My photo
A Chicago area girl born and bred, I've lived in Mississippi, Montana, Michigan, and...ten years in the wilds of northeastern Indiana, where I fought the noble fight as a book editor. Now, I'm back in Illinois once more...for good. (At least I intend to make it that way!)

Monday, January 16, 2012

Sleeping In

Not sure if this means much of anything, but...
At long last, it appears that I'm learning the art of sleeping in. Until sometimes as late as 8:00 AM.
Don't laugh...for several years, I got up between 5:30 and 5:50 AM. It just worked better for me to get to the day gig if I started my day ridiculously early.
Even for awhile once I began freelancing, I was still getting up at 6 or so.
And I kinda like that.

However, in order to do that and not feel like a bad-tempered lummox by 2 PM, I need to be in bed by 9.
(NOW, you can laugh.)


People have pooh-poohed the idea that I would need to be in bed by 9 to get up at 6. 
Someone once said to me, "But that's nine hours!"
I said, "Congratulations. You pass the math test."
The implication, of course, is that no adult needs nine hours of sleep. Growing children, maybe. But adults? Aw, heck, we should be able to get by on five, six max. Right? We're tough. We can't spend our time sleeping our lives away. There's work to be done!

Yeah. Right. While all the time, doctors keep telling us that over 60% of us never get enough sleep.
We qualify, in fact, as sleep-deprived. 
We need eight to nine hours a night, at least most of us do, to fully allow the body to relax, repair, and renew.
How many of us allow it to do that?

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. It's designed to weaken judgment, defenses, and ability to think clearly. Yet millions and millions of us, every day, willingly torture ourselves this way...thinking we're functional.

We're not.


We're underperforming, we're under-achieving, and what's worse...we're under the level of being truly human and truly healthy. We get sick more easily when we don't have enough sleep. We get irritable faster when we don't have enough sleep. We fly off the handle more easily, we have less patience with people and events, we don't tolerate life's ups and downs as well, when we don't have enough sleep. Lack of sleep can break down barriers of all kinds, leading to injuries, accidents, and even depression. It's a major stressor--and yet so many of us consider it a badge of honor to do that to ourselves day after day after day.

Why?

Yes, I know. Job demands. Family demands. World demands.
But maybe...just maybe...it'd be worth it to stop demanding so much of ourselves until we get a little more rest.

Fortunately, I'm able to answer that malady with a change of lifestyle. Even if I can't get to bed at 9 PM, which I often cannot, I can at least sleep in further at the *other* end of the clock. 
Something I'm still getting used to, mind you.

I humbly submit that perhaps one of the best things the business world could do for their overall growth and prosperity would be to slice into the "work" and "face time" hours they expect employees to put in...and allow them to get home in time so that they can be decently present for a few hours before getting to bed at an equally decent hour.

The rise in productivity, I suspect, would be truly amazing.
It only remains for a forward-thinking company to dare to try it.
To let their employees get more done by "trying easier."

Many, many companies pride themselves on trying to make more "holistic" workplaces. They put in conveniences on the job site from day care to beauty salons to gyms or exercise facilities. They offer healthier foods in employee cafeterias. They provide "nap rooms" or encourage employees to walk outdoors on coffee breaks. 

But we all know in our heart of hearts that  a "nap room" at a place of business will never, ever truly make up for the lack of sleep necessitated by long commutes to a job where one's expected to put in 9 hours of face time a day, if not more.
Better to shut the nap room down and tell everyone to go home an hour or two earlier.
It'll pay off in the long run.
And in healthier, happier people overall...which is nothing to sneeze at, either.

It only takes one company to do this. When the others see the fabulous results that will come of it, they'll follow suit.  I can only wonder who'll be brave enough to "go first."

I am, here at CWC place. 
Any other freelancers game to start?

Janny

Sunday, January 15, 2012

~~~I'm So Excited...~~~

Yeah, I know, now that song will be running through our heads the rest of the day. :-)
So be it.
It's LAUNCH DAY for VOICE OF INNOCENCE!!!!!!!

Gitcherself over to Desert Breeze Publishing or Amazon.com and be the first on your block to read it!
Or even the second or third on your block...I won't care. 
Long as you read it, tell your friends, buy lots for early Valentine's Day presents...


Who, me? Overboard?


Janny

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It...

It's finally snowing!
And blowing...
And getting COLD...
And...
it'll be perfect weather to curl up with a Kindle and read a good romantic suspense!


(heh heh)

Head spinning,
Janny

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

P.S.

One of the harder things I've ever done was to go to Mass this evening and pray for Bart, Erin, and Ryann. I did it anyway.

Praying the Rosary before Mass, which of course entailed the Sorrowful Mysteries (since those are prayed on Tuesdays)...now, that was a killer. No pun intended.

Anytime you are thinking of a loved one who's gone, and you're praying the Passion, it stands to be an emotional wringer. This was no exception.

But I hope it has done some good for a soul somewhere...for mine, if for no one else's. :-)

Onward,
Janny

Whining, Music, and Paying Mind

...when I looked at my last post, it unfortunately sounded a bit, as my crit partner would put it, "waily-waily."
It really wasn't meant to be.

But when I search for something like I've been searching for magic--well, sometimes it comes out sounding like I'm wallowing, and I really don't mean to wallow. Not at all.
It was just...sad.

I figured out part of it, however.
At first, I thought it had to do with cutting the ties and moving to Indiana, now seven years ago November. 

But it has more, much more, to do with music.

I had a golden era of singing great Christmas services at St. Matt's, and I miss that to this day.
That era would be no more, even if I returned to St. Matt's tomorrow, as the minister for whom I sang is retired and a whole new pastor, et al, is on hand at the church. In fact, on the rare occasions when we've gone back to St. Matt's for a Mass, we've almost felt like we were surrounded by strangers.

So it's not possible to "go home" and recreate that experience.
Nor is it possible, for many reasons, to duplicate it here.
So that part IS sad. And that part DOES represent magic I've lost.

I needs put some effective substitute in its place, and I simply haven't found that yet.
I hope if I can, that will restore some of the other old magic as well.

We'll see.
In the meantime...there is Choral Union's new season of wonderment to dive into.
That will have to do for the moment. :-)

A Month's Mind
Today, I observe an instance of a lovely Catholic tradition I didn't even know about until I worked in Catholic publishing. It's called "Month's Mind," a special time of prayer for a departed loved one on the one-month mark after his or her death. Often, it entails saying a special Mass for the Dead on that day.

Today is the Month's Mind for Bart.

So if the urge strikes you, say a prayer or two for the repose of his soul. Some of us have prayed virtually without ceasing since December 10th, but prayer is never...ever...amiss.

More to come,
Janny

Monday, January 09, 2012

Wanted...A Return to Magic.

Christmas is, in all senses but the liturgical one, over. 
(Liturgically, the "Christmas season" is not over until the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, which I believe is coming either this Sunday or next. Yeah, I'm a bad Catholic who hasn't memorized the liturgical calendar. So sue me.)
The end of Christmas is sad.

Christmas is my favorite holiday. Or at least it always has been. I get teased about my Christmas spirit, in fact. About having Christmas excitement in July. :-)
Only lately...sometimes...it feels like an act.

Please don't misunderstand me. I do a lot of things for Christmas that I truly enjoy. I bake, I decorate. I'm in charge of putting the lights on the tree, a multi-day endeavor that no one in our family  believes they will ever do as well as Mom does.(!)  I love singing in a Christmas concert, I even love tooling about the stores and looking at Candy Cane Lanes, and a bunch of other things. I want to enjoy every single minute of Christmas, as much as I possibly can.

But for many years, I've been feeling the lack of the "magic" part of Christmas, and I'm trying to get it back.

I can't even explain what I'm missing exactly, but I'll bet some of you are nodding in recognition. Some of you disguise this sadness by muttering, "I hate the holidays...so commercial...we've lost the meaning...it's all just a big stress..." and you at least give lip service to claiming to wish it could be different. You understand, I suspect.

Of course, there are also those of you who say, "Well, Christmas is for children, anyway," or some weak-kneed platitude like that. If you truly believe that latter one, you've missed the point for your entire life, including when you were a child. You don't understand, and you need the magic even worse than the rest of us. :-)

But I need my Christmas magic back, regardless. 


The magic of sitting by the fully-decorated tree, gazing upon the wrapped presents, watching some Christmas special on TV, or listening to Christmas music, drinking hot chocolate...just BEING in Christmas.
The magic of sitting, rapt, looking at the creche. Gazing on the figures, really seeing them.
The magic of taking time to wonder about what Christmas must be like in places I've always wanted to see, places faraway that I only caught glimpses of through Advent calendars from foreign countries.
That magic of spending time paging slowly through Christmas gift catalogs...and remembering when you were a kid, and you wore out the toy section of the Sears book. :-) 
And that breathless magic that takes over when you come into the church on Christmas Eve and it is decked from stem to stern with lights and flowers and evergreens and filled to the brim with music.

Heck, no matter where I am...I need more breathless magic on Christmas Eve, period.

I used to have it. Not so long ago. But I've been noticing it eroding, bit by bit, over the past few years.
So I prayed for it this year. I started praying for it way before Christmas.
What I got was the beginnings of a wonderful season...and then hell broke loose, and we spent the rest of it doing the best we could. 


Again, don't get me wrong. There was a lot I did enjoy.

But the old  "juice" wasn't back the way I remember it.
And I miss it still.

Even a little snow would have helped...but we didn't even have that grace to fall back on. (And is there anything more depressing than rain at Christmastime?)


So now, I've put everything away. The house is back to pre-Christmas normalcy. Gradually, the presents will be integrated into our lives, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of those things every day.


But something was missing this year, something I still miss.

I want it back.
And it's sad to think that I'll have to wait a whole year more to hope it shows up NEXT time.

Thoughts?
Janny

Friday, January 06, 2012

Going "Within a Yard of Hell"

There's a quote that runs through my mind frequently, usually when I hear the church bells ringing in our neighborhood:

"Some want to live within the sound of church and chapel bell;
I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell."

Lemme tell you something, folks.
I can't say for sure where "within a yard of Hell" would be, although I've certainly seen and been in neighborhoods that come awfully close, if they're not it.
And I've been around people who may well walk that path as their regular route, considering what I've felt, experienced, and heard from them.

So while I admire the bravado and sheer faith of that aspiration above...
...and heroic as that mission is...
...it ain't mine. And I don't want it to be mine. :-)
Call me a coward, call me an indifferent "church lady," or call me what you will...
Give me the church and chapel bell anytime. :-) No contest.

That being said...
writing-wise, at least, I'm about to deliberately start walking a path within a yard of Hell.
I've got a character who is evil. Purely evil.
Psychopathically evil.
And I need to make him convincing. More than that, I need to get inside his smarmy mind and his smarmy skin and make you feel him.
So I'll be walking within a yard of Hell for awhile.
Fortunately, I can come back.
But it ought to be a hell of a trip while I'm there.
Pun intended.

I'd say "wish me luck," but luck doesn't cut it when you're up close and personal with Hell.
I just pray I can carry this thing off.
Because if I can...

(heh heh heh)

Write on!
Janny

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Gimme Some Sugar!

Way to go BLUE!
 (video: mgoblue.com.)

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!

Janny

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Extra, Extra, Read All About It...

My crit partner, Deb Kinnard, has put up a lovely promo for me and VOICE OF INNOCENCE on her blog. Check it out! Comment on it! Wake the town and tell the people!

(Now, I just need to get that interlude from "TOMMY" out of my head, thanks to the title above. Those of you with a few miles under your belts will understand. And you're probably also singing the next line along with me. Mwah hah haah!)

Janny

Monday, January 02, 2012

Harsh? Who, me?

Thinking I'm starting out the New Year rather snarky?
Nah.
Just to prove it, here are two great quotes running through my head at the moment.

"If God solves your problems, you have faith in God. 
If God doesn't solve your problems, God has faith in you."
Fr. Augustine came out with that one on Sunday morning. Not sure if it was original or not, but I thought it was great. Of course, that man can pack more good stuff into a short sermon than many a priest I know.

And...
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

That, they tell me, is Marcus Aurelius. People who know more about ancient philosophers than I do will no doubt nod and smile...or write and tell me I'm clouded in the head. :-)

Either way, I believe those are two excellent (and non-snarky) thoughts to hold onto this New Year's Monday. So there!

Janny

You Have a "Word" for the Year? REALLY?

OK...I know you mean well. Or at least I hope you do.
Really. 


But seriously...all those of you out there who are choosing your "word" for the year?
As if it's a talisman?
As if it's something God gave you personally to inspire you for the next 365+ days?
As if it's some kind of New Age "charm" you're going to chant to yourself like a mantra?
As if it's not the most meaningless bit of fluffy, self-indulgent nonsense on the planet? 


Trust me. It doesn't matter one whit what your word for the year is.


Talking about it as if it matters--as if there's some secret code that certain of you share, spoken in a clubhouse in which a bunch of you gather once a year and choose "words" to stand for your entire year ahead...


Well, there's only one word for that whole mystifying and, I must admit, annoying process.
And that word is...PRETENTIOUS.
(I'd say "pretentious as hell," but that's THREE words.)


You're not getting anointed words from above, folks. God's done that already. It's called Scripture. Unless you're writing that, the whole assertion that "God" is giving you "a word for the year" as some kind of prophetic "message" borders on the sacrilegious. And that's not a border I'm eager to walk any time soon.


I'm surprised at all the people who are.


"Word" up, people. Words for the year? Sorry. Not good ideas. Unless, of course, you're willing to embrace the rest of the borderline-New-Age philosophy that getting a "key word" upon which to "meditate" implies...or imply that you're getting some kind of "code messages" from God.


Either way? I ain't standing next to you in the next lightning storm.
And you can take THAT word to the bank.


Thoughts?
Janny

Monday, December 26, 2011

(Almost) No One Mourns a Shooter.


On Saturday afternoon, December 10, my daughter's best friend took a gun, shot two people in his house, then turned the gun on himself. In mere minutes, the life of Bart Heller was over.

But the pain he would leave behind was just beginning.

Suicide is a cruel thing for many reasons. It's, of course, the cruelest thing one can do to oneself, and I truly believe that no one can kill himself without being, at least momentarily and partially, out of his mind. The folklore from crime and cop shows is that fully half of suicides change their minds when it's already too late. They've stepped out of the window, they've swallowed too much poison, or the gun has gone off.

I find myself wondering if Bart regretted his decision when it was already too late. I don't like to dwell on that question too much, for obvious reasons.

But that's only one of the questions I have. One of the things that Bart left unanswered. 

None of us will ever know exactly why this brilliant, volatile man took this step, ending two other lives with his. Some people are falling back on a "depression" explanation, but that's not entirely it, either. I've lived with depressed people. I know they can get suicidal. But there's a wide chasm between thinking about it and doing it, and Bart seems to have stepped across that chasm in a matter of moments. Just the day before, he had indicated to Jess that, while he was down, hurting, and angry, he was going to self-medicate a bit—take a "knockout cocktail" which would basically ensure he'd be unconscious for most of two days. He'd wake up Monday sick as a dog, but he'd wake up. And he'd go on.

Something changed in that plan somewhere between Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, even though he clearly led Jess to believe that he was literally going "down for the count" late Friday. What happened to change that—or whether he deliberately deceived her out of a last effort to "spare" her anything or reveal what he truly had in mind—I'll never know.

And that's why suicide is so cruel. Because there are so many questions that will never be answered.

So many of us will wonder, for the rest of our lives, if we could have saved him. If one word from us, one more text message, one phone call to the Fort Wayne police a few moments sooner, or one check-in that morning might have made a difference. Perhaps those two people he killed would still be alive if we had done something…said something…made a different decision…

And that's cruel.

It is unspeakably, exquisitely cruel to put people who love you through that. Which is why many people, when confronted with a suicide, blast the person who left them behind for selfishness. Indeed, there is an element of selfishness in it. Bart, for better or worse, is through with the pain he endured on earth. The rest of us are left wondering how he was in so much pain that we either didn't see or couldn't help him deal with. But the fact is, whatever his final destination is for eternity, he has left this world's angst, confusion, and rejection behind. From the sound of it, he had a lot of that to deal with over his life. A lot of wounds. A lot of demons.

In the end, he couldn't lick them.

I've never known a killer before. I never thought in this lifetime I'd know one. But I welcomed into my home and my life a man who, as his final act, committed a double murder and then took his own life. Nothing that comes after this will nullify that fact. Nothing will excuse it. Nothing will assuage the pain of it except the balm of time…and forgiveness.

And that's also a cruel burden to leave behind on people who loved you. Not to mention people who loved the people you killed.

Perhaps I'm in denial, but I don't believe Bart killed these people out of a premeditated, cold anger. I believe he killed one of them because she was what he saw as his last hope for love…and she backed away…and the pain cut too deep for him. Certainly, he had invested too much emotional currency into that relationship. It was too new to have meant either life or death to him, as it ended up meaning.

I would have told him so. I sensed there was too much of his very self being placed into one young woman's hands. But I didn't. I was so tickled to see him happy—radiant, in fact—that I decided to let those thoughts be. I had no idea how fast things went south. Had I known, I would have reached out to him and said, "Talk. Just talk about it. I don't care what you say, but don't hold this inside. It'll kill you."

I didn't know. Maybe because I wasn't a great enough friend. My daughter was, but she felt he was coping. He'd get through it. He'd be in hell for a while, but he'd come out of it.

He didn't. And that's a cruel thing for both of us to live with.

As for the other man who died, I can't begin to guess what was going on in those last fatal moments; I didn't know him, and I cannot make a judgment on that. But I would almost bet my own life that Bart acted out of little more—and certainly nothing  less—than a blinding, searing hurt that made him just want to lash out at the people he saw as contributing to that pain and end it, once and for all.

That's a cruel thing to go through in any life. Or in any death.

Where do I believe Bart is spending eternity? I prayed for him in life, and I continue to pray for him in death. There's an irony—a cruel irony—to praying that a killer goes to heaven in the end. Of course, I pray they all fall under mercy; I would pray that under any circumstances, even for total strangers.

But in Bart's particular case, I pray especially that Jesus was able to touch him in those final moments.

Because no one mourns a shooter.
Except those of us who knew him as more—much more—than that.

Requiescat in pace.

Janny

Monday, November 28, 2011

Well, Okay, Maybe I Don't Need a Spreadsheet Yet!

...but I do need a Google Books page!
...that is, if that's within the scope of my publishing contract to do.
More to come on that.

In the meantime, I've seen a great author "cyber release" party invitation on Facebook. Think I'll set one of those up. Stay tuned here for more details...I LOVE cyber-parties. I poured and served drinks for several cyber-parties in the old AOL Writers Club area, years ago. 25+ people in a chat room is, lemme tell you, chaos personified. I think we almost brought the whole system down a couple of times.

Ahhh, for those glory days of partying like it was 1995. :-) (Actually, it WAS 1995, which helped.)

Anyway, since I have a very, very small list so far of book promotional stuff...maybe I don't need a spreadsheet first. Maybe I just need to set up 1,427 cyber-connections of some kind so that when that magic day of January 15 hits, you can all hit it back...with a show of BOOK ORDERS!

(yesssssss!)
Off to try to make some worthwhile contribution,
Janny

Monday, November 07, 2011

Spreadsheet! I Need a Spreadsheet!

It dawns upon me that with Book Promotion Thingys starting, I need to start actually tracking (as in keeping up with!) what's been done, where I'm scheduled to "appear," etc. Which means...ta-da...a SPREADSHEET!

Don't hate me because I like Excel. It's the administrator in me, I fear. But I don't use it for anything but the most basic of tracking devices. My son, on the other hand, has been known to write and use formulas on Excel that are so complex they actually slow his computer down. There is absolutely no danger of my doing anything like that here. (My computer's slow enough as it is; doesn't need any help.)

BUT...it remains that one of the first orders of bizness this morning probably should be creating a new spreadsheet with some delightfully esoteric and erudite title, like, oh, say, BOOK PROMOTION FOR VOICE OF INNOCENCE.

I know, I know, the creative brilliance inherent in a Monday morning stuns even me.

:-)

Off to make a living,
Janny

Sunday, November 06, 2011

The New Guilty Pleasure...

...at CWC place is watching "chick flick" movies on Lifetime Movie Network and the Hallmark Movie Channel.

Uh-yup. The woman who writes psychopaths only a mother could love, in her heart of hearts, also wants to write sweet romantic stuff that makes people cry and feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Hmmm.

I consider it filling the well. :-)

Actually, I consider it scoping out the market. I have long thought that my books would translate to the screen with the greatest of ease. When From the Ashes came out, people even told me that they could "see" that book in their heads. Exactly what I wanted. And I've had the opening sequence of one particular book in my head for years. Of course, that book has changed over those years...but...okay, minor detail.

But with VOI on its way to screens, e-readers, and handhelds everywhere soon...why shouldn't it be on its way to a movie option as well?

Anyone have contacts at Lifetime Movie Network or Hallmark Channel? Give me a holler if you do!

Thoughts?
Janny

Friday, October 28, 2011

Note Night!

Heh heh!
This is play off the PTI call of "Puck Night!" (for hockey) or "Ball Night!" (for basketball)...

It's NOTE NIGHT! Time to sing our first concert of the season with the IPFW Choral Union tonight.  Canadian and Korean folk songs and a couple of Mass movements in Spanish.

It's gonna ROCK.

So...if you're in the neighborhood, drop in to IPFW tonight for Note Night! (Note: It won't be called that on the program. Just sayin'.)

Later,
Janny

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Time for the Buzz to Begin!

I am just about to put the finishing touches on the final Author Approved version of Voice of Innocence, and the final version of the cover will be available...shortly. :-) So it's time to start the BUZZ!

Can you BUZZ for me?

I am setting up Around the World in 80 Days for this novel--so if you love novels, if you love romantic suspense with a little "woo-woo" in it, if you love mystery, if you love happy endings...get on board.  I want to get a copy of this e-book in as many hands as I can possibly get, and to do that, I need LOTS of little "elves" to help.

I will send you all the information you'll need as time goes on--all I need you to do is let me know you're willing to plug the heck outta the thing! Indicate which e-mail lists you're on, which you're allowed to post on, what free sites allow book publicity, etc., etc., etc. I'll be researching this as fast as my little hands can type, but it's time to start this machine NOW, so I'll be glad to give it its first push. Wanna help be a part of one HECK of a book launch?

Here we go!

Janny

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Fools and Little Children....

My mother used to say, "God watches over fools and little children."
I am afraid I was both last night. :-)

I put my office to bed successfully...except that I forgot I had left a candle burning on my desk. An open flame, not even within a vigil light container, simply a small candle on a china plate.

It burned all night long and no one either noticed it or thought to blow it out. I think I even got up in the middle of the night to make a pit stop, saw the light in the office, and didn't think to investigate. (Lots of light comes into our house at night, due to our being on a corner with a street light and frequent traffic.)

But that shows where my concentration was...so to speak.

Fortunately, there were no papers or anything else near it to catch in any way, and the china plate held up fine.

But still.

I'm never that careless. I must have been preoccupied.
Proof positive that there's always Someone else watching.

I am thankful. :-)

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Things I Need To Give Up...In No Particular Order

1. Clicking on any political Web site whatsoever.
2. Clicking on any current affairs Web site whatsoever.
3. Clicking on a great number of Catholic blogs.

Reason: They only depress, frighten, and confuse me. :-)

4. Playing computer games. Yeah, I know. I still get my work done. But sometimes, those little buggers are WAY too tempting!
5. Clicking on Craigslist for ANY job at ANY time. I've never yet clicked on a promising link on Craigslist and found it to be anything but a link that goes to a message saying, "This job removed," "This job no longer exists," "This job cancelled," etc., etc., etc.
5. Clicking on Craigslist, come to think of it, for any reason.

Reason: Colossal wastes of time.

7. Clicking on pretty much almost ANY job site anymore.

Reason: Millions of people all looking at that same site. 9.9 million of them will probably apply for the job, even if they don't suit it at all, making the recipients of their resumes curse, try to recover their overloaded e-mail systems, and discard your application without reading it...and you'll never hear back, period, no matter what happens.

8. Staying at my computer all day as if I were in a real "day job."

Reason: I have good productive times of the day and not-so-good times of the day. Staying at the computer attempting to work through lull times is a) no better than putting in "face time" at a cubicle post and b) counter-productive. It leads to mistakes, or at least stuff that comes out of me that could be better.

9. Reading anything, anywhere, that the USCCB puts out.

Reason: should be obvious to anyone with a Catholic brain. See reason behind items #1-#3 above.

10. Maybe...Facebook.

Reason: Clicking "like" to social causes, political causes, or religious causes doesn't change a damn thing in the world; seeing 43.7 people sharing the exact same YouTube video is irritating, to say the least; and gimme enough time, I'll think of plenty more...

Of course, I probably won't give up on some of these things.
But the first few...
about the first nine, to be exact...
I'm going to really try to do.

Life is too short wasting it getting upset at things that there's no way in hell I can change by getting upset about them.
No one is listening to my brilliant posts on these places.
I have better things to do...like minister to the world through baked goods.

Can I get an "amen" on this? (heh heh)

Next, I will come up with a happier list: Things I Need To Do More Of...and More Of...and More Of!

Thoughts?
Janny

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Brilliant!

....or so I've been called, several times, over the past 12 hours.
This is a good thing.
If my brilliance actually pans out and gets someone what we hope for from it...it'll be a even BETTER thing.

Now, to make all this brilliance start paying for a change!

More later. I promise. I won't dangle you for too very long.

Janny

Friday, October 07, 2011

You Get What You Pay For...And That's The Problem.

I am registered at umpty-ump job sites for writers; some of them are overall better for prospecting and actually getting hired than others, but over the past couple of years on them, I've gotten some pretty good gigs.

That being said, however, one question still has to be asked.

Why is it that people think writing and editing should be cheap work?

It's like living in an alternate universe to encounter the pay rates that some people think are justified for a profesional writer. It is not uncommon at all to see things on job bid sites like, "Please bid on the amount you would charge for 10 articles, 500 words each...our budget is no more than $2 per article. If you want more, don't bid."
Or another of my favorites:
"I've written a book of ______ pages (anywhere from 75 to 300+) and want a good editor for it. Just go through, clean up spelling errors, make it read smoothly, etc. Budget is $50."
(Good luck on that.)
Or, the final favorite:
"I've written a fictional novel (sic) that is 65,000 words. Please bid on how many hours it would take you to edit this and get it ready for publication."
And then it's followed by an estimated budget of $100, if that much.

So maybe it's time for some straight talk here.
1) No one, and I mean no one, with decent English skills should be expected to produce 500-word articles on every subject under the sun for $1 or $2. I don't care what country they're from. I don't care what every other article mill pays. If you want quality, you ought to be willing to pay for it. The very minimum a 500+-word article should command on any site is $10. (Even that's low for decent writing.) You say that to these people, they laugh you out of the house. Trouble is, I've also seen what they get for $1 or $2, too. Unfortunately, the joke's on them.

2) No one, and I mean no one, should expect a professional to edit a book for $50. That's a nice price to pay for an initial consultation to see if you and the pro editor should work together at all. It's a nice kill fee, although it's a little low for even that. But that's barely one hour's pay for a freelance editor in some of the smaller markets; to expect an entire book to be edited for that money is an insult. Unless, once again, you really don't care about quality. Trust me. I've seen what a $50 edit looks like. You don't want it.

3) No one, and I mean no one, should put one sentence into an ad describing a book and then expect  an editor to give an intelligent bid on the hours it'll take to edit it. Frankly, I have no idea how long it will take me to edit your book until I see some of it. Yes, that's right. I actually need to see if you can write before I can tell you how long it'll take me to teach you how to do it right. :-) Once I see a couple of pages--or, better yet, a chapter--then I can give you some ballpark figure of potential hours involved. Remember those old standardized test questions where one of the multiple-choice answers was, "There is not enough information here to solve this problem"? Guess what? You've just written another one.

4) No one, and I mean no one, should ever, ever, ever, ever EVER think that it's correct to begin an ad with, "I've written a fictional novel." If you don't know what's wrong with that sentence, your work's not going to be worth the time and blood it'll take out of me to edit it. Period. There are no exceptions. No, not even you. Maybe especially not you.

Does this sound like the ranting of an embittered editor? A wonky writer? A person who's just not familiar with the "global marketplace" and thinks everyone should be paid "inflated" American pay? Or are people in the marketplace just so totally misinformed on how rare really good writers and editors are that they are willing to take schlock and publish it, as long as it fits their budget? Are we really so ignorant about what it takes to write well that we don't know the difference when we see it?

The world at present may be awash in more "information" on the Web than ever before...but the great majority--I don't think it's exaggerating at all to say probably 80% of it--is almost unintelligible, it's so badly written and/or edited. You've got so-called professional writers' sites full of typos or mistakes in word usage. You've got people applying for gigs that want "experts" and "native speakers"...only their test scores show English comprehension skills of 17%. And these people get hired...because they're cheap.

What's wrong with this picture?

Apparently, it's a matter of a massive number of potential hirers out there who've never heard, or believed, the phrase "You get what you pay for." If you pay schlock...that's what you'll get. And it must be said that part of the problem is many of the employers involved are so illiterate themselves that they have no way of telling schlock from scholarship.

It's worth remembering....
Just because people can speak English doesn't mean they can write it well.
Just because someone's taken an English test that proves he can write a sentence in English doesn't mean that sentence will make any sense, will flow, or will be something someone actually wants to read.
Some people know the difference. They're worth paying for.

But until the prevailing mindset accepts that, takes a deep breath, notches its belt buckle in by one, raises its bar, and decides to pay good writers what they're actually worth...the cycle will continue.
 
There is a better way. It's sitting here, right in front of you. It looks expensive at first. It's not.
Because quality things always are worth what you invest in them.
And investing in good writers, like me, is the only way this cycle will change.
Don't be cheap.
Be smart.
Go for the good stuff. :-)

Thoughts?
Janny

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Hidee Ho, Neighbors!

Yeah, I know, it's been done. :-)
But I think I've come upon a great way to keep myself blogging more frequently...make this the "home" page of my browser when I go on the 'Net.

Simple, huh?
Yeah, I know. Shoulda thought of this, oh, like five years ago.

Call me deliberate, I guess.

In the meantime...anyone got mortgage money for me? Click the "donate" button. I'm working hard, but the money isn't matching the workday...yet. I can cover ALMOST all the bills...except for the biggest and most important one.

Ain't that always the way?

Anyway...contribute. Buy my books. Everybody bring someone to the blog, read the previous posts, enjoy the tips and publishing opinion contained herein. You won't be sorry. I promise.

Thoughts?
Janny

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Empty.

I've been absent for awhile from this blog for several good reasons, none the least of which is that I'm writing some more of my own  fiction (yay!) and making pretty good headway on it, if I do say so myself. And I do.

I've also been up to my eyebrows (which is fortunately not a very high place to think about) in freelance work, to the point where if I believed in cloning, I'd want one or two of 'em to show up at the door and take over. I've easily got enough work and "chorse" around here to keep three people busy, if I ever wanted to actually get it all done in this lifetime (a nice thought).

And, lastly, I've been reading some of a book I got as a birthday present--just one of those "my husband liked the title" sorts of books: he picked up a book called THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CLUB because...well...if you hang around this blog long enough, you know that I am the Cookie Lady every Christmas. He saw the title and thought, "Hey, it might be a fun read."

It's by Ann Pearlman, whose claims to fame earlier have been nonfiction of one type or another, apparently. But the notion of a group of women who get together to do a mammoth cookie exchange every year was intriguing to me. And the gushing on the book jacket about how this was "every woman's story" was almost fatally offputting...but I was curious enough to delve.

Well, my curiosity's been tanked.

Not because the woman can't tell a story; she can, although the story she's choosing to tell and the ways she's telling it are not exactly enchanting to me. When a woman starts out a book with the first line, "I am the head cookie bitch and this is my party," you know you're not in for Betty Crocker...which is fine. Sassy, I like. You can't read Sophie Kinsella without being able to take a few knocks in the head, sass-wise, and I do it willingly. :-)

But what got to me about this book is what gets to me about lots and lots and lots of contemporary fiction now...the utter lack of a faith element in anybody's life. In any character's. And I find that not only increasingly depressing, but...truth be told...increasingly boring. What, after all, do you have if you put together a bunch of women living "contemporary lives" into a book, complete with all the important "women's issues" in there--yanno, pregnancy, married or not married, divorces, children, abuse, deaths of spouses and/or kids, financial problems, fear of commitment, etc., etc., etc.--but without a trace of any kind of higher power support system? Answer--a lot of introspective, navel-gazing, self-absorbed pointlessness. 

And, after 53 pages or so of this book, I'd had enough of it. The characters don't exactly whine; they simply have no direction at all  except what they're trying to provide themselves. I got to the point where there were so many times I just wanted to say, "Honey, this whole thing will make much more sense if you take it to God and let Him deal with it." Only...this isn't a spiritual book. It's a secular book. There's not a mention of God as He truly is so far, and after 53 pages, I'd expect some mention of Him if we were gonna get it at all. We haven't, so I suspect all the uplifting stuff that will take place here will be solely dependent on what these fallible human beings can figure out for each other.

Whoo-boy. Now that's an encouraging thought. Especially since the way some of them are handling their lives already is nothing anyone would want to write home about...much less use as a road map.

Unfortunately, the sad part of this is...that's the way a lot of people really live. And somehow, they still expect their life to make sense. To be rewarding. Or to have "meaning"--when it never even occurs to them to go to the Source of meaning, be it Scripture, prayer, church...in other words, someplace where they can stop pretending to be God themselves. Or you say "God" and they, in Pavlovian style, knee-jerk away and say how they don't want anything "religious" shoved in their faces...

No. They'd rather shove f-bombs, characters who think nothing of sleeping around, gory and gritty descriptions of various tragedy or depravity, and people scrambling for "meaning" in their lives out of things like Tarot cards or the latest sexual position, in someone's face. The message is clear: pretty much anything, in fact, is better shoved in one's face than having God there.

What a farce that is. And what a farce so much fiction turns into, when all the way through, I'm thinking, "Yanno, you're not really alone here. You really aren't. If you're into as much enlightenment as you claim to want to be into, if you're really looking for meaning, look for the One who gives life meaning in the first place. If you really want support, go to the One who will hold you in His hand. If you really want a way out of a bad situation, first admit your part in getting into it, and then surrender it...and then you can find the real way out, rather than scrambling from one dead end to another one."

It's sad. It's sad that so much fiction we see today could be so much more than it is, if it would simply acknowledge and deal honestly with the fact that there are a lot more of us out there who would welcome a touch of God in our lives than those who are running as fast as they can from it. (And there are. Even in this largely atheistic culture, you still ask people, "Do you believe in God?" and most times, you're likely to hear some variation on "Yes.") If it would simply have its characters come to a point where they go from wondering, "Is this all there is?" to actually looking outside themselves and their culture for the answer.

I guess what I'm saying is...I'm tired of fiction that wallows in the shadows of earth but never transcends it. I'm tired of fiction that completely ignores God--or if it talks about Him, implies that overall, it's better for us  if we do our best to shove along without Him. I'm tired of fiction where even where there's a "happy" (or, as the publishing mavens are fond of saying, a "satisfying") ending, the characters still haven't risen outside of themselves and realized they're not the be-all and end-all of their own universes, and their "fellow men" aren't, either.

We frequently bemoan the lack of "realism" in Christian fiction, and that's a valid problem. It's an even sadder problem when we have so many intriguing, wonderful things to share that could bring ordinary fiction into a much higher plane,  even make it more entertaining, without having to resort to a single Bible quotation...simply by bringing in an element or two of a character who's willing to touch on exploring the possibility of belief and/or "transcendence." Having characters who already know they don't have to have, or even find or explain, all the answers...but Someone else has them, and they can approach Him and He won't bite. Having stories where people aren't plaster saints...but they know they're on a journey, they know they're living conversion experiences every day, and they know--they know, not just hope--that there'll be a light at the end of the tunnel that's not a freight train.

Without that sensation--without that presence of the very real God in so much fiction--you can read and read and read horkin' good stories...but they'll still leave you feeling empty.

Which is what this book has left me, after enough reading in it that I should have wanted to come along. But I don't--because I don't want to hang out with a bunch of women who, at the end of the story, won't be any more filled with meaning than they are at the beginning. Who won't know the forest for the trees. And who won't know or care that there's Someone who has more answers than their "community" can ever muster, no matter how hard or earnestly they try. At the end, bottom line...there's still no transcendent hope in their lives. No triumph they can count on from a Someone stronger than themselves. At the end, they're still empty.

I need better than that from my reading.

Which is why it's so damned hard to find really good reading in the secular world...and why a touch of writing from people with faith is so desperately needed. Not preaching. Just damned good writing...with that wonderful undergirding of hope and fulfillment, rather than emptiness.

Are you up to the challenge of filling that void? It's there. First (or second or hundredth) one who figures out the combination, the touch of God without the preaching, and the communication of the hope that doesn't disappoint will sell like hotcakes. And the good news is, with such a tremendously BIG void to fill out there--if we all write as hard as we can from here until the end of our lives, there'll be plenty of room for our good stories and plenty of people who'll want more of them.

Anything's better than running on empty. People know it. They just don't know where to go to get filled. They're afraid that a story with transcendence will be "religious" and preachy; they're afraid that the presence of God in a story will rob it of depth, of realism, or of fun and laughter.

We know better.
Let's prove it.

Thoughts?
Janny

Monday, July 04, 2011

Obviously, I'm in the Wrong Line of Work...

...or at least trying to go at it the wrong way!
From Publisher's Lunch:

Gaby Rodriguez's untitled memoir about her experience faking a pregnancy for 6 1/2 months as a high school senior to determine the sterotypes of unwed teen mothers, unveiling the results at a student assembly weeks before graduation, to Zareen Jaffrey at Simon & Schuster Children's, in a pre-empt, for publication in early 2012, by Sharlene Martin at Martin Literary Management (NA).
Foreign rights: Taryn Fagerness Agency


Now, lemme get this straight.
This girl perpetrates a fraud on her high school, on her friends, on heaven knows who else. Then retroactively (is anyone actually doubting this?) decides it had a Great Social Purpose, and that purpose will be to (of course) point the finger at those people around her who no doubt "judged" her unjustly (meaning they probably gave her some impression along the way of "how could you be so stupid?", which would be entirely justified), and Incriminate Us All Yet Again For Being Pigheaded Closedmineded People...

...and she not only isn't kicked out of school, but she's given a book contract in a pre-empt?

The only people stupider than her high school for allowing this and spotlighting it in an assembly are the publishers and agents who lined up to get this project. And get this: it's going to be in the children's book end of the business.

Yeah, that warms the cockles of my  heart. I'll bet it does yours, too.

A year after this book comes out, there'll be a rash of kids faking all kinds of things with the intent of getting book contracts out of them--or, actually, in attempts to get the money for the books out of them, since there's no way in hell this kid's writing this book entirely herself--and sociologists, school psychologists, and YA experts will all be frowning earnestly and Wondering Why this has become some sort of odd trend.

Someone needs to go back to Child Psychology 101 and do a refresher course, methinks. You know--the part about "If you reward bad behavior with attention, it will continue"?

Yeah, that part.
But...never mind. That was clearly wasted on you the first time you read it.


So it's clear I've completely missed the boat.
I need to go find a fraud to perpetrate. Obviously, writing great stories and sending them out to these places doesn't get attention...but perpetrating a fraud, and then dropping the word "memoir" out there to tell everyone about it, does.
Silly me.
I'll do better from now on.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Don't we live in a GREAT publishing country?

Janny