Sigh. And Grin.

Well, I did not final in the Harlequin contest.
Of course, the editors are tweeting all over the place that just because you didn't final doesn't mean they won't be getting in touch with you...if they found your entry "intriguing."

I could hold my breath, but that'd make it hard to sing tomorrow night. :-)
I DO have other plans for the manuscript I sent them, as well---or actually, for the idea behind the manuscript I sent them. But this was an experiment: I wanted to see it get in front of more eyeballs to see if it could pull out complete strangers to vote for it.

Until I know how many votes it DID get--and I doubt I'll ever know that--there's no way to gauge the impact my entry may, or may not, have had upon strange eyeballs. 

Ah, well. There are better things to feast one's eyeballs on....like THIS:

My son Matt and his bride, Deirdre...October 5, 2012. MOMGRIN TIME!

(heh heh)

Janny

Well, I Did It!

...both entered VOICE OF INNOCENCE in the USA Book News Best Book Contest, AND entered RAINMAN'S BRIDE in the Harlequin "So You Think You Can Write" Contest. And yes, I DO think I can write. :-)

The nice thing about the Harlequin contest is it gives me another crack at getting RB into the Harlequin system, where I have believed it belonged since long before it won the Golden Heart (and then was summarily dismissed). 

And yes, I understand that Harlequin has a couple of black clouds over it of late. Frankly? I don't care. A lifelong dream of mine has been to sell "those little paperback romances." If I've got a way to do that now, I'm going to at least try it. :-) Yes, they're not the  best paying market on the street. But royalties, as I like to say, is royalties. I'll take 'em.

Besides, what goes around comes around. You'll never guess what's finally RETURNING to the Harlequin fold? Good old-fashioned clean romance. Yeppers. The kind, as they put it, you can share with "daughters and granddaughters."

My time may have finally come. One way or the other. :-)

The manuscripts will be posted on the Harlequin Contest website, soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com. Click on "Read Entries" and see what you find. And if you vote for my book, I'll be over the moon. :-)

More later!
Janny

The Editor Is Your Friend. No, Really: Part 2.

Last time here, we talked about what a good editor does for your work. But, it must be said, there are a lot of people out there claiming to be editors, book doctors, editorial consultants, writing coaches, et al. Not all of them will be very good at it. Some of them can hurt you.

So how do you know the good ones from the not-so-good?
First of all, let's deal with the truly nefarious, because they're easier to cull--and spot.

You probably want to avoid--or at least QUESTION--any editor or editorial consultant if he/she:

1. Has a Web site full of writing, syntax, spelling, punctuation, usage errors--or just plain wrong information about the business.
This should be obvious; it's not. Now, one or two typos, or a formatting problem--that, ANYBODY can have. We're talking about rampant errors--such as an "about" page that has a dozen or more typos or misspellings on it, and/or recycled "myths" about the publishing industry, blindly repeated. Usually when or if you point such things out to a good editor, they'll thank you and take pains to correct them. If you write a note to an editor about any of these things and he/she gets snarky, however...walk away. Quickly.  

2. Has been listed on one of the "warning" sites (Writer Beware, Absolute Write Water Cooler, etc.) as questionable--under ANY name or incarnation. 
Crooks or scam artists--in this business as in many others--will often get "busted" under one name, go underground for awhile, and then resurface as a whole new name, business, or enterprise. Some of them will even claim to have "gone straight" and be "legit" in a new partnership...only to have it revealed, upon further research, that they've merely formed a partnership with ANOTHER scam artist and are trying to "con" a whole new generation of writers who haven't heard the horror stories they've left behind them. Don't be fooled by it. Google their names and do a little research. It'll be time well-spent.

3. Makes any guarantees about whether, where, or when your writing will sell.
Yes, I know there are professional book doctors out there who have LOTS of contacts, some of them very high-profile, in the publishing and/or other media industries. That being said, however, not even THEY can "guarantee" that your work will sell at all, much less that it will sell in ____ months or ____ years. Note that this is also different from saying your work will be publishable in ____ months or ____ years. THAT, a professional may be able to tell you. Whether anyone will actually decide to PAY you for that publishable work, however, is something no editor can vouch for unless he or she...

4.  Also owns a publishing company, "manuscript showcase" site, or "literary agency."
...which is another BIG FAT RED FLAG.

This is not to say that you should refuse, out-of-hand, the chance of getting your book edited by people who are also publishers--if those two services are separate enterprises. But, in truth, it's danged hard to run ONE of these businesses, let alone BOTH of them, and keep them both separate and high-quality. See the first rule about "warnings" above--many scammers do this kind of thing, offering "editorial and book publishing service" packages that, in truth, are nothing  more than what you can do yourself as a self-publisher, with a little elbow grease. 

And it goes without saying--or it should--that it's damnably hard to be both an objective editor of work AND a literary agent representing that type of work. Very few people can do it; I'd be tempted to say no one can, actually, except there's probably one or two noble souls out there who manage it. So I won't say it's "impossible." It's just...highly unlikely. 

In short, you'll do yourself a favor if you keep the editing, agenting, and publishing aspects of your work SEPARATE and maintain the integrity of each. It's the best way to save yourself time, money, and heartache.

5. Gives any indication that he/she is "above" whatever you're writing or tries to manipulate it in any way.
This is a more subtle element, but it does happen. You're in a creative writing class, or a writers' workshop, where Ms. Incredibly Big Name Famous Editor is on hand to read and possibly consider (gasp!) taking on manuscripts to "nurture." Needless to say, your hopes are dancin' on the ceiling...until you meet this editor, and she looks at your work with a vaguely pained smile on her face and damns it with faint praise--or just comes right out and damns it. No writer's willing to take that kind of abuse, though, right? 

Think again.

The world is full of newbies who worship at the feet of Big Names. Newbies who will do anything the Big Name tells them to do. And in the process they take fresh, sometimes wonderful, work--albeit in a raw state--and beat all the freshness out of it. By the time they're done, the book might be salable...somewhere. But more often than not, it's not, because the Big Name didn't get what they were trying to do in the first place, and didn't have the humility to say, "Yanno, honey, this isn't my cup of tea. You might want someone more comfortable with the kind of story you write to take this on." So in the process, the Big Name made them over in the image she's most comfortable with...and they'll sound like no one but a derivative clone of Herself.

Don't misunderstand this; a good editor WILL change your work. A good, ethical editor may ask you to make changes that you think will "gut" the thing; in that case, a little dialogue is in order. But the kind of "editing" we're talking about above doesn't involve dialogue. It involves a condescending, dictatorial relationship in which Big Name says "Jump," and the only acceptable reply is, "How high?" THAT does not a good creative partnership make, and sometimes it takes years to recover from that kind of treatment--both for your self-esteem AND your voice. So don't succumb to that temptation. The best and most talented people in any industry--by and large--are also the nicest and most down-to-earth.  Keep that in mind every time you hand your work to ANYONE,  no matter what his/her reputation in the business might be. Life's too short to waste it trying to kiss up to prima donnas.

Lots of information here, we know. But it helps to know how to avoid the editorial "weeds" right away, so you can find the editors and writing professionals who will help your "garden grow" the way it should. Next time, we'll talk about what a GOOD writing professional looks like--from professional behavior to fee schedules, and much more in between.

Stay tuned!
Janny

The Editor Is Your Friend. No, Really: Part 1.

Aha! Some solid information in this blog for a change!
Seriously.

Not that many of you don't LOVE pot roast recipes...I know you do. :-)

But it's occurred to me several times (because people come right out and tell me, doncha know) that after as many years as I've spent in this profession, and as many millions of words as I've written, slashed and burned, rewritten, cut and pasted, and rephrased with and for people...I might know more than a little about this editing game. How it ought to work...and when to run for the hills, if necessary, to avoid major headaches and/or a lot of wasted money or BOTH.

Ironically, even in this age of unprecedented information, a lot of people DON'T know much about editing. Why it's necessary in the first place. And when they're being well-edited versus HACKED. 

So in a series of posts, I aim to help you out with a little information about editing, editors, and the process...and how to make the most of it. It'll be based on my experience, which is wide-ranging and varied. It'll be laced with more than a little cantankerousness. But above all, it'll be helpful.

Trust me on this. It will be. Because that's what I DO. 

So let's start from the very beginning...

(This space for singing, "Do Re Mi" to yourselves, now that I've put that song in your heads. HAH!)

The first thing you need to know about an editor--and the most important thing---is whether you need one or not.

The short answer is, "DUH."
The long answer is, "Of course you do."
Everyone does. Yes, even Stephen King. Even Mary Higgins Clark (something that's been painfully obvious by its absence of late). Even lots and LOTS of other "name" authors. And you can tell them I said so. They won't care, of course, because they don't know who I am. (Yet.) But, hey, make my day. Go ahead and tell 'em if you like. Heaven knows reader reviews on Amazon do it all the time.
(When they don't get taken off, like one of mine did. But I digress.)

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, can use a good editor. I don't just say that because I'm in the business; I say it because it's true. Just as a singer needs a vocal teacher (the "third ear" that can tell you where you're going wrong--or right), the writer who knows and uses a good editor will benefit from that "third ear" wordsmith. You'll never regret having a good edit, and your work WILL be much better as a result.

Not "may" be. WILL be.
Why is that?

1) Good editors will catch things you'll never see. Literally.
This is a given, but the reason it happens is more complex. You see, our brains are wonderful things. They will take a piece of writing and "fill in" gaps in it so that when we read it, it makes sense to our brain--even if what's on the page is gibberish. If you doubt this, take one of those "tests" online that has a box of text with letters missing, the wrong letters in a word, etc., and then tells you something about your perception and intelligence if you can understand it. News flash: it has little to do with perception and intelligence. It has to do with brain chemistry, and how our synaptic connections fire. For some of us, they fire faster...but for all of us who write, they can actually sabotage us. You've experienced this sensation if you've ever spent so much time on a piece, either reading or editing, that you literally don't "see" it anymore. It happens to everyone at one time or another. Hence, the need for a "third eye"--or, more accurately, a second PAIR of eyes. 

2) Good editors catch you out on every single bad habit you have.
We all--every one of us--have pet words we lurrrve to use in our writing. I LOVE to use "just" and "even" and, of late, "basically." Those are only (another favorite of mine) the tip of the proverbial writing berg; I have many more that good critique partners and editors have caught and underlined or highlighted (or just slashed and burned). (See? I told you it was one of my favorites.)  We all also have pet phrases, ways we express ourselves, or ways we like our CHARACTERS to express themselves that are cliched, are anachronistic for the time period in which we set our tales, or make all our people sound the same. What does this say about our writing? That we're lazy? That we don't have wide enough vocabularies? That we're uncreative, or uneducated, or something else equally nefarious?

Nah. All it says is that we,  like all of mankind, are creatures of habit. Part of it may be a tiny shred of "laziness," but in truth? I've rarely if ever met a truly LAZY writer. I've met a lot of them who fall back on habits, cliches, or pet phrases...but that's not because they're not trying to write the best things they can. It's simply a matter of writing from a certain comfort zone. We speak the language we speak, however broad or narrow that is, unless someone gently prods us to stretch ourselves and do better. And that's the end result of a good editor...

3) Good editors help you write better than you think you can.
Notice what we say here. Good editors don't tell you you need to write "like someone else." Good editors don't mess with your voice--any more than absolutely necessary--but, once again like a good vocal teacher, they'll strengthen that voice and deepen it until it's true music. Good editors don't make you change things that don't need changing--but they don't let you get away with doing something that's "good enough," either. They'll challenge you. They'll dare you to try things you don't think you can do. They'll push you and prod you and nag you to the point where you wonder whom they think they're talking to, anyway.

The answer? They're talking to a good writer who they think can be better. And the stubborn, persistent, craft-minded, picky ones won't let you get away with less than your best. You may never work so hard in your life as when you have a good editor--but your writing will amaze and astound you when you look back at the difference between what you started with...and what you end with.

That's with a good, topnotch, professional, skilled, artist of an editor.
But how do you know one when you see one?

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, and we'll talk about that!

Thoughts?
Janny

What I'm Doing...

...in between writing and editing for other people, is trying to get somewhere MYSELF.
I'm hoping this can help me get noticed for some old/new work that's been waiting for just such an opportunity...
...and this can help me get notice for VOI to take off the way it should.

So I'm gonna be a bizzy chicky, if I can make these things, or others like them, pay off.In any event, I'm going for it.

What are YOUR next targets?
Janny

Beats Me!

What do you know, as a writer, about "beats"?
And why do so few people seem to be able to use these things?

Second to the myriad errata I see in manuscripts of late in terms of commas, word usages, homophone confusion, and action/reaction transposition--and there are tons of THOSE--comes an embarrassing number of writers who, apparently, have never been taught about beats.

(Some of them haven't been taught about dialogue tags, either, which are related...but not quite the same thing.)

Do you know what a "beat" is?
Can you use it effectively?
How would you describe it?
And how do you learn how to write "beats" well in your prose?

I've got thoughts on this (yeah, like you ever doubted I did?), but I'd like to hear from other writers on this. This problem is so prevalent that I'm beginning to think NO one's taught it for at least a generation of writers...maybe more.
If so, I know what I'm doing my next workshop on.

Chime in if you would!
Janny

Balance in the Morning

...so I'm back to taking a regular walk in the mornings.
I've been doing a morning walk for YEARS now, to the point where I can hardly remember when I didn't do one. And yes, I did take a hiatus from the morning walk for a little while--under the guise that "I can get more work done if I don't spend a half hour in the morning walking nowhere."

I'm here to tell you, however, that for me...that's bunk.

I need that walk--not so much for exercise, although it certainly serves that purpose.
But I need it to establish a sense of balance in the morning.
Sounds odd, but that's the best word I can use for it.

I CAN start my workday immediately after my bath and first cup of coffee.
I DO go to adoration, two days a week, right after said bath and coffee.
But even to adoration, at this point anyway, I walk. It's not MUCH of a walk, but it's a walk.

Now, I do anywhere from 15 minutes to over a half hour, and at times, almost 45 minutes' worth of walking in the morning.
Depending on how I feel, what mood I'm in, etc.
And it's important to note that often, before I start out, it's with the intention of only going 15 minutes or so...but that by the time I've gone about two blocks, I feel like a longer walk, and by the time I've gone about five blocks, I'm ready to keep rambling.

There's something about fresh air, being outdoors, and just walking in the morning that gives me a sense of balance. It makes me feel like, no matter how I woke up, I can start the day refreshed. It does refresh me. If I'm desperately overtired, the fresh air soothes me. It can invigorate me. It makes me feel more relaxed, which paradoxically gives me more energy to start the day. And on the days when I spend the walk praying, it gives me extra "prayer points" as well.

However, it needs to be said that I have to keep the walk unstructured for it to work this way. The moment I start designating it a "prayer walk" or a "fitness walk" or determining that I have to go such-and-such amount of time or distance every day...it loses all its benefits for me. It becomes another thing to check off the list rather than a breath of fresh air at the beginning of the day that enables me to plan the day, shake out the cobwebs, or just enjoy everybody's garden as I amble along.

If for some reason I need to jump in the car to go to adoration--say, there's a dangerous storm or the like and it's hazardous outdoors--I feel the lack of that fresh air respite.
It really DOES make a difference.

So I'm doing the walk every morning again, and I'm feeling much better balanced because of it. To the point where, at least in theory, I can think more clearly and calmly about everything, and in the long run, be more productive.

Which kind of shoots holes in the idea that it's "spending a half hour walking nowhere."
It may be, technically, walking in circles. Walking a few dozen blocks away, and coming back.
But it's far from going nowhere.
And I'd highly recommend it as--paradoxically enough--one of the best ways to actually find yourself, at the end of the day, having gotten further than you thought you would when you woke up.

Just a thought.
Anything that gives YOU balance in the morning? Share it here!

Janny

So, What's that Holy Spirit FEEL Like, Anyway?

One of the things I like best about Catholicism, as opposed to many "faiths" I've seen out there, is that Catholicism doesn't depend much on FEELINGS.
This is not to say that emotion isn't important in spirituality. Of course it is. God created us in His image, which means that He feels emotions, too. And they have a big role in how we worship--at times.
But there's a danger there, cherie.

For you nondenominationalists out there...think about how you choose a home church.
Really.
I mean, you go to where you "feel" you belong.
You go to where you "feel" you are "called" to be.
You go to where you "feel" God is "leading" you.
See a common denominator here?
Uh-yup.

By contrast, the traditional way a Catholic chooses which church to go to is--brace yourself--GEOGRAPHICAL.
Nowadays, that's not as tightly binding as it used to be. But it still holds true in the large majority of cases that the church you go to, as a Catholic, is the parish church that "covers" the boundaries of where you live.
It's simple. It's neat. It's predictable. And, for anyone relocating, it's a snap. Just look at the church nearest your house, and that's probably the one whose parish you live in. Not always--like school boundaries, sometimes parish boundaries have some quirks--but as a general rule, the church closest to your home is the one to which you belong.

It does cause some problems sometimes, mainly because of inadequate Church supervision over some folks who can't get the idea out of their heads that "Vatican II" said you're all supposed to hold hands at church and sing "KumBaYa" at Communion.
(It DIDN'T, by the way. Just so's we're clear on that.)

So what if the parish church you're technically "supposed" to go to is one of those bat shit crazy places with multicolored rainbow vestments, weird-ass dancing, or priests who think dogs should be co-celebrants in liturgy?
Are you still bound to be members of that parish and support it no matter what, simply because of where you live?

That's a tougher one. Sometimes you have to go outside your parish boundaries to find a church that's faithful to the Magisterium, knows what's what liturgy-wise, and is unapologetic about proclaiming real Church teaching.
But it's still gonna be a Catholic church. 
You're not going to be searching among the 40,000 other "also-rans" out there to see if a better home for you exists somewhere else. Not if you're a real Catholic.
Chances are, the parish is still going to be fairly close to your home, if you can swing that. Even if it's a place you've had to decide on by process of elimination.

But one thing that choice is NOT based on...is "feeling."
Which, I believe, removes a whole lot of nonsense from the Christian experience.

You see, if you go to where you "feel" the "Holy Spirit" moving...
...then what happens when you no longer "feel" the Spirit in that place anymore?

I see this happen all over nondenominational churches.
At best, it leads to church-hopping, sometimes even denomination-hopping.
At worst, it can lead to infighting, opposing camps, and divided church bodies, whose members then go on to form NEW church "families" with folks from one side forming the new body, while the other is abandoned.
Not that bad, but still bad, is its tendency to leave people "without a church home" for a given period of time. Which means they don't go to church at all.
Because they haven't found the place they "feel led to be" yet.
Or they haven't found a place they "feel" has the Spirit, or is led by the Spirit.

But not going to church at all isn't an option for a believer.
And no, I'm not just talking about Catholics.
True, we're bound under pain of mortal sin (which is a Big Deal) to go to Mass on Sunday. 
EVERY Sunday, and EVERY Holy Day of Obligation.
But not going to church at all is not an option for any believer.
It's Scriptural. Look it up.
When Paul says not to neglect the gathering of yourselves together, he's not suggesting. He's commanding.
It's not a "nice thing to do." 
It's a sin NOT to do it.
It's a command. Based on a commandment.
And it has nothing to do with "feelings."

Fact is, no one can truly tell you what the "Holy Spirit" FEELS like.
No one.
Because the presence of the Holy Spirit isn't a "feeling" at all.
The leading of God can, in fact, be to a place where you're not "feeling the love" in the slightest.
It can even be one of those bat shit crazy places, where you become the salt and light that brings 'em back to the way they're supposed to be.
Is that fun?  
Nope.
Will you be "feeling" like you're in the Spirit?
Hardly. Usually you'll be "feeling" like you're being a fuddy-duddy who doesn't "understand" what "Church" is all about.
But if it's where, as far as you can discern, you are finding obedience...
then it's where you're supposed to be, and the Spirit IS present there.
Regardless of how you're feeling.

Which is why Catholicism, and its (ideal) separation of feeling from obedience, does a lot less harm and injustice to the believer than this notion of going where you "feel" led to go.
It makes things infinitely simpler when you're not testing the spirits based on how you "feel" about them...but on whether they're obedient to what Jesus declared His Church to be in the first place.
Feelings are, in the end, a really crappy substitute for faith.
They're an even crappier substitute for obedience.

Which may be why, in so many nondenominational Protestant churches today, there's a constant striving to be bigger, more innovative, more flashy, more "sincere," and reach out to more people as fast and in as many media-savvy ways as possible.
Because if people are going to go to churches based on where they "feel" the best...
you gotta keep those good "feelings" coming...or you'll lose 'em.
And that's considered a tragedy of eternal proportions.

But is it? Is it, really?
Or is the tragedy actually the foundational reliance on "feelings" in the first place?
The Gospel does not say,
"You shall know the truth, and it'll make you FEEL awesome."
It doesn't say,
"You'll know the presence of the Spirit because you'll FEEL it."
Nor does it  say,
"I am with you to keep you FEELING GOOD 'til the end of the age."

It does say, "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free."
It does say, "By their fruits you shall know them."
And it does say, "And know that I am with you always." 

People sometimes get their noses out of joint when Catholics say that they belong to the true Faith. But the fact is, a Faith that relies on knowing what Jesus promised we would know has a head start on being the real thing...
...and it's a much, much more stable place to be than waiting to "feel" where we're supposed to be next.

Jesus wants us to find the real Faith and stay there.
By knowing.
By obeying.
No matter how, or what, we happen to FEEL throughout the ebb and flow of our lives.

So I would submit that looking to belong to any church based on "feelings" is not only a futile endeavor--it may, in fact, be playing with fire. 
Feelings...change.
Moods of individual church bodies with no authorities but themselves...change.
(And don't tell me, "Our authority is Scripture," or "Our authority is God Himself." If that were true, there wouldn't have to be 40,000 of you out there all disagreeing with each other.)
The fact is, human authorities in charge of churches, no matter how sincere...change.
They can change churches  from being places you're sure the Spirit is a-movin' in...to places that Jesus would call unrecognizable. (As in, "I never knew you.")
It happens.

But the teaching authority of the Holy Spirit doesn't change.
And it doesn't rely on feelings.
Which is why, IMHO, when it comes to faith--it's dangerous for US to rely on that, either.
That road, eventually, always ends up nowhere...and God doesn't want believers to be nowhere.
But the devil just loves it when we are.

So you have to wonder whose "feelings" you're actually following at that point, when your "feeling" has led you to stay away from church...for ANY reason.
And you have to wonder whose "feelings" you're honoring when you can't "find a church home" that "suits you."

News flash: Church isn't supposed to suit YOU. Your job is to belong to IT...not the other way around.
If that hurts your FEELINGS, it's not the Church that's at fault.
But it may just be your theology.


Thoughts?
Janny

Enough With the "Issues," Already.

I thought I'd seen a peak on this twenty years ago. (20! Yipes!)
But, apparently, it's still an Important Thing to some authors.
That Important Thing being...the "issues" your books deal with.

If I had a dollar for every author who tried to convince me her novel was a serious book because it dealt with "issues" on some level...well, I probably wouldn't be able to retire on it, but I could at least buy dinner.
Probably a couple of times. If not more.
And I just wish we'd all Get Over this.

RWA went through this phase during that 20-year-ago period I talk about, to the point where there was a special mention during the awards ceremonies of what "issue" each of the RITA award nominees centered around. It was pretentious, embarrassing, and--mostly--a bore.
I classified that under an exaggerated idea of one's own importance  then, and I still do.

People, we're fiction writers. We make stuff up.
In the case of romance writers, we make stuff up that has to do with some of the "softer" emotions of life, albeit also with conflicts that need resolution, with some character growth, and with happy endings.
In many cases, what we're retelling bears more resemblance to a fairy tale than it does to anything real, gritty, or down in the trenches.
That's not a criticism, however.
That's a strength.
Why can't we just go with it?
Why are we seemingly ashamed that that's "all" we do?

Fiction writers serve a purpose on their own, without having to appropriate additional meanings, layers, or significances to their work.
Romance writers in particular serve a purpose on their own. Who doesn't love a love story?
Even guys who disavow "chick flicks," when cornered, have some sentiment in their souls.
And all kinds of people love happy endings.
That's because we, as human beings, need them. 

We always claim to be the generation who needs them "as never before," but let's not kid ourselves about that, either. Romance stories endure because human nature needs, craves, and is reassured by a happy ending. It needs the brightness, and it has for thousands of years. That's why many great romance stories are also the stuff of great literature. 

But even if "all" we're writing are paperback romances, murder mysteries, cozies, adventure stories, or thrillers that are here today and gone tomorrow...
If that's our calling...
That's still a perfectly good and valid reason to keep writing.
And it's still a perfectly good and honorable way to make a living.

Sheer enjoyment is highly underrated in today's society, and in certain circles of certain societies, it always was. But that hardly makes it unimportant.
Joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, after all. Go on. Tell the Holy Spirit that that's not important. I want to be a fly on the wall when you do that. :-)

I don't think, when we get to our last judgment, God's going to ask us what "issues" we dealt with in our fiction...and burn off everything else.
I think God's going to ask us if we used our gift to its fullest--whatever we wrote.
And if we did, I think that's going to be just fine.
We won't have to justify, excuse, or apologize for that.
And we shouldn't now, either.

Please understand this. If you're writing a story that happens to come out of some trauma, some struggle, some issue, and you've delved into the dark sides or tough sides of things in the process--that's great, too. That's what great storytelling can do for us.
But that doesn't mean that in order to be great, storytelling has to have more to it than a simply wonderful yarn, well-told.
Putting yourself into the box of having to have an "issue" to make your stories "important" is just another way of handcuffing yourself--and in the process, dishonoring the craft and the stories God's giving you in the first place.

Don't do it.
Don't fall victim to the pressure.
You don't need to tell me an "issue story" to hook me. In fact, one of the main reasons I will AVOID certain books is because they're specifically presented as dealing with a specific theme, "issue," or aspect of society.

When I want social commentary, I'll read the op-ed pages.
I don't want that in my stories...at least not superimposed upon a tale that would be perfectly good without any added "weight" that's artificially applied or implied.
For the same reason I despise "study questions," I despise issue books.
If you want me to read yours, don't tell me about the issue.
If I'm meant to get that message, I'll get it.
If not, and I enjoy your story anyway....
...maybe it was a perfectly fine tale in and of itself.
Which is, after all, what we're supposed to be doing in the end, anyway.

So can we please get over this?
Before we stifle all the life--all the "juice," whimsy, and fun--out of our books in a mistaken effort to make them "important"?

What you do is already important enough, if you're telling the best stories you can, in a way that fires your blood and makes you excited to read and write every single day.
If you're not feeling this anymore, then stop telling stories. Period.
Don't try to make them "important" or "valuable" by layering on additional "relevance."
Because what the world definitely does NOT need is another "issue" novel.
EVER.

Thoughts?
Janny

The Best Part of Wakin' Up...

(image from savior.org)

Eucharistic Adoration. We've got it at Peter & Paul's on Wednesday mornings, and at St. Mary's on Fridays. If you've got that, and a good supply of coffee...you've got your morning covered. :-)

Janny

Non-Culinary Thought for the Day

It's tough turning 60.
Just sayin'.

Just looking at that number, in one sense, makes me want to cry.
There's so much still undone.
There's so much I'd do differently.
There's so much more that the nasty evil gremlin in my head tells me I should have accomplished by now.

And there's no longer any chance that people will tell me, "Gosh, I never would have thought you were that old." They did that when I had red hair. They don't anymore. :-P

Just sayin'.
It's tough turning 60.

I think I'm going to go lose myself in a book now.

Janny

Culinary Thought for the Day

Many, many, MANY good recipes start with homemade chicken stock. :-)

I've got a couple I'll be posting shortly. In the meantime, go make yourself a couple of quarts of stock and stick 'em in the freezer. They'll come in handy anytime.

And for those of you who are stock-impaired, I can even suggest how to make THAT.

More in a bit!

Janny

I Know Why Padded Cells Exist. Truly. I Do.

...it's because people have been driven bat shit crazy by seeing too many signs with plurals formed by adding apostrophes.
(Maybe I should clarify. ONE, period, is too many.)

Walmart put up some lovely new signs over their apparel departments.
Girl's.
Boy's.
Junior's.

Uh...yup.

The signs are BEAUTIFUL. The colors are great. They're obviously rather new, well-coordinated with the store, etc. Except...every time I look at them, my teeth grind.

And these things are all around us.
And we wonder why the stress levels in today's society are so high?

This is basic English, folks. Yanno. What you should have learned in school, oh, about third grade or so. This isn't just being "picky" because I'm a writer. This is WRONG. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
THERE IS NEVER AN EXCEPTION.

Oh, well. Maybe with all that teeth-grinding going on, it keeps dentists happy.
Or maybe I should say it keeps DENTIST'S happy?

Agonizedly yours,
Janny

In Praise of the 24-Hour Vacation

Proof that you don't have to have a lot of TIME to have a great getaway...

Sunday afternoon, we left the house at about 1 PM and drove on up to here.  Had a picnic, went out on a paddle boat, spent quality time in the woods. 

Then, about 4 PM, pulled in here, where we had a king-sized whirlpool room.  The rest, as they say, is history.

By the time we were checking out this morning, we both felt like we'd been away a week. 

I highly recommend a similar getaway for those of you who *think* you can't afford a vacation. 
You may not be able to afford a week...but I suspect you can afford 24 hours. :-)

Just remember to leave the TV off--and get a room like we had, with NO CLOCK in it. :-)
Looking forward to the next one!

Janny 

A Boo-Boo...That Keeps On Giving

I had a "hot button" pushed this week, one that's nagged at me for a long time and one that seems to be without convincing reason or answer. That "button" is the phenomenon in Christian fiction that requires a conversion not only of character, but of life's calling. Of work. Of job.

In other words...

I really, really, really (as in REALLY!)  wish that just once, I could find a Christian novel in which characters don't automatically abandon the occupation they had before they got saved, just because it may be a career that they--or conventional wisdom--might see as somehow less than "Christian." Why is it such a foregone conclusion that "of course" they'll turn their backs on what's been their livelihood up to that point? What would be so wrong with staying put?

I'm thinking of two particular books at this point. The first one is Boo by Rene Gutteridge. A sweet book. A quirky book, one that has a uniqueness to it that prompted me to read it and the second book in this series centered in Skary, Indiana.

The second book, I will not name here for the simple reason that I have not read the whole thing, only a sample--and it's probably not fair to cite chapter and verse on a book that lost me at Chapter One.  But, it also must be said, this particular hot button is the reason it's done so.

In the case of Boo, the hero is a horror writer before he is led to Christ. (Think Stephen King. I did, probably a deliberate intention by the author.) Only unlike King, our hero Wolfe Boone--nicknamed "Boo" for short, hence the title--gets converted and decides, well, that means he's no longer going to be a horror writer. It seems to him to be somehow incompatible with his newfound faith. Trouble is, I never quite understand or believe the reasons why. 

Oh, it's not that it's not explained, in a sort of surface manner. After all, the first knee-jerk reaction of most people to horror is that it's a pretty godless medium that godly people feel a wholesome repugnance toward in the first place, and certainly have no business writing. It tends to be affiliated with such ungodly things as vampires and werewolves and zombies and serial slashers and psychopaths and...

But notice the word.  "Affiliated." Containing these elements, much of the time. But are those elements its substance, a substance from which one needs to be walled off the moment one knows Christ?

I would submit that that assumption is not only wrong but a cop-out.

It has long been maintained by horror writers and critics that horror stories are not heartless, godless pieces set up just to show unspeakable things, scare the bejabbers out of you, and make you sleep with the lights on. Those things often happen, don't get me wrong. :-) But that's not the purpose nor the underlying story of most horror literature.  I don't remember where I read this thumbnail analysis, or I'd give its author credit--but if I remember correctly, that author maintained that horror goes deeper than surface gore or creeps. In many cases, horror literature can almost be considered as modern morality play. I.E., if "I know what you did last summer," and it was a WRONG, and I'm coming back to make you pay for it...you'd be hard put to call it much else than "morality play." The fact that the characters who did the wrong have to fight off someone who's more purely evil than they are (!) in order to survive long enough to own up to what they did is where the struggle, the conflict, and the scary parts come in.

Or, in the case of much horror literature, the setup is that an unspeakable evil comes into the world of a person who's basically just living his or her life, perfectly innocent of any previous offense that needs "punishing." When the unspeakable evil enters, it immediately threatens not only that person, but everything he/she holds dear and sacred. The only way out of the evil is through it--and this person discovers strength he or she never knew s/he possessed in the process of fighting that evil and vanquishing it.

True horror fans will also go one step farther and tell us--much as true suspense/thriller fans attest--that the scariest things happening aren't what's on the page or the screen...but what's between the reader's or viewer's ears. That the power of this fiction isn't in the gore or the body count, but in the emotional identification we have with this poor person and his/her struggles against evil. We want them to win. We want them to reassure us that, in fact, there is order in the universe. That fighting evil can be successful.

As we watch, we see characters have to own up to the shadows in themselves. They have to confront things they'd rather have kept hidden, but saving lives depends on those things being brought out and dealt with. We feel their pain, their shock and revulsion, and we let them battle that shock and revulsion that resonates inside our own heads as we watch or read. When finally the happy ending comes, peace and normalcy return to their worlds--peace of mind, soul, and body. In other words, a defeat of a certain, defined  evil...and a redemption.

So do tell me...what's GODLESS about that? 
Go ahead. Think about it. I'll wait.

I personally think the Boo books would have been better had Boo decided, "Nope, God gave me this talent, and I'm gonna keep using it." After all...if all we have comes from God, the talent to write modern-day morality plays surely shouldn't be one exception to the rule. (Plus, it would have taken the smug Ainsley down a peg if she was actually forced to reconcile the dichotomy between finding herself loving the man and loving the Christian versus wishing he did anything else for a living. Now, there's romantic conflict. And boy, would that have been fun to watch!)

Instead, predictably, our hero dumps his "distasteful" career...and then wonders what's going to come next for him. Enter a whole lot of other manufactured conflicts driven by external factors--which made for an interesting book, and one that wasn't bad. But the whole time I read it, I kept wishing the author had been willing to step out on the riskier ledge. 

Instead, the book, and so many more like it, perpetuate an occupational Phariseeism that begins to split hairs with a certain insane predictability.

You may be a musician...but by golly, you can't play rock and roll anymore.
You may be an actor or actress...but you're now only going to act in religious drama.
You may be a painter...but from now on, your first priority is church murals.
And heaven help you if you're in any of those occupations and you dare to still have some bad habits, or drink or smoke or gamble or play cards or...

Uh-yup. This is the same song we've sung before, and its notes are just as sour.

Isn't it about time we wrote real people, allowed them to have real jobs in which they stood as real Christian witnesses--living in the world as it is--and stopped removing and isolating  them before they even have a chance to be salt and light? Unless your character was something like an abortionist, a sex, slave, or drug trafficker, or a hit man for the Mafia...there's nothing whatsoever laudatory about snatching him from his old job and forcing him to do a new one the the moment he knows Christ.

And let's face it: most people can't do that in real life. So isn't doing that with a character a disservice to your reader? Which is easier to identify with--a character who finds Christ and seemingly loses all other direction (while waiting around passively for "God to show him the next step"), or a person who sticks around in the effort to do the best he can, in the place he's been planted, sin-laden world and all?

I know which person I'd rather read about.
I know which person I meet more often in real life.
And I know which person's testimony has much more power in the end.

It's the guy or girl who faces the evil, who has to force him or herself to walk through it, who has to draw on strength and courage he or she doesn't know exists...

Yanno, just like the hero or heroine in that horror novel.

(Surprise!)

So don't strip the world of its salt and light by snatching your characters out of it.
Don't keep them safe.
Put them out there, like you have to be every day.

Don't worry. They've got Christ. They can handle it.
And so--images of fainting church ladies aside--can your reader.

Trust a little more, and tear down a few more of the walls.
You'll be amazed what happens. To your stories...and maybe even to your life.

Thoughts?
Janny

V is for Vocabulary

...but the question is, do you have a decent one?
Really?
Are you sure?

Most writers I've known have had pretty darn impressive vocabularies. In fact, many of us who write genre fiction have--more than once in the past--been asked to "dumb down" our verbiage. We've been told that the average genre book should be written to a sixth-grade reading level--which is still an interesting dilemma, considering that most of us weren't using any words that we didn't already know when we were in sixth grade. Nevertheless, we were told that "long" words would "put off" our readers; they wouldn't want to read with our novel in one hand and a dictionary in the other.

Unfortunately, we're reaping the results of that dumbing down now--in an unexpected place.
Our book editors.

Yes, we're told over and over again now that book editors don't "edit" much anymore. They're too busy doing non-editorial but book production-related tasks, having meetings with Marketing, etc., to go over books with a fine-toothed comb. So the books have to come in as darn near perfect as we can make them.

Which is a problem if we're also products of reading books that never made us reach beyond an arbitrarily-decided "sixth-grade reading level." Some of us were never forced to actually learn a vocabulary that goes into a high-school reading level, much less a college-educated one. That becomes a problem when we decide to write something ourselves.

But that becomes a class-A felony when we sit down to edit someone else's work. Because how can we edit a book properly, bring it up to snuff, correct its errors...if we don't know errors when we SEE them?

Books will always have errors, here and there. A few inevitably sneak through because of sheer time constraints. Even with several pairs of eyes looking at a proof, the mind will do a certain amount of compensation for what's not on the page--we've got all kinds of nifty little viral stuff circulating around online demonstrating just that.  So in a time crunch, editors will read something over as quickly as they can. That's almost always a mistake, and it almost always lets mistakes get through.  It happens.

Those mistakes, we can live with. But those aren't the kinds of mistakes I'm talking about--one or two in a full-length book.
I'm talking about finding seven or eight missteps in the first ten pages of something.

These are errors that can only be made by ignorant people--not in the punitive sense, but in the literal sense. Ignorant of grammar, ignorant of proper punctuation, ignorant of cultural references...but most embarrassingly, ignorant of words themselves. They just plain "don't know what they don't know"--and the results are just plain awful.

In other words, some of the worse errors I'm seeing of late are overwhelmingly in the "word usage" category of error. As in, the editor doesn't have enough of a vocabulary to know that the author just slipped up and put the wrong word in. Or worse yet...the author's proof started out right, and the editor's changed it to something wrong.

This kind of thing comes from editors who don't even have enough vocabulary and/or language training to know "lightning" from "lightening."
Or that it's "death throes," not "death throws."
Or that there's a difference between "subtly" and "subtlety."

There are more, of course.  Cultural references that go bad--things like spelling the name "Hannibal Lector" or the always-popular misuse of the term "Immaculate Conception."
Or grammar things that are wrong--like, for instance, that you don't put a comma after words like "maybe" or "but" except in very specific circumstances.

The list goes on. And on. And on. Every single one of these things is cringeworthy.
The good news is, every single one of them would be fixable...
But the bad news is, apparently the editors don't know that they need fixing. So they don't get fixed.
And our books look really, embarrassingly illiterate.

But even worse, for the sake of readers and writers alike--is that in the end, the ultimate damage done by these missteps isn't an offense to "grammar gurus" but a disruption in the story itself. Miscommunication--saying "dependant" when you mean "dependent," "tenant" when you mean "tenet," or "death throws" when you mean "death throes"--stops the reader from getting what the writer truly intended in the text. 
It stops the reader from truly getting the story in its best form.

In order to reverse this trend, there are some other trends we'll have to reverse. Like the dominant trend of insisting that our writing stay dumb and dumber.

We need to start teaching vocabulary again. And the grammar it comes in on. Because when we do want to fly with a word, we ought to at least be able to use the right one.

That's not a matter of snobbism or pedantics  (or even semantics!), or perfectionism.
Our stories demand it.
Our writers deserve it.
And our editors simply must have it.
Otherwise, we've got a whole raft of people out there trying to jerry-rig the sculpting of raw manuscript into finished book...using the heel of a shoe and a sharp knife, when they really need a hammer and chisel.

Any workman knows you can't do the job right without the right tools.
Many, many, MANY of our editors apparently don't have those tools.
If they don't, the writers they support will never have them, either.
And the stories are the losers in that process.

Let's change it.

Thoughts? 
Janny

I Dunno About You, But I'm Really, REALLY Tired Of...

...the whole practice of labeling people "haters" in today's culture.

Mind you, nine times out of ten, the concept doesn't actually apply to anyone who DOES hate or is actually EXPRESSING hatred. Our culture is fond of referring to people with real LIVE hatred as having anything BUT that in their souls. They have "anger issues," or "inaccurate perceptions," or all kind of other nonsense instead of us just calling the spade a spade and being done with it.

But then, in turn, calling that spade a spade makes you a...hater.
Huh?

I posted the following on Facebook, just now. 


A thought: 
Merely pointing out a public figure's weaknesses, hypocrisies, failings, or outright lies doesn't constitute HATING, and it doesn't make anyone a "hater." In many cases, it's an honest attempt to assess a person's character and achievements without either rose-colored glasses or tinfoil. :-) And it especially doesn't apply merely because MY assessment of that public figure is different from YOURS. Or is that much nuance beyond the scope of people nowadays to understand?

...Maybe it's a hopeless cause. But maybe not. Maybe if enough of us start saying it, like Chinese water torture...it'll start wearing some grooves of sense back into someone's gray matter. 
It's worth a shot.

At least maybe it'll force them to find another vocabulary word. :-)

Thoughts?
Janny