A true story...which explains a lot

Yesterday, my crit partner mentioned one underlying problem we all have now and then when trying to create: the bad mix of trying to "fit our work in a box" versus trying to truly write what's in our heart, the story that begs to be told, and then worry about the "box" it'll fit in afterward. She finished up with hoping I wouldn't "hem myself in" with "Must color inside the lines...must color inside the lines..."

Little does she know how accurate that is.

True story. 

Little Janny, as a first-grader,  is assigned to color something (you're always assigned to color something in first grade. Like they have to persuade you to color?). She colors it. 

Now, Little Janny LIKES crayons. She does bold strokes. She tends to stray over lines. She tends to use intense sorts of coloring, and it's not a neat product when she's done.

Sister Rosemary, in conference with parents, expresses Grave Concern about this.
"Little Janny's coloring is very sloppy," Sister says. "Does she have fine motor control issues?"
Parents, to whom fine motor control is something you find in a Cadillac (which may as well be a DeLorean, for the likelihood of them having one), are puzzled.

Sister Rosemary explains further.
"See, she's pushing way too hard on these crayons, and the movements are jerky. She goes outside the lines. Does she have problems seeing?"
Parents, who understand word "seeing," say, "Nope."

Sister Rosemary  goes on.
"Well, to color properly, she needs to put way less pressure on her crayons." Sister holds up exemplary picture from classmate, colored in careful pastels. It's a thing of beauty. Looks like it was professionally printed.
"Like this. See? She doesn't need to press down so hard to get color out. If she presses lightly, she'll be able to stop short of the lines, and then just fill in the edges, and her work will be neater."
Parents, who think Little Janny is already pretty neat for a six-year-old (they remember her careful arrangements of stuffed toys and toy animals on the bed), are still a little puzzled. Is neatness so important for coloring at this point? She got the "right" colors on the sky and the trees and the apples, so that was good, wasn't it?

The nun smiles indulgently.
"Of course, that part's excellent. But she'll have to be neater. This sloppiness is unacceptable. These scribbles at the edges of things--does she have some kind of problem? Maybe self-control?"
Parents, who are constantly urging her to be less shy, don't think so.
"Okay. So we don't have to worry yet. But just tell her...color lightly. Not so hard on the crayons. She'll break them and wear them out too soon that way, anyway. And when she colors lightly, she'll stay within the lines, and her work will be so much better."

Parents, who attribute wisdom to Sister, go home and tell Little Janny what Sister said.
Little Janny frowns for a second. "But that'll make my pictures too light. I like the colors darker."
Parents sigh, and tell her apparently what Sister wants is light colors and within the lines. Maybe she ought to color that way. That's the "right" way to color, after all. It'll make Sister happy.
Little Janny wants to make Sister happy.

So she internalizes this...until seventh grade.
Then Sister Carmen comes along and says, in art class: "Enough of this mamby-pamby pastel stuff. That's not what these crayons were made for. Crayons were made to put COLOR on the page. If you're not pressing hard enough that I can smell the wax on the paper, and if you're not wearing out a box a semester, you're not doing it right."

By then, it might well have been a little late.
Because in many ways Little Janny's still remembering Sister telling her the "right way" to color when she was six.

On the other hand, it's probably no coincidence that Sister Carmen, who turned me loose both to speak up and be heard (a whole other story in itself) AND color outside the lines and PRESS DOWN HARD ON THOSE THINGS...had a given baptismal name of Janet.

Uh-yup.  

Sister Janet, wherever you are, when this book of my heart is done...I hope you can smell the wax on the paper.

Thoughts?

Janny

The Dorchester Disgrace...and (all of) Our Part In It

If you don't make a habit of following publishing news and scuttle, it could be that maybe you don't know that Dorchester has done some very...er...interesting things to authors of late. I'm not going to publicize all the sites that talk about it, because there are a lot of them. But I'm also not going to talk about it so much from the "poor author" side of the desk, either...because the disgrace of what's happening with Dorchester has two sides, and one of these gets glossed over and/or dismissed all too often.

Yet it's precisely the option that gets ignored, rationalized away, or backed away from, that could deter this kind of thing from happening again--or at least happening so easily again.

What never ceases to amaze and astound me, in this case and many others, is the reluctance and/or refusals of authors to band together and initiate the class-action lawsuit that situations like this are custom-made for. Yes, going to court is a pain, but that's what you have lawyers for. Yes, it costs money, but in cases like this, your lawyer can set things up so that the defendant pays the court costs if they're found guilty--which they would be. And yes, you could end up getting nothing in a bankruptcy proceeding; but D's not in bankruptcy yet. They're trying to avoid it. So if you strike now, your chances of being heard on this issue and actually recovering some monies increases tenfold over waiting to see what happens. Nothing of any positive value is going to come from waiting to see how much further this company will screw people.

Another point that is extremely well taken is that Amazon and B&N are complicit with this fraud--so even if D has no money, these other two do. And they can be just as liable. Which means that authors stand a chance to at least be paid something for what's been done to them. And something is always better than nothing. That's certainly the case for authors who've been owed  thousands of dollars in back royalties and have been prevented from even seeing an accounting of what they're owed...for years now. 

Think about that, because that's the crux of this matter.

What were they waiting for? 
Are these authors truly in the business of writing, or are they just pretending to be?  

You'll forgive me if, on more than a few occasions, it appears to be the latter. 

Yes, Dorchester has no business screwing authors. But authors also have no business screwing themselves by not availing themselves of every legal avenue available to them within a reasonable time of when things start to go south. If they lose money, shrug and walk away, or sit around waiting patiently for answers and results long past when a reasonable person should have sought relief, they are as much the problem as the publisher is...because they're in effect relieving the publisher of consequences. Are they so naive as to think that the next publisher down the road who gets in trouble isn't going to do exactly the same thing Dorchester's doing? Why would they think not?  
 
In plain English, Why in the world are so many authors afraid of simply enforcing their own contracts?

If you buy a fridge from Sears and you don't pay the bill, they don't let you keep it. If you try to keep it, they sue you to get it back, and they collect legal fees and damages from you.

If you sell a book to a publisher and they don't pay for it, don't let them keep it. Pursue the legal avenues you have available to you. Period. End of sentence. That's how business is done in the real world...except, curiously enough, when it comes to authors and publishers.

Sheesh. Sometimes, I truly believe we as authors not only allow ourselves to fall into ditches, but we take up the shovels and dig them ourselves. So despite all the hand-wringing, mud-slinging, and shock and dismay, on the other hand...it's really, really hard to work up too much indignation for authors who allow themselves to be taken advantage of, so egregiously, for so long. Especially since, in the long run, that reluctance to act just makes it easier for publishers to do it again, to another group of us, in the future.

As long as we let them...someone will.

A business doesn't get away without paying its utility bills. Or its rent. Or its phone bill.

Neither should it get away without paying its other vendors...the authors without whom a publisher has no product to sell in the first place.

If we let them get away with it for months, or years...we shouldn't be surprised when this happens.

And happens again. 

And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves for the losses we take and the pain we suffer.

Thoughts?

Janny

 

Quote of the Day...

...from Alton Brown, when asked if he was a "born-again" Christian:

Yeah, "born-again" is kind of an odd term because that's like saying a see-through window. But yes, I am a Christian.

I love this for two reasons:

1) it's so "Alton" in its dry approach.

2) it's true.

He's absolutely right. If you're a Christian, you are "born again (as many people understand it)," by definition. But it's much more true to Scripture, and more accurate, to say you are "born of the spirit." Notice that when Nicodemus asks Jesus how a man can be "born again," Jesus corrects him: He does not tell Nicodemus, "You must be born again." (Despite what you may have been taught in Bible class, even when Nicodemus presses that point, Jesus answers in different words. Allowing for Jesus always saying what He means, that is worth noting.) He says, "You must be born of the Spirit (or, in some translations, 'from above.')." This does not at all convey the same meaning as the "second birth" that some folks talk about. And I think that by continuing to use incorrect and/or unclear terminology, we unduly separate ourselves one from the other and continue to perpetuate some interesting misunderstandings about who is, and who is not, a "Christian."

If you're trusting Jesus Christ for your salvation, you're a Christian. If you're born of water and the spirit and confessing Jesus Christ every day of your life, you're a Christian. So I would submit that it's far better not to continue to confuse this issue and let jargon get in the way of acknowledging who we are and Whom we serve. 

Alton says it extremely well. Calling someone a "born-again" Christian is like saying "see-through window"--it's simply putting in a redundancy, and one that's guaranteed to set people apart rather than to bring them together. In that context, I would maintain that--for many reasons--"born-again" is a term that probably needs to be retired...permanently.

I always knew there was more than one good reason to be a foodie. :-)

Thoughts?

Janny

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, YES!

This says it far better than almost anything else I've seen in a long time...

Of COURSE you want to be Catholic...if you're truly seeking Christ. This wonderful article above just gives you an eloquent, honest, and loving explanation for that "tug" you feel in your soul.

Don't fight it. Come to Mother. :-) We'll welcome you with open arms.

(Holy Hat Tip to the Ignatius Insight blog.)

Janny

Publisher "Approval"--The Bad Idea that Needs to Go Away

The first time I encountered the idea of a writers' organization having a list of "approved" or "non-approved" publishers was several years ago, in RWA. The idea, on its face, was presented as an honest effort by a major national organization at some author advocacy.

Unfortunately, that's not how it turned out. And it's an idea whose time was never good in the first place...one that needs to go away.

For those of you unfamiliar with how "approval" works, it breaks down this way: certain publishers are "good" for authors, while others are "not so good." In a well-intentioned effort to differentiate the two, RWA came up with criteria by which it would judge a publisher as "good for authors," or "approved."

Those publishers would then be the only houses from which authors could consider their books "recognized" in RWA as "real books." If your publisher was "approved," you could send your "new sales" information into the RWR, and it would be printed; if your publisher was not, it wouldn't. If your publisher was "approved," you could enter your book in RWA contests, including the national RITA awards. If your publisher was not--for the first time--you were ineligible for all of it.

Period.

Overnight, the complexion of many writers' careers changed. No grandfathering, no provisions for previous achievements, no retroactive crediting...nothing was going to crack that "approval" wall except publishers who could document that they met certain criteria.

Those critera included longevity/stability (the publisher had to have been in existence at least a year); sales (the publisher had to have sold X number of copies of X kind of book--specifically, romance fiction); and adherence to conventional "publishing norms" (the publisher had to pay royalties). Those don't sound so bad, do they? On the surface, no, of course not.

These rules were also--once again, to be fair--put forth in an effort to counter much of what was increasingly emerging as "publishing" but wasn't legitimate in one way or the other: scam "publishing," in which authors would underwrite anything from a portion of book production costs to the whole bill--and then might be left holding nothing at all, including the rights to their own work, when the companies went under. Added to this the number of non-subsidy "presses" that came and went, either from vast undercapitalization or sheer larceny on the part of the "owners" (or both!)...and the time might have seemed right for something like this, especially to protect newbies from the Web predators out there.

What was unfairly discriminatory about this policy, however, was something discovered only after many e-publishers had dutifully requested the paperwork, filled out the apps, provided the numbers, and jumped through hoops to "prove" themselves just as good as the big traditional guys: the "copies of books sold" had to be print copies.

You can see where this is heading.

E-book publishers, of course, raised a stink--as they had every right to do. This came about in the era before Kindle, Nook, and iPad...but that didn't mean that e-publishing was nonexistent, or that its books shouldn't have been considered "real books" if they were produced by royalty-paying publishers who could prove both longevity and the ability to market the books to readers to download in sufficient quantities that the author was paid for X sales of X number of books.

So, after having their collective heads slammed into a few walls enough times (executive boards don't do subtle), the powers that were at RWA at last decided to make a magnanimous, outside-the-box offer: they decided that the word "print" could be removed from the regulation of "approval." But, at the same time they took away the word "print" from the regulation for e-books, they added another new twist to the formula; by the time they got done, e-publishers would have to sell more copies of an e-book than a publisher would have to sell of a print book to get the same recognition.

Unfair? Yep, you bet it was. Deliberately targeted to eliminate e-book competition? RWA claimed not. The big monoliths--who, of course, cleared "approval" almost instantaneously--claimed not. But at least one e-publisher--who also put out print books--went through hoops not once, but twice, and still failed to qualify. As they put it, "Every time we filled out the paperwork and gave them figures, they raised the numbers." So they stopped. They warned their authors that this was how things were going down. They thanked their authors for being willing to be part of their adventure...but they would also understand if their authors decided not to submit any more to their house--since those books were no longer going to be considered "real" books by RWA anymore.

If this sounds crooked to you, it ought to. People who knew about what had happened to this reputable e-press began lobbying, and lobbying, and lobbying...only to be stonewalled. And when the dust settled, what was appallingly clear was that this kind of "approval," in the hands a few multipublished authors who all had firm footings in the "big guns" on the block, could be doled out as they saw fit--with rules changing as they saw fit--and with no accountability whatsoever to the membership. Why? Because this whole idea had never been put to the membership for a vote in the first place.

Now, since I've been out of the RWA circle for a couple of years, I don't know if anything has changed substantially in the interim. But the basic idea behind this "protection" was never a good one; was always biased against new voices, and smaller or newer firms, in the publishing world--no matter how successful they were proving to be, or maybe because of how successful they were proving to be; and, since it was never put to the membership as a question but imposed from above, it at best appears arbitrary and at worst verges on restraint of trade.

No, no one's saying you can't sell to a "non-approved" publisher...just don't expect your professional writers' organization to give you credit for having a real book, a real sale, or any standing in possible award or contest eligibility, no matter if you've written the next Gone With the Wind.

Fast forward to the ACFW decision to also have "approval" for publishers...and many of the same things are possible. That's scary.

No, I don't assume that because ACFW is a Christian organization, that that means this process will be above reproach. We're all sinners. We're all human. If we get a chance to seize power and apportion out "approval," some of us, eventually, are going to abuse it. But even if that never happens--even if by some miracle the ACFW use of "approved" publishers is always evenhanded, fair, and non-discriminatory--the point remains that this is a stupid provision. It divides authors into "real authors" and "those who aren't quite real yet." It divides books into "real books" and "those that aren't quite real yet."

And it sets up a "pecking order" that puts yet another burden on already understaffed and overextended publishers, to "prove" that their authors "deserve" to be recognized for selling "real books"--on the basis of a writers' organization's say-so, rather than where the recognition, the sales credits, and the kudos ought to come from...which is the marketplace.

Yeah. Readers and book buyers. Remember them? They're pretty smart people, yanno? They buy books, they like books, they write about books they like on their blogs...they tell other people...and those people buy books. "Real" books deserving of real honors come out of that kind of "sorting" process...not out of some artificial designation of "real" versus "not real" arrived at by a foolishly self-important organization of writers.

Writers don't determine what succeeds in the marketplace, except as readers and buyers. They shouldn't determine who can consider themselves a "real" publisher or a "real" author, either. That's not their decision. It never has been. It never will be. And the notion that a writers' organization's board should be able to "mother hen" the process like this is only borrowing trouble from one organization and putting it into a place where, if anything, the discrimination could be based on even more nebulous criteria than mere sales or print versus e-books...

This "approval" mechanism was never a good idea in a secular organization. It's far worse an idea in a religious one. It's a disaster waiting to happen...it's pandering to big guys while reducing a great many members to "nonentities" despite sales contracts...and it needs to go away.
NOW.

Thoughts?
Janny

Yanno, It's Nice to Have All the Answers

Different.

Sometimes, when things aren't working super-well, you can turn them around by a mere matter of a few extra days’ (weeks’, months’) persistence.

And sometimes not.

Over the past several years, I’ve been “trying” to do a lot of different things. I’ve been trying to build a freelance writing career—which has meant, at times, being at the laptop when I should have been elsewhere. In one instance, I remember typing away on an assignment for which I had a Monday deadline…only the Monday was the Monday AFTER EASTER.

Uh-yup. There I was, between making Easter Sunday dinner and seeing The Boy out the back door afterward from his holiday visit, playing catchup on an assignment that continued into the evening hours. And this wasn’t because I’d let anything slide beforehand…the assignment simply WAS what it WAS. A lot of work, time-consuming and time-intensive…with no other day to do it on but a holiday.

Yes, it was insanity. But when you’re building a business, you frequently engage in insane behavior because you believe you HAVE to.  I believed I had to.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Because, in the end, I didn’t succeed in accomplishing what I intended to do with the freelance income. Various factors contributed to this, everything from the economy slowing down to simple human limitations; there are only so many late nights and weekends and holidays one can give up before one pays the price for it.  So, sadly enough, the yeoman sacrifices I made didn’t do what they were supposed to do.

In retrospect, I would have done things differently. MUCH differently. But unfortunately, one can’t act from hindsight.

Except, of course, for the future.

And so I have decided, over the past several weeks, that my future actions need to be different from the past, and even the recent present.

For years, I have taken a mile or so walk outdoors every single morning—the only exceptions being of glare ice underfoot or lightning from overhead. At times, this walk has been the only thing that has kept me reasonably contented. It’s given me fresh air, it’s restored my soul, it’s been a balm after some of those late nights when I felt like hell warmed over.

But it at times, also, has become a burden and a chore.

So recently…once in awhile…I have foregone it. 

Which led me to think about some other things I can also forego.

Like setting the alarm earlier than 6 in the morning. (If I prepare well the night before, I have almost nothing to do in the morning that takes very long—and I can still walk, if I wish. J)

Like weighing myself every day.

Like…dare we say it…fretting about my weight and trying endlessly to lose.

This has also been a futile effort of late. I’m not sure what all it will take to make the effort successful, but for the past couple of weeks, I’ve decided that for a little while, anyway, I’m going to stop trying…since TRYING didn’t work at all. I lost 10 pounds on Atkins, five years ago, and then that stopped dead. When I get extremely busy doing something extremely wonderful (like the nonstop holiday cleaning and preparing), I can lose as much as 7 pounds in a week.

Unfortunately…I’m not that busy all the time. Fortunately…because that kind of activity leaves me EXHAUSTED for an entire day or more afterward.

Which is why I’ve started to think that maybe, just maybe, all this “discipline” I’ve been trying to exert over myself has been greatly overrated, especially since most of it has not accomplished what it was “supposed” to do.

So maybe those folks who talk about “trying easy” have had the right idea all along. Not that I can tell, since most of them talk that job, but are just as driven and overworked as the people they’re trying to get to slow down…

…but I digress.

Long blog short (even if it’s too late for that), I’m conducting a new experiment. I’m going to challenge every single thing I’m thinking I “have to do” or “ought to do” that wasn’t bringing me the results anyway…

…and I’m going to try something different.

Different might just be much, much better.

I’m hoping so.

It’s at least going to be easier on me, my emotions, my sense of self, my overblown shame and “duty” complex, and—hopefully—my overall health in the long run.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Thoughts?

Janny

I love this!!!!!

H/T to Nathan Bransford for this bit of fun!

Janny

AMEN!

If you want the whole story...read this.

If you want what I consider to be the best lines of the whole thing, they're here:

 . . . we should recognise the fundamental role that property rights play in the making of cultural things. Compared to the exciting rhetoric of the need for everything to be free, that might seem unglamorous, unromantic, and indeed hard‐hearted. But it may be all of those things and yet still be a better road for our society to take.

Do not be misled by claims of high principle in this debate. When someone tells you content wants to be free, what you should hear is ‘I want your content for free ’ – and that is not the same thing at all.

EXACTLY.

I am fed up with "brave new worldists"--many of whom have never written an original word in their lives--crowing about "content wanting to be free." That's just a polite way of saying  that they think they should be allowed to harvest freely  from MY creativity and MY work without giving me either credit or compensation for it.

In other words, they simply want to take whatever they want, whether it's theirs or not.

The way I was raised...that's called STEALING.

It still is.

The key to changing and arresting this deplorable situation is in not backing down--in being brave enough to align ourselves with people strong enough, and principled enough, to slap these people's little hands and force them to stop.

Thoughts?
Janny

Great Rejoicing Throughout the Land!

First of all, a buddy of mine has a new book! Search for the Madonna, by Donna Alice Patton, is cause for rejoicing on more than one front. Donna is not only a buddy but a faithful, persistent writer with tons of talent and it's a pleasure to see her succeed. Go there! Pick up the book! Tell your friends!

(There, was that subtle enough?)

Second, yours truly will be starting a great summer gig over at Chapter One starting on Wednesday nights in June. Yes, ladies and gentlemen...Ms. Mentor returns :-), with her ever-popular workshop, "12 Weeks to Submission." All the information you need to bring your work from rough idea, or rough draft, to ready to submit--in just 12 easy weeks. How can you go wrong?

Answer: You can't.

Seriously, the first time we did this workshop--which is years and years ago now, in Mentor Place--we drew 20+ people for each week's session, in the height of summer, when people have 100 more appealing things to do than sit in front of their computers...so you know they got something of value from it. AND we ended up with 6 people who actually submitted their stuff that August who said without a doubt that they wouldn't have been doing so without the shop "urging them on."

So there you have it. Spend your summer peeling, or spend it writing and submitting. Actually, you could do both--because the workshops are at 9 PM Eastern, which gives you plenty of outdoor time beforehand. The best of both worlds, no? Read Donna Alice's book on the beach, get your tan, and then come inside and work on your own success...

And yes, I'm pumped about it. So I hope to see YOU there.  Chapter One chat room, with your hostess, Shirley Flanagan, starting Wednesday night, June 2!

BE THERE!

Janny

Dahlings, I love you all....

...but I've just been through two weeks of deadline hell at the day job, and I'm too pooped to pucker!
Watch this space...I promise, I AM writing something and will put it up soon.

Janny

When It's Time to Say, "Enough."

...when you've been working your bloomin' tail off at the day job to get a book out that is your employer's idea, not necessarily your own...and you still take two projects home from work on Friday evening, something you never do...simply because everyone else is pitching as hard as they can and you don't want to make it look like you don't care about your colleagues' work getting out on time.
...when you, and your colleagues, are IN this position because your employer overcommits, rouses up the troops with rah-rah teamwork talk, and praises you all to the skies when you do well, so you naturally behave like children looking for another pat on the head. (Or, conversely, you can't ever shake the lurking fear that if you should ever refuse to do something like a good soldier, that they'll find some other good soldier who WILL do it with a smile, and they'll kick you to the curb.)
...and when you're a writer yourself. A writer, dammit. A novelist. A person who has her own work to do, her own stories to tell, and her own career to think about...but you're too exhausted working for everyone else to think straight, much less accomplish anything toward that end.

So today, I said, "Enough."
Those manuscripts I took home? They're sitting in the exact same place I put them on Friday afternoon. I haven't touched them. I feel guilty about that. I did, of course, check my day job e-mail and found an e-mail from the proofreader, as promised.
I did nothing with it.

That freelance client with whom I spent almost two hours online yesterday while he fed me all kinds of material he wanted me to go over--as soon as possible, preferably the day before yesterday--so he could get his project put together that he really, really wanted to get out...after I wrote and rewrote web copy for him in a lot of freelance hours this week already? When he saw me online and sent me an IM today...I didn't answer.
I said, "Enough."

I've been pushed to the limit these last two weeks, and tomorrow morning, the last minute crunch to get this rush book out for my employer will start anew. I actually heard one of the authors mentioning that they wanted this thing to production before noon. We'll make it, but I won't be able to do another stitch for anyone else to get it there.
So when it came to more demands from my other client...I said, "Enough."
I've done enough work for other people this weekend.

I was working on Chapter Two of a new story. I like this story. I could, eventually, LOVE this story...if I made it a priority and wrote more per day. But when I was working on Chapter Two, I still had my Yahoo Messenger open...and now I feel guilty that I didn't respond to the client.
I closed Yahoo Messenger regardless...and said, "Enough."

Tonight, I'll be speaking in a writers' workshop room, something I could cheerfully do five days a week if someone would invite me to do it.
I want to do this for MONEY, for a LIVING.
I think I CAN do it.
I think it's possible...through different channels.
But when I have a week or two, or a weekend, like this...I wonder if I'll ever get to it.
So it's time to do something radical.
It's time to ask for help.

If you are a person who runs a writing program...
If you know anybody who runs a writing program...
If you know people who have writing magazines, books, clinics, workshops, informal educational facilities, adult learning situations...
If you know of, or have connections to, ANYONE, anywhere, who's looking for a fabulous writer, editor, and teacher to come in and put the rookies through some basic training...
PASS MY NAME ALONG.
I give you permission. Carte blanche. With only one condition.

Do NOT pass me along to people who want me to do this for free. I can continue to do it for free online all I want to...all I've got to do is express the desire to do so at a few places, and I'll have all the free work (and all the overbooking that can happen with that!) that I can possibly want.
I'm not looking for MORE WORK.
I'm looking for someone who'll recognize that, over time, I have contributed an enormous amount to the writing trade, in quite a few people's lives, in various ways, and in various venues...
...and who'll be willing to give me some good old-fashioned honest Coin of the Realm for it.

But I'm sick of breaking my back accomplishing someone else's mission.
It's time to say, "Enough," and find the path that will once again put me in balance.


Any takers?
Janny

Words to Live By?

From Publishers Lunch:

Portions of Scottish airspace continue to open, though even with the newly-established flying zones London's airports remain closed until at least 6 PM London time today. (Limited trans-Atlantic flights have resumed at other continental airports in such cities as Paris and Amsterdam.) The US Ambassador in London told the White House he estimates that approximately 40,000 Americans are stranded in Britain. When White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked if the US would follow the example of the UK's Royal Navy and try to bring citizens home by boat, he replied, "We've got some big ships, but that would be a pretty big ship."

You said it, Admiral. :-)

More later,

Janny

"Be" Careful What You Ask For...

Wouldn’t you love to have a dollar for every time you mentioned you were a writer and someone said, “Oh, that’s so cool. I’d love to be a writer, too!”?
It’s usually only because of our Christian charity (or patience, or naïveté—take your pick) that most of us actually play the game that follows. Smiling sweetly, we ask the question to which we probably already know the answer.

“And what are you writing?”

You know what comes next. A stammer, a blush, and a shuffling of feet (figuratively, if not literally). Then, the shy admission, “Well, I haven’t actually written anything yet. But I’ve got this great idea, and someday—!”

Reflexively, you’re probably nodding, because we all know this wannabe is making two key mistakes. First is, of course, relegating anything in your life to “someday.” We all know that day never comes. Second, also obvious, is that to be a writer, you need to write something.

I know, I know. Crazy, but there it is. Go figure.

However, just as the wannabe fools herself into thinking that just having a great idea makes her somehow “creative,” some of us fall into a similar trap in the writing life. Many of us, myself included, have encountered openings for paying gigs (!) in the writing biz and thought, “Wow, it would be so cool to be that."

Only when we start actually doing the job…we don’t like it at all.

How does this happen?

I call it the Bright Shiny Object syndrome. Bright Shiny Objects are everywhere; they’re gigs with great-sounding titles or trappings—but the actual essence of them isn’t bright or shiny. It’s just plain work, sometimes work that—at its heart—is something we actively dislike...or aren’t very good at. In other words, we run smack into the difference between having a title, imagining ourselves as something...and actually doing it. Sometimes, those two things aren’t anywhere near the same.

So, just as the newbie gets snookered into thinking that “being a writer” would be “cool,” we get snookered into some Bright Shiny Object gig that we may regret saying “yes” to but then find it very difficult to get out of.

And it can happen to any of us. Some of us, more than once.

Being a columnist is “cool”—struggling with relentless deadlines, not so much.

Being an editor is “cool”—having really awful writing to fix, when you didn’t buy it in the first place, not so much.

Being a consultant or freelancer is “cool”—having a client stiff you for payment, not so much.

A friend of mine is fond of saying, “Anything you think you want, remember—if you get it, you also get What Comes With It.” Many of us have discovered this to our chagrin; that while we like certain parts of the writing life, certain elements make us cringe.

But it’s doing those things—the stuff that Comes With It—that separates the wannabes from the real deal. A success guru once said, “The only difference between those who succeed and those who fail is that successful people do what unsuccessful people aren’t willing to do.”

In other words, successful people do What Comes With It. They take the grunt work with the glory...the Brussels sprouts as well as the chocolate pie.

So if this writing life isn’t sometimes all it was cracked up to “be” in your mind—if you’re dealing with nagging irritations, blocks, or other obstacles that get in the way of your bliss—you might need to do some honest assessment of what you thought you were getting into. Were there things involved in this career that you didn’t know about before you started writing? Or did you know about them but thought you could get away without doing them—or that someone else could be persuaded to do them for you?

(Bet you’ve found out the hard way about that one.*)

The bottom line is, no matter which step is your next one in this writing life—be careful what you ask for, or what you think you want. Try to learn all that Comes With It before you leap into any opportunity, no matter how much you think you already “know” about it. You may still end up with some egg on your face and need to bow out of the omelet business...but it’s easier to stay out of uncomfortable or ill-fitting situations than to try to get out once you're in them.

And very few things are worse than grabbing for a Bright Shiny Object, only to discover too late that it’s actually a ball and chain in disguise.

Thoughts?

Janny

*Except for the Brussels sprouts. I actually love them, so you can pass them on.

Credibility: Shot.

I started to read a book today…put it down immediately…and I’m not sure I’ll pick it up again.
I was barely two pages into the thing, and it’s a book that, by many accounts, is terrific.

The book is James Scott Bell’s DEADLOCK*. It opens with a compelling scene, involving a 16-year-old who is obviously contemplating suicide. Yep. Strong stuff. And pretty well told from a 16-year-old’s mindset, too, all things considered.

Until I hit the line, “…that song her mama used to sing to her, about that girl named Billie Joe who jumped off a bridge.”

And I said, “Oh, for crying out loud!” and set it aside.
Why?

 This is clearly a reference to a song that a person of my generation (and hence, this girl’s mama’s generation) would know: Ode to Billie Joe. Bobbie Gentry. 1967. I remember it well. I turned 15 that summer, and the disk jockeys went nuts over that song the first time they played it. It zoomed to the #1 most requested song that night and stayed there for an impressive amount of time. It was a huge national hit. It spawned not only a novelization, but a movie…because it was a song that posed a lot of questions and didn’t answer all of them—thus allowing for all kinds of creative license.

But the one question it did answer, and the one this author got wrong, was who Billie Joe was. Billie Joe McAllister was a boy. The girl,who told the tale of his suicide, was the one narrating the ode. But she didn’t jump off any bridges. Not even once.

And anyone who had more than a nodding acquaintance with this song would have known that.

So if you’re going to use a cultural reference like this, the very least you can do is get it right.

I can hear the protests now. “But, Janny, this book was published in 2002! That’s a long time from when this song was popular! Maybe the character just got it wrong!"

Uhh…no. Her mama used to sing it to her all the time, remember? If your mama sings you a song that often, the very least you know is if the main character is a boy or a girl. And if it’s something you’re remembering at a desperate point in your life, it’s already part of your DNA. You know the thing inside and out.

Unfortunately, the author didn’t. And his editor didn’t. And the moment that became obvious, he shattered his credibility with me.

Harsh? Too picky? I don’t think so. Not within the first few pages of a book. The place where you’re trying to reel in a reader. To get her so involved in the scene and in your story that she can’t put the book down.

In other words, this is a lethal place to make a mistake.

Readers can be very forgiving people. Readers who are also writers can be even more forgiving. We know how hard it can be to construct worlds, to spin spells, to craft a compelling read, and little things here and there don’t bother us. Even I’ll forgive an author a minor gaffe if I’m well into the book, buying the premise, and involved with the characters’ lives.

But I’m not there within the first few pages.

I’m not involved with anyone yet at that point. I don’t know this author, I don’t know his people, and I don’t know—because he hasn’t yet convinced me—that I should believe him. Hence, when he makes a mistake that is easily corrected right at the beginning of his story, he's got me wondering already—not about his characters, but about him. About whether he was misinformed, or just lazy. And mostly, about whether I can trust anything else he says.

There are a couple of lessons here.

One, of course, is to avoid any obvious cultural references. Often, this is the advice that’s safest to follow—because it avoids the problem of “dating” the work, and/or rendering lots of what might be really good lines ineffective because another audience, in another time and place, won’t “get” them.

The second one is, if you’re going to use a cultural reference—and by that, I mean a song, a movie, a TV show, a character in a book or play, or even a brand name product or a real street in a real town—you need to be absolutely fanatical about getting it right.

This means you don’t trust the first source you go to, either. You back up the source with three or four others, if you’re smart. If you really want to get the lay of the land, you go there yourself, you walk the street, and you talk to the natives. You watch that play or that TV show or that movie and make sure the line you quote is actually in it. You listen to the song—or at least read the lyrics.

Above all, you never assume you “know” it.

And never assume your editor “knows” it, either. Because more than one author has had something right in a manuscript and had a well-meaning editor change it so it’s actually wrong.

Have your ducks in a row. Period.
And if you can’t be sure of a cultural reference—maybe think about changing it to something you make up. No one faults writers who make up fake towns, fake streets, and fake TV shows. If anything, that shows you’ve got the extra little bit of creativity to truly build an entire world. And even if most people who know you also know what real town you’re talking about…that part doesn’t matter. Because in the end, it’s all fiction, you can’t make a mistake unless you forget your own details…but that’s a whole ‘nuther problem, one that’s solved with a tad more organization. :-)

Unfortunately, screwing up a cultural reference as popular as this one isn’t so easily fixed.
I don’t know if I’m going back to that book, or that author.
So don’t let this happen to you.
I’d hate to leave a horking good story on the shelf simply because you lost me at “hello."

*And yes, I could have omitted the real author’s name and the real book name…but there’s no point to anonymity, is there? It doesn't help a reader. So don’t give me grief about it.

Thoughts?
Janny

What Am I DOING?

Let’s face it. Some questions, you never stop asking. And some you should never stop asking. How am I with God? is one of those questions.

But another one of those questions is also the title of this post. It’s something I think we, as writers, especially need to ask ourselves. And sometimes ask, and ask, and ask again.

Because if we stop asking it, we can get way off track.

Case in point: my recent posts about being sidetracked into writing things that I didn’t necessarily start out to write, didn’t necessarily believe in, and didn’t find I could carry off for any sustained amount of time. The “inspiration” for such projects tends to flare, get fed by others’ enthusiasm, and then fade when one is by oneself with one’s Muse wondering How I Got Into This Predicament, Anyway.

And today, I caught myself on the edge of doing it again. But I think I’ve pulled myself back in time. :-)

I have a story I’ve just begun. I have 15 pages or so, not counting a couple of pages of scrap and/or material that may go in another spot. (When I write, I always, always, always have a “scrap” folder. ‘nuff said.) These 15 pages started out very businesslike. Very clear. Very cogent. Very competently written.

But they weren’t “story.” At least not of the kind I was trying to tell.

My crit partner got a hold of them, suggested things to make them muchmuch better. After I stopped banging my head on the desk, I rewrote them muchmuch better as a result.

But this story’s still a baby story. I don’t know all of it yet. I do have a “climax” scene in mind for it, what the whole thing’s going to “point” to. But what I don’t have…yet…is a middle. Or a firm idea of word length. Or even, heaven help me, any kind of idea how to “categorize” it.

And that’s what almost got me into big, Muse-bruising trouble.

Because, you see, there’s this wonderful contest I was thinking of entering with this story. I could do it, if I wanted to. I’ve got the contest-length entry of 15 pages, and given a few more hours of work, I could come up with the optional one-page synop that an entrant can include to give the judges a little idea of where the story goes.

The only problem is, this idea originally came to me as a short story. This may be God’s way of keeping me creative on the smaller bursts of energy I have of late; the jury’s still out on that matter. But that aside, this particular story, as I know it right now, isn’t broad enough in scope or complexity to be the basis for a long book. Maybe it’s a novella. That’s certainly possible.

Only this contest I was thinking about doesn’t have a novella category. It’s longer books, or it’s nothin’.

So what did the Wise Catholic Writer Chick do when she realized that dilemma?

Did she smile, shrug, and tell herself that when the time was right, she’d look for a short story contest or a novella contest at which to aim this work eventually?

Uhhh...not exactly.

What I did—which I still don’t understand!—was start thinking of ways I could “expand the word length.” And find a category for it. And find the best judging team for it. And...

I started thinking of deeper places the story could go, places that were deeper than anything I’d ever had in mind for it in the first place.

Not more emotional, mind you—the story as I’ve conceptualized it so far is gonna have plenty of emo for the taking. But just places that were more complicated. More detailed.

I started thinking in terms of adding characters, putting in a “way the story can come full circle.” A way extra people could get involved way beyond the scope of what I originally dreamed the story could be. (I literally did get the concept of this story from a dream…just so we’re clear.) Before long, I was mulling over a connection from the heroine’s past, and then a hunky guy who could challenge her...

...and my little short story started turning into a romance novel.

And I started thinking in terms of “how many plot elements” I’d need to make it 50K words.

Then, suddenly, I hit a wall.

Because in my heart of hearts, I realized...

“I’m not writing a 50K word romance novel.”

Or, as my crit partner’s fond of saying, “That’s not what happened!"

I realized this sometime this afternoon. When I was in the 3-p.m. doldrums of a Sunday on which I felt tired and not at all willing to sit down and “try to come up with more” for this story, to “try to polish” an entry for the end of March, to “try to figure out how to make this” into...whatever kind of box I thought it might be fun to fit into.

Something in me finally rebelled, and said no.

And I heard a little voice whisper, Writing isn’t supposed to be “trying to come up with more.”

Writing’s supposed to be...creating. It’s supposed to be...telling what’s written on one’s heart.

And I very nearly lost sight of that again for the sake of a blasted contest.

If I hadn’t been suffering from fatigue...I would have surrendered yet another story idea to a grinder from which it might never have recovered.

I would have sat down and “tried to make” this story something that it might not be, instead of just writing from the crazy, wonderful warm feeling I took away from the dream and wanted to put down in words.

That, ladies and gentlemen, would have been wrong.

And it would have broken my spirit and my heart…yet again.

And I would have wondered why I couldn’t bring myself to finish yet another story.
And I would have doubted my ability...yet again...when ability isn’t the issue at all.
But thank heaven, I was tired enough, over-“thought" enough, and daunted enough by the prospect of trying to do all those “usual things” that, instead of sucking it up and being a good solider, I just looked in the mirror and said, “You idiot. What are you doing? Why pressure yourself to do something like this for a deadline again, something that’s not even what you started out to do in the first place? Why don’t you just write what you want to write…and then see what happens?”
There are times it’s good to be an idiot...if you catch yourself before you go too far with the idiocy in question. This is one of those times.

So I ain’t gonna stop asking that question—every time I catch myself stepping onto the idiot course—until the answer makes me smile again.
And I’m gonna let the enchantment come first...before I polish it, box it up, and get it ready to be shown off.
It has to come in that order, or it ain’t gonna work for me.

And in the long run, that’s how it’s supposed to be, anyway.

Thoughts?
Janny