection of having put there, and that The Husband had no intention of admitting that he forgot.

"I'll drop it off after I take The Kiddo to school," I told him. Over my shoulder to The Kiddo as I backed out, I gave her this solemn promise: "Sweetie, I know I'm not wearing make-up this morning, but I'll wear my sunglasses so that no one will see, OK? And this afternoon, I'll wear make-up."

She looked relieved, complained about the garbage, but otherwise we made the trip to school and I dropped her out.

Then disaster struck as I was about to make my getaway. One of the Professional SAHMs recognized my car and made a bee-line for me. I sat there praying mightily, "Please, God, no, no, no!" but the Lord did not see fit to intercede.

So she popped open my passenger door and stuck her head in, only to give me some insider piece of knowledge : "You know," she said, "That end door is open until 8 a.m., and you can just drive right over there and drop her off. That's what I do with (name omitted to protect the innocent). Easy-peasy."

To which I'm thinking, Please don't draw in a deep breath. And please, please, please don't make me have to call your name because I know you're (name omitted's) mom, but I have absolutely no clue what your GIVEN name is.

I didn't say any of this, of course. I smiled. Said something like, "Really?" Added a few inane comments about school. Hoped I made some sense and didn't blurt out the word "garbage" because it was so omnipresent on my mind.

In all of this, I realized that I had -- oh, my ever-lovin' goodness gracious -- slipped off my sunglasses. This woman had seen me without make-up. I had been caught without cosmetics in the school drop-off line by a woman wearing the coolest little cotton top (without a wrinkle, I might add) and denim capris (which meant the blasted woman had to shave her legs that morning) and wearing make-up down to lipstick.

She moseyed onto her car. I peeled out of there as if I were a getaway driver at a bank robbery. First thing I did? Toss the garbage. Second thing I did? Say a prayer of thanksgiving that at least I had taken a shower that morning.

Have I told The Kiddo? Are you kidding?

OK. 2:46. The count-down is on and I probably have to refresh my make-up at this point, too.

Anti-Christ seeking virtual personal assistant

2010-08-26T05:05:00.002-05:00

OK, so those of you who follow my blog regularly know that in early August, I got slammed with a curve ball right outta of left field: my dayjob position (along with those uber-important extras like health insurance) was eliminated.

So I joined the ten percent of the Georgia population looking for work. It has been, to say the least of it, an eye-opening experience.

A friend of mine reminded me not to forget the telecommute option and to search Craigslist in major cities for jobs that I might be qualified for that allow telecommuting. Off I went to Craigslist.

Since my strengths are in writing and in marketing and PR, I looked there first. Boy, did they leave more than my ears pink!

I had no idea ANYBODY was looking, for instance, for a sex-toy blogger. I mean, come on. How do you blog about, erm, sex toys, without blogging about ... oh, man. I'm reaching for anything to fan myself with. Shoot, I suspect in some southern states, sex toys are still illegal.

Plus, almost every major city has a few "customer service rep" positions listed for telephone call centers and chat rooms with really suspicious-sounding names, listings that brag how "the right person" can make a quick thousand bucks a week. 'Scuse me, but even my MacBook is blushing at the thought of what "the right person" might be saying or typing.

(Insert more fanning now.)

And then there are the ones that pretend to be legit, but if you look at them with even one eye open, they make you worry for the impressionable young people out there. For instance, a hip-hop independent label was advertising for a marketing PR person -- and the pay? That would be T-shirts and the chance to hang around with Hip-Hop stars. Uh, yeah. That'll pay the electric bill.

Plus, there are the truly outlandish ones, such as one that said, "The Anti-Christ really needs your help!" I mean, gracious, I'm a motivated job hunter, but a Faustian bargain so soon? Get thee behind me, Satan!

Craigslist has a bounty of contract work, and some of them just make me laugh. For instance, today on Craigslist I found a perfectly WONDERFUL opportunity: Personal Appearance Booker sought for Nat'l Media Personality & Author.

It's a commission-only position, but they're quick to point out that it has the potential of unlimited reward. Uh, right. I'm an author, and I do my OWN personal appearance bookings, because I know exactly how lucrative those book signings really are.

To be fair, I've found a few seemingly legit opportunities for uptight prim and proper types like myself, and I've applied for them. But, uh, the sex toy blogger? And the Anti-Christ's virtual personal assistant? If you want 'em, they're ALL yours.

A Wii Matter

2010-08-25T05:02:00.000-05:00

Last fall, The Kiddo wrote a fairly persuasive letter to us about all the benefits of her acquiring a Wii for Christmas. The letter talked about she would get exercise and how it would be a way we could do things as a family. Oh, and it included a whole mess of "please-please-pleases."

Needless to say, The Husband and I fell for it hook, line and sinker, and we gave the Guy in The Big Red Suit the okay to bring one in on his sleigh. Rudolf wanted to keep it. Guess Santa knew who would win THAT tusslin' match if it involved The Kiddo's Wii.

Fast-forward all these many months. I give the thing regretful looks as it silently reproaches me for not sticking to the yoga promise I made to Wii Fit. I sometimes join The Kiddo for a spirited tennis doubles match, and on occasion, I will be the low man on the bowling family trio.

The Husband, though, loves it. He and The Kiddo are particularly enamored with Wii Golf. Why, I don't know, because that's one sport that he USED to flip right on past.

It's not a casual match-up between them, either. It's a to-the-death fight, with both of them providing sound effects that definitely blow up the golf-clap decibel meter. You'd think they were fighting it out for the honor of donning the Green Jacket, the way they muscle each other around that virtual golf course.

The Husband: Aaack! The ball hit the flag pole and bounced off!

The Kiddo (in her most helpful tone): You should have hit it a little softer.

(Thoughtful, respectful silence as The Kiddo lines up her shot, and then) The Husband: I wouldn't do that if I were you. See? The wind? Coming from the northeast? That's pretty stiff.

(Long debate ensues about wind angles, spin, choice of club, followed once again by silence and then a good sound whack)

The Kiddo (anguished): It went in the water! You told me the wind --

The Husband (laughing in his most evil tone) You should have listened to me and put more spin on it. Now I'm a stroke ahead.

The Kiddo: Hmph.

The Husband: (whacks ball, says something that sounds too much like a muffled swear word): Bogey.

The Kiddo (laughing in her most evil tone): You should have never tried that short cut through the trees. This hole is SO easy. (whacks ball) Ooooh! A BIRDIE! Oooh, Mommy! I got a BIRDIE! Wait? That was the last hole? Mommy, Mommy, I won! I won! I beat him!

The Husband: Hmph. I was doing okay until that last hole. I led every one.

I swear, this is a regular occurrence in our household. Now there is absolutely not a single sport The Husband won't watch on ESPN (yes, he even watches the lumber jack competitions), and they both look disappointed when they shout for me to come witness their holes in one and I don't exhibit proper awe and amazement. Each has such a feat to his or her credit, feats that they extol about with as much detail as if they had actually been on a golf course.

You know, maybe Rudolf SHOULD have kept the thing. That evil Santa ... he must have known what a Wii would do.

A fresh view

2010-08-24T05:10:00.000-05:00

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it takes at least that to give me an idea for a blog post -- at least this one. My thanks to Dana Elmendorf, Lickety Splitter, Lola Sharp and Stephanie Thornton all contributed to my lightbulb moment for today's blog post.

Lola, Stephanie and Dana had all talked about revisions, the pain that they can be, and the long slow slog that writing often is. Lickety Splitter had posted a couple of pix of herself -- with and without glasses.

I was reminded of how blind I am. I am, without corrective lenses, legally blind. You know that E on the eye chart? That's about all I can recognize with the right eye that God gave me, and it doesn't even exist with the left eye that God gave me.

Thank the Lord that the God who created my less-than-perfect eyes also created the guys who invented (a) glasses, (b) contact lenses and (c) the plastic that makes both of 'em possible.

Since 7th grade, I've worn glasses -- hateful demon things that steam up when you walk out of an air conditioned building into Georgia's heat, fog up when you're trying to stir gravy, slip and slide when you're working outdoors. Contacts are infinitely better -- until they dry out, tear or pop out, I can at least pretend I have "normal" vision.

It was flat amazing the first time I put glasses on and I could see, though. The blackboard came alive with math problems -- gee, no wonder I had been skating by with a C in math. The trees had leaves. And yeah, those black shadowy holes in people's faces? Those gaz-y-boos were eyes.

I think about the things people take for granted with their vision -- things we see and don't marvel at every day. My mom, toward the end of her life, lost a substantial amount of her vision in one eye thanks to acute glaucoma, a complication of some meds she'd had to take. It made her feel so insecure and so fearful.

If vision is a wonderful thing, then re-vision is even better, even if I do carp about it, because revision is literally seeing something again. I'm in the process of revising a completed manuscript of mine. Yes, it's hard. Yes, all my darlings are screaming to be saved. Yes, I'd rather be creating something fresh and new.

But I am in a way. I'm looking over the work I did on the MS, and I'm using my fresh and "new" (well, as new as I can get 'em, anyway) eyes on this.

Part of those "new" eyes? Well, that would be whatever wisdom and knowledge I've learned after having four books published and (more importantly) after having written at least 8 books, maybe more.

So if it is a love/hate relationship between me and my glasses and me and my revising, well, at least I get new eyes out of the deal!

Dum-dum-de-dum

2010-08-23T05:08:00.001-05:00

I should be worried, I guess, that one of The Kiddo's favorite shows is SAY YES TO THE DRESS. I don't let her watch it much -- mainly because I'm worried about the message it's beaming into an unformed young mind.

No offense, but what is that show (or its southern cousin, SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA) really saying? Spend tens of thousand of buckaroos on a dress you'll wear for a half-hour service? My stingy bone just can't wrap itself around that.

But we Southerners are weird enough about weddings without a show like SYTTD. I do declare, Southern girls are obsessed about THE Day from the time they're old enough to loop a towel through a headband and hum Here Comes The Bride. If we could skip the getting-hitched part and just do the wedding ceremony, I know a bunch of Southern women who'd get married a dozen times over, different dresses every time.

It is a rite of passage, complete with an arcane set of rules that are just now beginning to relax. But here are a few that are still around:

1) The bride (at least the Southern bride) wears a tiara and a white dress. Period. I don't care if she was married three times.

2) Bridesmaid dresses must, absolutely, without fail, be the ugliest thing that you as a friend of the bride will be forced to pay the earth for and never ever wear again. And they must come with dyed-to-match shoes.

3) It ain't a Southern wedding without a bolt of tulle. Or maybe two bolts.

4) People will talk and your mama will be shamed if you let your Maid of Honor talk you into letting your bridesmaids wear black. Or red. So don't go there.

5) You can get cutesy all you want with the shower invitations, but the wedding invitations better be white linen with black script.

6) Rule #5 will be waived for all graduates of SCAD -- the Savannah College of Art & Design. But then, so few of those artist types even bother with tying the knot -- wait. That sounds just a bit gossipy, no?

7) Grandma will faint in the church pew if you wear a strapless dress. But she'll get over it and be fine for the reception.

8) Wedding albums are required by southern law to include the entire newly-grafted-together clan, complete with fake grins of congenial familial love, even though most of this bunch of in-laws never met before that day and won't see each other again.

9) You should spend just slightly less on the cake than you do on the dress. And as long as it's pretty, who cares if it's edible?

10) See rule # 3.

I'd thought weddings were pretty much universal in their method of torture -- until I was writing a book about an Oregonian bridesmaid. Tawna Fenske had no clue what I meant when my Oregonian bridesmaid/heroine was griping about tulle. Tawna took me under wing and shared with me that we Southerners are a bit ... fixed in our ways when it comes to hitching people.

Now, when I see a wedding announcement that runs half a page (just about every Southern girl's lifelong ambition), going on and on about the gown featuring embellishments of embroidered lace, a sweetheart neckline and yards of heavy satin, why, I just grin and say, "Bless 'er heart," and then ... say a quick prayer that The Kiddo won't be so fixated.

Holding on & Letting Go

2010-08-20T05:02:00.000-05:00

You know that show on TLC, BURIED ALIVE? Where people have somehow managed to survive in homes that are piled and piled and piled with stuff? Most people look at shows like that and say, "How'd they ever get that bad? What happened?" But me? I know. I KNOW.

Not because I have a mile-high stack of old newspapers and a barrel of bottle caps in my living room, thank God, but because of The Kiddo. Getting her to let go of anything is like pulling hen's teeth.

The trouble started when she was a baby. Well-meaning folks would give her ... well, stuff. They assumed that we would be able to ditch the stuff when it outlived its usefulness.

They assumed WRONG.

The first time alarm bells went off was when she cried inconsolably when I gave away a faded old Winnie The Pooh shirt she could no longer wear. True, it was her favorite shirt, but she was three.

Over the years, it got tougher: baby toys, stuffed animals, bits and pieces of paper, drawings, rocks, freebies from fast-food restaurants, sticks. Yes, I said sticks. Like small tree limbs.

I did what I could to deal with the problem: involve her in the donating, letting her keep the profits from yard sales, trying to control what came in the front door -- ha! That's like holding back the Atlantic with a napkin.

I'd just about given up on any signs of progress until this week, when we tackled her wreck of a room, prior to school starting. Her room was AWFUL -- not messy, exactly, but stuffed with treasures. You couldn't really put anything away because you had to move something else, which meant you had to move something ELSE.

So I hauled out the black garbage bag and sell/give boxes, and we started in on her closet floor, filled with overflowing containers of Happy Meal (not bought by ME!) toys. By 12:30, we'd moved to a cupboard. By 1:30, we'd moved to the original target of our project: the top of her cedar chest, usually so cluttered you can't tell it's even a horizontal surface.

With every item, I asked: Do you really need it? Can you find a home for it? Still, it was agony for her until she sat down on her bare-to-the-wood cedar chest and said, "Wowee! It's like a seat!"

"Yeah," I told The Kiddo. "Originally that's just what I had in mind when I put it there, for you to have a window seat."

She asked me what we'd have to do to make that happen, and I said, "Find homes for some of the stuff you keep on there and give away or sell the rest."

After that, it was like a switch got flipped. She was ready to put stuff in the toss or sell pile, empowered. The room has a long way to go. But it's miles better than when we started.

How many times have I stubbornly held onto a concept or an idea or a character, even when I knew it wasn't working? I once sent out a project that got 37 rejections -- 37! And it wasn't until Tawna Fenske read it and said, "The mom is a whiner and the daughter's a brat, and I can't feel sorry for either of them," that I admitted defeat.

How many times have I moaned to CPs when an editor told me I needed to revisions? Every time, without fail, I've come away from the new project and said, "Wow! I did that! It's better! They were right!"

It's hard to let go of the familiar -- whether it's a prickly old stick that The Kiddo can't even remember the reason she first brought in her bedroom, or the WIP I loved, even though I know it doesn't work. But I've learned -- and I hope The Kiddo will, too -- that you can't grab onto the new until you let go of the old.

Book Hungry

2010-08-19T07:16:00.003-05:00

When my "Twitterpack" started hounding me about a book I'd never read, a book I SWORE I'd never read, I hemmed and hawed. Then an impromptu Twitter Book Club sprang up -- officially dubbed BOOK HUNGRY now -- and I was excited. These were great ladies, ladies whose opinions about writing and books mattered to me. I said sure, that I was in.

And seconds later they gleefully sprang the first book on me: HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. The book I'd never read. The book I'd sworn to NEVER read.

"It's good," they said. "It's really, really good."

Yeah, right, that's what a zillion people say about TWILIGHT, and another equal zillion say they despise it.

The whole concept of the HUNGER GAMES -- a post-apocalyptic setting where a girl volunteers to take her sister's place in a to-the-death reality game -- gave me shivers. I don't like futuristic books. I don't like reality shows. So I was CERTAIN that I wouldn't like a book about a futuristic reality show where there could be no happy ending -- the main character would, by dent of my logic anyway, have to kill off all 23 of her fellow contestants, and what's likeable about THAT?

Still, I put the book on hold at the library, and when it came in, I picked it up. That evening, when I got in from shopping and the library at about 6:30, I heaved a sigh and started on the first page.

At 7:30, The Husband made growly noises about supper, saw I wasn't moving from the couch, and then went and slammed a bunch of kitchen cabinet doors and came back with a banana sandwich. The Kiddo asked me if it were all right if she fixed herself a heavy snack/supper. I didn't look up from the page, just mumbled, "yeah, sure."

Honestly? She could have asked if she could go rob a bank with her friends and I probably would have said, "Yeah, sure," at that point.

HUNGER GAMES is that good. It's a deep character study. A commentary on totalitarian governments. A love story. But most of all? It's flat entertaining. It sucks you in and doesn't let you go.

I shook myself loose from it once, to read to The Kiddo and get her to bed, and then I went right back to it. I finished it around 1 a.m., shut the book and heard my heart cry, "More! More!"

The main character, Katniss, is a teenage girl who has had to grow up fast to provide for her mother and her little sister. She finds herself, once she takes her sister's place, pitted against 23 other young people for her very life.

One of those 23 is a teenage boy named Peeta, who saved Katniss many, many years before. Katniss doesn't want to kill him -- doesn't want to kill anybody.

Collins makes you care for Katniss and Peeta and the locking conflict of how will both of them somehow survive keeps you flipping pages. Her characters are real and multi-dimensional. Her world-building is spot-on.

And to think I swore I'd never read this book. Why? Because of the blurb on the back and my preconceived notions and -- oh, yeah, the really biggie -- the fact that everybody said I had to read this book. I've always shied away from cult-like followings, even as far back as E.T., when I swore I wouldn't go see the movie. I didn't. My cousin and I, neither having seen E.T., would roll our eyes and say, "E.T., GO home," when we saw another merchandise tie-in.

But then we finally saw the movie when it came back to the theater in our small town for an encore performance. And we loved it and adored the ugly little alien. We finally got it, got what all the fuss was about.

And now I've finally got what the fuss is all about with HUNGER GAMES. My advice if you're a hold-out like me? Go. Read it. Now.

My fellow Book Hungry members are blogging today about their thoughts on HUNGER GAMES, and each month, we'll blog about the book our members have chosen. Check 'em out!

Karla Nellenbach
Patty Blount
Abby Mumford
Elizabeth Ryann
Kelly Breakey
Alyson Peterson
Vanessa Noble

Let 'er rip

2010-08-18T05:08:00.002-05:00

It’s back to school time again … already.

The Kiddo seems as ambivalent as I am about the start of school, mainly because of the concept of homework that she was firmly introduced to last year. She likes school, thank goodness. But I don’t know of any kid who really likes homework.

At least The Kiddo gets to start fourth grade in the school she knows, with friends she’s familiar with. My fourth grade year was the first year in a brand-spanking new school to me, and I didn’t know anybody in my class.

There were upsides – the lunchroom food was better, I loved the science and the social studies textbooks, and my teacher was great.

But it was also the year that I first started having to ride the bus (which meant getting up earlier), the year that I realized I didn’t know how to make a long-distance phone call to my mom to come pick me up when I was sick, and the year that a pair of pants graced me with a split seam down the back.

By funny coincidence, earlier in the week of the pants-incidence, we’d read a story about a boy whose pants had split. I’d not paid any attention to it beyond answering the questions and thinking, “Wow, that must have been embarrassing.”

Then a few days later, I heard the tell-tale riiiip in the straddle of my black-and-white checked pants and I found out just how embarrassing a split straddle was.

I had no idea what to do. It was a warm spring day, and I wore no jacket to tie over my suddenly exposed backside. I kept wondering how I was supposed to get from my desk – middle of the row, middle of the room – to let my teacher know what had gone wrong.

Probably if I had just walked up to her desk without making a big deal, nobody would have noticed. But it was probably the very way I tried NOT to attract notice that attracted notice. I heard giggles and snickers and was grateful to the bone when my teacher sent me to the office. In the deserted hallway, I didn’t have to worry about who might be seeing my underoos.

A very kind secretary let me stay in a little bathroom just off her office while she roughly stitched the rip back together. I remember wiggling my bare legs in the bathroom, my pants a world away on the other side of that door, and hoping nobody had to use the bathroom until my pants were mended.

I think about the me that I was in fourth grade, a funny little kid who loved Galileo and hated division and survived split pants. And then I think about The Kiddo. On the one hand, she seems so much wiser than I was, while on the other? So much younger. I wonder if my own mom thought the same thing when she, laughing in the kindest possible way at my predicament, ripped out the secretary’s stitches and began stitching a proper repair.

A fortune by any other name

2010-08-17T05:01:00.000-05:00

Now, first off, I want to say that I don't put much stock in predictions from horoscopes or fortune cookies. Most of them are so vaguely worded that a person could read just about anything into them, and apply them at will to life. Try it ... read the horoscope for your neighboring astrological sign and see if you can't apply it to your own life.

But tonight I found a couple of slips of paper that came from some fortune cookies we'd had earlier. The Kiddo keeps everything, including fortune cookie fortunes, and if we don't get her hoarding under control, one day she may well be the featured tortured soul on TLC's BURIED ALIVE.

The fortune cookies had been consumed and the fortunes read earlier this month, before my Tuesday surprise. They read as follows:

A long term goal will soon be achieved.

and

You will find great fortunes in unexpected places.

Well, tonight, when I found both little slips of paper, I shook my head. "Ha!" I thought. "Proves how accurate fortune cookies are."

Then it occurred to me, in that scary way that makes you have a niggling grain of doubt, that both fortunes were sort of accurate.

For instance, the day I came back to work after two vacation days off and was subsequently told my position was eliminated, I had tweeted earlier that morning, "When I grow up, I wanna be a stay at home mom."

Okay, so losing my job is not exactly how I wanted such a long-term goal to come about. But it did. So I plan to file that fortune under the "be careful what you wish for" category.

The second fortune was also true. As I was composing my grocery list this weekend, the idea of buying groceries for the first time post-layoff completely wigged me out. I had to know EXACTLY what was in my freezer. For the first time in months, the Kiddo and I pulled the frozen chunks out, organized them and took an inventory. I swear, I had about four half-bags of frozen green beans that I'd opened, not realizing I'd previously opened a bag. And meat? And chicken? And rice? Had that, too, and didn't realize it. This week I didn't have to buy one ounce of meat.

So yeah, I found treasure in unexpected places.

It's not that I believe in the power of fortune cookies. Nope, I reserve that faith for prayer only. But I think me finding those fortune cookies was no accident ... I think it made me look at what life had dished out and realize, with very grateful heart and eyes, just what I had.

When we get bogged down in anything -- life, the dayjob, mothering, a frustrating WIP that just won't behave -- we tend to think only the negative about it. At least, I do. But this little find reminds me that treasure can be discovered in the most ordinary places -- it's not at the end of a rainbow, but right in front of our noses.

Gleeps, Trixie!

2010-08-16T05:03:00.002-05:00

The Kiddo and Trixie Belden have now been officially introduced. After my rocky start with Nancy Drew, I was a little afraid of whether the Girl Shamus would hold up to the test of time.

I loved Trixie growing up ... I identified with her hatred of all things to do with housework, her difficulties in math and the fact that she blurts out the first thought that comes to her mind. I thought it was cool how the Beldens and Jim Frayne and Honey Wheeler (and gorgeous Di with the violet eyes) all got to go on super interesting trips and solve mysteries. (Psst ... I also had a huge crush on Brian, the would-be doctor). My parents bought me almost every one of the Trixie Belden books for Christmas one year, and I read them all.

So I didn't want this re-reading of Trixie to be a letdown. And I desperately hoped that the Kiddo loved her as much as I did when I was a kid.

That being the case, I girded my loins and started reading THE SECRET OF THE MANSION aloud to the Kiddo. And I was surprised ... by a lot of things.

1) Trixie seemed a little more bratty to me at first ... but I figure that's just the mother in me coming out. The writer quickly worked to make her redeemable.

2) The pace of the story is lightning fast. While I remembered the big plot points (learning how to ride a horse, finding Jim, Bobby getting bitten by a copperhead), I didn't remember it happening in a two-day timespan.

3) For all of her moaning and groaning about housework, Trixie sure doesn't have to do a lot of it ... and apparently the Beldens shipped their laundry out to be washed (remember the big laundry truck that nearly flattens Honey on her first bike ride?)

BUT ... Surprise #4 more than offsets 1 through 3: Trixie is a very real, very human character, and the book is as interesting to me as when I read it the first time. I actually think I prefer her to that paragon of virtue Nancy Drew (the shame of it!). Plus, it's interesting that in 1948, a girl who was fearless and daring when it came to spiders, snakes and the like could be presented in a favorable light.

The Kiddo is very caught up in the mystery, pulled out only to ask questions like, "Mommy, what are dungarees?" and "Do they have to wear helmets when THEY ride a bike or horses?"

Reading old books does require quite a bit of annotation -- that dungarees are the same as jeans, that girls used to wear dresses a lot more than they do now, that a riding habit isn't the same as a nun's habit. But I like the fact that Trixie is still relevant today -- probably even more so than other girl detective heroines, and that her exploits (at least in the first mystery) are in line with what a parent would actually let her get away with. Score!

Even a fish ...

2010-08-13T05:00:00.002-05:00

When I put out a call for humorous, happy and upbeat blog topics on Twitter, @mistyprovencher suggested that I write about what people should say to agents in the happy instance that they call to make you an offer.

But that advice could be summed up with the old saying about even a fish would stay out of trouble if he kept his mouth shut. So I figured, hmh, maybe it would be funnier -- and more helpful -- if I wrote a list of things NOT to say to an agent with an offer of representation on the table.

The top five faves ...

5) Great! So this means you're gonna join in on my slumber parties? Will we trade pedicures and brush each other's hair?*

4) Maybe this is too much information, but my husband has just ... (fill in the blank).

3) Terrific news! Today's the 10th, so by the 17th, you should have me in an auction? And I'll pencil in Oprah for, hmh, next month?

2) That book? You wanna sell THAT BOOK? Oh, sheesh. I just deleted it off my hard-drive because I had decided it stank.

1) So, um, how much more complex will a six-figure advance make my troubles with the IRS?

As you can see (hopefully), the common theme in the list of should-nots is TMI and too high expectations. An agent is, above all, a professional. If you wouldn't tell/invite/ask your dentist, your accountant, your doctor, or some other highly-trained, highly experienced professional, don't ask your agent.

So I guess the best advice I could give when (notice I say WHEN and not IF) that happy day comes to pass would be this:

1) Say thank you.

2) Ask what her (or his) view of the book and the plan for going from here. (Revisions? Does she have an editor/house in mind?)

3) Ask what her plan B is if the book doesn't immediately sell. Ask this question with tact, so she'll understand that YOU understand worst case scenarios.

4) Ask what her preferences are on communication -- does she like frequent e-mails, or will she maintain radio silence until she has something to report?

5) Ask if she is an editing agent or not.

6) Tell her if the full is under consideration by any other agents.

7) Ask for 24 hours (AT LEAST) to consider her offer.

8) Say thank you. (Yeah, I know. But say it again anyway).

9) Hang up the phone.

Really, I add #9 in just because you're sure to forget to hang up and the agent will hear you freaking out after you think she's off the line. Now print this list, cut it out and tape it by your phone for when the happy day comes.

*This one was stolen without shame from Tawna Fenske. Yes, I'm a thievin' individual, and that makes Linda Grimes hopeful that I am soon to be corrupted.

Annnd right outta left field

2010-08-12T05:02:00.001-05:00

The year that The Husband and I got married was a banner year. There were huge thunder boomers every night that summer, until two or three in the morning. Our well pump got struck by one of those lightning bolts. My car burned up. I was diagnosed first with arthritis (nope) and then with lupus (nope, again) and finally fibromyalgia (check). And one evening I came in from work to find that the freezer compartment in our ancient, single door fridge had come loose and fallen into my eggs and my butter.

It was just not a good year for the roses.

This past year has been that way, too, since October when my mom got sick, and then in November she passed away. That seemed to unleash all manner of torment, from little things like our kitchen floor getting ruined by a cantankerous, tired old dishwasher, to really big and awful things.

It seemed like every time I would get a handle on things, another curve ball would slam past me across the plate. In fact, I was just emailing Tawna Fenske earlier this week that I was about due for another curve ball, because I was beginning to get settled in over my latest misfortunes.

Sure enough ... I was called in for a meeting with two other ladies at my dayjob on Tuesday and told, "You do good work, we hate to lose you, but this economy is making it impossible to keep you."

I freaked. I have been working a public job since I was 17 years old, even before that at my parents' business, and I'd never, ever been let go. Plus, I am the one who carries the health benefits.

The cold hard truth about writing for a living is that you have to sell a LOT of books before you can give up that dayjob. Think about it. Your royalty for a paperback comes in roughly at a quarter a book, depending on the cover price. That's gross pay, before your self-employment taxes, before you pay for private insurance, before you pay for your writing expenses (and they do add up.)

The health insurance is the real kicker. At least in Georgia, there's not really a good alternative to group plans through an employer. Private insurance can set a family back $1,500 a month -- and that's with a $5,000 deductible on each family member. I know that, because my optometrist was recently bewailing the high cost of coverage for his family.

This post is not meant to discourage you unpublished writers out there. It's just to put it in perspective how much of a loss my dayjob is to me, despite the fact that I am published. Keep that dayjob, unless you are lucky enough to have dependable coverage through some other option.

As for me, I've shed a few tears, the numbness is wearing off, and I'm getting myself in gear for a job hunt. We're better off than some folks in our position: our house, never that expensive to begin with -- is now paid off, our cars, which we drive until the wheels fall off, are paid for, we have a little savings, and very little consumer debt. We tend to be frugal, mainly because I've always been paranoid about this very thing happening.

I have some leads for job opportunities. I've dusted off the resume. And in between filling out applications and (hopefully) going for interviews, I'm going to be working like mad on the edits for the book I'm trying to revise. I'm not waiting for luck, any more than I'm waiting for that ol' Muse to come staggering in with her feather boa and her stilettos. Nope, I'm going to tackle this with the same faith, hope and optimism (not to mention hard work) that got me my first publishing deal.

But if you're the praying kind, please, please, keep our little family in your prayers.

Truth is stranger than fiction - at least in Georgia

2010-08-10T04:55:00.001-05:00

Mark Twain is said to have observed, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities." I tend to agree. I can count multiple times when an editor has stopped me mid-plot-point, saying, "That would never happen."

"Oh, yes, something like that happened in a town near here," I reply.

Therein follows a long silence on the phone, and I realize that I have once again stumbled into the Mason-Dixon Line Mis-Understanding. I assume, like most ego-centric southerners, that the rest of the world knows a wedding requires bolts and bolts of tulle, that when a person passes away, you should break out your very best casserole recipe to prepare for the grieving family's comfort, and that you should never, ever wear white shoes, pants, skirts, dresses or white anything after Labor Day.

It's not that Georgia (or the South, for that matter) is backwards. We're not. We're just different, and different is good. Sometimes. As long as you have time to translate for non-Southerners.

But we Georgians tend to have a different mindset altogether, and we are definitely concerned with appearances. We do tend to get all up in each other's business, because, as you well know, it's much more fun to wash somebody else's dishes than it is your own.

Just like that T-shirt proclaims, "I nag because I care," we Georgia folks care mightily about the trouble folks might get themselves into. And we know what sort of trouble that could be because we, er, have thought up some mighty strange ideas -- or else seen our brother-in-law think up some mighty strange ideas.

To that end, around Georgia, we have some strange laws on the books, laws that my editor would probably shake her head at and say, "That would never happen."

But it is, and it falls under the Mark Twain Law.

For instance:

It is illegal to use profanity in front of a dead body which lies in a funeral home or in a coroner's office.

Donkeys may not be kept in bathtubs.

No one may carry an ice cream cone in their back pocket if it is Sunday.

Now, the profanity in front of a dead body, I can surely understand. We Southerners totally get the concept of letting the dearly departed truly rest in peace. But the donkeys? And the ice cream cone? Part of me wonders if anybody did this to begin with and the law was in reaction to that event. Part of me is glad that donkeys are safeguarded from would-be idiots who would want to put a donkey in a bathtub.

Depending on the town you live in here in Georgia, you may be subject to the following laws:

All citizens must own a rake.

It is against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. (Again, glad that the giraffes are so protected, but what idiot did this to begin with?)

No one may tease an idiot. (Oops, did I just break that one with my previous comment? I think I did. Hopefully, if I run afoul with the law, someone will bail me out.)

I found these, and other, even more hilarious, examples at Dumb Laws -- go check 'em out.

An all-over body ache

2010-08-09T04:48:00.003-05:00

The best exercise program in the whole world? Simply lie down in the floor, and get back up. Repeat about 60 times in one day.

It doesn't sound like much, but trust me: the next day, you'll be ready to hunt me down and shoot me. You won't be able to, though. You'll be suffering aches and pains in every major muscle group. Shoot, even my hands hurt.

No, I was not trying to get in shape. I was merely trying to put in my laminate flooring. You may recall having read about the Mountains In My Kitchen, courtesy of a dishwasher past its prime. This past Friday I took off a vacation day to install said laminate.

I'd watched YouTube videos to see how it was done, and I swear, one of the guys said you could do a room in two hours.

Two hours! It took me two hours to get the blankety-blank underlayment cut around all the door openings and the first tricky pieces of laminate down.

There were times when I was about ready to give up. For instance, about noon on Friday, when I was starving, and I realized that I had moved the fridge up against the table, where I couldn't open the fridge's door. The table in question is a heavy marble-topped behemoth that I couldn't move if my life depended on it. The fridge was equally impossible, as I couldn't move it back on my workspace for fear of tearing the blankety-blank underlayment.

Lunch for me and The Kiddo turned out to be two peanut butter sandwiches each. It was all that we could get to. We couldn't even grace the peanut butter with a little jelly.

By 2 PM, I'd gotten maybe a quarter of the kitchen laid ... a far cry from the "two hours and you'll be done" pronouncement of the YouTube handyman that I wanted to hunt down and clobber by then. It occurred to me that the room he was talking about was (1) empty of all furnishings and (2) blissfully lacking in tricky built-in cabinets. I couldn't lay any more flooring until I had muscle ... so I texted The Husband about my predicament and then rested my aching back as I watched a half episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats.

The Husband moved the fridge and I worked on, with his assistance. We got the last of the tricky corners cut, and I started making real progress.

Only, I was starving, my back was KILLING me, and it was (by then) 7 p.m.

I started back afresh on Saturday morning, making real progress as The Kiddo decided that it was more fun to help than to drag around the house repeating the refrain, "I'm boooored." She learned the business end of a rubber mallet and how to measure and mark boards, while I learned that I really HAD been helping my mom all those years ago when I stood on the ends of boards as she sawed them off.

By 11 AM, I'd gotten as far as I could (the beastly table was in my way again), so off I went to grocery shop. I returned, got The Husband to move the table, and I started in on the floor again. This time, the end was in sight, and by 7 PM, The Kiddo was banging in the last piece of flooring.

Yes, I still have clean up to do (everything's moved out to the garage) and yes, all my baseboard has got to be put back in, but I am done. And in pain. And joyful. And -- oh, gracious! Look at the time! I can take two more ibuprofen tablets!

A little bit is more than nothing

2010-08-06T05:04:00.000-05:00

All that talk of chocolate yesterday on the blog -- not to mention a near red-alert status when I was down to my last Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- put me in the mood for brownies. Luckily, The Kiddo asked for candy and I could offer brownies instead, so that it appeared that it was all her idea.

Why, yes, I am devious that way.

What I am not is much for forethought, apparently. I opened my big box of Hershey's Cocoa to find a scant three tablespoons. That was a red alert situation all in and of itself, as it was very late in the evening, past time when the sidewalks are deflated and rolled up in My Neck of the Woods.

For a bare moment, I considered tossing in the towel and saying, "Whoops, Kiddo, no brownies tonight." But then I thought, Hmm, three tablespoons. That's half a brownie recipe's quota of chocolate. Maybe I could make half a batch of brownies."

I double-checked the recipe, and sure enough it called for two eggs -- which is good, because I've yet to figure out how you half an egg when you half a recipe. Are you supposed to put the whole egg in? Because it sure won't taste the same if you round DOWN.

But as I mentioned, the recipe fortunately skirted the whole half/whole egg issue (dadgummit, now I've got this image of half an egg in my head), and The Kiddo and I proceeded with our brownie making endeavor. To make sure that we had a pan small enough to hold half a batch of brownies, I suggested that we use her mini-cupcake pan she got for Christmas from The Sister. The Sister is a Good Cook (who would know how to half an egg), and she hopes her niece will turn out to be as well.

The brownies turned out loverly, if I do say so myself. Each one was bite-sized, with a crispy little crust around the top, with a sinkhole of chewy goodness in the middle. I could have eaten about a dozen of them all by myself, had the little suckers been unguarded.

As I enjoyed the small tastes of heaven (three, just three), I thought about how I give up sometimes on writing, when I don't think I have a block of time, say an hour, to give to the effort.

The brownies made me realize how foolish I am. True, fifteen or twenty minutes of writing or editing time won't be as productive as an hour would be. There's the two minutes while I wait for the computer to whir and gig, and the 30 seconds it takes me to find the document in question, and the two minutes I stare at that blasted blinking cursor, afraid that this time it WILL outlast me. (It's a phobia of mine.)

But fifteen or twenty minutes might get me a paragraph. And a paragraph is better than no words at all.

So how about you? Can you write or edit in concentrated bite-sized moments of time?

The carrot or the stick?

2010-08-05T05:07:00.000-05:00

Oh, yeah, babe, a chocolate keyboard like the one here is EXACTLY what will make me BICHOK (butt in chair, hands on keyboard.)

On the other hand, I might be eating the keys instead of pounding them. So, hmh, that sounds like a less than optimum solution there.

While the spectre of breach of contract and being sued by a major publisher will get me to the keyboard every time, it doesn't make the creative juices flow or inspire me to whistle while I work. I wind up with the exact same work attitude as the recalcitrant old mule who has been dragged to the field only to sit down on his haunches, refusing to budge.

More positive motivations, the aforementioned carrot (or more aptly put for writers, the Hershey bar)?

Reading a good book: Almost nothing inspires me more than reading a book that moves me, a story that makes me see writing done right. Recently I read THE HUNGER GAMES at near gunpoint (yes, there are only two other people in the world that haven't read it), and despite my hesitation about the premise, I read it in one gulp and came away in awe. How had Suzanne Collins hooked me, a cynical writer-type who is past jaded? It excited me and made me want to polish up my own tricks.

Reading an awful book: This is the "almost nothing more" situation -- the only thing that inspires me to write more than a good book is a bad one. I read a bit of it, bang it against my forehead, read a few more pages, bang my head again ... and I think, "Self, you could write a better story than this. You HAVE written a better story than this." It sends me straight to the computer to prove to the world and to myself that I can and will write a better story.

(I feel at this point the urge to insert this caveat: I am fully aware that readers have used my very own books as aforementioned inspiration. Not all readers like all books, and as a published author, I can admit that not every book an author writes is one she is completely proud of. Sometimes it's just a miss, but I've done my best, my editor says it's approved, and so I cash the advance check anyway.)

Talking about writing: For me, whenever I get a chance to run my mouth about writing, I come away enthusiastic and pumped up, like a runner in a athletic shoe shop. With other writers, I feel understood and not like a long lost puppy who's really a kitty and doesn't know it. So writing conferences, writers groups, or just a bunch of writers meeting for a cup of coffee can serve to get me revived on writing.

Paying it forward: Helping newbie writers always reminds me why I fell in love with writing in the first place. I think it's sort of like how parents view the world through the eyes of their children -- yeah, they see the mistakes that can be made and the foolish ideas, but they also see the innocence, the joie de vivre, the excitement that they too experienced in a past lifetime.

Published authors have to be really careful not to sound like they have the market cornered on the Gospel Truth of Getting Published (because we don't) and they have to remember that their first obligation is to their families and their legal binding contracts (BREACH OF CONTRACT! AAACK! Away from me!)

But we can still pay it forward in small ways -- in random acts of kindness. Because really, when we're paying it forward, we're refilling our own motivation tank -- or at least I am.

Afraid of Santa?

2010-08-04T05:00:00.000-05:00

OK, so 'round here, it's been hot as all get outs, with the heat index upward of 115 degrees.

Why, then, am I thinking about Santa Claus?

Because I was thinking of agents and editors, of course, and the fear so many writers have for them.

Maybe it was all the RWA talk on Twitter. Maybe it was the fact that I had the privilege of critiquing a new writer's work (and it was GOOD!) and I saw afresh how scary the writing biz can be to a person just starting out.

But it got me thinking ... about Santa Claus.

When The Kiddo was two, I was working as an editor/reporter/chief-cook-and-bottle-washer for a small weekly newspaper. Christmas was a crazy time for me, what with all the year-end banquets and Christmas programs and special events. It meant time away from The Kiddo.

So a lot of times, I tried to multi-task and bring The Kiddo along, if it were appropriate for her and if I thought she'd enjoy it. Ergo, my brilliant idea about Breakfast With Santa.

I had to cover it anyway, and it was a sure fire way of making sure The Kiddo got to see Santa. Like most "sure-fire" things, it didn't go exactly to plan. As a multi-tasker, the endeavor went over about as well as washing your socks in your dishwater would.

It was the first time she got to meet The Jolly Old Elf, at least in her memory. I didn't get within 20 feet of him before she twisted in my arms. One look at him, sitting in his big wooden chair with his long beard and his beachball tummy, and her mind was made up. If she could have climbed on my head, she would have.

"NO, Mommy, NO. Don't wanna." she said. You couldn't get more emphatic than that. No crying. No real panic. Just a very clear, very no-nonsense declaration that there would be no Santa pix for The Kiddo at age two.

I tried explaining to her that she had to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas, that she knew about Santa, that she'd seen pictures of Santa. And she had. She'd plop one fat finger on Santa's pictures in books and tell me all about him. But she was having nothing to do with the real deal.

Writers can be like that. While they understand that they have to ask in order to receive (a query letter must go out before a partial request can come in), sometimes they can't get past that fear.

I've given up trying to cajole, trying to convince new writers that agents and editors are human (and yes, that means they can be cranky, just like us). I've given up repeating, "You can't win if you don't enter!" in my best Ed McMahon impression.

Why? Because I remember that The Kiddo just needed time to process such a fearful choice of making herself vulnerable. A year later, when I had not even mentioned Santa to The Kiddo (after all, the previous year's debacle was still fresh in my mind), she asked ME.

She snuggled into my bed one Saturday morning and warbled, "Mommy, when I get to see Santa? Can I see him TODAY?"

So right then and there I re-arranged my full-to-bursting schedule and took her to the nearest mall. She wanted to see Santa all by herself. So off I let her toddle up to the Big Red Guy. She bent his ear for the longest time about everything she wanted for Christmas. When she climbed off his lap and walked back down the carpeted path to me, she stopped, turned and said, "Santa, I wuv you."

Oh, yeah. When you're ready, you're ready, and absolutely nothing can stop you.

Twinkle-Toe Torture

2010-08-03T05:05:00.003-05:00

I am exhausted with school already, and all I’ve done is buy school clothes and school supplies.

Yes, this weekend The Kiddo and I went back-to-school shopping to take advantage of some sales that were going on.

The Kiddo tends to be a clothes horse, and one who would buy one of every color if my purse and my better sense would allow it. So this year I did something that was labor intensive for me, but saved me from pulling out my hair in the store.

I pre-shopped on-line. It took some doing. First I found the on-line stores where the sales were, and then I was able to find out what was actually in-stock at our brick-and-mortar version.

Presto, I printed out pictures of each shirt and jeans, figured my budget and decided how many shirts and jeans and so forth she could get.

Sounds a little OCD, you say? You’ve never been in the seventh circle of hell, AKA, a dressing room with a picky kiddo with an I-want complex in said dressing room.

The Kiddo and I carefully flipped through all the pictures, and she decided ahead of time which ones she liked and which ones she didn’t. I hammered into her head the magic numbers of how many she could get in each category.

I did the same with shoes, printing off a photo of a pair of heavily decorated canvas sneakers with lots of glitter and something called twinkle-toes. I figured for sure I was going to be paying 40 bucks for those sapsuckers. This is a child who will one day be wearing Manolo Blahniks for certain, as she loves and adores shoes.

But no. The Kiddo surprised me.

The Kiddo really liked the Twinkle Toes shoes – to look at. But if you wiggled your feet even the slightest bit, the sneakers lit up like a Christmas tree – a fiber-optic Christmas tree with halogen twinkle lights. They were impossible to ignore, and across the nation, sometime very soon, otherwise mild-mannered teachers are going to be ordering hits on the genius who designed these garish sneakers and the parents who sent their girl-babies to school thusly shod.

The Kiddo gave a long and wistful look at the Twinkle Toes and shook her head. “Maybe if they had an on-and-off switch,” she told me as she settled for a pair of shoes without the light show. “Or maybe if the battery would run down in a hurry.”

I chuckled at that, remembering all the very loud toys that misguided non-parent folks gave The Kiddo over the years, because I knew the rule of such devices: the more obnoxious the sound or light, the longer the battery lasts.

A cure for what ails me

2010-08-02T05:09:00.001-05:00

What do you call a fish with no eyes?

A fsh!

OK, that was so corny that you could shuck it and roast it, but as I write this, I'm desperately in search of a laugh.

It's been that kind of a day, not a terrible day, but one that bogs me down in negative thinking. If I can't change the day, then I can at least change my attitude toward it.

A good belly-laugh is better medicine than almost anything than I can think of. Studies show that laughter boosts immunity, lowers stress hormones, decreases pain, relaxes your muscles, and may even prevent heart disease -- and that's just the physical benefits. For me, it helps me find some distance from a situation that I want to fix NOW, even though that's either not possible or above my pay grade.

But laughing is not like breathing for me ... it's not automatic. I can forget to laugh. I can forget to look for humor in life. I can forget to laugh at myself.

And it's only when I'm this tense, tightly-wound attack spring, a bad-tempered Jack-in-the-Box, that I realize, quick, I need to laugh.

First step? Smile.

Yep. A snapshot of a laugh at conception would have to be a smile. So when I get so foul-tempered I can't even stand myself, I poke those corners of my mouth up instead of down. Just a little twitch -- not a grimace, not a fake smile, not a Cheese! smile for a photographer. And trust me, within five seconds, I actually feel lighter.

Second step? I poke fun at myself and my near melt-down in response to whatever the status quo is. I try doing it in a respectful way, because what you say to yourself, even in the privacy of your own head, can hurt just as much as if someone else was saying it -- more, sometimes, because you almost always believe yourself. But if I can laugh at myself, then I take myself and the situation a lot less seriously.

And that's always a good thing, because the pressure's off, and when the pressure's off, solutions can float in. An intense humorless person can be like one of those negative-pressure-air device the CDC uses: nothing goes out, nothing goes in. That may be really good when working with super bugs, but when I begin to resemble a room equipped with one of those gadgets, I know I'm not at my most creative best.

Third? I go TOWARD laughter -- whether it's a corny joke on the internet about a fish, or down the hall to where my co-workers are or on Twitter or -- you get the pix. I just keep hunting that first chuckle. Because if a smile makes me feel lighter, then a chuckle makes me feel like I'm a helium balloon.

For instance, The Kiddo just wandered in here, bored out of her skull, slinging a ball cap on her index finger. I am trying to get this blog done, and have been interrupted just slightly less than nine hundred ga-jillion times by every two-legged member of the household. My first instinct, when the cap hits her in the mouth, is to dish out an I-told-you-so. But she laughs, and that reminds me to laugh, too, so I do -- and tell her that she's been "pecked" on the mouth by the bill of a cap, which makes both of us laugh more.

Once again, humor defuses the situation, gives me oodles more patience, and doesn't escalate things -- including my bad mood!

And just in case the first joke didn't give you enough corn to shuck and roast, I got a chuckle out of this one, too:

A dyslexic man walks into a bra ...

Get it?

The Definitive Top-Five List of A Writer's Rewards

2010-07-30T05:07:00.002-05:00

Lickety Splitter, a non-writing (she says) follower of mine, has said she tried writing, but it seemed like way too little rewards for way too much agony, and so she quit it. I'm amazed that anybody could be smart enough to see this low reward-to-work ratio and get out while the gettin's good.

But then, no. I could never give up writing, because there ARE rewards.

OK, now you ask me to name them. Details, details.

Oh, you REALLY want me to name them. A little trust, people. If I say there are rewards, then there are -- ptui. You're not going to shut up until I enumerate them, are you?

So for the Doubting Thomases in my readership, here is the definitive Top Five Rewards list for writers.

5) People think you're smart.

It's true. If you let the non-writing public find out you are writing a book, people are genuinely impressed with you. They assume you are going to join the ranks of JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and that they will have known you when. Do not disavow them of such beliefs.

4) People will excuse your messy house.

The non-writing public will (generally speaking) give you a pass if your house is cluttered but essentially sanitary. They assume that you are expelling blood, sweat, toil and tears during all your free time, and that you don't have time to deal with dust bunnies.

3) People will excuse your strange behavior.

The NWP (non-writing public) will soon grow accustomed to you stopping in mid-sentence, shrieking, "Eureka!" and then scribbling something on your palm only to dash off for your laptop. When you NAME your dust bunnies and talk to them, the NWP will smile and say things like, "Well, yanno, she's one of those creative types."

2) You may get some dough.

Most writers don't get rich, but they can, if they're lucky and work at it, garner anything from enough to take a vacation to enough to quit the day job and still survive. Doing what you love for a living? That's not work. And what idiot walks away from money that can be made with so little capital investment?

1) You will remain true to yourself.

Eventually the NWP will get impatient with you and say, "So when's that big best-seller coming out?" But there's something about seeing your words in print, even if it's in the local paper, that gives you a thrill that won't quit. It's addictive. If you are a writer, you can't REALLY quit (which is why I suspect that Lickety Splitter, with her keen observations on her colorful blog, is truly a writer in hibernation). But if you did PRETEND to quit, you'd be denying a part of yourself. That would make as much sense as looking at your left hand and saying, "Huh, don't use it much. Guess I could chop it off and it wouldn't be cold in the winter time."

So be honest. Deal in truth. Say it loud and say it proud: I am a writer, I'm for real, even if I haven't been pubbed, and I do it for ME.

In need of an idea -- or frequent flier miles

2010-07-29T05:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday (pre-migraine) a college professor/writer that I am acquainted with tricked me into coming out of my shell.

OK, really, truly there were no tricks. He merely asked me if I would be willing to teach a seminar on writing to high school students and a class or two to college students on creative writing.

I said yes before I could really think about it. I love talking about writing, and I love teaching writing. If I had the dollars and the time, I'd go back and get the parchment that would say I could dayjob by teaching creative writing. Alas, the idea of doing more post-grad work makes my head ache worse.

Also, these commitments were blissfully out in the future -- the high school one is not until February.

Then Dr. Writer (who shall remain nameless) told me the kicker about the high school seminar: the time block is two hours, and in that time, the students have to produce a sample of writing that is judged for an English scholarship.

Yikes! Back I retreated into my turtle shell.

Usually when I'm asked to do something like this, I focus on something useful -- query letters or synopses or just a general overview of the writing/publishing biz. But these kids will be nowhere near submitting for publication (well, most of 'em, anyway), and I don't think even the best query letter could be good enough to base an English scholarship on.

So onto my quandary: what component of writing can I teach to high school students that I can teach in, say, an hour or so, and leave them enough time to craft a good sample of their writing?

My thoughts so far? Let's go all James Joyce and stream-of-consciousness for a moment.

Eeek! Can I get out of this? Maybe an unexpected trip out of the country? No, no, my word is my bond ... two hours! Not even two, because they have to write and how can they write anything in two hours that will give them a good shot at writing and what if I can't shut up about writing and take the whole two hours and they have zip to show for their scholarship? Two hours! TWO HOURS! I can say no, sure I can say no, no, no, I can't say no, say, how about dialogue?

Once I hit the brakes on the runaway train that is my thought process (ain't pretty, is it?), I tell myself to define the problem and get on with finding a solution. I have to teach a bite-size chunk, and dialogue is something that could be bite-sized.

Other possibilities:

1) Setting and imagery

2) First pages

3) Show, don't tell.

So you tell me. Back when you were a high school kid who thought all romance writers were rich and ate bon-bons all the live-long day and wore feather boas and stilettos and resembled Barbara Cartland, what could you have listened to in sixty short minutes and then turned into some sort of work product?

Because it's either you help me come up with this, or I'm hitting Tawna Fenske up for some of her frequent flier miles out of the country.

Zedonks and subgenres

2010-07-28T05:08:00.001-05:00

This week in Georgia, we had a rare birth: a donkey gave birth to a zedonk -- a cross between a zebra and a donkey. The little thing is cute as pie, with the striped legs of a zebra and the face of a donkey.

I always think about the world through one of two filters, that of The Kiddo or writing. The zedonk made me think of genres being mixed willy-nilly, coming up with totally new stuff. It's kind of like that old Reese's commercial: "Hey, you got your peanut butter in my chocolate!"

Take for instance, romantic suspense. In today's writing market, we tend to take it for granted, like it's always been there. Not so. The first person to really successfully combine the two genres in a seamless sort of way was Mary Stewart, of TOUCH NOT THE CAT fame, with her first romantic suspense in 1955 with MADAME, WILL YOU TALK?

I like a little mystery with my romance and a little romance with my mystery, and I do wonder why it took us writers so long for someone to come up with the idea. That's true creativity, if you ask me: someone taking two things we take for granted and combining them in a new and creative way.

Now we have zombies invading Jane Austen's world, and vamps routinely making inroads into the YA sphere. Sometimes I wonder what's new that's left to be written or even combined. But I know that I'm just too blind to see the obvious. Someone will come up with something that will make us all go, "Aaack! Why didn't I think of that?" and while we're doing the palm-to-forehead routine, the intrepid author will be whistling all the way to the bank.

But as far as the peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate that we have NOW, what's your favorite sub-genre? What's a classic of that genre, something that would be the book you'd point a new reader toward in order to introduce the sub-genre in its best light?

A sackful of writing lessons

2010-07-27T07:02:00.000-05:00

Bagging groceries is a lost art.

Some years ago, Tawna Fenske gifted me with a few reusable shopping bags, way before they were popular in my neck of the woods. I use those and an insulated shopping bag to pack my groceries in. Even now, the cashier and bagger will give me sort of quizzical looks, as though I've just asked them to stand on their heads.

This past Saturday the bagger totally ignored the chill bag and just tossed things harem-scarem into any bag she could get her hands on. The bathroom cleaner was chunked in with my bread. My frozen chicken tenders were in a bag all by their lonesome. And my chill bag? Well, the bagger held it in her hands and said, "Uh, guess I could have used this for the cold stuff."

I'd sorted the cold stuff as I put it on the register's conveyor belt. I'd asked the cashier to put my cold stuff in the chill bag. But bagger and cashier both looked lost as haints, as my grandmother used to say, so I pushed my cart out of the way of the next person in line and started re-bagging my groceries.

Yes, a tad OCD, but the temps were hovering in the 100-degree neighborhood, and I did have 30 minutes of drive-time in front of me to get home. As I rescued my bread from the bathroom cleaner -- which later proved to be leaking -- I thought about how baggers used to take such care with groceries. When I was little, paper bags were the rule, and cold things like ice cream went into a super-heavy small paper bag. Baggers took pride in filling the sacks so that, if the bag were ripped away, the contents would almost be able to stand in a tightly-packed tower.

I blame it on those infernal plastic bags. Baggers now toss a few items in each bag and stick your bread and your eggs on top of the pile. They've never learned the intricate art of assembling a bag of groceries -- or even that it mattered.

Computers, in a way, have made writing novels seem easy and accessible, just like those plastic bags. People think that writing a book is something you can just toss together: you open up a word processing document and start with Chapter One. No planning. No thinking of plot. No need to develop characters.

I'm not talking plotter vs. pantsers here. Pantsers do all the thinking and planning and character development after they have the framework done, whereas plotters get it done first. I'm not talking about people who are just starting out and don't know beans about writing - everybody's got to start somewhere.

Nope, I'm thinking instead of people who SHOULD know better but don't. They think a first draft is the ONLY draft they need to write before they send it off to a publisher, with the next stop Number One on the NYT Best-Seller List. They think that their manuscript should never be subjected to an editor's tender mercies, and that any suggestion of improving their story is a request for them to sacrifice their art on the altar of commerce.

Nobody reading this would fall in that category -- the folks I'm arghing about are too hard-headed to read blogs about writing. But as you continue to write, I can guarantee that you will run into these sorts of people -- the equivalent of my Saturday bagger who couldn't understand that cold stuff should go into a chill bag.

My advice? Smile and say, "Oh, you're writing a novel? Wow. That's great." If they're really interested in learning, they'll ask YOU questions that will signal that they understand the cardinal rule of being a writer: no matter where you are in learning the craft, there's always SOMETHING you can learn.

Wherein I discover a few things about myself

2010-07-26T04:55:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I talked books for three hours.

It was that Literary Ladies Night that I mentioned in a previous blog, the one where I said I had to choose my favorite book to share.

I was more than a little nervous about the evening. For one thing, since I'm a true introvert, I'm not a joiner. I'm not a mixer. I have been, all of my life, painfully shy and awkward, and inclined to blurt out things that come out entirely wrong. Maybe that's why I prefer books and writing to social functions -- at social functions there's no such thing as a delete key.

For another, two of the ladies to be at the event were college professors. Okay, so once upon a time I was a college English instructor, but one of these ladies had a master's degree and the other was the proud possessor of a Ph.D. To say that I was psyched out was an understatement of British proportions.

The third reason is that I had offered to bring chicken salad before I remembered that I was a Bad Cook. Sure, it's awfully hard to mess up chicken salad; after all it's just chicken, mayo and loads of sweet salad cubes (chunky relish for all you who reside north of the Mason-Dixon line.) But I'm terribly self-conscious of my cooking.

We wound up with six ladies, with six books, as well as egg-salad sandwiches, hummus and chips, pesto, strawberries and cantaloupe and brownies, plus my chicken salad. Round-robin we went. I was fifth, and glad of it so that I could Monkey-See-Monkey-Do.

Of course I had nothing to worry about. The college profs both brought very accessible stuff -- an English cozy and a book that was an out-of-print memoir that could actually be a targeted at a younger audience. I realized that when they meant favorite books, they meant comfort books -- the things you rested your soul with.

Each book sparked discussions about other books -- and one woman confessed she'd had to plod through WUTHERING HEIGHTS, as she'd felt inclined to slap the characters. It was a refreshing let-your-hair-down sort of evening, with no pretensions and lots of sharing -- and I came away with at least five books I hadn't read, but definitely wanted to after their thumbs-up.

I recommended GODS IN ALABAMA, and read a favorite scene (where Arlene Fleet loses it during a bout of home-sickness in a Chicago Wal-Mart). They all listened, asked intelligent questions, and seemed to be genuinely intrigued by the book.

Oh, and my chicken salad? They went back for seconds.

So yanno what? Maybe I've just been letting the wrong people eat my cooking, and maybe I've been going to the wrong social events. Because I'd go back there in a heartbeat, and I'd bring my chicken salad.

Auld Lang Summer

2010-07-23T07:22:00.003-05:00

Today (and yes, I know I'm late again with the blog) I'm taking a Mental Health Day off from the Day Job.

Nope. I'm not writing (except for this.)

Nope. I'm not gonna Twitter (not much, anyway.)

Instead, I'm going to take The Kiddo to her last day of swimming lessons, because this summer she has gone from terrified of water to swimming like a fish, and I have yet to see a stroke of it.

And then I'm going to let her play at her friends' house, while I do something supremely important.

Absolutely nothing productive.

Yep. No projects. No grocery shopping. No back-to-school-clothes shopping. No cleaning. No de-cluttering. No writing. No research on a WIP. No research on agents or publishing houses. No research on DIY projects. Or getting organized. Or chasing down that 25th hour of the day.

I intend to have a summer day like I had when I was ten. Unstructured. Unproductive. Because I've been waaay too productive lately when it comes to my life.

I was somewhat lucky growing up. My mom was at first a stay-at-home mom and then a work-at-home mom. Summers were an endless string of come-what-may days, where there was no rush, no worry, no fuss, no muss.

We were productive, don't get me wrong. My mom was always one to have a project going -- usually building herself yet another kitchen on our hill. Summers also meant produce -- corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, okra, squash. We grew it and picked it and shelled/husked/peeled/cut it, and then we canned or froze it. It was hard work, but it was fun work, and I don't remember any deadlines save for food safety ones.

I remember one day, very clearly, that we'd spent the morning shelling purple hull peas (for you Yankees, think field peas, but much, much better) outside by our pool, where we wouldn't make a mess in the house. Even in the morning, the Georgia heat and humidity sweltered. My mom took one wistful look at the pool, set aside her big pan of shelled peas, and jumped in the pool, clothes and all.

If there was one thing that I could give The Kiddo, it would be a single summer like that: a summer where I didn't have to get up and put on dry-clean-only clothes and go work with my brain all day in an office, while she had to get up early and go to the sitter's. It would be a summer where there was no rush, no worry, no fuss, no muss. And if we had a pool, we would jump in with our clothes on.

A little rain, a little lightning

2010-07-22T07:44:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, but last night was filled with thunderboomers, which meant no computer time for me. After having one computer fried by lightning, I take storms VERY seriously.

And maybe I'm a little phobic about bad weather. When I was kid, I never minded the storms, but my mom made a huge deal out of them. We'd sit in the dark when the power went off (as it frequently did out in the country), heating to death because of the summer's swelter, talking and worrying about how long the storm would last. I always thought it was much ado about nothing.

But then, when I was a freshman in high school, one afternoon the sky turned the weirdest green-orange I'd ever seen. Our gym was in a separate building, and I got soaked to the skin going through the rain. Me hating gym, I thought the logical thing for me to do was call my mom to come and get me. So I went to the office wing of the school to make a pleading phone call -- and the tornado alarm went off.

A tornado had destroyed a mobile home park about a mile or so down the road, and there were other reports of tornado warnings as well. I found that out as I sat huddled with other students in the hallways, listening to the worried and anxious whispers of teachers and staff.

It felt like forever we sat there -- and one reason it felt like an eternity to me was the guy that I was sitting next to. He already had the strapping frame of a Nebraska line-backer stuffed into a pair of faded-to-blue-white overalls. I know somewhere in this world he has grown up to be an avid watcher of The Weather Channel's Storm Stories, because he would NOT shut up about all the really bad tornado stories he knew.

Boy, did he know a lot of 'em, stories about pine needles buried into telephone poles, houses leveled to the foundation, people jerked up and relocated a mile down the road.

About the time I thought I would go insane if he didn't shut up, the principal stuck his head out into the hall and told me my parents had come for me.

My parents? I hadn't even been able to make the telephone call. They'd heard about the bad weather and had jumped into our little powder-blue '72 Vega to fetch me.

My relief at deliverance was short-lived. Our little powder-blue '72 Vega died on us, in the middle of a monsoon, about two miles from the school.

A mechanic rescued us -- a mechanic who had a knife as big as a small machete laid out on his front seat. He said he kept it there in case he encountered "trouble" on the road.

Between the spine-tingling storm stories of the Nebraska-line-backer-weather-channel addict, the stalled out car in the middle of the storm, and the scary mechanic, something clicked in me, and I've been more than a little nervous about storm ever since.

Kitteh haz plots? Does Kitteh haz fur?

2010-07-21T05:03:00.001-05:00

It is plain scary when my kitties get along.

We brought Max home when The Kiddo was three, after an Unfortunate Incident with a kitten and our big overgrown Chocolate Lab, who mistakenly thought she could use said kitten as a toy. The Kiddo was distraught, and in a moment of weakness, I said, "Don't worry, baby, you can have a kitty."

Max was supposed to be a white purebred Persian, but The Kiddo and The Husband picked a lanky orange tabby half-breed because he needed a home. I came back from Christmas shopping to find said kitty lurking under our tree. Later, he discovered the tree was great for roosting. I did not, at least that year, bother with an angel. Why should I? I had a real-live orange tabby.

Six months later, after Max thought he was king of the castle, I returned from a RWA convention, the first time I'd ever been away from The Kiddo. The very moment I walked in the door, a mom of a friend of The Kiddo's called me up and said the magic words, "I have a stray Siamese kitten who needs a home."

I was picturing the classic seal-point, so The Kiddo and I got in the car, headed over to her friend's house, and there was a tiny runt of a white cat with toasted coconut ears, paws and tail. I had myself a flame-point -- that's a Siamese on steroids. The Kiddo named him Pete because she wanted a name she could spell.

Max is an affectionate boy, whose main issue is that he will NOT drink water from a bowl. He demands fresh water -- and assures himself it's fresh by overseeing its dispensation out of the tub faucet.

Pete has intimacy issues. He's the only cat I've ever seen who doesn't have a magic spot under his chin -- his is on his forehead, midway between his ears. If he wants attention, he is very naughty and nips. I had completely forgotten this tendency of Siameses when I agreed to adopt the rascal.

They tolerate each other. They don't hiss and spit unless they're truly out of sorts, and Pete likes to wait for Max to go out the door first (Siamese deviousness -- he knows that if a bear's out there, the first one out has issues.) They also do a weird changing of the guard -- one will come in the house when the other goes out, and sometimes Pete will meow by the door to let us know that Max wants in. Pete is smart enough to knock and once scared the be-jeebers out of us by climbing up and ringing the doorbell when we wouldn't answer.

Tonight, though, I walked into our bathroom and found both of them within six inches of each other -- a miracle. Pete was on the ledge of the tub, and Max had the prime real-estate, the closed toilet lid directly under the cool jet of the AC vent. They looked a little startled and embarrassed, and I had to wonder: were they plotting something?

I sure hope the plotting does not involve the demise of the Permed Dachshund -- the one critter they both heartily agree on.

Thank you, Alton Brown

2010-07-20T05:02:00.002-05:00

I owe a huge thank you to Alton Brown -- you know, the half-chef, half-food scientist, all fun sort of guy on Good Eats? Well, thanks to him, I was able to cook a ribeye for The Big 2-0 for The Husband and me.

Yeah, we could have gone out to a fancy restaurant and had someone else do all the cooking. But then we would have added:

1) The stress of getting the reservations (for me and The Husband, it's a battle of wills. He doesn't want to do it, and I don't want to do it, so it usually doesn't get done.)

2) The stress of getting to the restaurant on time (I'm always late coming home from the dayjob. He's always the last one to the car. 'Nuff said.)

3) The stress of spending waaaay too much money.

4) The stress of getting back home at a semi-decent hour.

With all that possibility of stress, I decided that what I really wanted was a low-key anniversary. I wanted us to cook together. So Saturday I brought home a couple of six buck ribeye steaks, some red potatoes and some frozen brussels sprouts. (The Husband asked the potato soup and the sprouts.)

The Kiddo had supper with some friends, and The Husband and I talked more that evening than we probably had in the past six months. Having three jobs between us (his job, my dayjob and my writing), plus being parents, isn't a recipe for conversation.

Granted, I did most of the cooking, but The Husband stayed in the kitchen with me for most of the prep, and even washed a few dishes for me. The steak turned out perfectly, and for once, I got everything on the table at about the same time. For a bad cook, I didn't do a half-bad job -- salad, steak, potato soup, brussels sprouts, and rolls. I was going to do dessert, but didn't have time, and besides, we were stuffed with what we had.

We took a long walk, and talked some more. We talked about inconsequential things. But we talked. And that, after 20 years, is a mighty big deal.

Because pea green is such an ugly color for a complexion

2010-07-19T04:51:00.002-05:00

Except for Martians, lizards, geckos, other creepy-crawlies and the odd fish, I know of no living breathing critter that looks good with a complexion of pea green.

Especially writers.

This writing business is a capricious ride. People are plucked out of obscurity, out a slush pile of thousands, and suddenly, they have a book deal -- all because (at first) one person (dozens later) said, "Gee, I LIKE that!"

To writers who have been struggling for years just to get agents to request a partial, that can sting. To published writers, always conscious that they're only as good as their last sell-through numbers and ever-cognizant of the shrinking mid-list, that can sting.

Add to that the possibility of sudden, overwhelming riches with movie deals and merchandise tie-ins, and the green meter goes from the palest apple green to that of a sun-tanned Martian.

Let's face it. We've all done it. We're all human. We've all ground our teeth at a less-than-stellar book and thought, "WHY HER? WHY NOT ME?"

For one thing, it was her (or his) time.

Yes, that's a fatalistic view, but I sincerely believe in it. I've seen that the very best things in my life usually come after the longest dry/rainy spell (depending on how you look at bad luck). My most heart-felt wishes came to pass only after I'd truly given up ... a chance at a college education. The possibility of The Kiddo's adoption. My first book sale. I'm a Christian, so my theory is that God waits until we have our backs to the wall so that we're SURE that it's all Him and not anything to do with us.

For another thing? Being pea green with envy hurts only us.

Yeah. I said that. It doesn't put one less dollar in Mr. Best-Seller's bank account. But if I choose to grind my teeth over his success, I'm really just substituting excuses for effort. Pretty soon, if I've convinced myself that it's either blind luck or that all editors are interested in buying is whatever the hot genre is, then I'll give up on the book of my heart.

The cure? It's to realize that anger and bitterness and jealousy are really just mixed up expressions of fear and disappointment. Just like a toddler goes into melt-down mode and screams in rage when he's sick or hungry or hurt, we grown-ups do the same thing. We get all mixed up.

So let's use our words. Let's tell ourselves, "When I see Mr. Best Seller's books, I'm afraid that I'll never sell/never be as successful/never have as much money." When we define the problem -- or at least when I do -- then we can figure out what part of it we CAN control.

An impossible choice

2010-07-16T05:02:00.000-05:00

Later this month, a friend of mine is hosting a "Literary Ladies Night," a sort of show and tell where we bring our most favorite books and do the two-thumbs up deal. I am most excited about this.

Usually the extent of my evenings is rushing food from the fridge to the stove to the table, and then rushing The Husband and The Kiddo to the table to meet up with the food. Then comes the rushing of the dishes to the dishwasher (thank GOD for dishwashers), and the rushing of The Kiddo from the tub to the bed and convincing her that yes, three yawns in a row mean she really is sleepy. If we go out for entertainment, it's usually a kid's movie (The Husband suggested, for about 90 seconds, that we take The Kiddo to see Toy Story 3 for our anniversary. I think he got the picture. I'm not picky about anniversaries usually, but this IS our 20th one.)

So the idea of sitting around for a couple of hours, munching on food I didn't cook on dishes I won't have to wash and talking about books ... ah, bliss.

For all of about a nano-second. Then reality sets in. The price of admission to this Literary Ladies Night is one book -- one favorite book. I shall have to pluck, out of all the ones I have loved and sighed over, a single volume, preferably one that hasn't been discovered already by the other Literary Ladies.

I don't think I can do it. Books, for me anyway, speak different things on different days. Some days I'm in the mood for a fast-paced thriller. Other days, I want to dive into the thrill of romance in an epic love story. And others I want to laugh. So if you ask me, "What's your favorite book?" seven days running, you're likely to get seven different answers.

I'm not sure what book I'm going to recommend. The good thing is, even if all the also-rans go pouty and silent on me, whichever volume I choose, it's guaranteed to be a good one, because after four decades on this earth, I no longer force myself to finish truly bad books. (And yes, even though I am an author and I know how hard it is to craft those words, there are truly bad books out there.)

What about you? If you were going to a Literary Ladies Night, what book would you recommend?

What seems easy to us ...

2010-07-15T05:00:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, for a rather momentous occasion in my life, The Husband and The Kiddo conspired to make brownies.

The Husband cannot in any way, shape or form be considered a cook, or even a foodie. Bless his heart, pork skins or honey-buns are good eats to him. So it was understandable, as I prepared to leave for work yesterday morning, that he seemed consumed with knowing the right recipe for making brownies.

So I hauled out my two big fat cookbooks that are the staple of many a kitchen and laid their red plaid covers on my counters. "There, that's the easy recipe for brownies, and that's the one that takes the mixer," I told him.

Panic etched into his face. "Have we got all the stuff to make this?" he asked.

"Sure." I started dragging out the cocoa powder, which I use instead of baker's chocolate. "Er, you'll have to follow the directions here to make the equivalent of the baker's chocolate."

"You mean I have to cook that before I cook this?" he asked.

"You could pick up some baker's chocolate from the grocery store. But I usually use this because it's just as good."

"Okay," The Husband said doubtfully. "So you mix the cocoa powder and the butter -- does it come out in a hard block?"

"Uh, no. It looks like melted chocolate. You just add it to the flour."

The panicked look came back in full force. "Where's the flour?" he asked.

I pointed it out. "Well," I said, trying very hard to keep any trace of anything that could be misconstrued as judgment out of my voice, "there ARE mixes you can buy, where all you have to do is add an egg and some water and oil." When he looked crushed that I didn't have faith in him, I added, "But brownies are VERY hard to mess up. You really can't mess up a brownie."

Later that day, the texts I got from him:

"Where's the baking powder and the vanilla?" he asked first.

I texted back that our flour was self-rising, so no baking powder was needed. Then I gave him a mapquest version to find the vanilla lurking in our cabinets.

A few minutes later, he texted back, "Is it okay if I use vanilla EXTRACT?"

I texted back that vanilla extract was perfectly acceptable.

Then I got a weird question, something about did he have to mix the water with the chocolate. For the life of me, I couldn't understand that one, not until I got home and he pointed out the recipe. The directions had called for the baker's chocolate to be melted over hot water, but it didn't add anything about using a double-boiler.

The brownies smelled all chocolatey and wonderful when I walked in the door. They were dark and chewy, and boasted extra chocolate because The Kiddo had decided they needed chocolate chips in them.

The moral of the story? Never assume that things are easy.

I've been making brownies since I was a bit bigger than The Kiddo's age, and helping in the kitchen before that. I'd always assumed that anyone could follow a recipe, but recipes have every bit as much jargon as we writers do.

I've been writing since I was nine years old -- The Kiddo's age, in fact. For me, while stringing words together in a coherent novel can be tough, usually if all I need to do is dash off a letter or write a report, it's no problem. I have frequently found myself impatient with family members who beg me to write a letter.

For me, writing came so easy that I forgot how hard it was for most everyone else. By thinking it was easy, I was doing two things: 1) selling myself short, and 2) holding other people up to a standard I wouldn't want to be held to myself. My barely smothered scoff at the request of my Cum Laude graduate sister to write her a letter would be no different than if she scoffed at my reluctance to use power tools.

For The Husband, making those brownies from scratch was a hard and scary and intimidating thing to do. And let me tell you, I appreciate the effort from the very bottom of my heart.

Because girls are worth power tools

2010-07-14T05:07:00.002-05:00

I have spent 20 years trying to gift The Husband with power tools that he doesn't want to have and most certainly doesn't want to use. I have done this in the sneaky, indirect attempt to get what I want: a finished Honey-Do list.

Well, ladies (and gents), it's so not working.

When The Sister came and helped me paint my kitchen (before The Flood), she brought along her automatic battery powered screwdriver. Before that, when we were doing the refacing part of the project, she brought along her pneumatic brad gun.

I was terrified of the brad gun, and only slightly less intimidated at the prospect of using the battery-powered screwdriver. That's funny, really, because I grew up with a mom who did not move furniture around walls ... she moved walls around furniture.

But I was the littlest, and the baby, and everybody worried that I wasn't strong enough, and so I was given the all important job of fetching jugs of ice water and tea and lemonade.

After 20 years of THAT, I can fetch you a brilliant glass of lemonade, yes, ma'am. Power tools? Eh, not so much.

While we were putting on the hinges for the doors, The Sister handed The Kiddo the battery powered screwdriver and said, "Go to it, girlie." I looked on in horror, because of course The Sister doesn't have small fry of her own (just 30 kids that she teaches during the school year), so she wouldn't know that it was a Bad Idea To Give The Kiddo A Power Tool.

But then I thought, "Self, you have taught The Kiddo how to use your santoku knife to chop veggies, so maybe The Sister isn't so crazy."

The Sister wasn't so crazy.

(The Kiddo using a power drill on her SECOND project -- a kitchen that's not mine!)

It was a humbling experience, seeing The Kiddo tackle something that intimidated me. But it was also liberating. If a nine-year-old kid could do it, then surely I could tackle my fears of power tools and that Honey-Do list on my own.

Then my dad let me borrow his shop vac to suck up the water during The Flood, and I was hooked. I'd never bought The Husband a shop vac, because he wouldn't have appreciated it, and honestly, I couldn't think of why I'd benefit from one.

Not so. Tawna Fenske's Pythagoras has the right idea. That little sucker is handy. It was after I'd zapped all the cobwebs off my ceiling fan blades AND vacuumed out my garage AND vacuumed out my car that I realized the ultimate truth:

Girls are worth power tools.

Now how is this connected to writing? Bear with me. You know that computer you've been limping along with, the one that still runs Windows 98 and has the browser you can't upgrade? You're worth a new one. You know how you've been putting off moving from dial-up to DSL or buying that new modem? You're worth it. That printer you want to throw out in the street? Order a new one and condemn the old one to the recycle bin. You're worth it.

You know that Honey-Do list you've been nagging Hubby about? Grab that power drill and learn how to use it. What's the worst that could happen? (OK, I'm a writer, so we really don't want me thinking about the worst because I'll come up with a humdinger, so let's rephrase that -- what is most likely going to happen?)

Archimedes said that given the right lever, and a place to stand, he could move the earth. Well, I'm here to tell you, Archimedes knew a thing or two about how much more efficient we could be if we just had the proper tools to work with. And he would have LOVED power tools.

The Yin and the Yang

2010-07-13T05:01:00.000-05:00

My critique partner Tawna Fenske and I are taking part in Candace Ganger's "I Helped Bring Joy" auction, which is raising money to empower the girls and women of Ghana by generating microloans. We're donating a unique critique prize ... wherein you get not one but two crits of a partial.

It was Tawna's idea, but I think it's a great one ... and I'm really glad she suggested it. The two of us "met" on the eHarlequin forums about six years ago when we both thought for about 90 seconds that we'd be editor-sistahs. While that didn't come to pass, I found Tawna's honest, thoughtful critiques to be a wonderful treasure, and her wonderful, infectious zeal for life even more so.

We are so different, she and I. She is a West Coast dedicated recycler/nature-lover/world-traveler with no kids, and I am a South Georgia mom who knew all 99 different rules and rituals regarding the proper funeral. She loves wine-tastings and a risque joke, and I am a Baptist tee-totaler. She had no idea what salad cubes were, and I was just as lost when it came to couscous and quinoa. She is a pantser, and I'm so OCD that I plot EVERYTHING.

But at the same time, we are peas in a pod. Both of us love animals. Both of us see human beings' differences as something to embrace rather than to be feared. Both of us would go crazy if we didn't write. Both of us love a good story. Both of us hate Too Stupid To Live heroines. Tawna is probably the one other person besides my sister that I would call at two in the morning -- unless I was in jail, at which point I'd call Linda Grimes so that she could see, lo, how the mighty have fallen and capture all on video for YouTube. (Easy, Linda, that just ain't gonna happen.)

Over the years, I've taught Tawna how to make grits, fried chicken and corn bread, and she's turned me into a person who takes my own bags to the grocery store and cooks quinoa and couscous. As far as writing, she's taught me how to use my entire arsenal of the five senses in setting scenes and how to create stronger, more admirable heroines. Honestly, she didn't need any improving as far as writing, so I can't say what I've taught her, except that plotting isn't a curse word, and that you don't have to hiss when uttering the word "synopsis."

So when you get the Dynamic Duo critiquing your work, you get the Yin and the Yang, the classic East Coast and West Coast. You get the benefit of what we've taught each other as we've grown in that six years as writers.

Plus, you get to help women and girls who have never, and will never again, have a chance to chase their dreams and shape their destiny -- and I always say that if you want something done right, put a woman in charge, so your winning bid might well be the tipping point that turns Ghana around. Okay, okay, so I indulge in hyperbole. Sue me. I'm a writer.

But seriously, you want this. You really, really want this. So what are you waiting for? Go explore some more on Candace Ganger's blog.

No green thumbs, not even out of a bottle

2010-07-12T05:06:00.001-05:00

First off, thanks for so much warm support on Friday's post. Every comment lifted my spirits. I try not to be a downer, and I don't intend for my blog audience to be the recipient of all my moans and groans. Thanks for being there.

It's a definite sign that plants rightfully fear me.

I'm not so good with green and growing things. Either I get too much water on them or not enough, so usually I stick with the silk versions.

However, you can't slice and eat a silk tomato, or chop up silk basil and oregano. So this spring, I decided that I would plant three tomato plants, two pepper plants, and add to a window box of oregano I hadn't managed to kill last year. They reside on my back deck, save for one of the tomato plants, which is one of those Topsy Turvy planters I had to have after I saw it on TV. Why, yes, I am the living incarnate definition of gullible.

My plants have managed to limp along, and I've even gotten two knotty little ripe tomatoes from them. But no one could mistake my horticultural efforts for a green thumb.

Saturday morning, I found the whole passel of 'em wilted beyond belief, practically coding on the table. I rushed water to them, hoping I wasn't too late.

Off I went to town, for shopping, which included buying two cans of hunter green spray paint to resuscitate a patio furniture set I'd inherited from my mom.

It's a overgrown bistro set, one that my mom had since I was probably The Kiddo's age. Back when she bought it, she paid the earth for it, and I thought it was so cute in its black wrought iron state. It was Mama's pride and joy.

Over the years, Mama repainted it white to match with the changing styles. But as she grew older -- and sicker -- the thing rusted away in her back yard. I’d no idea how rusty it was, or how much it needed a face-lift, until The Sister and I were examining it.

The Sister suggested that, since it was small, it would be perfect for my back deck. We loaded the set up on her truck and hauled it to my house. Saturday was The Day that it was supposed to be turned from rusty white/black to a more stylish hunter green.

The Kiddo and I scrubbed away the biggest pocks of rust, sanded off the legs and seats until they felt fairly smooth. I kept thinking about Mama, and how I should have done this chore for her while she was still alive. The sanding finished, we dragged the chairs out onto the grass and I took the spray cans to them.

It took a lot more paint than I'd bargained for to cover the chairs. Two cans later, I still had some white spots and black spots and rusty spots shining.

Midway through, The Kiddo observed, "Hey, Mommy! You've got paint on your fingers!"

Sure enough, green speckles covered one hand. I suspected that I had green paint on other skin surfaces as well. As we inspected my hands, The Kiddo brightened. "Hey! Maybe this is how you can get a green thumb!"

But we looked closer, turning both of my thumbs this way and that. Alas ... not one fleck of green paint had landed on either of my thumbs.

The Kiddo gave me a sympathetic look, shook her head, and said, "Or ... maybe not?"

I nodded. "Or maybe not."

Giving myself permission to muddle

2010-07-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

This year has been a beaut. Every time I think it can't get any worse, somehow, some way, it does. I've had Get-Back-Jack days, but I swear, since last fall, this has been a Get-Back-Jack year.

I just want something, some tiny little infinitesimal thing, to go RIGHT.

I won't go into the gory details, save that it's bad, and it's life-altering, but it is, ultimately, survivable.

Right now, I'm concentrating on the survivable part. If I squint really, really hard, I can see light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm praying it's not a bear with a flashlight.

But enough about the specifics of my muddle. We all have muddles. They jump out and grab us when we least expect it, when we're the least ready for it -- or so it seems.

I want to talk about how our muddles relate to our writing. Some people use their writing during a muddle as an escape mechanism, an anesthetic. They wall themselves off and write like crazy, churning out beautiful, perfect worlds that they have control over, by gum.

Not me. When I'm in the middle of a muddle, it saps my energy. It saps my creativity. I'm like that lizard that starts out at sunrise at Rock A, and he calls it a successful day if he makes to Rock B by sunset.

A year ago, I would have beaten myself up about not being able to face my current editing project. I'd tell myself that I'm falling behind on my goals. I'd tell myself that you have to force yourself on and not wait on The Muse to come teetering in on her stilettos with her feather boa trailing behind her.

But that was before I'd experienced a Get-Back-Jack Year. I understand the importance of being professional, of not missing deadlines, of pushing on when other people's jobs depend on me.

This time my muddle doesn't coincide with a deadline. And I'm giving myself permission, however hard or self-indulgent it seems to me, to muddle through. And you know what else? I'm giving you, should you need it, that same permission.

Wherein I Get More Loot

2010-07-08T05:00:00.001-05:00

I still haven't figured out all the rules for these lovely blog awards that keep coming my way ... I suspect that there's some sort of code I should be following, kind of like The Pirate's Code.

I so appreciate it when I do get these awards ... it means so much when someone tells me that my blog has impacted the award-giver in some special way. But I REALLY appreciate it when they also accompany the award with the care and feeding of that particular award.

For instance, nifty blogger Samuel Park, who has a novel coming out in 2011 (do put it on your to-buy lists, folks!) gifted me with The Versatile Blogger award ... and he gave me the rules for it, too -- very handy!

The rules go something like this ... you thank and link back to the blogger who awarded you (check!). And then you reveal seven true things about yourself.

Woo-boy. Seven things, huh? Has there been seven things that I haven't already revealed?

1) I really DO like vanilla ice cream the best.

2) I am terrified of rats. Spiders, snakes, wasps ... they give me the creeps, but don't send me into the nearest chair.

3) I'm so cold-natured that July usually feels pretty good to me.

4) I will do things for my daughter that I could never get the courage to do for myself.

5) I cried when I ran over a turtle -- not big boo-hoo tears, but it completely ruined my day and I still feel awful when I think about the thunk the poor guy made when I couldn't avoid him.

6) I secretly think that I am a fluke when it comes to this writing business. My first editor told me I wasn't, but I keep thinking that somehow, someday soon, someone will figure out that I'm a fluke.

7) I hate the way that Hollywood portrays Southern accents. I can't for the life of me figure out WHY they sound all wrong, but they do. In the movies, the Southern guys all sound girly-girly and the Southern women all sound dumb. In real life, we don't really sound like that. Trust me.

OK, check! on the revealed seven things.

Now, onto the next portion -- I must name 15 bloggers that I admire and share this award with them.

That's tough. I only get to pick 15? But someone's feelings will get wounded! I'm going to do this in rounds, then, like a government grant, and it will all be completely random. Some time in the future, I'll award a few more rounds of 15, because I follow only those bloggers that I like and that I enjoy, and they're all versatile!

1) Toby Speed - The Writer's Arm Chair -- whose blog often captures sky pix of lovely, fluffy clouds.

2) Rebecca Thompson - Sonshine Thoughts -- whose Retail Wednesdays crack me up and make me glad I'm not in retail!

3) Lickety Splitter -- at Pukka Pearl -- who is a Southern blogger who has a great sense of humor.

4) Matthew Delman -- at The Secret Archives of the Alliterati and Free The Princess -- who is a great Twitter bud who has intro'd me to Steampunk -- something I had no idea I already liked.

5) Jamie Debree at The Variety Pages -- whose goals make me feel like an underachieving slug, but then I actually DO make goals and get some work done.

6) Julie Musil at her blog -- always full of interesting observations on writing and life, and whom, if memory serves, has gifted me with an award or two.

7) Susan Kaye Quinn at Ink Spells -- a loyal commenter and one who always gives you something to think about on her blog. She's got a book out -- LIFE, LIBERTY AND PURSUIT -- another for your to-buy list!

8) Lydia Kang at The Word Is My Oyster -- love her Medical Mondays and her cute little blog-strations! (That's illustrations for blogs.)

9) Joel Stickley's How To Write Badly Well -- a hilarious blog that shows me just how badly I can write if I don't pay attention.

10) Kelley Breakey at Blog Like You Mean It -- she's a great Twitter bud with a wonderful sense of humor, and I found her blog (I think) through Twitter.

11) Stephanie Faris at Steph In The City who always has the neatest blog topics about anything and everything.

12) Anne Gallagher at Piedmont Writer who, unlike me, can build fences on her own, but, like me, would also cry if she ran over a turtle.

13) Michele Emrath at Southern City Mysteries -- we Southern gals have got to stick together! (Please just think it's mysterious that you're #13, Michele -- nothing sinister, I promise!)

14) Jody Hedlund at her blog, and whom, if I'm remembering correctly rescued some baby squirrels and would totally understand that I cried over a turtle. She already has a Versatile Blogger Award, but she's so good, she DESERVES two.

15) Linda Grimes at Visiting Reality -- she's an agency sistah of my critique partner Tawna Fenske. Linda is a great Twitter buddy, and probably a person I could put on my "Call at 2 AM" list. If I ever wound up in jail, Linda would cheerfully drive down from Virginia to bail me out, just so she could rag me about my "fallen" status! :-)

OK, 15 recipients of blog love -- check! Now the rules say I have to notify said bloggers ... so I guess I'm off to enjoy their wonderful blogs!

Contentment is being happy with ...

2010-07-07T04:54:00.002-05:00

The Kiddo and The Husband and I wound up enjoying steaks at my dad and step-mom's last night -- which was terrific for all around, as I didn't have to cook and The Kiddo and The Husband didn't have to eat my slightly carbonized version of grilled meat.

The Kiddo had stayed with my parental units all day, and when I arrived, she and my step-mom were tempting a huge black and white cat away from the grill and to the other side of the yard. A serving of dry cat food and a small can of the moist, smelly kind of cat food served as bait.

The cat is not my step-mother's. She's not anti-animal, but she and my dad like to travel too much to be tied down these days to the demands of a pet. This big kitty, however, has shown up with no signs of leaving, and my step-mother can't stand to see the poor old thing starve.

She knew my dad couldn't stand to see the steaks in peril, either. Thus the application of cat food to prevent the collision of kitty paws on a hot gas grill.

The nameless cat, however, was having none of it. He took one sniff of the bowl of wet/dry food, and then turned his nose upwind, where the smoke from the grill drifted. That feline knew that steak was a better deal than the fishy clump of food we were trying to palm off on him.

Still, he was a pragmatic critter. After he saw my dad glower in his direction, you could almost see the cat's whole body sigh of resignation. He approached the bowl and started in on it.

I was reminded of the old saying, "Happiness is getting what you want. But contentment? That's being happy with what you have."

The cat would have been blissfully happy for the two seconds he'd latched onto one of Daddy's New York strips. But he wouldn't have been content with burnt paws and the after-effects of being knocked back from the grill. So he decided that he would content himself with the canned cat food.

We writers -- everyone, really -- can take a lesson or two from that old cat. I know the restless urges of want-want-want attack me, usually when I've been engaging in what I call Kitchen Porn -- flipping through one too many glossy magazines of kitchen make-overs that cost more than my house did. I see, and then I covet, and that's not good.

And with writing, even with four sales behind me, sometimes the bad old want-want-want gets me down to the cellular, bone-deep level, and I crave the Next Big Thing. If, I think, IF I could just get X or Y or Z, THEN I would be REALLY happy.

Maybe, though, it would be two seconds of ecstasy, followed by a whole lot of pain of wanting the wrong thing at the wrong time.

So I tell myself to count my blessings, to take stock of what I have -- and that's a lot. And you know what? The old want-want-want monster subsides back to his deep cave, and I find peace and contentment in what I already have.

Organization for the hopelessly disorganized

2010-07-06T04:53:00.000-05:00

The Husband would be rolling on the floor if I told him I was writing a blog post on organization tips. He'd get up, wipe his eyes and wander off, chortling, "You? YOU?"

But I figure if something works for a congenitally-disorganized recovering Messie, it must be a pretty good tip.

I thought about all this as I was searching out paperwork over the holiday weekend and cleaning up my home office. If I could just do the things I was supposed to do at the times I am supposed to do them, life would go so much more smoothly.

I do have a go-to system for filing that worked beautifully until I, ahem, stopped doing it -- mysteriously and for no good reason in June of this past year. And this weekend's search for paperwork reminded me why I should redouble my efforts to get organized and STAY organized.

The supah-secret-solution to never having to hunt for important paperwork?

Forget file folders and filing cabinets.

Yeah, I said that.

Think about it: a file drawer could be a mini-tower housing the Bermuda Triangle under my tender care. I've had file cabinets that I jammed with so much stuff that I couldn't open it to put more stuff in, and I couldn't close it once I got it open.

Plus, file folders hold only a limited amount of stuff, and unless I use a binder clip (expensive and hateful), my papers can fall out or get disorganized. Or (and this is how it usually happens), I'd get in a hurry and take something OUT of the file folder and then, ahem, never put it back.

Plus-plus, with a filing cabinet, I tend to make too many sub-categories, which means I have a tough time remembering HOW I filed something. Finding anything turned out to be one gigantic game of Concentration.

None of that is conducive to encouraging good filing habits.

So instead I use the jumbo-size three-ring notebook binders, the kind that you can buy at your handy-dandy office supply store and slip a label on the edge of it. Bank statements, credit card statements, retirement account statements, royalty statements -- pretty much any kind of paperwork you get on a monthly basis that you need to keep up with.

I take a three-hole punch, skewer those statements and drop the latest one in on top. I don't have too many binders -- one for my bank, one for my credit card, one for Harlequin -- think BIG categories here. The resulting binders stack neatly on bookshelves, and their contents never get confuzzled.

The Sister HATES my system. She is a teacher, and apparently for every new gimmicky fad in education, teachers are given a new binder.

She is also Martha-Stewart-incarnate, so "Martha" that she hides her microwave in a cupboard. The Sister hates how my binders look on a shelf, as there's no possible way they can be disguised to look like fine works of literature. She'd rather tuck all that ugly in a filing drawer -- her filing cabinet is made of dark cherry and looks like something you'd find in a super-organized office in the 1800s.

The Sister, however, has a better memory than me, and she can actually find things that she files. She was exhorting me just to go back and get a new filing cabinet (I tossed mine years ago when it appeared to be a purgatory for dead trees) and try filing once again.

Nope. The best tip of all when it comes to organizing yourself is to realize what you will or won't do -- because organization, like eating healthy and exercising, is a life-style choice. I have to find my limits, find what I am willing to do on a consistent basis, and then stick with it.

And you know what? My system works for me. It may not work for you. It may drive my sister crazy. But for this anti-filing gal, it's the secret of my success.

A Southerner's Ten Commandments

2010-07-02T04:54:00.001-05:00

Non-Southerners (the PC way of saying Yankees) just don't understand the Southern approach to life. We talk too slow. We worry about the wrong things. We never say what we mean.

But it can all traced back to the 10 Commandments of Being Southern. It's bred in us, especially Southern women, from the time our little bottoms are slapped and we open our eyes to the world.

1) Thou Shalt Always Display Good Manners. Now, this is not saying that Non-Southerners don't put stock in manners. They do. They just don't use them to the effect that Southerners do. It's much harder for someone to be rude to you when you're being nice to them. Don't holler and yell the next time you get bad service. Kill that cashier with kindness. Trust me, the poor blighted soul won't know what hit her.

2) Thou Shalt Never Rush. Non-Southerners -- well, the urban variety -- talk fast and they move fast and they eat fast. We Southerners know that such high velocity is only inviting trouble, for yes, the early bird may have gotten the worm, but what does that say about the luck of the early WORM?

3) Thou Shalt Always Remember That You Are A Direct Reflection of Your Mama's Raisin'. This, more than any other Southern Commandment is critical. It guides your behavior in ways that last long past the preacher's last prayer over your mama's casket. My mama's worst fear wasn't spiders or snakes or even a lizard loose in her house -- it was that she would be "hew-miiiiil-ee-ated." Yes, that's exactly how Mama said it. I laughed at her until I had a daughter of my own.

4) Thou Shalt Be Kind To Animals and Other Dumb Creatures, For They Know Not What They Do. Again, I'm not saying that Non-Southerners aren't kind to those who are vulnerable. They are, for the most part. But we Southerners tend to understand Commandment #4 applies to more critters than those covered with fur -- it applies to men, for instance, heinous husbands who say horrid things. And it applies to the less-genteelly brought up Southern girl who doesn't mind her manners and says something cutting and, my word, unforgivably direct.

5) Thou Shalt Always Be Hospitable. Yes, Non-Southerners can be hospitable, but we Southerners are truly brought up to believe that when we say, "C'mon in and stay a spell," we're opening our house up to you for anywhere from five minutes to five months. We're not going to turn you away hungry, even if it means stretching the spaghetti sauce with ketchup (a true story told by one of my friends, whose Dumb Critter Husband brought in a mess of good ol' boys for supper.)

6) Thou Shalt Uphold Tradition. Northerners don't understand why we put so much stock in tradition. They see us as resistant to change and progress. We, on the other hand, understand that things are always changing, and that if you wait long enough, it will work its way right back to where it was. Take, for instance, long straight hair and flare-leg jeans. Didn't we tell you not to throw those clothes out?

7) Thou Shalt Keep Weddings And Funerals Sacred. Closely associated with Commandment #6 is the one about Weddings and Funerals. Yes, you will attend every single solitary bridal shower -- the hardware shower, the lingerie shower, the Tupperware shower, the bridal-bridal shower -- that your starry-eyed engaged friend's mama is throwing. And you'll do it with a smile, because weddings are sacred. As for funerals, you'd best have a pan of home-baked lasagna in the freezer at the ready to take to the bereaved, because trust me, people will remember those kindnesses. And don't you dare think that bucket of greasy fast-food chicken will do -- if hard-pressed for time, throw together a care package of napkins, paper plates and cups, tissue and paper towels, or bring a big old ice chest full of ice.

8) Thou Shalt Honor Your Home. Southerners -- true Southerners -- know their home is where they were raised. True, they might get a wild hair and move up to New York City, but they're never FROM there. I know Southerners who've taken this commandment to the extreme ... there are spots in my county where you can drive for miles until you get to a house that doesn't belong to folks kin to their neighbors. And no, I'm not talking about marrying cousins. We don't do that. Er, not anymore.

9) Thou Shalt Honor Your Kith & Kin. This goes with Commandments #1, #3 and #4. Even if dumb old Uncle Butterball's drunk as a skunk and the old coot keeps mistaking you for a Hooter's waitress, you just smile and swat his hand. Then you go tell his wife, the long-suffering Aunt Mary Ellen, "I do declare, I think the poor old soul's forgotten his pills." That's all Aunt Mary Ellen needs to hear before she'll drag the dumb old thing out to the car by his ear.

10) Thou Shalt Never Apologize For Being Southern. Non-Southerners will assume Southerners, because of our studied indirectness, our slow, ponderous way with language, because of the way we get snookered into not one, not two, but three bridal showers for the same girl, that we are dumb. But we are not dumb. We're just treating people like we want to be treated, and as long as we don't venture above the Mason-Dixon line (or some city over-run by people who don't understand the importance of Commandment #3), we pretty much are treated that way.