Hearing is Believing...Or Is It?

This may be significant, or it may mean nothing. But it got my attention, so see what you think. To wit: Recently, I heard yet another of the many paeans of praise, after the fact, for The Sopranos. Now, I never watched the show for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that if I want to spend a couple of hours a night listening to the “f” word, I can do it through myriad means online, anytime. (Spare me the arguments about “That’s how real people talk,” or even “That’s how these people talk.” The real people I know don’t talk that way, and the Mafia do a lot of things I don’t want in my living room. ‘Nuff said.) But enough people around me were fans of it, including a local radio personality who brought up the fact that the reason he loved the writing of the show so much is because of how good the dialogue was. Now did he love it because the characters used witty repartee? Nope. Did he love it because it sparkled, because it “clicked,” because it hummed along almost lyrically? Nope. He loved it so much because it sounded like real people talking. Complete with “ummms” and “ahhs” and flubbed up and misused words. As he put it, “No one else on TV or in the movies does that. All the other dialogue in most things sounds fake. It’s too perfect. People never trip over a word, they never get tongue-tied, they never say one word when they’re thinking of another one, except if they’re going for comedy. But in real life, everybody does that. So these writers made you feel not like you were watching a script, but like you were watching real people just go through their lives, mistakes and all. That’s genius.” It might be genius in this guy’s eyes. But it’s also pointedly, diametrically opposite of the way we’ve all been told to write dialogue. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. In fiction, dialogue should perform more than one function. Ideally, it shouldn’t be just “the way people talk,” it shouldn’t have those embarrassing lapses in it (unless, as the man said, you’re going for a deliberate effect), and it shouldn’t have “ums” or “ahs” or all that stuff. The idea is to make it sound like real people talking…only streamlined. A little cleaned up, if you will. Ideally, then, dialogue gives the illusion that you’re with these people in real life, only it doesn’t waste your time with real-life hemming and hawing. So who’s right? Or are we both? And who’s actually writing people that sound like real people? This isn’t the first time I’ve run into the “dialogue” question, either. My son once remarked that “your characters tend to talk like you do. They sound like you, Mom.” That was a mixed critique at best. On one hand, of course, I was writing people like me: people who saw the world the same way I did, who spoke with a similar vocabulary, etc. I was “writing what I knew” in that sense. In another sense, of course, that’s a killing indictment of a work. If all the characters sound like you, they’re not people in their own right, and that means you have some work to do. My only consolation on this point is that I have lots of company in this fault. Lots and lots of people are guilty of this, and some of us get away with it. I was trying to read a novella once where in one story, I literally could not tell the characters apart. To this day, I can’t tell you those characters’ names or anything about them, because they had no distinguishing “voices” on the page—and I didn’t stick around reading long enough to give them time to develop same. Had this book not been by a multipublished and bestselling author, I would assume, it might not have made it out of the gate. But the fact that it was, and it did, makes the offense even worse. The good news is that this kind of problem is easily fixed, with enough creativity and time spent inside characters’ skins. But the first “problem” mentioned here has me wondering. Obviously, a screenplay can get away with “sloppier” dialogue in the sense that the experience a viewer has is more multilayered; while they’re listening to Tony Soprano come up with a malapropism, it’s a part of the total viewing experience. I suspect we don’t have that luxury in books, where the flat words on the page have to do so much more for a reader than the words of dialogue have to do on a screen. But I do have to wonder if, because of things like the writing on certain television shows, we’re coming to a point where we’re going to be asked to make our characters, in a sense, less articulate and more “real.” Is there a method by which we can, literally, do both? Have articulate characters speak dialogue that accomplishes what we’ve all been taught it’s supposed to do…while the people still sound real and not “fake” or “too perfect”? Thoughts? Janny

Thirty Years in the Carpenter’s Shop—Or, Hidden Preparation

Several of us have been thinking lately in terms of “breaking out” in our writing lives. No, not in poison ivy, although it is that season. But in terms of making some Big New Things Happen in our writing and our approach to same. As in, “This will be my breakout book.” Or, “It’s time I broke out of this rut.” Or, “Now that I’ve broken away from this genre…now what?” Some of us get a little panicky at this point, and with good reason (at least in our own minds). Many of us, after all, are of the Day Planner generation—if we’re not being productive (i.e. jumping right into the next book the moment we type THE END on this one), we’re wasting time, and we cannot afford to do this! We “owe” the world productivity for taking up space (!), and we owe our God the maximum output from the gifts we have. (Who can forget Erma Bombeck’s line, so frequently quoted, about hoping that she didn’t have a speck of talent left at the end of her life, because she used it all up? ‘Nuff said.) Some of us, however, get panicky for another reason entirely—the not totally unfounded fear that the writing and publishing world is passing us by. And not because we’re writing to a trend that’s going to be “so yesterday” by later this afternoon, but because we are surrounded by other writers who are selling, some of them at a rate that leaves us breathless. One particular writer I know has gone from getting her first contract last fall to being able to finish her e-mail signature with a list of three or four books already contracted, and another one pending. I get whiplash just thinking about it. When this kind of thing happens, I feel many other things, too. None of them good. I start out somewhere around “Ohmyword.” From there, I go quickly to “For Pete’s sake, leave some contracts for someone else,” and it’s only a short trip before I land somewhere in the skids of “Well, obviously, I missed the secret handshake meeting again.” (Otherwise known as the Slough of Writer Despond.) Now, putting aside for a moment whether I should be rejoicing for this woman (of course) and what’s keeping me from doing so (easy answer, tough problem to lick)…what’s putting me into said despond slough? The fact that I don’t have four books ready to go. To anyone. Anywhere. In any shape. And I won’t have that many ready to go for quite some time…especially since I’m doing some “breaking out” of my own. And there’s the rub. We who experience these jealousies, panics, and whiplashes are both forgetful of, and overly conscious of, the element of being prepared to move to that next step. Laying groundwork. Doing research. Learning new ways of approaching our art. Refilling the well. Tending to our spirits. Resting. Writing. Experimenting. Finding, perhaps, a new creative rhythm and voice. And we forget—or we want to deny—that all of that takes time. Why? In a word, because we’re scared we don’t have that time. The publishing world continually reinforces this notion of scarcity: not enough time, shrinking markets, diminishing opportunities for those who aren’t poised on the very edge of caffeine, ready to leap. Serendipity is amenable to dipping her hand into the magic dust and sprinkling it on us, but we gotta be out there for it to happen. Preparation work isn’t the work that gets us out there. It’s work that’s done within. In our own writers’ caves, if you will. But Serendipity doesn’t make cave calls, and we all know it. So we’re torn. We want that magic dust, and we want it to be the real thing, but we begrudge spending time in a fallow place while our Muse regroups herself. We don’t want to noodle around with six or eight or fifteen or twenty-three or fifty-seven ideas that don’t go anywhere; we want to get right to that magic #412 idea—the one that’s going to be The Book That Makes Our Name—as soon as possible, preferably yesterday, thank you very much, and while you’re at it, yes, I would like fries with that. And make it snappy. Too bad that’s not how craft really works. Success in the writing craft, as in most other areas, truly is a matter of “preparation meeting opportunity.” (And dumb luck, and the stars aligning, and the secret handshake, and…oh, wait. Never mind.) But we need to understand the true nature of “preparation” if we’re going to hit our own dose of magic dust. Preparation is dog work. It’s time-consuming. Sometimes, it’s frightening. Certainly, it’s unpaid. But it’s really, really necessary to take enough time to lay the right foundations. To make sure we’re working toward what our true place, our true voice, and our true niche in the craft is, not necessarily what all the “experts” tell us we “ought to” do. But it’s hidden work. And, at times, it can look like we’re doing “nothing” to get ourselves ahead. As a consequence, sometimes that outside world is going to ask us pointed questions. Or we're going to ask ourselves the pointed questions and worry because of what we think that world is thinking of us. But if we’re truly going to “break through,” we dare not try to shortcut the process. If we doubt this, all we have to do is look at the Lord and Master himself, who took thirty years to prepare for His “real” work. Think about that. Thirty years. How many of us have that kind of patience? That wasn’t thirty years of practice-preaching in pulpits, teaching VBS, or working in a soup kitchen, either—works that, had they existed, would have been good preparation for the life of itinerant preacher and healer. On the contrary; Jesus not only didn’t hang around the synagogue day and night and get labeled a “holy person,” but if anything, He did the opposite: He hung around Dad’s workshop and built tables and shelves and cabinets. Talk about a fallow period! And what happened when He finally left the woodworking tools behind and started calling fishermen? His own hometown pooh-poohed him for exactly the reason that we’re talking about: He was Mary and Joseph’s son, just a carpenter, nothing special. Who did He think He was? Well, of course, what mattered wasn’t what His hometown thought of Him. Or even what He thought He was. What mattered was what God His Father was preparing Him to be. And what He was preparing to be, and to do, was something no one else could do—something that gave life to all the rest of us. If that wasn’t a magnificent “breakout,” nothing was. We, too, can provide our own kind of “life” for people with the words we write. We, too, have the capability to tell stories we haven’t yet imagined. But we have to be willing to wait for them to come. To resist the temptation to jump out of the cave and try to do the Big Thing too fast, too soon, or in a way that isn’t true to the writer God made us to be. We have to be willing to sacrifice the good for the best, something that’s never easy…especially not in what seems to be an ever-more-competitive and ever-narrower world like writing and publishing. But if we can calm ourselves, yield that crazy world and our crazy craft to God and let Him handle it, I truly believe we have a much better chance of finding the wide, open road that we’re meant to walk and the niche we’re meant to fill. It’s a big challenge, but He’s up to if it we are. The question is, how “hidden” are you willing to be? How abandoned to what He wants you to do? If He were to tell you it was going to take thirty years to get you to where He wanted you to be as a writer, would you be willing and able to let Him take that time? Thoughts? Janny

K.I.S.S.

I have been, with great glee and malice aforethought, violating one of the key principles of blogging: I’ve written loooooooong pieces that take awhile to read. This, my friends, is a no-no. At least according to most blogging experts out there. (Never mind the oxymoronic idea of "blogging experts" when Microsoft doesn’t even recognize “blog” as a word yet. If the Evil Empire says what you do is not a word, can you still be an expert?) Anyway, these self-proclaimed experts explain to us now that people accustomed to doing things online have very, very short attention spans. Think “gnat.” Now, a gnat doesn’t hang around for very long in any one place. It’s got places to fly, people to annoy, crevices to hide in. Apparently, the same is true of most people reading blogs. (Well, okay, maybe they don’t fly much, but a lot of ‘em hide in crevices—that much is apparent by reading their comments. The “annoying” part goes without saying.) They have little time to “waste” sitting down reading a long, drawn-out piece of wisdom. Hit ‘em fast, hit ‘em with valuable information right off the bat, because their eyeballs aren’t going to be on your site for longer than 16.8 seconds before they lose patience and they’re off to the next click. Unless, of course, your blog says anything about scandal, gossip, links where people can get FREE STUFF, or is so inflammatory that people spend longer than 16.8 seconds just so they can click into your comments section and tell you what an idiot you are (language cleaned up for the sake of all of us). So my blog is breaking all the rules. Because this entry, as you can see, is already too long. You’ve probably already lost patience with me and are saying, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, she’s babbling again, get the woman some Prozac.” Well, you might be right. I am babbling. But it’s because I’m in a particularly snarky mood this morning, it’s Wednesday and I don’t want to be here at work checking other people’s stuff when I could be writing my own. It’s also blazing ridiculously hot, I had to stop on my way out to work this morning to clean catstuff off the carpet (eeewww), and… Yeah, I know. Prozac. Anyway, to keep this short and sweet: those of you who have my website address on your links may need to change it shortly…I’m changing web page providers, redoing everything, and that old link was supposed to expire as of July 31. Which, as we can see by the clock on the wall, has passed, and it’s bloomin’ August already. Which is as good a time as any, considering it’s my birthday month and all, to give myself the present of a new website. In the meantime, please tell everybody you know to come over here to Catholic Writer Chick and they can browse to their gnats’ eyes’ content! But what do you really think? Is short the only way to go? Or is there still a group of people out there who want to read steak, not sizzle, and don’t mind knowing there’s a blog or two out here with substance to it? Who don’t mind pouring a cup of coffee, clicking on the link, and seeing what diabolical stuff the CWC is up to today? (This is a hint. Tell everyone you know to come over here. Oh, did I say that already?) :-) Let me know. In the meantime, stay tuned for some chatter about What We’re (Trying To) Read At The Moment… Write on! Janny

Base-Hit Style Book Pitching…or, Hit ‘Em Where They Ain’t

People who “speak baseball,” as we do in our house, have a wealth of slang particular to that sport and some terminology that can be—to put it mildly—a little confusing. Case in point: you may see us comment on an infield groundout by calling it what sounds like an “Atom Ball.” This can be fairly alarming…until you realize that what we’re saying is “at ‘em ball.” It refers to a ball that’s smacked pretty well, but right at an infielder; the frustrating result is that the batter has nothing to show for a well-hit ball but a routine ground ball or shallow line-drive out. Which is why another common baseball slang phrase is, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.” If you smack a ball to the spaces between fielders, you end up with a much better result. “Nice,” you say. “Good idea. But what in confusion does it have to do with writing or pitching a book?” Well, call me dense, but I just realized recently that the answer to that question: a lot. This conclusion didn’t come easily. (Witness my reference to density.) It’s come very recently, after a long time slogging away in the trenches of writing, trying to identify where my writing fits into the marketplace, trying to decide what genre I write, trying to tailor my pitches to the agents and editors who handle my kind of work, etc., etc., etc. For years and years, I’ve believed in the ancient wisdom of the previously published: find a publisher who does your kind of book, and pitch it there. In fact, the narrower you can make this focus, the better: if you can find the editor who bought the last five or six books just like yours out there, and pitch her, that’s even better…and if you find an editor or a house that publishes an author you sound uncannily like, or whom you emulate, that’s like hitting the proverbial pot of gold and rainbow. Go for it, and you’ll be snatched up instantly—or at least have a better chance of getting your foot in the door. Sounds like great advice, right? Too bad it’s not. In fact, those are exactly the people to whom you do not want to send your book. Why not? Let me explain. You love Suzy Potboiler. You gobble up everything she writes. You dream about her characters. You reread her stories until the books are dogeared. And when you grow up as a writer, you want to be as good as she is. Fast forward a few years…and you’ve become a really good storyteller yourself. In fact, people now tell you your work sounds amazingly like S.P. It’s yours, of course—but it’s the same genre, it has a similar tone, you write to a similar word length…in other words, if Suzy ever misses a stride, you want to be the princess in waiting. To give her publisher the hint, you pitch your book there; if she’s prolific, you pitch your work to all her publishers. But no matter how you try, you can’t break in with her publishers, and you can’t get her agent to give you the time of day. Why would that be? They like what Suzy does, right? So shouldn’t they like your stuff just as much? Shouldn’t you be on that gravy train, too? Nope. Because they don’t want another Suzy. They want a Mabel. Or a Dorothy. Or a Colleen. Or a Meg. Not another Suzy. Two Suzys dilute the market. They confuse readers. People want to know what the difference is…or, worse, they forget. And forgetting a trademark, a name, or a label…this is serious in the book business. But a Suzy, and a Mabel, and a Dorothy? These gals write all different sorts of books. For different readers, and different buyers. And the wider swath a publisher can cut across the reader base…the better they like it. So, no, the place to pitch your work isn’t where Suzy pitches and sells hers. It’s at her competition. And this, boys and girls, is “hitting ‘em where they ain’t.” You see, for years, Also-Ran Publisher has been kicking themselves that when Suzy’s stuff came across the transom, they didn’t see it for the genius it was. The editorial assistant who gave it thumbs-down, of course, is no longer working for ARP. But neither is Suzy writing for them, while she’s making gazillions of dollars for Trite and True house down the street, and it bugs ARP every time Suzy hits the bestseller lists. What they’d love to find is another Suzy, but there isn’t another Suzy out there… Or is there? You see where we’re going here, don’t you? Think this week not about pitching where “they’ve already bought books like” yours…but where you haven’t seen books quite like yours yet. Certainly, stay within your genre, or within the range of the broad-brush “type” of book you want to sell. But don’t try to break into a place that does what you love by being more of the same. That’s hitting “at ‘em” balls, and you’ll never get out of the infield. Because they don’t need two of any storyline, any author, or any type of book that’s too much like another one in-house already. If you love Mary Higgins Clark, like I do, in other words…that means that your aim shouldn’t be to end up at Simon and Schuster alongside her. Mine was. For years. It isn’t anymore. Because Simon and Schuster doesn’t need another Mary Higgins Clark. They’ve already got one. It’s taken me all these years to figure this out, but I think I’ve got it now. I think it’ll be just as sweet to be Penguin’s answer to Mary Higgins Clark. Or Random House’s. Or Doubleday’s. Or maybeThomas Nelson’s. Or…a publisher or agent I haven’t even thought of yet, but who’s thinking of me. Who’s sitting there, thinking, “What I’d really love to see is a cross between Mary Higgins Clark and Karen Kingsbury. You know…a little suspense, a lot of emotion...” Note to said publisher or agent: e-mail me. I’ve got a book that’ll knock your socks off. Come to think of it, I’ve got a better idea. I’ll be pitching you shortly. And you’ll be glad I did. Janny

Weary of It All

I feel a little lonely and more than a little tired this particular morning, as a Catholic Christian writer. 
This feeling comes and goes, depending on the cultural currents around us. But two recent incidents made it come to the fore in especially vivid relief. 

 The first one came when I was reading my way through a novel called Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood. The book has a promising setup: a woman recovering from a serious accident begins to discover stuff about her life that will change her forever. 

I love stories where stuff gets revealed, secrets are told, and people’s lives change as a result. So it sounded like it’d be a horking good read. 

What was even more promising was that one of the major protagonists in this book was a Catholic priest, a man who took custody of the heroine as a child, when she was in need of someone to step into her life and provide stability. 

He was written wonderfully…for awhile. Unfortunately, the author then took the cheap, easy, and all-too-predictable path. (I guess she couldn’t hold out forever.) 

She had a character talking with Fr. Mike ask, “Father, do I have to obey all the Church laws? Even the stupid ones?”

 

 Well, you know what the “stupid ones” are, don’t you? 

 Yeah. Anything to do with sex. The contraception prohibition, among them. And, of course, a contemporary author wouldn’t be worth her salt if she didn’t hint that stuff like not letting women be priests and/or not letting priests marry (this space for violins), among other things, are just so terminally backward that they also fall under the “stupid” category of Church law.

Now, this was disappointing enough. But when this character gets done having her say, what does Fr. Mike do?

 

He could have used this as a wonderful teaching moment. Heck, he could have even just fallen back on “we’re not called to know all the answers, we’re just called to obey,” which is not only perfectly Catholic and perfectly Christian, but a perfectly okay response even in many secular situations. (Think military and/or medical settings, if nothing else.) 

He could have talked about faith. About God giving strength to people to do things on faith that, on the surface, may not make sense in human terms. 

So how did he answer her? He commiserated, chuckled, and finally confided, “Actually, you know what? Don’t tell anybody, but…I agree with you.” 

And I tossed the book across the room. 

 Frankly, I've gotten to the point where I’d just about sell my soul—figuratively, at least—for someone, anyone, to write and publish some faithful Catholic characters for a change. 

Not the overly-pious end-times crazies that pop up in some of the apocalyptic literature—that’s just as bad as going the other way. But a few ordinary, everyday, next-door-neighbor types wouldn’t come amiss. 

Failing that, I’d be willing to take characters who were at least neutral. Who were willing to say something like, “Well, there’s a lot I don’t understand, but since I’m in this Church, I do the best I can to be faithful to her.” 

Or if they’re not in the Church, to say something like, “Well, I don’t believe that way, but a lot of people grew up with those beliefs and they turned out all right…so it probably isn’t all that bad.”  

That may be damning with faint praise, but even that is better than the endless nudge-nudge, snicker-snicker, isn’t-this-just-like-those-stupid-reactionary-Papists stuff. 

Especially when it comes from characters who are supposed to be on our side. 

Where are all the characters who aren’t chafing against “stupid rules,” who aren’t badmouthing the Church when things get a little challenging, who aren’t kicking against the goad? 

Where are the priests willing to stand up for Mother Church? 

In real life, they’re out there. They’re some of the most wonderful people you’ll ever meet. They’re perfectly normal, too, amazingly enough—reasonably intelligent, informed on current events, participatory in their modern worlds, with healthy senses of humor and healthy senses of realism. It’s not like they’re all living in caves. So why don’t they ever show up in stories?

 

One might be tempted to assume that one didn’t show up this time because this book is secular literature, but the problem goes deeper than just secular versus “spiritual.” Some so-called spiritual writers offend equally, and sometimes in more egregious ways yet. 

The plain fact of the matter is that in our culture, it’s considered not opinion, but fact, that “Catholic Church rules are stupid.” And, like any propaganda does, that skewed perspective has had the effect of convincing many people that the idea behind Catholicism is “Just be nice, the rest doesn’t count;” or that the Catholic Gospel is less concerned with conversion than with liberating people from oppression, saving trees, or turning a blind eye to lawbreaking in the name of “loving Jesus.” 

None of this is true. 

None of this is authentic Catholicism. 

It’s not even good Christianity, for that matter. 

But it persists, and the more even fictional characters reinforce these predictable, ignorant bigotries, the narrower the field gets for all of us.

I experienced this narrowing in the second incident that set me apart.

I found a new Christian publishing house starting up, got along famously with the editorial people I contacted there, and asked them if they were willing to do reprints. Turns out they are, so I submitted From the Ashes to them…which, as you might expect, is Christian fiction from a Catholic viewpoint.

Now, the last time I looked, Catholicism was still based in Jesus Christ. Which, by definition, makes it Christian. But I was told very nicely by the editor in charge that if I wanted to have that book reprinted by her house, I’d need to remove the “Romanism” from it, because she is aiming at a broader reader base that is more heavily Protestant.

On the surface, this sounds like an innocent enough request. After all, she knows her potential market, right?

But is it really all that innocent? 

Or is it rather a matter of a huge number of Protestants buying into a picture of Catholicism that they've been fed by secular media as “what Catholicism is about,” and dismissing us and/or being offended accordingly?

That’s wrong. It’s a mistake. And the worst part of all is, it’s a huge blind spot that may come back to bite us when there are bigger battles to fight.

Our culture is literally racing toward dismissing anything pure, moral, and decent in favor of the impure, the immoral, and the indecent. If we needed any more evidence of that, the following piece of tripe I encountered in PW (Publishers Weekly) spells it out in rather chilling terms.

It’s an excerpt from a review in the June 11, 2007, issue. The publication in question is a comic book/graphic book called Misery Loves Comedy, by a certain Ivan Brunetti. Apparently, boys and girls, comic books ain't what they used to be. Not if you can believe a review that says, in part:

“Brunetti constantly offers up the worst possible image of himself alongside his portraits of a despised society. His festival of self-loathing, sexual depravity and brutal cynicism, is, however, amazingly clever and incisive. Whether from the point of view of a miserable comics artist and workaday hack, a nihilistic Jesus Christ or a raging ‘feminazi,’ these rants are fascinatingly convincing, readable and smart.”

We have already reached a phase in our culture where “self-loathing, sexual depravity and brutal cynicism” are considered “clever and incisive.” And yet, here I am with a clean, wholesome book to sell, submitted to where ideally it should fit right in...yet it is somehow not quite “right” for a “Christian” fiction market. Its Catholic identity makes it somehow...flawed. Risky. Possibly even dangerous.

Words fail me.

Note to my Christian publishing sisters: As erotic depravity takes over romance fiction, and comic book writers get praise for the kinds of things cited above...Catholics ain’t the ones you ought to be worried about.

We have bigger fish to fry. But it’s going to get real lonely in that frying pan pretty soon if we don’t have the sense to start frying them together.

Thoughts?
Janny

A Brief Pause for a "Catholic" Commercial...

...from a very articulate Protestant. Great stuff! Me, I'll pray for this guy's conversion to the Roman Church, if for no other reason than that he has his head on extraordinarily straight. That cannot be said, alas, for many of the USCCB...to mention the misguided (brain damaged?) souls over last forty years who have yammered about the "Spirit of Vatican II" while importing clowns and other nonsense into the liturgy. In the Church I love, all too often, the old Pogo comic quote comes to mind: "We have seen the enemy, and they is us." So, as this gentleman so eloquently put it, it's good news for all of us when the Catholic Church starts acting like the Catholic Church again. Viva il papa! More to come, Janny

Voice, Part II—Or, One Path To Finding Yours!

My original notion on this topic, it turns out, is correct. Everyone wants to have a unique writer’s voice, but no one is quite sure just how to go about getting one. So how do you know what your particular “voice” is? How do you identify it? How do you know it when you hear it? And can it change? Last question first, because this particular question seems to be a biggie. Short answer? Yes…to a point. I wouldn’t have said this a few years ago. I would have said, “No. The way you write is the way you write, you’ve got one voice, and no matter how you try, you aren’t going to sound dramatically different.” Then, just for a lark, I tried a chapter of a light, frothy “chick lit” type book just to see if I could carry off zany, comedic and a little edgy. And the feedback? “Wow! What a great chick lit voice you have! You’ve really found your niche.” There’s only one trouble with that assessment. I heard exactly the same thing when I wrote a traditional romance with a cute/funny meet…and a romantic suspense with more than a touch of the ghostly. I heard like feedback on the depth of emotion I brought to a “death” scene…and the pure sweetness of a happy ending (at last). I’ve written romantic suspense, I’ve written traditional romance, I’ve written inspirational fiction, I’ve written nonfiction, and I’ve dabbled in aforementioned chick lit stuff. And no matter what I do, someone will say to me, “Oh, now, this…this is your voice. You need to just concentrate on this.” I’m a veteran writer. I’ve been at this game for a long, long time. You’d think I’d know what I’m doing. You’d think I’d really know my strengths by now. But the fact is, if I turn my hand to something, I often can “fake my way” through it, pretty convincingly, if the feedback is to be believed. Probably we all can. So is it any wonder that we’re all so flummoxed? The unfortunate (and confusing) fact is, “who we are” as writers sometimes will change. Anyone who’s ever taken a Myers-Briggs or other personality test knows that your results can differ dramatically depending on the mood you’re in, whether you’ve had enough sleep, the atmosphere in which you’re taking the test, and such things. (I personally have tested ENTJ, but some of the “results” are so close that if you tip it one way or the other, I’ll end up ISTP or even ISFJ—although I can’t quite imagine myself throwing over that logical “T” for an “F”, somehow.) If something as basic as personality can reflect in different ways depending on external factors, then it stands to reason that an author’s voice may in fact show itself as two or three startlingly different “voices.” So how do you distill down to one? Or should you? Once again, the short answer, yes—find the one place where you’re always “singing” in words, and stay in that spot long enough to distill it…if at all possible. I say that because you may not be at the point yet where you know which “voice” is truly yours. You may just not have written enough yet. Or tried enough different things yet. Or totally enthralled or disgusted yourself enough yet to know what, for sure, you at least don’t want to sound like! But you will. One day, you’ll be writing something, and the sparks will fly out of your fingers, and a shiver will go up your spine, and you’ll know you’re Onto Something. That “something” will be the action of telling your own stories, in your unique author voice. And there ain’t nothing like the real thing. Notice I don’t say you’ll be writing in your unique “style.” An author can write different styles of work, yet still have the same voice. I think regular readers of this blog could probably find familiar “resonances” with it in anything I wrote. Heck, I can find resonances between this and most letters and e-mails I write. That proves I’ve written enough millions of words that certain ones just pop out of my fingers more readily than others, in certain orders, with a certain rhythm and pace. All of that is style, which is one component of voice…but voice is something even deeper, even more distilled than style. It’s an essence. And you can get at it, if you’re willing to be fearless and play a little. So fasten your seat belts, because this is where it gets fun. My favorite, all-time, number one way to do any kind of serious writer exploration is by talking things out. I do this at a couple of points in the work. The first point is during the writing itself, or even prewriting. The best venue to do this talking, for me, is in the car. I take a long drive alone, and after I’m on the road perking along, I pose whatever my story question of the minute is, and then think about it out loud. I think in character sometimes; I think as narrator at others. I’ve talked out dialogue, plot knots, conflict, motivations…any number of things for my stories and characters, basically by having a conversation with myself. (This is why driving in the city, for these purposes, is perfect. Unless your windows are wide open and you’re in stop and go traffic, you can expound away quite freely and people just think you’re singing with your radio.) (Which I also do!) Some people do this with a tape recorder, but I don’t. Not only do I freeze up if there’s a machine going, but I don’t need to record it—after I’ve rehearsed it out loud enough times, I’ve got it imprinted in my brain somewhere, and I can literally come home and write it pretty much word for word. In my life here, out of city traffic, I don’t take long rides in the car as often as I used to. So sometimes to accomplish this talking-thinking-out-loud, I have to wait until the house is empty, sequester myself in my office and chatter away in much the same fashion. It’s slightly less effective that way, but in a pinch…it’ll work. The second form of “talking out” takes place once there’s something on the page. In this second form, you take a portion of the WIP and read it out loud, by yourself, to yourself. With expression, animation, and whatever you want to put into the danged stuff. Because I guarantee that when you do this, two things will happen: —you’ll enjoy some parts of the writing way more than others, and —you’ll stumble over some parts of the writing way more than others. They will literally be hard to read. Your tongue will get tangled, or you won’t like the sound of something, or you’ll keep hesitating before you say a certain sentence or phrase. Your job then? To go back and fix those places until they roll nicely off the tongue. It’s both as simple, and as complex, as that. Simple because sometimes all you need to do is change one word, and the sentence or scene works. Complex because in the process of figuring out what makes you stumble physically over a passage, you’re also discovering places where you’re not truly “in good voice.” Something in the work doesn’t resonate with you, so you have trouble getting through it. But when you go back and fix it so it flows…? This exercise ends up building your voice two different ways. First, it gets you accustomed to how your writer’s voice sounds, reads, and flows. Second, it helps you improve your writing craft—the actual craft—without your having to come within five miles of a potentially devastating, confusing, or nonsensical critique from someone else. Anyone else. As big a fan as I am of critiques, “voice” is one area they can really mess with…so it’s best at these times to Fix Things Yourself. (If you’re perplexed how to fix concrete, nuts-and-bolts stuff, of course, get some help if you want it. On the other hand, after enough of these sessions, you may find you don’t need nuts-and-bolts help so much anymore, either.) In a nutshell, that’s my voice-finding method in its clearest, most straightforward form. Sounds almost too easy, doesn’t it? Trust me on this. After years of writing just this way, I can vouch for the fact that this is simple, not easy. You may find it frustrating, almost impossible, at first. You may think, “I’m not an aural learner. I’m visual.” (Visual is OK. Use your flow charts, your highlighters, your index cards. Those are nuts and bolts. This is different.) Or, “I don’t read well out loud. Won’t I just do more harm than good?” (Answer? No. Because part of what penetrates the layers of writer-speak to the point where you’re using your writer’s voice, and you know it, will be the gradual release of inhibitions toward the spoken/read word that many of us have, especially our own spoken/read words. That’s why this is as much a challenge to play as to work.) Yeah, it’ll be fun. Yeah, you’ll work hard. Yeah, I want to know what you think of this…after you’ve tried it. You might surprise the both of us. More to come! Janny

A Writer’s Voice—Or, I Know It When I Hear It

Voice. Surely no subject (except maybe the Holy Grail, or the elusive "will of God for my life") has been so misunderstood, had more mistaken info bandied about concerning it, or been a greater mystery to all and sundry than the subject of a writer’s “voice.” I once had a person ask me, “When I’m writing about the heroine, then I’m writing in her voice. And in the hero, I’m writing in his voice, right? So what do they mean when they talk about my voice? I’m not supposed to put my voice into stuff, am I?” Upon further questioning, I discovered that this poor newbie writer soul had somehow deduced that the writer’s “voice” had to do with dialogue. In reality, she wasn’t far enough along the craft road yet to realize what people meant when they talked about “voice” rather than “how characters sound when they talk”; in cases like that, you can only steer someone toward where they can get more answers and explanation, and then hope it eventually sinks in. The other side to that coin, however, happened this morning. Our local classical music station played a theater piece by Bizet—not from Carmen, but from another production for which he had also written music. Within the first minute or so of hearing it, even though I’ve never heard this piece before, I knew it was Bizet, and I would have known that even without the announcer telling me it ahead of time. How? Because of the composer’s voice. The orchestration of woodwind lines, in this instance—their particular melodic and harmonic combinations—was a dead giveaway. I’d heard Bizet do those same things in other pieces; those things are part of his orchestral “language.” If you will, they’re his vocabulary, his word usage, and his turn of phrase. Same with Beethoven and his endless codas. (Nice boy, but he can’t finish anything.) Same with Tchaikovsky and his “clouds of rosin.” (Translation: lots and lots of running passages played by lots and lots of strings!) Now, I know these “voices” partially because I’m an educated musician, but also I’ve listened to thousands of hours of all kinds of music. This is uncannily like the training we do as writers, in which we’re told to “read widely.” So we do. In the process, we read millions of words by lots of different people. We learn who we can't put down, who leaves us indifferent, and who we fervently hope will never land another contract. We learn, in other words, whose voices we enjoy. After long consideration, and much second-guessing and trying to read between the lines of rejection letters (a totally fruitless endeavor, by the way), I’ve finally come to the conclusion that voice is everything. Period. Editors and agents mention voice, of course, when they talk about why books get their attention—but they mention it as only one in a laundry list of items they “look for.” In reality, however, no one “looks for” anything in a manuscript; one listens for it instead. Which is why, in the end, what sells our books is not the beauty of our plot line, the heroism of our protagonist, or the complexity of our mysteries…but how we tell the reader about all these things. Or, put another way, how they sound. Psychologists and reading experts have lots of multi-syllable terminology to describe and label this process, but in essence, when you read, something in your mind “speaks” the words to you. Your mind either likes the sound of what it hears, or it doesn’t. That’s the “spark” that grabs you…or the lack of same that leaves you cold. And, yes, it’s as individual as your fingerprint or stride—which is why an editor, when pushed to the wall, can only shrug and say, “I can’t really tell you what grabs me until I see it.” Translate that as “hear it,” and you’re on to something. Most of us don’t have concrete “writing” reasons for liking certain authors. We just do. The reason, boiled down, is that their voices speak to us in ways we enjoy. Only in analysis after the fact do we put official-sounding “professional” writing terms to the elements involved. But in the beginning, it’s a sensory and emotional decision, and nothing more nor less than that. If the voice of a work speaks too slowly, seems to drag or be too shallow, you’ll get bored and distracted. If the voice is too frenetic or harsh, you have to set the book aside—either temporarily, to “catch your breath,” or permanently, because you just find the story too “rattling.” If the voice sounds too cloying, or whiny, or evokes too much pathos for what you find appropriate, you feel as if the author is in a sense “telling lies” to you; she’s speaking in terms you know are not true. Books that "fail" us in these ways end up in your giveaway pile. But if the voice of the writer employs pleasing sounds (words that “roll off your tongue” well), relates the story in a rhythm compatible with your own internal auditory preferences (a pace at which you can travel easily), and resonates with you internally (and ending that satisfies you)—guess what? You’re probably going to like that book. That combination of elements is what makes a “keeper” as well…because that pleasant “reading” auditory experience is one so enjoyable most of us like to repeat it, and sometimes we’d rather go back to a familiar well and drink from it again than take the risk of drinking from a new source. Which is why once you find an author you enjoy, you tend to want to read everything she’s written—just to see if the experience is equally satisfying every time. Which also, to me, finally explains the sense behind “branding” as well. It’s not, as the experts keep telling us, so much that “readers like to know what to expect.” On the contrary: as a reader, I love being surprised by an author. But I like to be surprised in a way that resonates with me, a way I understand, a way that seems “true,” and a way that doesn’t require me to change the way I listen to the author’s story too very much. That means I need the author to speak to me in a consistent voice.If she does, I’m loyal to her and spread the word. If she doesn’t, I’m confused. And confusion, for an editor or agent, means working harder than necessary to listen to a story…which is why, if they find my voice unclear or unappealing in any way, it’s easier just to send the rejection slip and move on to something that may speak to them more clearly. Voice. It’s everything. It’s the spark. It’s the difference. But how to develop your own? And how to target where your listeners are? Stay tuned. We’ll talk about that next time. Janny

Stewardship...Beginning at Home

Had some interesting input from the “weekends” post last week about writing on the Lord’s Day—along the lines of “God gave me this talent, so if I’m using it on the Sabbath, that’s a good thing.” Can’t really argue with that, on one level. Just as my singing in church is “work” in one sense, in a greater sense, it’s using a talent God gave me in the best possible way to use it, and that’s counted as blessed. But it’s when we spend our Sunday/Sabbath doing nothing different from an ordinary day except going to church that, I think, we need to take care. Catholic interpretation of keeping the Sabbath includes doing no unnecessary work, as well as refraining from treating the day the same as you would a regular weekday. So, ironically enough, if your normal weekday is spent writing, technically on the Sabbath you should break from that routine and REST from same. But it’s a dilemma if the other six days of the week crowd out writing, and your “Sabbath” becomes the only time when you can do the writing you feel God calls you to do. That might mean that something on one of those other six days has to go…in order that Sunday truly is not “the only time” you have to do these things in. That’s the tricky part, because we can convince ourselves that almost any use of time is “the way it has to be,” if we’re not careful. I know people who have actually talked themselves into believing that they can only grocery-shop on Sunday, for example; these people had abundant time for sporting events, bar hopping, or the like on Saturday night, though. So was it really true that they “didn’t have time” any other time in the week? Nope. Did they see that? Nope. Would they have been offended if a priest or even another “ordinary” Christian had pointed that out? Maybe. But it would need pointing out, regardless. That’s the kind of careful examination/inventory I maintain we all need to do, and not just once in awhile, but on an ongoing basis. Because these little chinks in our armor don’t ambush us all at once. These little omissions don’t happen in one fell swoop, Invasion of the Body Snatchers style. Satan knows if he comes in with guns blazing, we have no trouble resisting him. So he comes instead under the guise of “busy-ness” and “obligations” and “have tos” instead, our culture applauds us for being endlessly productive, and… Sigh. It’s all part of stewardship. Managing our time, managing our gifts…and managing our environment, as best we can. Caring for what’s been given to us. And I had an interesting session of stewardship this past week, when I deliberately structured a couple of vacation days so that I could in effect have a 5-day weekend. So what did I plan to do with this time? Write nonstop? Sleep half the days? Sun myself? Picnic? Well, part of it, I spent doing a wonderful dose of heavy duty cleaning. Now some of you are screaming.“What are you thinking? You’ve got this time off, don’t waste it housecleaning! Get outside! Do holiday stuff! Write first, then clean!” But what if I expressed it as stewardship for my home? And my sanity? And my emotional state? How, then, does it look to spend the better part of July 4 and 5 in dusting, polishing, decluttering, scrubbing, vacuuming, and organizing? Not only is it a worthwhile thing to do—and enjoyable, if you’re a homebody, as I am—but it’s also good stewardship. And good stewardship is not optional…it’s required of us. Did you ever think of housework that way before? I know I didn’t necessarily. I thought of it as “taking care,” as doing what needed doing…but I don’t think it really hit home to me that a home is part of the “abundance” that God has blessed us with, and we are to be stewards of it as well. So, while we may not get excited about housework, or while we may feel it “is never done,” or the like…the fact is, if we allow our surroundings to be anything less than the best we can make them, to that degree, we’re not practicing good stewardship of what God has given us. And it strikes me as it’s then tricky business to ask God for “more,” for prosperity, or success, or whatever material thing would really make our lives easier, while at the same time treating cleaning our houses as something unimportant—something we only do if there’s “nothing better” to use our time on. God says we have to take care of the “little” things to be trusted with big ones; in that sense, nothing we do in the home is unimportant. On the contrary…it’s more important than we may have ever suspected before. Scripture says if we don’t provide for our own families, we “have denied the faith, and are worse than an infidel.” That’s not just referring to financial provision, although the temptation is great to limit it to that in our own minds. It also applies to keeping our homes clean, uncluttered, and as beautiful as we can make them. It all counts. It’s all stewardship. And that’s why this past holiday weekend has been a great one for me…because I gave myself, and God, the gift of treating my home like the treasure that it is. And in the process, I also “had time” for outdoor stuff, for grilling, for resting, for fireworks…and for writing up a storm part of Friday night and all day Saturday. And I’m going to continue to do some of that same writing today, with God in charge of it, as best I can. It all counts, but the good news is, it all blesses, too. Thoughts? Janny

Does Your Muse Work Weekends?

Okay, now this may sound like a silly question. After all, we all know that as writers, we pretty much have to work all the time. Between day jobs where we can't do our own writing, and families whose needs have nothing to do with writing, and all those lovely little household tasks that crowd out time for writing...some of us may be thinking, "Duh. Of course. When else is there?" (Unless you're a vampire, one of the undead, and then you don't need to sleep.) But this evening at Mass, our pastor talked about putting God first in our lives. And whether we do. Or to what degree. And if our commitment is so authentic that literally nothing keeps us from serving God. Or, if we're not doing all we can for God...for our church...for our parish...etc., then what is holding us back? It got me thinking. For those of you who ain't got religion and who stumbled upon this by accident, don't leave too fast. You can be in on this, too. If we're truly living for God... If God is truly who we're loving with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, and all our strengths... And God says to "keep holy the Sabbath day"... Then if our Muse works that day, is that honoring to God? Some of us would answer an immediate "Who cares?" (Those are the ones what ain't got religion and/or who may have thought this was one of those allegedly Catholic blogs that's actually a thinly disguised dissident rant blog about What's Wrong With The Church. Sorry, guys and gals, for the misdirection. If you like, you can leave now. But we'll pray for you!) Some of us would say, "But of course. I write for God. He knows this is the only time I have." Do you? And does He? Or would He rather you spend your time doing something else on the Sabbath? Have you asked Him? Do you continue to ask Him? Do you ever get so caught up in your writing that you "forget" about other Sunday/weekend obligations? Or resent them? Or find yourself working out a plot line when you're supposed to be concentrating on the Eucharistic Prayer? (Not that I would know anything about that last one. No, sir.) Before I started thinking about the balancing act we call our lives in this particular light, I would have said, "You betcher sweet bippy my Muse works on weekends. Or she's fired." Now, I'm not so sure that's always the best answer. Oh, that's a great answer for a "serious" writer. Every spare minute, we carve out for the Muse, or we are wasting that valuable time. Yeah, of course, your real life has to come first, but... Well, that's certainly the world's standard. Produce or get out of the way. And Sunday, or your particular Sabbath...in that mindset...cannot be anything more than another day of the week. If it's a day you're not at the day job, hallelujah! You're free to write! (And you'd better have your butt in the chair bright and early, too, Missy...) But we're not called to the world's standard, are we? We're called to a gold standard of putting God first. Even before the Muse. And trusting that if we do, He'll give us the time for the rest. But we have to put the time in with Him first, before that promise gets fulfilled. And in reality, if it worked the other way around, it'd be meaningless. Because then we're saying, "Okay, God, if you give me this time to write, I'll _________ for you." Notice what comes first in that bargain. And notice, just for a moment, how backwards that is. I'll probably be writing tomorrow, if that's where God wants me to be. But He might not. He might have a better place in mind. And if He does, I'm going to do my best to be aware of that, and open to it, and trust Him to provide for my Muse to do her thing when it's time for that as well. I'm not saying this is going to be easy.... I'm just going to try to be more aware of it from now on. And sometimes, possibly, my Muse may take a weekend off. Or at least a Sabbath. What will come out of my keyboard once it's surrendered to God might be very, very interesting. May just be the best work I've ever done. I'm looking forward to finding out. Thoughts? Janny

The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is...II

...Or, You Get What Comes With It As my former hairdresser always put it, “Be careful what you wish for. Because if you get it, you get what comes with it.” Quite frankly, I would submit that that—rather than sheer gutlessness—is actually what keeps many of us from pursuing the path of courage I mentioned yesterday. Because asserting yourself means you have to take “what comes with it.” Sometimes, that can be terrifying. Or expensive. Or both. Long ago, I held a position where I was doing corporate newsletters for a major career consulting firm on a contractor basis. The CEO of the company was a pretty nice guy, as CEOs go, but he also had some typical CEO-type blind spots, and one of them was that he had no clue how to deal with me as a contractor. In his worldview, I was just an administrator of a satellite office out of Chicago, and so he kept trying to treat me like any other admin: expecting me to come and work Convention for the company for no extra pay, being slow to pay me for my contract work…you get the picture. Finally, I’d had enough of his office treating me like a second-class citizen; I’d had enough of never knowing when checks were coming, being lied to about when they’d been sent, and him expecting me to work 12-hour days at a Convention when that wasn’t even my job to do. But before I went into confrontation with this guy, my mentor, a career advisor with this organization, said to me, “Yeah, you’re right. And yeah, you need to tell him this stuff. But just know that when you make this stand, he may disagree. He may decide it’s just not worth the hassle to deal with you. So you have to be prepared to walk away.” This was a scary prospect, because I had no other income. But having income that you can’t depend on is almost as bad as having none at all…and so I went into battle with the guy. I sent him a polite letter and invoice indicating that he still owed for previous newsletter months, and so until he paid that bill, his office wouldn’t receive their mailing that month. To take such a step with a CEO of a company is not being “nice.” I knew that. And I knew when he called me, loaded for bear, I was going to get an earful about how “nice” I wasn’t being. The funny part was, though, that he started his diatribe with something along the lines of “I’ve never before had an employee do this—” At which point I politely interrupted, “You haven’t had an employee do that this time, either, Mr. Big. I’m not your employee.” At which point he sputtered, so I calmly continued. “Do you pay me a salary? “Well…no.” “Do I work in your office?” “No.” “Do you pay any of my medical benefits?” “No. “Do you pay toward my pension?” “No.” “Do you pay Social Security tax on me?” “Uh…no.” “Then guess what?” The bottom line was, what my career advisor friend had predicted would happen did, in fact, happen. Mr. Big decided that this “just wasn’t working,” and that he would bring the newsletters in-house. He had a potential editor already in mind for them, as a matter of fact, and it would just be “better” if they were in New York at corporate headquarters. (It wasn’t, of course. The person he hired was an artist, not an editor, and we went from a 14- to 16-page house organ chock-full of human interest stories to a 4-pager with some pretty clip art, but no photos, no personal stories, wooden writing, and four obvious typos in the first issue. To say it was a lame replacement would be being kind.) The impact upon my life was immediate. I got paid for the final newsletters I did, and then my association with that organization, and the money that came with it, was over. So was the hassle. But so was the security, sketchy though it was at times. And that, above all, is what terrifies most of us. Keeps us silent. Keeps us hedging our bets. Convinces us that a crumb off the loaf is better than nothing. We know that if we stand up for ourselves, we’ll get what comes with it. And sometimes, what comes with it can hurt. We may have to walk away from a book sale, when that’s all we’ve wanted for our entire lives…and we don’t know if we’ll ever get another chance. We may get vilified by “authorities” in our lives for being “too big for our britches.” We may even lose friends over taking a stand they didn’t take. And so the little voice in our head screams at us, and we knuckle under. We get that sick feeling in the pits of our stomachs—the one that tells us when we’ve sold ourselves short—but we rationalize it. We tell ourselves “no one” can do any better as a beginner, as a first-time author, with an industry as overcrowded with product as ours is, etc., etc., etc. We tell ourselves that there are thousands of people willing to take our places if we don’t buy in. And that slot will be filled with no skin off the publishers’ noses. All of that, in part, is true. But once again, it’s true because we’ve allowed it to be so. If we stopped contributing to our end of that equation, however, the same thing would happen that happened to that unfortunate CEO. He got an inferior product. He got complaints from the field. And he got, ultimately, much less than he could have had if he’d just been willing to meet a fellow professional on an even playing field. The question is, how many of us are willing to stand up to fear. To refuse to give it quarter. To act like adults, instead of scared children, and stop treating publishers, editors, or agents like “authority figures” when in fact, what they are is buyers of our products. In other words, customers. Of course, the name of the game is keeping customers happy. But I submit that we can keep customers happy without giving away our pride, our self-esteem, or the store. If we knuckle under too many times, it’s no longer a buyer/seller relationship, but a master/slave one. And none of us deserves that. We just have to be adult enough to take what comes with it. In the end, what comes with that stand is richer than we can imagine in our wildest dreams. I now have a way better job, and way better freelance writing gigs, than that corporate newsletter ever was in its best days. But to get to that place, I had to leave the old one behind…and take what came with it. Are we game? Janny

...Not nearly as dangerous as I thought I was!

The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is...

First, a little housekeeping! I did misread the calendar. Yesterday was the feast of St. Cyril...last Thursday was the feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga. Think the man ever dreamed so many people would know his name every March? (hee hee) Can't imagine how I made such an egregious mistake, since my day gig is all about making sure to AVOID egregious mistakes. (I just love that word "egregious.") But, onward and upward. Was having an interesting conversation this week about publishers' interests versus authors' interests--and why in the world they have to be "versus" in the first place--when the notion once again reared its ugly head that publishers have all the control, authors have none, and that's why things sometimes turn into the messes they do. But is that truly the case? I submit not. Or at least, I submit that it doesn't have to be. But it can only change if we're willing to stop being so danged scared of our own shadows. For years, I've seen authors--both the unpublished and the already-published--walk around on eggshells, afraid of the slightest thing. They're afraid to ask an agent for a status report after six months without a word. They're afraid to ask an editor for a status report after a year (!). They're afraid to ask for changes in a contract. They're afraid to ask that a royalty statement be printed in English. They're afraid to say anything that might be misinterpreted in an e-mail, in an elevator, or even in the privacy of a conversation among friends. But most of all, they're afraid to be honest about a lot of personal experiences...when honesty might actually help a lot of people in the long run (including themselves). But honesty sometimes means that what you say could sound negative to someone, some time, in some instance. So, no matter how true it is, they hold back. Why? Because someone, some time, might overhear it, get offended, the next thing they know, they'll be "blacklisted" forever in the writing business. All that anxiety, and all so unnecessary. Some years ago, a prominent male author was in a public interview situation (a press conference? book signing? whatever) where news had just broken that he'd left one publisher to sign his next book with another. In the process of talking about why he'd left, he simply said outright that one publisher gave him a better deal than the other one. He hadn't felt that the first one was ready to go to the mat quite as strongly with his second book as his new publisher would. They'd offered more money, they'd offered him a better marketing plan, etc., etc., etc. The reaction from most of the marketplace? "You go, guy." The reaction from RWA? "OHMYGOD!" Rampant horror. Rampant dissing of the man involved, indignation that he would act so "unprofessionally," etc. Did the publishers care? Heck, no. They smiled, went about their business, and life went on. Now why the disconnect? It sounds sexist to say so, but I suspect it's because RWA is predominantly made up of females. And for some reason, the female mind seems to prize "niceness" above all else in the world--even in business. Males, as we all know if we live with them, put "niceness" way down the list of things to even think about, much less worry about, especially in the marketplace. (!) A man's world is dog-eat-dog, may-the-best-man-win, and if you don't like what I say about you...oh, well. Maybe you'll learn from it and do better by your next customer. Which is nothing more nor less than a) perfectly good business sense, and b) the way the free market operates. You treat me well, I'll stay with you. Someone else comes along who's prepared to treat me better...well, you just may lose me as a client. C'est la vie. No one holds a grudge against you if you take your business to Dominick's instead of Kroger's when Dominick's gives you a better deal. You can even go back to Kroger's when they have a sale, and the checkers will happily wait on you. They may even smile at you. In any event, they sure won't "blacklist" you or "blackball" you or consider you "less than a reliable businessperson" for shopping around to get the best deal for yourself. They'll be happy they provide the best deal, and they'll leave it at that. So why is the writing world, in so many circles, considered so different? "Publishing is a small world," is usually the answer that comes back. "It's a small community. You do something nasty to someone in it, and word will get around, and you'll appear less attractive to everyone else in it. And THEY'RE ALWAYS LISTENING!!!!!" (Note: in the real world, that last sentence is considered a treatable mental illness. 'Nuff said.) I can understand if you actually do nasty things, how they'll come around to get you. Even men will waste no mercy on someone who (pardon my French) screws 'em over. But a good healthy attitude of do-unto-others gets out of control when we start defining "nasty" as including everything that has the remotest possibility of offending someone, somewhere. --like asking a clueless question at a writers' conference. (Hello? Aren't writers' conferences supposed to be for learning? So how do we do that if we don't ask?) --like failing to "dress for success" when it's called for. (Like anyone really knows what that is, or when the instances are. But heaven help you if you actually think that blue jeans can be professional attire, anywhere, at any time.) --like (horror of horrors) daring to say out loud that Suzy Millionseller's latest book was less than stellar, and that you didn't much care for her previous two, either. --like (double horror) saying that the romance genre--or any genre of which you're a part--doesn't always hit a home run. That some books out there are just plain stupid. That some of them are pornographic, in the good old-fashioned sense of the word that we all "know when we see." And that, far from "empowering" women, many of these books set up women to believe that if they just play their physical card effectively enough, they'll "tame" an alpha man and make him their slave. (Yeah, right. Now there's a healthy basis for happy-ever-after.) --or, like (worst horror of all) daring to say out loud that one publisher was willing to pay you more than another, and so--nothing personal--you're jumping ship. Or that Mr. High Powered Agent may be high powered for some people, but he didn't do right by you. Or that you sure wish those royalty statements you get from Major Market Bow Down and Thank Your Lucky Stars Publisher were actually written in a language normal human beings could understand...so you could know for sure if they were really paying you what they're supposed to be paying you. Yes, there will always be stupid people out there in publishing, just like there are stupid people out there in all the other occupations we inhabit. And rude people. And snotty people. And people who walk all over someone else to get to where they're going. Those people deserve whatever they get. The majority of us, however, are not stupid, rude, cruel, snotty, or manipulative. Yet we can be made to feel any of those, or a combination of them, if we start speaking out too loud, too publicly, or too impolitely...by standards that would dismiss most churchwomen as impolite. And that's insanity. The reason authors have no control, quite simply, is because they take none. Because they're convinced it's somehow not "nice" to take the power. Or to ask someone else about it. Or to spread the word when they don't get treated well. I can tell you from this side of the desk, trust me...if you're good enough, and a publisher wants your work, you can ask for a lot of things, and you just might get them. Go for it. See what happens. And off the record, every editor I've ever talked with will tell you the same thing. But I don't know more than a handful of authors who truly believe it. Just as one example--we in romance celebrate that now, authors don't "have to" use a pseudonym at the big houses. Isn't that wonderful? Hardly. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not insisting upon it years ago--not celebrating when the publishers were finally "gracious" enough to give us what was ours to begin with. And the fact is, certain authors did always have that right...because they were willing to walk away if it wasn't given to them. In short? Abusive boilerplate contracts, bad royalty statements, sloppy bookkeeping, lack of promotion, or broken promises happen because no one says, "No, I'm sorry, that's not good enough." Or even "Wait a minute." It's because so many of us are so desperate to see our names on the cover of a book...we'll sell out for the proverbial "$1.49 and a kitten." And keep our mouths shut about the rest of it. But that's not just dumb; that's perpetuating a standard of behavior that would be considered bad business behavior in pretty much any other industry, among pretty much any other people. One of the few authors I've ever heard of who had the courage to say "No, thank you, that's simply not enough money," and hung up the phone, not only didn't get blackballed--she got Zebra calling her back in less than three minutes with a better offer. On a first-time contract. Without an agent. It can be done. It has been done. But when someone does it, we write it off as an "exception." As "luck." Or, worse, we react with horror instead of admiration. We diss the author in question, instead of taking a page from his or her book and being unwilling to give up the power we do have--which is the power of having a product that, like it or not, publishers need. If we all said "No" tomorrow, we'd all get better deals the day after tomorrow...because they've got to have product to survive. Yes, we need them to sell it. But they also need us to create it. So what are we so afraid of? Fear is a lousy reason to do anything, especially in our writing careers. Let's screw up our courage, determine what we need and what we're willing to sacrifice, and then stick to our guns. And let's encourage other people to do the same. Who knows? If they're really "always listening," maybe they'll catch on fast! Thoughts? Janny

So what day is it again?

If you are an alum of Gonzaga University… My calendar at home says today is your feast day! But all the online sources say it was last Thursday. Such is the nature of online information versus print versus… Sheesh! In other news, your favorite blogger (me) has been sidelined temporarily due to an extravagant workload in the day gig, as well as some past crises on the home front. Things are relatively calm at the moment, although I'm broke…still waiting on a freelance check. Will write more when time permits! Janny