8 Lessons Learned from Taking 2 Years to Finish 1 Novel

What, me, self promote? Perish the thought.
I'd never be so brazen as to tell you that it's
available for pre-order on Amazon or Kobo.
Official release date: January 26, 2015.

So if I don't write a post for five months, will anyone notice? It's been eating at me - the time I've spent away from blogging about reading and writing. My last post was in July, for goodness' sake. I had lots to say, but no time to say it. But now that The Red Road is finished, I feel like a weight has been lifted. It's cliche, and as a writer, I should do better, but that's exactly what it feels like. 

This two-and-a-half-year journey is finally coming to an end. I started writing The Red Road in May of 2012. As of December 2014, it's done. As in file name "TheRedRoadFINALFINALNOREALLYIMNOT
KIDDINGTHISTIMEFINAL.epub." It's formatted, tested, and ready for pre-sale on the interwebs. Now it's time to wrangle some marketing and take stock of what I've learned. And, boy, this is the book that's taught me the most. Here's some of what I've learned.

Lesson #1: Writing about real life is hard. In thrillers, it's easy to come up with a quip and have the bad guy shoot someone to get out of a tough spot. In a book about high school girls? Not so much. These characters don't have the spatial freedom grown-ups have. I had to give up the easy answers that thrillers and paranormal tales had to offer.

Lesson #2: Writing about real people is hard. I don't think I will ever do this again. Characters based on my mom, dad, and sister are in this book. And I did bad things to them. I stripped every character of safety and left the worst versions of themselves exposed. This is much easier to do with people you're not sitting across the table from at Thanksgiving.

Lesson #3: You have to care about something a hell of a lot to work on it for two and a half years. There were times I cried, shut off the computer, and told the hubby I needed to find something else to do with my life. I never actually wanted to give up, but it felt good to say. It gave me the freedom to come back the next day and say, "Well, since I'm giving up, I guess it would be okay to tweak this one thing just to see what would happen." Sometimes that was enough to take the pressure off and shut down my inner editor, who is a world-class psycho hose beast. 

Lesson #4: Don't go into a book with a social or moral agenda. When I started this book, I was fresh out of grad school. I wanted to write a literary novel, a novel with purpose. I picked out all the social ills and evils of my hometown and forced them into the story. Guess what? The first draft was embarrassing. Preachy. Overwrought. Lacking connection with the characters. And, worst of all, boring. I deleted most of it.

Lesson #5: Presentation matters. File size, epub2 versus epub3, fleurons, dropcaps, embeddable fonts, line height, media queries...holy crap, I didn't know what I didn't know until I decided not to rely on Smashwords or Microsoft Word. My brain hurts. But this is the best-looking book I've ever put out. Now I'm kind of ashamed of all prior efforts.

Lesson #6: Never give up. Be as stubborn as you can. The day that ends in failure? It's just today. Tomorrow's different. You might spend weeks trying to figure out the dumbest thing (why the eff images come out huge in Adobe Digital Editions when they look great in the InDesign file). And you might feel really stupid and small because you can't "get" something that most people don't even bother thinking about. But if you keep working at it, you'll unlock it. And then everything you do from here on out will be right and you'll know why. It won't be an accident.

Lesson #7: Take the time you need. This goes hand-in-hand with Lesson #6. Any sane person would have said, screw this ninth draft. Screw this stupid image that won't size right. I can't spend any more time on this. Those Write, Publish, Repeat guys have serialized a twice-as-long sequel to War and Peace in the time it's taken me to figure out what CSS is. They don't write ninth drafts. And they're making money. So why should I do it? 

You should do it because you care about your work and your name and the story you're telling. If you care more about production time and the number of titles you can crank out in a year, you and I are different and that's okay. I want to take my time. I want to savor the process and learn every part of it. Delayed by 10 weeks to learn InDesign and eBook coding? Fine by me. Delayed by 3 months to add new character arc and revise book again? If it makes the story stronger and will leave readers more satisfied, I'll do it every damn time.

Lesson #8: Stay true to you. The writing world is full of posts and books that offer strategies, productivity tips, and shortcuts. Hell, I'm writing a tip-filled post right now. You have to know which are going to help you and which are not. You have to know what you believe in and why. And you have to know your own strengths and weaknesses. All advice must be filtered through your self-awareness. I'm still learning how to do this. But I'm getting better every day.

You are the architect of your own success. Good luck out there.

How Gossip Girl Helped Me Revise My Plot

I'm a huge Gossip Girl fan. Deride if you must, but know that George Sand being the writer a character most wants to have dinner with was an actual plot point in Season 2 (episode: "New Haven Can Wait"). There was also a Wharton tribute episode ("The Age of Dissonance"), plus GG gave us a memorable nickname to denigrate hack literary writers: F. Scott Fitzjackass ("The Fasting and the Furious"). Suffice to say, there are a lot more literary Easter eggs in the show than appear at first glance.

What does this have to do with writing tips? 

I'm about 70% through the fourth draft of The Red Road. This is the do-or-die batch of revisions, the one where I have to make final decisions about what stays, what goes, and what needs to be added. Drafts 2 and 3 were mostly about cutting my ridiculously verbose paragraphs down to their essence, and losing the overly "literary" tone that appeared every so often. This draft is about plot and subplot arcs, character arcs, and themes. 

The good news: the book has plot and subplot arcs, character arcs, and themes. The bad news: they aren't right yet.

The other night, I was super frustrated by the amount of work left in front of me. So I did what any frustrated writer would do--poured a glass of wine, turned off the computer, and settled down to re-watch a Gossip Girl episode with the hubby. One of the million reasons why I love my husband is that he tolerates...dare I say shares?...my unholy fascination with Gossip Girl.  He routinely uses that "F. Scott Fitzjackass" quote. Anyway, we're currently on season 4, when the Brooklyn team (Jenny, Vanessa, and Juliet) work together to take down Serena.

You don't need to know much about Gossip Girl to understand this particular plot arc. In a nutshell, the "outsider" Brooklyn girls want to ruin Serena, a glamorous rich girl from the Upper East Side. Their plan is simple: one by one, they will strip away everything Serena has that they don't: a devoted best friend, two boys who like her, her academic future at Columbia, and her family's trust.

They develop elaborate ruses to strip away each of Serena's support networks, and then go in for the kill: one super-elaborate ruse that is meant to destroy Serena's credibility for all time. The girls map out each takedown and orchestrate them individually. And guess what? It almost works. Serena gets put in the nuthouse and everyone thinks she's a lying, slutty drug addict.

And then it hit me: The Red Road needs a little Gossip Girl action. One of the main problems I'm having is that I feel the heroine's actions are too abrupt in the third act. I take her from a smart but worried schoolgirl into a revenge-seeking assassin. It doesn't work because she doesn't have enough reason to jeopardize what she has going for her. 

I realized I need to get all Gossip Girl on her ass and strip away the things she has one by one:

• Best friends
• In GG, the villain selected Blair for entry to an exclusive on-campus club at Columbia, leaving Serena out in the cold. Blair, who's always had self-esteem issues where Serena is concerned, now feels like the superior one. 
• In my book, I need to make sure to isolate the main character by giving her friends what they want, so they have more reason to act selfishly and maintain the status quo than they do to support Emma.
• Her academic future
• In GG, the villain sends an email from Serena's phone, asking one of her professors to trade sex for grades. This is, of course, enough to get her in trouble with the dean, who wants to expel her. 
• In my book, I'm adding two new chapters that basically put a black stain on Emma's academic record--enough to make good schools question her suitability as a scholarship recipient. The action she takes is entirely her choice, which means she knows exactly what she's doing, but can't help herself. She'll have a choice, and I need her to make the wrong one.
• Her family's trust
• In GG, the villain drugs Serena, dresses up exactly like her and takes pictures of herself snorting coke, then dumps Serena in a crappy cross-town motel and basically waits for her to overdose. When Serena wakes up and calls for help, her family thinks she's returned to her old, careless ways that apparently involve doing massive amounts of drugs and generally not giving a crap.
• In my book, what would disappoint the family most is Em sabotaging her own future--and acting out. This family values strength and silence in equal measure. So the worst she could do is show weakness, make mistakes, and be vocal about it, forcing the other family members to witness her collapse. This happens after the incident I'm adding that destroys her academic future, in a new chapter or two I'll have to write from scratch.
• The boy who likes her

• In GG, the villain starts an anonymous rumor that Serena has an embarrassing case of VD. This makes both of the guys who like her consider other options. Once this is proven false, however, the villain has a backup plan. She masquerades as Serena (literally...it's a masquerade ball) and while disguised, kisses both guys. Naturally, there's photographic evidence floating around that turns both guys against Serena.
• In my book, this is the one step I'm not sure I want to take. I kind of want to keep her love interest on her side so she always has a way out...and then I want her to refuse to take it. 

Every single one of these Gossip Girl plot points applies to my character...and maybe to yours, too. 

The next time you're looking at your book's lumpy middle and wondering how to stiffen it up, think Gossip Girl. What does your character have that the villain needs to take away? Pick it off in small pieces, and those small pieces will add up to a collective whole that gives your hero plenty of work to do in the story's climax.

If all else fails, just stream old episodes of your favorite TV show. You never know what will spark an idea for your next plot twist.

Merry Christmas

When I was little, my mom made me write thank-you notes for any birthday, Christmas, or graduation gifts I received. I hated it at the time, but now I understand that it's one of those niceties that makes the world go around.

This post is a thank-you to everyone who has read the blog this year. To everyone who has commented, thank you. To everyone who lurks, thank you.

I hope you have a chance to reconnect with friends and family over the next few days. (Writers: even if they drive you bonkers, this is valuable material. Keep a notebook handy.)  I've got some cool things planned for 2014 that will help all of us become better writers, better readers, and hopefully, better people. I'd love to have you along for the journey.

If, like my husband, you're about to be dragged through a family circus that isn't what you really want to be doing, remember: your attendance and your smile is a gift to the person who brought you. As Bill and Ted said, "Be excellent to each other."

May your eggnog be spiked...with love or whiskey, whichever you prefer.  

5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from Pancho and Lefty

I grew up on country music. This was the late '70s and early '80s, so we're talking real country. Outlaw country.

Country that would duct-tape Taylor Swift's mouth shut, take away all Brantley Gilbert's jewelry, and tell Keith Urban that rehab is for quitters.

One of my all-time favorite songs is "Pancho and Lefty," made famous by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. It's a story song, written by Townes Van Zandt. I still hang on every word like there's a secret nugget of truth waiting to be discovered.

How is there so much embedded in one sub-five-minute song? Have a listen and we'll find out.




Now, how can writers learn to tell a story so simply, with so much depth? Let's take a look.

1. A first-person narrator telling a story about someone else can be really effective.

No less a writer than Jonathan Franzen tells us that we should write in third person. This is one of those "establishment" rules for serious literary works. The reasoning? Third person is more remote (read: mysterious), which makes the reader work harder. It's also less limiting if you want to explore multiple characters. Plus, you get to create both the narrator's persona and your main character's (note: these are NOT the same thing).

"Pancho and Lefty" doesn't follow the third-person rule. It has a first-person narrator; however, the narrator isn't the subject of the song. This accomplishes two things:

True story.

(1) it creates immediacy with the use of the "I" voice, which is why many writers use first-person voice
(2) it generates mystery since the "I" voice isn't the subject of the song.

Our narrator probably knows Pancho and Lefty, and might have witnessed the events in the song. But we don't know. (Mystery? Check.) Our narrator says, "Livin' on the road, my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean." Who is the "friend"? Is it the generic use of "friend" that he's using to tell a campfire story? Or is he singing to an actual friend, maybe Lefty himself, after the events of the song? The narrator holds himself back from us, not making this clear. (Remote? Check.)

2. The right similes can set a tone without a single adjective.

In the first verse, we get two similes in a one-two punch: "Now you wear your skin like iron / Your breath as hard as kerosene."

Think about that. What does it mean to wear skin like iron? It means you think you're invincible. You think you can take a licking and keep on ticking. Or it means you've hardened yourself to the outside world so it can't reach you, no matter how hard it tries. (Unless you rust...that would suck.)  Each of these meanings make the simile richer. And here's the kicker: who is the singer talking to? Who wears his skin like iron? A man listening to the story? Lefty? Is he talking about himself in some weird reflective way? We don't know. But we do know this song is going to be about a mysterious bad-ass. This simile sets a mood, which is what all good storytellers must do.

And what the hell does it mean to have breath as hard as kerosene? Kerosene's a liquid. Liquid, by definition, isn't hard. Or is he referring to its scent, its noxious fumes? Those things are gases, which also by definition, are not hard. We're taking a trip through the three stages of matter here, just working on an interpretation of a single simile. Using "hard" to describe something that isn't hard works well here, especially following on the heels of the "skin like iron" simile. Skin is not like iron, and breath is not hard. But isn't that so much more effective than saying, "This is a song about some hardened criminals?"

3. Using action as a form of characterization works really well.

Also a true story.

It's pretty boring when someone says, "John was a good man" or "John was a bad man." What does "good" or "bad" mean? These aren't absolutes, especially in fiction. It's far more effective to say, "John rescued the cat in the tree because it belonged to the little girl down the block" or "John skinned the neighbor's cat in retribution for the loud party three nights back." This lets the reader place John appropriately on the scale of goodness and badness.

That's what our narrator is doing in this song. Pancho "wore his gun outside his pants / For all the honest world to feel."  I think "feel" should be "fear" here, but that's just me. In any case, the narrator isn't saying, "Pancho was really good at shooting people" or "Pancho had a death wish." No. He's telling us something about Pancho that's revealed through his action. What does it mean to wear a gun outside one's pants? Several things: Pancho means business. Pancho isn't afraid of conflict. Pancho is confident in his abilities. Pancho wants you to stay the fuck out of his way. So simple, yet so effective.

Lefty gets the same kind of characterization in the beginning of the next verse. "Lefty he can't sing the blues / all night long like he used to / The dust that Pancho bit down south / ended up in Lefty's mouth."

That's a powerful way of saying, "Lefty feels like shit for the role he played in Pancho's death." Instead of using the most obvious word on the planet ("guilt"), the narrator ties Lefty to Pancho's death using setting and figurative language. Lefty doesn't have a literal mouthful of dirt. But he's carrying a crap-ton of baggage that has to do with Pancho's death, so much baggage that he can't even sing anymore. We're left to wonder...is that how Lefty earns a living? Is he so broken up over his buddy's death that can't earn a living? This image conveys emotion and suggests conflict in a few simple words. Damn.

4. Be specific with names and places.

There's a beautiful juxtaposition in this song between the vagueness of the story itself and the concrete setting. We don't know who the narrator is. We don't know if he's talking to Lefty or about him. We don't know for sure what went down between Pancho and Lefty (although we can guess). But we do know Pancho died in Mexico. And we know Lefty "split for Ohio." Later, we get more detail: Cleveland's cold. Even here, we have layers. No shit, Cleveland is cold. The average temperature in January is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. But is it also cold because Lefty lacks Pancho's companionship?

What I love here is the specificity of "Cleveland." Lefty didn't go "out west" or "down south." There's something so much more pathetic about him shacking up in Cleveland, a non-glamorous city that's stuck between the midwest and the east. With all apologies to Cleveland, perhaps the idea here is Lefty's in nowheresville. But rather than say it, the narrator uses a specific place that plants that idea in our heads.

5. Leave a little (or a lot) to the reader's imagination.

Probably not a true story.

One of the best parts of this song is its mystery. The narrator doesn't tell us exactly what happened. How did the Federales finally get Pancho? Why did Lefty split on the day he died, with a mysterious sum of money? Did Lefty sell Pancho out? Probably. Why did Lefty do it? We have no idea. A secret dream of making it big as a singer someday? The need to get out of a life of crime? Why didn't he have the balls to say, "Hey, Pancho, I'm gonna hang up the old gun belt now and start singing showtunes for tips. You're cool with that, right?" Is it really a commentary on friendship, on weakness of character, or misguided loyalty? Or all these things? Or none of them?

We don't know, and that's the way it should be. That's why this song needs a narrator who isn't Pancho or Lefty. That's why it's so much more powerful when we hear about Lefty's inability to sing anymore. That's why it's still moving at the end of the song, when not only Lefty but the Federales are old and gray. Everyone involved still remembers, still feels bad, still has some regrets. It's that important to them. And now it's that important to me, because I've just written 1,500 damn words about an old-ass country song.  

8 Signs You Are Not the Chuck Norris of Writing

As a writer, you're a target. You're putting yourself out into the world and asking both readers and ubiquitous Internet heroes to comment on your work.

Some of these folks are looking to take you down, to give you a bad review, to tell you you don't know what you're doing. They are the Kim Jong-uns of the Internet: puffy, whiny, self-important, and probably in need of a kick in the pants. As a writer, the last thing on earth you want to do is give these people ammunition. You want to be the Chuck Norris of writing, the one-man-army capable of telling a legion of disbelievers to go straight to hell: Vaya con Chee-Tos, mothertruckers.

One of the best ways to do this is to make sure your fundamentals--your phrasing and grammar--are correct. Many writers skip this step, preferring to rely on their storytelling ability to carry them through the process. But this would be like Chuck Norris skipping all the other color belts that lead up to a black belt. Did Chuck Norris skip out on the yellow belt or the purple belt? I think not. He mastered that shit because he's Chuck Norris.  You can do the same.

One more note, before we dive in: Chuck Norris would never use Microsoft's grammar check. He knows it's wrong half the time. He ignores it, and you should, too. Chuck Norris learned how to write by reading.  A lot. And more than just kung-fu how-to manuals. Chuck Norris reads classics, sci-fi, historicals, biographies, and oh yes, even a vampire book or two.  If you want to learn to write like Chuck Norris, you need to read out of your pay grade. 

In any case, Chuck and I offer this starter kit of 8 stupid mistakes never to make with your writing. Some of these are actual mistakes I've seen in books, many self-published. Go forth and conquer.   

1. You use turns of phrase without actually knowing what they mean. 

• "...the change knocked her world on its axis..."  This is not correct. An axis is an imaginary line around which an object (presumably a planet) rotates. When something incredible happens to your character, her world cannot be knocked ON its axis. It was there to begin with. Her world may, however, be knocked OFF its axis.  
• "...step foot in..."  This is everywhere. People say it, but it IS NOT RIGHT. The phrase is "set foot in." It might make sense at first because "step" is a logical word to combine with "foot." But the sense in which it is used is totally wrong. To "step" automatically implies you are using your foot, which makes the use of the word "foot" stupid and redundant. To "set" does not automatically imply you are performing this action with a foot; therefore, it is reasonable that you then specify "foot" after the verb.  
• "...she thought to herself..."  Unless your character is telepathic, there is no way she could "think" to anyone else.

2. You use adverbs when the verb you use already implies that adjective. 

• "...tripped clumsily."  Can you trip in a way that's not clumsy? Even if you can, is that what your character is doing?
• "...shouted loudly."  Is it even possible to shout quietly? If it is, "shouted" is the wrong damn verb.
• "...jumped quickly."  Let's see you jump slowly. I dare you to try. I dare Chuck Norris to try.

3.  You use adverbs too much in general. We all know adverbs are to be used sparingly. But occasionally, they creep in and that can be okay. But it's not okay when you're using an adverb because it's easier and faster than describing how a character does something. You're a writer. You're supposed to be describing how characters do things. That's your job. So do better at it. Here are some examples of lazy adverb use:

• "You murdered my nephew," he said angrily. Really? Because I always thought proclamations of murder were issued joyfully. Gosh, wouldn't it be nice if the punctuation could somehow reveal the character's emotion? If only someone had invented a single punctuation mark that conveys strong feeling.
• "Constantly stepping from foot to foot, Joe looked nervous." In this case, the adverb is unnecessary. Stepping from foot to foot already implies the motion is constant. 
• "Moving slowly through the graveyard..." If your verb requires an adverb for the reader to get the picture, you picked a shitty verb. 

4.  You misuse prepositions.  Oh God, the prepositions. They are under attack. I don't know how this happened. It's like waking up one day to find out that all the streets have been renamed and now you have no idea what people are saying when they're trying to give you directions on how to get to the grocery store. And you're like, "Man, all I wanted is some mac and cheese. Why are you making it so hard?" Don't make it hard on your reader. Prepositions are the street signs that tell your reader where your sentence is going. If you don't use the right street sign, your reader is lost.  And lost people get angry. Sometimes they get murdered by drifters. Do you want your readers to get murdered by drifters? Don't answer that. Like Blair Waldorf, I rely on plausible deniability.

• "...ponder on..."  You ponder something. You don't ponder on it. If you tell me you're pondering on a Corvette, I will imagine you perched upon a car, thinking about a subject you failed to specify.
• "She was ignorant to the fact that he was an ex-con."  She ain't the only one. You can be ignorant of a fact, but not ignorant to it. There's no easy way to learn this stuff. You just have to read good books and absorb these idioms.
• "...disappointed from..."  You can be disappointed by the fact that you died from dysentery, but you cannot be disappointed from the fact that you died by dysentery.
• "She glanced on her watch."  A glance is not a tangible thing, so it cannot actually be on the watch. She may, however, glance at her watch.
• "You can never go wrong on fruits and vegetables."  I BEG TO DIFFER. You can go very, very wrong. In order not to go so wrong, try going with them instead of on them.

5.  You use descriptive dialogue tags. You've probably seen Elmore Leonard's advice for writers, one point of which states that you should never use anything other than "said." 98% of the time, he's right. There is rarely a case when you need to use a dialogue tag. If you use one, you're following the same lazy pattern of writing indicated by adverb use. Your dialogue, in combination with the motion of the character in the scene, should tell the reader how that line is spoken. If you have to specify with a dialogue tag, you haven't effectively conveyed the feeling of the scene, the emotion of the character, or his or her mindset. 

• "Eww! I hate spiders!" she shrieked. The problem with dialogue tags is that they are often unnecessary. The exclamation points tell you this character has strong feelings about spiders. She is probably angry or afraid, and you as the writer should provide the context to tell us which it is. Using both exclamation points and a tag such as cried/shrieked/wailed/exclaimed is overkill.
• "And the best part is...I never pressed play!" he cackled.  I call C+C Music Factory on this one. A cackle is a laugh, right? Can you actually speak all these words while cackling? Or is the laugh coming between the words? Or did the cackle come after, in which case the words themselves were not "cackled"? Or is the laugh really even a cackle to begin with? Do you see what kind of problems a poorly thought out dialogue tag can get you into? 

6.  You get subject-object agreement wrong. This is a tricky one, but once you know what to look for, you'll see it everywhere. Remember, no one's asking you to speak properly. You don't have to obey this rule when you're talking to your mom or your wife, but you do have to obey it on the page. Because if you don't, someone who does know the rule is going to put down your book and think, "Amateur." And by someone, I mean Chuck Norris.

• "Americans who love The Fast and the Furious live their life a quarter mile at a time." What's wrong here? The subject of the sentence is "Americans." You're making a statement about a large group of people. But you used the word "life," which is not plural. Do all Americans live one life?  Apparently not, since "One Life to Live" was canceled. See? Even ABC figured this shit out. Now it's your turn. You want to say that Americans live their lives a quarter mile at a time. Now you're cooking with gas.
• "One cannot have their cake and eat it, too." You would think that a word like "one" is enough to tell you that it means "one."  As in singular. As in not plural. So who are all these other folks you've invited into your sentence by using "their"? Is your "one" a schizophrenic? Are you a schizophrenic? If not, shape this shit up by keeping this a party of one: One cannot have one's cake and eat it, too.  

7. You use semicolons. Badly. You do not know how to use them, yet they appear throughout your book. Why is this? Do you randomly sprinkle mathematical formulas throughout your book just because they look intellectual and important? That's what lots of people do with semicolons. They look fancy, and probably imply that your sentence is multi-layered and complicated....right? No. Just...no.  If you can't tell me the rule for semicolons, right now, don't use them. Ever. Until you learn the rule, which is this:

• One rule to rule all the rules: Semicolons are used to separate TWO COMPLETE THOUGHTS. If either part cannot stand on its own as a grammatically correct entity, DO NOT USE A SEMICOLON. Chuck Norris will hurt you if you do this. If there's one thing Chuck Norris hates, it's bad semicolon usage. Don't believe me? Try it, and then go to sleep. See if you wake up.
• "One time at band camp; I did things my mom wouldn't approve of." A semicolon is not a comma. These two thoughts are clearly connected, but they cannot stand on their own.  "One time at band camp" is not a sentence...it is the beginning of a sentence.  And yes, I know that sentence ended with a preposition. Some rules were meant to be broken. Deal with it.
• "Rochelle had more to do that Saturday night; more than get wasted." Again, the second half of this sentence is placed for emphasis--it is not a sentence in and of itself. Only the cheese stands alone. Sentence fragments are not cheese.

8.  You confuse the most basic contractions you learned in first flippin' grade. I'm serious. Now you've got Chuck Norris *and* your first grade teacher really pissed at you. Is that what you want? He'll hold you down and punch you while your first grade teacher spits in your face. Or just drags her nails along the chalkboard. That's no one's good time. So do the world a favor and just learn what six-year-olds in good schools already have.

• For the last time: the apostrophe means it's a contraction. Contraction means two words are smashed together tighter than Kim Kardashian's boobs in a bustier. Some of the letters got kicked out because they couldn't breathe. The apostrophe tells us those letters are missing and someone might want to find them someday. Or not. It's up to you. 
• You're/your.  You're going to get your ass kicked by Chuck Norris for fucking this up. If you cannot replace the word with "you are," you should use "your."
• It's/its. It's a damn shame the snake left its home and decided to sleep in your bed instead. If you cannot replace the word with "it is," you should use "its."
• Their/they're/there. They're late for their own funeral because Chuck Norris got there first. 

If you're seeing some of your own mistakes listed here, now you have the power to fix them. This is progress! If you're not seeing any of these mistakes in your writing, look harder. Look even harder still. And then, if you still don't see these mistakes, congratulations on possibly being the Chuck Norris of writing. I salute you.

Mark Wahlberg Has Ted, but I Have Mr. Tudball

Me and Mr. Tudball today

Okay, so I saw the movie Ted today...and in honor of teddy bears everywhere, I decided to write a few words about mine.  (I promise this relates to writing.)

As you can see, Mr. Tudball is a little bit worse for wear.  I've had this bear as long as I can remember, which makes him nearly 35 years old.  I'm pretty sure I wasn't even the one to name him--how would a baby have come up with the name of the boss on the Carol Burnett show?  I don't even remember watching the Carol Burnett show.

What I do remember is taking him absolutely everywhere.  One time, my mom wanted to go to Kmart, and I wouldn't leave Mr. Tudball in the car.  I took him into the store, which resulted in us having to go all the way to the customer service counter in the back of the store so someone could wrap poor Mr. Tudball in this ugly yellow tape so the employees would know I hadn't stolen him.  I'm eternally grateful to my mom, who stood patiently and waited while all of this went on.  

As the years went by, Mr. Tudball sat in my room more than he accompanied me.  But he always held a place of honor among the other stuffed animals I acquired.  As you can see by his photo, at some point, I tried to use my Tinkerbell peel-off nail polish on him, as well as some crappy Tinkerbell lipstick.  (Do you guys remember Tinkerbell cosmetics?)  I sort of wish I hadn't done that, but then again, he's still alive to tell the tale, so no great harm was done.

1980:  Yep, me and Tudball were inseparable

Now, this adorable guy sits in my writing room and watches me while I work.  He sits very calmly, with one movable arm outstretched, and watches me write terrible sentences.  He watches me write awesome sentences.  He watches me delete and re-read and delete again.  He watches me get frustrated and cry and wonder why on earth I'm doing this.  Some days, he watches me slam the laptop shut in disgust at my inability to write something that an agent might actually want to read.  But no matter how my day goes, he's always there, waving at me.  It's weird, but it definitely makes me feel better about things.  No matter how badly I mess up, Mr. Tudball believes in me.

Circa 1981

In fact, one could make the argument that Mr. Tudball does the most important job of all--he reminds me that it doesn't matter how many agents reject my work.  He reminds that I'm writing for him.  My original audience.  Which is to say, people who like the same things I do.  If, some days, it seems like there aren't that many of us out there, it doesn't matter.  At the end of the day, Mr. Tudball still wants me to write something for him.  And I still want to write something for Mr. Tudball.


Some people might think it's a bit ridiculous for a 35-year-old person to use a teddy bear as a motivational tool.  (My husband springs to mind here.)  But anyone who's ever tried writing and then submitted that writing to an agent or a journal knows that some days, you'll take inspiration wherever you can find it.  Some days, I feel like Mr. Tudball is all I have...and all I'll ever have.  But other days, he has a few fellow fans in his corner who gather together to cheer me on.  On the days that are awesome and the days that are not, he's always there, in my writing room, wondering what I'll come up with next.

1982:  Still inseparable

Cheers to you, Mr. Tudball.

Britney Spears vs. Charlie Sheen

Okay, that's a really weird title...and a strangely disturbing visual, I know.  But this does relate to writing, I promise.

While I was running in the hundred-degree heat yesterday, my fried brain came up with a weird way of viewing the infamous blank page.  I'm about to start a big new project, so the blank page has been on my mind for the past week, in that oh-crap-I-say-I'm-a-writer-but-now-I-have-to-prove-it kind of way.  I view the blank page as my antagonist, something that's going to kick the crap out of me unless I kick the crap out of it first.  Not a very helpful mindset, right?  Who wants to be at war all the time?  Isn't writing supposed to be fun?  Isn't that why we do this in the first place?

So then I remembered a little Britney Spears gem from the album she made before she married K. Fed and went nuts.  "Me Against the Music" is your typical cheesy dance pop song, but it's the concept I find interesting here:

I'm up against the speaker, tryin' to take on the music
It's like a competition, me against the beat
I wanna get in the zone, I wanna get in the zone

It's as if the song, the music, and the beat are her blank page.  She's trying to kick their ass, but in a way that makes the result greater than the sum of its parts.  By sticking with the beat and not caring who's watching, she finds a place where she can be free.  But she has to frame it in an antagonistic way, like it's a boxing match:  Me vs. the Music,  me in the red corner and music in the blue corner.  That's the way I feel about this new project.  If I can stick with it, twist and bump and grind on the page, not caring who might eventually read it, maybe I can get "in the zone" and feel that free and happy abandon all writers chase.

But Britney's not done.  The song goes on:

So how would you like a friendly competition? Let's take on the song.
It's you and me baby, we're the music, time to party all night long.
We're almost there, I'm feelin' it bad and I can't explain
My soul is bare, my hips are moving at a rapid pace
Baby, feel it burn...from the tips of my toes, runnin' through my veins

Okay, Shakespeare it's not.  But the idea, the feeling, are exactly the same as that writer's high we know and love.  Writing is a "friendly competition" with yourself, with your muse, with the idea that made you turn on the computer in the first place.  So take it on.  Feel it bad and never explain.  Bare your soul on the page and let your body (fingers, people, we're typing here) say what your muse has trouble explaining.  Does it burn?  Sometimes.  Oh, yes, sometimes it burns.  But that's the whole point.  That's how you know you're on fire.

So in the contest of Britney vs. the music, what does "winning" mean?  It means staying with the music, creating a fusion of body and beat.  Something artistic, something of the moment, something greater than the sum of its parts.  Immediately, I compared that  to "winning" in the Charlie Sheen sense: making money, making other people pay for the bad things they did to you (real or imagined), making sure your name always gets top billing.  Is that really "winning"?  Not for a writer.  For a writer, Britney's "win" is the only kind that matters.  So while Hollywood may reward Charlie's antics with a crapload of cash and free press, the muse rewards a looser strategy, a more artistic one.

Just follow that beat.
Stay with it.
Don't let it drop.

Okay, now I have no more reasons to procrastinate starting my new project.  Unless I decide to reorganize my music collection...

The Results Are In...And I Won!

Wow, you guys...something really amazing happened.

I won first place in the 2011 RWA Kiss of Death Chapter's Daphne du Maurier awards for category romantic suspense (unpublished division)!

I wrote the book in January, in about three weeks.  It was basically a mad rush of creativity before school started up again.  I thought the book came out pretty well, but I'd never written romance before.  So I entered the contest to see where I was--you know, gauge myself against the field.  It was a long shot.  I'm not an RWA member, never attended any conferences, don't know anyone in the field, etc.  All I know is what I read and the kinds of things I like to see in a romance novel.  Apparently, it worked!

My book, The Cherbourg Jewels, won first place in its category and its division!  You can bet your britches I'll be writing thank-you notes to the judges!  (Yes, my mom raised me to write thank-you notes.  I hated it as a kid, but it really is a nice touch in this often classless and mannerless world....so thanks, Mom, for turning me into a useful and polite human being!)

I can only find one picture of myself hoisting a beverage...unfortunately, it's probably ten years old and I'm drinking what has to be spiked eggnog (hence the hat) at Christmas time.  In any case, cheers!

The Happiest Place on Earth

No, not Disneyland. I'm a broke grad student, too poor to get in Disneyland's door.

I'm talking about Tahoe.  Yesterday, we drove up to Emerald Bay and hiked the Rubicon Trail.  You know, the one that descends one hell of a steep mile to Vikingsholm, and then winds its way to to Emerald Point and then up to Calawee Cove.  We had a Camelbak and two saran-wrapped homemade burritos, which we ate at Calawee Cove, perched on an enormous rock formation above the blue-green water.

It was the most perfect lunch I've ever had.  

It made me remember how lucky I am to live here, in a place where going to Tahoe for lunch is do-able.  Sitting at the top of the world, on those granite rocks, feeling so close to the clouds and the sky...all the small problems of life fell away.  Agents, queries, rejections, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of bitterness melted away, if only temporarily.  So while I'm waiting for the sea of rejection that will surely follow the ocean of projects and queries I sent out this spring, I'll always have the memory of that one perfect moment where none of it mattered.  Where I felt small.  Where I knew that the mountains and the water and the man beside me didn't care at all how many times I get rejected.  They will all think of me in the same way.  And that helps me to think of me in the same way.

So, in terms of writing advice, this post boils down to a single idea: get out there.  Don't stay wrapped up in the fog of words and writing all day, every day.  You have to remember what wet wood smells like, what rushing water sounds like, the way lizards come out into the sunshine and do push-ups if they think you're not watching them.

Writing is beautiful and fulfilling, if not always rewarding.  But it can't sustain your soul, not on its own.  You have to see what's out there.  You have to feel small.  You have to realize that the rocks and sea and air have been here for millions of years before you and will continue to be there for millions of years after you.  What's a rejection (or even 60 rejections) in the face of that?

Always write what you want.  Always do what you want.  And always remember, you are small...in the best possible way.

(I didn't take this picture yesterday...it's actually from years ago, but it still gives you a good idea what the place looks like.)