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Art or Smut?

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The fire near Los Alamos (the Las Conchas fire, officially) is confined enough now to look like a giant train, steaming ahead on the horizon. I hope it gets where it’s going soon.

Last week, I received the quarterly newsletter from the Ucross Foundation. This is a really wonderful group that supports artists of many varieties. They sponsor a residency program where you can go stay for two to six weeks and, well, create full-time. I particularly like the Ucross take on this because the 8-10 residents at any given time can be writers, composers, photographers, painters, sculptors, etc.

Getting a residency is competitive and you have to pass several stages of admission. Once there, they give you a room to sleep in and a study. I had this amazing study that was like a library, with a little deck off of it. We were on our own for breakfast, which we pulled from this amazingly well-stocked kitchen. At night, we all convened for dinner and always fascinating conversation. For lunch, they would creep up outside your study door and leave a sack lunch. I never heard anyone come or go. It was like we were curing cancer.

This was an incredible experience for me and something I highly recommend to any writer.

This was the first time for me that my identity, and sole purpose for two whole weeks, was entirely about writing. It was a huge transformation for me and will always be an experience and memory I treasure.

They follow their former residents and include news of their careers in the newsletter. The five writers who had stories in Best American Short Stories, the gallery showings, the concerts. All pretty fabulous activities.

I wasn’t in there.

And I’m not saying this as a Poor Me thing. The reason my news isn’t in there is because I haven’t sent it to them. So this got me thinking.

Why haven’t I told them about Petals and Thorns, or the upcoming Feeding the Vampire and Sapphire? I don’t think I’m ashamed. However, clearly I’m not proud.

Or I would have told them. Right?

I know some of this comes down to the eternal battle between literachur and genre. I noticed that a couple writers I know reported fairly minor journalistic publications for listing. I probably would do that, too, before I’d send out notices about my very naughty novellas.

It surprised me that I think this way and I haven’t decided what to do about it. I did a little Twitter poll on the topic and most people said to own it, be proud and send in my info. One gal told me she wouldn’t do it either, but then, she was still “festering” about the people in grad school. Something I totally get.

So, I haven’t decided. Am I eternally seeking approval from the academics? Do I trumpet my work, which is selling far better than anything else I’ve ever written, and spread the good word about careers in digital-first publishing?

What would Anais Nin do?

Thunder Moon

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I had to catch the full Thunder Moon at dawn this morning, since last night, appropriately enough, thunderclouds obscured the moonrise.

Love those thunderclouds. Rain all you like!

Yesterday, Angela James, Executive Editor of Carina Press and savvy social media maven, tweeted this:

Angela James
Me to agent: “I’m going to pass on this author. She’s had occasion to be very rude to me & others in the past.” : Be professional

14 Jul via TweetDeck


This is noteworthy because we’ve all suspected it’s possible for this to happen. The publishing community is quite small, often insular, occasionally incestuous (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Whether at conferences or online, we are in each other’s laps much of the time. There are no secrets. When questioned, Angela followed up with:

Angela James

To clarify previous , I’ve never met author, but she’s been VERY rude to me re: past rejection letters. & to readers online as well.

23 hours ago
and

Angela James
I didn’t look at her writing this time.I’m not interested in working w/someone who has no respect for anyone else, readers or editors

23 hours ago
and

Angela James
if I know up front that’s how she acts, and she’s already destroyed her online rep, her writing is irrelevant if she won’t sell

23 hours ago
and

Angela James
also, my stress level is high enough. I don’t need to purposely add something to work situation that would make it worse

23 hours ago

This is pretty much what I would have predicted. Angela is at the helm of a digital-first imprint of a major publisher. She knows that online interactions play a huge role in this world. The days – if they ever really existed – of a writer getting to play the diva and curse anyone who crosses them are well and truly over.

It reminds me of the small town thing.

When I moved to Wyoming for grad school, I went from living in Denver and St. Louis, to a town of 26,000 people. Functionally the population is half that if you only count the year-round population. Now, I was an *ahem* aggressive driver. Not rage-driver, but definitely big-city driver. Other cars were never about people to me – they were simply “traffic.” Nothing personal.

Imagine my surprise when people called me out for it.

“Hey, you cut me off this morning!”

“Geez, how fast were you going down Grand yesterday afternoon??”

“You tailgated me all the way to Safeway – what’s up with that?”

Oops.

Once I got over the fact that these people actually looked in my car and recognized me, I discovered I was now accountable for my driving behavior in a way I’d never been before. No longer anonymous, I had become part of a small community, for better or worse. I had to change my behavior.

I suppose you could argue this impinged on my freedom to be obnoxious. Small towns can be oppressive because they do limit freedom of thought and action. The social mores can be restrictive. But, there’s always the option to leave that community. If the reasons to stay are compelling enough, you’d better learn how to get along with your neighbors.

And if you want them to hire you or elect you to city council? Find a way to be congenial.

It can’t be said often enough: watch what you say in public. Imagine that everything will be heard and remembered, and absolutely held against you in the court of public opinion. People will forgive you the odd slip, but a pattern of continued bad behavior? No no no. My writing buddies and I have the Cone of Silence. All snarkiness must occur inside the Cone.

Make sure it’s really on, too.

What was most amazing to me about yesterday’s exchange was an author replied to Angela saying:

Oh, shit, I said I was *sorry* I called you “picky.”

and

I’m crying now. You’re such a b*#$ch.

I didn’t include her tweet info here, because I think she’s an idiot for posting those and I’ll save her this extra bit of self-induced humiliation. The tweets are still up, though, for anyone who cares to see… and to track that her data matches up to Angela’s author-in-question.

Perhaps it all comes down to learning to take criticism. Live and learn.

When you do get called out for something, like I did? It’s an opportunity for course-correction. Apologize and fix the problem. People will forgive. They’ll eventually forget.

But not if you keep behaving badly.

Hummingbird Delight

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Last night one of my old high school friends came over. Her husband is in town for a conference, so they and their three kids came out to see the house. Then they dropped off the kids to make spaghetti and the four of us went out to dinner at Pink Adobe.

We probably didn’t need to order that second bottle of wine.

But it was fun to show off the house. The evening turned out to be just lovely, so we were able to sit on the patio and enjoy the view. It’s good to have new people come visit, to remind us of just what a lovely spot this is.

So, today, in honor of too much wine last night and by way of counting blessings, I’m sharing this hummingbird video.

They never cease to delight me.

Hummingbird Delight

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Last night one of my old high school friends came over. Her husband is in town for a conference, so they and their three kids came out to see the house. Then they dropped off the kids to make spaghetti and the four of us went out to dinner at Pink Adobe.

We probably didn’t need to order that second bottle of wine.

But it was fun to show off the house. The evening turned out to be just lovely, so we were able to sit on the patio and enjoy the view. It’s good to have new people come visit, to remind us of just what a lovely spot this is.

So, today, in honor of too much wine last night and by way of counting blessings, I’m sharing this hummingbird video.

They never cease to delight me.

Shaken Baby Syndrome

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Here in Santa Fe, our clouds have a golden lining.

Snazzy, eh?

So, when I was in Memphis a few weeks ago, talking to the River City Romance Writers (many thanks to LaTessa Montgomery for inviting me!), we had a long and winding conversation. I asked them what they wanted to hear about from me: career path, digital first publishing, writing erotic, writing short, writer’s life? They said, yes.

We ended up talking about all of those things, which made for an interesting conversation.

The thing about being a professional writer, and by that I mean, wanting to make money from your work, is that most discussions about it naturally include both aspects of creativity and considerations about the market. Neither aspect can be escaped. Stories must come from our creative selves. I know there are some authors who say they care nothing about art and treat writing entirely as a business. I suspect they simply view their creativity in a different way. And, no matter how much other writers cling to the purity of art over commercialism, we’d all like to be paid well for our stories. The demands of the market cannot be ignored.

However, I’m a believer in making sure these things occur in the correct order: creativity first, then market. If you put these two things too close together, guess what results? Yes. Shaken baby syndrome.

See, our new stories, or even story ideas, are like infants. They have soft spots in their skulls. Their plot backbones can’t hold up their heads. They can’t stand alone, much less feed or defend themselves. When we have a new story, we must cuddle it close and nourish it. Lots of quiet. Some silliness and fun. Maybe long walks and wordless humming. It’s a special, intimate time.

When your story is new, you can maybe show it to a few special people. The ones you know will coo and tell you how beautiful your baby is. They might cuddle it too and speculate on what a fabulous future your baby might have. Choose these people carefully.

Because there are other people who won’t be so careful. There’s the selfish love-interest who’d just as soon kick your baby into a closet, all the better to have your attention. There’s the careless teenager who criticizes your baby. Worst of all are the industry professionals.

It’s their job – and they’re good at it – to take your baby and shake it. To shake it hard and see if it’s neck snaps. Then they’ll hand it back to you with a sorrowful look and suggest that it might be brain-damaged. They’ll tell you your baby can’t hack it in the market.

Of course it can’t – it’s just a little baby. And now they’ve damaged it. Perhaps fatally.

Now if you grow your baby up, feed it the best nourishment, work with it to make it strong and smart then, when it walks into your agent or editor’s office, it can take a bit of slapping. And likely give back what it gets. Then they give you the happy smile and say, yes! Now this kid has got what it takes. Let’s send her out on the town! She’ll take the city by a storm!

I know this can be difficult, especially when you have an agent. After all, an agent’s job is to look over your babies and tell you which ones might make it and which she thinks you should just smother in their cribs. This happened to a friend of mine. She took her new novel idea – that she was tremendously excited about – to her agent and the agent said, Meh. She said there were too many other kids out there like it. Don’t feed it, she said. Let it die.

My friend isn’t working on it. But I know she still has that baby tucked into a back room and she’s feeding it on the sly. She can’t let it die. She loves it.

I’m totally behind that. I think she should grow this kid up, like the princess hidden away in the deep, dark forest. Then, when she’s sixteen and more beautiful than anyone else in the kingdom, she can trot her daughter out and say, see? Look at *this* kid! She could be Queen of the realm.

So, my point is, baby your new stories. Realize how fragile, how vulnerable they are. It might take a lot of time for them to be strong enough to take the vicious blows of the marketing end. Don’t expose them to that. Protect them. Be good to them. Love them.

Then bring out the tough love and put them through the wringer before they face the world.

Your stories will go on to lead brilliant lives. I just know it.

And Then It Rained

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Rain comes to the Galisteo Basin.

I know a lot of you out there have had WAY TOO MUCH rain, but we so have not. In fact, the first six months of 2011 made for the driest year on record for New Mexico. And for a place that’s already a desert, that’s saying something.

This has been a dry like I’ve never known. Now I know where all the buried soaker hoses run, because only the plants right next to them stayed green. Our skin has itched like crazy with the dry, which no amount of lotion seems to affect.

Then there are the fires. Blazing on the horizon, filling the sky with smoke. Filling our lungs with particulates from Los Alamos that are nevertheless, we are assured, perfectly safe. It’s difficult not to feel the press of the Apocalypse under these conditions.

But, ah, the rain.

This storm filled our rain barrels and soaked the ground. We’ve been hitting 95 every day and having to run the AC through the afternoon, but the rain dropped the temperature to 58. I put on a sweater because the windows had to stay open, to let that sweet, clean, moist air fill the house.

This morning we walked out of the house and David said he smelled smoke, still. I said no, you’re smelling petrichor.

He said, “what the hell is petrichor?”

I scoffed at him. “It’s the smell of rain on dry earth, duh.” (This is only one of the delightful features of living with a writer.)

But it’s a real thing and once you know what that smell is, you’ll always remember how it feels when the rain returns.

Take Back Those Metaphors!

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We went back to Wyoming for the first time in nearly two years, to go camping with David’s family. The landscape felt immediately familiar. Not like going home again, but like recognizing a part of your own body. I suppose Wyoming will always be a large part of me.

I hadn’t realized that before.

A lot of the things we do day-to-day are reflexive. We don’t really think about the influences that shaped us, the expressions we use.

A little while back, I was on a conference call with my boss. She lives in New Hampshire, but grew up in the South. The call was set up by a guy in the company who usually moves in different circles than we do. He brought us together with another company, which planned to bid on a project and needed the expertise my boss and I have. So, most of us don’t know each other – and Laurie and I are the only two women on the call.

He starts off saying, “Why don’t you lead off, [Dan], since this is your wheelhouse.”

She and I are on IM together. So I type to her “Did he say wheelhouse? Is that a boating metaphor?”

She says, “Isn’t it trains?”

I say, “No, no – that’s roundhouse.”

From there they talked about us being in a huddle, running the ball down the field, shooting from outside and loading up the bases. I kept playing “try to guess the sports metaphor.” It took some effort, because I am just so not a sports kind of gal.

The guys didn’t mean to be exclusionary, of course. If we’d pointed it out to them, they’d have been abashed and apologetic. We’ve told this story a few times and a number of men have said that half the time they don’t know what the sports metaphor means either.

But my boss and I have decided to Take Back the Metaphors. It’s time that those of us who did not grow up playing team sports introduce our own views of success. Some possibilities.

“Let’s run that one down the catwalk and see who snaps a picture.”

“With shorter hemline and some creative accessorizing, this could be a whole new project.”

“All we’re doing is slapping a fresh coat of cosmetics over the wrinkles – we need a full facelift here.”

And, offered by my niece while camping in Wyoming:

“That lipstick will never last 12 hours.”

So, please, join our movement. Use the metier of your choice and Take Back that Metaphor!

With a Little Help from My Friends

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The first morning at the RWA conference saw us playing. There’s not much going on that first day, until you get to the Literacy Signing that night. (There’s a great video of the madness that is the Literacy Signing here, if you care to see.)

So, with no need to attend the business meetings, we took off on a long walk with my roommates. The lovely Tawna Fenske already did a blog post (she’s so efficient) about me and Marcella as bunk mates. The thing is, we had a great time together. I wanted to see Rockefeller Center, Tawna wanted to see Central Park.

Of course we did the carriage ride.

Our driver had a lovely Irish accent, too. Amusingly his patter consisted of him pointing out sites where movies had been filmed. Most of which we’d never seen. I finally asked him if he’s a movie buff and he admitted that, no, it was just part of the job. He seemed surprised to be carting around a carriage-full of romance writers, particularly when I told him what I write.

More and more, conference for me is about spending time with friends like this. People I usually only “see” online. Laura Bickle is one of those. She arrived later that day, with just enough time to tie a little wine on before I had to work the registration desk before the signing.
Turns out that’s a great time to work the desk, because a lot of the big authors arrive right before the signing. The best part? They’re all registered under their REAL names.

So when Eloisa James stepped up and I couldn’t find her packet, I had to ask her if she has another, legal name. At this point, they look abashed and glance around to see who’s nearby. She leaned over the desk and said, “…” See, I swore not to tell. But I learned at least five secret identities. And yes, it’s totally enough just to know that I know the secrets.

The other funny thing was that the big speakers, like Diana Gabaldon, were done the great favor of having their registration stuff put in their rooms. Only a lot of them hadn’t BEEN to their rooms yet. Ironically, they couldn’t enter the signing without a name badge. When I told Diana her stuff was in her room, she gave me the terrified puppy-dog eyes. This was half-an-hour before the signing. She was afraid that, if I sent her to check-in and go to her room, she’d never make it through all the people in the lobby.

I ranted once before about how writers will never be rock stars. But Diana Gabaldon at a huge gathering of romance writers and readers? Totally a recognizable rock star.

We printed her up a special name badge. She was charming and grateful.

As I do every year, I also attended the Secrets of the Best-Selling Sisterhood seminar with Jayne Ann Krentz and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. This time I asked how they’ve maintained their friendship over all these years – if they have strategies. They seemed taken aback by the question and I wondered if maybe it wasn’t always easy. Finally they said that they don’t live near enough to irritate each other.
See? Just another reason to value those online friendships.

But it was really lovely to spend some in-the-flesh time with them, too.