I come from a very large family, with lots of siblings and even more cousins. Even though my sisters and brother and I shared the same parents (and my cousins the same grandparents), our view of our collective upbringing varies wildly. I notice this more now that I have children of my own. There’s only two of them, but according to them, their childhoods couldn’t be more different. When I get together with my sibs and relive old times, it’s like conversing with five strangers.

I’ve noticed the same with those in my high school class. Some are new friends, connected late in life by Facebook and reunion dinners. Others I’ve been friends with since the very beginning. No matter what the history, our recollections can be unique, if we can remember them at all.

We’re all different, and our stories are different, even though the principals and the plot are the same. Even though we live through the same crisis, at the same time, our brains will never see the same facts in the same way.

A good novel weaves the stories of all of its characters seamlessly, not just the antics of the protag and the antagonist. I’d never noticed the careful crafting of a good book before; I was too busy enjoying myself to take it apart, but there are typically stories within the story, interwoven like a hand-loomed sweater. You need all those loops, not just the main show.

I used to rather stupidly write from the top of my head, with little forethought to plot or character development or story lines or arcs. Hell’s bells, I was on a tear. Who had time to think? I was writing as fast as I could. Those “minor” components could be added later, tweaked and polished once the words “The End” came into view. (Boy, was I a rube!)

I now realize (after a lot of revision and editing and plot changes on the first two stories) that it’s a whole lot easier to begin plotting and character development before you sit down at the computer and begin pounding out dialogue.

Last summer, Mr. Ed gave me a series of assignments to complete before he began editing. One was to describe each character and their story. He knew each was unique, but they all came out sounding like…ME. (All of them are me, but they’re also not.)

My first thought was “Oh, come on. You can’t see them? One’s overweight, one’s a beauty queen, one’s gay, one’s down-home and honest. One’s a gadabout, one’s a middle-aged mom. You can’t see that?”

NO, he couldn’t see them that way, mostly because I hadn’t written them that way. I knew who they were and what they were doing, but no one else could see them. In deconstructing the characters, I realized I hadn’t really seen them in the way I wanted them to appear. That’s because I took the lazy-man’s way out of it and told more than I showed.

Boring.

In the last week, I’ve taken my other WIPs and done the same thing: List the cast of characters and write a sentence or two about their story. Because, you know, their view of the proceedings has necessarily got to be different than my protag. They’re not just pawns on the chessboard; they all have stories of their own. I wrote each in long-hand in my notebook (ecosystem – I’m cured from Moleskine), and when I forget about a personality quirk or trait and it all melds together, I can open it up and find my true characters.

It was a good exercise. Now back to writing.

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Let me preface this post by inserting this:

Of course, this particular song about being shot down in flames has absolutely nothing to do with writing, querying, rewriting, the publishing world, or literary agents. It’s an awfully happy song about a man looking for lust in all the wrong places, and being a horse’s ass while doing it. Let’s say I need a pick-me-up right about now, so I chose this wonderful piece of early AC/DC. (I’m a closet AC/DC fan, of the works before Bonn Scott died. I know; it doesn’t really mesh with the Bach Partita side of me. What can I say? I’m multi-cultural.)

Yes, readers, non-readers, writers and those who don’t really care, I have received yet another rejection letter today. That makes two this week. Woo-hoo!

I would cry, but I’d rather not think about rejection at this point. Besides, it’s hard to justify any rumination of auto-responses. Why waste the time?

I’ve been having a hard time lately writing. ANYTHING. I don’t even open my checkbook, and I have no ATM card, so if you can imagine being in the mindset of cleaning out the car for spare change – yes, that’s me. I missed two CITIcard payments in a row. But, things are improving. Last week, I wrote a rather scathing letter to American Airlines and mailed it to their Dallas headquarters. For my two attempts at expressing my dissatisfaction, they sent me two eVouchers.

I need approximately five eVouchers in order to feel better. Back to the drawing board.

Yesterday, I left work early and decided to write. After my latest critique group get together, I realized I have so many pots on the stove, nothing is getting cooked.

So I started by opening up some files that haven’t seen the light of day in months. And I discovered a few things:

1. I totally forgot some of the stories I wrote. Swear to God! As I was reading, I realized that some of them aren’t half bad. Some are pretty humorous. Some don’t even sound like me, but I know they’re mine, because no one else is writing for me. Working the archives was like cleaning the closet; there in the back recesses where the centipedes live, is a pair of flawlessly stitched, perfect pumps. Next to them is a cute chemise with the tags still on them. And next to that is a purse I’d forgotten I owned. My computer is much like my messy closet. It’s the gold mine! or at least a pyrite mine! of unique ideas and sassy words and scenes strung together with a little more than glue and duct tape.

I realized I needed to get off my lazy, sorry, fat, unsympathetic ass and get moving. Luckily for me (and thanks to my Mr. Ed), I have acquired all kinds of strategies for mapping out my stories. These include writing them down in my trusty notebooks.

I’m so much farther ahead now than I was a year or so ago. 🙂

2. Dr. Wicked is a freaking genius. I feel like PayPaling him again, just to properly convey my appreciation.

3. Friends are priceless. Writing friends, even more so.

Now I’m going back into the archives. You never know what you’ll pull up.

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I sign up for a variety of email blasts, most having to do with writing or writers, but some having to do with business or music. The nice thing about email blasts is that I can pick and choose which to read, and don’t have to write myself sticky notes on which web sites to visit on a regular basis.

One of my favorites is the weekly e-zine sent out by Jeffrey Gitomer. I signed up after purchasing a copy of his LITTLE GOLD BOOK OF YES! ATTITUDE, at the San Francisco Airport. What is funny is at the time, I hadn’t even started writing my first novel. Now that I think about it, I began writing the first novel on the plane ride home from that particular trip, probably minutes after finishing the book.

The most notable Jeffrey Gitomer trait is that he is enthusiastic. I’ve read many of his books since that day in 2007, and dare I say it, the man is never, ever down. A tiny book, like his green, red and black books, it’s packed with a lot of heart-thumping yet congenial energy. You can’t help but be swept into his positivity. Life might have pitfalls, but with a few tweaks and attitude adjustments, we can overcome!

The YES! attitude is a quality that translates across all lines in one’s life, be it business, relationships, children, and yes…even writing. I can be a cynic, a bitch, a naysayer, a purveyor of doom and gloom, yet once a week, Jeffrey Gitomer bumps me back into a positive rail.

Today’s Gitomer newsletter included an intriguing article on elevator pictures. As writers, we all know about the dreaded elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is also a standard with salesmen, which might explain why I never went into sales. Being naked in front of a bunch of people is not one of the things I like to do, and there is nothing that more closely resembles naked vulnerability than an elevator pitch.

The first time I tried speed dating with a bunch of highly regarded and therefore intimidating literary agents, I landed ker-plop on my face, with egg and everything else on it. Elevator pitching is all about confidence, a succinct delivery, and something about you that makes you memorable.

The actual pitch and the working it down to twenty-five of the most powerful, compelling words you’d ever want to regal an agent with is the easy part, in my opinion. You can critique your pitch with your writing friends, or pick up Katharine Sands’ book (or hear her speak, she’s phenomenal!) and work your pitch over until it’s sleek and, in her words, “POPS!”

Confidence can only be generated by the author (meaning YOU!) so if you’re not feeling it, perhaps you’d better look your work over and revise and edit until you DO feel it.

As for personal memorability: I recall discussing my first pitch-fears with a noted online author. “What do I do?” His reply was to wear a low-cut red dress. I opted for red, but decided to leave out the low-cut. I’m selling a book, not my services. But it did lead me to wonder…these agents see hundreds of hopefuls at dozens of conferences every year. What is it that makes me stand out among the rest?

The answer most “writers” would want me to say is The Story, stupid. But, wait…no! Like those copier, pharmaceutical, or siding salesmen, it’s not just the product. Think about it; I know I have chosen plumbers and car dealers not only because of the service or product, but also because of the personality of the salesman. It’s the “je ne sais quois” that gets the business every time.

After following agents on Twitter for a year, I gather that they’re not only looking for the next great book, they’re looking for an author who would make their job easy by having the personality to sell, to become a wag, to be memorable as well as prolific. While I don’t know the percentage of published authors who were picked up at a conference during an elevator pitch, I do know that a sparkling pitch followed by a stellar manuscript equals an author whose personality naturally bubbles.

Back to Andy Horner’s article on elevator pictures: Taking this concept to the realm of the agent-writer elevator might not be such a bad idea. And it’s not just the red, low-cut dress or the Steampunk jewelry. People these days have a limited capacity for words, especially in a world full of computers and smartphones, YouTube and Twitter. According to him, words are just too “2D” for most people.

I’m not going to share any of my ideas for the elevator pitch of the 21st Century, but I can tell you that my future pitch just might include pictures.

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If there is one thing I can say about my life, it’s that it’s never boring.

Take last week’s Real Life agenda, for example. (Please, puh-leeze take last week…) We are gearing up for the summer (which officially began yesterday on the West Coast of Michigan), it was payroll week, and my daughter is home. That alone is enough chaos for anyone to stay on top of.

Add to that my (feeble) attempts at writing, because as we all know, I have all the time in the world to waste (NOT!). I did manage to get the first seven chapters of the current WIP out to my critique group, which was amazing. I did some homework in my Jeremy Shipp class (yay! me!). I got my reading list on this blog partially updated (someday I will link all the books to their author web sites, not today though).  I even wrote in my brand-new eco-system notebook (I doubt I’ll be going back to Moleskine).

But then Real Life rears its ugly head.

I knew the week would be bad when a torrent of water ended up in my basement. This wasn’t ordinary back up; this was far more serious, judging from the sodden ceiling tiles that gave way under the pressure of gallons of water, right into my tumbler and steel shot. Verdict: Broken waste pipe from the second floor bathroom. Bad news: at least $2,000, and that was just the plumber’s estimate. There’s dry wall after that.

But that wasn’t too God-awful; after all, we have two other bathrooms, one in the basement where the flood occurred, the other our master bath. However, after five days of sharing our bathroom with my daughter and no return call from the plumber, I’m about ready to pull what little hair I have left out of my head. And run away from home.

As I was about to start doing P90X one day last week, I glance out of my bedroom window and catch sight of a deer in my backyard. No, really, a deer. A huge one. Now, I know this is Michigan and most people think it’s populated with transplanted hillbillies (it is), so far into Nature, and we are so backward that of course we have deer, but I live in a rather bustling suburb. A major eight-lane thoroughfare is just yards from my driveway. The infamous 8 Mile Road (meaning gritty, industrial Detroit) is just three miles away. And our backyard is fenced. AND it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. This is Motown, people. Deer do not appear on a regular basis, sit down in the middle of my yard, and take a snooze. EVER.

My daughter and blind Boston terrier chased it around the yard (after we all got photographic evidence), until it came to a low fence and gracefully bounded over and wandered to the neighbors yard. A group of chatting moms pushing strollers were right across the street, and they missed it.

Wildlife is the bane of my guerilla urban garden, and most of my friends know I have a distaste bordering on blind hatred toward all critters who would deign to eat from my veggies when I have neighbors who throw the squirrels and other scavengers old Krispy Kremes. Now I have to worry about huge deer.

It does explain what happened to my pears the last few years though…

To top off my week, my dog, the fabulous Princess Grace, ended up in the slammer on Friday night. She’s had a field day the last couple of weeks, chasing rabbits around the house (as well as the other miscreants), and Friday night, as my husband let her out to do her pre-bedtime duty, she disappeared.

(Right here is where I should insert – dammit, I told him to keep her on leash, because even though she’s a great dog, she is dumber than a box of rocks and is deaf and doesn’t listen well – but I won’t. Don’t think I wasn’t thinking it though…)

He looked around, he called, I called (I scream – like a pterodactyl, my children allege – so she can usually hear me from a block away). He drove around. He drove around all night, going up one street, then another, until he had prowled most of Royal Oak, part of Berkley, and all of Huntington Woods. I kept getting up and looking at the back door to see if she had suddenly appeared. (She might be a world traveler, but she knows where the kibble is.) Nothing.

My husband was despondent, and I was thinking of worst case scenarios, like her being dog-napped, hit by a car, or just left us because we weren’t nice enough.

Yesterday – at a decent hour – I started calling the local pounds. I hit the jackpot on Call #2: Grace was at the Huntington Woods police station. It appears they picked her up while she was trying to traverse those eight lanes of traffic I spoke about above. She made it to the median without becoming road kill, which is when she was nabbed and incarcerated. According to a police woman, “We got her before she successfully committed suicide on Woodward.” Poor dog spent the night in a cold cage with no blankies to roll herself into a doggie burrito with. (Bostons need their blankies, even when it’s 100 degrees outside.)

She was delirious to see me, and the first thing I did was get her a dog tag with her name and our phone numbers on it. (OH! Because I forgot to add, the hubs had her outside with NO COLLAR on as well.)

I’m thinking anything that happens this week will be a piece of cupcake compared to last week.

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Wow, what a busy last couple of weeks!

First a trip to Colorado for my brother-in-law’s memorial and interment at Ft. Logan National Cemetery in Denver. This might have been a quick trip back to see the old home town, except for one thing: a tornado hit Dallas last Tuesday which caused my plane to circle for what seemed like hours (turns out it had been) until we were forced to land in Austin, thankfully before we ran out jet fuel. There we parked on the tarmac for an hour – along with a dozen other diverted planes – before it was determined that we were going nowhere fast. After the deplaning of thousands of zombie travelers, the trip to a local Holiday Inn (loved that hour and a half of rest), and many phone calls to American Airlines, I surmised that I would not be flying out of Austin any time soon. In fact, not until SATURDAY of last week, meaning I would miss the services and get into Colorado Springs with just enough time to return to Detroit.

Thirteen hours and an immensely sore butt later, and after renting a car and driving through the panhandle of Texas (one big-ass state, to be sure), I arrived at my final destination only 24 hours late. Unfortunately, my bags were still in transit.

I have learned three things on this trip: 1. West Texas is beautiful – even with the preponderance of armadillo road kill, which is why I’m writing it into my next tome, 2. it’s good to be nice and keep your cool, and 3. I can finish reading a book and a half in six hours on a plane.

Usually, my trips out of town are a gold mine for writing, but this time, I could only jot down a few things in my trusty (manually operated) notebook. After the Trip from Hell, the final service at Ft. Logan (which I made by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin, and with my own clothes that arrived in CoS at 6 a.m.), and my sister’s sadness, I found I couldn’t write anything.

It’s not that I had a lack of information or inspiration. I was just plain B-E-A-T. I couldn’t even answer email. So I took a day to trim the bonsai tree located at my mother’s grave, which after 18 years of my neglect had morphed into the juniper who ate a headstone. It was relaxing to sit in the sun, listen to the traffic on I-25, to snip and trim, and now the Thing looks more like a bonsai.

But back to “I SUCK!” I found myself kicking and yelling (at myself) for my total lack of motivation. Yes, I have stories in my head yearning to be set free. Yes, I have something I’m shopping around and more than a few things I’m working on which languish in various states of disrepair. But to actually unpack my laptop and start moving in the right direction? I couldn’t. I was too exhausted/frustrated/sad.

But wait! There’s more! After the last email rejection letter (yesterday),

 

Although I thought your partial was well-written, it didn’t ring as perfectly right for our list as I’d hoped and for the moment we need fiction that sounds exactly right for us in order to be able to sell it as well as we all would like.

I was ready to throw in the the towel and hang out my “I SUCK” shingle. Life is hard enough without having rejection pummel your inbox every couple of weeks. I mean really…what am I doing? Wasting my time? Do you know how many talented writers there are out there? I am but a teeny-tiny wannabe with big honking flaws. I started late in life (for everything, job, marriage, kids, hobbies, you name it). When Real Writers talk about story arcs and character development, I rush to Barnes and Noble to find a reference book that can explain the concept, and even then I’m lost.

Well, after my pity party (yes, I know it was a pity party), I emailed (hurriedly) Mr. Ed for help. (He did. What a stellar guy!) This morning I read this, and began to feel better.

I even wrote over 500 words on my West Texas character.

I even finished this blog post!

The thing about “sucking” is that such a negative frame of mind lasts only a moment with most positive people, and I like to think of myself as being more positive than negative. This temporary self-doubt goes for people other than writers. I can remember my son thinking the same thing about himself, and he’s a very talented pianist. And while it would be ultra-fabuloso to be picked up by an agent, and maybe even have my work published (using the pulp material of your local forest), it’s more important to write because you have a passion to put your words together to make a story, and to make the story intriguing enough to read.

Perhaps I should seek to be read, not to be published.

At any case, I am back on the bus, and the wheels are going ’round and ’round.

🙂

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According to some, this Saturday marks the “End of the World.”

Personally, I’ve lived through several “ends” — including 1999, Y2K, and others — and so far the world has not ceased to exist…yet. I’ll give you the update on Sunday, should we make it past the Apocalypse and the After-Rapture Party.

This “End of the World” stuff causes me to re-evaluate what material things I would like to keep, in case the “end” isn’t total annihilation and just the “end” of the world as we know it.

For example, my friends (who realize I’m super kooky) know I have six months worth of food stashed in my basement, along with extra propane tanks, and those quaint antiques called matches. I will also be able to brew coffee with a French press. (I also have a lifetime’s worth of light bulbs – incandescent, not CFL – and a stockpile of paper and pens and pencils.) Hey, I might be nuts, but I’m gonna be a prepared nut.

Let us say the end was truly near (I’m holding out hope for 2012 and a quick pick up from John Cusack a la movie of the same name); what would I take with me if I could only take one thing.

I have narrowed it down…

My sole possession into the End would have to be a pocket dictionary. If I had room for two items, the second would be Roget’s Thesaurus (pocket version). And for Number Three? A Japanese/English dictionary.

Let’s face it; we can live without a lot of things — TV, clothes, pretty shoes, steak and lobster, fancy jewels, and even my computer and internet — but I cannot live without words.

As a child, the dictionary was the first book I read. The second was the entire encyclopedia (1958 version), one volume at a time. (For those of you Gen X, Y or Z-ers, those books were what we used for reference back in the day.) Okay, even my own kids don’t believe I read the dictionary and encyclopedia, but I did.

Why? Besides the fact that there were only three (3!) channels on TV, like many wannabe upscale homes in middle America at the time, these were the only books in the house. We couldn’t afford to buy books, and the trip to the library was made only once a week. In order to fill the void, I would open the dictionary to “Q” and start reading and memorizing.

(Perhaps this is what made me a Colorado state championship speller back in 7th grade…or maybe I was just lucky.)

Even now, I will occasionally find a dictionary and open to a random page. This Sunday at the Flea Market, I located a fine pocket dictionary from the 1950’s, leather-bound with pages so fine and transparent that they nearly melted in my fingertips. And I sat there and turned pages for a very long time, wondering if I should ask the vendor how much.

Back then “gay” meant happy, and “queer” meant strange, and there were no definitions for “internet,” “blu-ray,” or “flash drive.”

I love rarely seen words, like ‘pettifog,’ ‘intuit,’ and ‘insouciant.’ On days when I feel I’ve suffered media overload, I’ll curl up in my favorite comfy chair with dictionaries of all sorts, muse about word origins, and plant the seed in my brain about using my new-found old words.

It’s all you can do in this modern age, on the apex of the End of the World.

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Yesterday was Mother’s Day, but it was also Sunday, and since my children are half a country away – therefore, unlikely to surprise me with a visit, laden with Godiva and flowers – I decided it was time to clean the house. (Shock and amazement! I never clean! Well…rarely.) My daughter returned to San Francisco in January and I’ve been putting off her bedroom until we got the plants out (south facing room, this is where they winter). The plants were sprung and are basking in the sun on my deck. Besides, my daughter is threatening to return home for the summer, so I figured it was time to change the sheets.

I house clean best by music, so I popped in Elvis Costello’s Best Of. What a freaking genius! especially early Elvis. The man has a way with words, to be sure. Every Day I Write the Book is one of my favorites, and was popular right around the time I met my husband. (1983 – yes, I am older than Methuselah. I also owned glasses that big.)

Here’s the original video, which is also quite humorous considering the Prince Charles/Princess Diana reference.

The acoustic version is also quite nice.

It’s been a while since I’ve heard this song. The references to writing a novel are dead on:

Chapter One we didn’t really get along
Chapter Two I think I fell in love with you
You said you’d stand by me in the middle of Chapter Three
But you were up to your old tricks in Chapters Four, Five and Six.

Applying the Elvis Costello Method of Writing, I should be in the trenches EVERY day, not just when the Muse hits me (or not). You can’t hone the craft of writing if you only apply yourself every once in a while. I am thinking of writing DARLINGS FOR CLEMENTINE after this verse. And of course, since I was so horrible at dialog when I first started this journey into storytelling (and pacing, and purple prose), I should start writing “the way you walk, the way you talk and try to kiss me and laugh” – in four or five paragraphs. 🙂

My hope is to eventually own the film rights and be working on the sequel. With Clementine, I have two prequels in various states of disrepair.

I was amazed to learn that Elvis Costello wrote this song in ten minutes. TEN MINUTES. Which gives hope to lightning striking with precision every once in a while, the stars aligning in perfection, and the exact combo of MegaMillions numbers in my hand.

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