Scrivengale

Scrivengale has moved!

2012-01-11T22:35:00.000-05:00

Thanks for stopping by, but this blog has moved. In two seconds, you will be automatically redirected to the blog at my new author website.

Hope to see you there!

Lip-smacking whistlestop blog tour to launch my debut novel

2011-11-14T16:56:00.001-05:00

A bevy of bloggers with varied gifts–authors, artists, writers and opera experts–are opening up their blogs as part of a thirteen-stop tour to launch my soon-to-be-released opera novel Don Juan in Hankey, PA.
Thirteen must be my lucky number!

The tour kicks off on November 22 with Bachtrack founder David Karlin’s blog and continues through January 17, 2012. You can expect to read revealing Q&A’s and get a glimpse of the cinematic world of small-town opera that fill the book’s pages.

This blog tour is also an opportunity to meet some of the characters who bring the pages of Don Juan in Hankey, PA to life: the Argentine baritone Leandro Vasquez singing the title role in Don Giovanni–unleashed, as you’ve never seen him before; Maestro Schantzenbach, aka the Teeny Tyrant, the resident conductor of the Hankey Opera Company; and Deanna Lundquist, guild chair–shrewd, Machiavellian–determined to see the Hankey Opera Company succeed.

Stop by one or two of these blogs over the next several weeks or take in every worthy whistlestop!

All the tour dates are also online here with thumbnails of each blog.

Nov. 22 – Scintillating Q&A with Bachtrack founder David Karlin at his blog.
Nov. 23 – Some author to author dishing with Margo Candela at her website.

Nov. 29 – Guest post at author Amye Archer’s blog— where we get up-close-and-personal with fictional barihunk Leandro Vasquez.

Nov. 30 – Poet Kim Loomis Bennett crashes Operatoonity.com right here.

Gordon Darroch's blog

Dec. 2 – Probing Q&A with UK author Gordon Darroch at “Unreal Domain.”

Dec. 4 – Guest post at UK children’s author Martin King’s blog to discuss writing creatively.

Dec. 7 – Interview with Diana Di Mauro, doyenne of the online magazine Art Life and Stilettos.

Dec. 9 – Book review and giveaway at Kathy Sprinkle’s amazing, energizing blog, “Bliss Habits”.

Dec. 12 – Guest post at author and educator Ami Hendrikson’s blog “MuseInks.”

Bliss Habits by Kathy Sprinkle

Dec. 13 – Guest post at The Wagnerian where we will meet Maestro Jan Schantzenbach, resident conductor of the Hankey Opera Company.

Dec.15 – Q&A with writer Kirsty Stanley at “KIRSTYES” who will also talk with Deanna Lundquist, the main character in Don Juan in Hankey, PA.

Jan 15 – Book review and mini Q&A with sparkling opera aficionado Lucy at “Opera Obsession”.

Jan 17 – Guest post at Maine native Sharon C. William’s blog, “The Musings of a New Englander”.

Writers need readers!

2011-10-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

"It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of culture."-- John Cage

While it is a noble conceit to credit those who do, not all of us can do. In terms of writing music, I've written a few songs on my guitar, but I am in awe of real composers.

As far as writers go, many of us have friends who write, just like many actors have friends who act. While it is wonderful to have a network of writers to commune and commiserate and celebrate with, what would we all be without readers, blessed readers?

I can't perform opera, but I certainly do admire those who do. There are millions of people, God only knows how many, who can't write books, but depend on people like me to supply the books.

Thank the Lord for readers--what would writers do without them? Just like not every singer is equipped to sing opera, not every person who writes can write a book.

I'm putting it out there that I revere book readers. I understand what John Cage was trying to say, that those who create may be on some sort of higher cosmic plane that those who do not. However, if there aren't a critical mass of people who prefer to reading to writing fiction, fictionists have no real reason to be writing.

So, let me state for the record that I love fiction readers. Thank you, for reading and appreciating our words.

Revise or throw the baggage out -- that is the question

2011-10-12T18:28:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, early on in my writing career, I heard a famous author say that he/she doesn't revise a draft. They throw the whole thing out and start over. The entire manuscript.

Pitched. Deleted. Dumped.

At that time in my writing life, my cumulative life-word count might have been 150,000-200,000 words. So, you are probably not surprised to hear that I thought tossing out your complete draft was the most painful recourse for a manuscript I'd ever heard of. I decided I would rather have my fingernails plucked from their nail beds with a pliers than throw out a complete draft.

Think about it. If the average manuscript is 85,000 words, and you are fortunate enough to write 1,500 words a day, if you circular file that book, you've thrown out at least 60 days work--if not more.

Now that I have just engaged in a rigorous editing process of my third book which happens to be the first one that will be published, I'm beginning to understand the wisdom of completely starting over.

My editor and I spent a lot of time ensuring the rewrite complemented earlier drafts. It's very easy to make a mistake five chapters later, when you are rewriting a character's life. If you told the reader that the character was divorced but took the drill down out of an earlier chapter, did you reinsert it. Or did you plant a bit a backstory more than once because you forgot you'd done so in an earlier draft.

It gets God-awful complicated revising a draft numerous times. You find bits of prose repeated, and you are damn glad you found it in a reread or you'll tick off all your careful readers.

All of which comes down to the fact that I no longer think throwing out a draft is a ludicrous thing. It even makes sense. Because by the time you are integrating new scenes with old scenes and making sure everything fits, you might as well have begun anew.

What do you think? Have you been undone by revisions?

When writers are too sales-y

2011-10-09T21:46:00.000-04:00

Writers today are expected to engage with social media. You are perceived as more marketable if you have a stable of followers on Twitter and Facebook. Or hundreds of blog followers.

Having social media savvy makes a great deal of sense, especially for unpublished writers who are still trying to develop their audiences. I've invested a great deal of life energy into creating and maintaining my social media accounts, trying to develop meaningful content and in turn, loyal followers.

My issue is with writers who behave like they are enamored of their own Tweets--that's where I notice this behavior the most, on Twitter--this annoying tendency to be too sales-y.

If you have told followers your book is for sale four times yesterday, there's no need to tell these same followers this four more times today just because your Klout score will dip two points if you don't Tweet your followers 40 times in one day.

I think the value of social media lies in the quality of the interaction--not the ability to merely tell your story as often as you want to followers who are too polite to unfollow you. Even if you think you're adorable. Even if your Klout score is 75!

I'm not saying I jumped into social media knowing exactly how to use it. I'm sure some of my Tweets or Facebook posts have ticked people off. I've learned a lot in the last year and a half. Social media isn't a nifty platform for broadcasting. It's a platform for making connections.

Those of you who just can't resist being too sales-y, you might lose as a follower--me.

There's got to be a better way of raising your Klout score than annoying the hell out of your followers. Rather than saturating me with all your sales messages, why not try sincerely connecting for a change?

TrueType is beautiful, man!

2011-10-07T21:54:00.000-04:00

The first page of the first chapter of my debut novel!

Today I received the first typeset version of my debut novel, Don Juan of Hankey, PA, from the publisher--Booktrope.

How can mere letters and margins and justified text equal sheer loveliness? I'm not sure I know the answer to that question (or want to know), but I think I'm intoxicated with my first glimpse of my novel--typeset.

It's neat. It's readable. It's got panache!

I once heard Nathan Bransford say that it's hard to find the potential in typed (as opposed to typeset) manuscripts that used to cross his desk (to which I thought, boy, if an agent can't see the potential in double-spaced text, we are all surely lost.)

I'm exceedingly grateful that Booktrope looked past the double-spaced ragged-right Times Roman 12 pt. text manuscript and found a book worth typesetting.

Besides the urge to call it a book instead of a manuscript, once you get past the dramatic change in your book's appearance and readability, you immediately start scrutinizing your prose, looking for flaws, mistakes, ouchies.

I haven't found any ouchies yet.

(I must still be in love).

Close Encounters with Mrs. Darcy!

2011-09-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

Jon? Jon Pinnock? This is Breaker 1-9. Come in, Jon Pinnock!

(Aside) I don't usually consort with those who have the ability to tune in aliens. But in the interest of advancing great fiction worldwide, I'll make an exception . . . today. I'm sure you understand that I don't want to be beamed up into a flying saucer or have my soul sucked out by anyone who looks like that in a Regency gown. Ew!

So, Jon! You've written this riveting, rollicking new novel, Mrs. Darcy versus the Aliens, just released by Proxima Classics. Tell me a little about it. That is, if in telling me, you're not making me a target for an alien brain scan--or worse.

(Aside) Jon is an award-winning writer and a poet and a blogger. Now that I fully consider all his gifts, I'm certain he is a supernatural (a.k.a. ghastly alien) being himself--not of this world. I'm slipping on my lead beanie for this interview. That way he and his alien cohorts can't extract all my gray matter through my blowhole and slather on a scone at high tea.

Had you read any serialized fiction before you decided to write a book that way?
Oddly enough, no. So in retrospect, it was a somewhat foolhardy decision to embark on one myself! But my gut instinct told me that if I structured it the way I did - short, snappy, self-contained episodes - I might stand a chance of grabbing an audience.

How polished was each segment you posted? Did you have much editing to do? I'd like to think that I write reasonably polished first drafts - but then, wouldn't we all? There were a number of stylistic tics which my editor subsequently removed, along with some of the more blatant references to song lyrics. As far as the plot itself, that remained pretty much intact, apart from three or four scenes which I rewrote completely on the suggestion of my editor.

Author Jon Pinnock

Did your publisher notice your book without your having to query them? No - I think that's a bit of a first-time author fantasy! It very rarely happens. I was, however, fortunate in that - thanks to Twitter - I got in very quickly with Proxima when they were just starting up. I think I must have been one of the first people to submit to them, in fact. It also helped that Proxima's parent, Salt Publishing were aware of me through my short stories and general presence on Twitter etc.

What is your favorite scene? Gosh, that's a tricky question. The problem is that I can't really describe any of them without giving away important plot developments! My favourite is probably the one that takes place at the height of the Pemberley Midsummer Ball, which is basically an old-fashioned farce sequence. I'd love to see it filmed.

How much Austen had you read before you could write this sequel?
I think Austen is in many ways just one influence on the book. As well as her books, my research had to take in many sofa-based hours absorbing classic cinematic science fiction tropes. It's a hard life, but someone's got to do it.

* * *

If you live in the USA (or anywhere, for that matter), and you'd like your own copy of Mrs. Darcy versus the Aliens (and, let's face it, who wouldn't?), just visit Amazon here. You can follow him on Twitter @jonpinnock or friend him on Facebook.

(Aside) I've heard that if you hold the book over the top of your blowhole, it's as good as wearing a lead beanie. What's that? You don't have a blowhole?

The world's best self-editing tool! And it's free.

2011-09-24T11:48:00.000-04:00

Do you have an important editing job to complete? Don't forget to use the best tool at your disposal.

Know what it is?

Your ears. No matter if you pierce them or how you pierce them, no matter if they are big and floppy or set in close to your head, your ears are your best friend.

I'm finishing my last editing pass of my opera novel soon to be published by Booktrope. (Titular perfection soon to be shared with you all, dear readers.) I doubt there is anything more important to do well than this step, than adding this last coat of polish.

The most effective editing tool I have is reading my prose and aloud and seeing how it lands on my ears.

Yes, yes, putting the manuscript away for a months is handy. Having a crackshot editor is wonderful, too, (and I do). But I'm not signing off on this manuscript until I've read every word out loud.

Will it take hours? Yes! Will it be worth every second! Double yes. You'll find word omissions your eye glossed over, repeated words, awkward snippets of prose. You can't read outloud as quickly as you can silently. Reading forces you to slow down with your prose--and that's a great thing.

Because if you read it aloud, and it hurts your ears, your writing needs to be revised.

I know how wonderful editing programs like Wizard Manuscript Service are and how nifty medium weight roller ball pens are for marking up your manuscript.

But your best weapons are planted on either side of your head. I hope I've encouraged you to use them.

The quest for titular perfection . . . Holy Moses!

2011-09-18T10:04:00.000-04:00

Writers, is there any process more painful than coming up with a title for your book?

Not for me.

For my debut novel that's scheduled to be published this fall, I've been waiting for Moses to descend from Mt. Sinai with the perfect title, divinely inscribed on his stone tablets. Moses, Moses, Moses. (I know. I sound like Anne Baxter, sidling up to a half-naked Charlton Heston.) What's taking you so long, Moshe? Where's my perfect title?

For some inexplicable reason, I want my book titles to bowl me over like I'm a Brunswick ten pin. This has happened twice in my novel writing career, when the title has preceded the book writing. The title alone evoked a concept for a novel-length story, usually but not always, because it was an issue-based book.

I just sent back my first round of edits (the whole manuscript) for the opera novel being published by Booktrope. The editor agreed that the working title needed to be changed. What to change to? There's the rub. I've been working on this novel since 2009. This is not the first time I've sat down to this damn titular business. Every time it has been 1) painful; and 2) unproductive.

Agent Rachelle Gardner has a great post to help writers title their books. Part of this process involves finding titles of books like yours--she recommends twenty and suggests going to Amazon.com search engine--writing them down, and seeing which ones appeal to you. Then coming up with titles of your book inspired by the ones you liked best.

I did this part. I also did the part where you free associate words from your book, put them in columns, and wait for a title to leap off the page and bite you in the schnoz.

Some friends have suggested titles for my opera novel, but they are too serious, violating Rachelle's advice to ensure the tone of the title matchs the tone of the book. I've written a humorous book and the title needs to reflect that. At the same time, I don't want it to sound idiotic.

Since I'm waiting for the next round of revisions, I think I'll do some (MORE, PAINFUL) work on book titles this morning.

When I talked to my husband about it, he said that book reviews, more so than titles, determine whether he's interested in reading a book. I do know the title is not the most important quality a book needs to have before it goes to print.

But that doesn't stave off my desire for an eye-popping bing, bam, boom title.

How about you? What's your process for coming up with a title?

the best/worst time in my writing career

2011-09-09T13:39:00.000-04:00

The past week has constituted the best time in my six-year creative writing career.

Did I mention that it's also the worst time in my writing career?

Yes, best and worst together. What am I bi-polar?

Not medically speaking. Maybe metaphorically speaking, and here's why.

My opera novel was accepted for publication by Booktrope Publications, and I've begun work in depth with the editor of my novel. We are contracted to complete our work together by the end of the month.

For a debut novelist, having an editorial meeting regarding a book that someone independent from me plans to publish at their expense is a high point--the highest so far. It reminds me of how I used to feel as a stage actress just after I'd landed a big part and showed up for the first music rehearsal to sing my solos from a big, fat principal's score. Both accomplishments resulted from hard work. That being said, I think I have more natural talent as an actress and have worked (a lot) harder and suffered more rejection to get to this pinnacle in my writing career.

There just aren't any higher stakes when you are revising a manuscript that will next be in reader's hands. Depending on whether you do a good job will determine when it gets ignored or scooped up, lauded or panned.

This opportunity to have a talented editor comment on my work with the aim of helping me succeed when it's most critical? This is the best moment, and I am savoring the singular privilege this whole situation affords. Feeling the weight of the task ahead--having an edited manuscript by the end of the month--is probably the worst moment. There are only so many hours in my day. Good writing takes distance away a manuscript. I won't have distance from the new copy.

In short, everything I've struggled to learn, to do, to achieve as a writer in the last six years will be measured by whatever I produce in the next two and a half weeks because it's going out there for public consumption--next.

No wonder I feel a pit in my stomach the size of a coconut.

(Is it too early for a stiff drink?) Yes it is. Plus, I've got to bet back to work.

(Bull whip heard cracking in the distance as lights up on empty keyboard . . . )

The good some closure can do

2011-08-27T16:16:00.000-04:00

my writing area . . .

Three-ring notebooks dominate the lowest tiers of a five-shelf unit in my writing station. Printouts of manuscripts and edits, e-books, and Internet tips and articles fill these binders--pages and pages and pages of material I generated or created to help me learn and improve my craft over the years. Paperbacks and hardbacks organized by function--craft, models, comparables, aspirants--are crammed into the upper shelves. Those that don't fit are piled on end tables, bureaus, or empty chairs in every room of my house.

Utility drawers upstairs and downstairs are stuffed with red and black pens, paper clips, binder clips, post-it notes, highlighters. Literary journals, a notebook full of manuscript requests, submissions, and rejection notices line the shelves on my work desk. Another binder lists writing contests organized by month, dating back to 2008, but hasn't been updated since I started graduate school.

Six years. Seven novels started, chapters of which haved been shared with family and friends to varying reviews. Three completed. Evidence of countless revisions. Rewrites. Stories and novels redux. Three years of online critiques printed and collated. One master's in creative writing earned and even more binders of graded writing--one per semester--taking up space.

Until a week ago, nothing much to show for all this work--no, mess--besides about a dozen short fiction/essay acceptances, a half dozen contest wins, and too many snark attacks to keep straight, mostly from other writers though several agents get high marks for snarky zingers, too, in response to queries. One of my favorites: "I remember when I wrote my first novel . . ." in response to querying my first novel.

When you win a contest, you're up. When you get a savage critique from an online site, you're down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Rarely is there any kind of equilibrium. Writer friends lift you up. The same ones put you down. High. Low. High. Low.

That's why, when Booktrope Publishing out of Seattle offered a contract to publish my opera book this month, I accepted. I needed some closure--on at least one of my projects--in order to keep working on the other projects--on anything.

I realize now I felt weighed down by my completed manuscripts that didn't accomplish the ends I envisioned for them. Now that Booktrope is publishing the opera book, that chapter of my saga can be considered done--no revisions required once the book is published--and I can recollect my widely scattered attentions and channel them towards a fewer number of projects.

Though we are encouraged to multi-task in the workplace, and everyone claims to be good at it, I've realized over the years that I am not. However, the only way to persevere as a writer is to multi-task. Shop one novel while you are completing another and polishing yet another while you're entering a story contest or writing a blog post or doing a review of a friend's book. It's what we all do, and frankly, it's exhausting.

I will continue to juggle novel completions, submissions, and rewrites because that's what the profession demands from us. Having closure on at least one of my works has restored my faith in making the journey and has made it feel less like a slog.

The path to publication is a slog. Remember?

I know! However, because of the closure offered by this particular acceptance, I feel like a horse reshod, a kid with new Keds. I feel reenergized in my once-noble, now wholly consuming quest to be a published writer.

As my friend Mary Beth says, "There's nothing a little success won't cure."

Note: My debut novel will be published in December 2011 by Booktrope Publishing.

Leveled my gaze? Narrowed my eyes? Eye-action clichés

2011-07-30T14:51:00.000-04:00

Help. I'm up to my eyeballs in eye-action clichés (pardon the cliché).
No matter what I'm reading, everyone is "leveling their gaze" or "narrowing their eyes" at someone else on the page.

From Janet Evanovich to Andrew Davidson (who couldn't be less similar--literarily speaking), I'm encountering these same phrases.

Are you as tired of them as I am yet lacking a substitute, continue to use them?

So all writers are challenged with how to describe this phenomena that we all want to include in our novels when one character is sufficiently frustrated, piqued, annoyed, and has to look in the direction of the character doing the annoying.

Should we avoid this action completely? Should writers focus on individual parts of the eye, as in, "Her irises intensified in color as I told her it was over between us?" Or "His retina reticulated after I shot him in the shoulder."

Your thoughts?

An outrageous boo for a book!

2011-07-24T10:55:00.000-04:00

Will baritone Leandro Vasquez obtain the release
he is seeking, with Jeannie Jacobs, an older opera patron?

What's a book boo? Not a bad review, if that's what you're thinking.

A boo is an audio clip made using Audioboo, a site that allows you to upload or record sound from your smart phone or, in this case, from my laptop.

I thought about all the writing I could record as I experimented with Audioboo. One obvious choice came to mind: an excerpt from my novel DEVILED BY DON, which I read at a residency in the Wilkes University Writing Program.

It's my favorite scene from the entire book. My Wilkes classmates loved it.

Now you can listen to it, too. And read the accompanying text below, if you like, since the boo finishes a few lines earlier than the scene.

In case you're wondering, this is definitely a PG-13 boo! Just click the round button below to hear my boo!

An excerpt from "Deviled by Don"-- The Divo (mp3)

DEVILED BY DON, Chapter 20, "The Divo"

New Yorkers reacted to Leandro Vasquez like he’d come out of nowhere. They said things like, “Where were you hiding?” and “Who kept a delectable thing like you under wraps?” And not just female New Yorkers either.

Well, he wasn’t hiding now. Leandro Vasquez, who had been a lowly gaucho in Argentina who sang to his cattle, was performing in New York City of all places. Now that he’d been seen by New York critics, producers, and agents, finally he was somebody in a way he’d never been before. And he had wanted all that. But tonight, more than anything else, now that he’d earned the applause and the reviews and the critical acclaim he sought, he needed release. He was bursting with sexual energy. He wanted to get the head.

“I want to—get the head,” he whispered in the ear of the blonde actress seated beside him.

“I want to get ahead,” she said, “but first I have to use the little girl’s room,” and slipped out of her chair with a rubbery ease signifying she was more than tipsy.

“Get the head?” That was the expression; he was certain of it. So, why had the lovely blonde deserted him?

A matronly woman slipped into the empty seat beside Vasquez. As he turned to face her, she held out a hand with rocks the size of coffee beans on more than one finger but wore no wedding band. He took it, kissing her wrinkled flesh which felt thinner than parchment to his full lips. Though intially the feel of her skin had put him off, her overall appearance was very pleasing. She looked trim in an off- beaded gown the color of casaba, falling off her shoulders. Her eyes were aquamarine and reminded him of Vivian Perelli’s. Soft, full, dewy.

“I’m Jeannie Jacobs,” she said with the confidence of a woman who lacked for nothing. “And you are an incredible specimen of a man.” Then she shuddered, and the beads lining her décolletage rattled softly against themselves, creating flashes of light tinkling against heaving, freckled breasts.
Vasquez marveled at the reactions of American women. In Baltimore, they were wild for his Giovanni. What was it about American ladies, that they couldn’t tear themselves away from bad boys? Unfathomable—this weakness for men who used them and then discarded them. He intended to take full advantage of this baffling inclination.

He wondered if this older lady gave the head. Could he ask her that? Could he pull her aside and say, “Madam, you intrigue me. Would you like to give me the head?”

Back in Argentina he would say, “Haceme un pete.” If he said that now, would she understand what he wanted?

“Now that you’ve conquered New York, Mr. Vasquez,” Jeannie said, “what’s next?”

He leaned in close, tasting her flowery scent, and said in a husky voice, “Haceme un pete.”

He slipped the key card into his hotel room door and let her in first. Wordlessly, he removed his jacket from around her shoulders and tossed it on the floor. Jeannie unraveled his bow tie and began loosening the studs on his tuxedo shirt. She slipped her hands inside, first stroking then kneading his bare chest, moaning softly. Leandro slipped the strap off her shoulder and eased her gown down to her waist. He expected to see bare breasts but was surprised by a little strapless bra barely covering her nipples. He unfastened it with a one hand and massaged her generous breasts with the other. He bent over and said in a low voice, “Haceme un pete.”

If he said that to a girl back in Argentina, she would crack him across the mouth. Then she would go tell her father. Then her father would shoot a hole in his heart.

“What is this ‘Haceme something,’ Leandro?” she said breathlessly.

She didn’t know Argentine Spanish? How to explain this. You’d think a woman who’d been around the square as many times as she has surely would know what he wanted. What he needed. He took her hand, placed it on his crotch and moved it up and down. She rubbed him a few times before reaching up, unfastening his pants, and undoing the zipper. Little Leandro sprang out from confinement.

“Un pete. Mi pija. Mi pija,” he murmured, grazing her lips with his, placing her hands on his penis, trying to impart understanding to her bejeweled hand just like Annie Sullivan spelling “wawa” into Helen Keller’s dainty palm.

Jeannie rubbed and rubbed his pija. Enough with the rubbing, he thought.

“I could buy and sell you many times over,” she said, covering his face with kisses. “But I didn’t have to—did I?”

Leandro heard her say, “Buy and sell.” She was a prostitute? A little old for a whore, he thought. But if she needed the cash to give him un pete, he was in no position to argue at the moment. With his left hand, he fished in his pants pocket and pulled out a few crumpled bills. He wasn’t sure how much he had. Enough to buy a couple rounds of drinks. Probably enough for un pete from a woman her age. He slipped the bills into her hand, closing it around them.

Jeannie tightened her hand around the money and stopped rubbing. She pulled her body away from his, yanking up her dress, gasping. “You think I’m a hooker? A goddamn hooker?” She raised her right hand, turned her palm towards his cheek and cuffed it. She clenched the money balled up in her left hand and threw it at him. “And here I thought you were a nice boy,” she said, turning her back to him. Then she stalked out of his hotel room.

# # #

So, did you like my boo? Then go boo, yourself.

How NOT to behave in a writing group

2011-07-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

When I first thought of writing about writing groups and workshops, I was going to gush about how well the current group is going and how much great feedback I've gotten from it. I've been sharing my latest novel with the group since January and have gotten invaluble assistance and insights.

Then I recalled my other in-person writing group experiences. My first was very positive, and I made some lasting friends. Well, at least one. However, I was seeking a deeper level of criticism than this group could provide to help me grow as a writer.

So, I ditched the group I was in at the time and searched for a *gasp * new one. And I found (drumroll, please) the writing group from the underworld.

Critiquing someone else's work isn't about burning them.

Since it's more fun to dish about something than dote on it, I decided to write about that fated writing workshop. Four years later, it still gives me the shudders today.

There are lessons to be learned from my experience. Like a caring parent, I will share them with you, so you have the chance to avoid them. Like an impudent child, you will most likely disregard them. But I'll tell you about them anyway because it's my writing blog.

How NOT to behave

Don't tell another writer that her protagonist is a twit. I like flawed characters. It gives them room to grow throughout the story. Just like on the playground, no name-calling is allowed. You can say, "I couldn't relate to your character. I'm not sure I understood the choices she made. What are you trying to achieve?" or something like that. One week after I received her scathing critique, the same chapter won a First Chapter Contest at Billboard.Net. Oh, and I got representation, too, from an agent who loved my "twit."

Don't take every scene in another writer's story and judge it based on all your emotional baggage. If you are in a writing group, endeavor to separate yourself from your critique just as writers attempt to separate themselves from the characters they create. If the character cuddles her four-year-old nephew because she loves him and doesn't have children of her own, don't write a tome about how you were molested as a child in your critique, and that her scene is sick and perverted. It's not about you.

Don't, as a fallback position, remind everyone at every opportunity during workshop that you've attended the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, and that gives you license to trash everyone else's work. When you have a conventionally published book to your credit, then you may have a prayer of a chance of winning our respect. I'm sure Bread Loaf is a wonderful program and has a roster of prestigious attendees to its credit. However, your having attended it doesn't make you better than everyone else.

There are other heinous things you could do as a writing workshop participant or facilitator. Facilitators who don't take charge and rein in the nastiness shouldn't be surprised when the group falls apart.

How about you? Any workshop horror stories to relate? Success stories are welcome, too.

Three great reasons to write creatively

2011-05-23T08:49:00.000-04:00

Exactly six years ago, also in the thick of springtime, I began writing fiction. Since then I've spent an incalculable amount of time with my fingers attached to a computer keyboard, trying my hand at stories, essays, and several novels. I haven't done any house painting or furniture redecorating, things I did before I began writing. About the only hobby I've pursued with nearly the same intensity as writing creatively is gardening.

I never pledged to devote a singular amount of life focus to fiction writing, to the goal of becoming a published author. It's just something that happened along the way as I discerned the quality gap between what I was producing and needed to produce to be published.

Luckily, I have a supportive husband, who has encouraged my writing career in every conceivable way, including my choice to earn a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University.

Does writing involve sacrifice? It certainly can. It must. There are only so many hours in a day. I can't write every day and do all of the other activities I used to. Something's gotta give. I don't cook, bake, clean, shop, or hang out with friends as much as I used to. I don't do as many things with my husband either--writing is a solitary activity after all. Though my husband will occasionally serve as a first responder. By that I mean the first person to respond to new work I've written or stories I've rewritten.

In this quest to excel at writing and someday publish a novel, what then have I gained?

I'm more observant.

Over the weekend I was lying on the hammock on a gloriously sunny day and found myself examining the color of the sky behind scads of new green leaves on maple branches. A cloudless blue sky, with too much blue in it to be called robin-egg blue.

While it might not be difficult to identify the shade that comes from an HTML color chart such as #045FB4, the writer's job is to link the shade of blue with which something the reader can identify--a sensory detail. It was uniformly cornflower blue. I also really notice the heat stream from the dishwasher when I open it. And spend more time than ever watching blue jays contort their large bodies. With claws clutching the metal perch, they tuck their heads almost to their breast to be able to eat from the cylindrical feeder.

I learned volumes about classic opera
researching a novel about an opera guild.

I have a better general education.

Writers have to do incredible amounts of research in order to complete stories and books--fiction writers, too. In efforts to realistically create settings, effective plot points, and interests/quirks of characters, I have studied classic opera, Jamaican patois, contemporary hate crimes in the United States and around the world, calorie-restrictionist organizations, perfume makers, Shaker culture, Amish culture, activism in South America, Tom Jones impersonators, and the list goes on and on. I'm lucky I have a pronounced love of learning. At least that's what a University of Pennsylvania strengths-finder survey identified as my top strength. Does one's avocation pursued over time hone one's strengths or do certain strengths steer one a person toward certain pursuits? Perhaps a little of both.

I've learned to take rejection better, almost in stride.

Rejection hurts. No, Cymbalta can't help.

When you begin submitting your work with regularity, you are bound to face more rejection than you ever imagined you could or would. And unless you intend to stop writing, you learn to absorb what you can from the experience, put aside the rejection, and keep moving forward. Do I consider myself a loser because my work is being constantly rejected? Absolutely not. Rejection means I'm in the game.

I've not always handled rejection well. That's because a lot of things in life come easily to me. Writing not so much. If I have any success in the creative writing universe, it's because I earned it. Yes, rejection stings, sometimes it hurts like hell, especially when you've come close to publication, and by publication, I mean a book deal--that's what I'm working toward. But like Margaret Atwood said, "Don't complain. No one's putting a gun to your head--forcing you to be a writer." Or something like that. Being rejected offers me the chance to learn lessons critical to my development as a writer and as a person.

Why do you write creatively? What reasons can you add to this short list?

Publishing wannabes, be optimistic but not foolish

2011-05-11T16:24:00.000-04:00

Never thought I'd be referring to the Harvard Business Review for a creative writing blog post. But I ran into this inspired post at work offering great advice for those who've set challenging goals for themselves. What could be more challenging than publishing a novel--conventionally?

Anyway, in this article called "Be a Optimist Without Being a Fool," motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson* believes that while it's good to be optimistic, it is a ridiculous posture to think you'll easily succeed at most difficult tasks.

"But there is an important caveat: to be successful, you need to understand the vital difference between believing you will succeed, and believing you will succeed easily."

In other words, be a realistic optimist. Believe you will succeed, but at the same time, take steps to ensure success happens. For writers, that means submitting, networking, continuing writing, joining a writing group, taking a craft class or workshop, building your platform, etc.

None of us knows our own timetable for success. A friend's book may get picked up far sooner than yours or mine. Rarely does success follow just because we really want to be published. Don't be discouraged. Be heartened because you are a realist with the wisdom and maturity to needed to accept that difficulty lies ahead.

"Believing that the road to success will be rocky leads to greater success because it forces you to take action." Halvorson said. "People who are confident that they will succeed, and equally confident that success won't come easily, put in more effort, plan how they'll deal with problems before they arise, and persist longer in the face of difficulty."

Keep putting in the effort. Keep keeping on. Eventually, your persistence is likely to be rewarded.

*Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011)

Writing for life? Use common sense and self care.

2011-05-01T07:16:00.000-04:00

Against daunting odds, you’ve just completed your novel, your memoir, your chapbook. You’ve received strong feedback from a beta-reader or an outside evaluator through your creative writing program where you’ve received unprecedented access to the almighty gatekeepers—agents and editors. Maybe you attended a conference and pitched your book to an agent who requested a complete manuscript. Nothing can stop you now. Surely, you’ll have a publishing contract in hand within months, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. According to Putting Your Passion into Print, more than 150,000 books are conventionally published every year. That’s an incredibly large number of publishing opportunities compared to the number of screenplays actually made into feature length films every year. There’s plenty of room for good books—yours included.

Statistics such as less than five percent of popular booksellers' total sales are bestsellers provide reason enough to be optimistic that you may one day join the ranks of published authors. That is, if you don’t expect too much success too soon. That’s the fastest route to burnout. Expecting to be the next overnight writing sensation might be the single greatest handicap to the writing career you so desperately seek. Prepare instead for a long slog. Commit yourself and your faculties to writerly habits and a lifestyle that can sustain you and your writing career.

Keep writing. After I wrote my first novel in 2005, I was so proud of the fact that I’d completed a work of fiction, I used to carry it around with me wherever I went. After a few months, a pair of tired arms, and only one nibble from an agent, I realized that completing a novel was only the beginning of my writerly journey. I began writing flash fiction, short stories, and humorous essays while I began plotting my next novel. One of the writers I follow on Twitter who is also a literary agent never sold his first book—the one he was certain would sell. But sold plenty after that. So, keep writing. It’s never good to pin your hopes to one manuscript. Not to mention that editors and agents want writers who are good for more than one book. One of the Wilkes’ faculty members Lenore Hart sold her latest book The Raven’s Bride before it was written. Her publisher was banking on Lenore’s reputation for producing another publishable novel.

Keep submitting other work elsewhere. As long as you continue writing, you’ll not only be honing your craft, you'll have work to submit to publications and contests. For most of us, rejections far outweigh acceptances. You have to submit a critical level of work before the odds start turning in your favor. Once they do, every acceptance is validation to stay the course and builds confidence which you’ll need for more rejections and the inevitable slog.

Set reasonable goals. In recent craft classes at Wilkes, writer Lori A. May shared a framework for goal setting for a rich, focused writing career. Her model encourages writers to think in bigger chunks beyond the next story, the next month, the next acceptance. Set goals that will stretch you. But don’t doom yourself to failure either by comparing yourself to someone who’s achieved instant publishing success or setting irrational goals, such as, “Will have literary representation in one month.” Perhaps you won’t. I just interviewed a writer on this blog who has published four books but doesn’t have an agent. Make your goal instead, “Will query five agents every month.”

Volunteer to judge a contest. Reading others writers’ work with whom you’re not competing head to head, within your cohort or in the Wilkes program in general, can be eye-opening. It’s a productive way to learn from others’ mistakes and successes while being a good literary citizen.

Look for outlets to read your work. If none exist, create one. One of the great privileges published authors enjoy is the chance to read their work in public venues. In Wilkes University's creative writing program, students are given several opportunities to do that. Once you’re out of the program, it’s one of the things you miss most. At least I did because I love reading my work. Not seeing anything available in her hometown, one of the students in my cohort Ally Bishop went out and created an outlet for writers in Central Pennsylvania to read their work—published and unpublished—readings in which I’ve taken part. I know other Wilkes students are following Ally’s example, approaching galleries, book shops, and coffee shops about offering literary readings.

Get a writing group together. Writing is an insular life. If you don’t have an editor to give you pause to think about your narrative arc, to redirect your work, you would probably benefit from participating in a writing group. I said a writing group, not a shredding group. I’ve been in a shredding group—an utter waste of time and potentially devastating. If you can find a handful of other writers committed to careful reading and constructive criticism, it helps fill the gap left between working with a faculty mentor or a professional editor and writing in solitude.

Explore other avenues of sharing your work, like Scribd. I just learned about www.scribd.com, a social publishing site, where tens of millions of people share original writings and documents. One young woman who wrote a memoir but couldn’t obtain any interest from a conventional publisher shared her memoir in segments on Scribd, obtaining three thousand readers per post. Few bloggers can attract that volume of readership. It may be worth your time investigating.

Write something for sheer enjoyment. I’m not sure where I heard about this online writing community at The Write Idea (http://www.helenwhittaker.net/Home.html), an international group of poets and prose writers, but for three years now I have participated in a nine-round fiction contest with some of the most generous, talented writers I’ve ever met. It is sheer fun to receive the prompts, chat them up on the site, and see how everyone fares following each round of judging. This contest is something I do just for the love of writing and as such, the sustenance it offers me is invaluable.

Create something for sheer enjoyment. I read Jane Friedman’s blog There Are No Rules (http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/) regularly, which is how I learned about Scribd. In one of her columns, Jane also mentioned a site called About.me (http://about.me), which allows writers and other creatives the chance to create a free splash page, in lieu of a full-blown website. It was a great exercise trying to encapsulate my writing experience and persona into a splash page (http://about.me/GaleMartin), and lots of fun doing so.

Strive for a more balanced life. Shortly after I finished the Wilkes program, I needed a month to thaw out, having combined my studies with a demanding full-time job. Then I looked around my very untidy house, threw myself into some cleaning projects, and planned an anniversary celebration. I also recommitted myself to regular church attendance and singing in the choir, which meant rehearsing one night a week away from my *sigh* laptop, which I was certain was attached to my fingers. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the level of life balance I enjoyed before I began writing creatively, but the writing schedule a master’s or MFA program demands wasn’t going to sustain my marriage or a life well-lived. I simply had to make some changes.

Steel yourself for a long slog but fully appreciate any smaller success along the way.

Reincorporation: Surreal suppers and a lesson in storytelling--a guest post on 'Scrivengale'

2011-04-27T18:53:00.000-04:00

Author and secretly bestselling ghostwriter Roz Morris

Today, I'm pleased to welcome a guest post from author, editor, and blogger Roz Morris. Roz wrote an ingenious craft book called Nail Your Novel and is the host of a blog of the same name. It was through reading her blog (which I'm highlighting this month on "Scrivengale") that I was introduced to the concept of reincorporation. With Roz's permission, I am republishing her post on this technique, which has the potential to enrich your storytelling and keep your reader engaged.

Readers love it when you use reincorporation. Here’s what it’s all about.

The 15 guests had to be at a secret location in east London at 8.13. No earlier, no later. They entered through a doorway fringed with yellow flippers and feathers so they had to, er, duck. Fizz was served in teacups with sugar cubes, by a lady who would later dress up as a cat. There was no alcohol licence, so guests were given crayons and told to draw artworks, which they sold to each other, each ‘sale’ earning a free glass of wine.

Food was similarly witty. An amuse bouche of praline served in a paper cake case tethered to a helium balloon. Eat the praline and the case floated up to the ceiling, to gasps of delight. Japanese fish was served in tin cans. Between courses, the guests split into teams to play a consequences storytelling game. After pudding (a suitably surrealist baked Alaska) they took turns to read out the resulting literary lunacy – while breathing in the helium from the starters.

Isn’t there something amazingly right about this reuse of the balloons? We’d forgotten about them in all the other charming strangenesses, but they were up there on the ceiling all the time, bobbing there, on the periphery of the story.

In storytelling this ‘bringing back’ is called reincorporation. It seems to hit the audience’s satisfaction centres to a primeval degree.

When you’re tempted to invent more stuff to put in a story, it’s always worth seeing what you can bring back in. It could be a throwaway remark like a random thing you decided the character was doing the other night. Or it could be an anecdote you used early on for character building. Push something to the audience’s peripheral vision – or make it look as though you have finished with it. Then bring it back in and audiences will love it, as if you just performed a conjuring trick.

So, you introduce the helium balloons in the first course, have a little episode with them that is fun and charming, and let them drift away. It looks like they’ve played their role and the audience doesn’t give them another thought. And just when the story has got a lot further, and people have forgotten about them, you blend them back into the main story to do something even funnier.

I didn’t make this up, by the way. This delightful evening was the brainchild of ‘Sue Dinner-party’, a supper club in east London. My thanks to them not only for surrealist inspiration but for a nugget of storyteller’s gold.

* * *

You can read a fifteen-page sample of Roz's craft book Nail Your Novel here.

The second best writing tip ever!

2011-04-25T21:36:00.000-04:00

On the heels of posting the single best writing tip ever, I'm tapping into the momentum, posting the second-best writing tip I've ever received.

Once again, no long, drawn-out build-up; here it is:

Words are stones; feel the weight of them.

I heard this tip at the first writing workshop I'd taken through Gotham Writers Workshop in 2005. The class was taught by writer/visual artist Peter Selgin though I don't think this tip was Peter's original sentiment. As I recall, he was sharing someone else's tip, one he always remembered, for our gain. (My apologies if my memory doesn't reflect the truth.)

The concept of words as stones is a weighty one for beginners to grasp. Nearly six years later, I fully appreciate its simple wisdom and struggle to achieve it.

When those of us who write book-length fiction consider we have to create a tale 75,000-words long, the idea of words weighty as stones strikes us as impractical. We're trying to hit an expected word count and filler words slip into the prose to help us realize the length the genre demands.

Now that I've completed three novels, I find this tip applies more than it ever has. In rewrites, when you're building muscle and cutting fat, each word is a stone that can weigh down your prose or ground it.

As you're rewriting, as you're polishing, view each word as a stone. Examine it. Weigh it. Polish it. If it's not serving your prose, then skip it off the page and out of the book.

The single best writing tip ever . . .

2011-04-22T13:25:00.000-04:00

No build up. Just going to come right out with it. Today's post has one purpose only: To pass along the best single piece of craft advice I've ever gotten.

It actually comes from Kevin Oderman, my creative non-fiction teacher in the Wilkes University Creative Writing Program, and an outstanding craftsman himself.

In response to one of my assignments, Kevin said something like, "Everything you do must serve the story."

Basically, what he was saying was that writers must control their impulses to use a piece of dialogue or add a character or go off on a tangent or employ a certain phrase and ask themselves, "Does it serve the story?" It amounts to making good choices--intentional choices--to advance plot, character, and all the other fictional elements comprising your story.

Pretty simple test. If it doesn't serve the story, it has to go.

I actually used this test to evaluate a piece of stage business in a performance I was reviewing. It didn't serve the story. Not only was it extraneous, it detracted from the story. One piece of stage business weakened an important plot point. And it smacked of indulgent stage direction as a result.

Whatever story you tell, in whatever form (play, screenplay, prose), I challenge you to ask yourself whether the device you've employed or the scene you just added serves the story. The story is master--ironically, not you--and you need to pay slavish attention to it.

If you don't put your story first, who will?

How about you? Does this tip work for you? What is the single best piece of writing advice you've received?

Keep writing to bridge that quality gap in your storytelling

2011-04-16T14:30:00.000-04:00

I just listened to an inspiring series of videos by Ira Glass, host of the radio program "This American Life," sharing tips on storytelling and how to improve as a storyteller. Now as you probably know, Glass is a broadcast journalist of the highest order. Though the stories he tells are true, make no mistake, he tells a good story--creatively. He is an exemplar in the form and any aspiring storyteller can learn something from him.

The four-part interview, available on YouTube, takes little more than 20 minutes to listen to. I would highly recommended the series:

But if you'll settle for highlights, here are a few points that resonated with me:

Great stories are built around anecdotes

You absolutely must engage the reader with a sequence of events. This happened and then this happened and then this happened. The lesson for fiction writers is that stories not only need action--a sequence of actions. That's not to say that stories with more action are better than those with less. But you have to think of your narrative in the simplest way possible. What happens? When? And make sure the reader has been pulled into the action.

Build in reflection

After you've finished telling the world's greatest story or even while you're telling it, you have to build in some time to reflect on what's been told. What significance does it have? Why tell the anecdote in the first place? How much time you spend on reflection depends on both genre and POV (and maybe other elements of fiction), but not to spend any time will diminish the strength of your story, no matter how good it is.

Keep writing

There's only one way to bridge the gap between what quality you know your book or story should be versus what it is. And that is to keep writing. Most of us have a idea of what good taste is in storytelling, Glass says, or what quality we want our work to be. Usually, there's a gap caused by a lack of experience. Sometimes that gap is substantial. Whatever the size, the more you write, the more that gap will lessen.

Glass recommends steady regular work (writing) regardless of your circumstances. Create deadlines or have them created or built in for you to ensure that you will keep creating new work. But whatever you do, don't stop writing. Don't give up.

This was a powerful message for me to hear right now--that I need to keep working and creating. The only thing that will move me from where I am to where I want to be is to w-r-i-t-e.

Accept the responsibility for improving your art--your creative life--by continuing to do it with regularity and with discipline.

And thanks to Jane Friedman and her newsletter "3 Happy Things" for the line on the video interview series with Ira Glass.

a different sort of writing contest . . . molto differente

2011-04-10T12:28:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow marks the start of one of my two favorite writing contests in the world (the other being the nine-round Helen Whittaker fiction contest which I wrote about earlier).

This one is called #Operaplot. It's a contest solely administered on Twitter. So, you guessed it. Contest entries have to be 140 characters or less while including #operaplot.

In my other life, I host an opera blog called "Operatoonity." I also review live opera productions for Bachtrack. I have this whole other dimension to my writing life that revolves around opera.

The reason I like #operaplot so much is that, like the novel I wrote with an opera backdrop, is that the entries are very clever and though the international opera community takes the contest seriously, they don't in fact take opera that seriously. They poke fun at the masterworks and at themselves.

Sometimes I think opera fans are their own worst enemies. They run down anyone or anything who tries to be different or doesn't fit their narrow parameters of opera or opera singers. For instance, the little girl who won second place in America's Got Talent, Jackie Evancho, should have been embraced by the opera community since the American public can't and probably never will embrace opera as an art form. Instead, they were very vocal in criticizing her for taking on too mature of a work at such a young age, and it was going to ruin her voice, and. . . and . . .. I found the whole dialogue nauseating.

Because my book is a romp based on a small-town opera guild producing Don Giovanni, I welcome any initiative that embraces opera and humor.

All the #operaplot tweets go live tomorrow at 9 a.m. EDT until midnight on Friday. Nearly 30 opera houses have donated prizes. Winners will be selected by Eric Owens, a bass baritone and professional opera singer.

It would be fun to win, but if you are writer, then you know the real fun is in the writing.

If you are on Twitter, why not search #operaplot and read the entries this week? You will be surprised at how funny and clever they are. If you think about it, it takes ten minutes and two arias for someone to die in an opera, yet the contest mandates that you describe an entire opera in 140 characters or less. That's what makes this contest extraordinary.

The boyfriends in Cosi, in disguise

Here is one of my entries for a comic opera by Mozart called Cosi Fan Tutte:

Here’s a story di due donne. Boyfrenzi no trusta, not a lick. So, dey getta 2 mustaches. Duets great but silly plotta make asick. #operaplot

(Due donne is Italian for "two women"; Boyfrenzi is my made up word for "the boyfriends"-- and the Italian goes (further) downhill from there Mozart wrote most of his operas in Italian.)

Did you catch the trope I used for the plot--"The Brady Bunch" theme song? Too subtle?

Well, the contest goes on all week long. I can submit up to 25 plots. I wrote ten already.

If you think you want to try #operaplot, you have to be on Twitter and Tweet with some frequency for the #operaplot hashtag to register. So get a bunch of practice Tweets to prime your Twitter account.

Doesn't this sound like a fun contest? Hope to see you there!

Checking out 'Scribd' and you should, too

2011-03-23T16:52:00.000-04:00

Jane Friedman,
photo by Rowe Studios

Fellow writers, I am inspired to write another post based on a content tweet by Jane Friedman, invaluable friend to writers who want to be published or more published. Just to reiterate, whenever Jane tweets, I pay rapt attention. I even scroll through her tweets on occasion to see if there's something I missed. In confess that I'm a tactical tweeter and don't hang out on Twitter very often.

This time, Jane's tweet linked to a blog post she had written for Writer's Digest about a young widow who posted content on Scribd and has been very successful in building an audience for an eventual book launch as a result.

What is Scribd, you ask? Here's their line on themselves: They are the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. They've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Their vision is "to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them."

If you want to find out more about Scribd's potential, you should read the article. Instead of rehashing that woman's experience, I'll tell you what I did.

Granted, I am only taking baby steps on the site. Scribd has a lot more capability than what I am currently using. Just so you know, it's easy to log on to if you are already on Facebook. If any of your Facebook friends are on Scribd, they show up as "Followers" or at least that's how it appears. Even though Scribd tells me I have been a member since October 2010, I only uploaded my first two pieces of content to Scribd this week.

The first three pages of my WIP, WHO KILLED TOM JONES? (uploaded 3/21); and
The first 30 pages of WHO KILLED TOM JONES? (uploaded 3/22)

Today is 3/23. In those two days, I received more than 50 "reads" on each of those pieces. Now, while those numbers pale in comparison to the young widow's memoirs, I am really delighted with that level of activity in two short days. The fact is that I don't even know how all those readers found my excerpts in the first place. I don't think I would have been able to find them myself because I'm still learning my way around the site.

One of the things that became readily apparent is how major publishers are used Scribd to promote their new or newer releases by publishing excerpts. In fact, by perusing those excerpts, I realized I needed to reformat the larger excerpt to look more like the others. So I added some bells and whistles to make it look less like a manuscript and more like a book. I did end up uploading the thirty-page excerpt as a PDF though, since the file was too large to upload as a word docx. I like the appearance of a PDF better. The pages are clearly demarcated, and it looks more like the published book excerpts on the site.

I plan to upload more excerpts, to try to learn how to use Scribd and get a handle on its potential. I have other pieces I can upload as well.

So, if you liked the 500-word excerpt of WHO KILLED TOM JONES? previously published on this blog, you can read 28 more pages at Scribd.

What do you think? Do you see yourself used Scribd to obtain more visibility for your creative writing? Any keys or insights on how to use Scribd more successfully?

Do you know about Pitch2Win?

2011-03-22T21:54:00.000-04:00

First of all, let's all bow at the altar of Jane Friedman, former president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide from 1997 to 2008, Her links to content on Twitter are unparalleled in terms of substance.

When Jane Tweets (@JaneFriedman), I listen.

This past week, Jane was Tweeting about a #Pitch2Win contest sponsored by Abbott Press, a self-publishing division of Writer's Digest. In the interest of full disclosure, Jane has a professional relationship with Writer's Digest--she writes columns and blogs. But she is also a friend to writers--published and unpublished and true advocate for anyone aspiring to be part of the professional publishing community.

In essence, you pitch your book's premise in a tweet (140 characters) and that must include the hash tag # and the words Pitch2Win (#Pitch2Win) as part of the #Pitch2Win Publishing Contest on Twitter by March 27, 2011. By entering, you have a chance to have your writing reviewed by the editors of Writer’s Digest and for a shot at winning a publishing contract and marketing package from Abbott Press.

I can't say self-publishing is my dream arrangement for sharing my writing with the world; however, the prizes are so attractive, it's definitely worth entering and giving it your best shot:

GRAND PRIZE: Publicity Plus package ($8,299 value)
Second Prize: Market Edge package ($4,799 value)
Third Prize: Elite package ($2,999 value)

You can get more details at this link.

So, here is my 140-character pitch with #Pitch2Win for my novel, RACE CARD:

Race wars erupt and the mayor’s white mistress terrorized after a visiting Chicano professor hits on her and is brutally slain. #Pitch2Win

So, what do you think of my pitch? And what are you waiting for? Get on Twitter or log in and pitch 2 win before March 27.

Sarcasm is lost on cats . . .

2011-03-20T13:23:00.000-04:00

Frodo, the wonder kitty

Our cat Frodo likes to jump up into the bathroom sink whenever we turn on the spigot to stick her paws in the water. It's a bad habit we indulge by, in fact, turning on the water for her. Then, to communicate the pain and suffering she's causing us by hogging up the sink, my husband and I say things like:

"We hope we're not getting in your way, Frodo, trying to brush our teeth."

Something clever like that. Clever, perhaps. Effective, no. Sarcasm isn't an effective way to communicate when your audience is a housecat.

Sometimes as writers we forget the audience we're writing for. Much as we don't like to be constrained by formulas--I don't write formulaic romance, I always say--if we want to be published, conformity might be a smarter course of action than writing something that isn't easily categorized, then wondering why it's not readily publishable.

As part of their course work for the MFA in Creative Writing at Wilkes University, some of former classmates closely analyzed books in different genres to observe the use of technique or other literary element such as character. Such an intense examination can be very useful in helping to discover how the book you're writing either conforms, betters, of verges too far afield from the body of work in that genre or sub-genre.

I find revision the equivalent of a mental triathlon. Yet, in order to make a couple books ready to shop, I'll need to consider what category into which they can and should be slotted, rewriting them and their queries accordingly.

Because sarcasm is lost on cats.

Do you want to read more of my cozy?

2011-03-11T06:43:00.000-05:00

Here is my entry in Sari's Blogfest: the first five hundred words of a cozy mystery called WHO KILLED TOM JONES?--a WIP at 31,500 words to date.

My question to blogfesters is simple--do you want to read more? If not, why not?

Chapter One

What would it take to make Ellie Tetzel swoon? A white puffy shirt and pair of bell bottoms? A swath of dark chest hair, a puffy shirt, and pair of bell bottoms? Or would she have to see the total effect—a crown of curly hair, a swath of chest hair, the ruffled shirt, the platform shoes, and the swinging pelvis wrapped in a pair of tight bell bottoms—before she felt fashionably faint?

Ellie asked herself these questions as she drove to the fairgrounds hosting the first Tom Jones Festival ever in Grippey, Pennsylvania, and the first she’d ever attended. Maybe the only such festival in the entire world. She didn’t know the answers to her questions, but she had a two-hour reprieve from the rest home granted by The Big Boss himself to find out.

“Daily or weekly pass,” asked the large sunburnt woman seated at the entrance gate, wearing a sleeveless dress and a straw sombrero. Patches of skin on beefy arms glowed from too much sun. The tender skin under her eyes blazoned red. The last time Ellie saw skin that red and scaly, she had been watching “Lizard Week” on Animal Planet.

Ellie expected townsfolk to turn up looking like freshly steamed lobsters at this event. After a long, cold spring, summer finally burst out in Grippey over the weekend. The first few days it actually feels summery, Grippeyans typically spend every possible hour outdoors—admiring their roses, riding their Harleys, tubing down “the Gripp,” as locals called it—just plain overdoing their exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

“How many contestants?” Ellie asked. In the universe of uniquely gifted men, were there enough really good Tom Jones impersonators to make a weekly pass worth the investment?

“Twenty on the dot,” the attendant said, wincing on dot as if plagued by a sharp pain between her shoulder blades. Peeling sunburn, likely.

“Are they any good?”

“Are they any good?” the gate attendant mimicked. “Would I be selling these here tickets if they weren't?”

“Weekly then,” Ellie replied, digging out her wallet, forking over thirty bucks—half a day’s pay. She had missed the first day of the festival, working second shift at the rest home. But what’s thirty hard-earned dollars compared to the chance to see Tom Jones? Not Tom Jones exactly, but darn good facsimiles, nearly two dozen of them.

Earlier in the day, she watched YouTube videos on her desktop computer during her lunch hour, with Mrs. Peachey, a Hand Rest Home resident, studying the video clips over her shoulder. Precious little difference between the best impersonators and the real McCoy, at least via YouTube transmission qualities.

“What a man!” Mrs. Peachey said, glued to the monitor. “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

(end of segment)

Weekend blogfest can help with a page of writing

2011-03-10T20:38:00.000-05:00

Sari Webb of Melbourne, Australia, believes that when writers need some help with their creative endeavors, the writing bloggerverse is more than happy to pitch in.

So when I learned about Sari's Blogfest, I knew I wanted to participate. I wasn't sure whether I would enter a first page of a WIP or the query to the same. But it seemed like a fine opportunity to get a little critical feedback.

Here are the guidelines to Sari's Birthday Love Blogfest:

Choose to enter either the blogfest or the competition or both.

To do the blogging part of the compfest, put your name and whether you are posting as a writer or reader in the form on Sari's site, "Confessions of an Aspiring Author." Write your post to go up on the 11th of March:

If you are a writer, your post will be something you need help with on your writing--an excerpt from you story, a first page, a query, information on setting--ANYTHING the writing bloggerverse can assist you with. Make it clear what the question is, and if you are wanting a piece critiqued, keep it to max 500 words.
If you are a reader (or a writer who would prefer not to ask for help on their blog), in the spirit of spreading the birthday love, post about one of your favorite books and why you loved it.

If you would like to enter the competition part of the compfest:

Follow Sari's blog.
On the weekend of 11-13th of March visit the blogs of the people participating, and comment/offer your help/critique on a minimum of three of them. Each additional comment/offer of help/critique gets you an extra entry into the competition.

Get one extra entry for tweeting about the compfest.
Get one extra entry for blogging about the compfest.
A post will go up on Sari's blog on the 11th of March titled "Entries into to the Share the Birthday Love Compfest." Use that post to tell Sari what you've done to get entries with links to blog posts & comments.
To keep things simple, and to accomodate people on the other side of the world, the 13th of March will end at 12am EST.

You can win prizes! See Sari's site for more details.

Happy Birthday, Sari, and thanks for organizing this event.

Hail, fellow Stylish Bloggers of the blogosphere!

2011-03-09T13:07:00.000-05:00

I'm nominating the following bloggers for the Stylish Blogger Award that I received earlier this week. If you wish to accept this award, here's what you are supposed to do:

1.   Thank and follow the person who nominated you (Scrivengale).
2.   Share 7 things about yourself on your blog.
3.   Nominate 15 blogs to receive the award and let them know you have done so. I've nominated seven--fifteen just seemed too overwhelming.

And the nominees are:

- Itkupilli for *Cute n Cool* Blog Stuff --some extraordinary blog backgrounds including plenty of free ones. (I wish I would have found Itkupilli's blog before I decided on a look for this site.)
- Shallee McArthur for Shallee McArthur -- besides having this cool astronomical/cosmos quality to it, her blog has been approved by a handsome betta fish (and I love betta fish!)
- Rose Cooper for Rose Cooper -- she is a middle grade author and illustrator whose blog stylishly illustrates that she knows her market.
- The Happy Whisk - I love the food photography on her site and the pizzelles in her header--very appealing and appetizing.
- Tabitha Bird for Through My Eyes - strong sense of Tabitha's personal brand throughout the blog.
- the blog of Author Michelle McLean - a non-fiction and YA author whose personal style is carefully integrated into her blog's appearance and content.

Mardi Gras/Carnivale kitty
pictured on Victoria Sayer's blog

- Victoria Sayer for green and white garden - an extraordinary blog showcasing stunning photos of plants, flower gardens, borders, little green nooks, and currently featuring a photo of a friend's black cat who's ready for Mardi Gras/Carnivale.

Congratulations, you Stylish Bloggers, one and all!

Moi? A stylish blogger?

2011-03-08T18:22:00.000-05:00

Grazie mille to UK Blogger Gail Crane, host of The Writing Bug for nominating me as a A Stylish Blogger. Here is my badge of honor, which I will proudly display in my sidebar shortly.

I take this award as a high compliment since I put a lot of time (too much) into creating the look of my blog. I came upon the precise look I wanted for my opera blog, Operatoonity, within a few tries. But not this one. I changed colors and formats and backgrounds upteen gazillion times trying to hit upon something that was a visual expression of my personality.

I also think the Stylish Blogger designation is acknowledging a writing and/or personal style. Again, I try to approach each post as an opportunity to help the world understand who I am and what's important to me.

In accepting this award, I must tell you seven things about myself and nominate fifteen other bloggers. Fifteen? Oy!

Anyway, here's seven things about me you might not know:

I write a different sort of holiday newsletter each year in defiance of the dreaded stereotypical Christmas letter.

I aspire to domestic goddesshood but am forever falling short because of my concave cheese soufflés and general slovenliness though I have a few housekeeping idiosyncrasies--I don't like my husband Bill to put his sweaty knitted cap on my embossed Lenox vase, even if it's without posies.
I got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush a week before my daughter was born. Yes, it has been cleaned since.
My husband is nicknamed Dangerman because he hates to take any kind of risk--physically or otherwise--and is constantly admonishing me to be careful and not to do anything stupid like fall off a sidewalk, which I have done.
In the pet department, I have an indoor cat Frodo who is more fierce than Scylla the six-headed monster from The Odyssey, a parade of outdoor cats by my basement window regularly, and many unexterminated pests who call our happy domicile home.
I sang the Beer Barrel Polka version of the Apostles' Creed during Communion Service in church last week--word!

Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign

I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the prevailing wisdom embraced by my people is the adage, “What’s the use of being Pennsylvania Dutch if you can’t be dumb?”

I will announce the fifteen other bloggers deserving of this award in the next post. I will be looking for people who are up-to-date posters and who have a certain . . . how do the French say it? Ah, yes--je ne sais quoi.

My bipolar BFF

2011-03-07T13:38:00.000-05:00

my toxic Inner Critic

Today I read an excellent post about writers dumping their Inner Critics. I could definitely relate to parts of the post by author Nina Badzin.

However, my Inner Critic has a different nature than Nina's. She's not merely a toxic friend. She's bipolar, too. One minute she hates what I'm writing, tells me my work isn't any good, that it will never be any good, and that I should stop wasting time writing and sew Christmas stockings for felines instead, which are at least cute and marketable and might make some money.

my exuberant Inner BFF

But the next minute, she high fives me because of a new opening to a book which felt great while I was writing it, like I was absolutely headed in the right direction, thanks to my exuberant Inner BFF. Until I showed it to others--like gatekeepers and beta readers--no one besides me appreciated the new story start.

One minute my Inner BFF goads me to query a book that's not ready because anybody will be able to see its glorious potential. The next minute, she's kicking me for sending out something that wasn't ready, not by a long shot.

How about your Inner BFF? Up one minute? Down the next? Do you have great writing days and writing days that stink like offal and barely anything in between?

I know I do. For me, one of the ways that I discount my Inner Bipolar BFF is blogging. Blogging allows me to contribute something to the discourse about writing and publishing. My posts aren't going to revolutionize the publishing world but neither can they be faulted for not having value. They have value to someone--if not a handful of readers, than only to me because they offer a chance to practice writing and articulate what I'm feeling.

(Those of you who feel so inclined may insert the threadbare cliche here: "And I'm SOMEBODY-- because God don't make no junk.")

I think the key to success is to level out--to hide the toxic friend's posts from your brain feed until you have acquired enough critical success as defined by others to unfriend your Bipolar Inner BFF. Or put the Inner Critic and the Inner Exuberant Cheerleader in a padded room and let them duke it out.

What do you think?

To share or not to share?

2011-03-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

Recently, I learned an acquaintance was writing a book. Excitedly, I asked, "Oh, what's it about?"

Is there a more glorious moment when someone takes an interest in your novel, wanting to know what you're writing about? Not for me. I'm more accustomed to people muttering, "That's great," their eyes glazing over like fasnachts on Fat Tuesday. My experience has been that people only want to hear about your books if you have a track record for publishing them. When someone asks me about my novels, I can't wait to try my pitch out on them. What if I get stuck in an elevator with an editor from Berkley Books, and she says,"What's your book about?" I have to be ready.

So, I practice my pitch. I write it and write it again. As I am wrapping up a book, I revise my logline. I've entered assorted contests--pitch, premise, first page, and novel-in-a-paragraph--seeking feedback on my pitch--my hot idea. You need as much practice as you can get. Not to mention, that sometimes by defining and honing your logline or your premise, you realize your book is getting off track in time to steer it back onto the rails.

"Sharing your pitch is important," said Rick Fellinger, a fellow Wilkes University Creative Writing program alum. "Do you know how many ideas for story content I've gotten when I've told people what I'm writing about?"

"I'd rather not say much about it," the woman said. "I don't want to give it away."

I had asked about her book--in earnest. I was giving her the chance I live for. But she didn't want to talk about it. I asked a follow-up question, and she disclosed a few vague details about her book.

Why didn't she want to talk about her book? Did she think I was going to steal her idea? That's not usually how it works. I can't write her book or anyone else's. Most people can't. Maybe that's why I've experienced very little theft of my intellectual capital despite participating in lots of online writing communities and contests. My god, you're lucky if someone in a position to advance your book sees your book, and its potential. Period.

Hillary didn't get my vote...
and I didn't get a column

Once I submitted an idea for a column to an online magazine with the headline, "Hillary or Bust?" the premise being a sardonic one: Society expected me to vote for another female Democrat because I was a woman, but Hillary wasn't my candidate of choice. The publication didn't accept my column--apparently they were voting for Hillary. However, in the very next issue one of the headlines of their articles was, "Hillary or Bust?" In almost six years of furious writing and submission, that's the worst case of idea theft I've ever experienced. And I never submitted a column idea to them again.

So, what do you think? Are you reluctant to share your writing? Your pitches? Your premises? Do you see the value in sharing them or do you think I'm being too trusting, which I've been known to be? Has anyone ever stolen your writing--premise, pitch, copy?

'Don't leave home without your pants on' (or how to get a free splash page!)

2011-03-03T13:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday during my lunch hour, I was squeezing in the requisite scroll through my personal Twitter account. One of Jane Friedman's (@JaneFriedman) Tweets caught my eye. It was a link to an article called: "Ten Time-Saving Web Tools." Time and money are my two nemeses (never spend either wisely), so I clicked on the link, began skimming, stopping short at tip #9:

9. About.me: Build a personal website in about 2 minutes. These days, not having a personal website is sort of like leaving the house without your pants on. But not everyone needs a rich portfolio site or a custom-coded blog. About.me makes creating a personal “splash page” a no-brainer. You just slap up a photo, include a short bio, and decide which social media accounts you want to link to (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pandora, etc), and you’re in business.

Two minutes? I can create a splash page in two minutes. I had at least ten minutes of lunch break left, so I registered and got started. Technically, the interface is so easy you can create a splash page in 2 minutes. It's the other things that take time, especially if you are a tinkerer/putterer like me. I have to tinker. I'm not a designer, so I come across arrangements I like by trying things out, which takes more time.
I had the perfect concept in mind for the background of my About.Me splash page:

I even tried executing it--until I looked at the other splash pages and realized my approach was lame-o.
Here's one (of many) I really liked (Notice the difference in approach):

Tip: Before you create your page, use the arrow key or the person icon to flip through others' pages so you can see what works. The folks already on About.Me have already done the heavy lifting in creating their pages. Use their know-how to your advantage. It will save you needless set up/tinkering time.

After I looked at others', I knew I needed a different photo than the one I had planned to use. So I searched my files and found one I thought would work. I wanted to warm it up since I looked a little washed out, and it gave me an idea for a color scheme for the entire splash page.

And here's my latest revision, available on About.me at this link:

my new splash page

So, what do you think? I'm still tinkering with the copy--tone, wording--and trying to find out how to add social media buttons and not just links. If I look too burnished in this pic, I think it might be my desktop monitor settings because I have nothing more than a healthy glow on my laptop at home.

Now, I feel as though this blog should go from cool colors to warm to complement the new Splash page. Don't be surprised if you see "Scrivengale" in shades of tawny by tommorow.

See! You don't have to leave home without your pants. Splash yourself instead!

A view inside with author Lenore Hart -- on her latest book

2011-03-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

Author Lenore Hart

I am pleased and proud to be interviewing author Lenore Hart, whose new historical novel The Raven's Bride (previously reviewed on this blog), was released last month by St. Martin's Press.

And what an interview! In answer to my questions, Lenore has shared a trove of great information giving novelists of every stripe and genre and student writers a primer on how to tackle writing historically based fiction. And every visitor who leaves a comment on this interview will be registered to win a signed copy of The Raven's Bride.

Before we get to the interview, here's some brief professional background on Lenore Hart:

Lenore Hart is a fifth-generation Floridian, holds a BA from the University of Central Florida, an MSLS from Florida State, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University. She has been a grant recipient and writer in residence for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Fine Arts Council, and a Visiting Writer at Flagler College in St. Augustine. She is also a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts at Sweetbriar College, and was writer in residence at The New College of Florida in Sarasota in 2005. She has served as the Visiting Writer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and also at Elizabethtown College, and also teaches in the graduate writing program at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which is where I met Lenore. She was my instructor in the killer class of all killer graduate classes, Fiction Foundations.

Welcome to Scrivengale, Lenore!

How did you decide where to start The Raven's Bride and on its frame-story structure? Well, I could’ve started almost anywhere, except usually when you’re writing an adult novel you don’t want to open chronologically starting from early childhood, as that makes it seem more like a kid’s book. I needed to cover that period though, so I opted for more of a flashback approach. My main concern was to somehow make the story of their financially impoverished, short, and in some ways tragic lives also be entertaining and funny and occasionally joyous. I wanted the finished novel to have a hopeful feel, not end on a tragic note. Quite a challenge, considering the real life facts. But there were positive facts also. They clearly loved each other very much. They did have some fun at times! I hit upon the idea of a reverse Orpheus/Eurydice tale, in which the wife, Virginia – who up till then had played more of a student/muse role – took the lead and came back to escort Poe to the “underworld,” instead of vice versa. So that comprises my opening and closing frames.

Hart's newest book

Did Poe’s being a gothic writer give you license or inspire you to include gothic elements in The Raven’s Bride?
Oh yes. There is of course the ghost story element – not only of the opening and closing frames mentioned above, but also throughout the novel. I portray Virginia as somewhat sensitive to the presence of the dead, from an early age. Later when the ghost of her brother Henry visits her, it is both a continuation of that theme and a foreshadowing of her own approaching mortality – but also a glimpse of the future and a nudging of hope and the existence of a world beyond the often-harsh one she is living in.

The language of the book (for one set in the early to mid-nineteenth century) was so accessible compared to other works written in a comparable time period. How did decide and then cultivate the style and cadence to your prose for this book? I used her voice, first of all, to narrate, and so had to take care not to make her sound like some 19th century scholar. She had to sound believable as a young woman and as a person of that era and of her experience and education level. Sometimes writers make a common mistake of thinking they must cram as much as possible of their historical research on a time period into a novel. They seem to forget they’re writing fiction and instead turn out something closer to a nonfiction history or an extended philosophical essay. The novelist’s job is not to lecture on the past, but rather to suggest with carefully selected details and then recreate place, people, and events in a series of vivid and well-integrated SCENES. Summary plays a part but is usually best kept to a minimum. Oddly enough, when a writer is true to the facts and also good at characterization and plot, it makes the past much more immediate and vivid and engrossing and REAL to a reader than even the most copiously detailed, date-pocked history text!

Was "Muddy," Virginia’s name for her mother, your invention or drawn from research? It was what they called her – Virginia and Poe. She was a surrogate mother to him, as well. His own died when he was two, and his father had long since abandoned the family. I also did not invent the other nicknames – “Sissy” for Virginia and “Eddy’ for Poe. Those being what family members called them; shortening names or inventing nicknames and endearments as close relatives tend to do. The amusing thing is that some biographers have seized on Poe’s use of “Sissy” as proof they had more of a brother-sister relationship, rather than the husband-wife sort . . . when actually it was simply a common family endearment.

Were some of your scenes—Virginia’s singing at the tavern, sighting the tame elk—sheer flights of fancy or were there historical underpinnings to these scenes? His sighting of the tame elk really happened, though there was no indication Virginia too was there when he saw it on the banks of Wissahickon Creek. However, It seemed a good incident to use in the novel since it was amusing, and I didn’t have many other opportunities to get them both outside, much less out in the country. The scene at the tavern was wholly my invention. I was looking for a way to give her a wider experience of public singing beyond those parlor performances for friends which we know about. And her not telling Eddy about her public debut is in keeping with restrictions of the times on women, and makes it seem logical that it escaped the biographical “record.” Other scenes I made up were the supernatural frame (of course), childhood ones with her little friends Juliette and Claudine, the ones with both music instructors, and the slightly racy scene with the Scottish proprietor in the music store. I figured for a poor aspiring singer, the proximity to so much sheet music (quite expensive back then) might easily serve as an aphrodisiac! In any case, even when I had factual events to portray, the demands of fiction necessitated that in order to convert these to full-fledged scenes I sometimes had to invent appropriate details of setting, dialogue, thoughts, actions, or of the senses, as biographies mostly do not include those.

Lenore Hart presenting with Roy Blount, Jr.
at the Savannah Book Festival last week

Virginia seemed wise beyond her years. Was this quality embued by you the writer or did you have bits of research that indicated the kind of woman she was? To have her shoulder the entire burden of narration of the story, this seemed quite necessary. Fortunately, my research and readings seemed to indicate that she was indeed intelligent, talented, and interesting enough to keep Poe fascinated with her for twelve years. And, although I do not go into great detail about her lessons, as I mentioned in the novel, he undertook to educate her as well. I can’t imagine having a more sophisticated and thorough literature tutor than Edgar Allan Poe. Besides his writing abilities, his critical faculties were prodigious; his sensibilities and inventiveness ahead of his time. While many other critical pieces of the day don’t hold up now, thanks to the tendency back then to only say nice things about other writers’ works in noncritical “puff pieces," Poe’s honest, sometimes scathing, but pretty much accurate reviews of his contemporaries’ works are still held in high regard today. They won him no friends while he was alive, though.

How much did you feel beholden to being accurate to the events of Poe’s life—was it constraining to know where your narrative needed to go or freeing? Initially I think I felt very beholden. Too much so, in fact. I was worried about insulting her, I think. My first draft was too focused on Poe still, since almost all the information I had was about him anyhow – very little about her – and also I did not agree with the ways many biographers portrayed her as silent, childish, nearly simple-minded. Children – no matter how young and unformed – eventually grow up. “Folks often mistake a quiet nature for lack of wits,” I have Virginia comment to herself, in the narrative. And yet it is of course often the opposite case. Anyway, I have a very good editor at St. Martin’s Press, and she told me flat-out: “There’s not enough about Virginia and too much about Poe. You have to get creative with events to give her a fuller life.” And so, given that challenge and (it seemed to me) the official permission, I set out to add more events, in a logical, “could have happened “context.” These were the interrupted music shop “seduction,” the tavern singing scene, and some more childhood scenes that featured her great desire to learn as much about music and voice as she could. I think these came off pretty well. And anyhow, it IS fiction, after all!

Did you murder any darlings in the writing of this book? Not nearly so many as I had to do in my previous novel, BECKY. I actually took out very little this time.

What was particularly challenging for you about writing this book? Aside from the initial hesitance to make up too much, as mentioned above, time was a real problem. I was teaching both graduate and undergraduate students at two different colleges at the same time, in Pennsylvania, while I actually live in Virginia. So I had to compartmentalize teaching and writing more so than usual, and had a very regimented schedule in which I would write for about five or six hours starting early on Wednesday mornings every week. In this way I turned out a complete first draft in two semesters – about eight months of work.

Do you write the story and then heavily research it to ground it, or did you start with lots of research? I start out with research, and read quite a bit. I read all of Poe’s biographies and many of his letters and other documents available thanks to the good work of the various Poe museums. I already had a three-page outline and three chapters (about thirty pages). The book was sold to St. Martin’s in advance, before I actually wrote it. However, I know better than to get carried away with research by now. I don’t try to pin down minute details till later. Things change as you write a novel, and allowances have to be made for unexpected plot twists or ideas that, in execution, turn out not to be so great after all. As I write I might look for a detail or date or missing name or event, but I never let that stop my progress on the first draft. That way lies madness! You can always add more details later, so it’s best to press on and not get bogged down in minutiae. The fact is, I dread the first draft process, and I LOVE revision – it’s so very satisfying, like cleaning a long-dirty window. Gradually you begin to see, more and more clearly and in startling detail, the fantastic view outside!

There are two pages of reading group questions at the end of the book? Who saw this as a reading group book first, you or your editor? My novels are known to attract the notice of reading groups (should I call them reading groupies?) perhaps because I like to tackle themes that have a history but still resonate with readers today, and also because my latter ones have focused on some well-known fictional or real people. We are still essentially curious monkeys, and I think secretly or not so secretly want to know the “real” story behind famous people and events.

Though you were named for Lenore in the poem "The Raven," what things about Poe did you discover (or relearn) in writing this book? After I began, initially I was a bit worried about the age difference. I know what the knee-jerk reaction to such a relationship would be now, of course! There was Jerry Lee Lewis and his young cousin, a few decades ago . . . we are immediately suspicious now of anything to do with an older guy and a very young woman. So I was worried briefly that I might’ve signed up for something I’d later kind of regret. Though women sometimes married quite young in the nineteenth century, Virginia was a bit too young even by their standards. But there was their dreadful financial straits, and then the family situation (the early-orphaned Poe had no other real family by then and badly wanted to keep this one). So it seemed clear to me the original (unused) marriage license had been for formality’s sake, so Virginia and her mother could decently move to Richmond and live with Poe in the same boarding house and be supported by him and not raise too many eyebrows. And I felt that they finally married almost a year later because an eternal engagement would also look odd. But I believed by then they probably did not consummate the marriage until much later, and that was an intriguing plot element to deal with, also! This hunch felt confirmed when I came across a mention of Poe making a comment to a contemporary that they had not lived as husband and wife until Virginia was several years older. As a Victorian and a Southern gentleman, he could have hardly said much more than that about it!

What’s next? Now I’m working on a new Young Adult novel which is set in the present in Florida. It’s a bit complicated to coherently explain at this point, but the first person narrator is a sixteen-year-old girl who was driving when her father was killed in a car accident, and the plot involves love, death, cult religion, and string theory. It will be a nice change from copious historical research! After that I’ll either write another historical novel, most likely, or a contemporary murder mystery set on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. I have the beginnings of each already in hand.

* * *

See, I told you she gave a killer interview. Lenore even includes references to one of my favorite operas La Cenerentola by Rossini (based on the Cinderella story) in The Raven's Bride, and it is fascinating to hear it discussed as a popular work in the context of the book. Given the pace at which Lenore Hart writes her books, perhaps this time next year we'll be discussing her next release. And don't forget--anyone who leaves a comment on this post will be registered in a drawing to win a signed copy of The Raven's Bride.

When someone hands you 'The New Yorker' . . . a cautionary tale

2011-02-27T15:12:00.000-05:00

December 6, 2010 issue

When someone hands you a copy of The New Yorker, do you:

A) Slip it into your tote, feeling smug, because you can whip it out at any time, and say, "Well, I have the December issue of the The New Yorker," and bask in the glow of approval sure to follow;
B) Stuff it in your briefcase, so you can take it out on the train to New York and impress other commuters;
C) Think who you can pass it along to when you're done reading it; or
D) Read it right away--the sooner, the better.

If I were asked this question in a public setting, like on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," I'd select D. Final answer.

Alas, if I'd only done as much.

I'd planned to read it one week night when my husband was working, but I wrote a new blog post instead.

I intended to read the issue passed along to me by Nancy McKinley, a member of our writing group and a faculty member in the Wilkes University creative writing program, en route to a press conference at the Metropolitan Opera, representing Backtrack, a site I review opera for.

But I just didn't get around to it. I'd just received a new BlackBerry and busied myself entering contacts into it and practicing using the different features since this was my first smart phone. Meanwhile, The New Yorker sat in my briefcase, wedged in between my opera book and my writing group excerpts to critique. Never cracked it by the time we reached Penn Station.

Flash forward, one hour and thirty city blocks. I'm standing in the Met lobby, waiting to enter List Hall, talking to a photographer I'd just met who was also covering the Met's 2011-12 season announcment. She was asking me what kind of writing I do, and before I could answer, Gay Talese approached us.

Gay Talese

"Gay!" she said. "How nice of you to come!" (or something like that). Then she turned to me, "You know Gay, don't you? An opera lover from way back."

I didn't know Gay. But I wanted to know him, this dapper man who'd just come in from the blustery cold, donning a cream-colored fedora, universally respected and world renowned for his non-fiction writing.

Since I've done PR for about 15 years in Lancaster County and have invited a finite universe of people to news conferences over time, most of whom never show, I didn't know what to expect when the Met holds a press conference. A crush of people? Probably not. I suspected an outfit like the Met would frontload information to all the really significant media in advance. I didn't expect to meet anyone of consequence attending the event. I didn't expect to meet Gay Talese.

I muttered something like, "Nice to meet you," slobbering sycophantically. And faster than you can say, "Placido Domingo," Mr. Talese began chatting up another circle of attendees.

Marina Poplavskaya, from The New Yorker

What makes life worth living? All the ironies we encounter. For in the briefcase I was holding in my hand which contained the December issue of The New Yorker, featuring a in-depth article called "Travels with a Diva" about soprano Marina Poplavskaya, written by . . . . Go ahead. Guess.

Gay Talese! How did you ever guess?

Had I read Mr. Talese's fascinating account of traveling to several venues around the world with a mercurial soprano who made a name for herself by replacing a few more famous divas who pulled out of projects, I could have said something intelligent like, "I so enjoyed your feature on Ms. Poplavskaya. I always wondered what it was like to be an opera singer on the cusp of certain fame."

But I hadn't read it. So, I couldn't say anything about it. How many other chances will I have to meet Gay Talese, to make some kind of impression? I'm guessing not too many. But here's the life lesson:

In my gut, I knew I should've read that New Yorker cover to cover, a lot sooner than I'd gotten around to it. Did I listen to my gut? No. I put it off and put it off, blowing a great opportunity to make a literary connection. Why I did this, I don't know. Once I actually sat down to read it, I was riveted to the article. I wrote a book featuring a baritone breaking into the international opera circuit. It confirmed my suspicions that sudden fame can do a head trip on opera singers. It was an excellent piece, and I feel like a smarter person having read it.

Moral of the story: When someone hands you a New Yorker to read (whatever that New Yorker might be, esoterically speaking), don't worship it or genuflect or tuck it into a sacred corner of your expensive brief case.

Read the damn magazine.

Do you 'do' audio books?

2011-02-18T13:53:00.000-05:00

"I don't do audio books," the woman said in a tone of voice implying audio books were a scourge on humanity. Even my sainted mother, who has macular degeneration, considers audio books as selling out. She intends to hang in with large-print books as long as she can.

Audio books have been around a lot longer than I've been listening to them. I used to listen to NPR shows like "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" because it made more sense to listen to news than music or books for my job as the chief information officer at a university. Then I got a new job, one with a longer commute, one that didn't require being up-to-date on current/world events. That's when I decided to listen to audio books instead. Now, I'm not saying the NPR news shows don't have value--they do. But as a writer of fiction, the more books I can know by reading them or listening to them, the better for me.

I didn't say anything to the woman who doesn't do audio books in defense of them. If you knew her, you'd know it was a hopeless cause trying to convince her otherwise. (She doesn't do Harry Potters books either.) Let's hope she doesn't do blogs.

I don't know about you, but there are only 24 hours in my day. I have a full-time job. I have two blogs--this one and an opera blog. I have WIPs and books I'm polishing to shop. I review live opera events on a regular basis--which involves traveling out of town. I can't afford to not to use every means at my disposal to expose myself to other books.

The value of audio books

By listening to audio books during my commute, I'm taking in roughly 25 more books a year than without listening to them. That's a significantly higher level of exposure to other writers' work. I'm hearing how other writers:

use exposition, flashback, description
develop character through dialogue
build arcs for their characters as well as arcs for the book
end chapters on hooks
sustain suspense and elevate stakes

What novels and story collections have I listened to in the last year?

Here's a few titles off the top of my head:

Drama city by George Pelecanos
The year of secret assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty
Man gone down by Michael Thomas
The other Boleyn girl by Philippa Gregory,
Ghost a novel by Alan P. Lightman
The senator's wife by Sue Miller
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The beautiful miscellaneous by Dominic Smith
Our story begins [new and selected stories] by Tobias Wolff,
People of the book by Geraldine Brooks
Blasphemy by Douglas Preston
Water for elephants by Sara Gruen
All we ever wanted was everything by Janelle Brown
Walking in circles before lying down by Merrill Markoe
True evil by Greg Iles
Run the risk by Scott Frost
Last night at the Lobster Stewart O'Nan
The invention of everything else by Samantha Hunt
The time traveler's wife a novel by Audrey Niffenegger
Fired up by Jayne Ann Krentz
Oh, my stars by Lorna Landvik

my current audio book

Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

Right now I am listening to In the moon of red ponies by James Lee Burke. It's so well done, I don't want to turn off the engine. Instead I linger at my destination a little longer just to hear more. The narrator is gifted--one of the best I've heard--bringing out all the nuances in Burke's writing.

The downside of audio books

The only downside is that I can't say I read the books, strictly speaking. "I heard that book," sounds dumb. So, I say I listened or was exposed to them.

The bottom line? I have the potential to be a richer writer, not to mention, better read, because of audio books. I do them and plan to keep doing them, thank you very much.

When nightmares come...

2011-02-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

Heidi looked a lot like this German Shepherd

As I was watching the Westminster Kennel Club show tonight and the night before, a terrible memory gripped me. I didn't know what to do with it, other than write about it.

My aunt and uncle who lived in Gerritsen Beach had three German shepherds. Back in the 70s, this section of Brooklyn was a rough neighborhood. Teenage thugs used to steal cars and burn them in the open field across the avenue, among other illegal pursuits. My aunt and uncle had the corner lot on their block and a fenced-in backyard, which offered lots of running room for the dogs--Lucky, short for Lucifer, and Heidi who mated and had a pup, Wolfie.

The three of them made a fiercesome pack of sentinels. Standing outside the front door upon arrival as a schoolage child, I'd hear their savage guard-dog symphony, and become terror-filled, afraid to go inside. However, once their master, my uncle, admitted us to their home, the dogs were as accepting of us as if they'd grown up with us.

Lucky was a beautiful boy--white and black, not tan and black like many shepherds. Beautiful, regal, strong. Heidi was the traditional tan and black colors. And Wolfie was almost all black.

My sister and I used to sleep on the sofa bed in the living room when we stayed with them. I remember Wolfie jumping up there and sleeping with us all night--and he was the biggest of the three.

Beautiful, loyal, dutiful dogs.

A couple years after our last visit, I learned that somebody in the neighborhood fed the dogs something tainted with poison and killed them all.

I can't imagine someone poisoning my dog. I cried when I heard the news. I might have even gotten sick--I can't remember. I still tear up when I think about it as I did tonight. Why would someone poison innocent dogs? Because they barked a lot? Dogs bark--that's what they do.

So, now this memory, which I hadn't considered for years, has filled my head. I can scarcely think of anything else to write about.

I ask you, fellow writers. What do you do with searing memories? Do you write about them to assuage painful memories and hope they resolve themselves and leave you alone? Do you exorcise the most painful memories in your writing? Or do you let them remain the substance of nightmares?

'Raven's Bride' marries history and pathos, lore and love

2011-02-13T09:48:00.000-05:00

Book: The Raven's Bride
Author: Lenore Hart
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (New York: 2011)
Reviewed by: Gale Martin

As someone who appreciated Edgar Allan Poe's stories from my first reading of them as a teen, I was intrigued by the premise of Lenore Hart's newest book, The Raven's Bride, a fictionalized account of the short life of Poe's young wife, Virginia "Sissy" Clemm.

I'd even heard Hart share vignettes from her book (a work-in-progress at that time) during faculty readings at Wilkes University's creative writing program, finding her scenes entertaining and memorable. Who wouldn't appreciate fly-on-the-wall glimpses into the master mind of the most haunting stories ever published: "The Tell Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Black Cat"? My only misgiving before reading the entire work was this: Could a story centering on Poe's wife--not the tormented artist himself--intrigue over the span of a full-length novel?

Unlike Becky, Hart's novel immediately preceding The Raven's Bride based on Mark Twain's fictional character Becky Thatcher, Hart had the added challenge of rendering an accurate accounting of a real person's life while telling a robust story from his wife's point-of-view.

Poe aficionados will be pleased to know that Hart remained scrupulously faithful to history's record of the lives of Edgar ("Eddy") and his wife "Sissy," including many of the expected milestones of Poe's writing life--the sales of his first and most well-known tales and poems; his relocations up and down the East Coast, to Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York; and even his reputed drinking binges, as he both chased and reclaimed a career in publishing until two years before his death.

Hart accomplished all this while crafting a story that surprised, entertained, and chilled, employing some of the conventions of Poe's own gothic tales. Yes, it is part ghost story that captures rather than strains the imagination. Wholly, it is a consummate love story that begs the reader to consider whether true love ends with death--or only begins there. Unrequited love at first, then romantic love, then tainted love.

But The Raven's Bride is is too intricately crafted to be just a love story. Poe and Virginia's love is too complex, tinged with sacrifice and slavish devotion, foreboding martyrdom and doom.

Virginia was only thirteen when Edgar proposed. She herself contributed no single work to the annals of American literature. She never worked--it wasn't seemly--she only sang and played pianoforte a little and therefore never contributed to their household income even though they nearly starved to death more than once. Considering all these variables, Virginia Clemm was still remarkable and worthy of Hart's novelization. Had Virginia Clemm not devoted her life to her cousin and husband "Eddy," he might have extinguished his own flame at even a younger age than he did, and the world wouldn't have the body of work that generations of readers have loved because it's always "been there." Some later writer would have had to invent the detective story because Poe wouldn't have been around to do it.

He was a tragic figure riddled with tragic flaws, who staved off death from alcoholism or suicide because of the abiding love of his adoring cousin, then spurred by a co-dependent (by today's standards), desperate need to keep her alive once it was clear that consumption would claim her life at a young age.

Here is a passage taken from the middle of the book, when Edgar takes Virginia on what he hoped was a pleasant outing, but they are caught in a rainstorm on the way back, which dangerously aggravates her consumption and nearly kills her. Eddy, stricken with guilt, goes on a two-day bender, before returning to her bedside, dirty, reeking of alcohol, and desolate:

He sank to his knees by the bed. "I couldn't bear to see you lying there, it was happening--you were dying again." He laid his forehead on my hand like a child. He was my child--the only one, I dimly understood by then, I would ever have. (p. 209)

As historical fiction, the overall plot of The Raven's Bride is readily accessible in any biographical blurb of Poe published in print or online. Since Hart is a master of her craft--storytelling, I don't want to spoil the unique literary experience for the reader she contrives to set up the book. Let me just say that this handling of the gray, misty world between life and death, Clemm's and Poe's, between heaven and hell that Hart wraps around the historical record, envelops the reader and doesn't let go until the last page and constitutes some of the most surprising and satisfying elements of The Raven's Bride.

Author Lenore Hart

I've read books where accomplished writers become so bogged down in their historical research that they lose the story. This is not that kind of book. Hart's research illuminates her characters and their plights and elevates the overall reading experience. The reader has a front row seat to many of Poe's literary triumphs and his most crushing defeats. It's the kind of book that makes you feel smarter while you're reading it, conjuring the feeling that you are have been initiated into a select or insider's group having read it--you now know more about Poe's life and times than lots of other people in the world.

Because they suffered so much privation, Poe and his child bride did not have a happy life. But Hart has given voice to many happy moments with such color and vivacity that you are buoyed along at times while still able to take measure of the downward spiral of their entwined lives.

If you want to feel as though you are much smarter than the average person and love that happy-reader glow of superiority, as I do, which can be derived from reading certain kinds of books, you'd better rush out and buy The Raven's Bride (available February 15). A Brazilian publisher just bought the rights to the book, so it won't be long before potentially 180,000,000 readers are just as smart as me and you.

My rating of The Raven's Bride:

Four out of four noggins

Want to learn more about Lenore Hart and her work? Visit her website.

Writers beware . . .

2011-02-12T16:56:00.000-05:00

This isn't a post about disreputable agents or scammy vanity presses. No, what I'm warning you against, fellow writer, is a more dangerous entity than simply a bad agent or a pay-to-publish outfit masquerading as a legitimate publisher.

I'm talking about über-bossy writers. Have you encountered the know-it-all-writer before? Maybe in a forum or some kind of online writing community? (They love to hang out online.)

These super-bossy author-wannabes have an answer for everything: how to write, word choice, diction, what your query letter should be like, what should and shouldn't be in a synopsis. They always relay this information with the utmost confidence. They never temper their advice with phrases such as, "you might consider," or "it's only my opinion."

Instead, they dole out the advice like gravy at a firehouse turkey supper, using phrases like, "don't ever," "you better," "change," "fix," often with a snide, superior tone.

Once in their childhood someone must have told these bossmeisters, "You're not the boss of me." And they were so taken aback, they set about being the boss of everyone else as an adult.

Through the creative writing program at Wilkes University, I met many published authors and few of them ever forced their opinions on your writing. If you define successful writers as published ones, then these successful writers were more likely to use inquiry than directive to allow you to discover the strongest answer or direction.

A lifelong reader, once I decided to pursue creative writing, I wanted to succeed. So badly, at times, I put myself in a position to be bossed around in a few writing forums. I wanted to tell them to take their bad advice and shove it up their arses, but I didn't.

I wish I were more of a vigilante by nature, but my sense of justice isn't that refined. When I encounter bossy writers in forums, generally I avoid them rather than confronting them. Then I go write a piece on my writing blog about how destructive those bossy know-it-alls can be and that less experienced writers who are eager for information should steer clear of them like cruise ships heading for icebergs.

Bertrand Russell said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubt."

Avoid the cocksure types. Turn to those instead who encourage you to develop your own faculties and judgment as a writer rather than relying on theirs.

Now, I have not personally been impacted by a bossy writer type lately--not for years. I'll no longer give them that latitude with me or my writing. I won't put myself in that position.

But I see them on forums occasionally, like on the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award discussion board. They're so certain of the advice they dispense to noobs. Yet, they themselves don't advance in the contest and year after year, remain unpublished.

Now, keeping it real, in terms of my novels, I'm unpublished, too. However, I don't ram my advice down other writers' throats either. I put my opinions out there while encouraging other writers to develop the confidence to make their own best choices, to learn to trust their gut--not mine.

I wish more amateur writers would do the same. Then I wouldn't have to write blog posts encouraging other writers to beware.

Do dumb questions make others writers look like Dumbos?

2011-02-09T14:01:00.000-05:00

Recently I participated in a TweetChat with a (very) published author who is now also a literary agent. Though it was more than generous of the author/agent to spend an hour plus answering people's questions, I had to excuse myself from the chat early because more than a few would-be authors were asking really, really, really (did I mention really?) dumb questions, and I could no longer contain my irritation.

In this instance, the question that sent me signing off from the chat was something like this, "When I'm ready to shop my manuscript, should I just send an agent my first 50-100 pages and a synopsis in an attachment?"

There is abundant information on the Internet about what to send, when, to whom. A-b-u-n-d-a-n-t! With a smidge of research even someone intellectually challenged and/or completely self-absorbed (sometimes it's hard to pinpoint the source of their Dumbo-ness) can find out within minutes what the agent/editor wants and that you only send them what they want. Go find them on their website or AgentQuery. Take some initiative. Investigate they want and send them what they want.

Why does it bother me when other writer-wannabes blurt out Dumbo questions?

Maybe because I take care when I'm given a chance to them questions. They're busy. They get tired of answering the same questions. They are looking for signs of intelligent life.

And you, lazy-writer-who-could-find-out-your-answers-anywhere-with-a-modicum-of-research, aren't helping the rest of us. Of course, maybe they aren't hurting those of who have done the research and found the answer to softball questions as much as I think they are. Maybe agents/publishers can sniff out those who have done their homework and are serious about being published versus those who are, well, not.

What do you think? When other writers do Dumbo things, do you think agents and publishers than think we are all Dumbos who'd just as soon blow water out of our trunks and think things like, Gee, I've never written a book before but I think I'll write one today?

Disclaimer to today's post: I happen to really like the character Dumbo and the movie of the same name except for the scene with the delirium tremens. No malice is intended toward either.

Need to nudge your shorts? Here's the best writing contest around . . .

2011-02-04T12:46:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me how I stumbled onto the Helen Whittaker Prize writing contest three years ago because I can't tell you. What I can tell you is that if you need to create more pieces to submit (short fiction and/or poetry), you won't find a better impetus than the Whittaker Prize sponsored by The Write Idea Forum.

Now I always entered the fiction category only. Some writers do both. Since the contest lasts for nine--count 'em--nine rounds and because I am not a poet, not even in my mind, I've only entered the short fiction category twice--in 2008 and 2010. If I could have entered in 2009, I would have, but I was in the thick of my MA in Creative Writing classes and couldn't squeeze it in.

What's so special about the Helen Whittaker Prize?

The fact that it is a long-running competition makes it exceptionally meaningful and engaging compared to one-off contests, even annual one-offs. This contest consists of nine rounds, each lasting two weeks, from March 12, 2011 through July 16, 2011. Each round you compete against the same slate of writers for the top spot. Each round someone emerges a winner. So, you may not win the whole schmear, but let me tell you from experience, winning a round is a BFD! If you enter all nine rounds, you’ll have nine new pieces of writing in your back pocket by the middle of the summer.

I've had the privilege of competing with many of the same writers for two years now, and you won't find a more capable group of people who are surprisingly supportive, mature, and fair-minded for writers competing against one another regularly. They are also a very accomplished lot, publishing their stories, books, and in anthologies left and right. I feel as though I've made a lot of worthwhile friends in the writing world because of this competition while improving my ability to write shorts. Not to mention, you find out what you're made of--as a writer, as a person. This contest has allowed me to grow in both areas.

What really defines the Whittaker Prize contest, however, are The Write Idea site adminstrators, Donna Gagnon and Doug Pugh. They are hard-working and responsive. They are consummate professionals though running this contest hardly constitutes their livelihood. They do it because they are interested in preserving and growing a strong writing community. And on top of all that, they pat you on the back if you deserve and hold your hand if you need it (writerly egos and all that).

How to sign up and other details...

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 18 who writes fiction or poetry in English. There are two categories: fiction and poetry. Writers may enter one category or both categories. Anyone wishing to participate in this competition must currently be a member of TWI or register and be accepted as a member of the forum but it costs nothing to register for the site.

There is an entry fee of $30 CDN. Writers may enter BOTH categories for a fee of $50 CDN. Fees may be paid via PayPal to donnagee at vianet.ca or email donnagee at vianet.ca to make other arrangements (i.e. cheque or money order). What it boils down to is $3.33 per round, which isn't much considering that it involves a good deal of administration and that any judges worth their salt merit reasonable compensation.

Who are the fiction judges?

Donna's outdone herself this year obtaining capable judges. They are:
EVA STACHNIAK was born in Wroclaw, Poland, and arrived in Canada in 1981 on an English scholarship to McGill University. Her first short story, "Marble Heroes," was published by the Antigonish Review in 1994.

Her debut novel Necessary Lies (Dundurn 2000) tells an immigrant’s story of national and personal betrayals, silences and lies. Its characters – caught in the web of love and betrayals – grapple with their dramatic past that takes them from Nazi Germany and Communist Poland to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first years of democracy in the former Eastern Europe. It was first published in Toronto in 2000 (winning Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award) and in Poland as Konieczne Kłamstwa (WKTS 2004). Her second novel Garden Of Venus (Harper Collins 2005) re-tells a story of an extraordinary woman, Sophie Potocka, courtesan, courtier, countess, and confidante to tsars, queens and kings in late 18th century Europe. The novel has appeared in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Serbia, Ukraine and Poland. In September of 2011 Doubleday Canada and Bantam Books USA will publish her third novel, The Winter Palace, which takes place in 18th century Russia and is based on the life of Catherine the Great.

Eva lives in Toronto. More information at http://www.evastachniak.com

WILLIAM MEIKLE is a Scottish writer now living in Canada with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in 13 countries and eight languages.

He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in many magazines, newspapers and professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION reached #2 in the Kindle SF charts.

He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com.

Is it hard work? Yes! Is it worth it? Yes! Hope to see you there.

It's not how you start; it's THAT you finish!

2011-01-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

I learned something invaluable in the course of my five-year foray into creative writing: the very best thing a writer can do for herself is finish her manuscript.

Sounds academic, right? But none of the things that have happened to me thus far--the opportunities for exposure, my first offer (and subsequent offers) of literary representation, multiple requests for partials and complete manuscripts, the opportunity to attend a Pitch 'n' Shop conference and pitch a book to four editors would have come about without a finished manuscript.

Whatever it takes, I'm telling you, finish that manuscript. Nothing starts until you do.

Last year, as a requirement for my M.A. in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, I finished my third manuscript. And you've got to believe me--it wasn't all good, and it sure wasn't easy researching, writing, and revising a 93,000-word manuscript in ten months. I'm not the fastest writer, and I edit as I go. In spite of those handicaps, by the first week in January, I shipped off a completed manuscript to my faculty mentor.

Days later, I sent it off to a book club in Lancaster for their January read.

Was I a fool for agreeing to be that month's read for a local reading group so soon after finishing the book? Maybe. I see the flaws in it now, but I didn't have time to address them at the time. But I was absolutely right to push myself to finish. I'm grateful to the Wilkes program and to my friend who lined everything up with the book club, for pushing me to finish.

Did these things help? Absolutely. Make no mistake, a finished manuscript gets you in the game. Yes, I get rejection letters, but each rejection brings me closer to an acceptance. Yes, I'm still polishing that same manuscript that I finished a year ago but all I need to focus on is revisions. That means I can submit it to manuscript competitions, including this year's Amazon Novel Breakthrough Award (ABNA)--which I did.

I have three more unfinished manuscripts, each with about 30,000-40,000 words--a young adult novel, a cozy mystery, and women's fiction and ideas for two more.

The best thing I can do for myself is embrace one of those incomplete manuscripts and finish it. And if you haven't finished your novel, you need to as well. You MUST. You owe it to yourself and those publishing ambitions of yours.

Set a word count for yourself. Add a deadline with some teeth to it (because you are trying to enter contest or a challenge among friends.) And tell as many friends as you can what you are doing and enlist their support.

I'm kind of stuck on revising a manuscript right now, feeling like it's sheer dreck. But I'm going to embrace its dreckiness and finish the damn thing because when I revise it, I know I can send it to a publishing house who is waiting to see the revision.
.
Because it's not how you start, it's that you finish.

There's no substitute for confidence

2011-01-23T08:04:00.000-05:00

At a friend's request, I helped her ready a query letter for her police procedural. I offered to send her some sample queries I collected in the past couple years that helped me improve my ability to write a query letter. I suggested she read query letter for The Notebook written by Nicholas Sparks that made quite the impression on me when I first read it.

Now I know that The Notebook is the last book my querying friend would pick up and read. Me, I loved the book and cried my head off during the movie (but that's another story but not for this blog). I referred her to Sparks' query letter because it is the best example of a query letter I've ever read that says, "I am very confident about my work and this book and my ability as a writer. I believe in this book!" without ever using those words.

He shares some research

Sparks knows what his book is about. Without being arrogant, he tells the potential agent why his book is special. And he did his homework regarding its marketability. He mentions that there aren't many commercial books that have grappled Alzheimers as a theme.

He added a P.S.

He even adds a postscript that says the following:

"P.S. Because 22% of the people in this country (40+ million) are over 52 years old and 4.5 million people suffer from Alzheimer's, this book is unique and marketable to a wide audience. In addition, at 52,000 words, it is short enough not to be cost-prohibitive to most publishing houses."

He added a P.S.? Who has ever seen that before? Not me. I've never heard anyone say, "Never add a P.S. to your query." But I've never added one either.

He broke with convention

But I have heard experts advise: The query letter should NEVER exceed one page. His query letter was more than a page. I've always tried to keep my query letter to one page. Why? Because I didn't want to flout convention. See, I was more interested in being seen as one who makes nicey-nice than one who whose goal is foremost to sell her book.

Because I'm not Nicholas Sparks, I'm not intending to write a two-page query anytime soon. I'm not suggesting that you dash the rules either. What I'm suggesting is that you consider selling your book, your premise, yourself--unabashedly and unapologetically.

Confident not arrogant

Whether you like his work or not is immaterial. What matters is the confident tone of his query. There's a world of difference between confidence and arrogance. Nicholas Sparks couldn't have been more confident about the product he was selling. Is it any wonder he's a bestselling author.

No apologies

So, whatever you do. Please don't apologize in your query letter; don't even give off a whiff of apology about the book you just spent untold hours researching, writing, editing, revising, writing a synposis for, etc. You owe it to yourself to present your book as the jewel you believe it to be, that you want it to be. Your integrity as a writer demands it.

Think and grow published?

2011-01-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

I am the co-facilitator of a group for professional women in family business--it's part of my job to moderate this forum. One of the most exciting developments this year is that I had the chance to bring in a relationship doctor--a seasoned therapist--to provide counsel to these women, to help them realize more success in business and in their personal lives in 2011.

At our first meeting, Rita (the therapist) mentioned a book that profoundly influenced her called Think and Grow Rich by Dr. Napoleon Hill.

Her assertion took me aback. She didn't seem to be the kind of person who would be motivated to choose wealth over other things in life. But I trusted her so implicitly, I thought I should check out this book. As it turns out we had the book in our business library. And my coworker ordered it as an audiobook through Interlibrary Loan, handing it over to me today. I wasn't five minutes into the book when I realized that Meredith Wilson must have been spoofing the book in his musical Music Man, whose main character Dr. Harold Hill uses the "think" method to teach schoolchildren to play musical instruments.

After I stopped laughing about that, I settled in to really listen to the message of the book. And I now understand that Napoleon Hill wasn't just trying to make people wealthy. He was trying to help them realize their dreams, whatever they may be. Besides, I'm allergic to wealth it seems, destined never to have it. As long as I have enough money, that's sufficient for me.

But I do have one magnificent obsession--something that I really want to accomplish--and that's publishing one of my novels. I haven't gotten far enough into Think and Grow Rich to know how to do this other than hearing the message that you'll never realize your dreams if you give up at moments when you feel most defeated.

Maybe it was providence I had no other book to listen to on the way home and popped in Think and Grow Rich. Other writers can appreciate when I say I've been feeling very defeated lately. Someone's recent post about not being able to get your books published being a sign that you should stop writing has been cycling through my head lately like a bad eighties song. I'm at one of the lowest points I've ever experienced in my five-year writing career. Yet, today I heard some advice reaching up from the late, great Dr. Napoleon Hill's grave that success means not giving up, to keep trying, bettering yourself, and your craft. And the strength of that admonition that you simply can't give up socked me in the gut.

I'm going to listen to more of this book. And as I do, I'll share more insights from it on "Scrivengale." This is the most upbeat I've felt about my personal quest to be a published author in days--maybe even months.

New connections in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award pitch thread

2011-01-18T18:39:00.000-05:00

I made a few connections over the last several days that may be critically important to the success of my Amazon Breaththrough Novel Writing Award entry. I submitted my book pitch for review on the pitch thread and several people reached out and gave me some quality feedback as a result.

When the first critique came in, I was surprised that someone had taken on my book and pleased with the detailed feedback. The reviewer made several good points, and I agreed with him on a few counts. Then another came in and then a few generous affirmations for my pitch(es). I ended up pitching two books and asked reviewers to choose which one would fare better in this contest, and got the advice I was seeking on that point, too.

After I got my first bit of feedback, I realized I wanted to be a good literary citizen in return and read a few pitches. When I found one I could offer constructive suggestions for, I posted a reply, outlining them.

It's amazing how powerful human connections can be--even using a keyboard and an Internet connection. Once one is forged, others are sure to follow.

Not sure you want to drop in and comment on the blog you're reading? Don't think you have anything valuable to impart regarding another's writing? Think again. Connections beget more connections and connectedness than you could ever imagine.

What are you waiting for? Start connecting today.

(I was actually supposed to post something last Tuesday on the theme of New Connections for blog hop. I'm a week late but then I'm almost always late to the party)

"Mice Capades" -- my blog contest entry

2011-01-16T19:01:00.000-05:00

I've entered a contest to win a one-year contract to be the blogger of record for a popular consumer magazine. The entry required you to submit a 200-word (tops) entry about a real-life, everyday event and a bio, to include mention of family members and pets.

Some of my friends in the blogsophere know I go back at least five years as a blogger. At one time, I hosted as many as five blogs concurrently. Why? You guessed it. I really love to blog. So to be paid to blog would be a dream come true.

What follows is my 200-word sample blog post called "Mice Capades" and requisite author bio. Let me know what you think. Yes, I want the unvarnished truth.

Mice Capades

Walt Disney made them huggable. John Steinbeck made them heroic. In reality, mice are creatures of terror who carry parasites, gnaw through wiring, and make you feel like a crummy housekeeper.

Whenever I hear a house mouse scurrying across my spotless kitchen floor, I race to the cupboard, wrangle into latex gloves, and wait until said mouse ventures out from underneath the range. Then I pounce, grabbing it by its rubbery tail and flinging it off the deck of my two-story home, yelling, “Sayonara, sucker!” From my fingertips to a crash landing in the back forty. A landing from which no mus musculus ever returns.

Buy a cat, you say? I have a feline named Frodo. Like Scylla, the mythological she-devil, she’d tear out your liver just to amuse herself. And that’s what mice are to Frodo—amusement. She bats them between her paws like she’s having a game of pinball on the floor-you-could-eat-off-of. Once she actually managed to kill a mouse— when the rotten thing died of cardiac arrest before it was “Game Over.”

Heaven knows why I pay a pest control service $200 a year. Maybe I’d have better luck if the exterminator wasn’t named Mickey.

Author Bio

I am mechanically challenged wife, mother of one, and full-time marketing director, fueled by endorphins from my Curves workouts. I aspire to domestic goddesshood but am forever falling short because of my concave cheese soufflés. My husband Bill, aka Dangerman, who may have consumed one too many failed soufflés, is constantly admonishing me to be careful and not to do anything stupid like fall off the recovery boards during my sessions as Curves. In the past, I have been known to fall off a sidewalk and hurt myself.

I have a college-age daughter, who lives in Vermont, who is brilliant and well-educated, both of which have nothing to do with economic self-sufficiency. In the pet department, I have an indoor cat Frodo, a herd of outdoor cats who parade by my basement window regularly whom I have cleverly dubbed, "The Cat Parade," and many unexterminated pests--mice, spiders, stink bugs, box elder bugs--who call 37 Briar Crest Manor home.

typical PA Dutch hex sign
My eighty-three-year-old mother is one of my best friends. I take her to church on Sundays because I’m worried she’s going to kill herself one day, fighting over the best spot on the communion rail.

I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the prevailing wisdom embraced by my people is the adage, “What’s the use of being Pennsylvania Dutch if you can’t be dumb?”

Thanks for stopping by. Wish me luck.

Ten quick craft tips learned in online writing groups

2011-01-14T13:29:00.000-05:00

Today I'm sharing ten tips I've picked up from other writers in online writing groups or from their critiques of my work. I don't do online groups anymore (that's a whole other post topic).

But I've never forgotten some of things I learned from other writers I encountered online.

To make your prose more graceful, in a series of items, put the longest item last. Example: wide eyes, a pert nose, and lips as tempting as a ripe peach.
In describing someone follow the natural path of the eye (unless of course your viewpoint character has a strange optical tic) from top to bottom, bottom to top, near to far or vice versa. Example: She wore pink lip gloss, her curly dark hair fell to her shoulders, and a low-cut cashmere shell showed just enough cleavage to distract any man she happened to want something from.
Lighten up on the -ing verbs and the participial phrases. Example: Crashing into the Christmas tree, she began spinning around the room. It would be better to say: She crashed into the Christmas tree and spun around the room.
Drop "began" and "began to" phrases wherever possible (see previous example). People don't "begin to." They just do.
Most adverbs can and should be written out of your prose. Look for -ly words: hauntingly, hurriedly, calmly, briskly, etc. Only keep an adverb if you'd pay $100 for it.
More than one or two adjectives (modifiers) weakens rather than strengthens the writing. It dilutes the power of all the others. Example: The sad, tired, old woman rested on the park bench. Now none of the modifiers--sad, tired, or old--makes an impact.
Description can be too lush. If you describe every detail in a scene, there's nothing left for the reader's imagination to fill in. Painstaking description can be painful. Example: The quarter inch gold plated locket on the 20 inch 14-karat gold chain with feather weight links was perfect for a cameo about the size of a small child's middle fingernail. Aren't you in pain already?
Adjectives, if used, are always stronger without qualifiers. Forget the really happy's, very well-off's, too beautiful's.
Most writers have habits or idiosyncracies such as overusing one or two words. I slip the word "just" into many sentences. Now I use the find function in word processing software to take them out.
Words are diamonds. Showcase their beauty by sloughing off the carbon around them. Or as one of my writing teachers put it, "Words are stones. Feel the weight of them." Diamonds. Stones.You get the idea.

If you have a quick craft tip to share, feel free to leave it as a comment. And thanks to a whole host of online writers who shared your wisdom with me earlier in my career.

A Four-Noggin Nod to 'Glass Cases'

2011-01-12T12:14:00.000-05:00

I've been on Twitter for almost a year, following agents and publishers left and right, to hear what they're buzzing about, what excites them, frustrates them. And to gain snippets of their wisdom, 140 characters at a pop.

In interviewing author Margo Candela this weekend, I was struck by her contention that writers who want to make a career of it need "someone in their corner." Via Twitter, I've come to realize that some agents are in some writers' corners. Some publishers are clearly encamped in other writers' corners.

For Sarah LaPolla, for giving many writers a hand up!

But there's one agent who's in every writer's corner--Sarah LaPolla--recipient of a hearty Scrivengale four-noggin nod!

She's an associate literary agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. and a writing enthusiast. She loves talking about books, publishing, pop culture, and promoting up-and-coming authors. She also writes articles that publishing wannabes's would be wise to check out such as this essay, The Obvious Symbolism Police, which was singled out as A Top Ten Fiction Article of 2010.

She showcases novel and memoir excerpts, personal essays, and short stories on her blog, "Glass Cases." All genres of fiction are welcome. Just about the only thing she won't showcase is poetry. (Sorry, to all my poetic friends.) In the past year, she's featured the work of fellow Wilkes writers Rick Fellinger, Amye Archer, and Anne Henry, to name a few.

Today she is featuring the first five pages of RACE CARD, a suspense novel I've been working on for almost three years. And this is not the first time Sarah's featured my writing. She posted an excerpt from my opera novel some months back, which got some very heavy duty feedback, for which I'm grateful.

"Glass Cases" is a wonderful outlet for getting exposure and valuable gut-level feedback. You will find out PDQ whether people are taking a shine to your work or not. Being on "Glass Cases" is similar to experience a someone picking up your book and reading the jacket and the first few pages to decide whether they like it, and want to take it home with them, or not--only virtual.

How to get your writing on "Glass Cases"

Send your work to Sarah's attention at glasscasesblog@gmail.com. Pieces should be no more than five pages (size 12 font, double-spaced) and pasted in the body of the email.

Also on her blog are guidelines for querying Sarah. If you are seeking representation, you'll want to check those out to see if your work is a fit for her interests.

Salud, Sarah! Grazie mille, "Glass Cases."

Dishing the dirt with author Margo Candela

2011-01-11T14:53:00.000-05:00

Margo Candela

Hard work, professionalism, and a bit of luck. Owing to those three things with particular emphasis on hard work, Margo Candela is breaking out of the pack of contemporary female authors and carving out her niche by writing modern women's fiction--smart, clever books--the old fashioned way.

Born and raised in Northeast Los Angeles, Candela moved to San Francisco to attend college where she majored in journalism, a background that shines through in her attention to detail. She grounds believable characters in authentic surroundings and circumstances so finely hewn that the reader is immediately drawn into the story.

Her first three novels, More Than This (Touchstone, Aug '08), Life Over Easy (Kensington, Oct '07) and Underneath It All (Kensington, Jan '07), are set in San Francisco. More Than This was a Target stores Breakout Book and an American Association of Publishers national book club selection at Borders Books with Las Comadres.

Her latest, Good-bye To All That (Touchstone, July '10) which also earned a Four Noggin "Scrivengale" review, is her first set in her native Los Angeles and was the only novel picked by Los Angeles Magazine for its 2010 Best of L.A. list. Other buzz for Goodbye To All That includes these industry citations:

"Captures the ups and downs of Hollywood in her appealing send-up of the cutthroat side of the industry." -- Booklist
"A cunning wit create[s] a frantic atmosphere and a near breathless momentum as the story barrels toward an ending that's anything but a focus grouped happy fade-out." -- Publishers Weekly

Besides being a workhorse, Margo's also a generous writer, ready and willing to share information to benefit others about her experience en route to as well as after publication, and she has intentions to publish more than just novels--short stories and screenplays.

Welcome to Scrivengale, Margo. How would you characterize your writing voice? Is it your hallmark?
I write funny. Rather, I aim for funny but with a tinge of something more serious. My main goal is to entertain readers while also dealing with issues like divorce, job loss and family obligations, but in an irreverent way. It’s taken me a long time to be able to accept the compliment that I am a funny writer, so I fully embrace it now. A writer to should write to her/his strengths and humor is mine.

Candela's most recent book

What was your greatest challenge in writing this book (or publishing it, revising it--wherever the challenge arose)? Good-bye To All That went through a stressful five week revision that left me curled up in a ball for a few months after I turned it in to my editor. At the same time, having drop-dead deadline made me focus on what needed to be written. There wasn’t any time for tangents or musing, I figured out what I had to be done and I did it. Later, when I got the manuscript back for a first pass from my editor, I was able to enjoy the story itself and add little bits and bobs there to draw out the humor.

Would you categorize this work as chick lit? What are your feelings about it being labeled as such? I’m okay with my novels being called chick lit or women’s fiction. I tend to lean more towards women’s fiction because I don’t write traditional happy endings. That being said, I think Good-bye To All That is my most chick lit book to date and I’m happy to have made a contribution to the genre. It’s a genre that’s out of favor right now, but I know my writing voice fits nicely into that category.

You and a few hallowed others (Jennifer Weiner, Lauren Weisberger) have risen from the ashes of a genre which received a death sentence somewhere around 2008. How did you accomplish that? That’s good company. Thank you for including me in with those two fabulous authors! But on a serious note, I’ve gotten more than a few funeral notices for chick lit. If I’d bought a black dress each time, my closet would be very depressing. As someone who reads and writes chick lit, I’m hopeful that readers and publishers will still support the genre and the women who write it. Whatever New York wants to rebrand it as is fine with me, I just want to write.

What would you consider your first big break?
I owe my career to an Internet search and insomnia. True story! My editor was up one night and clicked on my rinky-dink webpage after a random search. She sent me an email asking me to submit and, within a few weeks, called me up with an official offer to publish my first two novels, Underneath It All and Life Over Easy. When she moved to another house, she took me with her and she edited More Than This and Good-bye To All That.

How long did it take to find representation?
Currently, I don’t have an agent, but I have a very short list of who I’m interested in working with. Finding an agent, any agent, is the toughest part of the whole operation. It’s a very tricky endeavor as you’re putting your career in someone else’s hands. I’ve worked with three agents and one literary manager and so far haven’t found “The One.” This is surprising to me as I’m a very monogamous person, but what I’ve learned is that a bad agent is worse than not having one at all.

Querying agents right now is tough, more so than usual, because of the state of publishing. It might take twice as long to find an agent, but knowing what I do now, I’m positive it’s worth the wait to sign with the right one.

What's the best advice you can give to writers who aspire to be published?
The most important factor in surviving, if not thriving in publishing no matter the genre, is to have someone in your corner. I’ve gotten supremely lucky with my editor. She’s shepherded all four of my novels and believes in my writing. The rest of it is hard work and acting like a professional writer. I treat this as a job and business, even though the writing part is purely creative. Nowadays, authors have to wear many hats and some might fit better than others, but being a self starter can only help. A little luck doesn’t hurt either.

Will we be hanging with Raquel in another book? Soon?
I’m currently working on a short story series, and I’m sure Raquel will pop up. I’m excited to see what happens to her and what kind of mess she gets herself in and how she’ll get out of it. The one thing I do know is she won’t ever again have to wear another pair of control top pantyhose. Cross my heart.

* * *

By the way, if you, dear readers, have any follow-up questions for Margo related to this interview, she is more than happy to answer them in the comments. So ask away. (See, I told you she was terrific.)

Writers and Social Media--Get On It!

2011-01-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

This week, one of my former instructors from the Wilkes University Writing Program, Christine Gelineau, emailed me prior to the next residency for current students. (Alumni are always welcome on the community email forum--a neat feature of the program). Christine, an accomplished poet, and playwright Jean Klein teach the "Business of Writing" module, a series of upper-level craft classes that I found invaluable.

my opera blog

Christine asked if she could include a mention of my opera blog and networking successes at establishing my credentials and building an audience for my manuscripts even before they've found a publisher. She also was also interested in sharing any comments about the value/drawbacks of Twitter to student writers and the vast would-be published.

If Christine thought it might have value to graduate students in Wilkes creative writing program, perhaps it may have value on Scrivengale, too. Hence, this post.

Building an audience for a book

Here's a little history on my attempts to integrate social media with creative writing. While I was finishing my novel with opera as a backdrop (Spring Semester of 2010), in February of 2010, I established a blog called "Operatoonity: Everything you never knew you wanted to know about writing," which logged 12,000+ visitors since then. At the same time I set up two Twitter accounts, one as me (Gale_Martin) and one as my Operatoonity persona. There are lots of Twitter tools to help you quickly target people by interest, and I began following nearly everyone I found with an interest in opera: performers, houses, fans, conductors, and composers, thereby giving me a ready pool of people to interview for the blog. Through Twitter I also learned about opera from the content links others posted and about specialized contests such as Washington National Opera's songwriting contest, which I ended up winning first place (and an embarrassing number of cool prizes.)

Writers on Twitter

This October, as I began other manuscripts with themes other than opera, I realized I needed a writing/publishing blog, a stepping stone to an author's website, so that's when I established Scrivengale. I believe it was agent Janet Reid who said if fiction writers don't have a website they needed to at least have a blog or she'd be hard-pressed to consider their work.

Blogger has made so many improvements in their platform that a Blogger blog is a good stand in for a website because of all the pages you can add. Just by visiting other writing bloggers' sites, you can get a great overview of how these pages can be used to flesh out and plump up your blog. If you don't believe me, take a look at this writing blog, "Unedited," hosted by Jennifer Daiker, which has all the robustness of a website because of the extra pages she's created in addition to the home page.

If you have a writing blog, and you're not on Twitter, or not sending your content to Twitter, you are missing an invaluable opportunity to take advantage of built-in syndication features. The technology is there to Tweet your posts--even on Wordpress--and you are silly not to avail yourself of it. A quick review of my Scrivengale stats proves Twitter is the highest ranking single URL sending traffic to this blog and one of the top referring sites.

If you blogged back in the day (circa 2006-2008) as I did--sans Twitter and before the Facebook revolution--when you posted and prayed to the Google Gods that people would somehow find your blog, then you know how invaluable the social media are to bloggers developing followings and readers today.

As I told Christine, there are hundreds of agents, editors and publishers on Twitter that you can follow. If you are an unpublished, unagented author, you're lucky--very lucky--if they follow you back. However, I had an editor for a major publishing house follow me back because I asked her a thoughtful question after one of her Twitter posts.

Even if the glitterati from the publishing world aren't following you, you can always ask them questions by posting a mention to their attention, by using their Twitter user name preceded by @. If they check their mentions and deign to respond, you're in luck.

Regardless of whether they follow you or not, lots of agents and editors post links to their blog content--filled with pearly advice for would-be authors. And they dole out lots of industry tips, 140 characters at a time, too. Sometimes they make spur-of-the-moment offers to answer questions on a certain topic, read partials, and even whole manuscripts if you are willing to make a video, for instance. Even then, they may not always follow through on Twitter "promises" made. So be wary of that aspect of Twitter, too, that it encourages more impulsivity than regular email would because it has its own psychic energy or momentum. That energy is one of the great things about Twitter. Just don't fall prey to the impulsivity it allows.

Be professional

I read a hilarious essay about shopping for e-books while drinking heavily. While such a bald-faced confession seemed to buoy this memoirist's image, writers need to be careful when putting content out there, and not to say things you later regret, that tear down the personal brand you've been trying to build, one Tweet at a time. Once you launch your sentiments into cyberspace, they're gone--irretrievable--but perfectly able to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune times because Twitter content never dies.

I can sack my reputation with
one irresponsible Tweet?
Inconceivable!

Right now, there's a lot of information circulating on Twitter about writers acting unprofessionally, and that if they say anything to run down an agent or an editor, they are a tight network growing tighter all the time, and their gaffe will eventually come back to haunt them.

Yes, social media is making the world smaller, one byte at a time. You could conceivably sack your chances to be published with one foul Tweet flown in front of hundreds of publishing professionals. But the increased connectivity can work to a writer's advantage if you're smart and strive to be professional.

Unless of course, bad behavior is part of your writerly persona (like @BadBanana) or you're channeling an investigative reporter or something. Then by all means, skewer away.

Three wishes for the Creative Writing Genie

2011-01-08T19:50:00.000-05:00

O, creative writing genie of the lamp. You have come to grant me three wishes?

Shazam-a-lam-a-ding-dong!

You'll be happy to know that I've given this some thought--roughly four-and-a-half hours driving to Wilkes University and back--and here's what I wish for.

I wish that one of the publishing gatekeepers I queried (agent/editor) would have an epiphany (a visit from three ghosts would be okay)--that people like to laugh when they read books--and, as a result, find potential in my comic novel about the opera guild.
I wish that I could find enough time every day to finish three more novels and complete rewrites to another this year.
I wish for more discernment, to know when to change my writing based on the feedback of others and when to listen to my own instincts.

How about all of you, dear readers? What would you ask of the CW Genie?

Say Hello to ‘Goodbye To All That’: A Book Review

2011-01-05T19:58:00.000-05:00

Book: Goodbye to All That
Author: Margo Candela
Publisher: Touchstone
Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2010

On the sidebar of her blog, “My Brain, My Blog,” Margo Candela combines the covers of her four books into one book jacket with the caption, “You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll have a good time. Trust me.”

Margo Candela

I haven’t read Candela’s other books. But I can say while reading her 2010 release, Goodbye To All That, that I laughed out loud more than once, winced in disappointment for her sympathetic and pathetic characters several times, and without equivocation, had a wonderful time. Now I know I can trust her to deliver on that all-too-elusive good read, just like she promised.

Candela is clever, often outrageous, and fills this book with characters who revel in being themselves, whether it's genuinely self-effacing, philandering, tender-hearted, laughable, or merely fiercely gutsy. Twenty-something Raquel Azorian is one such viewpoint character. Candela plops the reader in her head from the first line of the novel. It’s so much fun being there—hanging with Raquel—you have to wonder why Raquel’s still single and why so many people work so hard to remove her from her job throughout the book. She’s an executive assistant at Belmore Corporation, a gigantic Hollywood moviemaker, and is much smarter and more resourceful than the position allows her to be. For instance, she instinctively knows when to open her mouth and when to keep it closed. (We all should be so wise.)

So, it’s entirely believable that she finds herself at a professional crossroads before too long, having outgrown the job she’s in. Should she use everything she’s learned at Belmore combined with her strong intuition and common sense to make a power play and get that promotion she richly deserves? Of course, she should. The reader’s been rooting for her since page one when she confesses to the reader that LA doesn’t have real weather and that the only storms you’re likely to find are on a soundstage.

Though Candela grew up in Los Angeles, this is only her first novel set there. Based on Candela's rendering of her hometown, LA has so little real character—teeming with shallow people with shallow goals whose commitments are thinner than the skins of Hollywood starlets—that it has a sort of anti-character—an abundance of it. If you’ve always believed Hollywood to be a cut-throat, miserable, empty place to live and work, this novel will not dissuade you of that opinion. At the same time, it’s exciting to be a fly on the wall of a swanky club or a posh hotel in West LA, and Candela masterfully shuttles the reader from a Hollywood party to a Bel Air mansion to police station at two in the morning a without sacrificing a single beat of plot or character.

Goodbye To All That is a very funny novel with a cast of complex dysfunctional characters. One of the things I really like about Candela’s humor is that it only sounds bitchy when coming from a character who’s been painted as a Class A bitch. And the novel sports a few of them, both female and male varieties. Raquel gripes about her off-center, self-centered mother whom she calls both Mom and Marlene, depending on her mood, but behaves with more compassion than her mother deserves. Why? Because its part of Raquel’s nature to do the right thing. Even when doing the right thing means forfeiting a level of personal happiness that everyone’s entitled to, to some degree.

If I had to categorize it, this book falls under the recently maligned sub-genre of chick lit, which was even dubbed a dead genre by more than a few literary agents. If chick lit is dead, either someone forgot to tell Margo Candela, or she’s the author who’ll resurrect it with smart, entertaining books like Goodbye To All That. With any luck, Candela will give readers the chance to hang with Raquel in another book, holding down a different but equally outrageous Hollywood job before too long.

Review: four out of four noggins

Gave myself a B-. Thanks, Janus!

2010-12-29T10:40:00.000-05:00

Hard to believe that we are only days away from ringing in 2011. Thanks to learning about Janus in adult Sunday school almost two decades ago, the two-headed god for whom January is named, I now can't look ahead to the New Year without reflecting on the past year.

I began this blog in October by introducing a framework for setting and realizing writing goals introduced by Lori A. May. I thought it was fitting to revisit my goals--which should be done four times a year.

GOALS FOR 2010-11:

Revise SHAKER mss and resubmit to [certain publisher]
Complete three of five WIPs novels
Have 4 quality journal credits to add to my clips
Make some money from my writing
Meet new writers, editors, agents
Be a better Literary citizen
Improve my visibility as an author
Further my craft and push myself as a writer
Have a fiction manuscript accepted for publication
Cultivate and deepen opera network in preparation for book tour

Based on a framework, I devised those goals in mid-July. So, six months later, how much have I accomplished?

I added 6,300+ words to one WIP. (Goal #2)
Finished the first draft (except last chapter) to another WIP--adding 20,000 words. (Goal #2)
Added 40 posts to this blog since October and as many followers. (Goal #7)
(Goal #8).
Following and seeking out new writers, editors, and agents on Twitter daily, to build my online network (Goal #5)
I completed and requested new interviews with opera companies, directors, and composers. (Goal #10)
I did one reading since revisiting my goals in October. (Goal #7)
Completed TWIt Write-a-thon on October 30 to benefit my local library and participated in NaNoWriMo(Goals #6 and #8)
Read two e-books on craft and writing to publish (Goal #8)
Pitched new WIP (nearly complete) to agent who passed on other manuscript. (Goal #9)
Revised and submitted a short story for publication. (Goal #4)

So what grade have I earned for the fourth quarter of 2010? I give myself:

I didn't revise that all important manuscript that one publishing house offered to revisit. I didn't revise any other short stories to submit to journals. The most significant accomplishment was the work on two WIPs--which is good work. I made no money as a writer--though I did submit a resume to our continuing studies department so that I could be considered for teaching writing classes to adults.

How about you? What grade would you give yourself for your literary/writing/publishing endeavors in 2010?

Long on words? Short on words? A Twitter/Blogger mashup challenge.

2010-12-27T10:23:00.000-05:00

Have you ever known someone who's too long on words? I'm thinking of a professional writer who's too long-winded. Once I sent this person a story. Imagine my surprise when said editor didn't reduce my word count--they added words. Filler words and phrases. Here's an example:

If my caption says something like, "George Washington (left) joins Benedict Arnold at the nation's first Fourth of July party," invariably, after this person is finished with it, it says something like, "George Washington (at left) is seated with Benedict Arnold (at right) in observance of the nation's first ever Fourth of July holiday get-together."

Precise or fussy?

Now, precision is critical with this person--in all their endeavors. So what if more words were added, trying to be precise? No BFD, right? In my view, it's easy to streamline professional writing and important to do. Usually, this kind of writing doesn't sizzle. Why add filler words? Like medicine, professional writing should go down easily. It behooves all of us who write professionally to be as clear and concise as we can.

By contrast, another professional writer I know tries not to be long on words. It goes against her writing training. She even credits Twitter for forcing her to say things concisely. For those who don't use Twitter, each Tweet needs to be 140 characters or less--that includes spaces between words and punctuation.

At first, Tweeting takes getting used to. But like anything, you learn by doing. Plus, there's plenty of models of clever writers whose Tweets have substance or wit or irony to inspire new Twitter users.

A Twitter/Blogger mashup challenge.

Today, to celebrate saying more with less, let's practice brevity. What was the best novel you read in 2010 and why? Write your answer in the comments but limit yourself to 140 characters or less. (You have to include the why.) I'll start.

Favorite novel was The Ginseng Hunter (Jeff Talarigo). Not only moving, it taught me how the North Korean regime uses and hurts its people. (139 characters)

Your turn:

Meeting writing triumphs and disasters just the same

2010-12-26T07:17:00.000-05:00

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same . . . "
--an excerpt from "If" by Rudyard Kipling

The writing life has many ups and downs.

The writing life is often a string of contradictions: positives/negatives, acceptances/rejections, "I like your work"/"I hate your work." You get a story published or win honorable mention in a contest. The same week another piece gets roundly rejected or formulaically dismissed.

At present the only entity with more ups and downs than a writer's career is the stock market.

What was that lyric Mary Chapin Carpenter used to sing: "Sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you're the bug."

Writing is subjective (though it is curious to me how many people think something is good only when others like it, too--but then the same claim has been made about opera singers. People only recognize the quality of the performance when they recognize the name).

For all their expertise, ribbon dancers are
judged subjectively, too.

Writing to publish is a lot like many other art forms from the visual arts to dog shows to rhythmic gymnastics (those ribbon dancers in the Summer Olympics?) and is unlike racing and lots of other sports contests. Writers' work is subject to expert assessment, including mechanical standards that must be met. Assuming you've demonstrated a modicum of competency, your work will advance or fail based on someone's subjective opinion.

When writers are rejected, because writing is such an extension of oneself, often we take it hard--too hard. I know I have. But I keep trying, keep getting back on that horse. Because there's no way I can get a book published if I don't get back on that horse--no matter how many saddle sores I've accumulated.

It really distresses me when writer friends/acquaintances have taken rejections overly hard, threatening to tear up a manuscript, tell a gatekeeper like an editor or agent something that might compromise any future acceptances, or give up writing all together. I can see it so clearly that they are over-reacting to one person's subjective opinion (much less clearly when it's me.)

If writing means that much to them, I've often asked myself, how can they consider giving it up so easily? Or perhaps writing doesn't mean that much. Is getting published more meaningful? Should getting published always be the overarching goal to any writing?

I believe the desire to have your work published needs to be commensurate with your desire to write. Writers who say they are only interested in writing for themselves have always struck me as disingenuous.

So, if you're like me, you want to be a published novelist, and sometimes you fall into a black hole--like if someone else gets published before you but you've been at it longer? When mired in self-destructive cycles, writers should stay far away from their work. Let the bad feelings sink in. Feel the pain, so you can let it go, but don't go after your manuscript. Give it a day, a week, a month or six months. I promise you, you'll feel differently. I've given myself a restraining order from my latest manuscript. Otherwise, I'm sure I'd kill it because it hasn't gotten picked up yet, and I can't yet revise it objectively.

Just so you know, I'm not suggesting you stuff your feelings. We're allowed to get down on ourselves--it's only natural. Most of us do at some point.

But give yourself permission to get back up. And fix your eyes on the prize, and keep your head out of the clouds. Believe in yourself but don't get carried away with yourself.

On fewer occasions, I suppose because many of my writing friends aren't published, they are tempted to let themselves become complacent with that occasional endorsement.

Writers striving to be published have to learn to weather the bad and the good. Some of you might be thinking, did you just say, "Weather the good"? What's to weather when things are good, you may be thinking. However, if old Rudyard Kipling has any cred, he contends that triumph and disaster are both impostors.

So, what happens to the person who "meets with triumph and disaster just the same"?

A product of his day, Rudyard Kipling says, "You'll be a man, my son." With apologies to Mr. Kipling, we can consider that his use of the word "man" applies to "women," too, that he was merely using a gender convention of his time.

I'll go a step further in suggesting Kipling's couplet applies to all the writers among us--if we "have ears to hear."

You can be too close to what you write

2010-12-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

I won’t argue with the guideline that you should write what you know. However, writers need to consider that sometimes they can be too close to a personal experience to write about it well.

Lack of distance can be a trap that snags up storytelling, pace, plot, and character development. In other words, it can sabotage the book in your head you’re dying to and trying to write. It can and often is the dealbreaker.

Writers feel an unnatural and ultimately limiting responsibility to faithfully represent the fictionalized account of something that really happened. They provide too many insignificant details–many more than the reader needs. They fail to use the old flash forward–jumping the time frame of the story–because flashing forward is not true to one's precious memory.

Sorry to be the bearer of painful caveats, but slavish attention to memory isn’t always a writer's friend.

I learned this lesson firsthand in writing my first book–a fictional account of a midlife reckoning. It was gratifying for me to recount every detail of the viewpoint character’s meltdown for the reader. It was my life, I felt violated, and I was writing this book to eke out some poetic justice for myself–my motives were pure. It was a formula for an unsuccessful novel that would have held little interest for most readers.

In my valiant effort to recreate the characters in this autobiographical tale faithfully, I limited my storytelling ability
.
Did I learn I from my mistake? Absolutely. In fact, I approached the same theme again in a short story a few months later, this time taking quite a bit of poetic license with the protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist even became a ghost, coming back to haunt the man that drove her to self-destruction. I changed up lots of small details. And it was very freeing. I felt unshackled from my own history and finally able to tell a story, and I did much better job of it. It won a short story contest, and I made my first ever money from writing creatively–at 3 cents a word, that story earned me $90-some bucks.

Now that I’ve committed the I-was-too-close-to-the-story-I-was-writing offense, I recognize it in others. When I point it out, however, people most often balk at the observation.

“Well, I have to say what really happened,” one writer said, when I told him he really didn’t need to share every single detail of his motorcycle ride across New England. He disagreed with me. He won a battle--he stuck to his guns and didn't change a word of his text--but lost the war because he lost a reader.

This topic segues nicely into control, discretion, and writing about something very painful with a healthy amount of emotional distance, which is necessary for exquisite memoir or autobiographical fiction. Some writers can only learn this lesson the hard way. At the time I wrote my first book, I didn’t have a circle of writing friends as resources. I had a burning passion to pour out my story, my keyboard, and my unflinching memory. In the instance of autobiographical fiction, I should have flinched a little.

If you're writing autobiographical fiction, take more license than you think you should with the story. Be brave enough to elllipse details that don't advance character or story. Chances are, you're way too close to it to write about it well.

A page turner, please, and a viewpoint character with quirks

2010-12-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

I like quirks in characters. In my favorite cozy mystery series created by the late Lawrence Sanders, private investigator Archie McNally has many of them–from unusual clothes items such as colorful berets to telling you what he eats at every meal to pet sayings such as, “One never knows, do one?”

I think quirks can elevate characters above stereotypes, too. Though I’ve met some unusual people, I can’t say most of the people I know are quirky. (But then I wouldn’t want to read about them either.) Whenever I’ve met someone in real life with a quirk, it’s always stuck with me, and some of my family members and friends have found themselves in my stories. For instance, my older brother is very anal retentive about his pepper. He has seven kinds of pepper, each in its own mill, clearly labeled, and arranged on his stove top from mild to hot. Well, I couldn’t let that juicy little item go by. Of course I gave one of my characters, an FBI agent, some anal retentive qualities and used those pepper mills in his kitchen, causing the protagonist to say, “Seven mills? Sounds like a tax rate.”

Anyhoo, if you don’t know particularly quirky folks whose habits you can infuse into your characters or if you suffering from brain drain and can’t think of any qualities particular different or downright strange with which to imbue your characters, then you need to hit some sites that role players use. Role players have identified tons of quirks on their websites and forums, more than you could ever think of if you sat down to come up with quirks and had an endless supply of paper, two free hours, and a Red Bull.

For example, I spent less than a minute on a Dungeons & Dragons forum called 1001 Character Quirks and found lists of tasty quirks such as:

keeps a bag filled with little jars of dirt from each nation he’s been to;
insomniac;
contradicts everyone about absolutely anything even the pointless things;
constantly catches bugs and keeps them as pets in containers, isn’t aware of their need for sustenance and is deeply upset when they die;
always steals people’s stories and doesn’t keep track of which story came from who hence occasionally tells a stolen story to the person he stole it from; and
has an obsession with people's ears or other body part.

Then of course there’s a blog post called 100 Character Quirks You Can Steal From Me. And many, many other rich sources you can find within minutes on the Web.

Now, of course, you can’t stuff all these quirks into your book characters. But if you carefully choose one or two, you may end up with a more novel novel than you envisioned.

Take a writing lesson from the B-I-B-L-E

2010-12-14T20:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I told another creative writer who'd stopped in my office that I'm ruined when it comes to reading books.

He stared at me quizzically.

I went on to explain that now that I've studied and aimed to be a practitioner of creative writing, I can no longer experience a book the way I used to--innocently, wholly, naively. Now, anything I read is interpreted through the gimlet eye of the writer searching for craft.

If no longer reading thrillers for sheer enjoyment weren't bad enough, now I can't even participate in readings from the Bible during a church service without examining the craft evident in the text.

Maybe that's because the Bible is so well crafted, especially when it comes to the use of fresh, figurative language.

Last Sunday, the first reading was from the book of Isaiah, chapter 35. Look at the first several verses through the lens of a creative writer:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

(skip to verse 5):

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy,
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

First, I really responded to the personification in the passage: desert rejoicing; crocus rejoicing with singing; the land shall be glad.

Next, I love the comparisons that are fresh and unpredictable: the lame shall leap like a deer; the tongue of the speechless sing for joy; burning sand shall become a pool; haunts of jackals shall become a swamp.

In the book of Isaiah, the writer takes us places we don't expect to travel. Forget the lame merely walking. No, they're going to leap like deer! How powerful is that? Plenty powerful.

The the speechless won't just recover their speech. They'll sing for joy.

The burning sand doesn't cool down. No, that's not potent enough to express what God's chosen people can find once God leads them out of exile. The sand must become a pool to be impactful.

The language "the haunts of jackals shall become a swamp" is evocative. A few well-chosen nouns (haunts, jackals, swamp) and a clear image forms in the minds of readers!

The other piece of craft worth noting is the prophet Isaiah's attention to audience. He is writing to a people who have been in captivity in Babylonia for so long--for generations--that they are past hope. His language must capture their imaginations, and in describing how their homeland will transform so completely to welcome them, he captures our imaginations, too.

If you're looking for a new source of craft, try reading passages from the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, which is laden with powerful and lovely prose. It couldn't be more instructive--in more ways than one.

Five ways to ensure I'll never participate in your writing contest again

2010-12-12T15:40:00.000-05:00

I'm a little frosted right now. Arguably, I am involved in many things--too many things--and understand the tendency to overcommit myself. Regardless, I try to deliver on my promises or implied promises.

But what about under-commitment? Under-commitment or not sufficiently caring about something you've already committed yourself to can be as serious a deficit. It can lead to really disappointing blog contests, like the one I just participated in.

Now, I haven't hosted hundreds of contests, but I can tell if you do the following things just as this blogger did recently, you'll never have to worry about my participating in your blog contest again.

1. Host a blog contest without posting a "results by" date.
2. Say nothing about your blog contest for five days after the deadline has come and gone and then post something like, "You weren't waiting for me, were you? Got too busy with real-life things to read and evaluate your entries" with no apology offered to contestants for the lack of communication.
3. Extend the deadline for another week--again, no "results by" date included.
4. At the last minute, bring in an outside reader to evaluate eleven (11) 150-word entries because you lacked the interest and enthusiasm to do it.
5. Announce that no one has won--that none of the entries was good enough, per the outside reader brought in at the last moment.

I'm a busy person. But if you give me a deadline, I'll try like hell to hit it. But if I do participate in a writing contest this time of year, it means that presents have gone unwrapped and lights unstrung and cookies unbaked just so that I could participate in your damn contest.

Yes, simply post those five guidelines for participation, and you'll never have to worry about receiving an entry from me.

Living by the Chicken

2010-12-11T07:58:00.000-05:00

This time of year is especially vexing because of all the extra things we must do on top of what we normally do--shopping, wrapping, decorating, even baking. But if productivity is important, no matter the time of year, than you should try living by the chicken. Just like me.

I read a blog post at work about how much more a person could accomplish if she or he had two more productive hours in a day. If you could carve out just two more hours towards a significant project, you could change the world, rock your manuscript (you fill in the blank with something important to you).

So, when my friend gave me a chicken timer, I thought I could put it to excellent use to make my time more productive.

I'm hardly the busiest person in the world. I do work full-time, I host two blogs, and I am a writer. I'm not particularly social--don't run out for a lot of parties and social functions--but I see the value in keeping up a social media presence because the contacts and information are really invaluable. Occasionally, I try to be Suzie Homemaker and yes, that happens around the holidays. But I don't have any children at home any longer. I also try to see my elderly mother two or three Sundays a month--take her to church and to lunch--that sort of thing.

So, other friends of mine who write have more schedule constraints than me--getting their MFA's, constantly traveling for their jobs. But I'm still not as productive as I need to be. My husband might disagree with me, but the most important thing I need to carve out time for is my writing.

I'm living by the chicken.

My little black chicken timer goes room to room with me. Even as I write this blog post, I have the chicken set for twenty minutes. I'd better hurry if I want to finish this post because when the chicken dings, it's time to move on to another task, in this case tidying up and then getting cleaned up. You would be surprised, even if you tend to watch the clock, how much time it takes to do simple tasks like checking your vitals--all your email and social media accounts.

She's completely portable, loveable, sweet to look at, and helps me to avoid the time-suck of too much Internet surfing, excessive tweeting, or trying too many Facebook memes.

Need to carve more productive time out of your day? Then get one of these babies (they come in lots of colors) and start living by the chicken. And that's all I have to say about this because my chicken timer just went off.

Burroway Book Winner

2010-12-10T21:03:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Gabriela Lessa, a Brazilian writer and journalist; chick-lit /women's fiction fan and writer; avid reader and literature lover who blogs at http://aspiringwriterworld.blogspot.com/.

She has won the Janet Burroway book, "Imaginative Writing" during my Follower contest for being the eighth Follower, the number selected at random by my husband who doesn't even know this blog exists.

Thanks to all those new followers who joined Scrivengale this week, and I look forward to your posts. And of course, Blogger has that nifty Blog List gadget that allows you to keep up with your Followers newest posts.

Do stop in on "Aspiring Writer." Gabriela has a great post up now about keeping in writing shape during the holidays.

While you are enjoying her blog, I on the other hand will have to learn how to ship something to Brazil.

Are unpublished writers happier than hamsters?

2010-12-09T20:27:00.000-05:00

Poor maligned hamsters. As they trot in circles in their wire wheels, we liken them to people in dead-end jobs. There's even a variation on that expression: "The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead," which refers to someone who is really dumb--dumb as a pea-brained hamster.

Pathetic little misunderstood (slightly cute) creatures.
We assume hamsters are witless. As far as we know, they keep running around in circles because they don't know what else to do and haven't yet cultivated hobbies like knitting, mah-jongg, or flash fiction writing. Rumor has it hamsters aren't big goal setters.

Who's better off? A hamster in a mill or an unpublished writer?

Good news for all you would-be-published authors out there, who may feel about as a successful as a hamster chuffing along on his wheel. Establishing a focus toward the goal of being published along with motivated effort is the very definition of happiness, at least according to Dr. Rita DeMaria, a relationship expert who spoke to our women's group this morning on the subject of how to achieve happiness in the new year. As she was encouraging the group, I was thinking how useful it would be for my fellow writers to hear that message.

In other words, happiness can be found in the journey, in the effort, in the slog. Yes, the slog, provided your slog is pinned to a worthwhile goal. And what could be more worthwhile than a goal of having your novel published? That is a life goal for me.

Keep writing! You're not a hamster!

That wasn't meant to sound like a line from a Monty Python movie. But in fact, we're none of us hamsters, no matter how much we might feel like hamsters. (If you happen to be a rodent sympathizer, then just think of yourself as a happy, goal-oriented and comely rodent for whom self-fulfillment is paramount.) And keep keepin' on until you realize publication, hopefully in the new year, or however long it takes. Why? Because the journey itself can engender happiness if you let it.

Book Pick Contest: Win Burroway's 'Imaginative Writing--The Elements of Craft'

2010-12-06T19:20:00.000-05:00

One of the many things I appreciated about being in Wilkes University's Creative Writing Program was the texts and instructional materials. Really first rate stuff. I've already featuring Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer on Scrivengale, which we read for the program.

Now, I'd like to introduce (or reintroduce) you to a craft book by bestselling author Janet Burroway that is in a word mind-blowing (no one said it couldn't be a hyphenated word) with a mind-numbing title called Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft.

If the title makes it sound like a textbook, that's because it is a textbook. But it's hardly dry. It offers accessible, practical lessons and examples (including excerpts from published works) on all the craft elements--image, voice, character, setting, and story--across multiple genres.

And the ideas? It's a 400-page book including the glossary and index filled with ideas to launch and revise and refine and polish your writing. More tools and ideas and information then you can use in a lifetime of writing--as least if you're middle-aged to begin with. I really appreciated this book because I never considered myself a rank beginner. Remember, before I started the program, I had read a bookshelf full of handouts and books on writing--the craft and the business of it--and had finished writing two novels.

In case you're not convinced, let me say without equivocation, that I LOVE this book. I love it so much I loaned it to a very good friend because I wanted to share the secrets of the writing universe with someone whose writing career I cared about. When she told me she misplaced it, I must have made a face like nothing she'd ever seen before because she went out and bought me a new one. Then, a month later, she found my copy with all its highlighting and tiny post-it tabs throughout. So, I gave her the new one, happy to welcome my trusty old Burroway back into my home library.

It's laced with reminders like, "Metaphors are comparisons that convey abstractions or judgments" (p. 13) or "Everything we know about people we know through our five senses" (p.79). Perhaps many of you intuited as much in your writing, but it's nice to be reminded how readers must fundamentally learn about our characters.

She shares some of her own missteps, too, which reminds me that she's human. I'll warn you, however, that if you read even one-third of this book, you'll soon be thinking Burroway is a writing deity. That's one of the reasons I became so incensed with a Narrative Magazine fiction contest. I entered a contest--no, I paid to enter a short fiction contest--that was won by Burroway, which seemed like an unconscionable money-grab that Narrative would allow someone with her stature to come in and win the top prize.

I mention this (because I'm still disappointed in Narrative) and because I still adore this book despite that experience. Yes, this post is simultaneously a rant and a rave. I used one of Burroway's exercises to start a story that won first prize in a fiction contest. The judge commented that the first line of my story grabbed her, which is why I won.

Be a follower. I need more followers.

Since this blog is newer rather than older, I do the happy dance every time a new follower appears in the sidebar. I'd like to build my follower base by offering two followers a chance to win this book (a $40 value). Anyone who's officially following "Scrivengale" either in my Blogger Followers gadget or using Networked blogs as of Friday, December 10, will be eligible to win a copy of this book. How new do you have to be? This blog is only two months old; you're all new followers the way I see it.

I'll be giving away one new copy for every 20 new followers (up to 40). All colorful highlighting and post-it tabbing is up to each winner. Winners announced on Friday, effective immediately of course, which I mention twice since I'm the kind of person who likes to know when things start and end.

If I haven't made this book sound splendiferous enough, here's an excerpt from one of the Amazon reviewers, "indypoet":

...it offers dozens and dozens of recent examples to illustrate its points. As an anthology alone, this book would be a good read. But Burroway's comments aptly help a reader to understand what is working well in each of her excerpts.

And it's really important to note that Burroway's book is great for writers working on their own--you need not be in a formal program to benefit from using this. It was also mentioned in this wonderful roundup of books every writer should read published by online universities.com.

So, tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell people you feel lukewarm about. I don't care. Anyone can win just as long as he or she becomes my follower.

Write that synopsis (and other painful stuff) before you finish your novel

2010-12-05T16:36:00.000-05:00

I'd rather be put to The Machine than write a synopsis.

I'm as bad as the next fiction writer in one aspect pertaining to my craft. While I get true enjoyment (most of the time) out of the writing of the book, I dread coming up with the "marketing" materials once the book is finished--and I'm a marketer by profession. In fact, I haven't met any author who likes writing a synopis, logline, or query letter. Maybe some of my writerly associates actually like writing these things but never said as much around me and my friends for fear of being stoned to death. If that's you, before you go on and on about your spectacular synopses that flow from your fingertips like blood from a head wound, you need to know I live beside a rock quarry.

Necessary evils--all this marketing stuff--that most writers put off as long as possible. No one puts off writing these loathsome items more than me, and I have completed three novels and have four other WiPs.

Of the three items, I hate writing the synopsis the most. I'd rather write another first draft of a novel than write the synopsis for the one I just finished. Although, thanks to a tool offered at the writing blog, "Let the Words Flow," I may be able to throw off my synopsis loathing like a cable-knit sweater during a heat flash. Author Susan Dennard offers the single best, most helpful model for reluctant synopsis writers I've ever seen called How to Write a 1-Page Synopsis. And I've seen plenty. Remember those binders filled with print-outs from the Internet I mentioned in an earlier post?

Susan's tool was so helpful, it also gave me an idea for this post. Don't wait to take a stab at any of these things until you finish. Here's why.

Plot weaknesses surface earlier

Wouldn't you rather know that your inciting incident needs to have a more pronounced impact on your protagonist sooner rather than later? If you complete Susan's synopsis worksheet before you finish the book, as I did, flaws in your plot will surface faster than earthworms in a rainstorm. Of course, plot isn't the only thing that's important in fiction. But no level of spectacular prose can disguise a plot that needs shoring up.

sample logline

Needed scenes emerge

Like secret messages scribbled in invisible ink, once you've identified those plot flaws, all the scenes you need begin to appear. Sometimes they pop into your totally relaxed mind at three in the morning the night after you've struggled writing a one-page synopsis. You find yourself asking yourself, "Why hadn't I thought of that sooner?" Even if you're using a beat sheet, you may lose sight of the bigger picture the synopsis and the logline allow. If you take a crack at your query, and you can't sum up your book in a paragraph, besides being a rambler, you may have a rambler.

Weak scenes are easier to weed out

Here's when writing a logline before you finish a first draft can be unbelievably helpful. Summarize your book in a sentence--include the high concept, just like a screenwriter needs to do. Whatever scenes fail to support that logline might need to be axed. Unless they drive forth story, character, or theme--out they go.

Not what my prewriting resembles,
not in the least

Regarding my WiP, I did a beat sheet. I also did another plot assessment to ensure I had my tentpole moment and my all-hope-is-lost scene immediately prior. And let me just say that I'm not one of those writers whose pre-writing exercises look like they could be entered in scrapbook planning contest. Using Susan's 1-Page Synopsis tool, I uncovered other areas that needed to be stronger and set about strengthening them.

The bad news is this: Don't wait until you're done to write the marketing pieces. Begin your pain and suffering much earlier. The good news is that you'll save yourself a lot of heavy revision and will have a book ready to shop sooner. Yes, you'll probably have to revise your synopsis and query once or several times. But seriously, wouldn't you rather do that than rewrite your book? Of course, you would. (I was just kidding about that rewriting a new book part I mentioned earlier.)

Five clues you're ready for a master's in creative writing . . .

2010-12-03T19:36:00.000-05:00

Kidnapped, Great Expectations
Jane Eyre, Les Miserables--
been there; done that.

Thanks to my undergraduate degree in English, I'm a fairly literate person in Western Literature studies. Because of teaching English in lower high school grades and middle school for ten years, I've also read lots of good-for-you YA and many of the required classics for young adults.

I've read for pleasure (Lawrence Sanders' McNally mystery series) and also for pain (went through a box of tissues reading Cold Mountain, and it still haunts me today.)

Baby Dionysus fresh from the calf of Zeus

Reading is great for writers--a necessity--like water for fish. But it doesn't make a writer. Well, at least this writer didn't spring from the leg of Zeus, bestseller in hand. When I first started writing creatively at age 47, I knew about themes and symbolism from literature studies, but not about scenes and character arcs. I had to take baby steps when learning to write. I had to learn the hard way--by doing.

Within a year of embarking on this midlife writing venture, I published my first short story. Then several others followed. I entered a gazillion contests. I ordered at least a dozen books called "Writing Novels for Dummies," and "Everything You Need to Know to Write a Novel."

I took one-day workshops, extended online workshops in fiction and mystery writing, and attended a few conferences. I joined writers' groups--online and in person. By 2009, I had bled every possible free or low-cost resource to learn the art and craft of creative writing that I could. But I hadn't published a novel. That's when I thought that some formal study might be in order, and I enrolled in Wilkes University's Low-residency Master of Arts in Creative Writing program.

How do know when you're ready to pay big bucks to learn to write?

When you've filled a six-foot bookcase with 3-inch binders overflowing with handouts you got from Internet writing sites, and it's time to buy another bookcase (and more binders).
When you no longer derive any substantive value from your writing groups--online or otherwise. If you apply yourself to your writing, you're bound to improve. As a result, in two years, I outgrew my writing groups and needed to ply my skills in a more competitive arena to get better. I never got to be a better tennis player by challenging weaker opponents. The same holds true for one's writing.
When you need to belong to a serious community of writers. I met a few terrifically dedicated writers, but quickly wearied of the many amateur writers in online workshops who make all kinds of excuses for not turning in their work or reading yours (and they paid for the class).
When you need some kickass criticism from people who really know what they're doing because they are published authors with advanced degrees themselves, who teach and are evaluated in professional settings.
When your husband doesn't want to read your work, and you don't want to spend any more money paying a so-called professional editor to vet your manuscripts.

If you're considering doing advanced study in creative writing, you might want to get ahold of Lori A May's new book called The Low-Residency MFA handbook, coming out in January, to find a program that fits your needs.

For those of you who pursued a graduate writing degree, what led you to enroll?

Stop back for upcoming posts entitled "Five Clues you're NOT ready for a master's in creative writing" as well as some informal assessment of the virtues of the low-residency MA, from this graduate's perspective.

Polishing prose for a micro-post contest

2010-11-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

Another blogging writer (or is that writing blogger?) Aimee Salter has a prose challenge on her blog "Seeking the Writing Life." She's requesting that writers submit 150 words of anything they've written that is potentially better than her post. Writers need only leave their entry as a comment to the post to participate.

I just rewrote the beginning to my NaNo novel, RACE CARD. The book opens with the protagonist in the midst of a nightmare. It details a recurring dream she's had since she witnessed skinheads beating a black man to death in Luxembourg City as a teen. Since the character is in a dream state, it's highly sensory and surrealistic by intent. Because I was limited to 150 words, I couldn't include the next line which includes her alarm sounding and ending the nightmare. Of course, the style of my post is much different from hers. This is even a different style of writing for me, but I like to try new things and with any luck, I'll get some feedback on my entry.

I enjoy this kind of challenge. And I like participating, especially when it's sponsored by another writing blog. You can enter, too, by posting 150 words of prose by midnight tomorrow.

Here's my novel start:

The indigo sky deepened to black tendrils that snaked to the ground, winding across the flagstones and encircling her ankles. Within seconds, they thickened to tethers and raced up her legs and midsection, lashing her to the nearest tree. Their loose rubbery ends nipped her like waves plashing a ship in a gale.

Two white megaliths materialized in the gloom. First, they grew legs, then arms that shoved her as they passed, storming toward a lone black figure staggering in the wind. One of them lifted the man and hurled him to the stone path as the other one faced her.

“Watch,” it screamed from the maw in its torso. Blood poured from the man’s head. “Look!” it commanded, as the creatures pounded and kicked him.

The lifeless man’s blood lapped her ankles then rose with the speed of a rain-engorged river until its metallic tang engulfed her mouth and nose.

# # #

I didn't hit 50K, but doing NaNo still made me a winner

2010-11-30T07:47:00.000-05:00

I'm enjoying seeing the NaNo Winner badges on friends' websites, even as their default pics on Facebook, and am proud of them for their success. This is my fourth year that I participated. I didn't hit the 50,000 word mark, but thanks to the NaNoWriMo campaign, I still feel like a winner.

Here's why...

NaNo helped me focus

I don't lack for ideas to write about. I struggle with focus. Thank goodness I only have a talent for writing fiction, not like some of my friends who also are poets, or I'd be more scattered than I am. Before NaNo 2010, I had four other books started, each stalling out around 25,000 words. However, each of those books is viable and worthy of completion. After NaNo, I added 6,000 words to one novel and more significantly, nearly 20,000 words to another. Participating in NaNo definitely helped me focus. The focus began from external sources--the badges, the word meters, the buzz among writers on the Internet--until I became sufficiently dug in and was able to internalize my focus. This constituted a breakthrough because I had essentially given up on this book because of some harsh critics early on. NaNo gave me the wherewithal to pick it up and give it another go.

NaNo helped me write smarter this time

Because of all the helpful blog posts about how to prepare for NaNo, my time was more productive than ever. Before I sat down to write the 20K on RACE CARD, I did a beat sheet, laying out every plot point from beginning to end. I also reexamined my structure, to make sure I had the major plot points and the moment when "all hope is lost" in the right places. Once I had that beat sheet, all I had to do was carve out time to write. On each project, the books moved forward more prudently than they had in the past. I won't have to do a lot of rewriting as a result. Did the beat sheet change midwriting? Sure, it always does. Writing, not outlining, is my way of thinking. But overall the product was much stronger as a result.

NaNo strengthened my resolve

Thanks to NaNo, I became reinvested in each book, convinced of their worth, and became recommitted to finishing each one. Prior to NaNo, I was feeling not only conflicted but a little too lackadaisical. Sure, I guess I would eventually finish the books someday. Now, I know I'll finish each, and I won't have to spend a lot of time doing heavy rewrites because they are stronger works this time around.

I may not be a category NaNo winner. I can't post an official winner badge like many of my deserving friends. But make no mistake, this November I feel as though I've brought home the mirror ball trophy! Thanks to my Wilkes cohort for the constant encouragement and to so many fellow writers for the great tips and cosmic energy around writing. All very good things for this fiction writer.

Five tips for writing action scenes from "The Fugitive"

2010-11-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

Harrison Ford as Richard Kimball

No matter when it comes on, no matter how late it is, if I'm channel surfing and I find the 1993 film The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford and directed by Andrew Davis, I flip it on. There's only a handful of movies that never bore me--that are like opening gifts each time I stumble upon them--and this is one of those films.

As a rule, I'm not an action movie die-hard (pun totally intended). But there are certain qualities about this movie--the clever screenplay, the acting, the main character's refusal to give up until he discovers who killed his beautiful wife--that impress me each time I watch it.

My newest book culminates in an action scene. I'm on the second revision, and as I tuned in the last twenty minutes of The Fugitive last night, I was for the first time, watching it as a storyteller, looking for parallels between the conclusion of the movie and the last scene of my book (before the denouement).

Spoiler alert: Yes, I give away the end of the movie. Big deal. If you haven't seen The Fugitive by now, you must've been living on another planet or have lived in a cable-television-free bubble your whole life.

Here's what I learned:

Make your hero heroic. When Harrison Ford's character (Kimball) discovers that his colleague and friend is behind his wife's murder, he doesn't merely pay him a visit at his home or his office. He walks into the lecture hall of the upscale hotel where his friend is delivering a lecture at a conference and confronts him during his speech--something a regular joe would probably never do. Another interesting choice is that as distraught and infuriated as Kimball is, he uses words as his weapons first, then his fists--because it's a much more effective scene if it replicates a playground brawl between childhood friends first. Also, it prolongs the action, giving it a chance to escalate. Think outside the realm of possibility and make your human hero do something you and ten of your friends would never have the guts to do.
Use dialogue, too, not just action. In The Fugitive, you have two highly educated characters, doctors, trying to kill each other. Of course, they're going to have dialogue--and they do until they are hiding from each other in the laundry room. I have two better educated characters fighting each other, too, so dialogue must be deftly incorporated into the scene in addition to the expected action that qualifies it as an action scene.
Give equal literary attention to the antagonist's reaction. Though the story is told from the hero's viewpoint, the camera (and or the screenplay) in the action scene is an equal opportunity device. Give the antagonist's reactions to the hero's actions equal weight. For instance, the hero pushes the villain into a bookcase and books fall on them and all around them. The villain, lacking a conventional weapon, reaches down and picks up a book and hurls at the hero with all the force he can muster. Actions will be strengthened by an equal and opposite literary focus on the reaction.
Allow the scene to escalate--and choose a setting that will let you do that. The fight between the two doctors begins with words and moves to a hotel room where shoves, swings, fists, and furniture are all used (and in some cases destroyed) while they're trying to kill each other. So, the hotel room is completely trashed. Bad enough? Not nearly. The hero and villain end up on the roof (while Chicago police in a helicopter are trying to fatally shoot Kimball), fall through a skylight, landing on the elevator several stories below, which starts off and drops them off in the laundry room of the hotel. Amidst dangerous machinery and overhead girders not to mention the cover provided by the oversized racks and other equipment in a hotel laundry room, they stalk one another. By the time they two characters discover each other in the laundry room, you're as physically exhausted and emotionally spent as they are. The upscale hotel is the ideal choice for this scene--offering so many dramatic possibilities.
Make sure the reader feels the hero suffer and knows that they could die. In the final confrontation with the villain, make sure the hero gets beaten up and battered. They might even need to get stabbed, shot, or suffer a concussion or a fractured skull or lose something or someone important to them. The reader needs to feel that the stakes have never been higher. This is no time to allow your hero an easy victory. Whatever it is that makes your hero vulnerable, make sure your antagonist has discovered that weakness and exploits it. In the end, their victory might have to be pyrrhic, or one with devastating costs to the hero.

As I go back to revise the climactic confrontation between my hero and the story's villain, I intend to keep lessons learned from The Fugitive in mind. Also, I like when good guys win, which is something that makes the movie a favorite, too, and I intend to have a similar, affirming outcome.

Too many plot twists?

2010-11-26T19:49:00.000-05:00

Can a popular mystery have too many twists? As much as I like a good twist--one damn good twist--I can say without equivocation that after the third significant twist occurring in the last two chapters of a book I was rather enjoying, I felt ground down and a little exploited.

I just finished reading Sins of the Brother by Mike Stewart. Why was I reading it, you ask? It's a ten-year-old book. I'm finishing a suspense novel, and I wanted to see how others who wrote in the genre handled dialogue attribution, sensory detail, and in this case, a mystery told from a single POV throughout, which is precisely my challenge. Though tempted to throw in a few scenes from someone else's POV to ratchet up the tension, i.e., the murderer's, I've chosen to stick with one POV (yes, unlike blockbusters like The Da Vinci Code). But that's a topic for another post.

Anyway, I found Sins of the Brother a good read and surprisingly literary only because I wasn't familiar with the author. He's a very capable writer.

So, why all the kvetching about the twists at the end of this book? Because I'm guessing some of them were added to propel the reader to read the next book in the series featuring the same protagonist. And I may read the next book, however, I wanted more satisfaction at the end of this book, not more twists just to get me to read his next book.

Now, maybe the writer didn't have a choice and the editor wanted to transport readers to Pretzel City en route to buying his next release. Or maybe he did have a choice. If it was his choice, apart from his publishing house's wishes, then he gave me one too many.

It reminds me of singers who go off on a vocal riff during a recording--think Christine Aguilera, if you're not sure what I mean. One riff sounds good so ten riffs must be ten times as good, right? Wrong. The nine other riffs devalues the effectiveness of the one good riff.

My understanding is that this was Stewart's debut novel. Since it was his first book to be published, if they twisted his arm to twist his readers into knots at the end, maybe he was reluctant to argue with them. Or maybe it was his idea entirely.

Sometimes less can be more. He already worked a few great twists into the end of that book. What if there had been two more twists in "The Necklace" after Mme. Loisel learns the necklace she borrowed was nothing more than costume jewelry? That happens to be one of my favorite story endings of all time. Any other twist on top of that would have ruined de Maupassant's perfect literary twist.

Sometimes the novel you write doesn't gel with the one you had in your head. Even if it turns out to be well written as Stewart's was, dumping every last conceivable twist into the story isn't going to fix such a problem. Sometimes cliches are cliche for a reason: Discretion can be the better part of valor. All of which goes to say that I'd rather see the writer serve the story than the series.

What do you think? Are you a the-more-twists-the-better kind of reader? A no-holds-barred-on-the-twists person?

Five Big Nevers from George Orwell

2010-11-22T07:14:00.000-05:00

In the past week, I listened to two audio books. One uses lots of fresh figurative language--it's a thrilling police procedural, so the attention to comparisons surprised me. The other uses lots of expressions you and I have seen in print before also known as clichés.

They can feel comfy, easing into metaphors or similes that we've all heard before--like pulling on a well-worn sweater. I'm not sure how the second writer got away with using so many clichés in a published work.

All I know is unpublished authors are held to a higher standard than those who have work in print. Yes, rules are made to be broken. However, it's still worth rereading your WIPs and looking for the FIVE BIG Nevers from George Orwell.

Never say never, you say? Valid argument. Then how about rarely.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Out of the entire Serengeti of writing advice available on the Internet, I thought these were five predators worth pursuing. (Just so you know, I could have said “pantheon of writing advice,” but then I would be violating number one of the big five, so I tried to go for something fresher since I violated number four in saying “were worth pursuing”.)

If we could at least edit our work adhering to these five rules, our writing would improve. How about you, Scrivengale readers? Are you stalked by any of these big five?

The Enneagram: It's great for dialogue and swell for pick-up lines

2010-11-17T19:33:00.000-05:00

The Enneagram suggests people fall into nine
possible personality types.

Would you like a model for crafting stronger characters and better dialogue in your fiction, in addition to a chance to know yourself better? Of course you would. That's why you're here!

As I mentioned earlier this week, while writing my first novel, I realized my dialogue needed to be stronger. So, I picked up a book by Gloria Kempton that introduced me to the Enneagram. It's one of the newer personality systems in common use and emphasizes psychological motivations. Primarily a diagnostic tool of one's emotional outlook on life, it also may help point out fixations undergirding them--unless of course one has no fixations.

The Enneagram is also useful because it helps you see more clearly how other people see the world very differently from you. For that reason, it has become particularly popular within the self-help and personal growth movements, but other professions use it as well -- therapists, teachers, psychologists, managers, and writers. When I wonder why I behave the way I do, I reflect upon my Enneagram number (#4), and the reason is readily clear -- that's how #4's roll!

Kempton suggests using the Enneagram as a tool to help develop characters. Rather than creating a complex personality chart for characters, which some writing coaches advocate, she advises writers settle on a personality for a character (ideally, your characters should be well differentiated) go to an Enneagram chart, and pick a number. You'll know your character, where she comes from, and can write more authentic dialogue as a result.

Here are personality types in the Enneagram, which also can be found at http://www.9types.com/.

#1 Reformer - I do everything the right way.
#2 Helper - I must help others.
#3 Motivator - I need to succeed.
#4 Romantic - I am unique.
#5 Thinker - I need to understand the world.
#6 Skeptic - I am affectionate and skeptical.
#7 Enthusiast - I am happy and open to new things.
#8 Leader - I must be strong.
#9 Peacemaker - I am at peace.

Each of the types has a link to a more complete description in case you already recognize yourself as one of those types. You can also take a short test at http://www.9types.com./newtest/ if you'd like to be sure of what type you are.

by Leonid Afremov

I'm #4, the Romantic, sometimes called the Artist, who is motivated by a need to experience her feelings and to be understood, to search for the meaning of life, and to avoid being ordinary. Bingo. C'est moi.

I knew as much immediately upon reading Kempton's book, and the 36-question Internet test confirmed it. I also learned that I was somewhat a #3, a bit of #7, and because I was a middle child, I have a pinch of #9 in me as well, which hasn't yet been drummed out by the callous and cruel workaday world.

In fiction, a #4 is good character choice because he or she always adds conflict. Let's face it, who doesn't tire of the drama queen? Though entertaining, #4's can also be annoying.

Another type that drives conflict is the Skeptic (#6), also called the Questioner, because questions can ratchet up the tension in any scene. Imagine a boss character as a questioner: "Who gave you the authority to do that?...Where were you?...Why were you late this morning?..." You get the idea.

I'd love to know what number or numbers are dominant for you? And if your dialogue needs work, I heartily recommend Kempton's book called, Dialogue: Techniques and exercises for crafting effective dialogue.

"Hi, there. What's your Enneagram?"

Prefer to be more organic about your character development and not corralled by numbers and types? It's a free country. At the very least, I've given you a new pick up line next time you're looking for love in a fern bar.

Tip of the week: Gloria Kempton's dialogue book . . .

2010-11-16T06:28:00.000-05:00

While writing my first novel in 2005, I remember being scared to write dialogue. Imagine that--a world-class talker afraid to give her characters something to say. My early attempts were weak until I read a book by Gloria Kempton called Dialogue: Techniques and exercise for crafting effective dialogue.

I tried lots of the exercises in the book. You could say I read the thing like an evangelist reads his Bible. In a short period of time, my dialogue improved--a lot. Okay, there was lots of upside opportunity. However, I know my dialogue has become one of the strongest elements of my fiction writing. In the 2008 NWA Novel Contest (I placed fifth), receiving perfect marks from both judges in dialogue, and not just because I love to put words in people's mouths.

One of the most useful tools in the book, besides both good and bad examples, was using the enneagram to help identify and differentiate characters. Once you've assigned them an enneagram designation, you have a really clear idea of what sorts of things should be coming out of their mouths and why. More on the enneagram later this week.

I used Gloria's book as a springboard to embrace a weakness and turn it around into a strength. What craft books have you used to help address your writing weaknesses?

get to know Absolute Write Water Cooler

2010-11-09T17:17:00.000-05:00

If you're a writer who's writing to be published, there's an invaluable forum in cyberspace, waiting to be tapped. It's called Absolute Write Water Cooler.

What's so special about Absolute Write (AW) Water Cooler? If you took a bunch of people who hoped to have their work published sooner rather than later, combined them with published authors, threw in a few agents, and stood them around a water color, what kinds of things would they talk about? Good agent experiences, bad agent experiences, requests for partials, agent response time, getting published, good houses, great houses, great writer-editor working relationships, all kinds of other things that writers who want to be published would benefit from knowing.

They have a forum that answers oft-asked questions about basic manuscript format called FAQs; a forum where basic writing questions are asked and answered; a grammar forum; a bewares and background checks forum; a forum on paying markets; and the forum topics go on and on. They have extensive guidelines to help newbies fit in and not embarrass themselves.

One of the things I like most about AW are the absence of "flame wars." Divas and divos need not register--they won't be indulged.

It costs nothing to register though contributions to keep AW operational are welcome.

I've gotten lots of helpful, insider information from AW. I've taken care to follow newbie rules and have really benefited from all the publishing intell it offers. At any given time there are literally hundreds of writers logged in, using the site.

Check it out. I guarantee you'll favorite it after a couple uses--especially if you're shopping a book.

Still not sure what it's about. Here's an interesting testimonial/anti-testimonial to AW Water Cooler.

NaNo update...the 4-1-1 on this year's NaNo project for you non-NaNo's

2010-11-07T20:21:00.001-05:00

Even though overall NaNo goals, in terms of total numbers, can be daunting, I'm inspired by the daily word count goals, including today's goal. Since I'd not added anything substantive to this manuscript in two years, I'm feeling great that I added 7K words in the last two days.