Libbie Hawker

The Universe is trying to tell me something...

2012-01-12T09:05:00.001-08:00

Just kidding; I don't believe in a higher power that tries to tell anybody anything. But I do have an amusing anecdote for you, if you still read this blog.

With Mitt Romney maintaining a baffling hold on the competition (such as it is) for the Republican candidacy, and with the well-deserved success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, and with the internet being positively bombarded with those obnoxious "I'm A Mormon!" banner ads, the stars all seem perfectly aligned to assist me in selling Baptism the moment it's finished. (Not that I'll be surprised if it fails to sell anyway. I've been at this novel-selling game for almost three years now, and I am a hardened cynic with regards to the publishing industry. It's almost enough to make me drink whiskey and write poems about drinking whiskey, Bukowski-like.) I know the timing is as good as it will ever be for this novel, so I've been wringing every drop of writing energy out of myself through my fog of depression.

(I am happy to report that I did finally find a job -- a permanent, full-time job with benefits, which is something I haven't had in nearly six years -- and as I've adjusted to the working life once more my writey feeling has increased daily. I think I will soon be back on a regular schedule of writing, and Baptism will come together quickly once I am. Hooray!)

Anyway, along with Mormons being everywhere in the zeitgeist just now, a funny coincidence happened a few days ago that has zapped me in the butt like a cattle prod and has made me leap back toward this book with renewed focus.

I got a call from my ex-husband the other day. "The Mormons came looking for you," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, two guys knocked on the door and asked for Melissa Ricks." Melissa Ricks was my legal name back when I was a member of the Church -- I have since legally changed both my first and last names, but not to evade the Mormons. "I told them you don't live here anymore and asked them what they wanted with you. They said, 'We're from her church.' I said, 'She doesn't have a church.' And they said, 'Well, she's in our records.'"

We had a good laugh over it, and I told him it must be God trying to tell me to hurry up and finish Baptism for the Dead because He's not going to keep the circumstances favorable for my publication and the birth of my career for much longer.

I truly don't believe in signs, or "things happening for a reason," or anything vaguely mystical or "cosmic" in the hippie sense of the word. It's all just confirmation bias, which is a fascinating enough psychological phenomenon on its own that I think it's rather insulting to our magnificent brains to assign some kind of winking, nodding, knowing significance to everyday coincidence. But I have to admit to being entertained by this particular coincidence -- the Mormons haven't sought me out for twelve years. Why now, when I'm working on a novel that explores Mormon culture?

It gave me a good laugh, and it's stoked the fire under my ass, and that's all I can ask from the universe.

So yes, I am still working on Baptism, and I am feeling extremely cheerful about its potential. Thank you, Elders, for showing up at my ex-husband's door!

Still making some progress

2011-11-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

I wrote another scene tonight in Baptism for the Dead and revised an existing scene. I think it's coming along nicely. the book is at almost 37,000 words and I've got a complete first draft of Part 4. (Parts 1 - 3 are on, oh, probably a third draft by now.) There are two more parts to go in the book. I'm not sure exactly how long each one will be, but my best guess is that this book will finish at a little over 50,000 words. That is a short-ass novel. I hope this won't be a problem in selling it.

I would be lying if I told you that my writing is just that concise. My writing is anything but concise. I am the wordiest motherfucker you'll ever meet -- I am prone to overadjectivizing like angry dads in the 1960s were prone to oversalting their food. I never let too many paragraphs go by without writing one paragraph that's actually just one really long sentence. I never miss an opportunity to add in some really weird, memorable sensory images. I do not write tight.

I could go in and "pad," but I don't like the idea of padding for padding's sake. This is just not a long story. It takes place over the course of maybe a couple of months, and a lot of the characters' time is spent traveling by car -- time that can be summed up in a paragraph or two of pretty scenic description before moving back to relevant stuff.

I am taking some comfort in the fact that it's a literary novel, clearly and undisputedly, and short novels that aren't quite short enough to be novellas are not that uncommon in literary fiction. So hopefully it won't be a deal-breaker that my book is shorter than your average YA novel.

We'll see, I guess. No sense worrying about all that until I've finished the damn thing anyway.

HEY-O!

2011-11-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

Just worked on Baptism for the Dead for five straight hours. Most of it was revision, so I could re-acquaint myself with the existing 35,000 words, but I was really pleased to note that after a long absence from it, I think this book is fucking kickass. Like, more kickass than I suspected it was.

Feeling very motivated to put in at least five more hours tomorrow, probably a lot more. I guess that's the nice thing about not having a job.

The self-published book is going fairly well, too. I'm spending a little time expanding my network of historical fiction readers and writers on Goodreads. I am really starting to believe that Goodreads is a powerful tool for authors to promote, and plus, it's just fun. I have sold something like 50 copies at last count, and reviews are starting to creep in, all of them positive so far. I have a feeling I just need to make some kind of breakthrough somewhere...getting an online book club interested in reading it, getting a review from a very popular reader on Goodreads, etc. -- and then it should start to take off. As much as a self-published book can be expected to take off.

OH HI THERE, blog.

2011-10-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

Hey, I still have a blog! And yes, I am still alive and kicking. I know it's been a couple of months. I've been busy.

Here's the short version: extensive travels throughout most of September (badly needed; brain needed to recharge), moved, threatening and preparing lawsuit against former landlord, settling out of court, getting appliances and furniture for new place, frantically searching for real jobs because writing doesn't pay crap. Yet, anyway.

So things have been a little wild. When I've found some spare time, I've been doing promotional work on the self-published book, and that seems to be very slowly picking up in sales. A few reader reviews have trickled in, all of them positive, I am happy to say. So maybe in a few months I'll start to see some pocket change from that.

In the meantime, I am forcing myself at knifepoint to get back into my more serious writing. It's been so, so hard to find the motivation to work on my book (methinks I am currently struggling with depression a wee bit), but I did do a solid two hours' worth of revision/refreshing-the-mind work on Baptism for the Dead yesterday. That's the most work I've put into this book for MONTHS, I am embarrassed to say, but it was useful work, and by the time I'm done running back through the first 30K or so I ought to be ready to tackle writing new material for it. The book should only be around 70K when done, so I'm close to halfway. Just need to keep up some motivation.

I've also pulled out and dusted off some short fiction, polished it up, and sent it off into Submissionland. My old John Muir/robot lady tale from last year -- the one I wrote and then couldn't do squat with because I was in an agency with a contract that didn't allow me to sell anything on my own -- is now off to Clarkesworld for consideration, and we'll see what happens there. I made a list of pro-rate paying markets, and if they all reject it I'll move down to the semipros.

I'm trying to keep my chin up while I look for work. It's looking more and more like I'll have to take yet another temporary holiday retail job, the low-paying and exhausting kind, the kind where they always make big promises about how you'll be first in line if something opens up permanently, because you are just the best temp ever, but then they never follow through on that promise and they always give the job to the loser friend of some loser who already works there.

It's been the same song and dance for almost four years now, and the prospect of going through this yet again is so exhausting and humiliating and infuriating, I can't even tell you. I'm 31, for fuck's sake. I'll be 32 in a few months. I know the economy really sucks awful bad and all, but I still feel like I shouldn't be such a loser. I expected to be published by now, to have at least a small side income from writing so I could deal better with the stresses of having to be a temp-job loser without a predictable, reliable paycheck, without any health insurance. I'm just incredibly tired of not having a respectable career. And the depression of this mess is making it hard for me to feel confident in my writing, and not feeling confident in it makes me not want to do it.

Maybe if I can sell this story, I'll start to feel like my writing is worthwhile again. I hope so. I don't like feeling this way, but lately I can't seem to help it.

Every literary writer needs to read this web comic.

2011-08-08T06:57:00.001-07:00

Assuming I ever finish another novel and then attempt to get another agent, I'm going to make myself a nice little web site. Nothing fancy; just a place with information about me, how to contact me, a decent photo of myself, and a prominent link to this blog. You know the kind of site I'm talking about.

I've already considered what I'd like to say about myself on such a site, and the most important thing I think I can say about my writing -- my style and what I hope to achieve -- is to list my major influences. We all have influences, and I think it's important for a writer to understand how and why each of hers affects her writing. Right alongside my usual rogue's gallery of literary influences (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Oates, Atwood, Martin, etc.) I intend to place a name you've never heard before, but you should have heard it, because Chris Onstad is one of the best writers of literary fiction living and working today.

You've never heard of him because he doesn't write novels or short stories. He writes a web comic.

But Achewood is more than a web comic. It's an entire carefully crafted world populated by some of the most real and poignant characters in all of fiction, and it is clearly the product of a sensitive, intelligent, thoroughly observant and enviably expressive artistic mind.

NOT A TYPICAL WEB COMIC

I've tried to turn some friends onto Achewood in the past, and, set up by their expectations that web comics be funny and jokey, they proclaimed it terrible. What they were expecting was the usual comic-strip formula: setup and punchline in a few panels.

Achewood doesn't deliver that sort of experience. It's not meant to. It is a mistake to think of Achewood as a comic strip, really, or even as a web comic, although its primary mode of delivery (more on that later) is a series of panels and it is found on the web. Rather, Achewood is a long-running serialized graphic novel (it started in 2001 and went into what I hope is an impermanent hiatus in 2011.) Specifically, it is a graphic literary novel, where the focus of each story arc rests on character development and internal conflict.

Don't get me wrong; there is some humor. But it's Nabokovian humor, Updikeian humor; the kind that adds a little splash of brightening absurdity to a scenario that is otherwise all too realistically heavy. Achewood is not about satire or punchlines or making you laugh -- at least, making you laugh isn't its prime directive, and the laughs you get aren't "Ha ha! Isn't life grand!" but rather "uh...heh heh. Life's a real bitch, but at least we're all in this together."

PIONEERING LITERARY FICTION

What's so striking about Onstad and his work is that he has never felt the need to limit himself to the panels of his web site. When one reads the Achewood strips archived from beginning to end, one gets the sense that about three months into the strip Onstad succeeded in making his characters come alive. Suddenly the reader feels that Onstad had so honed each individual personality that they started speaking with clearly recognizable voices inside his head (Onstad's and the reader's), and had histories and aspirations and depth and life.

Rather than sticking to the main method of delivery -- the strip -- Onstad stretched out and gave his characters more space to grow and to be. Soon the characters had their own blogs, where Onstad would write in their voices, expanding their personal stories and character arcs off the panels and into an electronic world where readers came to know each one as well as a person can know anybody online -- which is to say, quite intimately. Characters experienced story arcs on their blogs that had nothing to do with the arcs on the strip, effectively living their own lives away from "home." One character ran an advice column for a time, where readers received wisdom from a jive-talking wealthy housecat, in pitch-perfect character voice. Another character created a 90's-style 'zine, Xeroxed its various issues, and mailed it off to subscribers (yes, I have my own copies of Roast Beef's 'zines.)

Literary fiction is about exploring character. That's what drives the genre (or category, if you prefer that marketing label.) But how many authors of character-driven fiction have spent ten years giving free rein to their characters? The same characters that populate the same world that has been built and actively, publicly explored over the course of an entire decade? Most of us stick with our characters for a year or two at most while we work on a single novel, and while we may come to understand our characters' inner lives as well as Onstad understands his, we don't make those lives freely accessible to the rest of the world. We restrict ourselves to what we show between the covers of our books. We edit. And there's nothing wrong with that. Discrete novels are fantastic, and the narrow-angle peek novels give us into the lives of characters and the worlds they populate is exciting in its own way.

But I can't think of any characters in a novel I feel I know as well as I know Onstad's characters. The residents of Achewood have been given such life by their author that they feel as alive as any of my friends I know only via online interaction -- which is to say, wholly alive -- except I know they're fictional creations.

If an aspiring writer of literary fiction wants to understand how to make a character indelible in the mind of a reader, he should study all the usual masters, but he should study Onstad, too, who is so unafraid of the reality of his characters that he loosed them beyond the boundaries of their medium. I've never seen such fearlessness and confidence in fiction-writing. Onstad is one to look up to. As they'd say in Achewood, the dude has got no mercy.

DAMN GOOD WRITING

Aside from Chris Onstad's intense and pioneering character work, he's got a real flair for words. And not only words, but timing, subtlety, symbolism -- all the things that make literary fiction so damn good. He pairs his word choices with just the right simplistic, touching image in the way a gourmand pairs the right wine with the perfect cut of meat. Image and words reflect and enhance one another -- but such fantastic synergy wouldn't be possible without the right words.

The interesting thing about how these words are so right is that most of the time, the words themselves are not particularly beautiful. That's not to say they're unlovely. Like the drawings of the strip, Onstad's words are simple, clear, and minimalist. Their beauty lies in their uncomplicated nature, the way they reflect the speech patterns of contemporary readers. You get the sense reading Achewood that these stories are about you, that these characters are you are people you know. Onstad's writing is more relatable than most of the stuff I've read.

A large part of what makes literary fiction appealing is its reflection of the real intricacies of our lives...the balance of comedy and tragedy, the poignancy of little fleeting moments. I can think of few writers who achieve this depiction of the gorgeous, small absurdities and triumphs and horrors of life with as much consistency as Chris Onstad. His contribution to the world of literary fiction is undeniable, and will probably go uncelebrated for a very long time. Because he does not work in the medium of novels and short stories, because he has chosen to let his characters truly live and to facilitate their expansion and development without restraint, he will probably never win the awards and the critical acclaim he deserves. We don't give Pulitzers or National Book Critics' Circle awards to people who make web comics, or who blog in the voice of a depressive cat.

But why don't we? Achewood proves that depth and emotion and poignancy are not limited to the printed page. Truth is not restricted by anything, and certainly not by the front and back covers of a book.

A long poem.

2011-08-07T06:55:00.001-07:00

Here's something I wrote for my last weekly writers' group meeting. It's a long poem, and it was my first attempt with poetry to not just capture a moment or a feeling or an idea, but to relate a separate, unaffiliated aspect of my life to an internal aspect of my life. I think in that sense it was successful. It's not my best piece of writing ever, but I'm proud of it because I set a goal and achieved it, and because it's long, and I haven't written this many useful words in months.

My writers' group is great. We're a small crowd and I'm the only one in it who has aspirations to be published someday (although not the only one who has the skills to be published!) but the critiques are fantastic. And they're good friends, too. I think everybody needs a good writers' group.

Sergei

1.
The fence around his house has grown taller and grayer
and more solid, and is hung with a simple flat plaque
notifying passers-by that here had lived the great Russian master
who made us famous for more than potatoes,
who burned our sky in sunset flame,
our sky in violet thunder, its towering ferocity,
our fields of transient delicate ochre light
and summer green and distant ultramarine buttes
into the hearts of art historians, students,
all those who think they know what it means
to know art.
Today you type his name into a search engine
and you are served up bland pictures of middle-aged women
posing in front of that plaque, overtopped by that fence,
dulled by that gray, made monstrous by the meekness
of the foliage of lilac trees out of bloom, paling in September,
all the color gone out of them.
Sergei had loved lilacs.

2.
I have not viewed all his paintings; I have not made a study
of his masterworks. I do not know the title of a single one.
I never went to school. Not the kind with desks and professors
and essays on art history, on intent, on composition and communication,
on what he meant when he turned the woman’s head just so,
the woman with her arms raised to comb her fingers
through the dark hair that twists like a flock of blackbirds
over the yellow fields.
I cannot guess why he chose this brushstroke or that.
All I learned of art I learned from the artist,
from Sergei taking me on his knee in the middle of a sun-warm field
where wild asparagus grew up around the legs of his students’ French easels,
quick vertical strokes of hooker’s green, a dab of cad yellow light.
I remember that his hands were callused and cracked
and smelled of turpentine, and there was a smudge of ultramarine
beside his old-man nose.
He painted the mountains the atmospheric blue of far distance
and told me that it was creation.
From where I sat, his arm could have been my own, my hand
holding the brush, describing the world
in terms of shadow and light, brilliance and movement.
He called me creation, too.

3.
Years ago in my mother’s attic I found pieces of masonite
covered in gouache, a canal scene – Venice? –
with angular white boats and a hasty sky,
and others dabbed in rough colors, poppies, corn fields, a café.
They were signed: O. Berberian, G. Berberian.
The Armenian brothers who hated Turks and were only
minimally gifted with brushes, and never would give up gouache
no matter how Sergei berated them.
They had followed him from Europe to New York to California
to Idaho, where they died, like him,
and became one of the thousands of blackbirds
twisting above the ochre fields.
Though they gave their lives to the Russian master
and tried so hard to emulate him the only legacy they left
were a few gouaches on masonite in my mother’s attic.

4.
You probably think the word is pronounced
peony,
But I know that the right way to say it, the truest way, is
pe-oh-nee.
That’s the way Sergei said it, and who knew peonies
better than Sergei?
A peony is not merely a pretty flower, a blush of color
among the shade.
A peony is the movement of the earth under a slow sun
in a dozing Idaho sky, the conversations of the big white geese
in their pen, the buzzing of the flies around
the long sweet slices of watermelon arranged just so
on the old wood table beneath the bouquet of peonies
in the cracked glass vase and Sergei
pacing toward his easel to touch his brush to the canvas
lightly
in just the right place,
creation.

5.
Paul is going to Kuwait, where the only color
is in the cars that the sheikhs drive too fast, and wreck and leave
glimmering along the gray road like monuments.
So I bring him to the museum, where he will smell turpentine and see
wild asparagus growing and the Tetons rising
above fields of yellow light and violet shadow,
overflown with the suggestion of spirits
and blackbirds.
He must have something to take with him.
I am surprised to find a collection of Sergei’s paintings,
and not surprised, not at all.
Paul frets when I lean in so close to the canvas;
when I hold my hands up as if to touch he pulls me away,
gently.
But I may have touched this painting already,
once, sitting on Sergei’s knee.
My fingerprints may already be dried
into the paint among the petals of the peonies.
“He used to sing to me,” I tell Paul. “I sat on his lap while he painted.”
My own hands could have made these brushstrokes, creation.
“He called these flowers pe-oh-nies.”
The right way to say it.
Paul, I may amount to nothing more than a few nothing pieces
forgotten in an attic,
or I may become so great that one day I amount to nothing more
than a plaque on a gray fence in a tourist’s photo.
I don’t know which I hope for.
I don’t know which I prefer.

Wow!

2011-08-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Freedom! The divorce was finalized yesterday. After all the time it's taken and the many disappointments along the way, I was not expecting it to be rubber-stamped and John-Hancocked as (relatively) quickly and smoothly as it was.

I hope this takes some of the strain off me so I'm able to write again. My writing has been almost non-existent for months due to all this stress. When it has been existent, it's been abysmal. Really terrible. I haven't written anything useful or that I could even consider keeping since April. This is very frustrating for me. Over the past several months I've basically given up any hope for having a writing career. I'm not sure why I was trying in the first place, to be honest. My writing has been just total shit for months, and I believe maybe it always was. There is still a tiny fragment of my brain that still thinks I can write and that still wants to have a career; the majority of my brain is just sluggish, all dead weight and fuzz, and I have no idea why I ever thought I could write in the first place.

In nine days things should be looking up for me considerably. I'll be very busy, so I may lack the time to write for several weeks, but I have a very small hope that this doubting of my capabilities and my future are just depression, and will lift once my life picks up a little once more, once all my free time and energy is no longer occupied by the divorce, by dealing with my ex's drama, and by frantically trying to come up with a little extra money every month to make ends meet. I have been under an extreme amount of stress, and that's probably what's making me feel so negative and listless. It's probably not really true that I suck at writing and should give up now. But it's hard to remember that sometimes.

Anyway, in September I'll be on a much-needed road trip. I am looking forward to a change of scenery and some serious mental stimulation...two things I desperately need for all aspects of my mental health, not just for my writing.

I will also be quitting my job next week, and while it sucks to face joblessness again, I think this job has been a big part of the no-writing problem for me. It provides me with no creative stimulation at all. I really need some interaction with people in order to write. I need an environment that changes...whether I'm actually going places, or working outside with changing weather, working with animals with their changing behavior, or even seeing different customers and co-workers every day, as in my retail jobs...I just need some variety in my life in order to be optimally productive...or productive at all. The job I've been working at since April has allowed me to pay the bills, and that's been important, of course. But I am ready for a job that gives me more than just a reliable paycheck. I need a job that doesn't crush my self-esteem by making me feel like I've wasted my entire life thinking that I can write at all. So I don't really care what job I take next, although I hope it's another job in zoo keeping, and if it's not, I hope it's got some creative elements in it. I have a few ideas, and hopefully they'll pan out.

Anyway, the important thing for now is that the biggest problem in my life has been largely solved, at long, LONG last. I am feeling cautiously optimistic. I even randomly composed a few nice sentences in my head the other day, something I realized as I did it that I haven't actually done for months. Maybe that's a sign that my writing will return to me. Maybe it's not. I don't know; I'm not even sure I can write anymore. But it's a change, and I'm taking any changes right now to be good things.

stab stab.

2011-07-25T13:26:00.001-07:00

The hell-divorce keeps getting more hellish.

HEY!!!!

2011-07-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

Something awesome just occurred to me! Now that I'm no longer under contract with my previous agency, I can polish up and submit some of my short fiction! Wooo! I haven't tried to sell short fiction in about three years (and I did sell some, to small but paying markets.)

This means I can hopefully find an appreciative home for John Muir Fucks a Robot...er, I mean A Light in the Merced River.

Hooraaayyyy!!!

The old Men Vs. Women debate.

2011-07-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

That same old subject came up on AW yet again (Why do more men win awards in literary and most genres of genre fiction than women?) I don't recommend you read more than the first post in the thread. It's long, and mostly full of angry female writers shrieking at other writers (non-angry female and male). This, along with the correct way of dealing with writer's block, seem to be the perennial topics on AW.

The last time I got an overload of the weird backward logic so many women use to spur their anger over the discrepancy in who wins awards, MacAllister freaked out at me and started deleting my posts. So I just stay out of those threads now, because my opinion isn't popular, and I am too outspoken and confident a debater to meekly back down and go with the status quo when I don't believe it's right.

This makes me rather unpopular among certain female writers on AW, which is kind of funny when you think about it, because aren't we all supposed to be in favor of confident, bold female writers who will stand up to anybody if they perceive a wrong? I guess you're only supposed to stand up against wrongs committed by people with penises. Huh.

Anyway, early on in the thread a writer named Lydia Netzer weighed in with her opinion, one I was astonished to read. Didn't she know that you're not supposed to admit on AW that maybe women just aren't as good (yet) at writing award-winning literary fiction? Apparently not. The thread quickly devolved into the predictable rigmarole, with some posters going so far as to compare her to notorious dickwad misogynist V. S. Naipaul. Nice, people. Really nice.

I thought Lydia's point was spot on target, and that her blog post on the subject was incredibly well thought out and helpful in gaining insight into why the discrepancy between the genders (or sexes, really, since we probably don't know the psychological genders of most writers) exists. Unlike the whole AW thread, you should read Lydia's post. Then read my response to her post here, after the jump.

Yeah, it's another long one, guys.

So what do I think about the discrepancy in sex of award-winning writers? I agree with Lydia entirely, but I have a few clarifications I wish to make to explain my own opinion and I have some thoughts to add to Lydia's already well-stated thoughts.

I do think there are a lot of women out there writing on themes that are culturally relevant. I do think that motherhood as a theme, approached in the right way, can be very relevant to everybody, male and female, and can be just as important a book as one about war or abiding friendship or family dynamics or childhood or whatever.

In my experience as a reader, though, not that many female writers are writing in ways that reach out to lots of male readers. That doesn't mean they can't write about motherhood or "women's" themes. Men will read those books if men can connect to them. They will. Contrary to the prevailing opinion in the industry and on forums like AW, most readers, including men, will read any good book as long as they can identify it as a good book. Identifying it as something they might like to read before they even buy it (or decide to review it) is the key.

By the way, let me point out that there are also plenty of male writers writing on "men's" themes in a way that doesn't reach out to female readers. The male writers who win awards are the ones who make their books so accessible and so universal in emotion -- not theme or conflict or plot, but emotion -- that everybody "gets" them. Because in the end, humans are humans, regardless of gender, and we are all able to "get" the best stories, no matter what they're about on the surface.

I mean, have you READ Oscar Wao? Tomcat In Love? Anything by Ishiguro? Who cares that the characters are (mostly) male? What draws you in is the clarity and depth of feeling. The accessibility. The overarching truth. And truth is still truth, whether it's told from a male POV or a female POV, or from a genderless POV.

Now back to that "identifying a good book before you buy it" dilemma.

Personally, I think it's not female writers at fault for not reaching a broader audience, nor is it an inherently sexist industry. But it is an inherently flawed industry. It's an industry that blindly compartmentalizes fiction into easy-to-sell categories. Woman wrote it, deals with sexuality, includes a hint of humor? Chick-lit. Woman wrote it, has a woman MC, heavy theme? "Women's Fiction." Young main character? Young Adult.

When you can segment fiction onto discrete shelves in stores or lists on Amazon, it probably tends to sell better. But being identified by a specific label also makes a book seem less appealing to reviewers, who want to read A GOOD BOOK, not a "women's novel" or a "men's adventure" or a "legal thriller" or a "YA romance."

Now, obviously the industry uses this heavy-handed, narrow compartmentalization because it's working for them. And yes, as a reader it can be a lot easier to find precisely what you're looking for when the entire world of books is neatly categorized and placed on the shelf and coded with "You Might Also Like..." But it also makes it a lot harder to find what you're not looking for -- the book you stumble upon just because of its intriguing title or its beautiful cover while browsing stacks an stacks of spine-out novels. I don't know about you, but I've found some of my favorite books that way, by accident, while browsing. Who the hell browses equally through all the various sections of the modern book store? And who clicks at random on Amazon to get the same effect?

I think if the industry already had the same compartmentalizing/marketing fractures for men's fiction as they do for women's fiction, suddenly the discrepancy would vanish, because authors like Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh, who deal with themes of male aggression and the darkness of being male would find themselves in a category roughly equivalent to "Chick-lit," while the authors like Douglas Coupland and Tim O'Brien, who deal with themes of the depth of the male emotional world and how men relate to the people they love would find themselves in a category roughly equivalent to "Women's Fiction."

If male writers faced the same kind of strong marketing corralling that female writers face, all that would be left outside any category would be those authors who write on themes less easy to categorize. And I feel confident that there would be an even split between male and female writers among the Indescribables. Suddenly, women would be winning roughly as many literary awards as men, although the pool of potential winners would be significantly smaller.

As it is now, female writers' work is carefully scrutinized for its potential to fit into marketing blocks, because those blocks exist. So a big chunk of the women writing about themes which might appeal to a broader number of people (not only men, but also to women who don't often browse the Women's Fiction and Chick-Lit categories) are filtered out of the running.

We are left with the dumping ground for male writers -- the difficult-to-describe hinterland of "Literary Fiction," which I have already tried to express my thoughts on elsewhere. You have a statistically overbalanced proportion of male writers there not because "men's themes" (whatever those are) are more important, but because there's nowhere else to put them. Yes, female writers are there, too, but only if their writing is too broad for the convenience of categorization.

So why are women being categorized by the industry? Because women buy more books. It makes sense from a business perspective to bias your marketing toward the surest crowd of customers. If men read more books, and especially more fiction, the Flying Dutchman of literary fiction would have a much less testosteroney crew.

As I've already ranted about where it pertains to YA, I think this over-categorization of the industry is, ultimately, a bad and stupid thing. It is making it harder for people to find good books, and I like to pretend like I write good books, so I am not in favor of an industry which restricts my potential audience. It's making readers less adventurous by allowing them to stay camped out beside their favorite shelf in Barnes & Noble, where they can find an endless parade of comfortably homogeneous black-jacketed teen vampire novels, or chick-lit novels with pastel covers, or books set in Tudor England. Yay. All those books can be fun, and it sure is nice for the industry to keep a constant stream of reliable cash coming in. But maybe those readers would also really love a well-written story found on another shelf. How are they do find it, when shopping for books is too convenient?

All that being said, Lydia still makes a good point. "Women's themes" like motherhood and sisterhood and how a woman relates to her community or to war or to anything else can be just as culturally relevant as "men's themes" of fatherhood, brotherhood, etc. If those "women's themes" are written in a broadly accessible way.

You can have one book about a woman's biological clock ticking away, and it may feature a Prince Charming potential daddy and a demanding job with quirky co-workers and the potential mother-to-be pulling out her hair over wine and chocolate with her BFF, trying to figure out how to juggle her life. You can have another book about a woman's biological clock ticking away, and it may feature a man she loves who is just too much like her absent father who was an alcoholic anyway, and the potential mother-to-be becoming increasingly more confused and emotionally raw as she tries to figure out how to reconcile her attraction to a man who might not be good for her, and whether to bring the child she desperately wants into the world with another bad daddy like the one she had.

Guess which approach to the same subject is more culturally significant? Guess which one is more likely to be nominated for a major award?

Some really fun but culturally insignificant categories are populated mostly by women. "Quirky" sex tales. Shopping-and-wedding-planning beach reads. Vampires. Reimaginings and sexed-up sequels of Austen's works. Fun, if that's your thing. And fun is valuable. Fun has an important place in our lives. Fun is not something that's going to win the Pulitzer.

Why are so many women writing this kind of thing, instead of insightful examinations of the human condition? I said near the beginning of this behemoth post that many female writers aren't writing in a way that reaches both male and female readers. Why?

For some women, it's because they genuinely want to write the fun stuff. Great! Awesome! Write it! Fun is fun!

For other women, it's because they want to have a writing career, and agents and editors in service to a dramatically fractured and partitioned, over-marketed industry are pushing them to write something more commercial, something easier to label, easier to package, easier to sell. I know. It happened to me when I was encouraged to drastically alter my novel to fit it neatly into the YA category. I said no. Not everybody does.

Books that win literary awards and critical acclaim are books that touch our hearts and our minds in real, lasting ways. Male or female writers can do that. Male or female characters can do that. Male or female perspective can do that. If you want to win awards, write books that matter to our culture. If you're a woman writing fiction, and your goal is to write literary work that reaches a broad audience and that wins major awards, STICK TO YOUR GUNS. Don't let your work be compartmentalized and marketed to a narrow readership. Find the right agent who will help you achieve that goal. Don't become a victim of the industry fracture.

If you just want to entertain your fans (which is a perfectly reasonable and admirable goal), then write books that are just fun to read, but for god's sake, quit your fucking bitching about how you don't win awards. If you're not writing books with the real potential to win awards, then acting all astonished and indignant and being insulting toward men won't change a thing.

FINIS.

Man...I hate query letters.

2011-07-06T14:52:00.001-07:00

Well, fortunately I'm getting close to finishing Baptism for the Dead. I've been doing a lot of revising and polishing as I go, although of course there will still be plenty more to do when I finish the latest draft...but I estimate I've got about eight weeks of work left on the book. That's a great feeling!

Not so great a feeling is the realization that I've now got to craft a query letter. The last time I went through the process of writing one it was the fall of 2009. It's been almost two years and I'd forgotten how intensely I hated writing that last query letter. Uuuuugh.

Presenting more of a problem than the mere fact of query-writing is the unique theme and structure of Baptism for the Dead. It's got a whole bunch of parallels in it to a particular LDS temple ceremony, and because of that structure my protagonist/narrator has no name.

Where the hell do you start with a query letter for a book that has a nameless protagonist? Jeeze! At least with books that have named protagonists, you can start with the basic "When (protagonist's name) tries to (achieve goal), (conflict happens), and (stakes) are at stake..." and build from there.

Any ideas, party people? Help the Libster out!

How and Why I Decided to Self-Publish, and What I Expect Will Happen When I Do.

2011-07-03T21:47:00.001-07:00

I know, I know. Those of you who know me really well, those of you who interact with me a lot on AW or who even just read my posts from time to time, surely know that I have a dim view of self-publishing, to put it mildly. You are probably picking your jaw up off the floor and looking at the calendar to determine whether we have collectively time-warped backward to April 1st.

Take a moment. Collect yourself. Then read on. I think this all makes sense, even coming from me, and so will you when you’ve read through this long post. Actually don't read through this long post. Page-down and read through only those sections (headed in bold and all-caps) which interest you. Because this blog post is a goddamn tome, my friends, and there's a lot of stuff here.

First, let me make this clear: I am NOT considering self-publishing Baptism for the Dead or any subsequent literary/contemporary novels. I am ONLY considering self-publishing my commercial historical fiction. I’ll tell you how and why I decided to look at this option with serious intent, what I expect the outcome to be, and why I am not (at this time, anyway) considering self-publishing the rest of my writing.

Read on, mi amigos.

APOLOGIES TO YOU, DEAR READER

First, let me apologize for making such a long post. I am going to do my best to make it organized and easy to read, but this decision is the result of complex circumstances and I feel I need to explain them: not to justify the decision, but rather to help manage the expectations of others who are considering self-publishing and who may find my decision process useful. (More on managing expectations later.) It’s a lot to discuss, and I didn’t want to take up scads of space here discussing it in multiple posts. This way, all comments stay in one thread, and the rest of my blog resumes with its usual topics without turning into Libbie’s Self-Publishing Blog. That’s not what I want this space to be.

WHY THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS STARTLING COMING FROM ME

If you know me as a writer at all, you know that I have been rather outspoken in my opinions of self-publishing. Such opinions generally are, to say the least, not very high. (And from here on out, when I refer to self-publishing I am speaking of fiction. There are plenty of good reasons to self-publish nonfiction, and lots of wonderful self-pubbed nonfiction titles out there.)

I am going to be blunt here – brutally blunt and viciously honest, because I want people to understand how much thought has gone into this decision. I believe most people who self-publish don't think about it much at all, although they may believe they have considered it carefully. I don't think that's the case with me. I've carefully weighed all sorts of options and I've even carefully examined my mostly-negative feelings about self-publishing. Honestly, truly, I still think most of what is self-published is crap.

When I say “most,” do I mean sixty percent? Seventy-five? No, I mean about ninety-eight percent. If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said ninety-nine percent. A year before that, ninety-nine-point-nine percent. Self-publishing is full to bursting with writers who can’t string together words, let alone sentences, who don’t seem to understand that their stories make no sense, and who think their MS Paint-created covers look as good as covers designed by professionals at traditional publishing houses.

Self-publishing is still mostly the realm of the impatient, the clueless, the non-reader, and the entitled. I'm sorry to be so cruel, but I worked at a book store which bought used books from the public, and you would really not believe the number of self-published books I saw every day. I don’t have this opinion without reason. I’ve read – or tried to read – a lot of self-published stuff. More than most people ever will in their lifetime. So far, it hasn’t been a positive experience for me.

However, since the advent of portable e-book readers, I really have seen a glacially slow shift in the quality of self-published works. Even Libbie the Self-Pub Curmudgeon has had to admit that things appear to be inching upward out of the absolute morass. Amazon’s launch of its self-pub-for-Kindle feature has attracted some talented authors whose work has real merit. Before this service, they may have been more inclined to take the independent/small press route, but that route, too, has its pitfalls, and for some of these authors producing one’s own books is more attractive.

And every day it seems we learn of one more career novelist with an out-of-print backlist who chooses to make his or her older works available as e-books. So there, too, we have some genuine talent shifting the tide of crap ever so slowly in the opposite direction.

There is no doubt that e-books and e-readers have played the biggest part in initiating this lethargic sea change. They provide instant gratification and low cost, so that a reader can take a risk on an unknown or self-published author without dropping any substantial amount of cash. Also of importance are the rise of book-review blogs and reader-review sites like Amazon’s active ratings community and Goodreads.com, the book-oriented social networking site. Even Facebook has been useful to the independent- and self-published author, as these social resources have made word-of-mouth easy, and the right kind of buzz can sell anything, even a self-published novel.

With all these changing forces acting together, I believe the time is coming when self-publishing will not be utterly overwhelmed with crap. I also believe that such a time is still relatively far off, and that many kinks need to be ironed out, and many trails need to be blazed. The light of legitimacy is on the horizon, but it’s still a distant horizon.

At this moment, in the summer of 2011, I feel certain that traditional publishing is still going to provide the best financial outcome for all but the tiniest handful of authors. I feel certain that this will remain the case for a long time yet.

But events in my own fledgling writing career have also made me feel certain that there are particular instances when self-publishing fiction just might work out better. After much consideration, I believe some of my novels may fall within the boundaries of sensible self-publishing fodder.

WHEN IT MAKES SENSE TO SELF-PUBLISH

Even in my most strident criticism of self-publishing, I have always been careful to point out that there are certain times when self-publishing makes sense, and may even be smarter than trying to publish traditionally.

When does it make sense to self-publish?

-When you have a book that appeals to a niche audience rather than to a wider audience.

-When you only want to make your book available to a small number of folks (a book of your grand-dad’s stories, for example, self-published so your extended family can enjoy them and pass them on to their kids.)

-When you don’t care terribly much whether that book is successful; when you have reasonable expectations from the venture and aren’t deluded into thinking you will make a livable wage from self-publishing.

-When you expect to put many hours and possibly many dollars into promoting your book consistently and intelligently, and when you expect to get small financial returns, if any, from this investment of resources. Essentially, when you can afford, psychologically and physically, to make it a hobby first and a potential money-maker as a distant second.

And here’s the rub: You have to have written a good book. Ultimately, nobody will give a pinch about your work if it’s not good. It needs to be quality stuff. Really quality stuff. It needs to be as good as any book with a traditional publisher’s imprint on the spine. It might need to be a little bit better, just to overcome its built-in stigma of being self-published.

If you’ve tossed off a careless book full of needless errors or if you’ve written a rambling fever dream that nobody but you can relate to, let alone understand, then I’m sorry to break this to you, but not even your family and friends who buy your book will enjoy it. If they read it all the way through they will tell you how much they liked it, but nobody actually appreciates a poorly written story.

Bottom line: if you don’t have a really good book to self-publish, polished and groomed and fully matured, then you shouldn’t waste your time or, potentially, your money. You will not be successful, no matter how you measure success.

HOW I DECIDED TO SELF-PUBLISH MY HISTORICAL FICTION

A little over two years ago I called my first historical novel finished, queried just under sixty carefully researched agents, and after a few partial and full requests (and lots of rejections), I accepted representation from a new agent at a well-respected, major literary agency.

I was ecstatic. I was over the moon! I was certain at the time that I wanted to build a career on historical fiction (which I absolutely love to read), and I felt my novel happened to come at just the right time. My novel is set in ancient Egypt, and in the previous couple of years a new historical novelist had published two well-received novels also set in Dynastic Egypt. Plus, my novel dealt with Hatshepsut, and her mummy had just been positively identified. The Egyptology world was buzzing over the She-King. Hatshepsut was even making appearances on NPR and other news outlets with regularity. I thought the timing couldn’t possibly be better.

My first agent was excited, too. She was the perfect agent for this book: a big fan of ancient Egypt and enthusiastic about my writing style and the story we had to sell. After we worked together to edit the book, it went on submission to an impressive list of imprints at the Big Six and at independent presses that are known for producing quality historical fiction.

The rejections rolled in, but it was hard to feel bummed out. All but one editor who rejected the book shared enthusiastic praise for this or that feature of the book, and that made getting rejections fun! Some editors loved the story, but felt that it was too close to books already on their list. Others complemented my writing style in terms that made me speechless with happiness, but felt that the tone of the story wasn’t quite right for them. Still others thought it was a good read, but were concerned about the main character’s age at the beginning of the book. Did the fact that she was thirteen when the book opened make it a better candidate for the YA category? And if so, would I be willing to totally rewrite the book to tone down the sex scenes and make the prose, pacing, and conflict more accessible for a YA audience? (After discussing with my agent, I decided it was better not to rewrite the novel to make it YA, and I am still glad I stuck with my gut on that front. I have never been averse to major revisions of my work and I love to receive criticism, but if I’d turned it into a YA novel it wouldn’t have been my novel anymore.)

One editor at a major house turned down this book but asked me to submit whatever else I was working on so they could consider my works in progress instead. High praise indeed, although they didn’t end up offering any contracts.

When we had exhausted the best historical fiction imprints, my first agent and I discussed what we might do next. We agreed that perhaps this book just wasn’t a “first novel” – too hard a sell – and that I ought to get the next Egyptian novel I had planned finished as soon as possible, try to sell that one first, and offer the other as a prequel if a publisher showed interest.

That’s when life sprang its ambush.

I had just begun my divorce when my first novel went on sub, and by the time we reached this point, eight months later, life was getting rocky. No matter how hard I tried to work on historical fiction, I found that I had no desire for it at all. Trying to work on the Egyptian novels had become miserable torture. I can’t explain this. The escapism should have been welcome amidst all the crap I was dealing with in my personal life. Instead, every time I opened the documents I felt hollow.

Meanwhile, I was writing with great passion on a new novel, a contemporary/literary piece with the working title Baptism for the Dead. With that book, I found that writing came easily and that I was producing work so pretty it would wrack me with chills every time I read it – after the hundredth time I’d read it – and I was writing this stuff without any struggle at all.

I agonized for a few weeks over this. How could I have decided to finish and sell that second historical novel yet be so compelled to write this new work, which was so unlike what I’d been drawn to just a few months before, and, more ominously, which was so unlike the work my agent had signed up for?

After weeks of fruitless attempts to stay in Egypt I finally arranged a phone meeting with my agent, explained my predicament, and like magic, a solution presented itself.

My first agent and I parted ways.

She had made the decision to move to a different agency that focused on commercial fiction, and it was clear that my career path had changed. In the wake of my turmoil-laden marriage and divorce, I had reassembled myself as a contemporary writer with a strong literary bent, and my work wouldn’t fit in well at her new agency. She recommended I stay on at the big agency where I was now, and she would arrange to hand me over to another agent there. She was and is an excellent agent, who always puts her clients’ needs first. I was happy to work with her and I felt good about the way we parted.

My second agent took over, and right away I was impressed with her, too. We had a phone meeting to discuss where I saw my career going. She was more interested in YA than anything else, and I am not a YA writer. But she did have some interest in adult literary fiction, although she hadn’t yet tried to sell any. She agreed to give Baptism for the Dead a read when it was done and, if she felt she was the right agent to sell that work, she’d get started on it. If she didn’t feel she was the right one, or if I didn’t feel she was the right one, we agreed that we, too, would go our separate ways.

In the meantime, I gave her the Egyptian books (the completed one and the partial one), figuring I might as well give her a shot at them; they were just taking up room on my hard drive. She read through them and had some excellent suggestions on how to improve them, but she expressed doubts that she could sell them as-is. Not because they weren’t good books, but because of the darn protagonist’s age again.

We discussed some possible fixes to this problem that could anchor the entire work more firmly in the realm of adult fiction. It was a great conversation – she, too, is a fantastic agent – but ultimately I decided not to put the time into changing the manuscript that much. I just didn’t care enough about making the Egyptian book(s) a commercial success.

I was still most drawn to Baptism for the Dead. If I was going to spend a lot of time restructuring and obsessing over and losing sleep over any book, it was going to be Baptism, not the Egyptian novels. By now, it was clear to me that I had no expectations at all that I would ever build a career on historical fiction. I am still a fan of the genre, but when I thought about my career to come, I saw it built on books like Baptism, not on books like the Egypt novels. Baptism was and is my passion. The historical novels were good – editors at big houses had said so – but they weren’t my future.

And at the same time, I felt vaguely annoyed at how tightly compartmentalized the industry has become over the past decade or so. Since Harry Potter and Twilight, YA has become such a financial behemoth that anything – anything that might slide into that category must. Somewhere between Harry’s patronus and Edward’s sparkles the traditional publishing industry decided that adult fiction can’t have young protagonists, that adult readers won’t appreciate stories with younger characters – and this in spite of the fact that everybody knows more adults than teens read Young Adult fiction.

None of this made any sense to me, especially when adult historical novels with teen (or younger) protagonists have remained in print and revered for decades. I saw that the publishing industry truly thought an adult novel couldn't have a young protagonist, and that such a position made sense with their post-Twilight business models. But I knew that readers of historical fiction wouldn't balk at a young main character. I was seeing a large and unfortunate disconnect between the industry and the people it serves.

Around roughly the same time as this realization about industry compartmentalization hit me, my second agent, too, moved on to a new agency, and I opted to leave my agency as well.

In part, I left because doing so freed me up to play around for a few weeks with all the options I face with my commercial historical fiction. Once I am locked into another agency contract for my literary fiction, I may not be able to experiment with the historical at all. Most agencies represent a writer’s entire body of unpublished works, and the right agent for my literary fiction probably will not be the right agent for my commercial historical fiction. Once Baptism for the Dead finds the right representation, my Egyptian novels will sit on my hard drive for eternity, unless I get them out into the world first.

So here I have ended up, at a point where I have a good book, confirmed as good by several industry professionals, just taking up space on my hard drive, being enjoyed by nobody. It’s burned through nearly every historical imprint worth a hill of beans, and can’t go on submission to too many more editors. It probably appeals to a niche market rather than a wide audience, since apparently the young age of the protagonist will give some folks pause – and anyway, the 18th Dynasty of Egypt is not as familiar to the average reader as the Amarna period or the Ptolemaic period. So this really is a novel that’s more likely to be a hit with hardcore Egypt nerds and women’s history buffs than with the beach-reading fans of the Tudors or Asian history. Although it’s a good book, I don’t feel any deep attachment to it, and I don’t want to be a career historical novelist anymore. My future lies with other categories of fiction; I am certain of that now. So if this book were to bellyflop into the mudpit of self-publishing, I wouldn’t be dismayed.

Sure looks like a good candidate for self-publishing success to me, according to all my own self-pub standards.

WHY NOT SMALL PRESSES?

I’ve bandied this idea about self-publishing the Egypt books with my good friend Lori. We’ve talked about it off and on for a few weeks.

Lori encouraged me to go the small-press route before self-publishing, because there is still such a nasty stigma surrounding self-publishing (and not undeservedly so in the majority of cases – see my section above titled WHY THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS STARTLING….)

Lori is a talented, hard-working, exceptionally prolific author of romance, erotic romance, and erotica who has more than twenty novels published or contracted with several different small presses, some of which produce e-books exclusively. Lori is really enjoying working with these presses, and I’ve watched as she very quickly built up a large and enthusiastic fan base. She’s doing well. There’s no doubt that small presses are a smart move for some authors.

However, after spending a few weeks checking into them, I don’t think they’d net me any more success with my historical fiction than I could achieve self-publishing, and I can see why, in this case, self-publishing would be a smarter move for me.

Let me explain.

Small presses have been a great boon to fans and authors of erotic romance and erotica. Those genres have taken off like crazy since e-books became a big part of the scene. There are quite a few specialty small presses catering to these readers. However, I couldn’t find many small presses that publish non-romance historicals, and the ones I could find seemed disappointing. Their cover art looked unprofessional and their web sites were confusing enough that I had a hard time believing I could rely on them to produce a quality product. (See? Presentation is EVERYTHING!)

I did find three independent presses to which my Egyptian novel hadn’t already been submitted, and that also seemed to produce a product I’d be proud to put my name on. However, two of them were closed to fiction submissions for at least six more months. By then, I hope to have a new agent for my literary fiction, and it could be too late to do anything with the historicals.

This issue of presentation is so crucial. That means cover art. I worked in a book store hand-selling books and I am an avid reader. I know – you know, reader – that presentation matters enormously. And to be honest, a lot of the small presses out there are putting covers on their books that are just as embarrassingly bad as many self-published covers. Given that a professional appearance can be a serious factor in whether a reader chooses Book A over Book B, why would any author submit her work to a press that didn’t understand the importance of a clean, modern, appealing presentation?

The small-press options for romance and erotica are, fortunately, robust. They’re even quite good for literary fiction. For non-romance commercial fiction, I’m afraid they are quite paltry indeed. If I self-publish, I will have control over how professional my book looks. And while I can’t do as good a job as a pro employed by a major traditional publisher, I can do a lot better than some of the covers I’ve seen on many small-press web sites.

Additionally, as I already have a completed novel that has gone through a few different editing phases with industry professionals, my book is pretty close to “ready to go,” although I will, of course, give it a few more passes before self-pubbing it. I could release the book in a matter of weeks and start seeing a small (likely very small) income months sooner than if I went with a small press.

Which is a nice segue into the next section…

WHAT IS MY IDEA OF “SUCCESS” WHEN IT COMES TO SELF-PUBLISHING?

I think it’s vital to manage one’s expectations when it comes to self-publishing. Let me be very, very clear here: SELF-PUBLISHING IS NOT LIKELY TO BE A BIG INCOME EARNER. I don’t expect it to be, even though I have a good book, even though I have what I believe is a smart plan to promote it. I think the people who make any appreciable income at all with self-published works – and by that I mean somewhere between $2000 and $5000 per year (as of 2011 it’s unlikely to earn you more than that) are the authors who are offering their out-of-print backlist as e-books. The traditionally published authors, in other words.

Manage your expectations.

Yes, there are one-off cases like Amanda Hocking, but she had a phenomenally good gameplan from the start (self-publish a large body of work all at once, so she entered the scene with a built-in backlist…and then spend eight to ten hours per day promoting that backlist.) Most of us don’t have that many novels written yet, and most of us can think of anything we’d rather do than spend ten hours a day doinking around on the same old blogs talking up our books. I imagine that gets old remarkably fast, and Ms. Hocking was probably pleased as punch to hand that duty off to the publicists at St. Martin’s. After all that time spent doing boring self-promotion, she was probably excited to get to mow her lawn, fold laundry, and deliberate over produce at the grocery store. Most of us don’t have the concentrated drive Ms. Hocking has.

There will always be one-off cases. The Amanda Hockings of the world should not be held up as expectations for your own success. You will probably not be that successful.

Manage your expectations.

So how successful do I think I can be? Eh – successful enough to feel good about my book. Successful enough to feel pleasure over the fact that some Egypt nerds really had a great time dorking out over my take on the 18th Dynasty. I think that with a healthy dose of smart self-promotion, scheduled weekly so as not to interfere with my work on Baptism for the Dead and my subsequent “serious” novels, I can reasonably expect to sell around 2,500 copies in a year. Depending on how I price my products (yet to be decided) that will likely translate to about $5000.00.

A little extra spending cash for me to blow at Anthropologie. Not a writing career. Most of what I’ll get out of this experience will be the fun of bringing my cool book to the wee niche market that will really appreciate it.

Manage your expectations.

Don’t get me wrong: I love money, I want to make a lot of it, and I fully expect to live off my writing some day, preferably someday soon.

But I do not expect to reach that goal by self-publishing. That’s not why I’m doing it. I still feel strongly that real financial success comes from a solid contract with a Big Six or a major indie publisher, negotiated for maximum efficacy by a kickass literary agent, who will also sell foreign rights. As of the summer of 2011, it still doesn’t look like any other path is likely to get me (or you) to my goal of rolling around in a pile of writer-money.

Manage your expectations!

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS BOOK SUCCESSFUL?

In a word, promote.

In an earlier section I mentioned how the social networks have boosted small-press and self-published books. That’s entirely because of the power of the buzz.

I used to run a wedding photography business, and I got over 90% of my new customers from one reception site that absolutely loved my work and referred ALL their new clients to me. I impressed them, and because they were genuinely impressed, their enthusiasm for my work convinced their clients to become my clients before they’d ever spoken to me.

I want that kind of buzz for my self-published book.

I feel confident that I have a book that’s good enough to impress some reviewers with some popular blogs. I’ve done my homework; I know which blogs I want to hit. I know what they like. I know what they expect from their reading experiences. I am targeting my book to these reviewers just as I once targeted it to the agents I queried. I think I can impress these reviewers enough that they’ll sell my book for me, just by loving it and telling their many readers how much they love it.

I am going to harness the power of the social network to achieve my goal of 2,500 copies sold in a year. It’s a reasonable goal, and my product is good enough to set that ball rolling right from the beginning. I will let the reviewers do the work for me after a few weeks of concentrated effort. Once I’ve lit the fuse I’ll sit back and let Mark Zuckerberg do the heavy lifting, and I’ll hope that I was right about how long a fuse I needed.

But I’m managing my expectations, here. Remember that my book was good enough in the first place to get me into a major literary agency, and then it impressed editors at big houses enough that they gave me very encouraging, even flattering, personal rejections.

I’m not bragging here – I’m trying to help you, reader, manage your own expectations. I’ve received outside, professional reinforcement from multiple sources that my book is a good one. Have you? Are you starting with a high-quality product, from content to packaging? Where has your feedback come from? How knowledgeable are your test-readers, and how honest will they be with you? How much do you know about editing? Have you ever worked with an industry professional to edit a book? What does your cover look like? What message is it sending to the person who holds that book in her hands?

All this is important. It really is.

MY BASIC GAME PLAN FOR SELF-PUBLISHING

1) After re-polishing the book and sending it out for critique to a few more test readers, I will use a POD service to print up some nice ARCs.

2) I will contact several historical novelists (all of them working with traditional publishers) whose work I admire and politely ask them to review and blurb my book, explaining that it is a self-published novel, and BRIEFLY (I can hear you laughing) explaining how I came to self-publish it. I will not have expectations that any of them will actually blurb it – it’s self-published, after all, and everybody still believes with good reason that nearly everything self-published is terrible.

3) I will add any blurbs I am fortunate enough to get to my front and back covers, which will look as good as anything you’d pull off the shelf at Barnes & Noble.

4) Four weeks before the release date, I will start sending out copies to review blogs and to the biggest reviewers of historical fiction on Goodreads and Amazon’s reviews community.

5) Four weeks prior, I will also step up the web presence for my self-pub pen name, making “her” become alive and vibrant and interesting.

6) I will seek out opportunities to do interviews and give-aways on blogs.

7) On the release date, I will have some fun contests and give-aways planned on my pen name’s blog, which will hopefully bring in blog subscribers.

8) I will continue to blog weekly under the pen name for at least twelve months, because that’s how long I’ve given myself to reach this goal.

WHAT DO I EXPECT WILL HAPPEN WHEN I SELF-PUBLISH?

This is an experiment, really, isn’t it? That’s what it looks like to me, too. I am doing this in large part because I’m really curious where e-books and self-publishing might go in the next decade. I can see it flagging and dying back into the morass of impatient/entitled crapola, and I can see it turning into a real blossoming industry full of glorious gems just beneath the surface of the mud, easily scratched up and treasured. Either option seems equally likely at this point.

I am very motivated to give this a try just to see if my suspicion is right, that if one starts with a quality book and if one treats it with respect and enthusiasm, and if one takes advantage of social networks, and if one understands the publishing industry enough to manage one’s expectations, one can achieve a reasonable goal.

I will make some prediction now:

I think in twelve months, I will exceed my goal of 2,500 copies sold, but not by a whole lot.

I think my Egyptian book will develop a fun little fan following among the hardcore devotees of ancient-history novels. I think it will be genuinely enjoyed by a niche of readers.

I think I will make a little more than $5,000 off the book during the course of a year, which will be about what I could have expected to make from a small press.

I think e-book sales will outstrip trade paperback sales by a significant amount.

I think I’ll have fun with this experiment, and I’ll be proud of the results.

I think I’ll be way more proud and have way more fun when I find the right agent to represent my serious novels, my life’s work, and I think I’ll build a career off those via traditional publishing.

WHAT AM I GIVING UP BY SELF-PUBLISHING?

As you can see, even if you didn’t read this groaning colossus of a post and you only skimmed around reading the headings that interested you (for which I do not blame you), I have put a lot of thought into whether to do this, why I might do it, and how I might attain my modest success.

But what about the downside of self-publishing? I’ve thought about that, too.

What WON’T I get if I self-publish, that even a small press might have done for me?

Foreign sales. I can reach an English-speaking audience, but not all that many populations in the world speak English. A working author makes a good chunk of his annual income from foreign sales, and I have no means of securing those if I self-publish. That is a pretty big minus.

I’m also giving up first rights to this book – another very important part of the publishing puzzle. If I still wanted to build a career off of historical fiction, I wouldn’t consider ruining the first rights to this book. Even if it’s a “hard sell” and “not a first novel,” it could be a second novel, or a fifth, or a fifteenth.

First rights are valuable in the traditional publishing world, and by self-publishing, I am kissing them good-bye. That’s why I don’t think I’ll ever self-publish my “serious” fiction – the stuff I want to turn into a viable career. Even if Baptism for the Dead doesn’t sell initially, it may sell later, after I’ve sold a few others yet to be written. But it won’t sell at all if I axe its first rights.

And I am giving up a pretty significant chunk of my free time – also nothing to sneeze at. I’m fortunate in that for the next six weeks or so I’ll be able to spend several hours per day working on design and promotion without cutting into my writing time for Baptism for the Dead. If working on self-publishing were to take away any amount of time from writing my career-builders, I wouldn’t do it. The career-building fiction is far too important to me, and there are only so many hours in a day.

So there it is, folks – my very long and honest thoughts on self-publishing, why and how I decided to do it, and what I think will happen once I do.

Now let’s see if my predictions come true!

Progress?

2011-06-22T12:24:00.001-07:00

Progress-ish? Progress-esque?

I have been able to turn out about 1000 words a day, except for a few days here and there where I had appointments to jet to or other stuff to take care of that kept me away from my keyboard until bed time. It's still too soon to say that I am "cured" of my "writer's block," but I do feel that I'm making some good headway. I've had to chop out a few scenes that just weren't working in Baptism, so the word count is just shy of 34,000 words at present, but I don't mind taking a few steps back if I can be assured that the next steps I'll take forward will really get me somewhere.

Interesting factoid: the theme of this book has changed a lot since I first set out to write it. Now it seems very intent on being about a woman reclaiming her sexuality and ridding herself of guilt in a post-religion life. I like where that's going. It's feeling more and more right all the time. I'll need to re-tweak the beginning just a bit, but only to alter some imagery to fit the new theme.

If I can keep up this pace, I should have the book ready for serious revision around this time next month. But I am not willing to celebrate yet -- it's still uncertain whether I can keep up this pace.

I've got my fingers crossed.

The YA Juggernaut

2011-06-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I've begun to find it frustrating how open the industry seems to be to new YA authors while seeming so reluctant to take a chance on new authors writing in other genres.

Yes, I know that the industry is pretty much fueled by what readers are buying, and over the past decade Harry Potter and Twilight have had such success among all ages of readers that it's made YA look like a frontier full of endless promise. Adult fiction is still selling, but I know of more first-time sales going to YA and to a smaller extent MG authors than to other new novelists. And I see more agents specializing in YA/MG to the exclusion or near-exclusion of adult fiction.

In some ways, this is an awesome development. When I was a kid, there was no marketing category for YA. Ender's Game was considered an adult novel. "Juvenile fiction" was the industry term for the catch-all category that ranged from picture books to Judy Blume. Probably a useful label for people working in the industry, but not for shoppers. And can you see an adult reader buying a juvenile novel for herself to read? There was definitely some societal judgment attached to that label. So I am glad for writers and readers that YA exists and has become "a thing," as Stefon would say.

On the other hand, it's become such a thing that it can feel to a writer trying to get her first novels published that if she's not writing YA, she's doing it wrong. I have noticed that people with a YA novel to sell appear to have an easier time and a shorter road to publication than I've experienced. Logically, I know this is probably just a misguided perception. But it is hard to ignore the sheer numbers of writers working in YA on forums such as Absolute Write. And it is hard to ignore the fact that most weeks there are lots of sales announcements for YA and MG contracts in Publisher's Lunch, but not as many adult novels selling.

I felt for quite a while that my only hope of getting published was to write a YA novel. I thought it might be the only chance I had. So I tried to write one. I developed a few characters and a situation and a setting, and I was ready to go with it. But when I tried to actually write the book, nothing would come. I just had no emotional connection to the idea. I had no desire to write that story. It didn't do anything for me. I actually felt quite a measure of despair over this. I worried that if I couldn't write a YA novel, I might as well kiss my chances of ever publishing any novel good-bye. YA was all that was selling. It was my only hope. I kept kicking myself for not being able to get into it.

But the truth is, I don't feel any particular draw to YA in general. I do read the occasional fantastic YA novel and have a great time doing so, but I don't seek it out. I always end up reading these books because friends recommend them so strongly. I don't keep an eye on what's coming out next in the genre. It's just not my thing. (Which is weird, because I loved my teen years and would do it all over again if I could...but truly, even when I was a teen I was reading adult novels. I've been reading adult fiction since I was eight years old.)

I received the feedback a few times from a few different sources that I should rewrite my first novel, a historical, to make the main character older than her thirteen years at the opening of the novel. Or that I should rewrite it as YA. Multiple professionals suggested this, and I thought about their advice carefully each time. I finally decided not to. I decided I'd rather not publish that book at all than change it so dramatically. Altering the character's age would mean changing actual history more than I'm comfortable with, and changing it so much that it would work as a YA novel would mean turning it into a dramatically different book in story and tone. That wouldn't be my book; it would be somebody else's book with my name on it. I wasn't willing to do either, even though I probably could have sold a historical novel set in ancient Egypt.

I am just not a YA person, I think. It can feel so easy to give into hopelessness, recognizing that about myself. Everybody is writing YA. Everybody is selling YA. Everybody is buying YA. Everybody wants to represent YA. But I don't know what to do, other than to keep writing what I feel I should be writing, even if that means I have way less of a chance of selling it than my friends who are working on YA novels.

Oh well. :/

Word up.

2011-06-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and wrote 1000 words. Not as much as I used to write daily, but more than I've written in ten days this year. It's too soon to say whether my horrid road block to productivity has been cleared away, but I did feel good enough to sing Lady Ga Ga in the shower. Maybe the high-waisted pants are already working their magic. We'll see if this positive streak holds out...I am off to co-host the radio show, something I also haven't done in a long time. I like how this day is going so far.

This post has nothing to do with my writing.

2011-06-11T22:00:00.001-07:00

Or any writing. It is about...FASHION. Run away screaming now.

Yeah, I'm kind of a nerdo for fashion. This started around 2008, when, out of sheer boredom, I turned on What Not To Wear. I was vaguely curious about this show because my aerobics instructor claimed she looked exactly like Stacy London, to the point that people frequently asked her -- like, every day -- if she was Stacy London. After hearing this multiple times, I finally became curious enough to watch the show. And what do you know! Stacy London could be my aerobics instructor's evil twin! Pretty cool.

As it happened, on the day I tuned in the woman who needed wardrobe help had a body shape just like mine: very curvy hourglass figure with a large bust and round hips with a comparatively small waist. I'd always thought that because I have Marilyn Monroe measurements I must have looked good. But to my horror, the terrible wardrobe the woman on the show was going through (and it was terrible!) could have been pulled from my own closet. I was astounded at how frumpy and depressed the wrong clothes made that girl look -- and realized quickly that I must look the same, because holy crap, all my clothes were just like that. Ew!

I took careful mental notes on that episode, and thus began my interest in clothes. Is it sad or awesome that I made it to the age of 28 without giving a shit about clothes? I will leave that to you to decide. I am still up in the air about this myself. Some days I am embarrassed and bummed out that I went through my 20s looking like I fell off a turnip truck wearing a gunny sack, when I could have been rocking my Marilyn bod. Some days I am glad I just did my thing. But ALL days since I awakened to the weird and wonderful world of fashion, I have been glad that I did awaken. Since I started caring about how I dress, I have felt immeasurably better about myself, and that added confidence has shown in real, measurable gains in my life. Seriously. I know it sounds like a stupid line from a Bravo show, but dressing right can change your life. (If you are lucky enough to have a relatively comfortable life, in which you don't need to worry that you are about to be homeless...or are homeless...etc. I mention this because I have lived in total poverty before, and I know that life could be worse than wearing crummy clothes.)

Anyway.

I got way interested in clothes. I became fascinated by the fashion industry. I started following runway shows online to see what designers were coming out with. I learned what shirred means, what an empire waist is (and why I shouldn't wear one), I learned what modal is. I figured out exactly how to dress my body to its best advantage, which was a fun and entertaining learning curve.

Then I watched in horror as TERRIBLE TRENDS came down the runway and stuck. Trends like skinny jeans. Short-hem shirts. Front ruffle embellishment. Those hideous big-shouldered 80s tops. Basically, everything that looks HIDEOUS on me flooded stores, and it became impossible to find any new garment that I could wear. Then, the color palettes became revolting for my complexion, and the situation only got worse.

I smoldered for almost two years, hating fashion all over again, while unwearable trend after unwearable trend filled up stores and crowded out all the stuff that would actually look nice on my body. I lurked in upscale consignment shops, hoping for a rare treasure in my size in a color that would work. Oh, the rage! Oh, the gnashing of teeth! Oh, the skinny jeans!

But this season, it seems the tables have turned. Yes, my friends. I came back from a sale at Anthropologie with something I've been dying to add to my wardrobe for two years: trouser-cut pants with a very high waist and a wide waistband. OH YEAH. Libbie is in the house. After that long miserable stretch of skinny jeans and 80s shoulders and embellishments that make me look like I'm five months pregnant, MY HOUR HAS COME AT LAST. All the Marilyn-looking ladies say HEEEYYYY, because now OUR ASSES WILL LOOK TOTALLY FINE IN THE LATEST TREND: HIGH-WAISTED TROUSERS. Yeah, high waist, suckers. All you girls who had your fun with the skinny jeans, if you try on these pants they will make you look like a soccer mom. Make way for my totally delicious can in my amazing Anthropologie sexpants which were 40% off. Now it's your turn to rage at the uncaring fashion gods because the hot trend will make you look like a hot mess. THE DAY OF THE SIZE 12S AND 14S IS AT HAND. Start your jealousy engines! Rev them all you like! You will never catch up to my fly butt in its high-waisted trousers!

BOO-YAH!

Summer of 2011 must be my time. This must be an omen. Maybe I'll even sell Baptism this year. THE HIGH-WAISTED TROUSERS HAVE SPOKEN. THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER, 'CAUSE THAT'S ALL THE WORLD IS.

(I am also having a tailor make a high-waisted knee-length pencil skirt for me, because I can't find one anywhere in stores.)

Love affair

2011-06-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am making painfully slow, tortured progress on my novel. I still feel it's good, but my confidence in what other people think of my work is so badly shaken that I vacillate between feeling that I have a decent shot at actually selling this book and total, complete despair -- my other novels didn't sell; why should this one? I realize that kind of thinking will only inhibit progress, but "just think positive" is easier said than done.

I see blog posts and facebook posts and forum posts from friends and acquaintances and clients of my former agent and my current agent, all celebrating their sales, the releases of their books, cool new cover art, good reviews. All these published authors. And I am still not one of them.

A couple of people who have read my work in progress were enthusiastic about it; the rest, who far outnumber the enthusiastic two, never said anything at all about it. As already noted, this bothers me. Enough has already been said about that. I guess I should think positive: the people who I can be sure actually bothered to read the manuscript really, really liked it a lot. Maybe the others aren't giving me radar silence because they thought it was not even worthy of mention, but because they just never could be bothered to read it. Maybe if they had actually read it, they'd have liked it. That's an oddly comforting thought.

Regardless, in the face of this feeling that I am not good enough to be among the published, it's hard to keep working. I can go for days and days without even opening the document; I just have no desire for it. I don't see the point. I feel certain that it's futile to write. Then I will finally force myself to work on the book. I'll force myself, and it will be miserable torture just to type a few words.

I'll write a couple hundred words and then read back over the last thousand words or so. And you know, in spite of the misery of turning writing into a chore, I genuinely like what I've written. I enjoy the prose. I think the plot and characters are interesting enough. I'm really proud of the work. So why can't I keep working on it with real focus?

I used to write 2000 words a day or more. I finished a 110,000-word novel in three months. But I can't seem to make any real progress at all on this book. I mean, I've now been working on Baptism for the Dead since April 2010. True, it's gone through a few total revisions of structure and plot, but still -- I'm at 30,000 words and that's the highest word count I've achieved with any incarnation of the book.

I had an email conversation recently with a friend who is also a writer. We talked about the various motivations for writing, what it must be like to produce entertaining work that is easily sold, easily read, easily consumed. Enjoyable, probably. Fun. Hard work, but fun work, like when I was working as a zoo keeper. I wish it was fun for me to write. I wish I was writing something I could be relatively sure would sell. I wish I was working on something that the industry professionals I know seem to be actually interested in. I have no idea where this book will go, if anywhere. That's not fun. And all that un-fun-ness makes me have to force my own writing at knife-point. I'm shocked that I like what I write so well, considering it's all flogged out of me. None of it is coming easily. None of it is enjoyable to produce.

My friend and I also talked about what we want our respective books to mean to readers, and that conversation is helping me keep things somewhat in perspective.

I'll be honest, no matter how unpalatable it may make me seem to other writers, many of whom I love dearly and consider to be good friends. I am in the midst of a months-long writing crisis here, and I need to be frank with myself and with the world if I'm going to stay focused enough to stab out my meager couple hundred words per week. So here is all my ugly honesty, hanging out all pink and naked, for you to jeer at or despise me for if you want to, O Writing World: I don't want a small contract with an e-publisher. Not for Baptism for the Dead. I think this book deserves something stronger and more substantial. I don't want to be with an independent press, unless it's one that has a reputation for publishing really high-quality work. I don't want to be a flash in the pan. I want my writing to really mean something to the world. I want a big, sturdy contract. I want a well-respected editor. I want a publicity budget that will allow me to have a reliable career, finally, after fifteen years of working at shit jobs to support my writing habit. I want my writing habit to support me. I want to make money. I want to be respected. I want the world to know who I am. I want to be longlisted for awards. I want to be shortlisted. I want to win awards. I want reviews from reviewers with clout.

I want to create something that is really, truly worthy of respect and awards and reviews.

And I don't much care what other writers think of me for wanting these things.

These are my goals. This is the end result that will make me happy. These are not the goals of every writer. Many writers will look down on me or feel I'm looking down on them because I have these particular desires.

But I can't worry about that. If I don't stay focused on my goals, I will be overwhelmed by the sadness of not being the writer who's selling ten books a year, of not being the writer whose book is coming out next spring. I will hate myself for being the client who was passed along to somebody else because she no longer fit the list. I will hate my prose, my own creation, because it's not commercial enough to give me the instant gratification half of my heart wants.

I need to listen to the other half. It's the half that agrees with the aforementioned friend, who summed up our whole conversation so precisely when he said that some literature is like a one-night stand. It's fun, it's good, it should be indulged in. But some literature is like a soul-shattering love affair, and it haunts you and makes you long for it years and years later, when you should be over it, when you should have forgotten it and moved on.

I want to publish the love affair. That's my goal. I'm not going for a one-night stand here. I've had enough of those in my lifetime. I know, because it's happened to me, that real deep, striking love affairs that haunt you forever are entirely dependent on chemistry, and nobody can predict chemistry, or make it by design. I have to keep telling myself that my unique prose just hasn't found its chemical match yet out there in the world of professional publishing. It's been brushing up against a few pros, but they're cold to its signals. No blame there. Chemistry can't be commanded and it can't be begged. I have to keep going, because my book's lover is out there somewhere, and when they meet, my goal will be a foregone conclusion. I will have what I want. But I have to be patient and persistent. I have to remember what my goal is, and not be tempted by other people's goals.

Think I'm an egomaniac all you want. I'm cool with it. Whatever keeps me writing, even a couple hundred words a week, I'm cool with.

The best job ever

2011-06-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching back through my saved episodes of Game of Thrones on HBO, because it's just that awesome. It occurs to me that the best job ever might be an extra in a show/movie like this, where you just get to charge around in battle scenes wearing replica armor waving a battle axe and yelling, "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!"

I kind of wish that was my job. I would be so awesome at that job.

The Finger

2011-05-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have been facing a bad stall of about eight or nine months. I lost confidence horribly when multiple people expressed interest in Baptism for the Dead, then promptly forgot that I exist and that they'd pestered and even brow-beaten me into sending them my unfinished book to read. That combined with the divorce from hell has drained me of creativity and motivation. It feels just about impossible to keep writing at this point, but what choice do I have? I can't do anything else with my life. And not in that awful, cliched "I CAN'T NOT WRITE, I BLEEEEED IIIINNNNK" bullshitty way. I literally have no other skills, no money for schooling, and I cannot qualify for financial aid. Writing is my only viable long-term option for supporting myself for the rest of my life. That's it. It's all I've got. All my eggs are in this basket. Fortunately I do it well, I think, but it's hard to remember that when people pay about as much attention to my writing as they pay to their own respiratory systems.

Getting some good feedback and some eagerness from two very helpful readers last week helped a lot, but I'm still feeling a serious lack of motivation. God, I hate just floundering like this. I've been asking myself why this so often happens, and I think I've got it figured out.

A big part of the underlying problem for me is that so many people have said they wanted to read my book -- some friends even got miffed and pissy with me because I "wouldn't let them" read an unfinished and unpolished draft; then when I relented and sent it along to them, they never bothered to read it at all -- or if they did, they never bothered to comment on it at all. One person repeatedly made comments like "When will you finally let me read your book?" as if I was rudely holding out something that should have been his right to access at will because he is a casual friend. It's been about six weeks and he still hasn't bothered to even give it a glance.

Fuck that guy. Seriously. That kind of thing totally deflates my confidence. When somebody says they're going to read my work and then ignores it, it crushes me completely and saps away all my desire to write. I am totally fine with a person reading what I wrote and hating it. I am not of the opinion that I can or should write something that every person will love. But when I can't even write something that others will bother with -- when they'd rather read comic books or play video games or screw around on Facebook or get drunk than devote a half hour to reading a measly 10,000 words -- I figure I might as well just give up writing forever.

A reader putting in the time and deciding my prose just isn't for them will still motivate me. At least it interested them enough to READ IT. At least they acknowledged the existence of what I wrote, even if they thought it sucked. At least I wasn't just shouting into the void. A reader harassing me or kindly offering to read and then IGNORING IT absolutely kills me. It breaks my heart. It ruins me.

Critiques like the two I got last week definitely help. A lot. But I am still having a very hard time overcoming the tremendous slump I've been in. I am very slowly recovering from many months' worth of nonreading from many well-meaning friends. It's a kick in the face every time somebody asks and then ignores, and it only makes me more and more hesitant to allow anybody to read an unfinished piece. I'm so glad I've had some GOOD experiences with readers lately, or I'd still be deep, deep in the rut. Thanks to their feedback, I am working my way out a millimeter at a time. But a lot of the previous damage is well-ingrained. The message I get from non-readers is "I only said I wanted to read it because I felt like I had to say that. I don't actually have any interest in what you do, in what you care about, or in what you have to say. Also, the way you say it is totally uninteresting to me." I know I don't write inaccessibly, so it's not like my approach is the turn-off. It must be me specifically -- the things I care about, the things I want to tell the world.

I'd estimate that every time I give into a friend's request to read my work and then they ignore it, it causes around a month's worth of struggle to get myself well and truly back into writing and working hard again. So with about nine months of lack of motivation, you can imagine how many people have pulled this cruel little stunt on me over the past year.

Okay, so the obvious answer is to not let anybody read my works in progress, right?

I wish!

One thing I can say about myself is that I know who Libbie is very, very well. For better or worse, I am one of those writers who really does need the feedback to be sure she's heading in the right direction. Especially with this book, which needs to be accessible to readers who don't have any experience with Mormon culture. It's very easy to presume that a reader understands the things about the Mormon world that I take for granted because I was raised in it. I need readers who are strangers to my culture of origin to point out to me what they don't get, what needs clarification. I can't do without at least a few readers as I work on this book.

I'd like to say that I'll never accept an offer to read my book from anybody who's not also a writer, but one of the critiques I got back that was so helpful is from a friend who's not a writer. And I've had the same experience of being totally ignored, without even a note of apology for the delay, from other writers.

What can I do? I guess I have to just keep taking risks. One out of every ten requests to read a work in progress will be good for me; somehow I'll have to learn to deal with the rest that are just repeated and very callous kicks in the face.

So to those of you who have been thoughtful and caring enough to actually follow through on your offers to read, thanks, guys. It means more to me than I can say.

And to all of you who said you wanted to read my book -- or who acted all put-out because I initially wouldn't let you -- screw you. You're really rude, and I don't have any respect for you anymore.

Bite me.

I am compiling a list of "People who can be trusted to read" and "People who are all hot air and self-entitlement." Guess who'll be getting Christmas cards this year, and who won't.

Hooray for critiques!

2011-05-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

I just received an amazingly thorough and extremely helpful critique from Mr. Jonathan Dalar and it made me want to write about critiques.

In general, I find that most writers are eager to get some feedback on their work. Most of us are writing in order to sell -- or at least to know we're providing a quality experience for our readers. "Good" and "bad" are subjective concepts, but still, input from fresh sets of eyes gives us access to new approaches to our works in progress.

I loves me some critiques.

More about critiques below the jump!

Jonathan told me he'd never given a critique before and that he was somewhat apprehensive when he first approached my book. It can be intimidating to offer feedback on writing, for sure. We all know that our own writing feels very personal; we've put a lot of time and energy and emotion into it. We've sweated over jut the right words, we've deleted and rewritten the same scene five or ten times until it feels just right. Any writer giving a critique to another understands that it's fraught territory.

But Jonathan did an awesome job. He told me exactly what he loved about about Baptism for the Dead (so far...I've only got a little more than 25,000 words written), and he broke down his suggestions for improvement into helpful categories -- description, plot, characters, voice, etc. This was such a well-organized and well-thought-out critique that I felt it was far more thorough and more persuasive than any I'd received before, including critiques from agents! (Can't blame 'em -- they usually have a lot of critiques to get to.)

Because he took the time to really explain his impressions on my book, I felt that he'd devoted some real deep thought to my work and that I could trust his opinions. What was especially nice was the fact that many of the areas he found unsatisfying were parts I also had trouble with. He and I agreed about which scenes were the weakest.

And of course it's always wonderful to hear that he felt compelled to keep reading from the time he opened the file, and that some of my descriptions stuck in his head long after he'd finished. That reassured me, because I've had some misgivings about this book, worrying that it's too narrow in scope, that it will be appealing to too small a group of readers to sell, and that there's nothing special about my prose. A good, useful critique certainly put a lot of those worries to rest!

Thanks, Jonathan!

I do think it's extremely important for all writers to do regular critique work. I've noticed that problems became easier to spot and resolve when I began critiquing with regularity. When you really put some thought into a work in progress -- what works, what doesn't, and WHY -- the scales begin to slowly flake off your own eyes, and revision of your own work comes easier and faster. It's just like building a muscle -- the more you do it, the more of it you've go to use.

Online critique circles or forums are wonderful for this, and I encourage you to use them. In-person groups are also great, because they provide some important social interaction, which writers can skimp on unless they are mindful. I go to a critique group every Thursday night and I try never to miss it. It's not only socializing; it's a very important part of perfecting my own craft. For me, a useful and effective revision is 75% of the battle -- the hardest and most exciting part of writing. I've got to stay in practice if I'm going to be any good on my own.

I think it's also very important for writers to learn how to TAKE a critique -- not only to improve the work itself, but to improve their approach to the act of writing. Not too long ago a well-meaning friend invited me to her weekly writers' group. I asked her about it, and she said it was "not meant for criticism, but just a place where we can all feel safe writing."

I feel safe writing on my futon at home. Or at the library. Or in a coffee shop. I don't have any anxieties about the act of writing. I am beyond the point where i need somebody to hold my hand and tell me I'm doing a great job. I want to sell my work -- I want a career. To get what I want, I need to see my writing as not only an expression of my feelings, but a conveyance for a message that I want other people to understand; not a display of my plumage, but the provision of enjoyment for many readers. In other words, I need to communicate effectively for the benefit of other people. I need to know what I'm doing wrong in order to make it right. "Only tell me what you like so I feel 'safe'" isn't a critique. It's a pat on the head. If that's all you're after, fair enough; but it's not going to make you a more effective communicator.

Now I owe Jonathan a critique, and I am looking forward to reading his novel and offering some insight. Hopefully he finds my comments half as useful as I found his!

What the hell is Literary Fiction?

2011-05-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

This question comes up with regularity on AW, and as we all know, AW is my personal frame of reference for all of reality. Invariably, everybody weighs in on the subject, and virtually invariably, the threads eventually devolve into this script:

(warning: this post is long.)

FantasyWriter: So what you're all saying is that literary fiction is somehow better than that "low-brow" genre fiction.

AllLiteraryWritersInConcert: No, that's not what we're saying at all. Where did you get that from?

ParanormalRomanceWriter: I've read some literary fiction and all it was to me was a bunch of snobbish masturbation, and the writer trying too hard to be smarter than the reader.

ALWIC: Read some better lit fic. There are poor writers in every genre. Also, stop calling us snobs, for the love of god. That's a way dead horse already.

Sci-fiWriter: My extraordinarily heavy sarcasm will fly right over your head as I sneakily imply that it's totally not fair how some literary authors win prestigious awards.

SarcasticForumRegular: *posts smiley eating popcorn*

ALWIC: Uh, you guys have the Hugo and the Nebula. Also, most of us would really enjoy the opportunities that genre fiction present for series and an enormous backlist, which makes you more money in the long run than any advance or literary award.

RandomWriter: Well, it's pretty obvious that literary writers are only in it to show off, because they are snobs. I despise literary fiction and I will never read it. That kind of pointless wankery is so far below me and I shall never abase myself. Did I mention I think you all are snobs?

ALWIC: ARRRGH!!!

The net result is that few useful or productive discussions defining literary fiction ever take place. And maybe that's a good thing, because I'm not sure it's really possible to define it.

Many people wiser and with better credentials than mine have said that it's easier to tell what Lit is not than what it is. So what isn't it?

Well, it's not especially concerned with big plots. Taut thrillers are not generally described as "literary." Quest fantasies are not usually literary.

It's not about an expected setup with a gratifying conclusion. Romances, where boy meets girl, obstacle prevents love from forming, obstacle is overcome, and happily-ever-after occurs, are not literary fiction.

It's often said that literary fiction is about character development and internal character arc, and I would tend to agree with this in the general sense, but there are other types of books that also deal with these structures but are not literary fiction. Chick lit/gossip fiction, for example, is usually about a character's internal or emotional struggles, but is not typically considered literary. I'm not sure why this is. I suspect it's for two reasons. First, the voice in chick lit tends to be plucky and assertive (even if the main character doesn't always behave that way with other characters). Literary fiction seldom has a wholly plucky main character. When an unusual amount of pluck is evident, there is usually some juxtaposed tragic element. In my observation, at any rate. I have not read every literary novel out there by a long shot, my friends.

Second, the problems main characters in chick lit face tend to be relatively light, when compared with the heavier conflicts faced by the MCs in literary fiction. In gossip fiction, a happy or at least a pleasant ending is virtually guaranteed, while in literary fiction endings can be significantly darker. A truly awful (but still plausible and satisfying) ending can only be a possibility when a high-stakes conflict is faced. If your book is about reconciling with your drunk bridesmaid after she ruins your wedding, how sharp a stake can your main character really be facing? If your book is about keeping your family from starving to death during the Great Depression, the stakes are a tad higher. So literary fiction is not about generally light-hearted plots.

Literary fiction is almost never simplistic in style. That's not to say that there is not a very large sampling of spare lit out there. Hemingway is just one example of many. His writing is marvelously trimmed but the moods and concepts in his stories and novels are far from simple. There is a complexity underlying his work that is obvious to any reader. Typically the complexity of a literary work manifests itself not only in its plot or theme but also in its style; we have all heard literary prose described variously as "embellished," "intricate," "flowery," "experimental," and even "purple," but that all depends on opinion, of course. It does tend to deal strongly with imagery, with atmosphere, and with mood, and I believe that is largely because its character-focused story arcs tend to occur deep in the realm of sensation and emotion. The style follows the structure.

The thing about literary fiction is that it's got no real home. With fuzzy boundaries like these, it can drift all over the place -- and it does. You will find strong literary elements in science fiction, in fantasy, in mainstream fiction (whatever THAT means), and in romance. Anywhere you can think to look, you will eventually bump into a heavily literary work that still sits neatly within the bounds of some genre or other.

Literary fiction is transient. It is more about feeling than plot. It is more about mood than structure. It is more about character change than character adventure. It's the Flying Dutchman of the genres, forever condemned to sail the turbulent seas beyond the safe ports of backlists and steady writing careers. Don't call snobbery on those poor souls doomed to pace its ill-defined decks. We yearn for the harbors, but we're serving a penance. We loved the sound and texture of language too much, and now we're confined to our drifting curse, always just beyond the reach of steady land.

I LIVE!!!

2011-05-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been a while, ne? Sorry 'bout all that radar silence and whatnot.

I have a few problems with blogging. Or had, I guess I should say.

Below the jump: my personal problems partially and tantalizingly exposed; fun with dementia; why you shouldn't fall off the writing wagon; and what happened when I followed my heart and bought a book solely on the strength of its title and cover.

Problem With Blogging The First: people seldom respond. I don't really like feeling like I'm shouting into the void; there is little interaction on this blog and so I tend to lose interest in it very quickly even though I know I should keep it up, that hopefully soon I'll have another book going out on sub and editors might possibly be Googling me and I really ought to look like I am a dynamic and charismatic person with interesting things to say. The reality is that I spend a lot of time taking long walks by myself, and drinking coffee by myself, and writing books by myself and shopping for dresses by myself and not a whole lot else happens in Libbieland. In short, I am boring.

But I do have fourteen years of acting experience behind me, so if I really wanted to I could ACT like I'm fascinating instead. If Deepak Chopra is right (spoiler alert: he's not), just by acting like I'm fascinating I might actually become fascinating!

Of course, after totally losing interest in this boring blog, I checked it months later to see that several people DID respond! Callooh, callay! Suddenly I see a glimmer of hope in the future. If people talk to me here, I'll actually pay attention, and then maybe you'll all be fooled into thinking I am fascinating. (Thank you, Deepak, you crusty old time-stopping fraud, you!)

Problem With Blogging The Second: life has had me down, man. Way down. All those "personal problems" I alluded to in a previous post are still lurking, although they get closer all the time to finally resolving, and I will be so glad if they do; particularly if they resolve without having to go to court. I have learned many, many valuable things from this miserable and frustrating experience. Valuable things I would like to impart to the young women of the world if only somebody would read this blog. The most important is this: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T HAVE SUCH LOW SELF-ESTEEM THAT YOU MARRY THE WRONG PERSON. Learn from my mistakes!

Problem With Blogging The Third: for quite a while there I was still working at the book store, with a very erratic schedule. This left me with little to no brainwaves for anything other than very weak scrabbling at my keyboard during my free hours. I pecked out perhaps 2000 words that I could actually keep during revisions while I worked at that accursed store. An ever-shifting schedule ain't no way to write. Being unable to set aside a specific time of the day to work on my books is hell on my productivity.

Now that problem is solved. I have a shiny new job which consists of sitting in a chair ALL DAY LONG, watching an old woman who has dementia sleep in her La-Z-Boy while The History Channel blares at full volume. Occasionally I make some toast or some soup for her and we do sometimes have conversations that loop endlessly into one another, a predictable Moebius strip of words, the same words every day, that continue on from just after lunch-time until she falls asleep again. I went from no routine to more routine than I could ever imagine having, just when I was beginning to despair that I will never finish a good book and never get published. I have hours every day to work on my stuff, I can block out most of The History Channel's drone with gun-range-certified ear plugs, and I am getting paid to sit here and write. Getting paid more money than I made at the book store, I should note, by a significant margin. This is almost enough to make me believe in God. But not quite.

So here I am, blogging again, and working on my book again, which seems to be coming along pretty well, as far as I know. I figured out why I hated the previous version of Baptism so badly, figured out how to fix that, and started a rewrite; in a couple of weeks I had rewritten more in the new version than I'd had in the previous draft. And I still feel cautiously optimistic about it, so I probably won't need to rewrite it again until I start to hate it once more, in a couple of weeks.

The lesson I learned here is this: FOR CORN'S SAKE, DO NOT STOP WRITING. I know things like unpleasant emotionally draining divorces that drag on way longer than they should will make it tempting to stop, just to give yourself a break...and I know that you'll sometimes have jobs that require you to work bizarre hours for no good reason, and that will sap your will to live, let alone to write. But YOU MUST KEEP WRITING. DON'T STOP. It is SO HARD to get back into it once you stop.

Anyway, now that my lengthy explanation for my long silence is out of the way, let me tell you what happened with my previous blog post, which I called Cover And Titlefest Episode #1.

Amidst all that craziness and depression, I did manage to read Mariette In Ecstasy, Ron Hansen's slim little novel, spending a few minutes a night on it before sleep. As somebody noted in the comments of my previous post, it was not the type of O-fest I thought it would be, but it was still O-inducing.

This was my first Ron Hansen novel, and from the first page I was totally in lust. Ohh, literary goodness! Oh, hedonistic Saturnalia for the senses! Oh, present tense!! Forget Mariette; I was in ecstasy. The book itself had a rather meager plot and a few interesting main characters with far too many uninteresting minor characters, but that's not why you should read it. And you should read it. Read it for the atmosphere and setting so real you are actually living amidst it. Read it for the unique imagery that stays with you long after you've put the book down.

"Sister Dominique says a prayer to Saint Peregrine for her Canadian nephew's cancer as she dashes flour on the kitchen table and turns over a great slab of dough that rolls as slowly as a white pig."

"Wind, and a nighthawk teetering on it and yawing away into woods. ... Cattails sway and unsway. ... Workhorses sleeping in horse manes of pasture. ... Mooncreep and spire."

"White hallway and dark mahogany joists. Wide plank floors walked soft and smooth as soap." Just read that one aloud...god, the music of it!

This book is rich with words. Rich with images. They overspill it. The most valuable thing I got from reading it (out of all the many valuable things) is the sense that Hansen took his time with every single sentence, that he must have tested each line to see how it fit into the overall flow of the scene. This book is all about taking time and about feeling everything around you -- for the characters and for the reader. And certainly for the writer.

I am going to remember this one for a long, long time, and I will be reading more of Ron Hansen, without a doubt. It was an extraordinary book that did not disappoint. Bravo for the cover that enticed me to buy, and although the book's plot did not contain the type of ecstasy I was expecting, its prose certainly did.

I will likely do Cover And Titlefest again, since I now have more disposable income for buying books and more time to read. Plus, reading is good for a writer, or so they tell me.

Anyway, that brings another boring, windy blog post to a close. I'll start being fascinating tomorrow, I promise.

Cover And Titlefest Episode #1: Pudge, Hunger, and The Big O.

2011-02-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think titles and covers are enormously important to authors' interests. Past surveys have suggested that as many as a third of all readers choose their next book based on either title or cover (or a combination of the two.) Unfortunately, you'll have to take my assertion about these surveys on blind faith, since I just got home from work and am far too lazy to look them up right now. But if you're a regular over on Absolute Write (and you should be), you've seen them, since the title/cover/how-do-you-choose-books issue comes up regularly, along with Who Would Play Your Characters In a Movie Adaptation, Should I Put a Sex Scene In My Novel, and How Long Should a Chapter Be. It's a perennial topic for discussion.

Whenever this subject arises, or whenever a writer wonders how important his or her title really is, I always side with the camp of Very Important Titles (And Covers.) This has, on occasion, been met with open sarcasm from certain forum regulars who will remain nameless and with snarky rep comments...par for the course on AW, where one must expect passionate behavior because the whole place is just crawling with writers. (I love AW; don't for a second think that I am disparaging it by characterizing it. It's the only thing any writer needs, I believe, to become a pro.)

Primarily, I push people to pick good titles and to be wary of bad cover art because I am a voracious reader, and I know exactly how influenced I am by titles and covers. To make this situation worse, I work in a used book store and am exposed to all kinds of interesting books in all their various edition-incarnations all day long. I am battered by a smorgasbord of book marketing.

Cover and title tell a potential readers SO MUCH about a book.
I really think their importance cannot be overstated. Title instantly clues the reader into the genre of the book: Written On the Body likely conjures a particular type of writing or theme when you read those words together; What A Rogue Desires conjures another image. As Hot As It Was You Ought To Thank Me will likely give you all kinds of ideas just based on the length and languor of the title; Get Off The Unicorn will give you all kinds of different ideas. Combine these little soundbites of imagery we call titles with physical images -- the cover art itself as well as the design of all the visual elements (title, author's name, artwork, even imprint label) and you have a perfect package of marketing goodness right in your hands, that will attract exactly the kind of reader who will love your writing and will allow the kind of reader who will have no patience with your tomfoolery to pass you right by.

Hopefully.

Sometimes covers and titles go wrong in a variety of ways. I'll explore the wrong turns a bit as this mini-series progresses.

My point here is this: Nothing reaches out to a reader with a more firm hand than the combination of title and cover. Authors need to do everything in their power to put the best titles they can come up with on their books, even during the query phase (agents and editors are readers, too, and will still be swayed by marketing) and it behooves the serious writer of fiction to work with an agent for many reasons; the advocacy you get from an agent when the publishing house presents you with inappropriate cover art is just one reason.

Covers and titles are your allies.

So here comes the first in a series of blog posts wherein I pull actual books from the actual shelves and actually read them based on their covers and/or titles. I will tell you why each one caught my eye, what I expected from it, and whether it delivered what I expected (thus determining whether the book was successful in reaching the appropriate kind of reader with its marketing ploy.)

Book 1:

How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers

What attracted me: The title got me first, and to some extent, the design. This simple and unusual title is laid out on a clean white spine in very plain, very readable text. It stood out among more colorful and darker spines with more scrolly or fancy script. It gave me the immediate impression of starkness. I like starkness in my reading material. I pulled it off the shelf and examined the cover, and was strongly attracted to the strange whimsicality of the art. The movie-poster-like geometrical sequestering of the title, author's name, and blurbs are just quality branding: Eggers' other books have similar design so this was quickly recognizable as a Dave Eggers book.

I was so drawn to the weirdness of the cover art and the promise of stark simplicity that I flipped open randomly, located a flash story titled "What It Means When a Crowd in a Faraway Nation Takes a Soldier Representing Your Own Nation, Shoots Him, Drags Him from His Vehicle and Then Mutilates Him in the Dust." Being that it was very short, I read it right there, standing at the shelves, and decided I could give the rest of this collection a try.

This cover and title got me, and that's pretty remarkable.

Why this is remarkable: Being that I am a writer of literary fiction, I try very hard to keep up with what's current and popular in my genre. This means I have tried very hard to read Dave Eggers, but just can't make myself. After a few years of resisting, I worked past the eye-popping bombast of the title "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and started to read the book. The unnecessarily long and goofy prologue so exhausted me that I didn't care enough by the end of the first chapter to keep going, despite recognizing that it was technically really nice writing (if you don't consider the prologue stuff.) I then tried You Shall Know Our Velocity!, but again, in spite of technically nice-enough writing I found I didn't care at all about the main characters' predicament to read past the first chapter. I decided Eggers wasn't for me, so I was surprised to be drawn in by the cover of How We Are Hungry, and to be moved by the simple beauty of the very short story I read. I have high hopes that I'll enjoy the rest of this collection.

Book #2:

Fat Girl by Judith Moore

What attracted me: First, the title. It's snappy and short, and it pretty much tells you what you're going to get. This is a memoir, which works well with the slightly blurred snapshot cover, of a really-not-very-fat girl in a bathing suit, standing in some kind of lame suburban yard. I picked this one out of a pile of memoirs waiting to be shelved and read it on my lunch break. Or started to, anyway. As it turned out, this book was not what I expected based on its packaging.

Why this book failed in its mission: Kudos to the author for being honest with her readers: She says right at the outset that this isn't a book in which anything pleasant happens, and she delivered on that promise. Thanks in no small part to the blurb from Augusten Burroughs on the front (he's known for his witty memoirs) that promised this book was darkly humorous, I was hoping for a darkly humorous reminiscence of what it's like to grow up as an obese young woman in America. I hoped for some interesting anecdotes that would break my heart and make me respect the pluck of the author; I hoped for a memorable voice and a little strength and resistance. Instead, I got a depressing laundry-list of everything the author has ever eaten, along with unrelenting reasons why she has always hated herself and continues to hate herself. Perhaps it was the bright and cheery bathing suit on the cover or the sass of the title, but this definitely was not what I'd thought it would be. In several chapters there was no humor at all that I could detect, dark or otherwise. I stopped reading when my lunch break was over and had no desire to return to the book again.

The wrong packaging for a book (that includes title and cover) will set a reader up for disappointment. Do you think a reader is likely to buy another of your books if your first was not anything like what they expected? This reader isn't likely, I can tell you that!

Book #3:

Mariette In Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

What attracted me: I won't lie, folks. Nothing stood out about this book when I was browsing the shelves. Its title is not particularly gripping (especially without the context of the cover art) and the edition I have was older, with the faded pastel-orange text of the mid-nineties. I actually pulled this book off the shelf to put it in clearance and make room for another, newer book...but I stopped when I saw the cover.

It's a painting of a woman having an orgasm.

I am pro-orgasm, so my curiosity was instantly aroused (ahem).

I flipped it open and sampled some tidbits of the prose, which I found palatable enough, and noted that it's told (at least in part) in a series of inquisition notes, as if a character is being interviewed about her participation in something urgent...perhaps a crime? The slimness of the book combined with the unusual storytelling mode sealed the deal, but it was mostly the picture of Mariette in ecstasy that got me.

I'll read anything sexy, especially if it's attached to really great prose.

Too early to tell whether this one was a success, as I haven't yet started reading. But I did buy the book, which is a sign that I fully expect to enjoy it.

I hope you found this very long foray into titles and covers enlightening. There will be more to come, but in shorter form, since I got all the explaining of what I'm doing and why out of the way here. Feel free to discuss, please, by all means! This blog needs some action or I'm going to just let it die.

cheers!

Lib

Book Cover Extravaganza starts tonight!

2011-02-14T08:33:00.001-08:00

...provided I will actually remember to post tonight after work. Ha ha.

Coming this evening: my analysis of covers and titles from Judith Moore! Ron Hansen! and Dave Eggers!

Enjoy, mon ami!

Cover Art Extravaganza still coming...!

2011-02-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

Fear not, I still plan to do a little miniseries of posts on covers and titles, and why these aspects of book development are so very important for writers. But the more I've thought about it and discussed this plan with my book-store coworkers, the more ideas I've gathered and the larger in scope this project has grown. So I'm brewing it over my weekend and will plan to launch it on Friday.

Meanwhile, I got a whopping good five hours of writing in yesterday before work (wooooo!), discussed some things with my agent (double woooo; I feel really excited about our chat), and am eating some ice cream right now. It's been a pretty good week so far.

Baptism for the Dead is sitting at about 25,000 words, which is just shy of halfway, I think. I believe it will fall just over 60,000 words when finished, which is on the slim side for a literary novel, but it's just not a very fat story.

Still doing more writing tonight as time permits, and will be having a full-on ovaries-to-the-wall writefest for two solid days over my weekend (Wednesday/Thursday), culminating in my weekly writers' group meeting, where the usual suspects will inform me that I'm not making my characters accessible enough...STILL! :D I love those guys.

Afternoon in Seattle

2011-02-07T14:23:00.001-08:00

Walking down the Ave to work, I passed a druggie kid on the sidewalk. He said to me emphatically, "Your glasses bring out your eyes!" His fat friend: "He's lyin'"

I laughed at them both.

The Importance of Titles and Covers

2011-02-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

In an effort to get myself blogging again, I've come up with a few ideas for picture-rich and reader-interactive posts that I think will be a lot of fun for me and for any folks who still bother to check in here. :) I know it's been rather dead lately...sorry. Life has been a wee bit hectic!

Anyway, at the moment I am working as a temp at a very cool book store in Seattle. It's a used book store where most of the store's inventory is purchased from customers for resale. This, as you can imagine, provides the store with a more unique selection than your average store that sells only what's available currently from publishers.

While shelving fiction yesterday I noticed myself setting books aside that I wanted to read myself. Idly I asked myself why I was choosing these particular books. After thinking about it (while still working! I am a busy bee!) I realized I was attracted to either the cover art or to the title. The author had little to do with it, as in most cases I'd never heard of these particular writers before.

I've always sort of known that I am more swayed by title and cover than other factors in choosing my book purchases. In fact I've always thought MOST readers are swayed this way, but of course such a cliche admission (don't judge a book by its cover!) sparks debate on forums and at writers' group meetings. But still I stick up for the importance of quality (and genre-appropriate) titles and covers, and try to encourage my fellow would-be authors to put a lot of thought into titles, even if they think their titles might be changed later by Higher Powers, and to kick and scream if they don't love their cover art. Sometimes I've received the internet equivalent of eye-rolling for my crusade for better titles and covers. Since seeing first-hand just how much these things do factor a shopper's choice in what to read, I feel justified!

So I thought it might be fun to examine what I pull from the shelves for personal reading every week, and analyze what about the cover and/or title draws me to make that purchase. And of course you, my few readers, are welcome to join in the discussion! I hope you will, in fact. I hope to have it up and running in the next couple of days.

In other writing news, as the writing world now knows, the amazing Natalie Fischer announced a few weeks ago that she is heading over to The Bradford Literary Agency. After discussing my writing and where I see it going over the next few years, Natalie and I decided to part as client and agent; we both agreed that Dijkstra Agency was a great match for my potential career. I am now represented by Taylor Martindale, and am very happy about it! After a lengthy phone conversation with Taylor, I feel great about our working relationship and she feels like an excellent match for me.

I really enjoyed working with Natalie. She's a sharp editor and has a ton of enthusiasm for what she does. Her input made my two historical novels much better books, and I am so grateful! I'm sure she'll find lots of success with The Bradford Agency. :) Thanks, Natalie, for everything!

Hey, what do you know.

2011-01-25T12:57:00.000-08:00

After spending the past couple of hours on Baptism, I am really pleased with this book. I know it's terribly uncouth to praise one's own self, but I don't care: this book is fucking awesome. I feel great about it. I can't wait to get it done so I can revise it with my agent and turn it into something I can SELL.

I feel good about this one. It's a winner. Can't wait for tomorrow, my day off, when I shall make stew in my crockpot and work on Baptism until I literally cannot type any longer.

YEEAAAHHHH.

One-Word Journey

2011-01-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

Back on January 12, my friend Stephanie Thornton encouraged people to describe their recent journey through life in one word. I think that's a fine idea, and challenging. Here's mine:

FUCK.

I'll let you take that any way you please.

I'm still dealing

2011-01-25T09:13:00.000-08:00

For the past few months, I've been dealing with some stuff. Some people would call this stuff heartbreak. Some would call it bullshit. It's a lot of assorted stuff and it involves things I mostly won't talk about online because of the way it impacts multiple other people's lives, and I respect them even if they are the source of a significant portion of the heartbreak/bullshit/stuff. The stuff I will talk about includes a surprise move to a new place -- in the city itself, in fact, rather than on its outskirts where I've lived all my life. These are very new things. Big changes. It's made me neglectful of my blog, but who cares, because really nobody reads this piece of crap anyway.

I'm trying to assemble a better, stronger Libbie from all the stuff. This is much easier said than done. But I've come through a lot of stuff since last January with an aplomb that has surprised and delighted me. From a distance born of necessity, I've been able to watch myself move through this strange, fractured landscape and I am impressed with the way I've chosen my route carefully, picked my way, avoided pits full of rattlesnakes and anvils dropping from the sky. I am startled to learn, at the age of almost-thirty-one, that I have an excessive portion of what some might call grace. This is, I suppose, what is meant by growing up. Huh. Go figure.

The downside is that I haven't written as much as I'd like to, aside from a few poems for my weekly writer's group (not nearly as many as I used to write) and daily journal entries, which have helped keep me happy. Not much work to speak of on Baptism for the Dead, alas, aside from work inside my head, which will be translated to Actual Words Written starting this morning.

I am back at work on the novel(s) as of today. Yes, novels plural, because I've been putting together the next project through all the stuff. It's another darkish finding-self story but this time it centers on trains, not on Mormons. Plus, I get to make up some hobo names for my characters, so I'm looking forward to wrapping up Baptism and rolling out Tin Moan (working title, obviously.) And I've already started tinkering with my third project, the one that might come after Tin Moan is done, about a horse and his boy...in a shitty coal mine. Man, I like it dark. This is possibly a reflection of the fact that I've had to keep myself sane and functional through an extraordinary amount of stuff, so why not explore the dark side of things on my computer screen, where it's safe; and possibly a reflection of the fact that dark stories have always felt deeper and more real to me. Yeah. I like Cormac McCarthy.

Well, here I am, blog that never gets read, blog that nobody gives a hoot about. I'm still around. I'm wading through stuff and it's not over yet. I'm not even sure I've hit the shallow end on the other side yet, but I am getting there and I'm still on my feet. I wish I could say that I've been writing this whole time, but I haven't. So instead, I'll say that I'm writing again, as of right now. As soon as I take a shower and fold up my futon, I'm going to crack open Baptism and I'm going to make it sing.

Later.

I feel good, oh I feel so good (UH)

2010-11-30T22:45:00.001-08:00

The subject line is just for Emily M. M., who I don't think even knows this blog exists, but it's for her all the same.

So...yes! Big changes. Changes that will be, I think, for the best. Changes I believe I cannot discuss with the world at large yet, but about which I'm feeling positive.

I am back at work on Baptism for the Dead and will remain at work on Baptism for the Dead until it's finished. A skeptic like me doesn't see signs and/or portents anywhere, but if I weren't a skeptic, I'd be seeing them. The universe appears to have made several alignments so that working on and finishing this book will be easier or at least more fun. Of course, I'm a skeptic, so that's just confirmation bias talking. But it's still fun to have an occasional tongue-in-cheek fantasy that the universe gives two shits about my piddly little novel.

One funny portent: my friend Tim showed up at work to say hello, and informed me that I must have Baptism finished by January 30th. It was a totally arbitrary date, chosen for no reason at all, and Tim admits he has no way of enforcing the deadline. But I have a deadline, so a deadline I shall meet. There will be a few distractions along the way -- the Holidays are coming up and I expect to get writing time in on lunch breaks only just before Christmas -- and I've got to finish all the presents I'm making for my loved ones. But January 30th should still be feasible. I write fast, the book is already outlined, and I've got about 25,000 words done already. January 30th will be cake.

I've got an important phone meeting this week and I've got a fire crackling under my butt and I am SO HAPPY TO BE WORKING ON BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD AGAIN!

Who wants to read the first chapter? It's below the fold!

The first thing is the setting.

None of this will make any sense to you at all if you don’t understand where. A place is a hammer and an anvil, and a forge fire that heats the steel. And this where, this place, is what shaped me. Rexburg shaped all of us. James, me, our families, our friends. We are imprinted by this die. In my flesh, the curve of the yellow earth against a changing Idaho sky. In my heart, long wide roads between prim houses and every six blocks a church in yellow brick. In my palms, cuts from the steeples that are like swords. The scabs break open now and then. The place shaped all of us, but not X, of course. The only claim Rexburg laid on him was through me. I marked X, and I am marked by the setting.

So it’s important that you understand the setting.

The setting is the first thing.

*

The roads in Rexburg are too wide. Four lanes through the heart of town, with lines of pale-barked trees orderly in their precise square holes in the sidewalks. The sidewalks level and straight, empty but hopeful, running neatly in front of the shop fronts that sit like abandoned cardboard boxes, dull-colored with faded signs. This Space For Lease in white shoe paint flaking off a window. A kid has scratched his initials into the opaque streaked L. Now and then a car passes, a neat, polished, obedient beast of burden probably belonging to a chiropractor or a professor, too bright against the speechless dun of old brick facades and cinder-block walls. The few cars on the road move like prairie schooners, brave against the vastness of all that open space, the optimistic four-lane trail split by a turn lane.

Big warm-hued houses cling to the sides of the roads and hold hands, red rover, red rover, and out beyond them it’s isolation, picked last for the team. But the roads are the thing. The too-wide roads like flood rivers in a badland, macadam currents, lifeblood of the cottonwood stands of homes and a force deep and strong enough to sweep those stands away.

We are driving down one of those roads, X and I. The Thirty-Tree, which draws out to Sugar City and the mysterious places where the rivers and streams – the real ones, I mean, the water ones – sink into the golden sighing earth and reappear where you do not expect them. The Thirty-Three, and after Sugar City, on and on and away from this place. Ghost cars with fender fins and wood paneling join us on the highway. Their wheels are a slow-motion blur. The cars are full of obedient children and moms who forgot to take their aprons off, seen through a dissolving, particulate haze, the dreams of the pioneers who plowed these roads into the ground. Dads with neat haircuts and tidy fedoras. All transparent and color-reversed, like film. Photo negatives. Dreams dissolving into final bursts of scent and sound and golden flares of light, scattering, just before the dreamer wakes.

X squeezes my leg and accelerates past them onto flat, giddy road.

They are gone.

*

The setting is the first thing, but I’m not doing such a good job of this, am I? I should stick to just the facts.

Rexburg, Idaho. Population 18,647. College campus on the hill. Golden brick hospital with state-of-the-art maternity center. Business establishments in order of economic importance: retail, health, real estate. Ethnicity: white. Religion: Latter-Day Saint. Sex: male. Five-point-five children per household. White picket fence, dog in yard, pot roast with carrots and potatoes on Sundays. Approved housing for young ladies just off West Fourth Street.
It’s the best place in America to raise a family. No one knows who first declared this, but everybody in Rexburg believes it with the wide-eyed, breathless sensation of unbelievable good fortune that settles like a mantle over those who have won lotteries, cake walks, school raffle baskets containing expense-paid vacations to Hawaii. Virtually no crime or Democrats. I grew up here, dropped out of college here, was married and sealed to my husband here in the new temple on the hill that lights up at night like a pillar of fire. Oh, lucky me. Fortunate Lauren of Rexburg, The Best Place in America to Raise a Family.

The house I grew up in was dark red brick, two stories though only one showed above ground, and held hands on one side with a wooden rambler surrounded by crab apples and immature birches, on the other with a mustard-yellow home with mustard-yellow glass set into the front door, and in the summer mustard-yellow dandelions would bloom on its sloped bosom of lawn. Saturday mornings, my six brothers and sisters and I would eat artificially dyed cereal in our footie pajamas and watch cartoons while my parents slept in. And I don’t know what came over me one day. A premonition of my future, perhaps, and this was the only resistance a five-year-old girl could show. There was a huge heavy inelegant moss-green glazed cookie jar in the kitchen, stowed away where we couldn’t reach it by conventional means, on a white built-in shelf above the countertops. And I just couldn’t take any of this anymore. The no-skid plastic soles of my pajamas made sticking sounds and parting hisses as I left the TV room and made for the kitchen. While my brothers and sisters stayed in their cartoon world, I pulled drawers open until they formed a staircase and climbed up to the counter. I pulled the cookie jar against my chest. It was cool and pressed the metal snaps of my pajamas into my skin. I held it a moment, wondered why I had never done this before. Then I threw it out into the cinnamon air of my mother’s kitchen. There was in the TV room the sound of oversize hammers hitting cartoon cats and my siblings’ wide-eyed, green-glazed, slack complacency. Then with a roar gravity seized the jar and it hit the linoleum, the cookies and shards of pottery skittering outward in a ring, arresting in a fantastic pattern of chaos a second before my father arrived.

I was paddled, of course, but as I hung over his knee, my breath pressed out of my lungs, choking on my sobs, I became aware very slowly that my tears were less for the pain of the punishment than for the thought of all those cookies my mother had baked, ruined, inedible with shivering bits of pottery hiding among their chocolate chips and walnuts, waiting to cut up my tongue should I take a bite.

Most of the time since that morning I’ve been a good girl. I’ve done what I am supposed to do. I’ve subjected myself to the rites. I’ve observed the forms. But sometimes, in a deep and secret blue-violet inner world, the knowledge of what I really am blows like a scouring wind, strips away the hot heavy flesh of Rexburg until all my pottery bones ache with the joy of their frank, stark, dangerous form.

*

When I was fourteen, I was in love. It was the only time I felt myself in love at all during the twilight-sleep that was my life before X. I didn’t even love my husband – not like I loved that boy.

His name was, and still is, I suppose, Adam. He was fourteen, too. It was the summer before eighth grade and very windy. His family belonged to a different church ward from mine, and so he was a virtual stranger to me.

We met by wrecking our bikes. School had just let out for the last time and I was pedaling hard for home down a long quiet street where shade from very old dry-barked trees alternated with pools of white sunlight on the sidewalk. I didn’t slow as I came to the corner and the front wheels of our bikes smashed together. Adam and I both flew to the pavement. I was stunned and stinging, picked myself up carefully, brushed grit from my scraped palms. Adam said “Sh—it,” drawing out the sibilant with an accelerating warp, the sharp end of the word bursting from this mouth in a shower of sparkling spit.

He swore, so I adored him immediately.

Neither of us was badly hurt, and we walked our bikes together, talking. He was completely unapologetic about his vulgar language, either unaware or uncaring that he’d used such a foul word. I was glad. The mood would have been ruined if he’d repented.

Let me describe him for you, if I can. The memory of my childhood is all dark rust, and even he can slip away from me if I’m not careful. The way he looked is important to the story – Adam is to be resurrected not too long from now -- although it wasn’t his appearance that captivated me. He was only a little taller than me, and just as thin. His skin was as pale as mine. His hair was dark rich brown like damp earth and very straight, and I noticed right away that it was longer than other boys’ hair. That’s not to say it was actually long, of course. Male Mormons are well-groomed. A sign at the college’s dance hall: Thank you for observing the grooming and hygiene standards. He wore things Mormon boys never wear: a very tired old black t-shirt. Faded denim shorts with a rat-cuffed hem. A plaid shirt, the kind farmers wore, was lying on the sidewalk; he picked it up, shook it out, and tied it around his waist while I righted my bike. He wore glasses with crackled blue-black rims. The lenses were thick and magnified his eyes just slightly, so that they stood out with a kind of compelling intensity, each individual black lash larger and thicker than it should have been. The irises were a darker blue than was usual, and the whites of his eyes were not white, but diffuse pink, redder around the edges. The intense color of his eyes and their prominence behind his glasses made him seem all eyes, so that everything in my field of vision was cokebottle lenses and the downward mope of his gaze. When he pushed his bike beside mine and said, “I skipped school today; let’s go up onto the Bench,” my heart burst and reformed itself in one quick beat. Reassembled, with Adam at its center, it went on pumping as if nothing had happened. But I liked the sound our bicycle wheels made rolling together, and I liked the look of our two pairs of shoes stepping in unconscious unison over the cracks in the sidewalk.

The Bench is the hill, a long, high promontory that lumbers above the town, wandering meekly up from the south. It slopes easily into the white and buff homes at the northeast edge of town, its gentle grade holding the temple and university up like pennants in the sun. It’s a place for dry farming: here the avid consumer of fries and chips and mashed and baked will find the most famous of Idaho’s famous potatoes. When the spring rains come the Bench flashes briefly into glorious lime-green life, then settles back to its dry-smelling, dun-smelling slumber in mid-May, until the autumn snows set in. Aside from the potato farmers, there is no one on the Bench but the wealthiest families, and at the start of the summer when Adam and I were fourteen, the ranks of wealthy families were growing.

Construction sites pocked the spaces between clean lawns with their crab apple trees in glossy foliage. Valley-view lots were subdivided and allowed to tangle with weeds, dreaming of the backhoes that would soon dig the foundations that would hold the future rumpus rooms of return missionaries, who would come back to town to marry the girls who had waited for them. The cycle of life.

Adam and I climbed steadily up the Bench (I stopped at a gas station, called Mother to tell her I was going to pizza party at friend’s house, would not be home for dinner, don’t look for me until after sunset, would get ride home from friend’s dad). When the road leveled out, we got back on our bikes and coasted slowly, gear chains ratcheting, skinned knuckles grasping handlebars, wobbling. Startled grasshoppers clicked and glided along the road’s shoulder. We rode all the way out to the blue and white water tower that reminded us in bent block script, REXBURG, the letters like scripture engraved on a plate, held up by steel spider webs.
In the grass behind the reservoir’s cool cement wall, under the dark shadow of that water tower, Adam and I sat on the ground, ate granola bars and half a cheese sandwich from his backpack, and very nervously I held his warm soft young hand. I rested my head on his shoulder. I sighed because I felt good, better than I’d ever felt before. And as the sun dipped and darkened and the shadow of the tower passed off our faces to stretch out across the potato fields forever, I lifted his glasses off his face, looked into his sleepy dark blue eyes with all the sincere fragility of a teen-age girl, and kissed him.

Do not do anything to arouse the powerful emotions that must be expressed only in marriage.

Do not participate in passionate kissing, lie atop another person, or touch the private, sacred parts of another person’s body. Do not allow anyone to do that to you.

Do not arouse those feelings in your own body.

Oh, Adam, your hand was so kind and eager, and your tongue in my mouth….

The prophet Alma taught that sexual sins are more serious than any other sins except murder or denying the Holy Ghost.

Why? I loved you, Adam, and God made you. God made us both, like he made the grasshoppers and the Bench, like he made the colors of spring that grade into summer dull, that stifle under the thick snows of winter, temple-white.

*

In spite of all my honesty and sincerity and best efforts, I still feel I’ve failed to show you what Rexburg really is. Never mind all that about Adam and the cookie jar. It’s meaningless outside the context of the setting. X loses all of his significance, too, if you take him out of the sterile pseudo-habitat where he found me. You must understand the town in order to understand the story.

Listen:

Monday evenings the parks are deserted. Every family is at home, gathered around a game board. Dad is the banker and keeps the pink and yellow undersize dollar notes in neat little stacks. His mind is on the computer where he’s hidden all his pictures of barely-eighteen girls in a folder called “Presentation for Client Meeting.” The girls are tanned. Their breasts are sharply pointed, like precious stones cut into brilliant facets. Their eyes are brilliantly dull, their mouths half-open in expressions of lust or maybe disappointment. Mom plays the iron piece. Her hair lost all its luster years ago; it’s soft and rounded; she’ll put it in curlers tonight, like every night, and recall when she was first married, how it thrilled her to brush her hair in front of her husband, how he’d watch her do it and then come stand at her side and touch her shoulder and lead her to their bed. And she’d think, Predetermined. For all of eternity I waited for you. And now she feels guilty because she thinks about her friend’s husband with the smile lines that curve outward from his eyes across his cheeks, his bold laugh and his live eyes. Each child -- the dog, the shoe, the racecar -- they build up their fortunes and collect their cards and they think, When I grow up, I want to have a family just like this one. Just like my own.

At a Relief Society meeting, the most recently married girl shows off her two-carat diamond and hides behind her hair. Everyone has brought a dish to share; the casseroles with lids are all labeled with strips of masking tape because they all look and taste the same. The initiate samples every dish and compliments each woman on her cooking. She is thinking of her new husband waiting at home, his neat hands cradling a 7-Up in a sweating glass with ice. They were predestined. This was all arranged ahead of time. Their children wait beyond the Veil to be called forth from her body, from her beautiful young body that was made by her Heavenly Father to be a vessel for life, a gift for her husband. His feet are up on the coffee table – she can see him -- his black trouser socks are still on, just the way he looked in the pre-existence.

No – I’m not hitting the mark. You don’t see it yet.

Let me try again.

The red gem of the Gem State. I can tell you that the streets are planted with shade trees, and every summer afternoon brings a gentle thunder shower. I can tell you that all the high school boys work in the potato fields all summer, moving pipe, saving up a tithe to pay their preselected wives when they return from their requisite routine missions. I can say that the houses on the hill have open floor plans with plenty of sunlight. And all this is true. This is Rexburg, on the surface. The surface is the tense bland unwholesome skin on boiled milk.

When I was a little girl, there was a pool in the biggest park, and a bright and decrepit carousel with calliope music spun endlessly beside the pool. I swam there almost every day of every summer with my brothers and sisters. A booth in the park sold snow cones – my favorite flavor was tiger’s blood, which was all the flavors mixed together with a distinct artificial note of coconut. My mouth would stain red as I ate it, wandering the straight paths through the park, looking at the boles of paper birches where teen-agers had written their initials on the peeling bark in blue ballpoint pen. Each successive summer the old names were gone, and new names appeared in their places, same identical hearts pierced by same featureless arrows. They filled in the pool the year I turned eight, moved the carousel across the grounds to house it in a forbidding dark wood fortress that choked the music in. Where there was pale turquoise water and horseplay and summer, now there is a flat uniformity of grass, and the snow cone booth was torn down. The trees peel off their unmarked coconut bark. Every other week a few Spanish-speaking men mow the grass and rake up the stray birch leaves, and the park is all green quiet, except for the breeze that leads in the brief routine storm.

Go out from the edge of town, past the shirtless boys laboring in the fields, earning money for the wives they haven’t met yet. Go beyond the cemetery and the lush line of the creek dark with cottonwoods. Go to where the soil is still fertile but too rocky to tame, where the ground splits into fissures, then heaves, then craters. A moonscape. Lava fields. Shining college and pure white temple spire and Relief Society and Family Home Evening, shattered cookie jar, predestiny in the pre-existence: all of it sits fitfully on the dome of a shield volcano.

The planet is asleep.

But one day it will wake to the shout of a golden trumpet, and when it stirs, the town will be a vault of fire. American Pompeii: women frozen smiling identical smiles at identical electric ranges; dogs curled up in resigned arcs; men with their socks petrified on their feet.
The children, who will be the first to know that ruin has come, will leave their homes and run for the potato fields, and when the blast of heat reaches them they will be mannequins of ash, ash-blonde hair and great leaping strides, arrested in their individual patterns of chaos, a V of birds shot down in flight.

Here we go.

2010-11-26T08:08:00.001-08:00

This has been a bracing and life-changing few days, in several different respects. There is uncertainty on the horizon, but it's the fun kind, not the kind with fangs. Or it might have fangs, but they are possibly fangs of the cute variety, like a hedgehog's fangs, or a fruit bat's.

I feel totally refreshed by Thanksgiving, reinvigorated and redirected and ready to forge ahead and make some cool shit happen in my life.

Skype is an amazing invention, even if it's a bit of a bandwidth hog.

I CAN DO ANYTHING. Just see if I can't!

It's like driving nails into my own forehead.

2010-11-20T10:06:00.001-08:00

Right now I am absolutely demotivated to work on Egypt 2.0. Oddly, too, since it's right at the really fun scenes where I get to describe amazing ancient-culture pageantry and feasting and naked people dancing and also some pretty great action scenes, too. But I just want to barf all over my laptop when I think about writing it all.

It's simply not what I want to be working on right now. But guess what? THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO WRITE FOR A LIVING. You do the work you need to do and you get it done and turned in and you do your best and you shut up and write. Life isn't full of floating kittens wearing dark-rimmed glasses and riding fixies. Shit, Libbie. Stop whining and work. (Really, though, I wonder if this would be easier to get through if I was getting paid for writing this infernal book. God, I need money in the worst kind of way.)

Wait...here's the fix. I want to be known for my pretty prose and daring insights into the human condition (or something like that.) I want to be known for literary fiction. It's what I most love to read, after all, and what I enjoy writing the most. And what people praise me for the most when they read my writing. And the Egyptian books are good and fun and well crafted but they are commercial, not lit. So here's how I solve this problem: I'll publish my historical fiction under a different name.

Problem solved. Now my ass is getting to work on those fun, commercial, kooky Egyptian party scenes.

Oh.

2010-11-18T23:10:00.000-08:00

There are so many tiny moments in a given day that make me say oh, oh, oh my god, that are the reasons why I write. How can I ever tell the world about the beautiful suspense in the drawn-out moment, the too-full beer glass passing behind my head as slow as sap waking, the held breath and the stillness, even the dart-throwers downshifting, and the surface of the red beer tilts just beside my left eye, cross-section of a mobile sphere wobbling, and lips open in very slow motion to expose teeth, to drink. How can I show you if I don't write?

I don't really want to be writing what I'm writing now. I am just hedging my bets, because I want a contract and just enough money to keep me alive until I can get another contract, and then another.

What I really want to be writing is Baptism for the Dead. And then Band Geek. But I'm going to finish what I started, because it's commercial, and it might sell. I don't have much enthusiasm for it. I really just want to tinker with words and images. I don't want to stick to a formula and I don't want to be this commercial.

But I do want a contract.

But more than that, I want to show you all the little things that are worth noticing.

Dance, dance, dance.

2010-11-18T19:02:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting in the Starbucks on Phinney, killing time until my weekly writers' group starts. There is an old man -- somewhere between seventy and ninety; I can't tell -- waiting at the bar for his drink. He's dancing. Hands in pockets of black parka, head up, black-and-red Adidas, spectacles with gold rims. This is not a shuffling sort of dance. He's really moving. Purpose and complete confidence. I don't know a thing about dance so I can't identify the steps, but he knows them just fine.

I ought to learn something about dance.

Progress!

2010-11-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

Over 16,000 words now and rarin' to get going on the rest. I'm a bit sad that I have to pack up my 'puter and head out for work. But there's always the lunch break for working in more writing, eh?

In the meantime, here is the last paragraph of what I wrote this morning. My aim here is to write a fun and very commercial historical novel, and what fun commercial historical novel would be complete without a mystery that can only be solved by spying? Spying inside a royal palace? Spying via secret passageways?

Nehesi had described this passage as being the length of six men lying head to foot. Yet it seemed to take a season of blind groping to reach its end. When she drew near the passage’s terminus, Hatshepsut’s eyes became quietly, vaguely aware of a lesser blackness, a paling of the dark. She paused, strained her eyes wide open to be certain they were open at all, and stared at the colorless ghost of light. The longer she stared, the more certain she became. Here was a broken, inverse twin to what she had found in the servants’ hall: another stone door at the corridor’s end, its edges defined by the faintest trace of lamp light coming from within the lesser audience chamber.

Re-relief.

2010-11-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you know how my last blog post was all, "Oh, I'm totally on the right track now and I feel great about this" and I was planning to drink a lot of coffee in celebration?

Scratch that!

Actually, don't entirely scratch it, because I am now back on the relief-wagon and am loving my book. But between that blog post and this one, I woke up sweating in the middle of the night, with that creeping, awful feeling that I'd really doinked up some history somewhere in Egypt 2.0. And not on purpose. (Believe me, there is plenty of intentionally doinked-up history in this book, but I only want historical errors to be ones I made on purpose, in the service of telling a whopping good tale, not because I am an idiot and overlooked something.)

So I combed through the pages and pages of notes I've taken on the 18th Dynasty and on the Thutmosides. Pages amassed from my first research jag in the summer of 2007 and continuing to build to this very day. Thatssa lotta notes.

I figured it out, too, after a couple of days of anxiety. I was starting Egypt 2.0 with a fourteen-year-old Hatshepsut AND a Thutmose I still living and happy on the throne. Oops. Especially "oops" when you consider that in Bride of Amun, which I fully intend to get published some day OR DIE TRYING, I have Tut sitting on the throne a good five years before Hati is even born.

Yeah, that won't work so much. Thutmose I only reigned for thirteen years. Crap!

So I had to strike the entire rewrite of E2.0 and start over from Word Zero. Uuuugh!!!

The good news is that I love it EVEN MORE now. It opens with Tut's death (really bummed about that...I hoped to explore his character more in E2.0, as he's one of my favorite characters I've ever written). But E2.0 is about Hatshepsut, not Thutmose I, so Tut gets the boot right in the prologue. Sorry, Tut. We had a good run. We'll always have Paris. Or Waset, at least.

Since fixing that little issue, though, the rest fell into place quickly and I was able to re-use two previously written chapters, with minor tweaking. I'm up to 15,000 words and still miraculously on target to get this book completed before Christmas strikes in all its fury.

So now, please enjoy a snippet of the very beginning of Egypt 2.0. And please, for the love of Amun, feel free to suggest titles AT ANY TIME, o my blog readers. I am awful at titles and I'm getting tired of calling this one Egypt 2.0. (I can't call it "Walk Like an Egyptian," because that was Bride of Amun's working title.)

Adieu, Tut! <3<3

----

Prologue

She was only eight years old, but Hatshepsut knew death. She knew the sound of it, the smell. The moment the guardsmen with drawn faces and shadowed eyes threw open the doors of her father’s chamber, the cloying odor of holy incense and the priests’ chants, rote and resigned, brought back the last moments of her little sister’s life. Sweet little Neferubity, lost to a fever. Just as at Neferubity’s bedside, there was no timbre of urgency in these chanted prayers. The priests, the physicians – they had given up on the king. Pharaoh Thutmose, the first of his name, would not live.

Hatshepsut pulled at the grip of her nurse’s hand, could not get free, jerked like a creature in a trap, and stumbled as Sitre-In suddenly let her go.

“Hatshepsut,” the nurse said, low with a note of warning.

But Hatshepsut flew to her father’s bedside. She shoved between the royal physicians who flanked the king, and stopped abruptly at the sight of him. She had been told – her mother the Great Royal Wife had sat her down to tell her that the king had come home from his campaign in the south early. A chariot had overturned and hurt him quite badly. His injuries were serious; he may not live. The gods may choose to take him to the Field of Reeds. She had been told, but telling could not prepare her….

When the Pharaoh had left for the land of Kush, far to the south, he had been a strong man. Reaching his twilight years, yes, but still with the strength of a bull. He had been mighty when Hatshepsut and her brother had seen him off on his great warship with its pointed prow and its fierce eye like Horus’sorusHorus stare. She had stood on the wall of the quay and waved until his ship was out of sight, lost in a white-blue haze with the rest of the king’s fleet. It had been only weeks ago. How could he have returned in such a state, even accounting for his injury?

Thutmose’s face was sunken and dry, as if he already lay beneath the salts that would preserve his body for eternity. The familiar long, sharp arch of his nose and the prominent jut of his upper teeth were accentuated by his sickly state, as rough and pronounced as the first tries of a portrait carver’s chisel. His chest, once firm and flat with muscle, now caved slightly at its center. His ribs showed plain. His arms that had been like a fisherman’s knots were softened by weakness. And from beneath the cloth that covered his hips, a putrid smell rose to assert itself over the hysterical sweetness of the incense. A deep black bruise rose from that place, too, staining the Pharaoh’s skin halfway up his side.

“Amun,” Hatshepsut swore.

The king’s lips moved. On the other side of his bed, a sudden movement: Queen Ahmose, the Great Royal Wife, raised her hand in one imperious gesture. The chanting ceased at once. The king spoke again.

“Hati.”

“I’m here, Father.”

He raised one hand, now frail-looking, a weak old man’s hand. So foreign. Not the gentle, strong hand she had often held, the hand that had guided hers on the chariot reins and the bow. The hand that held her heart. She took this hand all the same, and squeezed it with all her strength so he would know she was truly at his side.

“Gods have mercy,” he whispered. “My son.”

“Your son is here as well,” said Aunt Mutnofret from her place just behind Ahmose’s shoulder. Mutnofret’s voice was musical as always, smoky, and conspicuously ungrieving. At the sound of her words, the king waved his free hand as if chasing away a fly, and Mutnofret’s eyes squinted like a cat’s in the sun. She stooped, picked up her boychild who murmured a complaint, and swept from the room. Hatshepsut paid her aunt no more heed.

“May all the gods have mercy on me, Hatshepsut.”

She didn’t know what to say. It was as if he sought some solace from her in particular, though he was surrounded by the finest priests and physicians in all Egypt. And what could Hatshepsut say of the gods’ mercy? She was eight years old. But she understood that her father was frightened. Or if not frightened exactly, then seeking some kind of comfort before he went to the underworld to set his heart upon Anubis’s scale. Some comfort that only she could give. She did her best for him. “They will have mercy on you, Father. I know it. Don’t be afraid. You’ll see Neferubity in the Field of Reeds.”

He gave her a wincing smile. “Neferubity, yes. She was a good little girl. A good daughter. I loved her. As I loved all my children, all of them. As I love you. Never doubt that.”

Hatshepsut looked down at the tiled floor, at her toes poking out from her gilded sandals. There was still dirt under her toenails. She had been playing in the garden, dressed as always in a boy’s kilt, when her nurse had rushed her inside and dressed her up like a girl to visit the king. She had known by Sitre-In’s crimped face and fast, ungentle hands that the visit would not be a good one. But she hadn’t expected this. Tears fell from her eyes to darken the tiles near her toes. She did not wipe her eyes, though. She was holding onto the Pharaoh’s hand with both of her own.

“I will never doubt it, Father. I swear it.”

“Gods have mercy.” His voice was a pale breath.

“You were a good king,” she said to him. “Anubis will find your heart light. You were an obedient king. You always did what the gods told you.”

Had she said something wrong? Queen Ahmose had visibly shifted, tensed; the Pharaoh’s hand tightened with a sudden, desperate strength.

“Annu,” Thutmose whispered. “Annu. Gods forgive me. Hati, forgive me.”

And his hand loosened in her grip, went slack. The fingers curled like a dry leaf. All at once there was a stillness to the king so complete that even a young girl could not mistake it. It was the same stillness that had fallen over Neferubity when Anubis had come to claim her.

Hatshepsut did not let go of the king’s hand. “There is nothing to forgive,” she said, too late.

Ahh. Relief.

2010-10-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

I know I'm definitely on the right track now. I like my book and my characters much better, having straightened out just where to start the story. It feels like an adult historical instead of a YA historical, and I'm eager for the story to progress. Momentum! This calls for (even more) coffee.

New Chapter One is done, and I can incorporate a whole lot of what I'd already written into the first third of this new revision. It will just require a little tweaking to update the voice. We're about to send Pharaoh Thutmose I off to be killed -- adieu, Tut! You've been fun for a book and a third, but it's time to make way for your daughter.

Here's a bit (not the last paragraph or so, but my favorite part) of what I've written today:

On a dais at the hall’s end, King Thutmose, the first of his name, filled the golden Horus Throne with his evident presence. A bright white kilt of the purest linen fell over his knees to the floor, and lying against his broad, strong chest was a glittering Eye-of-Horus pectoral, stern and staring. His lined brow bore the tall, red-and-white double crown of Egypt with a precise care, and beneath the band of the crown his beloved face, common and welcoming, broke into a grin at the sight of his daughter. Hatshepsut smiled, too. It was always a joy to look upon the Pharaoh, with his sharp nose hooked and prominent as a falcon’s beak, his great front teeth gleaming in the light of the hall’s hundred braziers. He had smiled just that way every time she’d seen him for as long as she could remember. She loved him like she loved no other.

To the Pharaoh’s left, Queen Ahmose, the Great Royal Wife, Hatshepsut’s mother, perched small and dainty on her own bright, high-armed seat. Hatshepsut’s face and figure was all of her father’s doing and none of her mother’s. What Ahmose had, Hatshepsut lacked: delicate structure, graceful curve of breast and hip, pretty face and feminine bearing. Hatshepsut’s nurse, Sitre-In, swore that the First Princess would grow to be more like her mother as time wore on. But the closer Hatshepsut drew to her own womanhood, the more she resembled her father, square and rough-cut, strong and graceless as a river-barge, despite her finery. It was Neferubity, her dear dead sister, who had taken after the queen. Hatshepsut was her father’s daughter.

“Mighty Horus,” she said formally, and bowed at the foot of the throne, palms held toward the Pharaoh. “Great Royal Wife.” She bowed to her mother, too, eyes downcast, aware of how her brightness dimmed in the presence of the queen. But she straightened again, and smiled at her father. She had no need of beauty to win his heart. He’d been hers to command from the time she was a babe in swaddling, to hear Sitre-In tell it.

I am definitely feeling better about the voice (I've made my Hatshepsut more grown up and serious in this new version), and I'm not having to fight to put in imagery. I will need to clean up sentence construction until I hit my stride and really start to feel this voice out all the way, but it shouldn't take long to get to that point.

I'm really going to miss Tut. I have personal reasons for adoring this character -- he's maybe my favorite in all my writing to date. Damn, I'm going to hate killing him off! :(

Aww, crap!

2010-10-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

I just realized I started Egypt 2.0 in totally the wrong place. Damn and double-damn! I so hate when this happens. Well, at least I realized it now, and can start afresh without the deadwood of the wrong beginning hanging around my neck.

BLAAAHHHH. I was really liking opening the document every morning and seeing a nice, high number in the bottom left corner. Now starting over from ZERO.

Okay, it'll be a nice challenge. How fast can I get back up to 30K, now that I've started the book in the right place?

Wait...when did I get 28 followers?

2010-10-26T08:05:00.001-07:00

Hi, new followers. Welcome. Why are you following me? I never update!

But that changes today. Today, I'm going to institute a new feature. I'm going to post the last paragraph I wrote each day. It'll keep me thinking about putting fresh content on this blog, and hopefully it will torment you all and make you want to read my books, so when we finally sell one, you'll be all OMG WANT TO READ IT CAN'T WAIT FOR RELEASE DATE.

First one's free. Then you gotta pay, kid.

So here's the final paragraph or so I wrote yesterday during my new energetic burst of writing-fu. (Bear in mind that this is all rough draft stuff, so parts of it are guaranteed to suck.):

Ordinarily, the sharp arc of his falcon’s-beak nose and his prominent front teeth – so distinctive and unexpected in the face of a king – made her fight to contain a smile. It was improper for the First Princess to grin like a dolt whenever her father looked her way. Today, though, she had no trouble maintaining the solemnity required by the court when Thutmose looked upon her. She straightened and dropped her gaze from his angled fierce-bird face beneath its imposing double crown. But there was no place on the Pharaoh’s person where her eyes might comfortably rest. They skittered over the glittering Eye-of-Horus pectoral on his broad chest, over his strong sun-browned hands lying still and sure on the arms of his chair, over the intense white of the long pleated kilt which fell like poured water over his knees to his sandals. And there her eyes rested at last, on the Pharaoh’s feet (and even they were like the feet of a lion), too shame-heavy to rise when the voice of Thutmose filled the room.

“Hatshepsut.”

She flinched.

“Hatshepsut, my daughter. This morning I received a report from the Temple of Amun that worried me greatly. I wonder if you can guess what this report said.”

Yeah, I'm still alive.

2010-10-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, so listen. The last three months or so have been among the most distracting and strange in my whole life. But I've gotten through them (officially, as of tomorrow) and while things aren't entirely settled, I think they're settled enough that I'm back into the swing of things and pushing forward at my old pace. Yesterday I pulled out Egypt 2.0 and wrote like my face was on fire before work, and really liked what I produced. Then all day at work I couldn't stop thinking about that book and about writing in general. I sneaked pieces of paper around in my pockets and wrote two poems clandestinely while on the clock and another on my lunch break, and I think they're all pretty decent. I believe this means I am officially Back On My Game.

Did I update with the news about Bride of Amun? Don't wet your pants -- it's not super-thrilling news (but not bad news, either.)

My rad agent Natalie (who just sold an adult historical novel earlier this month -- woot!) was not thrilled to death with the sluggish response we've been getting from the five editors who will have BoA on their desks. So she suggested we put BoA on the back burner and go full steam ahead with Egypt 2.0. E2.0 has a lot of good things going for it that can sell commercial fiction: battles, cross-dressing, secret lesbian affairs (yeah, my version of Hatshepsut is bisexual. That's what she told me she wanted to be, so I said, "Okay, Hat, you're the boss."), a plot to poison the kingqueen, and the early emergence of the Cult of the Aten, which, if you are an Egypt nerdo, will excite you and make you drool. Oh, and 150% more adultery by volume. This is basically the Michael Bay version of an Egyptian novel, whereas Bride of Amun's main strength is that the writing is really pretty. Otherwise, it's another book about two women in a rivalry to produce a royal son, which, let's be honest, WE'VE ALL SEEN BEFORE. Even in an Egyptian setting *coughMichelleMorancough*

I still believe strongly in Bride of Amun -- it's got a good story and, to toot my own horn a bit, some genuinely lovely prose. But I think Natalie is right -- it will have a better chance of selling to a really good editor who'll put a big push behind it if it follows something that's easier to sell to more people: explosions and lesbians and sex. Okay, there are no explosions in Egypt 2.0. But there is a totally sweet scene of Thutmose II getting beaned on the head with a rock thrown by a captive Nubian boy. Man, that guy is such a dick. He totally deserved it.

So the plan is to hold off on BoA and to get E2.0 finished PRONTO -- like, six weeks or less -- and start submitting that book right after the Holidays, when those acquisitions people are all fresh and chomping at the bit to acquire.

Can I write a kickass novel in six weeks? Yes. I'd better be able to, anyway. No, kidding. I totally can. I actually write much better and with greater discipline when I have a deadline. This is what will make me a badass professional writer some day. I'll be able to produce like Joyce Carol Oates (but not as depressing.) (Maybe as depressing. I can't promise anything.)

Actually, I can probably make E2.0 my NaNoWriMo project. I've already got about 20,000 words done (I had 20,000 words before but I rewrote them because I hated them), so if I get at least 50,000 done by the end of November I'll have a nigh-complete novel on my hands. Let's hear it for fast typing!

Now I just need to come up with a good working title. I can't keep calling it Egypt 2.0. I love the title Red Land, Black Land, but I think Natalie will hate it and anyway I have a friend whose graphic novel is called Red Eye, Black Eye even though it has nothing to do with Egypt so that's kind of out.

Damn! I hate titles with a passion!

Editing update.

2010-10-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

Okay. Editing the old content is, for the most part, done. I want to completely rewrite the first chapter but that can wait until I've finished the book and am ready to send it off to Natalie.

I got some new content written this morning before work, too. I'm looking forward to getting E2.0 finished and sent out into the world. I think I can do it by the end of November. If I could get it done sooner, I would...I hate the thought of it going on submission near the Holidays. It always takes so long to hear anything around that time of the year!

Oh well...onward!

Editing. Uuugh.

2010-10-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

I'm working on edits for the first 20,000 words of Egypt 2.0. Still need a title for this beast. And while I'm not dissatisfied with the first 20K words, I'm not entirely satisfied, either. I think it's mostly that I don't want to be working on my commercial fiction right now...I want to be working on my literary fiction.

But it'll be easier to sell something commercial, and the Egypt books are fun and good and well thought out and not terribly difficult to write. They're solid stories. I just need to get them all wrapped up so I can move onto the stuff that has captured my heart and mind.

I need to keep up the push and get this book finished by the end of November. If I can turn it in then, along with a completed and polished synopsis for Egypt 3.0, I should be fully justified in jumping right back into Baptism for the Dead. To sweeten the deal for myself, I'm allowing myself to rewrite Baptism as either a verse novel or a stream-of-consciousness novel...but ONLY if I get Egypt 2.0 and 3.0's synopsis done in six weeks.

Better get cracking, Libbie! Time is a-wasting.

Screw you, blog!

2010-10-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Stop making me feel guilty for never updating you! There is nothing interesting going on in my life right now, although I am now finally, as of today, only working at one job instead of two. Still, screw you! My life is complicated and difficult and I don't need you nagging away inside my brain.

Bite me, blog. Just shut up. Get out of here. I'll update you later. When I have something worth saying.

Here, you can have the poem I brought to writers' group last night. Hopefully that's enough for you.

Argiope trifasciata

We stopped to stretch our legs
above the Pendleton Gap.
The Earth was a bright stone,
the sky grading smooth from facet to facet,
turquoise, cerulean, diamond white.
We ignored the signs -- Danger: cliff edge
and climbed the barrier.
On the crest of the basalt heaves
among splinters of teasel
we lay on our backs to photograph
enormous spiders, white and gold,
fat uneven opals strung heavy
in their platinum nets.
The van ticked, cooling, beside the shelter.
Generations of names eroded out of the wood
where, like glyphs, they had been carved
by vanished travelers.

Every time I pass that way
I recall the name of the spiders,
genus and species,
the smell of dust devils dying in the valley,
the weight of your friendship
a warm stone in my palm.

Yeah, art too.

2010-09-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

I've been threatening subtly for some time to show some of my art on this blog. I vow to make good on that threat later today. I have a couple of days off work and nothing to distract me, so once I've run some pressing errands up north, I'll be back to fiddle with my pastels for a while. I've been collecting photos of city scenes and am eager to try out some pastel renderings of Seattle, The Best City in the World.

In the meantime, if you're curious about my more commercially viable but considerably weirder artistic pursuits, you can check out the model horses I paint here. The name on that web site is my old legal name from years ago, and I decided to just keep it to avoid confusing my customers who do spend a considerable sum on my horsies. It's like a pen name now. Kind of. Used for the same purposes -- to brand the product, to direct the right customer to the right purchase.

Back later with pastels.

It's not every day...

2010-09-01T17:54:00.001-07:00

Not every day you get to buy one of your favorite writers dinner and beer. Welcome to Seattle, Ted! We're glad to have you here.

And I would like to point out that Seattle is steadily accumulating all the really cool authors. In your face, New York! WESTSIIIDE!

So what YA should I be reading?

2010-08-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, party people. It's time to recommend some good YA for Libbie. Since I am still in the thrall of Good Idea that Won't Let Go, and as you know from the previous blog post it is a YA novel (damn it...I'm still kind of ticked that I am going to write YA. I've got nothing against the genre at all -- I like to read it, in fact -- but EVERYBODY is writing YA. It's like vampires and zombies. Everybody!) I need to read more YA lit.

So tell me...what should I be reading? Please recommend your favorites here. Danke!

Hello, neglected blog.

2010-08-21T16:54:00.001-07:00

I am TERRIBLE! Look at this poor neglected blog! It's awful! I haven't updated in fourteen days! Blah!

I do have a good excuse. The past couple of weeks have been more stressful than any other period in my life to date. I haven't been focused on much other than what I've needed to do to make it through each day. In the back of my head has been a little voice shrieking, "OH MY GOD, YOU NEED TO WRIIIITE!" and that little voice is absolutely correct. I've written through other stressful periods and the writing helped me stay sane.

Not that I'm insane now. But devoting at least a little time each day to my writing has been therapeutic in the past, and I could sure use some word therapy lately. So why am I not writing more? Don't know. Just stress, I suppose.

Well, I've got a carrot and a stick now that will hopefully get me back on the right track, writing every single day like I used to, and making great progress each day on my books.

I came up with an idea that just won't let go. I've been trying to sweep this idea under the rug for a couple different reasons.

1) I need to finish Baptism for the Dead. It's a damn good book and I should get it done, revised, and sent off to Natalie as soon as possible, so it has the best chance possible. Baptism has been hard to work on right now, though, because it's a really pathetic story (as in, it's heavy on the pathos) and I find it a little draining to write. I have to tap into some sometimes-unpleasant emotions to communicate what I want to communicate, and things have been so rough for me in my personal life that my brain just turns away from digging up all that dirt and sifting through it. I just want to have as much fun right now as I can have. (Un)fortunately, the fun will be cut short very soon and I'll be entering another period of mopey emo-ness, which is exactly the kind of mood that works for writing a book like Baptism. For me, anyway. I need to be feeling a little down and frowny, but not as stressed and upset as I've been feeling lately. So I predict that Baptism will come together and wrap itself up around the end of November. I'm satisfied with that.

2) Second reason why I am trying to sweep the Good Idea that Won't Let Go under the rug: I need to finish Egypt 2.0 and probably Egypt 3.0 as well. E2.0 in its unfinished form is with an editor at NAL and if they decide to buy it (unlikely, but fun to fantasize about) I want to have it ready to rock. However, largely because of Good Idea I am not feeling strong motivation to work on E2.0 and E3.0. I need to get over that. Writing isn't an opportunity to lollygag and dick around. This is a career -- or I want it to be. Deadlines will happen. Expectations need to be met. I need to stop screwing around and finish these two historical novels -- they're good stories, anyway, and I really like them. So I need to finish them and stop thinking so muh about Good Idea.

3) Okay, so there are three reasons. The third reason why I've been avoiding Good Idea as much as possible is a really stupid reason, but one I can't ignore. Good Idea is a YA novel with a male protagonist. That's basically what everybody is writing right now, isn't it? I hate the idea that I'd be jumping on a bandwagon of sorts. But if the past couple of weeks have taught me anything, it's that you can't predict when good things will come to you, and it's stupid to shut them out just because the timing isn't technically right, or because everybody else is doing it, or whatever stupid reason I might come up with.

Good Idea is a good idea, and I should write it and enjoy it.

I was rather liking being one of only two of my agent's clients who DOESN'T write for kids. But to hell with it! YA is fun, and I don't have to become Officially A YA Author. This could be a one-shot thing, written under a different pen name...I need to just loosen up and go with the flow.

Maybe working on Good Idea, which is generally going to be an upbeat and happy book WITH A HAPPY ENDING (rare for me, I know) will put me into a better frame of mind and get be back into writing with greater focus and drive.

Yeah, I've just gotta go with this, and see where it takes me. I'll outline it, at least, and then see if I can't get E2.0 finished up by the end of September. Should be do-able, and getting that chore out of the way will make me feel a lot better about myself.

This post was long, and you didn't care much about it, I know. Here's a tidbit: Working title for Good Idea is Band Geek, and it's going to be based on my REAL ACTUAL TRUE ADVENTURES in the high school band. And believe me, these were some serious adventures. My high school band was INSANE.

Back to work, Libbie!

2010-08-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Life has bee extremely rocky lately. Rocky and surprising and sad and strange. But good, on the whole. Good.

The bad thing is that I haven't been writing, except for a poem a day, which I'm grateful for -- at least it's SOME practice daily, however brief. That's over with today, though.

I had a good talk with a friend about where Baptism is going, and it's made me think harder about the theme(s) I want to put into this book. In order to do it right, I need to finish reading a nonfiction book before I proceed with Baptism, take copious notes, and determine what from history I need to secretly weave into the manuscript. I'll need to set aside some reading time daily to get through this long book, but it'll be worth it.

In the meantime, in order to clear the cobwebs from my brain I'm going to return to the commercially fun Egypt 2.0 (still trying to think of a decent title for that one!) and hammer out as much as I can before inspiration re-ignites for Baptism.

The summer is getting close to being over, and I want to get as much accomplished during this season as I can. Time to get back to work with a vengeance.

What a weird week.

2010-07-31T13:41:00.001-07:00

This week has been...odd. Just odd. And I haven't done nearly enough writing. I'm going to take care of that tonight after work. Write, Libbie! Write!

Head-shrinking

2010-07-23T16:13:00.001-07:00

Today my shrink brought up an interesting observation that I've never examined before. I write -- or, really, I use language as a tool, whether it's written or spoken -- as a means of controlling my environment. I have little control over the world at large, as is the case for most humans. But I have complete control over what I create, and what I say. And I learned at a very early age that words have power over people.

Words are not just my craft, but the rudder and keel of my craft. And my hand is always on the tiller. Words do what I want them to do (most of the time) and that is my power over my world.

Interesting.

Don't you hate it when...?

2010-07-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a book takes over and bitch-slaps you and makes you do it the book's way.

Baptism for the Dead has always wanted to be in present tense. I tried to write it in past tense since that tends to be easier to sell, but the book is not giving any ground. When I allow myself a little deviation and go with present for a few paragraphs or a couple of chapters, some mighty delicious prose and a really fascinating plot just come ripping right out of me. When I rein it in and go back to past tense, I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall that has a whole bunch of outy-facey spikes on it.

I am just about to hit 20,000 words. I've been working on this book since May. I should be closer to 60,000 words by now. I think if I keep it in present, my productivity will increase dramatically.

Present tense it is. You got it, boss.

I think by this point we can safely affirm

2010-07-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

that my resolution to update every three days has been a failure. Oh well.

I have been sticking to my writing, though. Not only am I making progress on Baptism for the Dead (even trying some experimental stuff I've never done before with writing...and liking it! We'll see whether it stays after revisions, though) but I am writing a poem a day and posting them on Facebook.

I only recently became interested in poetry, due in large part to the influence of my writers' group (from which I am taking a brief hiatus -- hope to be back soon). Most of the participants write poetry and their enthusiasm for it has infected me a bit. I've been reading a lot of it lately, and I've tried my hand at it with moderate success. I believe I've written something like twenty poems by this point.

The thing I like about poetry is that it forces a writer to convey mood or image in as few words as possible. I am all for embellished, drawn-out writing -- I love juicy writing and I'll gladly drool all over it -- Fitzgerald, Nabokov, etc. -- and I've never really gotten into the prose writers who are famous for their concise style (Hemingway, etc.). I mean, just look. I put three em dashes in the preceding sentence, for corn's sake. But I need to learn to write in a short, spare style, too. I think a writer can never have too many gadgets in her toolkit.

Poetry -- reading and writing -- has been an excellent teacher for me. I feel that I am getting better and stronger and faster (read: more confident) with poetry, much like Bicentennial Man. My word choices are becoming more precise and easier to decide upon, I'm paying much greater attention to devices such as internal rhyme, repetition, consonance, and how words will sound when read aloud -- and of course all this carries over into my prose-writing. I am feeling so good about the impact poetry has made on my prose that I would like to suggest that any of you reading this blog who are also writers should make a serious attempt at learning how to a) appreciate and b) write poetry. A good start for me was Steve Kowit's book In the Palm of Your Hand.

Stepping up my game and writing a poem a day has been a wise move for me. I've only been at it for five days, but it's kept me more focused on writing in general (I should say even more focused) and it has made me spend more of my non-writing time musing over words and images. What will make a good poem for today? What am I feeling right now? What imagery is sticking in my head? What do I want to make readers feel? All day, not just when I sit down to hammer out my daily quota of words.

It's not so much discipline as neurosis, really.

Anyway, I might decide eventually to post my daily poems here. That would make me focus a little more on writing some kind of content for the blog. We'll see. In the meantime, if you feel like following me on Facebook, you'll have to do so under my "real" name, Libbie Mistretta (note: not technically my real name, either.) I mostly whine about my writing on Facebook, and/or post silly links, and/or update my wordcount for whatever novel I'm working on.

Well, okey-dokey.

2010-07-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

The synopsis for Egypt 2.0 (still no title for that thing!) and the first 20,000ish words are with an editor at NAL. To recap: I am not expecting a sale, but I am flattered that they requested an unfinished novel, and excited to see what they have to say about it.

Waiting is hard!

Back to work on Baptism.

Putting some pep in my step

2010-07-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

Things have been wild for me lately, but I am back to pouring every spare ounce of effort into Baptism for the Dead. I'm really excited about this book and want to get it finished, revised, and turned in to my agent as soon as I can.

I've been struggling throughout the first quarter of the book, getting down a meager 1000 words a day (sometimes less!). Considering I usually write a minimum of 2500 a day, sometimes twice that, this has been somewhat discouraging for me. However, yesterday I found my groove and wrote 3600 words. I'm hoping today will be similarly productive. The book has wrapped up its setting and character development (stop cringing -- it's necessary in a novel that relies heavily on atmosphere, and in which the antagonist is the prevailing culture of an entire Idaho town) and is now starting to get into the part where the action really begins.

I'm a bit wary of this book. I have some pretty serious emotional investment in it. It is hard to write in some parts. It's harder to write it and to know that some of the things I have to say might offend people I care about. But I feel compelled to write it anyway, and I feel certain it's a story that needs telling. I don't think I have the power to change an entire culture. But I might have the power to touch a few individual hearts and minds, possibly to offer some comfort to people who are hurting or angry. And I know for a fact that the story I want to tell, although fictional, is true. There are people who go through what my characters will experience. There are people who live these lives. And I want to make others aware. I guess that's a task I can do. I take it seriously, and I hope I do it well.

The adage goes, "Fiction is lying to tell the truth." Ain't that the truth.

I'm here.

2010-07-09T06:58:00.001-07:00

I'm still alive. I'm still writing.

Vacation day is here at last!

2010-07-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

I am heading out for a three-day weekend on Lopez Island in the San Juans. Ahhhh...really looking forward to it. I'll be there with the people from my weekly writers' group (this is the annual summer retreat, apparently, where nothing much is done other than steak-eating, wine-drinking, and Boggle/Scrabble tournaments. Sounds like just the thing.)

I may or may not have internet access. So if I don't, I'll update after Monday.

Woot!

Warning: This Blog Post Has Nothing to Do With Writing.

2010-07-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

I am making cookies right now. Double-chocolate cookies. Then I am going to eat them. I anticipate deliciousness.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Inching toward a better job...?

2010-06-29T07:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was trained to do some very basic penguin care. Exciting, because I hope this means they're already considering me for a position that *might* open up toward the end of the summer. Not exciting because a) I hate fish prep more than anything -- seriously, I would rather clean and skin rodents than do fish prep, and this fish is herring so these evil little scales get all over everything, including me; b) penguins stink like hell. But still, I'll take it.

Said position probably won't give me more hours and won't give me any benefits, but it will pay me almost twice what I'm making now, which would be an enormous help and a huge relief. Anyway, that position all depends on whether the gal currently working it moves. She's seriously considering it, but you never know. I'd love to have that job -- it would entail more responsibility and a whole lot more BIRDS! Woohoo!! Plus it would get me a step closer to grabbing a permanent, full-time position with benefits.

Between work and my much-alluded to "personal problems" I have had a hell of a time keeping myself writing. This morning, I have a critique to send to somebody and then I am going to see if I can't get in a good 1500 words. I really want to get Baptism for the Dead finished by the end of the summer, which I should be able to do handily if I just stay focused! I still love the book but I am allowing outside forces to drive me away from my disciplined writing routine.

If I can't get those 1500 words done this morning, I'll do them after I'm home from work, Hell or high water.

Oh, and here is a fun fact: some Humboldt penguins like to get hugs. :D

Resolution Fail!

2010-06-27T07:54:00.001-07:00

Ack! Has it really been six days since I last updated? I blame house-sitting for this breach of commitment. It's distracted me. That, and all the personal shite I'm dealing with at present. My road-o-life is not just rocky right now, it's pitted with enormous potholes and also there are some downed trees across its breadth. This makes daily travel difficult, but I am determined to find a way through.

I had a good weekend with some of my closest friends. I love my friends -- they really keep me sane and focused and happy. I have not done much writing lately, which burns me big-time, but my personal struggles have really overcome my energy and are kicking my ass pretty hard. Gotta shake that off, though. What do writers do? They write.

I will find time to write today, and tomorrow, even though I've got two different seldom-seen family members in town for visits and need to get a whole bunch of stuff done in preparation for my sorely-needed vacation next weekend. Writing will be a priority starting right after breakfast. Back on the ball, back on the chain gang. Can't sell books if I don't finish them.

Speaking of my vacation, I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this. I am dirt-poor, so it's nothing fancy -- just going to Lopez Island with some friends to get away from the stresses at home and recharge my brain in a peaceful setting for a few days. I fully expect it to be glorious.

Okay. This post doesn't make much sense, I know, but I am trying to stick to my commitments and keep up with a routine, especially as concerns my writing. That will help keep me from becoming too depressed and/or distressed. So here's a blog post. Make of it what you will.

Go write!

Why you even gotta do a thing?

2010-06-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

Man. Don't go through what I'm going through. Don't do it. It's no fun at all.

That's my personal crap, though. On the writing side of the coin, things are all shiny and spit-polished.

I'm making unbelievably rockin' progress on Baptism for the Dead. Hooray for outlining! It's still some of my strongest writing ever (I feel, anyway...we'll see what other people think, such as my agent). I have partnered up with my friend Lori to exchange 2500 - 3000 words every Tuesday for critique, and this has been no problem for either of us to meet since we both write at least that much daily. It is, however, keeping us very focused and giving our brains something to do other than write.

Which brings me, apparently, I suppose, to the topic for this slightly-overdue blog update. We all know that it's important to have your own work read and criticized by others. But did you know that's just as important for you to do that reading and criticizing of others' works? Not only because this is a bit of an exchange system -- you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Without readers/critics, the system collapses. But also because it's fantastic practice for your own self-editing. When you become able to quickly identify problems and solutions in writing, you gain the amazing superpower to do so not only with others' words, but with your own.

Of course, it takes a lot of practice. And of course, it's not failproof. You'll still probably need to get regular readings of your work from sources you trust to rip it to delightful shreds and then put them back together.

That's it. That's all I've got. Now I'm going to eat some chocolate eclairs while I get my daily writing done. I have just enough time for 2500 words before I have to run to work.

One (or two) liners

2010-06-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Somebody on AbsoluteWrite started a thread on "The 100 Best Last Lines of Novels" yesterday. I was thrilled to find there the last two lines of Lolita, my favorite book (yes, I have a single favorite...with many, many second-favorites that come very close to matching the magic of Lo).

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

It got me to thinking with some surprise how much that image and those words have influenced my current WIP (Baptism for the Dead, that is, since I'm in the very new position right now of kind of having two WIPs going at once -- something I "never" do, except for when I do, apparently). The idea of two people forming a connection and creating a permanent relationship via art, even though the actual relationship itself will probably come to an end, is one of the more important themes in Baptism. I wonder, reading the last lines of Lolita, whether this idea was seeded in my mind by the brilliant closing of Nabokov's brilliant book, or whether I am merely noticing an interesting coincidence. I have read Lolita probably a dozen times throughout my life; I can recite the entire first chapter (it's a short one) from memory. Who knows.

Anyway, opening lines are often lauded, and with good reason, although I've never been one to flip right to the first page of a book to decide whether to buy it. I sample from the middle when test-driving books, and often read the last few paragraphs, too. Spoilers don't spoil it for me.

But closing lines are seldom discussed.

So I'm curious. What powerful opening and/or closing lines have made a big impression on you?

(Edited to add: I have officially reached my pinnacle on the internets. I cannot possibly top this.)

Revisions

2010-06-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

Give me a machete -- I'm cool with it. I don't mind chopping out whole chunks of my books. And I do it fast, too.

Natalie gave me some really astute notes on the pages we're planning to send to NAL. That woman has a brain for books. She's so right in all her notes. Per her suggestions, I've spent the last two hours cutting the first 20,000 words of Egypt 2.0 to bits (I might give this one a serious working title -- I'm thinking Daughter of Amun -- it goes with Bride of Amun, but maybe that's too matchy-match). Now it's time to patch it all back together. I'm also going to write an additional chapter to bring the wordcount back up to 20K, since that's what she told NAL she'd give them.

I've never been the type of writer to balk at extreme revision. Nor have I ever quailed at a critique. I'm not entirely sure why this is -- it's not as if I don't put as much sweat and blood and tears (literally on the tears part) into my writing as anybody else. Any scene for which I've had to tap into my real painful memories -- whatever they may be -- brings up fresh tears when I read it again, no matter how many times I read it. Any scene that hurt me to write hurts me to re-read.

In BoA, when Thutmose loses his cool and brutalizes Ahmose, I get a cold fist in my gut each and every time I read it. I remember when I wrote it, how hot it was in Tacoma, sitting by the window AC unit and shivering not from the cool air but from what I was doing to this character. I love my Thutmose, he is so gentle and understanding, so sweet and kind -- but I couldn't stop the story from taking him to this dark, terrible place, and turning him into a monster I never planned for him to be. It was his grief that took him there, and I had to feel his grief in myself in order to know that this was the most authentic situation I could create for him. That scene stayed in the book, but if I'd been told by a wiser, more detached voice to cut it, I would have, no matter how powerful the scene still feels to me.

And Baptism for the Dead -- forget about it. That whole book has been nothing but a cryfest for me, it's so close to my heart. Once the first draft is done, though, I know I won't hesitate to edit or change or remove anything that doesn't serve the story. As near as that story is to the core of my self, it remains in my estimation a product I'm creating, a product I want to sell, a product I want to use to hook returning customers. I am, in fact, looking forward to notes for Baptism, so I can figure out how to trim the emotional fat and streamline my very raw feelings into a useful product.

Maybe that's the thing I like to much about revisions. some writers think I'm odd or detached because I am so quick to make any cuts that are suggested by those I trust. I know it's rather unusual for a writer to feel so little hesitancy about obliterating hundreds or thousands of tens of thousands of words she's worked so hard on, chosen so carefully. But maybe I have an instinctive voice that tells me I've made too many trees to see the forest, and it's pleasant to allow somebody else to choose for me which parts of my emotional outbursts deserve to stay and which can go into the round file.

I can always scratch up some fresh pain to tap later on, after all. There's always more to come. The nice thing about writing is we never stop doing it, so what do a few machete-hacks matter in the long run?

It's too late for this kind of thing, really.

2010-06-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

About half my life ago, my friends and I would spend our weekends at a cabin on the shore of Lake Cavanaugh. It was almost always cold, and more often than not it would rain, but we always went. There was a sauna, hand-built out of old cedar shakes, with two tall windows that looked down on the lake and a pot-bellied stove with a train wheel on top, and in the wheel, rocks cracking under a dipper full of water. We took off all our clothes, boys and girls, laid on our backs on the benches and told stories. It was dark inside. The whiteness of our skin took in and reflected back what little light came off the evening lake. Glowing pale bodies with lost edges in the steam. Sometimes we sang songs, listless fainting songs that trailed off mid-chorus because of the heat. Mostly, we bared ourselves in front of each other and just lay still, feeling the comfortable proximity of one another's nakedness.

One time I remember so well -- after the sauna, we dared each other -- I dare you, jump in the lake. It was black night, very cold, clouds moving fast over shifting stars. We walked down to the shore. The mud sloped into the water. I went in thigh-deep, and stood hugging myself against the cold. J__ kept going past me, laughing as the chill bit into him. And just before he dove in, he turned back to look at me. I was shivering, I was covered in goosebumps, but I knew that what he saw was beautiful: The curves of my form, the paleness, the night sky over me and a forest of blackness behind me. In that moment I was certain that he loved me. And maybe for that moment, he did.

When we came out of the water, wool blankets and sleeping bags by the fire to warm our bodies. Nylon-stringed guitar singing somewhere behind me. J__ stood across the fire from me. We saw each other, perfectly and wholly, in the red-orange light. We opened our blankets to let the fire's heat in.

There is something to say here. There is a point I'm trying to make; I just can't find the right words. All I have are pictures to play with. I can line up little images and hope you get the idea, but why can't I ever put my most important thoughts into simple, easy words?

There are these moments in life.... Life is so short, and most of it we forget. Most of it we never really see in the first place. And once we're gone, we're gone. Our brains, our minds, or memories.... Gone. All that exists is what we observe and remember now. All that is real is whatever we take the time to recognize, to meditate on, to accept, to describe.

I drove to Lake Cavanaugh alone one night. I'd had a bad fight with my mother. I just wanted to be with my friends, the people who saw me and understood me. The people who accepted me. It was spring. The rain was coming down hard. I was all tucked up inside myself, sad, so focused on being sad and so unable to do anything else. I came down a dip in the road. My headlights fell on hundreds and hundreds of moving dots. In the blur of the rain it took me several seconds to identify them -- frogs. Maybe a thousand frogs or more, black and slick, going from one side of the road to the other. The rain had set them moving. They traveled with such certainty across the road, directed by some secret so powerful and primal it overcame me, pulled me right out of myself. I stopped and watched them for a long, long time.

And then I realized I'd have to go through them. There were thousands of frogs; they'd keep coming all night. I couldn't wait for them. I edged my car forward as slowly as it would go. I figured they'd hop out of the way of my tires if I just gave them enough time. I didn't feel anything crunch under my tires so I figured I'd made it -- I'd passed through their magic hollow on this obtrusive, offensive human road without harming them. Our paths had crossed, the frogs had erased my pain, and I was grateful. My thanks to them was that I'd respected them enough to go slowly, and spare their lives. But a few days later I found a frog's dessicated body stuck to the bumper of my car, and I cried for hours. Seldom in my life have I felt as badly as that dead frog made me feel. I still ache and cry when I think of it.

All right, so that one wasn't so clear. Let me approach it from another angle.

These frogs will always be with me. Especially the one I killed. Until the moment I die, they'll be inside me. I really saw them. I really was there, in that moment, with them -- and I was there afterward, when I pulled the dead frog off my bumper and wept over its broken, bent little body.

If we're not fully engaged, if we are not awake to the moment and thinking and observing and really seeing, we miss so much and there is so much to miss. When you hiked alone among the rock fins, and found the spot where perhaps seconds before a kit fox had urinated -- and the two of you were the only living things under the fast-moving sky. When you climbed the table rock at Dry Falls, and J__ pulled you up the final stretch with his good hand. The man who sat across the table from you and talked in a voice that was all wet ocher and honey-in-a-jar. And his voice dipped down out of your hearing so you only caught a handful of his words, but it was okay, just fine, because you saw the tremor in his eye when he tried to stop himself, again and again, from looking at your mouth.

This is the only short and sweet life you have. But it's not enough to just know that. You have to really expose yourself to yourself. Expose yourself to others. When you find a person who sees you naked (this is me, the dark little moles against skin that burns but doesn't tan -- the white scars -- the lake, the frog on the bumper) be glad, be brave, be grateful.

Didn't even have to use my AK.

2010-06-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have such a great day that you wonder if it's even possible that any day could ever get any cooler.

Vegetarian Pattern Baldness

2010-06-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

I admit it: I have not been particularly vigilant about my diet of late. Due to ethical obligations, I stopped consuming commercially raised animal products about a year ago, which makes me effectively a vegan at restaurants and a vegetarian most of the rest of the time, although I am technically neither, since I don't have any problem with actually eating meat -- only with treating living beings as production units who are incapable of suffering.

On top of that, since learning how incredibly destructive and resource-heavy feedlots and commercial dairies are, I've been even more reluctant than usual to support factory farming. If you are worried about doing your part to put a dent in BP's profits, don't cut back on your driving, cut back on your steaks and spare ribs. It makes a much, MUCH bigger difference.

I don't have the income at present to buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat, so I've been living off of fruits, veggies, and rice. And chocolate, of course. While I find this delicious and gastronomically satisfactory, it has apparently had some impact on my health. My hair is thinning. Like, whoah. It's a little scary, in fact. I'm thirty and I'm going bald.

Thank goodness for research. I've learned that in women of my age, hair loss is nearly always due to iron deficiency -- and what is the biggest cause of iron deficiency? Not eating meat. Damn. Of course, you can still get lots of iron from a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I haven't been eating with my iron needs in mind, so I undoubtedly have failed miserably to do that over the past year. My hair is punishing me for this. In any case, eating humanely has to be done carefully -- iron-rich non-animal foods are out there, but their iron is less accessible to the body, and there are some tricks to making full use of it, such as eating iron-rich foods with vitamin-C-rich foods (no problem for me -- there's nothing I'd rather drink with any meal than a big fat glass of grapefruit juice). Oh, and both soy and caffeine inhibit the body's absorption of iron. Good-bye, grande soy caramel sauce lattes. :'(

Heme iron -- the kind found in animal sources -- is the simplest for the body to access. No special tricks needed, no calculators, no graphs, no grapefruit juice -- just eat a steak. A delicious, juicy, medium-rare steak with bleu cheese and worcestershire sauce. Mmmmmmm.

Knowing all this doesn't help me keep at bay the monstrous craving I've had lately for meatloaf and barbecued ribs. Dear god, I need my books to sell SOON so I can buy a chest freezer and a quarter of a nice, happily raised, humanely killed cow.

In any case, I've started taking iron supplements (again -- this happened to me once before. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson) and seeking out iron-rich veggies and vitamin C. Hopefully in six months or so I'll have thicker hair and I won't look like a granny, getting all thin and wispy around the crown.

This is not good for my image. There is nothing sexy about balding lady writers. I bet Joyce Carol Oates never went bald. She probably yells at a steak every day and then writes a novel in its steak-juices, though. SIGH.

At least the sun is finally, FINALLY shining today. We've had the most disappointing summer ever. We wait for nine months to get a little sunshine, and so far we've been denied until this late into the season. I knew last night that today would be a good day, because I saw the stars come out for the first time in months. It's making me feel hopeful -- about my hair, about my writing, about everything.

Audiobook time!

2010-06-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

Ahh...nothing like downloading a new audiobook to cheer me up. I am currently acquiring This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald) to listen to while I paint. In the bull pen is Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Several of my friends have been singing the praises of Murakami and I haven't read any of his works yet, except for one short story which was weird and very good and a little bit sad. Just the kind of writing I like.

I am a voracious consumer of audiobooks -- in fact, it's only recently that I've gone back to reading the traditional way with any regularity. I'm not sure why this is -- maybe it has something to do with my short stint as a bookseller. Audiobooks are my usual schtick, though -- I listen to them while I'm driving, at the gym, jogging, and while doing any kind of artistic activity. When I don't have a book to listen to, it's the podcast of PRI Selected Shorts or other short-fiction podcasts, and when those run dry I turn to This American Life and The Moth. I am a story addict -- what can I say?

I've got a subscription at Audible.com (highly recommended!) and take full advantage of it. My iPod gets a good workout every day.

If you've never done the audiobook thing, you don't know what you're missing!

Some Nabs to ease my aching heart

2010-06-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

"Okay," she said co-operatively, and bending toward her warm upturned russet face somber Humbert pressed his mouth to her fluttering eyelid. She laughed, and brushed past me out of the room. My heart seemed everywhere at once. Never in my life -- not even when fondling my child-love in France -- never --

Night. Never have I experienced such agony. I would like to describe her face, her ways -- and I cannot, because my own desire for her blinds me when she is near. I am not used to being with nymphets, damn it. If I close my eyes I see but an immobilized fraction of her, a cinematographic still, a sudden smooth nether loveliness, as with one knee up under a tartan skirt she sits tying her shoe.

(Ahh. I know. I know.)

I'm an outliner.

2010-06-08T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am most definitely the type of writer who needs to outline. I can fiddle around for a few weeks with writing random scenes and random moments of character development, but sooner or later, the not knowing exactly what will happen to my characters starts to freak me out. I MUST outline.

I am happy to say that I did finally work up a good outline for Baptism for the Dead today, at last! it's been around six weeks since I started working on this novel. That's the longest I've ever gone without outlining and then making serious, concentrated progress. These have been very frustrating weeks for me. I feel drifty and fuzzy without my outlines.

The nice thing about the process of writing an outline is that I see the story actually happen in little short scenelets, like small clips from a movie. As I look back at the outline and expand each part into a chapter or a scene, I am able to replay and revise and embellish the scenelets into whole cinematic spans, and I simply write down what I see. Easy cheesy.

Best of all, as I work on the outline the final scene forms in my head, and I am a "write to the end" writer. Once I know exactly how the story ends, and can see that moment of catharsis and resolution playing on a loop in my brain, the stuff between the title page and that last scene practically writes itself.

Outlining is the key to my speed and efficiency. I love it.

Are you an outliner, or a by-the-seat-of-your-pantser (more commonly called a pantser)?

These are a few of my favorite things...

2010-06-07T09:25:00.001-07:00

A long dry spell, and now two updates in a single day! Just a quick note to note that I have expanded the links lists on the left sidebar...more books I love and recommend to you, broken into user-friendly categories. Please feel free, friends, to recommend me more books! I am especially interested in reading more excellent short-story collections and more poetry collections. But any and all recommendations are welcome!

We can always read more, amirite?

Resolution.

2010-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

I resolve to update this blog no less than every third day. I am resolute.

I've had a copy of Tender Is the Night sitting around for quite some time and never delved into it. I don't know why, since The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorites and I swoon over Fitzgerald's prose.

I finally started reading Tender Is the Night, and I find that the story speaks to me and the position in which I find myself currently in a very direct and startling way, which is exactly what happened when I read Gatsby for the first time as an adult.

(I firmly believe that any teen-age assigned reading of that book doesn't count -- one must have experienced adult love and loss in order to understand what is going on in Gatsby. That's not to belittle the reality of youthful love and loss -- those are just as poignant, but in a totally different way.)

Now, since both The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night deal to a greater or lesser extent with adultery, let me point out that I am not cheating, nor would I ever. I don't respect that kind of behavior in anybody, and would especially not respect it in myself. It's more the unique perspectives the characters in both books have on relationships that affect me so deeply -- that, and Fitzgerald's moving, delicate, incisive prose.

Have you ever had the experience of picking up a book that was just right for your emotional situation? What was it about the book that spoke to you?

I have the best intentions...

2010-05-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

...yet somehow I never manage to update my blog. Sorry 'bout that.

Well, here we are in the midst of the good ol' Memorial Day weekend. True to my word, I finished revisions on the synopsis for Egypt 2.0 (working title only, don't worry) and sent it back to Natalie "before the weekend." Alas, "before the weekend" ended up being 7:40 p.m., after she'd already left the office. Waah-waah-waaahhhhh.

Here's hoping NAL enjoys it. I am not expecting to make a sale from a partial novel and a 1900-word synopsis -- if it did happen, I'd take four poops and die -- but I am hoping for another encouraging rejection.

In the meantime, I am having a little bit of fun being dirt poor. Life is different, that's for sure. Before the recession, between my husband and myself we were making an extremely comfortable living. Now we have about sixteen dollars between the two of us (don't ask -- it's a very sore spot) and are fighting for unemployment insurance from the government. It's tiring, but it is making me resourceful. And it's making me feel awfully proud that I'm able to survive such tough times, too.

Part of my plan to survive is to put my vast collection of art supplies, amassed during my richer times, to work for me. I've begun practicing portraits and will soon be offering them on commission. Hopefully Craigslist will provide me with some cash for my art. At the same time, I'll be putting together an impromptu illustration portfolio and will begin pimping myself out to small presses to do cover art. Between portrait work and what I imagine will be an occasional job doing the odd book cover here and there, it should be enough to keep myself afloat until I can get a job at a book store again.

I'm working only about 8 hours per week at the zoo, on average, and while it's a great job, it's obviously not enough to keep me going. Unemployment insurance makes up for the rest, but just barely -- and it won't hold out forever. I've had to go without some things, too, such as health insurance. Yikes! Happily, the book store where I worked as a temp this past Christmas season has a couple of openings. It will be a week or two before I hear more about it, but it looks hopeful. Even if the openings never materialize after all, because of the way this particular company does business, openings at other store locations should form within a month or less.

So with a little luck, art will keep my head above water until I'm back at a book store. Then I'll be in the odd position of working two jobs at once again, but the zoo job is short, easy, and fun, so it doesn't really feel like work. ;)

Art won't feel like work, either. I come from a long line of artists, after all. It's in my blood.

...and back to Egypt we go!

2010-05-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Well, well! The past 24 hours have been a buzz of memorable activity in Libbieland.

Item 1: A bird pooped in my eye for the first time ever; I had to clean out my eye with potent alcohol wipes. This is not an experience I recommend at all, my friends. Not only is it patently gross for an animal to defecate directly into one's eye, but swabbing your eyeball with alcohol hurts like the dickens. However, I know enough of my profession to know that bird feces + mucous membrane = zoonotic disease. I'm not sure WHAT kinds of zoonosis might be contracted via eyeball, but I wasn't about to find out. Being around birds is generally safe for healthy people, but coming into such intimate contact with bird poop is generally not. I was quick to stick a disinfectant wipe in my eye, though, so I am not worried.

To those of you who think zoo keeping is all snuggling baby animals and frolicking in khaki, I am really not kidding when I say it's about 90% dealing with feces. The other 10% is wiping your eyeballs out with alcohol.

Normally, such an experience would be enough to ruin my day. However, just minutes before having my eye rudely bombed, I received an interesting email from Natalie, the Most Awesome Agent Ever, which brings me to

Item 2: Several days back, we received a very encouraging, very complimentary rejection of my historical novel from NAL. They said they liked my writing and liked certain aspects of the book, but didn't love the middle part, which was enough to cause them to pass on it. They did, however, invite Natalie to send along anything else I'd written. Wow! Very complimentary indeed! I was quick to let Natalie know that I don't have any other novels completed, but I do have a literary novel partially written (needs a lot of work, though) as well as the synopses for two more Egyptian historicals, plus about 20,000 words of Book 2 (which I have given the working title Egypt 2.0).

I sure as heck didn't expect they'd be interested in reading any of that. They were, though. The editor requested the synopsis and completed pages for Egypt 2.0. And I basically floated around on a Natalie Fisher-shaped cloud of joy for the rest of the day. Even the eyebomb couldn't sour my mood.

Now, I am not expecting that NAL will want to buy my unfinished historical novel just based on a synopsis and a bit of preliminary writing. That kind of thing really only happens with established authors who've already proven readers are willing to shell out cashola for their stories. I am taking this for exactly what it is: a wonderful compliment and a very fun and memorable feather in my cap. It is extremely encouraging that an editor at a major house is willing to look at my unfinished book, and all I'm expecting to get out of this is encouragement and a little much-needed revving of my motor.

That being said, I am going to spend the day polishing the hell out of those 20,000 words and the synopsis. Then I'm going to write up a cover letter that my agent can choose to send or not, as she sees fit, describing recent discoveries in Egyptology that bear on Hatshepsut's life, and pointing out the reissuing of Pauline Gedge's Child of the Morning. Now is, I believe (though I do have limited knowledge of the industry) a good time to be marketing a novel about Hatshepsut. So even though I don't expect NAL to buy Egypt 2.0, I am still going to use everything in my skill arsenal to convince them!

This is a good time to reiterate my feelings about agents. If I were another person observing the early development of the career of Libbie Hawker, this incident alone would be enough to convince me to put the time and effort into obtaining a really good agent. Natalie is serious, driven, intelligent, and working for a major agency, which is an indicator that she's the real deal. She has a personality that clicks with my own; we work together well. She has taste in writing that is similar to mine. This door to NAL is one that would never have opened for me if not for Natalie's influence. Whether the book sells to NAL or not, this is an opportunity I couldn't have had without an agent. And this is only one of the many wonderful things my agent has made happen for me.

I hang out enough on Absolute Write to know that fiction writers are split by two camps. Some think agents are the only way to go. Others seem to be rebelling against the current "trend" (I believe it's not a trend but a sea change) of needing an agent to break into fiction. They want to do it without an agent. Or they've received a few rejections from agents and have decided they're done with searching. That's well and good -- they can take any path that feels right to them. But I know my tent is staked out very firmly in Camp Agent. This experience with the partial request has only firmed my belief that agents are the best way to a serious career for any fiction author who isn't already established.

So it looks like I'm back in 18th-Dynasty Egypt once more! I went to work on Baptism for the Dead because I needed to air out my brain, which was feeling stuffed with natron and linen. Now I'm pretty jazzed up to get back into the book, though, and give it a little spit-shine. I'll try to update more frequently in the coming weeks to let you know, O Blog Followers, how it goes.

Oh, wow, an update!

2010-05-18T09:04:00.000-07:00

Obviously by now you realize that I suck at updating my blog. My life is turmoilful at the moment, and it keeps me distracted when I'm not writing. I haven't been writing near enough lately, either.

Work on Baptism for the Dead is clipping along well enough. It's a hard book to write, without an outline. But I am getting there. Still enjoying it, still feeling good about it.

I'm feeling awfully tired and stressed, and that's all I really have the energy to say right now. I need to shower and get over to the library so I can get my writing in for the day. Tonight, I am going to a meetup with the Seattle Skeptics, and really looking forward to both getting out and meeting some new people. Writers can isolate themselves, you know, physically and emotionally. I am feeling of late a very strong need for physical affection and emotional connection, and the lack of that makes me cranky and pained. Which is generally a good mood to be in while I write, at any rate, so let's get this show on the road and wallop 2500 words or so.

Library love

2010-05-04T12:20:00.001-07:00

I love doing my writing at the Edmonds library. It's inspiring to watch the day's weather come in over the Olympics and across the Sound.

A tale of woe, and not-so-woe.

2010-05-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hi! A bit overdue for a blog post, I am.

I've had a bit of a struggle with my personal life for the past week. Stuff is rocky and I am not feeling particularly confident or secure about my social and emotional future. Additionally, I have been feeling rather sad and rejected with some aspects of my life and frustrated and angry with others. So clearly I haven't been in much of a mood for cheery blogging. I'm working on feeling better about things, though. It is an uphill hike.

I came up with a really brilliant idea for a literary novel but try as I might, I was unable to outline it or even write a synopsis. I knew my characters, I knew their initial circumstance, I knew how the book would end, and I knew the theme of the story. I absolutely could not figure out anything else. The entire middle of the book was and still is a mystery to me. I decided to wing it and write without an outline. I've never done this before.

Now, I am not one of those writers who rigidly adheres to her outlines. Not at all. Outlines can and do change dramatically as I go. But somehow, having the outline on hand keeps me focused and confident. Whenever I start to feel unsure of what I'm doing, I can tell myself, "Relax...if you need to, you can refer to the outline to refresh your memory." With historical fiction and my short sci-fi that has worked very well. But I've never made a serious attempt to write a literary novel (I don't count my teen-age flailings at literary fiction as "serious") and literary novels are all about internal conflict. That is somewhat hard to outline, I suppose. So even though my outlines are always flexible, at least I've always had them. When I tried to outline this new novel, it was so hard I was making myself cry so I decided to just stop.

Yeah, I made myself cry. Oh, that's not the worst of it, Dear Reader. Over the past two weeks I've discovered that I am a very sensitive artistic type. I didn't know this about myself previously. I'm rather embarrassed to be such a cliche, actually, but I'm trying to accept myself for what I am, here.

So I decided to proceed without an outline. The story crept forward at a disgusting and alarming pace, something between continental drift and languid snail. I was writing perhaps three hundred words every two hours. It was absolutely distressing.

I do not believe in "writer's block" -- I think it's a term people apply to themselves in order to excuse inactivity. "I CAN'T write; I have writer's block." Fie! Libbie does not suffer from some external and uncontrollable force which robs her of her abilities. When Libbie has a hard time writing, it's because of Libbie.

So in an attempt to increase my productivity, I tried various tricks -- changing up the time of day when I write, writing free-hand on note cards at a lovely park, etc. -- and while I was able to work out some kinks in my story this way, no significant progress was made. After a good two weeks of rusty occlusion, combined with my dual-faceted personal issues (longing/rejection on the sinister and frustration/anger on the dexter), I was fairly constipated with emotion and was in a fragile and embarrassing emotional state.

I went to my weekly writers' group like usual and made an ass of myself by CRYING in the middle of the bar once my friend started to prod at me to find out why I seemed so down. Then I went home and sent ridiculous emails of apology to everybody in my group re: the crying incident. Then the next morning I sent more emails (slightly less ridiculous) apologizing for the ridiculousness of my previous emails. THEN I sat down to write, and oh god, it was like flogging myself. I was so upset over what a dope I'd made of myself in front of some of my best friends for the past twenty-four hours, and I was so upset that what I KNEW was a really great story -- a seriously fantastic and important work -- was stuck inside me and refused to dislodge. All this upset plus shame over the previous day's ridiculousness plus the negative emotions I was feeling from my long-standing personal difficulties plus WORDS WOULD NOT COME OUT OF ME equaled a colossal digestive upset on a truly impressive scale. I was so sick, I thought maybe I'd contracted food poisoning at the bar, but nobody else in my writers' group was sick, and everybody had nibbled off my hummus plate.

Between searing intestinal cramps and sprints to the bathroom, I figured I must be having an anxiety attack. This was pretty interesting -- I used to be under medical treatment for severe anxiety, years ago, but wound up discontinuing that treatment once I found some ways to cope with it. Apparently it came back to visit me.

As you may imagine, the realization that I was having an anxiety attack made me go OH NO NOT ANXIETY, THIS MAKES ME FEEL ANXIOUS and exacerbated the problem. (I hope by now you are laughing -- I am.) In an attempt to relieve my anxiety by expressing it, I made what I thought was a rational post on Facebook explaining what was going on with me. Then I kept working on my book, as I had been doing all along (albeit without much success.)

The next morning, all the anxiety was gone. I don't know where it went, but I was relieved to see it had vanished. I read the Facebook post, laughed about it, and promptly deleted it -- it was something along the lines of BLA BLOO BLOOOOO, WHY CAN'T I WRITE, BLAA BLOO BLOOOOOOO, I FEEL SICK AND NOBODY LOVES ME, BLAA BLAAA BLOOOOO. Oh, boy.

Conclusion: I am a precious snowflake, apparently, who is way emotionally involved in her writing and is fully capable of a public freakout (or two) when things aren't going well in her life. Who knew? At least now I am aware, so I can avoid such scenes in the future. I hope.

But this story has a happy ending. Maybe I just needed to have a couple of meltdowns and really and truly vent my emotions. I've been keeping them wrapped up pretty tight for -- oh, eight years or so. After waking up anxiety-free, I was also blockage-free. Suddenly everything was clear to me. More than clear! I was really FEELING my characters and their story. I still had no idea about the middle of the novel, but I woke with an absolute trust in my characters as real people, in the truth of their story, and in my ability to tell it. Not only to tell it, but to ROCK IT.

I ran to the library, where the quiet and the view of Puget Sound always stimulate my brain, and ripped out about 5000 words in record time.

And I'll tell you something: it's the best writing I've ever done.

The working title is Baptism for the Dead. And it's going to blow a lot of minds. I can't wait to get it finished and sent off to my agent. I have never felt more confident about my future as a writer than I do right now.

Well, it's finally happened.

2010-04-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

I'm thirty! It's going to be a good decade. I can tell.

Still hard at work on my new novel, though I've been in a scramble to come up with money this month. My goodness, but this economy sucks.

Today I got an affectionate snoofle from a beautiful seventeen-foot-tall, four-year-old giraffe, and got to spend the early morning watching a bunch of gazelle, oryx, and zebra kick up their heels and enjoy the new day. Those experiences by themselves were more than enough of a great birthday gift for me...but I also got to talk to many of my wonderful friends and have dinner with my super-cool mom. I'm a lucky, lucky person, even if I'm broke.

You.

2010-04-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, you.

Go to a book store. Buy a copy of The Great Gatsby. Read it (or, like me, re-read it for the first time since it was assigned to you in high school.)

Marvel.

Leaving Egypt for a while.

2010-04-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

I am way burnt out on ancient Egypt. I have two books set in Egypt outlined and one partially written, and I need a break from that setting.

I am researching and plotting a book that falls somewhere between literary fiction and fantasy. Literary fantasy? Maybe. It's weird, I can tell you that. And it involves birds. Lots and lots of birds.

I really need to scour my brain by writing something heavily literary for a while. I feel like I've been reining in my creativity by sticking too close to what's commercial and therefore safe. I want to go all out, get weird, and get very uglypretty. It's going to be a fun ride.

First, though, a synopsis. Gotta write a synopsis.

What's this...a paycheck?

2010-04-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

Settle down; it's not for my book (yet.)

I will soon be officially employed once more, working a very part-time shift as an "attendant," the ultimate foot-in-the-door position at Woodland Park Zoo. I'm very excited, since it's extremely difficult to land an attendant position at WPZ (and everybody starts out as an attendant, unless they already have significant animal care experience on their resume from other facilities.) I'll still need to draw unemployment to make up for the gap in my expenses that this job will NOT fill, but I'm beyond thrilled at the opportunity. I'll be working with birds -- yay! My favorite!

And who knows -- my book may sell sooner than I expect, and keep me afloat while I wedge that foot farther inside the door. Sure would be nice to wedge it in far enough that I can get benefits! Oh, this economy. What can we do but shrug and laugh about it?

The best part is that this job will leave me with PLENTY of time to continue to write like a crazy woman. My plan of turning in three new novels to my agent before year's end should continue unimpeded. And given how productive I can be this summer, who knows? Maybe I'll be able to get a multiple-book deal. A girl can dream!

Maybe I won't have to butcher my book after all.

2010-04-14T08:14:00.001-07:00

After waking in despair yesterday morning over my epiphany about having started the book in the wrong place, I decided to press on for one more chapter just to see what would happen. And you know, I think it just might work after all. So I am proceeding with the outline I've got now for Book 2, and I'll let Natalie (my agent) tell me whether she thinks I started it in the wrong place.

I'm just going to shut up and write.

Love/Hate

2010-04-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

I both love and hate when I discover an author or book that is so good it makes me wonder whether I will ever be that awesome. I hate it, because I feel some jealousy over these authors' ideas, styles, and methods. I wish I'd thought of their books first.

And I love it, because it gives me something to aim for. I like having the bar raised consistently higher.

Today I downloaded the audiobook of Clare Clark's The Nature of Monsters for my trip to the gym. I am only twenty minutes into it (painful ladycramps prevented me from doing my usual two-hour ass-busting at the gym) and already I know it's a love/hate book. I am not surprised that I love it so much, yet it has only an average of three stars in Audible's reviews. Often the books I enjoy the most are the ones that sharply divide readers. I like darkness, despair, icky sexuality, and raw, unpleasant emotion. That doesn't spell a great time with a book for every reader.

But it does for me.

Go buy it now.

It's been a while...

2010-04-13T09:15:00.001-07:00

Between visiting my new niece (cute!), juggling job interviews, going to my friend Lisa Graff's book signing, and a few other various and sundry tasks, I haven't updated my blog in an entire week. Crazy! Well, let's recap the week, for starters.

Agatha June is a healthy and happy little girl, born at home, 11 pounds even. My sister is 6'2" and she grows huge babies. Big brother Henry really seems to like her, only occasionally offering to crush or poke her, and frequently sharing his monster trucks (which she does not care about, of course.) My sister recovered from the birth in about ten seconds and is back to her usual self. Apparently she is some kind of Amazon.

I finally landed an interview at the zoo where I ultimately want to work long-term. It's unbelievably hard to get a foot in the door there, and I am beyond psyched to have a chance, especially since their budget has been tightened up even more this year and there are few new positions offered. But it sounds like I got the job -- I'll be raising baby birds for a meager eight hours a week, with occasional extra hours picked up as a relief person, taking on other tasks when other keepers are sick or on vacation. I'll take it! It's a starting point, and my huge foot is in the door, and from here I am very confident that I can make an excellent name for myself, as I have at other facilities, so that when an opportunity with more hours arrives, I will be the first candidate everybody has in mind. Plus: BABY BIRDS! As an insane bird nut, this fills me with joy. I only regret that I will get to spend a mere eight hours per week with baby birds. I would prefer a million zillion hours per day.

I'll take advantage of the fact that this job offers almost no hours and continue my breakneck writing output through the summer. I will be a machine. I'd like to wrap up Book 2 by the end of May and get Book 3 all finished by midsummer, so I can start something non-Egyptian by the late summer. My agent is going to soil herself when I hand her three more historical novels to sell by the fall.

My pal Lisa Graff came into town for a children's book conference, and a local teacher who loves her books (with good reason -- Lisa is the bomb) set up a signing for her at a Borders store. Not too many people came who didn't already know Lisa, but it was short-notice, and Lisa didn't seem to care. We had a great time catching up, and Lisa sold almost all the copies of her latest midgrade novel, Umbrella Summer, that were in the store. Yay!! I am really excited for her next MG novel. She's still working on it. She's got a chapter book coming out next, and then her fifth book will be out, and I can't wait to get my paws on it. It's about kids who dare each other to do increasing more horrible pranks, and it sounds suspiciously like one of the characters is based on my husband, who grew up with Lisa, and who led all the children of Big Bear, California in their awful misdeeds. Plus, it sounds like this fifth book will be a lot like Lisa's second, The Life and Crimes of Bernetta Wallflower, which has the distinction of being one of the few books, for kids or otherwise, that I literally could not put down. I lost almost a whole night of sleep over that book, and I am eagerly awaiting another like it. ;)

While at Lisa's signing, I met another local author, Richard Farr, author of Emperors of the Ice. This book sounds like exactly my cup of tea -- it's technically nonfiction, but written in a novel-like style. I can't wait to get a hold of it. Richard was a fascinating guy, and we had a lengthy discussion about the ups and downs of that whole "getting published" process. He has a manuscript out there, a book on rational thinking for teens, that keeps making it all the way to Acquisitions and then getting kicked back because they just don't know how to label and market nonfiction for teens. Arrgh! This is a book we sorely need, and I am rooting for Richard big-time.

Anyway. It was a good old time, and I am eager to do my own book signings, even if the only people who show up are my friends. We had fun, and that's what it's all about, right?

Meanwhile, writing has continued, though the word count of Book 2 is actually shrinking the more I write. I have written the fifth/sixth/seventh chapter triad more times than I care to count, each time deleting it after a day or so of rumination because something about it just isn't quite right. This morning I woke up with a terrible epiphany: I've started the story in the wrong place, as I did with my last novel. I've begun the tale when my main characters are just too young, and to continue like this will make the book too YA, which won't be a strong follow-up for Bride of Amun, which is decidedly adult in spite of the fact that the main character of that one is thirteen at the beginning of the story. Book 2 is just to darn young, and that means not only the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters will probably be cut again once I finish this blog post and get to work, but likely chapters one through four, too.

I could be starting over again with a blank slate. A sick feeling, but at least I know from past experience that once I hit on the correct beginning, the rest will come ripping right out of my head like a stooping falcon, and the book will practically write itself.

Why do beginnings have to be so hard for me? The Alliterati recently asked on their blog whether beginnings, middles, or ends are easier for their readers. Endings are always the easiest for me. I actually see in my mind a few images from the endings of my books and stories. A final tableau, a last scene. All the writing I do is just propellant to get me to that final image. I've got an image in my head of Hatshepsut, a strong young woman, dressed in the regalia of a king, crossing the crook and flail over her bared breasts, proclaiming herself Pharaoh to a crowd of rekhet that is drunk with love for her. It's the final scene of my book. But I am having a hell of a time kick-starting the ride that will take me to that image.

Nothing to do but keep writing!

A girl!!

2010-04-06T14:12:00.001-07:00

Hooray, I have a niece! I only have one sibling and she only wanted to have two kids, so it's great to get one of each.

I am on my way up to her house now to meet little Agatha. I bet she has red hair like her mommy and her big brother! :D

I'm the happiest auntie in the world. Only an email from my agent telling me Ballantine or William Morrow (or one of the other awesome publishers who received my pitch letter) wants to buy my book could make today any more fantastical!

It's going to be a good day!

2010-04-06T05:35:00.001-07:00

My sister woke me up at 5:00 this morning to tell me she's in labor and is doing just fine. They are planning another home birth (their last one with two-year-old Henry went just fine, but they live two blocks from a hospital with a NICU, so nobody worry!) but don't know the sex of the baby this time, since all previous attempts to find out were thwarted by the child. He/she is already a trouble-maker, between refusing to reveal his/her sex and moving "like a linebacker" in the womb. It's another big baby, too! The midwife says it's the same size as Henry was during this stage of growth, and Henry was just shy of eleven pounds when he was born. (My sis is 6'2", so huge babies are to be expected.)

Needless to say, I am beyond excited to meet little Jasper or Agatha. (If it's a boy, he is decidedly NOT being named after the Twilight character. My sis has always liked the name, and I agree! Neither of us is fond of Twilight. She's really taking one for the team, because at least for a few years, everybody is going to assume she's a Twimom. :D ) I adore my nephew Henry and am so happy to have another member in our awesome family! My sister and brother-in-law are WONDERFUL parents, and I am so thrilled for them!

Does this tie into writing? Indeed it does! At Henry's birth, my sister asked me to be present for support and to take pictures (and to see to the needs of the two midwives, the two student-assistants my sister graciously allowed to come along, and Dad!) What a gift! Not many people get to see the birth of any child, unless they're midwives or OB-GYNs. Fewer people in today's world get to see the natural birth of a child, with the mother unmedicated and experiencing all the stages of labor fully, free to move herself around as she needs rather than being confined to a bed or even a single hospital room. :)

It was a powerful experience, and I drew on it to write the birth scene in my novel. Later, when women who'd had natural births beta-read my book, they told me nobody who reads it will believe I've never given birth myself. That is quite a compliment! I guess I did something right. I owe a lot to my sister!

Much of the first half of my novel involves the main character fearing birth, and avoiding her "duty" because of this fear. In order to understand what my sister would go through when she brought Henry into the world, I studied everything about natural childbirth I could get my hands on. Like most of biology, I found it fascinating, and I learned way, WAY more about pregnancy, labor, and birth than most child-free people ever know. I am grateful to my sister for educating me about the process and for asking me to be there when Henry was born. Not only was it amazing, but it helped me understand what my character feared as a spectator of births, and what she would experience physically as a mother birthing a child.

I may end up heading to her house later this morning. Henry, at two, is as well prepared as any toddler can be. He is excited to meet the baby and likes reading his picture book about home births (written to give kids like him some idea of what to expect.) But he is just two, and getting over a viral infection, and might have a hard time with the birth, especially when Mommy starts to make some noise. I am on call and ready to swoop in to distract him with trains and hugs if it becomes necessary. :)

In addition to that exciting news, I was also given a Butterfly Award by Stephanie over at Hatshepsut: The Writing of a Novel. Yay! I'm a coooool blooooogggg! Thanks, Stephanie! I found Stephanie's blog while googling for "Hatshepsut novel," trying to make sure I hadn't missed any published novels before I put too much work into my Hatshepsut books. Stephanie is a hard-working writer, being a history teacher, a mom, and a novelist who just began querying her first book. I have no doubt she'll get published, and together we will revive and popularize Egyptian fiction! Woohoo!!

Well, back to bed, with the hopes that I can get a little more sleep this morning. Not likely to happen, though.

A female scribe?

2010-04-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've been working, during my free time, on a large database of ancient Egyptian names. When I began writing Bride of Amun last summer, I enjoyed a very well researched, well compiled list of Egyptian names and relied on it for the naming of my supporting characters. Sadly, about halfway through he summer and the writing of my novel, it disappeared, taken down forever by its webmistress. A great wailing was heard in the Puget Sound, while I tore out my hair searching for a similarly reliable resource. None apparently exists. All the name lists on baby-naming sites that claim to be Egyptian probably are Egyptian, but combine ancient names with modern Arabic names, as well as names from the Greek and Roman periods, clearly influenced by the trends and peoples of the time. I needed a good list of Dynastic Egyptian names, but couldn't find any.

So once I'd completed Bride of Amun and had a little time to play, I started compiling my own list.

By writing down every name I read during research, I was able to make quite a list. Once I found the book The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, my list grew to an impressive size. Now I've begun scouring records of tombs on Digital Egypt and other University-run sites, and my list has become unwieldy. I am setting it up in its own nice little database, and once I've exhausted all my resources, I'll alphabetize it, sort it by male and female, and offer it up to the internet so other novelists -- or anybody else who needs a really Egyptian Egyptian name -- can have free access.

Anyway, in working through the lists of discovered tombs, I found the name of a woman called Irtyru. Virtually nothing is known about her, other than her name, that she was a scribe (an occupation usually reserved exclusively for men) and that she served a particular God's Wife of Amun called Nitiqert during the 25th Dynasty. And that's about it.

I am intrigued by the idea of a female scribe. I've done little learning so far about women and literacy in ancient Egypt. The assumption I've made during my book(s) is that women of high standing were educated. Why not? Women, although not what modern Westerners would call "equal," still had considerable respect and rights in Dynastic Egypt. I can't imagine why they would not be taught to read and write. But why so little evidence for professional female readers and writers in Egypt?

While cleaning my goat pens at work today, I mused on this Irtyru. My brain quickly went Yentl and I immediately thought of writing a Late Period Egypt where women weren't educated as a matter of course, and where Irtyru, slight and thin and without many primary sexual characteristics to speak of, would have to masquerade as a young man to achieve the education she desired. But that's just not what I really feel Egypt must have been like, and in any case, that's a bit of an expected take on such a story. Nothing surprising there. Plus, by the end of this summer I'll have two novels in which an Egyptian girl cross-dresses to fool those around her. I'm already shy enough of writing a fourth Egyptian novel for fear of being labeled a one-trick pony. I don't want to go REALLY one-trick here.

So I will continue to turn Irtyru over in my brain until some well-formed story starts to take place. What did she do for this Nitiqert God's Wife? Why did the God's Wife choose a woman as her scribe, and not a man? That's the angle from which I must approach this very intriguing puzzle. Somewhere in the questions I'll ask myself about Irtyru and how she came to serve the God's Wife lies a story that really wants to be told.

How do you develop your stories?

Cradles? Who knows?

2010-04-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

Apparently it is impossible to discover whether babies slept in cradles in New Kingdom Egypt. Or ever in ancient Egypt.

Oh, the woes of being a historical novelist!

I heart my group.

2010-04-02T19:56:00.000-07:00

My plan to update the blog every day is not going so well. Things are awfully rough in my life right now, though, so I suppose that's to be expected! I'm keeping my chin up, though. Working on my novel is helping bolster my spirits tremendously.

I think it's extremely important for all serious writers to make regular use of critiques. It's true that we must develop the skills of self-critique. It's nigh on impossible to be an effective writer if you don't have some inkling of when you're doing really well and when you need to improve a scene, a passage, or a sentence. Or a word. However, it's also important to seek out the input of others whose opinions you can trust.

Lots of folks have great luck with finding critique partners online. I have certainly received some invaluable feedback from online critiques. However, I have had the best luck and the most consistent help with improvement from my weekly writers' group.

We meet every Thursday night at a local pub (chosen, I am told by the founding members, for its excellent food. And the food is excellent.) We order dinner and drinks if we're into that kind of thing (some of us aren't...usually) and after an hour or so of friendly chit-chat, we get to work reading and critiquing our weekly works.

I am the newest member of the group, and have been attending since early February. In that short time, I've learned more about producing clear prose than I've learned in the rest of my lifetime (and yes, I have been putting effort into writing well for nearly my whole lifetime -- since I was about eight years old, to be exact.) I am told fearlessly and helpfully every week what I need to fix about whatever short project I've brought for my dose of learning. I often tell my friends in the group that Thursday is the best day of the week for me. I look forward to receiving that feedback -- good or bad -- like nothing else.

So, you five readers ;), share your experiences with critiques and critiquers. I want to know how you all do it.