Tag: writers life

Like a Bolt from the Blue

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The great thing about a lightning storm is you don’t have to be all that lucky to see it.

Contrary to the common wisdom about lightning, it strikes lots of times, over and over. I set my camera up on a tripod on our patio last night and just kept pressing the button until I caught the lightning. It didn’t take long. A little persistence. A lot of faith. And being willing to enjoy the night and watch the show while you wait for the perfect opportunity.

A lot like writing, yes.

Allison asked me if I was going to get my “First Sale” ribbon for my nametag at National. She was surprised that I said no. Technically, I could have, for Petals & Thorns, my Loose Id novella. Because, oddly enough, my erotic take on Beauty and the Beast qualifies as a first sale in the genre to RWA. If I make enough money on it, which it looks from early sales like I might, I can qualify to be part of the Published Author Network, or PAN. I’ll probably take that.

But first sale? No way.

I remember my first sale and what it meant to me. I sold an essay, Bullets, to Wyoming Magazine in 1997. They paid me and everything. Then I had a few pieces in literary magazines that didn’t pay, but made me feel snazzy. Redbook published one essay in 2000, which paid really well and made me feel snazzy. Everyone said I’d “arrived” at that point, which really wasn’t the case at all, but was nice to hear.

I remember when the acquisitions editor at University of New Mexico Press asked if she was in time to publish my first book. And when she told me the review board approved the essay collection she helped me put together. My launch party in January of 2004 for Wyoming Trucks was one of the best nights of my life. I was all about the first sale jubilation.

So, you can see why I didn’t care to get the ribbon. Or the notice in RWR (the RWA magazine).

I came to terms with this long ago (though I know I bring it up now and again), that RWA only considers an author published if the work is in a romance genre. It’s their prerogative and in line with the organization’s mission. What I do mind, though, is that somewhere along the way, I allowed this to make me feel like a newbie again. I feel like the kid sister tagging along with the “real” authors.

My friend, Tawna Fenske, says that one of her most popular blog posts ever is “You ARE a Real Author, Dammit.” In it, she talks about how people treated her differently after she had a book contract. She was suddenly validated in their eyes. Tawna makes the excellent point that it’s up to us to validate ourselves.

To sit quietly in the dark and wait for that bolt from the blue.

Recuperation

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To celebrate convention recap wrap-up and the return to normal life, I’m using a Jeffe-at-home photo today. We’ve been getting tons of rain, so the desert is very green right now.

It’s good to be home.

As I tag today’s post with “writers life,” it occurs to me that I should have been tagging all of the convention posts as that. No, it’s not actual writing, but it’s a part of being a writer. In fact, I haven’t written (aside from blog posts) since I did my final read through revision of The Body Gift on July 18. I mentioned it before – I really depleted myself to finish that novel. That, on top of a tough day-job project with many deadlines and requiring lots of thinking (*gasp*), plus David’s birthday, traveling to Denver for my high-school reunion, then turning around to go to RWA National Convention and all that entails…well, I got sick.

Big surprise there.

I came home Sunday tired and with this hoarse throat and a cough I was afraid might be settling into my lungs. David hit me with herbs and mucus-dissolving foods, which is good because I’m not developing bronchitis or pneumonia now. I do, however, have a full-blown sinus dealie. I even took two full sick days from the day-job. I don’t remember the last time I did that. Not to mention the 3-hour afternoon naps each day, after sleeping 10 hours at night.

Guess I did a number on myself.

So, while I was planning to get back on the writing schedule Monday morning, I took sick leave from that, too. Which is okay. I clearly need it.

David mentioned that Sir Richard Burton took two years to recover from cholera. This was part of the same conversation where David was telling me that a teacher at his acupuncture college, who’s been hospitalized twice this summer for pneumonia and is now on oxygen, won’t be teaching her class for the rest of the semester. Of course, her physician had advised her not to teach at all this semester, to give herself time to convalesce.

Much is said about our fast-paced culture, but I think this is one place we can really see what we do to ourselves. In some ways we can blame antibiotics and other interventionist medicines. They’re a blessing, but they also replace the long, slow convalescence. No months in the country with lazy days for us. Instead we pop some pills or take an injection and get back to work before we use up our 40 hours of sick leave for the year. Most of us will say we can’t possibly afford to take more time off than that.

But if we don’t, do our bodies ever truly recover?

The natural health people think that running ourselves in a state where we’re forever trying to recover health is what lays the foundation for chronic diseases, like Type II Diabetes, cancers, fibromyalgia, etc. Taking that into consideration changes the scale on what’s affordable, I suspect.

Not to be a downer.

Ugh.

At any rate! Thus I’m giving myself time to recover. I’m waiting on other people on The Body Gift right now anyway. I have a couple of leisurely day-job QA projects to work on. I might start writing a new erotica to follow up on Petals & Thorns, which has been getting nice reviews (here, here and here – you have to scroll down on that last one), and I’m told the readers want more. Most gratifying. It’s been called “high-brow p0rn” and “elegant erotica.” I think Anais Nin would be proud.

I might also have another afternoon nap…

Back In My Day…

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I read a fair number of blogs about writing, reading and the publishing industry.

No surprise there.

If you read a lot of these blogs, you’ll notice that there are certain themes people like to return to. One of the favorite ones is how unlikely you are to make money as a writer. I wanted to add the phrase “especially lately.” It’s true that the economic downturn has people focused on money and lack thereof, but I’ve been hearing this lecture since I started writing back in the late 90s.

Exhibit A: http://pimpmynovel.blogspot.com/2010/07/you-aint-in-it-for-money.html. I generally like this guy’s blog, but what he’s saying about keeping the day job is pretty standard. You might make some money, but not enough to live on, is the message. At the same time, the big news last week was that Janet Evanovitch, author of the wildly successful Stephanie Plum series, now up to 16 books, asked for $50 million for her next four books. Well, her agent, who is also her son, asked for it. Same thing? I was shocked by this number until an editor on Twitter told me Evanovitch got $40 million for the previous four.

Still, she says, that’s a raise of $2.5 million per book, which is asking a lot in this economy.

So, I’m going to leave alone the concept that someone who’s already received $40 million could then want another $50 million. This is a world I don’t live in. I understand this gets to be like movie stars, where prestige rests on the price tag. I just keep thinking that once I buy the beach house in the Caribbean, what would I do with the rest of the money?

But that’s neither here nor there.

I’m wondering where the middle is?

There must be something besides “you won’t make enough to live on” and “I need $12.5 million per book.” The zone gets fuzzy because everyone thinks they need a different amount of money to live on, but still…

For most writers, the goal is to make enough money to ditch the day job and write full time. This seems like a reasonable ambition. After all, nobody practices law on the side while working as a checker at the grocery store. Nobody tells you when you go into environmental consulting that you should really plan on just enjoying it as a hobby that supplements your real income.

I’m beginning to suspect this is a bit of a “stay away” gambit. Well-meaning, perhaps, but I think a lot of these writers are seeing their pool glutted. Especially the ones who aren’t making enough money to live on. I’ve never heard Nora Roberts or Janet Evanovitch give this cautionary tale. In fact, I once heard Anne Rice announce that she was getting something like $1 million for her next book (I know – Janet was giggling) and that if she could do it, anyone could.

The upshot is: I’m tired of this particular saw and I don’t intend to listen anymore.

Our finances are good. I pay attention to where my money comes from and where it goes. We have no appreciable debt beyond our mortgage, which is solid because we bought at the bottom of the market. I know what I need to live on and what’s gravy. I think that’s just being financially savvy. We should all know where we stand and what we need. From there it’s perfectly reasonable to set income goals from our writing.

It’s not magic; it’s just being smart.

Hope Is a Thing of Dorkiness

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We’re heading into good sunset season again.

Once again I’m reminded how lucky I am to be able to witness this from our front porch. Last night was a hot night, unusual for us. At about 10:30 I went and sat on the patio. Heat lightning flickered around the valley and the moon swam silver through black clouds. It felt lovely and peaceful.

I might be refilling the well for a while here. I feel considerably less depleted today, however.

I also managed to finish a big chunk of a project for the day job yesterday, so that made a huge difference.

And I sent The Body Gift off to the agent. No, not *my* agent, but my potential agent. The one I’d really like to work with. She’s responsive, positive, really good at what she does and she likes me. When she finally rejected Obsidian, she asked me to “please, please query again.” She’s the one who called The Body Gift a stellar idea (stellar/sterling – I got mixed up. forgive me). I’d emailed her last week to find out her reading schedule and see if there was a good time to read it. She wanted me to send it right away, so she can read it before National (eep).

So I sent it yesterday morning. With a little “Here it is!” And I sat there and stared at my screen, sifting through all the things I wanted to add. Wanting to pour all my hopefulness and excitement onto this little email, which adds or changes nothing. And she knows how I feel anyway. Every agent knows how writers feel when we send our manuscripts.

Finally I typed, “I know this is silly to say, but I really hope you love it.”

I know – I’m a dork.

But she replied later in the day, saying “Me too!”

Which is sweet of her. And it reminds me, should remind all of us of something that we forget. The agents really want to love our stuff. Every time they read our pages, they are also full of hope. Hope and anticipation that this will be something they can love and champion and hopefully sell for enough money that their 15% will buy more than a week’s worth of groceries.

We take turns waiting on each other. They wait while we write. We wait while they read. Each of us hoping the other will come through.

Hope feels like such a silly thing, where cynicism feels so wise and mature.

But hope is what keeps us going.

The Body Gift

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I worked on the novel all weekend.

And it was good.

All day Saturday we sat under the grape arbor. I wrote, David worked on a project for his herb class and Isabel hunted a packrat through the grape vines.

All day, she hunted this rat. At one point, it came crashing through the leaves, hit the ground and dashed over to the massive climbing hydrangea to hide. That was a dramatic moment though. For the most part, her project was as quiet as ours: lots of stalking. The occasional creeping over the vines and wires, pink jellybean toes wrapping for purchase.

She sat in the sun on the adobe wall for so long she had to retreat to our shade and lie there, panting.

And I’m nearly done. I think I have about 25 pages to go. It’s been slow-writing as I tie in each plot thread. Much like the beginning of the book, the ending has seemed to require that I immerse. I only wrote about 4,000 words over the weekend, but I was in it for hours all day Saturday and Sunday. When I started back in February, I did the same thing: low wordcount, lots of noodling.

I’m excited to see it come together like this, seeing moments from early in the story bear fruit.

I’ve decided on a working title: The Body Gift. The ending is confirming that choice, with all kinds of resonance. Of course, I don’t delude myself that the title will make it all the way through publication, but I’m happy with it for pitching and querying.

But now: to finish.

Oxygen Masks

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The cholla are both flowering and fruiting now – a brilliant combination of yellow and this purple-pink that can look scarlet from a distance.

Quite the show.

Last night Kerry and I were talking about how making progress on the writing can make or break your day. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it can be astonishing how much of a difference getting the writing in can make.

She had slunk home from a grueling day at work. Her job involves people in crisis, so it’s more emotionally demanding than, say, mine. She said she was in a mood of deepest blue, but had to try to work on her revisions anyway. I gave her the virtual pep talk and she disappeared for a while.

When she came back a bit later, having hit her page goal, her mood had entirely shifted. Everything suddenly looked better. She felt ready to go spend time with family who needed her emotional support.

“I use the analogy with my patients of the airplane, where you put on your own oxygen mask before assisting another,” she told me.

Sometimes I think this is mainly true of writers. I also saw this guest blog post by D.J. Morel yesterday. (This is a bit of a departure for the Pimp My Novel blog, which is usually about the marketing end of publishing and well worth following. Clearly I liked this guest post, too.) He talks about choosing the day job that allows you to write. This line struck me:

When I realized that I was screaming at the walls of my house for a half hour after coming home each night, I knew it was enough. I quit, and didn’t come to understand how unhappy it all had made me until many months down the road. If you are indeed a writer, you can run away from writing, but it’ll only come and find you.

But one of my favorite quotes for a very long time now is this one by Mark Rutherford:

There is in each of us an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground around it into a swamp.

(It turns out I quoted this before on the blog, but it was back in January ’09, so I hope you’ll forgive me the repeat.)

He very carefully does not ascribe this phenomenon only to writers, though he was a novelist. I suspect we all have this, the upwelling spring that keeps us alive, engaged and vital. The Buddhists say each of us has one thing that we do better than anyone else in existence and that life is a journey to discover what that is.

Unfortunately it’s all too easy not to cut a course for the upwelling spring. Daily life piles up, gradually blocking the way. Often we don’t notice until there’s a flood and we’re standing in a boggy mess as far as the eye can see.

What to do then?

Put on your oxygen mask and take a deep breath. The rest will sort itself out.

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I couldn’t decide today between earth and sky, so you get both. Shades of blue.


If I haven’t mentioned, writing fiction is really fun.

(Well, except when it’s miserable, but that’s a whole other set of issues.)

Really I mean that writing fiction is fun compared to nonfiction. I started out as an essayist because that kind of voice came naturally to me. And there’s satisfaction in telling those kinds of stories. True stories about life and people, the things we experience. Once this new novel is complete, I might spend a little time writing or revising some essays, just to get my hand in again.

Then again, I might not. Because writing fiction is really run.

It’s fun like reading is fun. You know that feeling you get, when you’re reading a book you love, and your mind is sunk in that story, that world, that voice? I get that writing fiction. When its going right, my mind returns to the story and the characters over and over through the day and I would absolutely stay up all night to finish reading it.

If only I’d finished writing it, that is.

It’s an odd sensation, because that aspect of writing feels more like self-love, like navel-gazing, than any other. Like I’m so in love with the sound of my own voice that I want to listen to it all the time. Perhaps this is why so many writers like to ascribe their inspiration to muses or other outside storytellers.

“It’s not me, I just write down the story as it comes to me.”

Loving Calliope or Erato feels more wholesome than loving the sound of one’s own voice. Besides, as we all know, that way leads to insanity for writers. Ego is the eternal danger.

Amusingly, the last time I used the “insanity” label on this blog, I accidentally typed my heroine’s name when I logged in that morning, instead of my password. Which is exactly what I did today.

At least I’m consistent in the way my thoughts run?

Just so long as it’s not a foolish consistency, which leads to hobgoblins and all manner of obnoxious creatures. I’m pretty sure hobgoblins are not the new zombies, which were the new angels, which were the new vampires.

I know, it’s hard to keep up.

And Also Patience, Play and Naps

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I spotted this blossoming prickly pear by accident.

I happened to look down from the bedroom window and the spot of butter yellow caught my eye. It was blooming away under a bushel, or rather, a sagebrush. It took a bit of clearing to get the photo. Now I feel like I need a special path around to the back of the house, so people can be sure to see it.

But, seen or not, appreciated or ignored, it blooms anyway.

A number of people commented on yesterday’s post. Tara Lain told a great story about koi and cats and suggested we add the word “patient.”

And, in the infinitely frustrating world of blog commenting, Kerry tried to comment, but was denied. She wanted to remind me that cats also know when to play silly games and when to take a nap.

That might seem self-evident, but it’s easy to forget.

So as we finish out our Fridays, it’s good to revisit what weekends are about. For many of us, the weekends are full of tasks. I know my To-Do List is long. I try to do laundry every-other weekend and clean the house on the intervening weekends. Last weekend, though, I was gone, so now I have three weeks of laundry to catch up on the same weekend as house-cleaning. We have guests coming next weekend, so there’s no fudging that part. The garden is crying for attention. I have some publicity stuff to do for Petals & Thorns, coming out July 13.

And about 35K to write on the novel.

No, no, no – I know I won’t do that. But it does hover pretty high on my mental To-Do list.

The things that don’t end up on the list? Games, naps, nonsense. Even if we don’t work corporate jobs, our families and friends often do. Weekends should be for play, too, not just catching up.

Or running in place.

Or bailing the sinking boat.

Wherever you might be with stuff.

Here’s hoping you get to do something silly, catnip optional, and that you indulge in a nice nap.

I’m adding them to my list.

Vigil

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This is Isabel outside my office window, watching the Bewick’s wren nest.

I originally thought it was a house wren, but the song and behavior has me now convinced that it’s a Bewick’s wren. Apparently they’re easily confused. And, sadly, the house wrens are driving out the Bewick’s wrens, so much so that they’re pretty much gone from the eastern half of the country.

The males go around building several nests in cavities, like inside the cow skull on our front porch, and the female chooses her favorite. Our male worked away to build the nest and sings his heart out. But I’m not convinced he has found a mate, much less that there’s anything going on in that nest.

Isabel, however, is certain there is.

She spends her days watching that nest. With unwavering intensity. She never tires of it. It’s the same method she employs to catch mice or lizards. They hide and she sits and waits. For hours. Until they finally come out and she catches them.

Part of the reason felines sleep so much is because they’re such efficient hunters that they can. Among all predators, cats spend the least amount of time actively hunting. Part of this though, is that persistence. They never forget or lose interest. Isabel’s been watching that nest for two weeks now without much reward. If there ever are chicks, I’ll have to keep her inside, because she won’t rest until she gets them.

Writers talk about persistence all the time. Persistence to finish the book in the first place, to see it through the tough spots, in the face of ongoing rejection, to write the next book even as everyone apparently hates the one you’re trying to shop. People throw around phrases like “thick skin” and “hanging on to your dream” and “never give up,” which all sounds so grueling.

I wonder if it shouldn’t be more like a cat hunting. Work on it every day, never lose interest, always check the nest. For Isabel, watching the nest is just as fun as finding something in it.

For her, it’s not grueling. It’s just what she does.

Simmering

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This weekend was hot.

Santa Fe broke the record high on Saturday by hitting 100. So, yeah, not so bad. And it’s a dry heat. Believe me – I lived in St. Louis for a while. Lack of humidity makes all the difference in the world.

We have nice cross-currents for air flow in our house and ceiling fans, so we never felt like we had to turn on the air conditioning. But we stayed pretty still. Even Isabel stayed inside. She’s gone from being the toddler-cat who has to be dragged in from playing, kicking and screaming, then immediately falling asleep, to teenager-cat. Friday night she spent the entire hot, still night in the garage hunting mice. Then on Saturday morning she slept in, got up to eat breakfast and went back to her kitty condo – the cat equivalent of partying all night and watching TV in the darkened den all day.

Then this storm rolled in, creating a dramatic sunset and dropping cooling rain. All of us parched people, animals and plants drank it gratefully.

I’m making steady progress on Sterling. Allison called me “quietly enthusiastic” about it. I said that’s because I’m trying not to be obnoxious. I never thought I’d be one to agree with the write-every-day thing. When I was first working at being a writer and attending every workshop I could, almost every singled writer gave that advice.

Write every day.

Write at the same time every day.

Some would shrug, apologize and say they knew it wasn’t easy, but that it was the only thing that worked for them.

I felt like that was impossible for me. At the time I was finishing my graduate thesis, working full time and taking and teaching martial arts classes most nights of the week. Even if I wrote every day, it couldn’t possibly be at the same time, because every day was different.

So I wrote when I could. Usually in sporadic chunks. I was writing essays then, so I could write an entire essay over the course of a few hours and that worked for me. My first publications came out of that time and my first book. We’d have to agree that worked just fine.

But other things still took precedence. Even gardening and quilting tended to edge out writing time. I would bemoan my lack of writing time, but there it was.

All that changed when I went to writing novels. Obviously I couldn’t bang out a novel in a few hours. I found I had to work incrementally, building the story piece by piece over the course of months, holding the ideas in my head over that time.

It took me nine months to write Obsidian. No, I didn’t work on it every day. I had several long stretches where I worked on it only a little or not at all. Sterling will take five months. And I’ve really only hit the smooth rhythm in the last two months.

But I do have to write every day. At pretty much the same time. Shockingly enough, it works. That approach also requires that the writing time is my core schedule and I work everything else in around that, even the day job (unless I just can’t make that happen, which can occur).

Some people draft faster, then revise. For me, when I’m done by mid-July, the novel will be reasonably polished.

And I keep thinking that it might be really good.

Which is this lovely bubbling feeling.

My quietly enthusiastic.