I Resolve To Be a Blind Squirrel. You?

I'm not necessarily a big believer in resolutions, but I like choosing things to focus upon. It seems to me that when my thoughts and dreams and activities keep circling the same drain, something usually happens. Maybe not exactly what I'd hoped, but something.

January of last year, because of a friend's list, I wrote down 13 resolutions with the addendum that I'd be happy if I did any of them. Well, I've achieved one,slightly differently of course, but more awesome-ly, than hoped. I've made varying amounts of progress on 6 or 7 more, depending on how generous I am. They're not checked off, for sure, but I'm feeling okay. And that, for me, is what this time of year's about. The resolutions or goals are a road map (with no copyright traps!), and it's fun to imagine arriving at some glorious destination, but the side trips and traveling companions are just as important in the end, maybe moreso.

I received by e-mail a list of guidelines to making New Year's resolutions, and I really liked a few of these by Dr. Michelle May:

• Consider Your Values. What is truly important to you--family, health, career, achievement, contribution, spiritual growth? When you are clear on what really matters, you'll willingly invest your valuable time and energy pursuing meaningful goals that are congruent with your principles and values.
  

• Be Inspired. Your goals should act like a magnet that
  draws you toward them. (Hint: If you are repelled by the
  thought of working toward a particular resolution, start
  over with a new goal that excites and challenges you.) Go
  for the shiver-factor: If the thought of achieving your
  goal gives you a little shiver of excitement, you're on the
  right track.

• Be flexible and creative... Obstacles
  and detours are a natural part of change and provide
  important learning opportunities. When you are patient and
  gentle with yourself, you'll discover creative solutions
  that help you grow beyond anything you could have imagined.

As a closing item of this year's business, I know I and at least two other WOM sent our manuscripts in to the MWA First Novel Competition. Sure, I'd love to be published, but I'd even be delighted with nearby coattails. I like seeding the future with possibilities, even if they're long shots, and that's one thing I do plan to do in 2008: create work that gives me more chances to be rejected, since they're also the only way to get accepted. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

So, enough of the horrible, destined-to-fail Shoulds, what thrills you?

Trust a Lexicographer, Cartographers, Never!

I thought this was a lovely image, even if it doesn't entirely pertain. It's called Sphinxes with Dictionary by Francine van Hove.

1) Did you know this is a magical time of year? Shmaltz aside, it must be, because of all the protections that developed for this window between Christmas and the New Year (alternatively through Epiphany on Jan 6th). Erin McKean, a real-live lexicographer and proprietor of the great word blog Dictionary Evangelist, has written for the Boston Globe detailing some of the oddness in her article Season of Superstition:

...People born on Christmas are considered either fortunate, as they supposedly cannot be drowned or hanged, or unfortunate, because they are more likely to be able to see ghosts and spirits. (Sir Walter Scott said that the Spaniards attributed the gloomy mood of King Philip II, thought to have been born on Christmas, to his frequent ghost sightings, and not - as we might imagine - to always having his birthday and Christmas presents combined.)

Some also believe that those who are born on Christmas Eve turn into ghosts on that day every year while they sleep. If you were born on Christmas Eve and don't want to have this happen to you, the remedy is to count the holes in a sieve from 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve until morning...

2) Perhaps that didn't catch your interest though, because you're too involved in assigning addresses and realistic geography to your plot-in-progress. Well, if you're writing about San Bernadino County, for example, be extra careful using a Thomas Brothers map for reference, because they've salted in over 100 fake streets to catch anyone making unauthorized duplications. Copyright traps, as they're called, are no urban legend among cartographers. As usual, the Straight Dope has the low-down.

I suggest we all borrow Cecil's excellent and pithy defense against errors in his own work.
Mistakes, my arse. Copyright traps.

Assassinations and Writing

I grew up in the Age of Assassination. JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., RFK, Malcolm X. To stick up for a cause meant to stick your head above the crowd - be an easy target. It killed my desire to attack evil forces on a broad platform. I chose teaching and subversively worked to raise consciousness about things of great import.

When I started feeling bold again, the fatwa hit Salman Rushdie. The good news is: he outlived the Ayatollah.

And now Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated. Will this lunacy never end? The Age of Aquarius was not supposed to end up with the world still full of hatred and violence. I was hoping for a resurgence of the Age of Enlightenment.

Will this become known as the Age of Terrorism?

What role does this have in shaping my writing world and yours? We are, after all, people who target a wide audience (you should pardon the expression). We try to capture reality in a way that is both gripping and rewarding. We try to make sense out of the senselessness of violence, or at least put a muzzle on it.

Hmmm. Out of chaos comes a myriad of possibilities. Timing is everything. And writers have been known to rally the troops. Wasn't it some southern lady whom Lincoln credited with starting the Civil War? How will this latest assault on democracy be translated into our writings? Will it have no impact at all?

I don't believe that our internal life force vaporizes with death. Our verve is not eternally gone from the universe. At the very least, our voices linger in the minds of others. We continue to influence the world we leave behind, just not so directly. All of us carry bits and pieces of others - both good and not-so-good - in our souls. We are living legacies. As mystery writers we are tied into the emotional soul of our audience. Sorting out impossible puzzles is part of our daily fare.

Do the spirits of Benazir, the victims of 9-11, and all of the other assassinated heroes have an impact in fictional worlds? Do they whisper in the ears of writers, and inspire our fingers with words of encouragement and hope for a better tomorrow? Will our stories in some way keep their hopes alive?

How do you deal with the world of reality in your world of fiction? I'd like to know.

Write On!

Books Not To Buy

If you're like me, you have an ever-growing list of books you want, and people know it. So when they're desperate for a last minute prezzie, they go out and get you a gift card from Borders or Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

This year I was lucky enough to get this book, which has been on my Amazon wish list for ages. I also got a gift card from Borders, so now comes the complicated process of trying to figure out which books I need right now, and which can wait a while.

The only book reviews I read consistently are Janice Harayda's One Minute Book Reviews. I like her style, and one minute is about all I have to figure out if I want to invest in a book. In today's post, Janice points out Entertainment Weekly's Worst Books of 2007. Not that there are any on the list I was planning to buy, but it is nice to have a short list of books not to buy when the list of books I do want is so long, and gets longer every day!

My New Year’s Resolution

It’s that time of year again. Yup, to make our New Year’s resolutions. Mine is simple this year: to clean my house less.

That’s right. I said less. I’m weird? I think we’ve already established that. But my resolution really isn’t.

Ever since I’ve had my own home, I’ve been obsessive about cleaning it. I clean every Saturday morning and straighten up at least half a dozen times each day. Some of this is necessary and I’ll of course continue it. But the bulk of it is overkill.

I don’t remember where, but about a year ago, I read an article about the history of housecleaning. According to that article, today’s practices and beliefs only developed in the twentieth century. Before that, the average woman was too busy working for pay to help support her family. Some of these paying jobs were accomplished at home—for example, taking in laundry—but true full-time housewives and stay-at-home moms were rare, found mainly in the upper classes. It really wasn’t till after the Great Depression, and especially after the two World Wars, that average women began working outside of the house less. At the same time, a booming new industry developed in household appliances. These new appliances made quick—or, at least, quicker—work of housecleaning. But what did women do with all their new free time? Clean more, of course! (What! That wouldn’t be your first choice?)

When I worked outside the house (as opposed to what I do now, which is run my own business from a home office), I had a cleaning lady come in on a regular basis. She always insisted that every other week was sufficient. I, naturally, was appalled. My mother had always cleaned her house every Saturday. But when you think about it, my cleaning lady was right. We use cleaner forms of heat today than we did 100 years ago. We cover our floors with expensive wood, carpeting, tile, and linoleum. We keep mud out with doormats. We keep bugs at bay with window screens. Our high-tech kitchens feature refrigerators and freezers for the sanitary storage of foodstuffs and electric or gas stoves for clean and efficient cooking. Electricity, not smoking oil, lights our lamps. Outhouses have gone, well, the way of outhouses, with even today’s simplest homes sporting a sleek bathroom—and often several—on each floor. Cleaning products for every variation of surface, dirt, and stain imaginable, as well as paper towels, garbage bags, lightweight buckets, and all manner of scrubbing brushes and sponges, fill the shelves of every supermarket. Cleaning chores that used to take hours or even days can now be completed in a matter of minutes. And with today’s miracle surfaces and fabrics combined with the modern cleaning-product formulas, everything stays clean longer. (Although dust seems to be housecleaning’s version of the common cold—incurable. It’s back again almost before we put the dust rag away.)

So, beginning this year, I’m going to clean my house less. I’m going to try to wean myself off my weekly deep-cleaning routine and shift to a bi-weekly schedule. I’m going to straighten up in the morning and after dinner, but try to cut out the hourly “tours” of the house “to stretch my legs.” I’m going to try to stop my automatic response to a dirty dish in the sink being to grab the sponge and dish soap.

Of course, this is going to leave me with some extra time. Let’s see, what can I do with that time? Think. Think. Ooh, I know! I’ll work on my book!

w00t! w00t! w00t!

Meet Mirriam-Webster’s word of the year—w00t.

According to Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, "w00t" blends whimsy and new technology. You’ll notice the middle letters aren’t letters at all—they are zeros.

Merriam-Webster describes w00t this way:

1. w00t (interjection) expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay."

W00t illustrates “a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said. He explained that gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, creating what they call "l33t speak" — that's "leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the world.

Click here to see the Merriam-Webster top ten “words of 2007”, which includes the always familiar “apathetic” and the not so familiar “sardoodledom” which describes something I guarantee would never be found in the writing of the women of mystery or any of our blog buddies.

And now from the New York Times:

In Sunday’s edition of The Week in Review, Grant Barrett, co-host of the public radio show “A Way With Words” and a lexicographer introduces us to the buzzwords of 2007.

Barrett includes words you’ve probably noticed such as:

forever stamp n. A United States postage stamp that will cover a first-class letter regardless of future price increases.

And words that may have escaped your notice such as:

bacn n. Impersonal e-mail messages that are nearly as annoying as spam but that you have chosen to receive: alerts, newsletters, automated reminders and the like. Popularized at the PodCamp conference in Pittsburgh in August 2007.

So take a gander (how old fashioned is that?) at these sites and learn the words of 2007 because in a very few days we will start building the lexicon of 2008.

Terrie

More Stuff we Fancy

Yet another round of Favorite Things in response to Travis Erwin's and Clare2e's challenge...

***
Agents who ask for our manuscript pages
Friends whose eyes tear up in all the right places
Sons who fix laptops and daughters who ken
These folks climb high on our list of top ten.

Spouses who get why we're hunched over keyboards
Winking their eyes when we mention the mortgage
Stories that come without outline or tears
These cause our voices to ring out in cheers.

When the plot thins
When the drive dies
When we're feeling had…
When turned down by agents for pitches too dry
Just give us a pen and pad.

Cobwebs that don’t show when we dim the lighting
Old Trader Joe's for meals while we're writing
Web-wired cafes and keys that don’t stick
These all restore when our brains are too thick.

Deer in the side yard who forgo a nibble
Guests who don’t quibble when we forget dinner
Dreams that inspire a great turning point
These set us right when our world’s out of joint.

When the plot thins
When the drive dies
When we're feeling had…
When turned down by agents for pitches too dry
Just give us a pen and pad.

Have the happiest of holidays...may your ink flow fair.
-Lois

All I want for Christmas is an aging barfly

Have you spotted any barflies lately, perched precariously on a bar stool, swirling the beer bottle as if the brew needed a little more mixing? Are barflies endangered species, or nearly extinct? Do they only exit in remote locales?

It's been years since I've seen one. I've never had a long conversation with one. Should you come across a barfly with some time to spare, would you tuck her into a nice spot under my Christmas tree? I promise to snatch and release, should you bag one for me.

A barfly could slide into my novel as a fly on the wall, looking at the darker moments in life without a dream of escape. With her in my mystery series, how could I go wrong? I'd treat her kindly. No enslavement here!

I could also use a slick liar who sometimes speaks the truth. Do you know one who's available? Is there room on your sleigh? My stories sure could use that slick liar to redirect the plot just in the knick of time. Please don't send anyone with a pyramid scheme, okay? I don't have the money to lose just yet, and I tend to believe that people are honest.

OH! How about an old soldier? Do you have one who would hang around for a while? The kind of guy who might keep a barfly company? One who uses lots of nearly obsolete adages? (The other night my hubby compared something to being "like tits on a boar hog." I whooped. He couldn't believe I'd never heard that old soldier's line. I want more!)

According to my rejections, I'll be needing more than just a barfly, a liar and a soldier to spiff up my series proposals. Could you summon up a great story teller to drop down my chimney? Somebody who swills a bit, then spins a tale that has everyone laughing until their sides hurt? Maybe that old soldier guy could be the narrator and keep the story running? What brand of beer should I stock up?

Whew! Thanks for listening to this letter-writing warm-up. It's Christmas and I need to send off my DEAR SANTA note before time runs out. Ah, the time of miracles. Maybe, with your help and all these salty characters hanging out at my house, I'll break into the big-time in 2008 - Okay, okay, I'll settle for 2009!

(Be sure to catch Clare2e and Travis Erwin's musical/poetic challenge from December 21st, which inspired me to ponder my Christmas wish list. Hope Santa brings you and your loved ones great joy!)

Write On!
Nan

No, Travis. MY Favorite Stuff

Blame our blogorrhiec pal Travis Erwin, but during this season and year's end when we assess our lives and hopefully spend some seconds in general gratitude, he's posted some verses about his Favorite Stuff. I covet his rhyme for "readers": coconut rum in liters. Brilliant. Read it all and don't skip the comments.

(Mentally set it to the tune of My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music. Various MP3s here.)

So, Travis, I blame you for this completely, and here I go:

Coffee and sci-fi and old kung fu action
Add in the noir thing and crime from all factions
Surfing my whimsies and 8-hours a night
French wine and sunshine and twinkle-y lights

Floors cleaning themselves with help from the Roombas
Lacy confections to lift the bazoombas
Long-lasting lipstick, concealer that works
So, I’m greedy! A publishing deal wouldn’t hurt

Smells of a bookstore and great-fitting blue jeans
Chocolate and cheeses and changes of season
Colorful songbirds a-feeding in flocks
This, pal-ly’s, my tally of stuff that rocks

When bills are due
and the pets puke
My to-dos are long
I figure what Jessica Fletcher would do
And know that I can’t go wrong

Weird plots that only occur when I travel
Avoiding the long lines with loud-talking rabble
Planes with enough seats that all leave on time
A seatback in front of me that can’t recline

Chapters that matter, synopses that capture
Editors deciding that what I write matters
Odd genre-straddling, omitting romance
My colleagues of Eros, I mean no offense

Music and singing and dinner with loved ones
All Vince Guaraldi and Husker Du albums
Old swing and be-bop and bone-crushing riffs
This, friends, is my definition of IT

When I’m pigeon-holed
Too new, too old
All my words fall flat
I ask whether Jessica Fletcher would quit
And I tell the world, “F--- that!”

Feel free to join in with verses of your own. It's just a given that you are my faves.
Happy Christmas!

Turning Grief into Gain

I lost an old friend this week. No, not to death. To a fight.

I hate fighting. I usually apologize for doing wrong even when I didn’t. But not this time. I refuse. She broke a confidence, then when I expressed disappointment, she broke another confidence in a particularly harsh way.

I struggled through work all week as a result. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t sit still. I had a headache. I wanted to throw things. Of course, every time I started to calm down, I had to—absolutely had to—reread the series of emails containing the fight and upset myself all over again. Not a good idea.

But I think I’m over the hump now. As I was staring at a manuscript page today, not seeing what was written there and not getting anything done, I started to picture the protag in my current WIP and to transfer my feelings to her. An amateur sleuth, she has quite a few unpleasant run-ins with people while investigating her co-worker’s murder, and she also feels awful over losing that co-worker. If I can harness everything I felt this week, I think I can make her anger and grief and anxiety much more realistic.

It’s not the first time I’ve done this. I felt horrible for well over a decade because every now and then during my father’s funeral, I would find myself, in my mind, turning it into a scene in my WIP at that time. I did the same thing when my mother had cancer, when my kids were sick, when I had a car accident. Am I terrible?

I thought so for a long time, but I recently learned I’m not alone in this practice. It seems a lot of writers do this. Writers draw on everything for their work—their families and friends, their jobs, their hobbies, their vacations, things they see while doing errands around town, stories related by friends about their neighbor’s sister’s best friend’s brother-in-law’s plumber. Why not life’s bumps and bruises, everything from tussles over shopping carts to death and illness? Not only can this help you craft more accurate scenes and character reactions, but it might also help you work out some of your demons. That’s never a bad thing.

Proust and the Squid and the Matrix

How often will I get to write a title like that without being drunk? Yay! Explanation of image in last paragraph.

We've been discussing this topic from various angles when considering the recent and disouraging NEA survey on reading and in considering e-readers and the different ways we interact with them versus a book. How about versus video?

Well, in the yet-unsettled debate of the developmental value of television as educational medium and of fluent reading as a distinct and superior cognitive
activity, there's a newly assembled set of interesting arguments. Caleb Crain's whole New Yorker article is worthwhile, including highlights of the important differences in cognition between readers and illiterates who really do perceive and process the world around them very differently. (via Arts & Letters Daily) There's also juicy stuff on how much TV (even educational) for kids seems to be the magic amount before the onset of underperformance in grade-level reading, science, and math. Here are some snipped chunks I found interesting:

...Taking the long view, it’s not the neglect of reading that has to be explained but the fact that we read at all. “The act of reading is not natural,” Maryanne Wolf writes in “Proust and the Squid” (Harper; $25.95), an account of the history and biology of reading. Humans started reading far too recently for any of our genes to code for it specifically. We can do it only because the brain’s plasticity enables the repurposing of circuitry that originally evolved for other tasks—distinguishing at a glance a garter snake from a haricot vert, say...

...Drawing on recent imaging studies, she [Wolf] explains in detail how a modern child’s brain wires itself for literacy. The ground is laid in preschool, when parents read to a child, talk with her, and encourage awareness of sound elements like rhyme and alliteration, perhaps with “Mother Goose” poems. Scans show that when a child first starts to read she has to use more of her brain than adults do. Broad regions light up in both hemispheres. As a child’s neurons specialize in recognizing letters and become more efficient, the regions activated become smaller.

At some point, as a child progresses from decoding to fluent reading, the route of signals through her brain shifts...reading starts to move along a faster and more efficient “ventral route,”... With the gain in time and the freed-up brainpower, Wolf suggests, a fluent reader is able to integrate more of her own thoughts and feelings into her experience. “The secret at the heart of reading,” Wolf writes, is “the time it frees for the brain to have thoughts deeper than those that came before.”

...When reading goes well, Wolf suggests, it feels effortless, like drifting down a river rather than rowing up it. It makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone. Ruskin once compared reading to a conversation with the wise and noble, and Proust corrected him. It’s much better than that, Proust wrote. To read is “to receive a communication with another way of thinking, all the while remaining alone, that is, while continuing to enjoy the intellectual power that one has in solitude and that conversation dissipates immediately."

This seems, to me, like an erudite explanation of what avid readers, even writers, struggle to explain to the unconvinced: the rich and exciting fountain of thoughts and feelings which is possible while reading because the translation of squiggles into meaning has become fluid and automatic.

If you haven't seen The Matrix, the movie takes place in a dystopian future where humans live unaware that they're enslaved within a machine-made simulation of what was once normal life. The few humans outside this shared delusion often view the simulation (people, buildings, weather, everything) not as images and sound, but instead choose to monitor it as lines of computer code cascading down their screens. (screen capture image above) As it turns out, this story detail is expressing a real truth about human cognition. Once we've learned to effortlessly decode, we can perceive more completely, faster, and with better retention from reading than experiencing real-time images and sound. The good news: The Matrix takes place centuries in the future. The machines have become implacable overlords using humanity as wet-cell batteries, but people are still reading. Whew!

For the Writer on Your Gift List

If you still have a writer on your list to buy a holiday gift for—or if you’re a writer and you don’t know what to ask for—consider an editor’s desk. Levenger (www.levenger.com) sells a couple that a number of writers and editors I know couldn’t live without.

An editor’s desk is basically a small inclined work surface that looks very much like the top of a lectern. It’s designed to sit on top of your regular desk and hold whatever you’re writing on or in—loose paper, notebook, journal—at a comfortable angle to ease neck strain. A small ledge along the lower edge holds the paper in place, while a back ledge can be used to hold a reference book or two. The editor’s desk can also be used for reading.

While I do most of my actual writing on my computer, I generally prepare my notes and outlines in longhand. I also print out my manuscripts and edit them on paper. If no one in my family took the hint, I’m buying an editor's desk as a gift for myself.

On Being A Good Citizen/Member

I submitted my mystery, A Snake In The Glass, to the MWA/St. Martin's First Crime Novel contest (making the deadline by the skin of my teeth) and today received a note from my assigned judge saying he had received it.

I don't have much hope that Snake will win the contest (like its author, it doesn't fit comfortably in any genre), but I appreciate the fact that my judge--let's call him "Bob"--took the time to drop me an email. More than that, I appreciate that he's willing to read who-knows-how-many manuscripts from writers like me.

I always wonder what motivates people to do things like this. "Bob" gets no reward for reading however many manuscripts he has to read. He's not an editor at St. Martin's, he's part of MWA--an author--so reading manuscripts by unpublished writers is not his job. And it's not as if the manuscripts he gets are guaranteed to be good. (Although I suppose he can say "next" after a couple pages if they are really awful, since he isn't critiquing them, just judging.)

If I wrote a book about a man who was murdered because he volunteered to judge a contest, I'd have to know why he had decided to give up his time to do so. I'd have to be able to explain his actions in a way that would sound logical to my readers. But all too often, motive in life is less clear than it is in fiction. People act in ways that are counter-intuitive. Fact, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you do something? Something difficult? Something that gives you no obvious reward? Did you come up with an answer, or did you just settle for "I guess that's just who I am," the way I seem to all too often?

Knowledge is Power! Write On!

If you're a long-hand writer, or even just a jotter, this season offers abundant lures for you or those wishing to delight you with an apropos gift.

If you are deeply pocketed, there are plenty of shops and experts to aid you, emporiums of soft light and classical music where finely-machined barrels are pressed into your fingers to test their balances and grips, all while trays of champagne flutes glide by in the gloves of liveried staff. Of course, there are those who will sniff and say that for much less expense, serviceable, even inspiring, devices can be had. But how to choose? We may well sympathize with ink-stained wretches of years past who had to decide upon the ink with which to stain themselves without customer reviews.

As of this writing, Amazon has accumulated 61 reviews of the
Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, medium point, black, EACH by Bic

Samples I've snipped:

"The image of the pen above clearly shows the pen hovering over the lid at an angle of 45 degrees (approximately). Since my postie delivered the pen this morning (fab packaging Amazon!), I have watched it sit constantly on my desk at what I can only descibe as a "horizontal" angle." (3 stars)

"...I called the Bic technical support number and after some discussion with a very nice young man called Brian I was informed that I had failed to remove the so-called 'protective cap' from the writing end of the pen. I realise for the 'young people' this procedure must seem fairly obvious, but come on Bic, perhaps some clearer instruction for us 'old fogeys' would avoid such confusion in the future" (4 stars)

"...Finally i knew, finally i felt peace as i took Biro between my thumb and forefinger and applied it to the scrap of paper i had prepared on the desk. No more afraid, i wrote the words "Semi-skimmed milk and a packet of Monster Munch. Pay Gas Bill". Exhausted, i collapsed back into my chair, spent yet satisfied. The pen itself seemed to thank me as i laid it to rest on top of the microwave." (5 stars)

"I had assumed from the image on the Amazon site that the Bic was a portable quill, with a travel inkwell, in which the pen could be dipped..." (3 stars)

"I have noticed that what this pen writes in my diary are the exact same thoughts that i have in my mind. Can this pen be reading my thoughts, i mean, is this at all possible?" (3 stars)

"It's an adequate pen for accountants or lawyers or beekeepers, but not deadly enough to use to impress hot femme fatales with your pen-shooting skills." (2 stars)

"Whilst this may cost more than a piece of pointy charcoal, I think the extra cost is justified." (5 stars)

"I frantically checked the package to see if there was some sort of activation process for the pen and stumbled across a warning note. Apparently the Writing Implement Association of America (WIAA) has established the UK as being part of distribution region 2, while North America is region 1. Because of the region differences, my imported pen will not work with region 1 8 1/2 x 11 inch letter-size paper - it only works on European (A4 and such) paper. Unfortunately the import duties on the pen itself cost quite a pretty penny, and I cannot afford to purchase appropriate-region paper to write on. I have looked up some so called "gray paper" import companies but I don't know if I altogether trust them." (1 star)

"There once was a young man from Cairo
Who wanted a 'tache just like Poirot
But he wasn't aware
That he had no facial hair
So he drew on his face with a biro..." (5 stars)

There's lot more poetry and fun at the link. I understand that Amazon's listing for Tuscan milk may be similarly helpful.

A Question of Weather

The weather outside is frightful. There's snow, and sleet, and so much ice I can't get up the driveway on foot or in the car. (I live at the top of a hill.) Normally, none of this fazes me. But my current work in progress is set in the Caribbean, and it's hard to remember what it feels like to be warm when just getting the mail from the box down on the street is a chore!

Does the weather affect your writing? What do you do about it?

On Crimespace, Writer's Block, and The Dickens Challenge

If you don't know it, Crimespace, now boasting 1000+ members, is like Myspace for lovers of crime fiction. Recently members have engaged in a fierce debate on the subject of writer's block, ignited by blogger/author Erica Orloff who began a blog post on the subject with this quote:

"There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write." --Terry Pratchett

Clearly a tongue-in-cheek challenge from a much-loved humorist, one recently diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's.

On Crimespace, folks are divided in their opinion as to whether blocked writers should simply buck up (!) or whether, in the throes of burnout, stress, anxiety, or depression -- when they lose heart for writing -- recovery is not a mere matter of pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

Because writing for software companies is my bread and butter, I've plugged away (sometimes grimly) for seventeen years in the face of occasional sickness, sadness, and stress. But when it comes to fiction, I'm on the fence in this debate. Because it seems to me that when writers take on new challenges, stretch higher than they've ever before reached, face impossible deadlines -- or when their standards of perfection are over-the-top -- they're bound to have lowered immunity for this condition. Having been there, I'm comforted to know that plenty of admirable writers (Hammett, for one) have been there as well.

The remedy for most seems to be to keep on writing no matter how awful the bunk you churn out. In the Crimespace debate, thriller author Timothy Hallinan said it well:

"Banishing the internal critics and writing material I don't like, for as long as it's necessary: dialogue that sounds like furniture talking, turns of plot that absolutely creak, they're so mechanical. Just putting one uninspired word after another."

I was intrigued by The Dickens Challenge that Hallinan suggested as cure. He says Mystery Dawg has volunteered to create a site for those who accept the challenge to post a chapter or other unit in serial form, committing to previously-posted chapters without going back and changing them. Check out the discussion on Hallinan's blog. His take is to do it for the joy of it, as an exercise in taking oneself less seriously.

I don't think I'm ready for this one (I'm forever editing my blog posts...isn't it maddening how blockquotes are followed by single spacing?) but those among us who are freshly lubed by Nanowrimo might want to try it.

-Lois

John, Jeff, Jim, Joe, Jack, Jen, Jill, Jan, and Junior

I just finished copyediting a wonderful manuscript. Written by a first-time author, it had a great theme, a page-turning plot, and characters that made me laugh, cheer, boo, and cry as I added the occasional comma to their dialogue. It also had a ton of characters with similar names. That wasn’t wonderful.

I’ve been editing a lot of novels lately. I love it. After many years of specializing in health, spending day after day reading about cancer and Alzheimer’s and all manner of infectious diseases, novels have been just the change I needed. I feel rejuvenated. Rather than dreading the next chapter of the manuscript on my desk, I look forward to it. But while novel manuscripts don’t require as much fact checking and quote double-checking as nonfiction, and absolutely no reworking of citations and bibliographies (hallelujah!), they each still have their bugaboos. Confusing character names is a common one.

The manuscript I just finished had 42 named characters. Of those, nine had first names beginning with J and another nine had first names beginning with S. Five had first names beginning with C and four with D. In other words, 27 characters had first names beginning with one of just four letters. Altogether, all the first names began with one of 12 letters, leaving 14 letters unused. That’s not good planning.

While authors spend anywhere from a quick two months to as many as 10 years or more working on a book, most readers finish the average-sized novel in roughly two weeks. Some people even finish a whole book in one day! This means that authors spend a lot of time getting to know their characters, but readers generally don’t. Therefore, to help readers follow a story better—and thereby enjoy it more—writers should make every effort to keep character confusion to a minimum. Giving nine characters first names that begin with the same letter doesn’t accomplish this.

Keeping track of what names you’ve given your characters isn’t difficult. Using a piece of paper, a word-processing document, or a spreadsheet, just create a table with three columns and 26 rows. Label the rows with the letters of the alphabet, and label the columns “Last Names,” “First Names, Males,” and “First Names, Females.” Then, whenever you give a character a name, jot it down on the table. (Note that a last name shared by two or more related characters needs to be listed just once.)

With your table in front of you, when it comes time to name a new character, you can see at a glance which letters of the alphabet you’ve already used and which ones you still have available. You can also see if the names you’re choosing are too similar in other ways—for example, if most of the women’s names end in y or i, if the men tend to have nicknames held over from childhood, or if too many names sound alike (Pam, Sam, Tom). You can also use the chart to keep track of other name-related factors, such as ethnicity.

Naming characters should be fun, not a chore. With a little bit of organization, it can also be simple, plus help you make following your story much easier for your readers.

Vaguely Literary Trifles

Courtesy of author John Scalzi, here are the
10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time.
Do read his descriptions which are as great as the titles:

• An Algonquin Round Table Christmas (1927)
• The Mercury Theater of the Air Presents the Assassination of Saint Nicholas (1939)
• Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951)
• The Lost Star Trek Christmas Episode: "A Most Illogical Holiday" (1968)
• Bob & Carol & Ted & Santa (1973)
• A Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1978)
• The Village People in Can't Stop the Christmas Music- On Ice! (1980)
• A Canadian Christmas with David Cronenberg (1986)
• Noam Chomsky: Deconstructing Christmas (1998)
• Christmas with the Nuge (2002)

Great Bathsheba's Bra, Are We Suddenly Cool?

Whether or not we misanthropic, ink-stained wretches are actually cool, HCC's covers always are. Someday...

If you haven't been following along, the board of Mystery Writers of America has officially tightened its ranks of accepted publishers, and MWA has followed through similarly in the nomination guidelines for the Edgar awards. As a result, editor Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime is not eligible to win for his own novel Songs of Innocence (excerpt at link if you're curious) published by Hard Case under his alias, um, Richard Aleas.

The issue becomes heated precisely because Charles is a very good writer as well as editor, not one of the craptastic dreckmeisters that MWA is trying to shake loose. Mystery fans, a category including most mystery authors, are grateful for the development of Hard Case Crime as a wonderful new venue for hard-boiled fiction. Through it, Ardai's been involved with not only his own work, but reprinting older, forgotten titles and putting out great yet-unseen grimness from masters (some Grand) of the field. To have someone so well-respected shut out of Edgar consideration in the process of ostensibly raising the quality and the legitimacy of the award process is the definition of unintended consequences, but here we are.

If you'd like the essential details, I'd recommend Sarah Weinman's blog post including substantive comments and counterpoints by MWA board member Lee Goldberg and Charles Ardai himself. They stake out their positions clearly, so you may decide where your philosophy leads.

However, this simmering situation reached an entirely new level when I, in my vapid fashion, turned to Page Six, the famous gossip column of the New York Post and found their lengthy blurb on the subject (look for The Case of the Conflicted Imprint) with all the writerly names in customary bold-face and Charles Ardai's picture. Are mystery writers fascinatingly cool now? Can't be. At least I hope not. I can't keep up.

'Tis the season

to do something fantastic for yourself by doing a little bit for someone else.

All the authors of Murder New York Style were saddened by the death of Samuel A. Glenn, father of our dedicated publisher, Linda Houle, of L&L Dreamspell.

With Linda’s obvious love of books and reading, the authors decided to make a donation in Mr. Glenn’s name to Reader to Reader.

According to the mission statement, “Reader To Reader, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to bringing books, free of charge, to needy school libraries across the United States.” Organized in 2002, Reader to Reader also supplied more than one million books to libraries in the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I first heard of the organization when Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine ran a special Katrina relief issue and displayed a full page ad for Reader to Reader. I called David Mazor, the executive director, and he cheerfully explained that the organization accepts and ships all usable donations: books, videos, CDs, anything that a library normally supplies.

David reminded me that cash always makes the perfect donation! With that in mind, if you are in the mood to write a “gee, this makes me feel just great” check, here is the mailing address:

Reader To Reader, Inc. c/o Cadigan Center 38 Woodside Avenue Amherst, MA 01002

Okay, so you want to write a check, but you need some great holiday gifts in return for your outlay. Laura had your answer in a recent blog a few weeks back when she suggested you run right out and purchase a few copies of Carols and Crimes, Gifts and Grifters. This project of Wolfmont Publishing is edited by Tony Burton and all proceeds are going directly to the Toys For Tots program.

Several of our good friends have contributed stories to this very entertaining anthology, including Deborah Elliott-Upton, who blogs every Thursday on Criminal Brief and Chris Grabenstein, who, I can personally attest, allows himself to be accosted by strange women at MWA meetings and becomes fast friends while freely dispensing advice about the struggles of writing.

In case the helping hand you are stretching out is empty, I mentioned in a recent post that you can polish your vocabulary and help feed the hungry at the same tie by playing a very addictive game at the FreeRice website.

As a mother and a grandmother, I have great admiration for a woman named Frankie Mayo. I first saw her on television shortly after her son was deployed to Iraq. She was horrified that we sent so many of our children into a desert war and quartered them in housing without air conditioning. In true mom fashion Frankie decided to do something about it, so she founded Operation AC. She hooked up with a major hardware outlet and overcame the Army’s “sorry, but regular air conditioning units don’t comply with our electrical supply” nonsense. Frankie’s son and daughter-in-law both came home safely in 2004. But as the war drags on, so does Frankie’s resolve. For the last several years, she has been collecting money for fully decorated Christmas trees, complete with lights to be distributed to members of the Armed Forces around the world. I am sure she could use your help.

Just a quick shout out to the people I regularly visit on blogs and message boards: I am presently at my daughter's house in Florida, having a grand old time with two of my grandchildren. I have peeked in on you but have very little time to post or comment.I'll be back home soon and will catch up with you then.

A special note to the Bag Lady: These grandchildren loved the candy that you sent for them from Canada just as much as the New York grandkids did and just as much as grandma loves her CartSmart Bag.

Terrie

The Upside of Piggy Kids

My son made dinner yesterday. No, not for my husband and me. Rather, just for himself—in the middle of the night. From the looks of the debris, he made a large pot of pasta and sauce, accompanied by two of my Weight Watchers frozen dinners, a variety of leftover veggies, and several bowls of cereal. He used three pots, five cereal bowls, two dinner plates, three glasses, and almost every piece of silverware in the everyday drawer. He’s 20, but the way I felt this morning when I first saw the sink and the counter and the floor—and the chair and the table in the family room—he would’ve been lucky to see 21.

But there’s a plus to having a slob for a kid. And I have two, although the second one is now in San Francisco. I also have a husband whose name really should be Oscar. Not only have I become very good at digging out of messes, washing dishes, and removing stains and dried-on unidentifiable substances from all types of surfaces, I’ve also learned how to control my temper and my stress level. Not by burning incense and listening to Yani on my iPod. Not by chanting Om and concentrating on a little light flickering somewhere in the back of my brain. Not by turning off the overhead and scrubbing by candlelight.

What I do is picture all the ways I could murder my son. And while I'm at it, I imagine all the ways I could manipulate the evidence to make the other two look guilty. (I might as well take care of all three problems at once!) I’ve come up with some wonderful plot ideas this way. And if I can’t immediately use any of the ideas, at least the fire they spark in me often results in a day or two of very productive writing.

Oh, that son in San Francisco? The last time I visited him, I spent my entire vacation cleaning his apartment. He needed the super to fix a leak and had been putting off calling him because of the mess. That trip resulted in several months' worth of innovative plot ideas!

Tangled in the Web

We've taken many a fantasy trip into the future of publishing here lately. Assuming, however, that people continue to read books in some form or other, the question of how to make sure those readers know about--and invest in--our books is vitally important. When I first approached the other Women of Mystery about starting a blog, I did so because every editor and agent I'd spoken to said the same thing: authors, even unpublished authors, need to have web presences.

This is not news to me. For my "day job," I make and sell glass beads, and in retail, too, you need to have a web presence. With one, enormous exception.

No web page is better than a bad one.

"That's not what I wanted to hear."

I know, and I am sorry. And I have more bad news: just like you can't ask your friends to tell you what's wrong with your writing, you can't ask them to tell you what's wrong with your website. First of all, they may not know. For example, if your site is heavy on the graphics or Flash animations and your friends are all geeky types running high speed connections, they may not even realize that some people will leave your site without reading a word because the images take so long to load.

And then there's the question of text. You're a writer, so your site will probably have a lot of text on it. But studies have shown that people don't read text on a web page the same way they read it on paper.

In fact, with the exception of those passages of text you're using directly from your book, those teasers tempting readers to go out and buy the book, the writing on your website will probably bear no similarity to the deathless prose of your novel whatsoever.

People like to see lots of open space on web pages. Short paragraphs, bullet points, text that can be easily skimmed, that's what people want from a web page.

But wait...there's more. They want to be able to go to your web page by using your name. So if the domain associated with your name isn't taken, get it now. You don't have to use it right away, but you don't want someone else to take it while you're busy figuring out what you want to be when you grow up!

"I was going to use MySpace."

I'm not saying you can't, since it's easy enough to "point" one domain to another. [For example, if you go look at my temporary, under construction site at laurakramarsky.com, you're actually going to a subdirectory of my eCommerce website at http://torchsongsglassworks.com/laurakramarsky/ , but the pointer takes you directly there so you don't see. -edit: this site is down for a while while I decide what name I will be using for publication]

But before you go set up your MySpace page, consider whether that's what you want. Recently, a discussion thread on a list to which I belong debated the relative merits of gather.com and myspace.com. I have to say, nothing I read made me even slightly interested in joining either "community." A couple of people mentioned that their participation in those sites had resulted in book sales, but it sure sounded like a lot of work for relatively little reward. (I can't help it--because I run my own business, I'm always doing cost-benefit analyses, and it was really hard for me to stay out of that discussion.)

And then there's the question of professionalism. Do you really want your web "home" somewhere that the first thing people see at the top of the page or all along one side is a banner ad over which you have no control? What if the sponsor of the day turns out to be a company promoting something you stand wholeheartedly against? (Not to mention the question of having one's hosting site in the news weekly because of some pedophile or the likes of Lori Drew.)

"I can't afford a fancy web design."

And you don't need one. In fact, simpler without ads is far better than fancier with ads. I've said this before, when talking about the "numbers" trap--the desperate counting of website "hits" without considering the cost-benefit ratio of gaining those hits. Rather than thinking of your website as something to attract new readers, think of it as a way to keep in touch with readers you already have. Those readers are your best bets for finding a new audience--you need to keep them up to date so they know when to tell all their friends you're coming out with a new book!

They have to be able to say to a friend at a cocktail party "oh, you can find her website at..." and not forget the name of your site. They have to know their friends won't be freaked out by the kind of things you say on your site, which probably means you should steer clear of majorly controversial topics on your website unless they are things you tackle in your books (and is another good reason not to have ads you can't control on your site). And they have to know that their friends, who listen to books on tape (or on CD, or on their iPods) because their eyes aren't so great, will be able to read your site.

"Everyone says you're supposed to use your site to make connections."

I hate to sound like your mother, but if everyone said it was cool to jump off a bridge, would you do it? If you're not comfortable "making connections" online, joining a "myspace" group won't help.

You want to make your connections however best suits your personality and use your website to keep them. If you make new ones through the web, that's great, but if you set the goal at selling books and finding new readers, you're going to cause yourself a lot of angst. Because you're always, always going to be trying this thing and that, wasting your time attempting to determine whether various tactics are paying off.

Believe me when I tell you that you have the connections and you'll make more as you research and write your books. If you're feeling "unconnected," as if there's no audience for your book, you're much better off considering why that is rather than trying to correct it with an online shot of some kind.

"So I just stick up a web page and leave it there? That's it?"

Nope. How many books are you planning on cranking out this year? Did you try NaNoWriMo? Did you write a complete novel, edited and perfect in the month of November?

No? Me, either. So I won't be churning out twelve books a year, which means my readers might get a chance to forget I exist. I can't let that happen. So I have this blog, and eventually I'll get my author site up.

(But no spamming! Donna Andrews--whose website exemplifies simple, effective design--has a great post on why you don't send email to people who don't ask for it over on the Sisters in Crime blog.)

Look, you wrote a book. And you're planning on writing more. You can commit to writing a post once a week. Heck, give your readers tastes...commit to putting a paragraph up on your site every Monday. By the time your book gets into bookstores, your readers will be salivating over the full text.

Or don't. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable; if maintaining your web presence is a chore, it's going to show. Writing is hard work. Let the web stuff go slow and easy.