Which end of the elephant?

Remember the old joke about the three blind men who were asked to describe an elephant?

One said that an elephant was flat and wide and thin like the leaf of a big plant. Another said, "Oh, no, an elephant is tall and broad and rough, like the side of a hill." And the third laughed and said, "You're both wrong. An elephant is slender and round like a garden hose and really, really stinks."

It all comes down to point of view -- and where you're standing when you're viewing the world.

I'm not going to debate the virtues of first person versus third (but I will say I love writing first person). To me, good writing means that in a single scene, the point of view, regardless of the pronoun the author uses, is limited to one set of eyes, one nose, one pair of hands and one pair of ears -- and the brain that operates all of those.

A term that writers like to throw around is "deep POV." In non-writerese, that's deep point-of-view. That means the perspective is so tightly embedded that even in a third person, shifting POV book, you can instantly tell whose perspective you're in by the first sentence of the scene.

That hinges on one thing: every single person looks at the world just a little differently, and to nail that POV, a writer has to crawl inside that person's head and see the world from the character's shoes.

I'm not talking just about a person who sees her hair long and flowing down her own back (man, that would take the flexibility of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.) I'm talking about authenticity, about knowing only what that character would know and using mental imagery that only that character would use.

I thought about all this as I've been "reading" an audio book, whose title will remain nameless out of respect for the author and every author's job. It's first person, from the perspective of an adult recalling a summer when she was 12 years old. The imagery is fabulous and lush ... but I keep getting yanked out of the story by images that no 12-year-old would use, not even the well-read kid the character is. A kid, especially a kid in decades past, would just not know the terms or descriptions. Yes, I understand that the character is all grown up now and that this isn't a YA book. But when we remember things we did as kids, we tend to go back and bury ourselves in that perspective, recalling things as we actually saw them then. We have the eyes of a child again.

I wish I could pull an example or two out of the book, but it wouldn't be fair to the author for me to pan her book. Maybe I'm just too exacting. Maybe that author would read my books and say, "Gee, your characters' POV isn't all that authentic, either."

What difficulties do you have when you're trying to deepen your characters' POV? And what are your pet peeves when you're reading a book?

Life Interruptus

This weekend was a huge deal for me, day-job-wise (is that even a word?). It was the absolute do-or-die, must-pull-off biggest event of the year. I wound up with sore feet, sore arms, sore back, sore everything.

The blog? The Writing? The Kiddo? The Husband? All of the above went neglected while I tried to emulate a good duck: calm above water, paddling like mad underneath.

The weekend is over, and I'm considering getting all the people who helped me pull it off T-shirts that say, "I Survived!"

Tomorrow, I promise, I'll be back with my usual advice about writing. But until then, tell me, when do you think you'll be able to give up your day-job?

Friday Awwww

Sometimes life is so in-your-face, you've just got to surrender to it, like this kitty. Don't you wish life could be as cute as the little chick here?

Alas, this has been the week of unholy terror for me. After Saturday, however, it will be better. Should I survive, that is.

(And yes, I am still stalking the wundercat BW, but he's decided to be more discreet in his love affair with the fridge.)

Characters Have to Make a Living, Too!

You know what your main characters look like. You know what makes 'em laugh. You know what ticks them off. You know what makes them swoon.

But do you know what they do for a living? Before you start writing, of course.

Whether you are a pantser or a plotter (I think you're born to be either one, btw), your decision about your characters' career paths can reveal a lot about them.

People don't usually stay in a profession that doesn't suit their personality. It's like that in real life, and it's like that in book-life, too. In fact, readers are sometimes demand that a character's personality and his job match more tightly than it does in real life.

For instance, a shy retiring hero wouldn't make it as a cold-calling traveling salesman. And a boisterous talkative heroine would go stir crazy stuck in a research library.

Now, if part of the conflict of the plot is between the hero and his job, then I go for the disconnect.

If the job is just icing on the cake, I need to match job to personality better than a Garanimals outfit.

Jobs, of course, depend on the setting, and the characters' education levels. I wouldn't ordinarily put a neurosurgeon with a busy practice living in a rural small town.

But a job can ram home a character trait of a person. Is your heroine a helper type person? A people person? Does she empathize with other people? Is she a crusader? She'd pick a career based on the things she's good at.

So as I'm planning a story (oh, yeah, I'm a plotter all the way, baby!), I usually turn to an online career quiz, like the one at Career Path

It's not always foolproof, but quizzes like this help me get to know my characters better. It also helps to know how tied down my characters are during the day - my heroine can't be having picnics on a weekday afternoon with my hero if she's a school teacher.

Unless it's a field day, and the hero is a principal or a parent or the new-to-town single superintendent ...

Blast. I have to go write down another story idea! While I'm gone, why not share how you put your characters to work?

The Ones Who Got You There

We writers may not practice our Oscar speeches like this cute little kid, but we do have a spot in each book to thank the ones who got us where we are.

Still, some thank yous are worthy of the Oscar-type speeches we'll most likely never give. I thought about one of them when I read a blog by agent Suzie Townsend. She talked about what to do (and more importantly what not to do) when pitching. It's absolutely spot-on advice.

It brought back memories of chilled pasta salad that I couldn't eat and the sharp edge of a 3x5 index card digging into the palm of my hand. It was my first pitch.

The editor, Jen Green, isn't (I don't think, anyway) in the business anymore, which is a loss, because she was a terrific editor. She had come to do a workshop at our Georgia Romance Writers chapter meeting and to listen to pitches for the now defunct Harlequin Bombshell and NeXt lines (insert funeral dirge here.)

I'd practiced my pitch until I could recite in my sleep. (The Husband has offered corroboration on this point, and swears I actually did recite it in my sleep.) I was psyched. I was ready. And thanks to a wise and wonderful author friend, I had done the wise thing and left my pages at home. (Oh, yes, I was that green.)

Picture all of us at a table, the little circle of hopeful writers. Ms. Green smiled at us and gave the signal for someone to start the round-robin.

My turn came. My heart raced. The pasta salad in my stomach lurched. And my mind went blank.

So I gulped, looked at Ms. Green, then looked down at my card, gulped again, and read straight from the card.

And she said the most beautiful words in the world: "That sounds like it might work. Why don't you send me a partial?"

That book, after two gut-it-like-the-trout-that-it-was revisions, wound up selling -- not to Jen Green, but to the lovely, lovely Laura Shinn (who is now onto greener pastures herself.) It was my first sale.

And it was all because Jen Green didn't mind that I had to read the pitch off my index card.

When You Can't Spell C-T-A, I mean, C-A-T

I have a dirty little secret.

I am a horrid speller. Is it neice or niece? Stilletto or stiletto?

Lots of people ask me how on earth I can be a writer and not be able to spell. More importantly, how can I be a former elementary school spelling teacher and not be able to spell? (So true. I hang my head in shame.) Isn't spelling ... I dunno, required?

No. One does not always get bitten by both the writing bug and the spelling bee. Especially if one is, well, me.

Don't get me wrong. I can spell most things. But my writer's vocabulary too often outstrips my speller's vocabulary. If I just wrote only the words that I knew how to spell ... aack. Sometimes I can't even get through a blog post without thinking, "That doesn't look right."

Spell check is great ... if it can guess what word it is that I'm murdering. But too many times, it can't.

There's the dictionary, of course. If you're like me, though, a former nerdy little kid who passed the time on rainy days by reading the dictionary, Webster's can offer more distractions than all those tempting Facebook games I dare not try. I start looking up one word, and suddenly I find this other juicy word that I've never heard of, and that makes me think of another word ... well, you get the picture. I'm fairly easy to amuse.

Last year, though, a writer friend, Lee Cheek, gifted me with the best little book. Bad spellers everywhere should have a copy.

It's The Word Book, published by Houghton-Mifflin, and it's based on The American Heritage Dictionary. It boasts that it has 40,000 words spelled and divided.

More importantly?

It has no definitions. Just words. I can't get side-tracked by meanings. There are fewer pages, so chances are, I find my word very quickly.

Unfortunately, I believe it is out of print, but it can still be had on-line.

I use my copy daily, much to the delight of my former spelling teachers!

(BTW, the cute little Miss-Speller came via Funny English, which has an amusing Ode To The Spelling Checker.)

Should've Demanded No Green M&Ms

My CP Tawna Fenske recently blogged about how she has been asked to speak to writers' groups and readers' groups, and how she's not sure how she'll do. (She'll do fine!) It brought to mind my very first forays into life as a Published Author.

Like my first book-signing "tour."

In Rural, Backwoods, we have, alas, no independent booksellers. We DO have Wal-Mart, which is very good to sell Harlequins. So after I'd swooned over my first actual, real, live copy of my book, I thought, "I should ask the Wal-Mart manager if it's okay if I sign my books."

So off I went to the phone, and my call was first routed to the manager, and then to the regional manager. Turns out, the regional manager's wife was a HUGE fan of romance.

"You've gotta sign in ALL my stores," he insisted. "You've gotta."

So, bemused, I agreed to do so. He said he would get Anderson's (the book supplier for Wal-Mart) to get in touch with me.

They called me a few days later, while I was at my day job. Picture my whiplash when I went from helping one angry and very unsatisfied customer (I was sort of an ombudsman and problem-solver) to the Anderson lady.

"Hi, we need to know what sort of things you'll be requiring for your book-signing," she said.

"Uh ... a table? And my books?" Honestly, I couldn't think of anything else.

There was a long pause. "Of course, we'll have that. But your SPECIAL needs. Do you, er, require a security detail?"

If I'd been drinking coffee, my keyboard would have been a goner.

"No, no. No security detail."

"Okay, then, good, uh, what sort of instrument do you want to autograph your books with?"

"Instrument? I use a Sharpie. But I was planning on bringing one with me."

"Oh, what color?" she asked eagerly. "The fat ones or the skinny ones?"

"Er ... blue. The fat one."

I heard her pen scratching out notes on the other end of the phone line and (maybe I imagined this) her sigh of relief. "Okay, then! I'll have blue Sharpies waiting for you. And refreshments? What can we provide for you?"

"Uh ... water?"

"Water? Sparkling or just plain ... bottled ... water?"

"Water. The plain kind."

By now, I was wondering if maybe I was falling short of this lady's expectations. Maybe what she really wanted was me to ask for a bowl of M&Ms minus the brown or green ones. I was also wondering what other authors asked for and if perhaps I was missing an opportunity or three.

But I couldn't do that. I'm not a high-falutin' kind of gal. I was bowled over by the idea that they would give me a Sharpie! Wow!

We talked a bit longer, and she ended the conversation by saying, "And, er, you're sure that all you want is ... water? And you're sure you don't need a security detail?"

"Yes to water, no to the security detail. But ... thanks!"

I interrupt this program ...

to do a little Snoopy dance! Yeah, yeah, I know I usually blog just Monday through Friday, but I managed to power through the rough draft of my proposal.

Yep. Chapter Three is finito!

This is the proposal that I've started and stopped and scrapped and started and stopped and scrapped. It's been a sheer miracle that my CP (the Talented Tawna) and my beta readers have not come completely unglued about all the incarnations this sucker has had.

But I did it! I hung on, and I listened to all the great input my lovely, lovely readers have had, and now ... ah, now, it's done.

OK, so not done, but ready to revise. And then submit.

Gulp. Not thinking about that, not thinking about that. Not. Thinking. About. That.

Just gonna think about how good I feel RIGHT NOW.

And we now return to your regular programming. :-)

Friday AWWWWWW

Because a person can never have too many hearts in her life! This comes via a cute website called Crittertastic ... warning: do not go there. Do not follow the link. Failure to heed this warning will result in many, many minutes diverted from what you should be doing!

And I'll end (before you get all tangled up in Crittertastic) with a shout-out and a thanks to Stephanie Thornton, who gave me the sweetest award (see pix below).



You should check her blog out ... her post on the dangers of spellchecking will leave you chuckling!

(You didn't listen to me about Crittertastic, did you? Okay, then, what's your favorite trick to unhook yourself from your Internet addiction?)

How To Train Your Conflict

Whether you love him or you hate him, Bob Mayer has a jam-up definition of a novel: it's a story about a person with a problem, and how s/he solves it.

Okay, so that's a rough paraphrase that came from a workshop at RWA a few years ago. That being the case, it could be a really bad paraphrase, or he could have scrapped his definition in the years since.

But I like it, because it sums up what a novel is all about: conflict.

I don't care what kind of genre you're talking about, if you don't have conflict, you don't have a story worth reading.

I mean, strip away the symbolism and everything else in Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, and you find that the reader hung on to see if the old man would make it back alive, and with his fish. (If you haven't read it, I'm not telling you whether he did or not. Hemingway rocks. Go read him, but don't ever try to write like him.)

Yeah, yeah, I know, we loves us some heroes, and we identify with our heroines, but if they're set in a picture perfect world with everything coming up roses, we'd start to hate 'em pretty fast.

We talk alot about "hooks" and "high concept" and all those nebulous industry buzz words. Me? I think it all boils down to conflict. Oh, and not minding putting your characters in their worst nightmares. We writers are sadistic like that.

I find that animated movies make for great illustrations of conflict. Maybe it's because it has to be fairly clearcut for kids. Maybe animated script writers are just better at it. Maybe I just have a thing for animated movies and I never did grow up. (Hey, you don't have to agree with me!)

Take How To Train Your Dragon for instance. I saw it last weekend, and I love, love, love it! (Okay, you, in the back row, no teasing about me still liking kiddie movies.)

The plot boils down to this: clutzy son of dragon slayer wants to grow up to be like dad, but then, aaack, discovers he likes dragons. How can he be like dad if he doesn't want to kill a dragon? How can he kill a dragon if he likes dragons?

The thing that makes readers keep turning those pages at 2 a.m. when they should be in bed, asleep, ready for that 6 a.m. alarm and work, well, it's conflict. It's the question: how will they EVER solve this?

So conflict has to be ...

Organic: notice that in How To Train Your Dragon, the son was already different -- not a natural at dragon slaying. The conflict came out of his own personality. He didn't suddenly decide he wanted to be an accountant or something (not that there's anything wrong with accountants.)

Sustainable: it has to last and last and last. It has to look unsolvable. In a romance, the best way to do that is to make sure that if the hero wins, the heroine loses and vice versa. Bonus points, too, if the writer can make said couple love each other so much by the end of the book that they can't stand to see the love of their life lose.

Solved by growth: a novel's characters grow and mature and learn during the course of the story -- or they should. So any solution or resolution has to come (again organically) from the story. The clues should be there all along, and please, please, please don't spoil it with a plot device that screams, "Oh, I painted myself into a corner, so, er, don't mind the footprints."

How Cleaning Is Like Rescuing Starfish

A non-writing friend of mine remarked recently, "You writers amaze me. Where do the words come from? Is it like being a compulsive reader or cleaner or quilter – you just gotta do it or be miserable?

Oh, yeah. The Husband would much prefer if I were a compulsive cleaner.

Alas, I am a recovering Messie. My name is Cynthia, and I'm a Messie. There, I've said it.

Before The Kiddo and The Writing, I had tackled my messy house with a good dose of How Not To Be A Messie, a wonderfully lovely book that pegged me like a sheet to a clothesline. I had it going on, chores done every day, menus planned in advance, a well-run house.

Truly. Honestly. It was a miracle. I even learned how to fold a fitted sheet.

But then The Kiddo came along, and one little person can dirty an enormous amount of clothes.

And then The Writing came along, and I got a job that was more than five minutes away from home, and things were harder.

And then The Kiddo hit her school years, and teachers will send tons of papers home, and what am I supposed to do with them, because if The Kiddo finds them in the trash, what does that tell her about the value I place on the work she does from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.??

And then The Kiddo turned out to be a packrat. I tell people that I live in a 1,100 square foot house and that I must have at least 3,300 square feet of junk in it, because, I swear, I feel like I'm manuevering around three feet of junk at all times.

With me, it's incredibly hard to write when the house is a disaster (The Husband would comment here that I shouldn't ever be writing, then). But cleaning my house is like rescuing starfish on a beach, an unending task that gets undone with every high tide.

So of course I try to tackle the problem systematically and research it to death (house going further to pot around me as I crouch over the computer).

Checklists abound on the web, checklists which will do nothing but raise your blood pressure and lower your self-esteem. For instance, Real Simple tells me that I can have a deep-cleaned house in 11 easy steps -- and they provide the checklist to go along with it. They have the nerve to call this a Weekend Cleaning List.

Step 6?

Dust inside drawers. Open furniture doors and drawers and dust the insides with a cloth and cleaner.

Bwhahahaahaaaa! They must think my drawers are empty!

Wait a minute. Maybe they're supposed to be empty. But if that's the case, then why have drawers at all? This is all very confusing. I must go away and think about this quandary.

Hello, my name is ...

And I thought I had trouble with character names.

Charles Dickens called the sickly character in A Christmas Carol “Small Sam” and “Puny Pete” before settling on “Tiny Tim.” And until her editors at MacMillan intervened, Margaret Mitchell had been calling the woman we all know as Scarlet by the name of Pansy.

Yowza.

I try to tell myself that I shouldn't worry about the names of a character when the book is in progress. After all, the important thing is the plot and the story and the character. Right?

Uh, no. The wrong name will worry me like a toothache until I get it right. It will stop me dead in my tracks. You'd think, after four pubbed books and untold numbers of "trunk" novels, I'd have a system worked out.

I sort of do, but it's not a fail-proof one.

I'm a stickler for accuracy. One reason I can't watch soaps is because of all the weird names. Back in the 90s there were just way too many Hunters and Chases for guys, and I can't even remember all the strange names for the ladies. Now, of course, Hunter and Chase are perfectly commonplace names for little boys.

So I start first with the age of the character. A 28 year-old woman? My handy-dandy calculator tells me that the woman was born in 1982 (a mere child. An infant almost, but still.)

Then I let my fingers walk right on past all those baby-naming books. My clicking takes me to the absolute best naming website: The Social Security Administration.

Yup. The SSA has on record the most popular baby names, girl and boy, for any year or decade after 1879, and most popular names by state. It appeals to the geeky nerd in me. I just type in the year and pick the name that appeals to me from the top 25 names.

Now sometimes the name will come first, or I'll have a special reason for naming a character a particular name. For instance, I have a women's fiction MS where the woman's name is Glory. I love that name. It's just perfect for the character, and even more perfect for the wacky parents who named her that. And in my first pubbed book, THE BABY WAIT, I named my heroine Sara, after the barren Sarah in the Old Testament.

Or sometimes I'm just so desperate that I take the ultimate shortcut, like I did with WHERE LOVE GROWS. I was beginning the first chapter on my laptop, as I waited for The Kiddo to get out of ballet. Another mom was flipping through a magazine. The name I'd picked (by my aforementioned method) just wasn't working. I couldn't write.

So I turned to the unsuspecting mom. "What's your favorite name for a girl?" I asked her.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, gazing at my very flat (well, it was back then) belly. "Rebecca," she told me.

"Hmmm, Rebecca. Becca." I rolled it around on my tongue to see how it fit. And voila, it worked.

So, the storel of the mory is, if your careful and systematic approach fails you, just ask the mom in the ballet studio's waiting room.

Warning from Easter Bunny Central

Oh, yeah. After this week, I was SO expecting this one to hit my in-box. If I had any illusions about being a good mother, this put the nail in that coffin.

To: Cynthia Reese
From: Easter Bunny Central
Date: April 4, 2010

Mrs. Reese:

It has come to the attention of CEO Peter Cottontail that you have informed your daughter that The Easter Bunny was not real. It has further come to the attention of Mr. Cottontail that you conveyed this information in a less than sensitive manner and that you did not realize the depth of your daughter's belief in The Easter Bunny, thus causing deep and possibly irreparable harm to said child.

Your daughter is to be commended for her unwavering belief and the fact that she was willing to still put a note under her pillow well before the Friday midnight deadline, asking The Easter Bunny to bring her a present. Her selfless nature (unlike her maternal influence) is also to be noted, as she furthermore demonstrated such thoughtfulness by asking for presents for her father, her godfather and her, ahem, non-believing mother.

You will have noted that she indeed did receive her requests, even the chocolate bunny for her, ahem, non-believing mother. Mr. Cottontail wishes to inform you that this was a special circumstance. You are hereby on The Easter Bunny's Naughty List (yes, Easter Bunny Central has one of those, too. In fact, we had one before our round-roly-poly cousin to the North did. It's just not as well known.)

We understand, somewhat, that you never taught your child about the Easter Bunny because you wanted the focus to be on Christ. But Easter Bunny Central is not in competition with Jesus, regardless of what mass merchandisers may think. (We can't help how they've somehow hijacked our original message. It's got something to do with how our cute fluffiness performed in focus groups.)

We instead offer our aforementioned cute fluffiness to help young children get through that awkward time before they understand that all the talk about blood and empty graves and crucifixions and sacrificed lambs is actually happy talk. For instance, your own daughter has a particularly deep phobia about blood and covers her ears at the mention of "the shed blood of Christ." It is our job to help with the transition. You keep telling her about Jesus, and we'll help her via our cute fluffiness.

But remember. Don't ask for anything, I mean anything, next Easter. Because you are on our Naughty List.

Mopsy
Director of Security/Naughty List Coordinator
Special assistant to CEO Peter Cottontail

Friday Awwww Moment

Pix one is the Permed Dachshund at her favorite resting spot. You will note that she is never completely at ease, but always ready to protect us at a moment's notice.



Pix two is when she noticed me taking a pix of her. At that moment, she channeled her inner-German Shepherd and went into full-guard-dog-mode.

Yep, I do know these pix are soft, but I took them with my dinky phone camera, which has no flash. And yes, I do know that red and green throws don't look good together (my sister would be horrified that I put these on the internet), but, while photographing from a languid & relaxed position, I was covered up with the throw that matches the red and white throw. I love being warm much more than I love being fashion-coordinated. That being the case, I stack throws on the end of my sofa to ward off the snowballs when The Husband turns the thermostat down again.

ARE we April Fools?

Waaaay back when I worked at a newspaper, I decided I would enter the Georgia Press Association's Humorous Column of the Year competition. My editor at the time told me I could, but not to be surprised if I didn't win. The competition was stiff, he warned me.

"It's like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon," were his actual words.

So I entered. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I forgot all about it.

Then, some months later, I got a notice that I had, gasp, won.

My rose petal had landed with a bang.

I got much the same response when I admitted to people that I was trying to get published. They patted me on the arm or the head or whatever socially acceptable body part they could easily get to and said, "That's nice, dear. Don't be disappointed."

For years, longer than some writers' journeys, shorter than others, I secretly nursed the idea that I was a fool. Who was I kidding? Maybe everyone was right.

I found April to be a particularly hard month, because that was the month I added up all my little tax deductions -- my paper, my printer ink, my Tyvek envelopes, my book purchases, my RWA dues, my internet usage. I dreaded the day the IRS would audit me and say, "You can't deduct this! You're not a real writer!"

Yes, I did finally get published, through a combination of luck and learning and pure cussedness.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because it's April. And somewhere out there is a non-writing spouse leaning over Turbo Tax and saying, "Honey, that's a lot of money you spent on your little hobby last year. We could take a vacation with all that money."

Don't give up. Do you hear me? Do not even think about giving up.

This isn't some hobby that can easily be swapped out for snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef. If you're anything like me, your writing is a big, chunk of who you really are. And who you are? Well, that's the last thing you should give up.

But don't I get enough exercise by juggling this many irons?

I've been blessed/cursed all my life with being skinny. When I was six years old, I weighed 36 pounds and was 36 inches high. In high school, I hovered around the 68 pound mark. When I donned my wedding gown, I weighed 72-freakin'-pounds, and no, I did NOT wear the flower girl dress. But I could have.

Fast forward. Yep, that's right. Past the gall bladder surgery, where they took out the offensive gall bladder and put in an appetite. Past the adoption of The Kiddo. Past the giving up of the newspaper job where I walked everywhere, and past the jobs where I, ahem, basically warm a chair all day long. (I'm productive. I am. I just get a lot done from command central.) Past the time where my free-time was spent working to meet editor deadlines and revisions and, oh, that new book proposal. Past my big 4-0 b-day.

I am now a whopping 98 pounds.

Yeah. I heard that snort. It was, "She thinks she has a weight problem?"

It's not so much of a weight problem. It's a jiggle problem. And a belly problem (I've been told that good southern ladies like me shouldn't refer to our body parts in the same way one would refer to livestock body parts, but, hey. You can't call my tummy anything BUT a belly.)

So I should exercise. Twenty minutes a day, right?

WRONG. Now to completely overload my guilty-exercising-avoiding-conscience comes a new study which says we women should exercise 60 minutes a day to avoid packing on the pounds.

The study comes via two very interesting blogs: Steph in the City and Fitness: A Journey, Not A Destination.

Now, Karen Evans, who writes about the study in detail, does quibble with it. She makes very valid points. And Steph is right when she says it's just depressing.

What I want to know is where on EARTH I will find 60 minutes a day to exercise. That's not even touching the motivational issues or the how-bad-the-belly-looks-in-yoga-pants problem. Because, lemme tell you, I'm sacrificing sleep to The Kiddo and to The Writing, and I got no more sleep to sacrifice.

I guess, though, I should forgive myself. If I can do 20 minutes a day, it's better than zip a day. Heck, if I can do 20 minutes a week, it's better than zip, too. I'm coming to the conclusion that exercising (and general fitness) is a lot like writing. A little every day will add up over the long haul, and the cumulative effect is to make it easier.

Besides, when I'm an old woman, I'll wear purple yoga pants and have LOTS of time to exercise. :-)

And Be A Villain

Last week, I was the Wicked Witch of the West.

No, I didn't recently join my friendly neighborhood coven (is there one??) and I'm not involved in Little Theatre. I'm a mom, and The Kiddo wanted to take her 300-buck DS on a field trip, despite the fact that the school handbook says no electronics on school property. Last time I checked, a school bus was school property.

From 5 p.m. (when The Husband called and put The Kiddo on the phone to ask if he could run her out to Wally-World and buy her an iPod to take with her the next day) until 9:30 p.m., there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Basically it sounded something like, "Whhhhhhyyyyyy? All my friends are going to have electronics! You have an iPod! Whhhhhhyyyyyy? I just wanna diiiiiiieeee."

It started back up at 6:30 the next morning.

My standard response was: "Hey, it sucks, and it's not fair. But my no means no."

It got me thinking. Villains get the short end of the stick so many times. We just paint them bad and unfeeling and cold-hearted (that's certainly how The Kiddo saw me). But they have their reasons. Yes, I know. Some of their reasons are so twisted they rival pretzels, but still, they have their reasons.

And if we can remember that, and include some of those complexities, then we'll wind up with villains who possess a bit more depth.

Plus, there's always the chance that someone will tell me that The Kiddo only thinks I'm the Wicked Witch of The West, while in reality, I'm being the wonderfully consistent, wonderfully firm parent that she needs. Because let's face it. The Kiddo won't be saying anything like that until she's probably 100.

I got my MFA at the cineplex

What can this guy (the fellow with the supercilious smirk and the cool specs) teach a writer about writing?

Okay, okay. So my title has already ticked off all the MFA survivors out there, and the Dude in Black is probably a male model who knows beans about directing. Bear with me.

I love movies. I love television. Yeah, I'm a writer, and I admit that. I love both movies and television because I love, love, love a story. I am addicted to stories, and I'm not picky about format, though I am picky about quality and authors.

The greatest thing since sliced bread, when it comes to movies today, is the bonus parts of a DVD. The director's commentary -- oooh. So helpful, but time-consuming. I seldom have time to watch a movie once, much less twice. And then there are the deleted scenes.

Deleted scenes are the bestest things (yes, I know, no such word as bestest). I save them for last, when I've watched the movie and have decided whether it's a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. If it's a thumbs-down, I weep momentarily for the wasted time that I shall never get back.

Thumbs-up? I jump on those deleted scenes like a puppy on a pair of Manolo Blahnik stilettos. It is amazing to see what the director thought he (or she) needed while in the throes of creativity, and then decided, eh, newp.

And usually the decision is pulverizingly, obviously right. The scene was just so much fluff and didn't propel the story on.

Writers (uh, I'm talking to me, now) can learn a thing or two from that.

First, I shouldn't mind the effort of creating a scene that may well later be axed. Maybe I needed to write that sucker in order for me to better understand the character. Or the setting. Or the backstory. After all, at least it didn't cost me film and the salaries of a movie crew and movie stars.

Second, sometimes you don't know what you don't need until you've processed everything. That's why they chop scenes at the editing stage.

Third, like any good lab rat, I can learn from my mistakes (well, theoretically, anyway.) Maybe I can realize, as I'm writing (or better yet, as I'm planning!), that I don't need to bog the reader down in a scene that is only important to me and to my understanding of the world I'm creating.

Probably this will happen when I also find oil under the petunias and subsequently spend my days on a beach with a cute waiter bringing cool drinks and delicious munchies. But a girl can dream, no?

Friday Awwwww Moment

Found this on the web (it seems to be popping up in several places, so I'm not sure just who to give credit to.

But a kitty is an all-time best-ever writing buddy, no? (Unless you have an attack Flame-Point Siamese who demands, "Pay attention to me, or I'll chew your laptop's AC adapter cord in two." But that's another story!)

Oh, I SO love good news!

See that beeeee-yooou-ti-ful book cover there beside this entry? Well, that just happens to be the debut YA book of a friend of mine, the best plot-hole-puncher in the known universe, Nelsa Roberto. She got her real, honest-to-goodness author copies this week. Squee!

I feel rather attached to Illegally Blonde. I saw it in its raw and unshaped form (which looked pretty darn-tootin' good to me even then.) I saw it before she got her agent, before she got her publishing deal. I knew it was a great book then, and I can ASSURE you that it is a wonderful book now.

Illegally Blonde is available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble (and pick up a cool 5% discount, just like yours truly), and all your usual on-line book outlets. It's officially on sale and available March 30.

It's also available via that dying breed, your independent book seller. (I say "your" because I do not have an independent book seller available to me.") I so wish these guys weren't going the way of the Dodo (but that is another blog post entirely.)

Go. Pre-order. Now.

Well? What are you waiting for?!

Why I Write

I skimmed a very interesting interview about The INTERN (interview here, INTERN's blog here), and one comment in it made me think:

"In the case of her fiction and poetry: realistically, INTERN probably writes because writing has always yielded more positive strokes for her than any other pursuit—much as a rat will keep pressing the button that gives it the most candy."

The quote brings to mind the first time that I decided being a writer would be cool. I was about nine or ten, bored out of my head during summer vacation, and I'd run out of books to read and games to play with my cousin. I came up with an elaborate pretend "game" where we were the staff writers for a magazine. I dimly recall that I wrote a piece on Mozart, and my cousin wrote a piece on the game of marbles. (It was an eclectic magazine, you see.)

The grown-ups oohed and ahhed (mainly because we weren't making a mess, probably), but at that time, something just clicked. I was good at something!

Amazing. The kid who couldn't hit a beach ball with a tennis racket, the kid who had no rhythm, the kid who was so clutzy that she'd trip over her shoe laces even if they were tied, that kid was finally good at something.

I wonder just how many of our best-selling authors today wound up where they are because they were like me: can't dance, can't sing, can write a little.

Why meeeee?

Doesn't the little guy I've used here look cute? He completely sums up my feelings today, so cue the violins!

Today, I have jury duty. The Husband never has jury duty, whereas I have served on at least two juries and been called for countless others during my married life.

The problem with jury duty is that you have to show up, even if, at the end of the day, you're not called because the defendants in question decide that, hey, all the potential jurors look like a hanging jury and they'll take their chances requesting mercy from Hizzoner.

Still, I never fail to come away from jury duty without at least one good book idea (but that's nothing. I find it hard to shut the Idea Engine off, much to the chagrin of my friends and family).

So maybe I will come up with THE hook that will develop into THE book that will ... shoot, I can't come up with anything that rhymes with hook and book. I'm a writer, not a poet!

Wish me luck!

Life gets in the way. Superstition to the rescue?

(Yeah, I know it's not Thanksgiving, but hey, this was too cute an illustration of supersition to pass up! Thanks to Paula Becker for the hilarious picture!)

I intended to write this weekend. I had a hot date with my hero, who was finally talking to me (because, most likely, I was talking to him). Life, however, had different plans.

My daughter's first-ever, oldest gold fish died.

I am not kidding. This is not a riff off the-dog-ate-my-homework excuse. My daughter was prostrate with grief, and every time I thought that things were going to be okay and that she was beginning to give herself permission to move on, bam! More fat tears rolled down The Kiddo's face.

So I had to give myself permission: permission that this weekend, family came first and hot dates with heroes would have to wait.

I feel guilty when I don't write, not to mention terrified, because a nagging doubt still dogs me: what if the words stop coming?

Ha! I've been creating stories out of whole cloth since way before junior high.

Still, we writers are as superstitious as any major league baseball player.

When I was writing the first draft of the novel that eventually became my first published novel, I wore the same shirt every night to ward off the cold (my cold intolerance is legendary). It was my sister's shirt, a fuzzy flannel one that she'd left by accident at my house during a vist.

I'd pull that sucker on atop the other many layers I wore, hunch down and let the words fly from my fingertips. No matter what subtle hints my sister sent my way, I wasn't relinquishing custody of that shirt.

Finally, when the subtle hints stopped being, well, so subtle, I had to confess. I laughed it off, knowing in my logical, rational brain that superstition is all bunk.

"But, hey, why rock the boat, huh? And it, uh, it keeps me warm!" I told her.

My sister cocked one eyebrow. "Yeah, and if I had it, it would keep ME warm."

I've heard other writers confess their funny little rituals. What's some of yours?

Eventually I did return the shirt, after, of course, the draft was complete. I did it in an amazingly short time. Hmmmh. Now, I'm wondering if maybe I should go pilfer through my sister's closet ...

Letho - what??

Writers, like your car mechanic and your plumber and your handy-dandy carpenter, have tools. We don't carry them in big tool chests, but they're all tucked away just the same.

Our tools are words. Sounds simple enough. You sit down at the computer. You play on FB for a little while. You update your blog. Then, with a twirl of your fingers that a concert pianist would envy, you set yourself to the task of assembling words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into -- okay, okay. You just want the short version, don't you?

Non-writers in my family think I never have any trouble with my words (except when I'm regaling them with a story of my catastrophe du jour. Then they quibble over the length.) After all, I must know a lot of words. I was the nerdy little kid who entertained herself by reading the dictionary on rainy days.

What they don't know is that I FORGET a lot of words. Have you ever been writing along, really crusing into the scene, and then, bam! You need a word. Not just any word, but THAT word, that pulverizingly precise word, the one that is itching and twitching at the tip of your tongue -- er, fingers.

You can remember all sorts of synonyms, but they are like all so many discarded wannabe wedding dresses. They're just not the ONE.

Whenever I get like this, all writing comes to a screeching halt. I'll pick up dictionaries and dust off my Roget's Thesaurus. I'll remember a book that I read that used (maybe, anyway) that word, and I'll pick it up and flip through it. I'll remember how the word can be used in a lot of contexts and then I'll find OTHER books that MAYBE have the one, beautiful, shiny word in it.

I'll know it when I see it, but I can't for the life of me remember it.

At this point, I'll get panicky. Am I losing it? Is this a sign of the old brain slipping? Am I suffering from the early stages of dementia? Then if I'm really desperate (and let's face it, a writer who can't write can be pretty desperate), I'll start asking friends and family.

They hate this. After all, if I can name a dozen synonyms, why, they wonder, can't I just use one of THOSE words?

Because, because, because.

I never knew that there was an actual name for this disorder. But recently I learned that the word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Ah-ha. Now, it seems, I have another word that I can sort of remember the meaning of, but I can't, dagnabbit, remember the actual WORD.

Crash-and-burn-a-vision

Sorry that the blog went dark yesterday. The morning started out all wrong, the day proceded unwaveringly in that direction, and it ended with me being eternally grateful that when I lay down last night, the bed did not fall under me.

Part of yesterday's doom and gloom was the news that I was to be interviewed on TV for part of my day-job.

(Brief pause while I tend to the hives I broke out in upon hearing such news.)

I do not like cameras, at least not being on the lens side of a camera. Not film cameras. Not Polaroid cameras. Not digital cameras. Not cell phone cameras. And most definitely NOT video cameras.

Some people, it can be said, perform flawlessly in such situations. They sound intelligent, as though they have a brain. They sound like the guy on the six-o'clock news.

I am not some people.

On the TV performance scale, where you have an Emmy-award-winning star on one end while on the other, a hick witness to a tornado, I fall most definitely toward the hick witness end of the spectrum. Oh, yeah, put a microphone and a camera in front of me after a tornado touches down, and my first instinct is to prattle, "It went off like a bomb, it did. Just outta nowhere, and there goes Aunt Mabel's washing machine and her nighties, too, off in the clear, blue sky."

Which is not to say that I have not worked hard to overcome such propensities. Unfortunately, every single blasted one of my day jobs have, at one time or another, forced me in front of a camera. I have learned to talk more like the six-o'clock news guy and less like the hick witness he's interviewing.

The camera guy always says, "Just act natural, and you'll do fine."

Trust me. The LAST thing he wants is me "acting natural."

Battling with printers

Yes, I know, I know, my blog post is late, but I have been in a to-the-death grudge match with a printer.

I was planning to blog about something else entirely. I'm so steamed from paper jams and error messages and printers taking so long with "initializing" that I didn't get lunch until 2 p.m.

Things could be worse. I could be purple with ditto machine ink, or black and blue from carbons, or sliced with papercuts from separating yards and yards of dot matrix paper. I love, love, love being able to change one word on a page and not having to correct all the pages thereafter. And yes, I AM old enough to remember a ditto machine. So I should really be grateful for printers.

Printers and I, however, have never gotten along very well. Maybe it's because I so seldom print anything out. Most of my pages stay as neat little kilobytes on a computer file (backed up, naturally). So the time comes for me to do a massive printing job, and I find myself cursing and kicking and whining -- with a background of soulful violins accompanying my sob story.

Maybe it's because I don't use them that often and I'm completely unfamiliar with them. I like to think more dramatically, though. When I am in the throes of agony, I am CERTAIN that inside that innocuous gray and black box resides a forked-tail little red devil, tee-heeing every time he sticks his prongs into the mechanism and creates yet another paper jam. He dines on printer ink and sips on my tears of frustration.

Boy, after all my frustration, does he need to take some Maalox today!

Talking to Oneself

You remember that classic scene out of ROMANCING THE STONE, don't you? The opening scene where it's a race between Joan Wilder's wrap up of her manuscript and her supply of tissues?

To refresh your memory:

Grogan: What's it gonna be, Angelina?
Joan Wilder: [voiceover] It was Grogan: the filthiest, dirtiest, dumbest excuse for a man west of the Missouri River.
Grogan: You can die two ways: quick like the tongue of a snake, or slower than the molasses in January.
Joan Wilder: [voiceover] But it was October.
Grogan: I'll kill you, bleep, if it's the Fourth of July! Where is it? Uhh. Get over there!
Joan Wilder: [voiceover] I told him to get out, now that he had what he came for.
Grogan: Not quite.
[spits]
Grogan: Take 'em off. Do it! Come on!
[Angelina kills Grogan by throwing a concealed knife]
Joan Wilder: [voiceover] That was the end of Grogan... the man who killed my father, raped and murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog, and stole my Bible!

I admit it, there are worse fates than to be yanked into a Columbian treasure hunt with Michael Douglas ... as long as it ends Happily Ever After.

But the only things I have in common with the fictional Joan Wilder are that I am a writer, and that, er, I talk to myself as I'm writing.

It is a sort of new realization. One recent Saturday, The Kiddo was putting on some sort of Barbie Fashion Show in her room while I was working on my current MS in my room.

I was all snugged up with my laptop, and finally the story was beginning to flow. The explanation for this sudden "click" didn't dawn on me. I didn't care WHY my characters were finally talking again; I was just glad of it!

And then The Kiddo popped her head around the door jam. "Mommy?"

"Hmh?" Still engrossed, hadn't really looked up, DETERMINED to finish the thought before it escaped.

"Were you talking on the phone?"

"Nu-uh," I muttered. A few more keystrokes, and I'd finish this elusive paragraph.

"Well, who were you talking to, then?"

Paragraph screeched to a halt. I looked up. "I wasn't talking."

She raised her eyebrow and gave me a squint-eye she could have only learned from her mother. "Yes, you WERE."

And then it hit me. The reason my characters were talking was that, ahem, I was talking for them.

What's Good About Being Insulted?

Okay, so the title is for dramatic effect. Hey, I'm a writer. Sue me. :-)

We writers are often portayed as thin-skinned "artistic types" who can't handle anyone messing around with our "art." Honestly, though, most of the serious writers I know understand that we need to have skin rivaling a rhino's.

True, nobody likes to be told that her hero is rude or that her heroine is inhospitable (uh, both criticisms yours truly got this weekend via beta readers and critiques partners, in the interest of FULL and messy disclosure). I admit that my first reaction is, "Mmmph! Didn't they READ what I wrote?"

However, that's just the first few seconds' reaction. What it really amounts to is projected anger: I'm disgruntled more with MYSELF that they couldn't see the image or the character as I saw it in my head. In other words, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

If you can reframe your thinking, realizing that your frustration is that the reader didn't get the message you were sending, then it's easier to go back and tinker with your work. You realize, "Ah-ha! This is what made my CP or beta reader think my hero was rude!"

Usually, as in real life when someone takes offense, it's one teensy, tiny little thing. Change it, and bam, your character's been totally rehabilitated.

This "what needs fixing" approach lends itself to any sort of criticism, unless the criticism is meant in a less-than-constructive way. No, I'm not perfect at receiving criticism (just ask The Husband. On second thought, DON'T!). But I like to think that, after all these years of understanding how valuable critique partners are, I've learned something in writing that applies itself to Real Life.

And God bless those CPs and Beta Readers! I couldn't get anything done without having them reading over my shoulder!

Awwww!

Okay, it's Friday, and we all need an awwww moment! This pix is stolen from . Now, go home and kiss your baby giraffe!

The real secret to writing

Forget talent. Forget the ability to string together lovely words. Forget life experiences out the wazzoo. Forget all the tips you hear about eavesdropping at Wal-Mart.

The real secret to writing? Space, baby. Lots and lots of space.

Notice I did not say "time." We writers are forevermore saying, "Oh, give me time to write!"

But what we really need is the mental space to focus inward, on our characters, on those lovely words, on that delightful insight we overheard at Wal-Mart.

Physical space is also critical. That means the fam being able to actually function without interrupting you 90 gajillion times to ask the whereabouts of something that if they'd put up themselves to begin with, they'd know where it was.

But just like a ringing phone is the universal signal for babies to cry and dogs to bark and cats to scratch at the door, reaching for that laptop is the signal that a race for Mom's space is about to start.

I have to admit, most times, if I just ask, my little household is good about giving me space.

So maybe I should ask for it more often, hmh?

(The cute pix above was taken by a friend of mine, Bill Ricks. I couldn't help but add the caption. I'm sure he would have chosen something less humorous, but hey, finders, keepers, right?)

I miss purple Garfields

Yesterday, as I sat in my dentist's chair, watching The Kiddo color the Garfield coloring sheet they gave her to keep her occupied, I realized that I missed purple Garfields.

I watched The Kiddo as she carefully colored within the lines, choosing the orange Crayola to properly color in the famous fat cat. Two or three years ago, The Kiddo would have dispensed with conventional wisdom and gone with purple or pink or some other wild color. And she would have not bothered to color within the lines.

But thanks to public school and dozens of grown-ups (not me, never me) telling her that the sky should be blue and the sun should always be a yellow circle, this time Garfield was his traditional orange.

I thought about that move toward safety in conventionality, thought about how it might apply to writers.

When we first start out, most of us don't know the rules. We don't know the jargon. We just throw words on the page with the abandon of a pre-schooler scribbling Garfield purple. The rush that gives us is indescribable.

But then we learn. We learn about plot points and hooks and blurbs and character development and how celebrity and athlete heroes never sell.

So we opt for the safe road.

Sure, our writing improves on some levels. Now we are paying attention to format and our highpowered sales exec hero isn't bashful and shy because we know that he wouldn't have gone into sales if he hadn't been a people person to begin with.

But we worry. As that cursor flashes, we find ourselves worrying if we've picked the RIGHT shade of orange for our Garfields. We obsess about format and plot and motivation as carefully as any third grader worries about neatly coloring in the lines.

Yes, we have to conform. Publishing is a business, after all. But let's not forget that wild feeling of power we had when we decided that Garfield SHOULD be purple.

The oldest argument on earth

Ok, well, the second oldest, anyway, and the Permed-Dachshund and the Serious Attack Kat keep it alive. Here, the war is over the beloved arm of the sofa, and it looks like the Serious Attack Kat has maintained a firm grip on the high ground.

(And, yes, thank you, my migraine IS better! Yay! One more day, and I'll feel like writing again!)

Today I Won't Even Try

I am a migraineur ... one of the 28 million or so Americans who suffer from migraines. Lucky for me, I (a) don't have them very often, and (b) have warning "auras" before the sledgehammer pain and acute light sensitivity kick in.

Unlucky for me, today is a migraine day. Actually, it's Day 2, and you know how sequels stink.

So I give you, from http://rulingcatsanddogs.com (WHY WON'T MY LINK THINGIE WORK TODAY OF ALL DAYS???!!!???), my best writing/life advice EVAH:

Mighty Dog

Christmas 2009, I made the VAST mistake of telling The Kiddo that we could adopt a stray dog that was hanging out at a local store. When said stray had, er, strayed, and as I was faced by a torrent of tears and "but you SAIDs," I made another rash promise: to find her a dog.

It's not like we didn't already have a dog, a big old chocolate Labrador impersonating a Rottweiler. The Kiddo, however, wanted a LITTLE dog. A dog that was JUST hers.

I can admit, now that I'm fab and forty and all grown up and have embraced the philosophy of embracing one's limitations, that I am more of a cat person than a dog person. Don't get me wrong -- I like dogs.

Cats, however, are self-contained and not so needy. They don't call that guilt-inducing look dogs give you "puppy eyes" for nothing.

I'd promised, though, so we got a dog. It's a dachshund/poodle mix -- think a weiner dog with a perm. She's a cute little gal, and wouldn't you know it? The dog has bonded more with me than anybody else. She curls up on my feet at night. She follows every step I make. She won't go out for anybody else, and if it's raining, forget it. Even I can't make her go out very easily. She pulls the old "puppy eyes" trick on me. "Hey, lady," she seems to be saying, "would YOU go potty in the rain?"

Rain is one thing, but snow is quite another. She loves snow (as does the Kiddo, but that's to be expected.) We had a rare "snow event" in February, and a friend of mine caught this pix of her ... shouldn't she be wearing a red cape with a big M for Mighty Dog?

Forget the experts, I'm in need of an intervention

Dang the invention of the DVR. Pre-DVR, I was such a techno-fumblefingers that there was no way I could program my VCR's clock, much less schedule recording shows and making sure I had a blank tape in there.

But oh, the ease that my DVR provides. With one click of a button, I can record a whole series of programs that I have no business watching because I should be writing in that 45-minute time span.

I can't resist, though. Criminal Minds whispers into my head things like, "Sheesh, what smart plot twist will they come up with next?"

I have to admit, I've long been a sucker for a serial killer novel. (I know, weird. I write romance and women's fiction, but when I grow up, I wanna be Tess Gerritsen.) I don't like horror, however I love to have the willies scared out of me by a good writer.

I'm also a sucker for an ensemble cast. I lie to myself and say that it shows me how you can reveal a lot about a character through showing (in tiny little tidbits) and not telling. Really, though, I watch it for the characters as much as the plot.

Criminal Minds is the best of both worlds, which is strange, because for ages I ignored the show. I thought it was about crimes told from the point of view of, I dunno, criminals. But then one day I was home, alone, and there was Season One on A&E, a marathon. Omigosh, but I was hooked. Thus began my relationship with my DVR.

I have been entirely too OCD about managing this addiction. I have a list of all the Criminal Minds episodes, and as I watch one, I strike it off. Currently, thank goodness, I have managed to watch all of Season One, all but one episode of Seasons 2 and 3, with a few from Season 4 and Season 5 still to bag. I admit, I'm looking forward to the time when all that I have waiting for me on my DVR is the one new episode a week.

I Need An Expert

Despite what The Husband says, I do NOT think I'm the end-all, be-all Genius of Our Time. My head full of useless trivia (such as hallux is the name of the big toe, and that the Pluto we know wasn't Mickey Mouse's original dog) must annoy the stew out of him. Especially when I can spout off stuff like that, and yet admit that, "uh, I forgot the dry-cleaning. Again."

As it happens, there's a lot of stuff I DON'T know. I learn that every time I begin a new book (like now! Wee! I'm in love! Stay tuned to see if It Will Last.) That's when the yawning chasm of my continued ignorance can't be ignored, as I'm trying to figure out the answer to The Big Question (Will My Plot Hold Water?!?!)

Oh, I start out with the easy internet search, and that leads to another three or four hours bouncing from one site to another. But so much of the internet these days has fallen prey to C&Pitis ... someone has copied and pasted until the whole big Google search result is the exact same thing, or most of it anyway.

That's when I start e-mailing people I know AND people I don't know. Right now, for instance, I'm in need of the answer to one simple question about public defenders in Georgia. (Yeah, yeah, that one question will be like the heads of Hydra: once slain, it will produce two more questions.)

Most of the time, complete and total strangers will be nice enough to help out. They read my sincere question and my sincere promise that I will put them in my acknowledgements and move onto my sincere(ly outdated) website. And then they'll throw me a bone.

This time? With lawyers? Not so much. Not a single bite to my respectful entreaties. So ... guess it's back to figuring out who I know who knows someone else who knows someone else. I've heard it said that we're all just two people away from getting/finding out anything we want.

But if you know a little something-something about public defenders in Georgia, by all means, let me know! I promise! You're a shoo-in for my acknowledgements page!

Coming out of Lurkdom With Some Good News

Yes, I have been silent since October. But ...

My mom got sick.

My mom passed away.

I got sick.

I survived, but I had to have a money-ectomy to do so.

Yeah, it's been that kind of winter.

Still, it's wonderful, wonderful news that inspires me to blog again ... my uber-talented friend Tawna Fenske just, gasp, landed a three-book deal with Sourcebooks!

This gal is so phenomenal that I knew she would be published one day. When it comes to writing, she's had about as bad luck as I've had this winter, but I never gave up the faith that she would one day be able to give me an autographed book.

She's funny and witty and can create the most quirky, loveable characters ... you're gonna adore 'em, I swear. Her first book is due out August 2011, none too soon for me.

Tawna's rollercoaster story of ups and downs is a testament to the amount of perseverance you need in this business, that's for sure. She has done the best darn impersonation of a cockle-burr I've ever known, sticking to her dreams, continuing to try even when the bottom fell out on her. And that, my friends, is what it takes in this business -- talent, perseverance, and a terric agent like Michelle Wolfson! Woo-hoo!

I want my minutes back

Is there anything more frustrating than trying to deal with your cell phone company???

My current phone is one of the oldie-but-goodies, with no Qwerty keyboard. So it's a pain to text anything on. I'm supposedly eligible for a FREE upgraded phone. Supposedly -- but I have tried and failed.

I have spent all morning trying to fix my upgrade order (an order which also ate the better part of a morning). The first phone I ordered was back-ordered — I figure since it was free, it is a bait and switch deal. So I decided that I would swallow the bait and order another one that I actually had to pay for. Only, since The Dear Husband is the primary account owner, he had to call and give permission to change my phone order.

Then I carefully researched phones, chose one and called and waited and waited for “the next available representative,” only to be told that the phone I wanted required a stripped down data plan. So then she suggested I order another phone, for $49, but I’d have to change my plan, as it would not work. She assured me the plan was the same price.

Only, when I went to do it, it totaled an extra $10 a month — for no more benefit. Aaargh.

So then I called BACK and waited and waited and waited, only to have another guy try to explain how the new plan really WASN’T ten bucks a month extra, but you had to order it a different way. Riiiiighht. Color me cynical, but I’m still trying to apply new math, old math, any sort of math to make it work out.

Finally I got frustrated beyond belief at the amount of time I’d wasted on this, asked if the other phone I’d ordered (and was apparently in eternal backorder) would work on my current plan. "Yes," he said, sounding disappointed. I figured that if he sounded disappointed, it must mean I was choosing wisely for my pocketbook.

"OK," I said. "Let’s just go back to that one." I may never get the phone, but if I do, it’s free, and it will work with my current plan.

One thing I won’t ever get back is the time I could have spent writing this morning. Wonder if I could send the wireless company a bill for Premium Weekend Writing Minutes consumed ...

Ben Franklin Rests In Peace Again

Well, I say he is. I'd been following on various blogs and websites the travesty of Philadelphia's libraries being threatened with closure. The day of doom was to have been Oct. 2.

Public libraries closing? In Philadelphia? Where Ben Franklin, the first person to open a lending library, lived?

I'd thought it was bad enough that my own library had begun closing at 2 p.m. on Saturdays. But to not have a library at all? Yikes.

I credit public and school libraries for helping feed my voracious reading habit. As a relatively poor kid, I found my reading pace outstripping my wallet's ability to pay for books. The library is where I find new authors and try them out before I put them on my auto-buy list. When I need to research something, I go to my library. It's where I find the audio-books that I must have if I'm going to drive any distance at all.

The best part about public libraries is their egalitarian spirit. Anyone with a library card can check out a book -- any book they like. And mid-list authors' books cozy up to the volumes of best-sellers with no threat of returns to publishers.

Libraries aren't just another line item in a budget, to be slashed in hard economic times, even if some elected officials seem to think so. I'm glad to know that Philadelphia's bibliophiles fought back and won -- and the libraries in the city continue to be open to the public.

Wood On The Fire

Michael Jordan can teach a girl a lot about writing.

Well, not writing per se, but the pursuit of dreams and goals. That's what writing is all about.

Last night I sat down with my husband, a die-hard Michael Jordan fan (he followed him when Michael had hair and played for North Carolina), to listen to Jordan's acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame ceremony.

I've always considered Jordan to be a class act, so at first, his neener-neener speech was kind of ... off-putting. He talked about how he got his competitive spirit. That spirit had its roots in proving other people wrong. He talked about how, when he got cut from the varsity high school basketball team, he wanted to prove that his coach had made a big mistake.

Other naysayers along his path had been, as he put it, "wood on the fire." Basically, his acceptance speech, except for one very kind comment about teammate Scotty Pippen, was one how-do-you-like-me-now remark after another.

Or it was at first blush.

About halfway through it, I realized his speech wasn't just a "neener-neener." He really was thanking them. He was admitting that, if they hadn't told him what he was after was impossible, that he wasn't good enough, he wouldn't have become Michael Jordan.

Huh. Now that was enlightening for a girl like me. It occurred to me that some of the biggest moves I'd made in life were in response to people who said, "Ennnh. Can't be done."

People told me only rich kids went to college. I won a full honors scholarship and graduated magna cum laude.

An editor told me that I shouldn't enter the Georgia Press Association's competition for Best Humorous Column. "It'd be like dropping a rose petal in the Grand Canyon," he said. I did, and I won first place the very first year I entered.

My husband told me it would take me three years to finish a book for the first time. I finished it in three months.

My husband rolled his eyes when I pointed to the First Sale Column in the Romance Writers Report and told him my name was going to be in there one day. "Right," he said. "Keep dreaming." Two months later, my name was in black and white.

Unlike Michael Jordan, I didn't realize that what goosed me was proving naysayers wrong. I'd thought all this time I needed warm and fuzzy affirmations from those around me. I thought negativity was bad for you, that it would tear you down and kill your spirit.

And maybe it would. But something else happened this very month that tells me maybe MJ is onto something.

My daughter, bless her heart, came home with a fundraiser for school, three-pound tubs of refrigerated cookie dough at fourteen bucks a pop. The brochure came with incentive prizes: sell twelve items and you get to go to a Mega Party. Sell thirty items and you get a chance to spin the money wheel. Sell an impossible amount and you get to take a lunch-time ride in a limo.

That's a lot of dough. BOTH kinds of dough.

We live in a small town, and having a product that you can't sell easily to out-of-town friends and family makes it dang hard. It's even harder when every kid in the elementary school is selling the same thing. I told the Kiddo, "Sweetie, don't get your hopes up. People can't really afford to buy cookie dough at $14 a pop. I just don't think you'll make the Mega Party."

She cried. I cried. I admit I did the dumb thing and called the superintendent and fussed at him for ever allowing such a fundraiser go forward.

But she didn't give up hope. Every afternoon, she got her dad to take her around to peddle her cookie dough. Yeah, she got some "no's." But so far she's gotten fourteen yeses. And she's made that Mega Party I didn't think she could attain. I guess I put wood on her fire.

I think, in light of Michael Jordan's speech and my daughter's success, I owe the school superintendent an apology ... and I need to rethink how I look at naysayers. I need to look at them as if they're wood on my fire.

Speechless, just speechless

I am speechless.

Well, voiceless to be more accurate. I am on day 3 of laryngitis so bad that I can emit nothing more than a whisper. I had NO idea that a person needed to talk as much as I apparently do. Now I know why two-year-olds throw temper tantrums – they get so tired of not being able to be understood!

It's the little things that will get you: say for instance, calling out the Kiddo's spelling words and going over her science study guide and her reading vocabulary. Last night I remembered that there were computer programs to “read” text, so I looked on my computer, and thank goodness, it was there. I typed in all of the Kiddo's science study guide for this week (on fossils) and her reading vocabulary words and her spelling words, and then I let the computer call it all out for her. I wish I had a portable computer to do my talking for me today.

And then there's negotiating dinner-table conversation. Last night I had to try to explain profit to the Kiddo. Can you imagine trying to explain profit to an 8-year-old using sign language and a notepad? Lovely.

This morning, the Kiddo wanted to take her lunch. Only we had lost her insulated lunch bag, and I couldn’t fit all the stuff she wanted into my old one, because I needed to put a dry ice pack into it (ham and mayo sandwich). If I’d had another Ziploc bag to put her grapes in, it would have all gone in, easy-peasy, but I was fresh out of bags save one. So finally after much tears (hers) and much frustration (mine) and a few more tears (mine, because I couldn’t talk and it was exhausting to carry on an argument with an 8-year-old in gestures), I wrapped the grapes in aluminum foil, the sandwich in aluminum foil and stuck her chips into the only Ziploc bag I had. (Can you tell I didn’t go grocery shopping this weekend??? And that nobody ELSE went grocery shopping for me, either???)