With a Little Help from My Friends

The first morning at the RWA conference saw us playing. There's not much going on that first day, until you get to the Literacy Signing that night. (There's a great video of the madness that is the Literacy Signing here, if you care to see.)

So, with no need to attend the business meetings, we took off on a long walk with my roommates. The lovely Tawna Fenske already did a blog post (she's so efficient) about me and Marcella as bunk mates. The thing is, we had a great time together. I wanted to see Rockefeller Center, Tawna wanted to see Central Park.

Of course we did the carriage ride.

Our driver had a lovely Irish accent, too. Amusingly his patter consisted of him pointing out sites where movies had been filmed. Most of which we'd never seen. I finally asked him if he's a movie buff and he admitted that, no, it was just part of the job. He seemed surprised to be carting around a carriage-full of romance writers, particularly when I told him what I write.

More and more, conference for me is about spending time with friends like this. People I usually only "see" online. Laura Bickle is one of those. She arrived later that day, with just enough time to tie a little wine on before I had to work the registration desk before the signing.
Turns out that's a great time to work the desk, because a lot of the big authors arrive right before the signing. The best part? They're all registered under their REAL names.

So when Eloisa James stepped up and I couldn't find her packet, I had to ask her if she has another, legal name. At this point, they look abashed and glance around to see who's nearby. She leaned over the desk and said, "..." See, I swore not to tell. But I learned at least five secret identities. And yes, it's totally enough just to know that I know the secrets.

The other funny thing was that the big speakers, like Diana Gabaldon, were done the great favor of having their registration stuff put in their rooms. Only a lot of them hadn't BEEN to their rooms yet. Ironically, they couldn't enter the signing without a name badge. When I told Diana her stuff was in her room, she gave me the terrified puppy-dog eyes. This was half-an-hour before the signing. She was afraid that, if I sent her to check-in and go to her room, she'd never make it through all the people in the lobby.

I ranted once before about how writers will never be rock stars. But Diana Gabaldon at a huge gathering of romance writers and readers? Totally a recognizable rock star.

We printed her up a special name badge. She was charming and grateful.

As I do every year, I also attended the Secrets of the Best-Selling Sisterhood seminar with Jayne Ann Krentz and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. This time I asked how they've maintained their friendship over all these years - if they have strategies. They seemed taken aback by the question and I wondered if maybe it wasn't always easy. Finally they said that they don't live near enough to irritate each other.
See? Just another reason to value those online friendships.

But it was really lovely to spend some in-the-flesh time with them, too.

Good Business - Please Don't Be Difficult

The longest day of the year comes to a close. The sun is now at its most northern point, shining into the Secret Garden. The pendulum hits the end of its arc, hesitates, and swings back.

So, I've been talking to people about redoing my website. Yeah, it's old. I've bastardized it over the years. I *ahem* rarely update the thing. I kind of hate even looking at it and the prospect of dealing fills me with this formless sense of dread. Nevertheless: the site needs help and it's time to do it.

Always an interesting thing, when you step out into the world with your fistful of money and say "hey, I'd like to purchase this service." You'd think, especially with the economy as it's been, that people would love to have your money and provide that service. Odd that it doesn't exactly work that way.

I'm totally not counting all the people that suddenly followed me on Twitter the second I mentioned web design.

The first guy I talked to didn't get my first email. Then, when he got my follow-up email, gave me a lot of complex feedback. As the astute Laura Bickle says, "I don't want to know how sausage is made." Don't tell me about code, please. If I cared about that stuff, I'd be doing, um, web design. He charges by the hour, wasn't sure how many hours it would take, and seemed to be going in directions that confused me. I expressed my confusion and he never replied.

Guess I was difficult.

After a week, I asked for other recommendations yesterday. KAK gave me one, and a Facebook friend gave me another. I filled out the form requesting proposals on both sites. One of those I still have not heard back from, which I wouldn't think too much of, except that the other called me within about 1/2 hour. This gal chatted with me about what I wanted, didn't treat me like I was crazy and explained in exact dollars what it would cost me and what I'd get for that.

THANK YOU.

Later in the day, the company owner emailed to tell me they were enthusiastic at the prospect of my business. She will be at RWA National next week and wants to meet with me. The fact that she runs her business this well makes me think that she will represent *my* business well, also.

My feeling of formless dread has transformed into enthusiastic hope.

Which is exactly what I'm hiring someone to do. Handle this for me, please.

I think it's good to pay attention to how people handle their businesses, both good and bad. As writers, we are necessarily business owners, whether we want to be or not. More and more I think the key to running a good business is to make it easy for people to do business with you.

In short: Don't Be Difficult.

I could wax on with specifics, but I'm sure you all know what I mean. Be easy to communicate with. Be clear. Know your price points.

Oh - and have a good website.

Ahem.

Village Fashion Assistance

Why, yes, that is Katy Perry dressed in Gautier from the June 2011 issue of Vanity Fair. And there's a very good reason she's there for you to admire.

Let me tell you the story.

See, I'm going to the RWA National Conference the last week of June. This will be my fourth time. This year I knew I'd be invited to the Carina party, as one of their authors. Author cocktail party? Pretty much a slam dunk in fashion-planning department.

Now I had a bit of an additional complication, in that I discovered the Carina cocktail party would be right before the FFP Gathering. Not a big deal, right? One party to the next, stick to the same drink, all is fine, tra-la tra-lay.

Only there's one little hitch: the FFP party is a Superhero theme and I have my heart set on being Cat Woman. I don't think I'm ruining any surprises here by leaking that, especially since I fully expect to be far from the only Cat Woman at a Superhero party attended primarily by women. In fact, I figured I'd just go to the Carina party in my Cat Woman outfit. It's pretty demure, since I'll be more of a Michelle Pfeiffer version than the Halle Berry iteration since, hello, I do not have Halle Berry's vicious body. Dress myself only in black leather straps? I don't think so. My costume looks like this (sorry it's so small) and I figured I could be brassy and just wear it to the cocktail party, too.

But, and this is a big "but," then I was happily invited to the Harlequin party, too. I wasn't expecting to, but since Carina is a Harlequin imprint, they included us questionable digital types. It's after the FFP party, so that's fine. And, hey, everyone says it's THE party to go to, so woo hoo! Except, I get the invite and it's a rooftop Black and White ball, formal dress.

I've got nothing.

Clearly I'm not wearing the Cat Woman outfit there. Even if it wasn't an outfit that can't be worn outside of air conditioning (lemme tell you, that thing does NOT breathe), it just ain't formal, by any stretch. I look in my closet - nothing. You know what that means, right?

~FASHION EMERGENCY~

I'm going in a couple of weeks, have practically no time to shop, and no inspiration.

So, I'm getting my hair done - my carefully planned pre-conference beautifying appointment - flipping through Vanity Fair and whining about my fashion emergency to a sympathetic Larry. I get to the above Katy Perry pic and say, this! This is what I should wear. Larry peers over my shoulder. "That's perfect," he says, "that's exactly what you should wear."

I say, "Um, Larry, that outfit is Gautier and out of my league on so many levels it's not funny."

"Oh no," he waves the scissors in the air, "you could totally fake this outfit."

He outlines how I'll do it. Do I have a black skirt I could slit up the front? As a matter of fact, I do. I have a black pleather pleated Jones New York skirt that would work. Put a white lace slip or skirt under it, black heels, black leggings - I love how he never once considers putting white stretch lace on my thighs - with a big white blouse on top, belted with a fabulous Santa Fe belt.

I'm sold.

Of course, this is not so easy as it sounds. (Did it even sound easy?)

Once I left the salon, clutching my pic of Katy Perry in *my* outfit, which Larry thoughtfully tore out of the magazine for me, I began to lose heart.

"Just find a little black dress," my mother counsels. "You don't have time for this."

I went shopping Saturday morning and nothing, just nothing lit me up. I began to despair. Sunday I hit the consignment stores and Goodwill thinking I could cannibalize a wedding dress for the white lace underskirt. Big goose egg.

Then, in Dillards, of all places, I found a big white jacket - spunky, sheer and shimmery. It's the last one, and I make the sales gal take it off the mannequin for me. It's a large, turns out, but that works perfectly. I find some black leggings with black lace edging at Kohls. Already bought funky black heels for the Cat Woman look. I'm rolling now.

Back at home, I start Googling for wedding slips. KAK is helping me via IM. But even her Google-Fu, which is very strong, fails. She does, however, find me this fab black corset to wear under the white jacket.

Now we just need the lace skirt, which totally should not be this hard. But it is.

She's combing eBay. Laura Bickle comes on IM and I catch her up on the Story So Far. Almost immediately, Laura finds this skirt on eBay. It's perfect. It's in Hong Kong.

BUT, they have express shipping and it's not that much overall.

Win!

So, all the parts are acquired or on order. Yeah, we'll see how it all works out.

I think it will be fabulous. I'll try to post pics of the final product.

Could never have done this without my pals.

Anger Management

This is a Cinco de Mayo rose. I just love the subtle lavenders in with the brighter shades. I bought this rose at Santa Fe Gardens, which is the local bricks & mortar presence of High Country Gardens. If we weren't on water restrictions that forbid new plantings, I'd go every weekend and pick out just one new friend to take home.

It feels good to me to garden again. To spend some time with the earth and the plants.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote on Word Whores about how I've given up so many hobbies, to make time for writing. I don't regret that choice, by any stretch. The last couple of years have been very productive for me. You folks out there might not be able to tell, because it's mostly going to yucca juice right now, but I've been writing these fabulous novels that will be published ANY SECOND NOW. I've got a good root system of several series going. When I look at my portfolio, it feels good.

Hell, I feel sexy just saying I have a portfolio.

Yesterday, I mentioned to the fabulous author Laura Bickle that I'm trying not to be angry that I'm going to RWA this year with the same novel I pitched last year. She told me she thought I should be angry. That it's healthy to express that anger, rather than tamping it down and seething over it.

She's right.

I am angry and that feels good, too. It makes me mad that no one has fallen in love with this novel like I feel it deserves. It pisses me off that so many agents tell me they love it, the premise, the writing, the characters - and ask me to send them the very next thing I write. I'm angry and that fires me up.

Yes, I know I could self-publish. Or submit to a press directly. I'm choosing not to at this point.

I see so much dithering in the publishing world right now. So many of the industry professionals are hunkered down waiting to see what will happen. I hear many editors have been instructed not to acquire anything at all. I see agents making what seem to be desperation moves, selling clients' work to epresses with no track record. Established authors are turning down NYC deals to self-publish. (Courtney Milan is the latest news that way.)

We all want to make the thing happen. To get the stories to the readers, to make a living doing what we love. Everyone seems desperate to get rich and terrified of going under.

So, I'm coming back to the idea of balance. I'm spending more time in the garden, hand-watering and adding mulch to retain moisture.

I let myself be angry and it felt good, too.

It's good to want things.

How Old Is Too Old?

This New York Times article annoyed me yesterday. Oh, it's an interesting article (thanks to @wolfsonliterary for tweeting it!), about the inspiration for Suzanne Collins' young adult Hunger Games series. It's fun to read as a writer because, no, Suzanne didn't spring from Zeus's forehead as a full-grown bestseller. She's been honing her craft and working as a writer for years.

No, what annoyed me was a toss off sentence in regards to Collins' first book: "When it was published, Collins was already 41."

The implication being, of course, that omigod! She was already really old!

I looked up the staff writer of the article and she's not the fresh-faced 20-something I'd imagined. Perhaps some of her own angst leaked in there. It happens. She might be feeling the passage of years, wondering how much time she has left to do everything she dreams of.

It seems I know a lot of young writers. Perhaps because more young people tend to use the interwebs than older ones. Many of the hot new YA writers are young, too, so that could be part of the surprise with Collins. I hear a pervasive restlessness from the younger crowd, bemoaning the loss of their twenties, lamenting that they've hit a milestone birthday without reaching their publication goals, watching the approach of OMG 40! with horror.

The thing is, we're not football players or ballerinas. Our careers aren't over at 28. Most writers write their entire lives. And, writing is the kind of pursuit that improves with age. In fact, a number of studies show that the average age for writers to have a bestseller is 50.5.

(No - I have *no* idea why that article is on a golf cart website. I've read lots of studies/data like that and that was the first I found. Perhaps they think retirees searching for high-end golf carts might also want to finally write that novel? Could be.)

I went through a stack of notebooks and journals last night, looking for some information for author and writing buddy, Laura Bickle. I don't really journal extensively, but starting in about 1993, I took notes from writing classes, visiting authors, martial arts and philosophy classes, and wrote down story ideas and research in bound journals. It kind of makes for an interesting chronological mishmash of what I was thinking.

One thing that struck me, though, from those early writing notes, is how much I've grown since then. Confidence as a writer, yes. But also in perception, craft and skill. I *know* so much more now than I did at 27. That might seem self-evident, but the novels I write now are not ones I was capable of writing then. It's exciting to think of what I might be capable of in another twenty years.

By then they'll have really good voice-recognition software, too. I'll just lay back and dictate. While handsome men feed me grapes.

What were we saying about fantasy yesterday?

The More We Know

I don't mind the overnight snow, since we need the moisture. Dust storms have been clouding the valley. Even the daffodils don't mind. They whispered that they're built to withstand this kind of thing.

Over at Word Whores - my group blog, if you didn't know - we've been talking this week about drafting styles. Whether you plan it all out ahead of time or discover as you go. Whatever terms you may assign to to those styles, writers seem to fall pretty solidly into one court or another.

On Laura Bickle's post from yesterday, she talks about her plotting method. The comments conversation has become very interesting, as other writers profess horror or admiration for her detailed outlines.

That she does *before* she writes the book. Ahem.

At any rate, in the comments, the issue of revising came up. It's long been the lore that the great drawback of not plotting ahead of time is that you spend a lot more time revising. KAK, who is a german dictator under all that red hair and those pretty smiles, declared that every scene must pass the "purpose" test. If it doesn't serve the overall story, off it goes.

She's ruthless. Believe me, I know.

I can see her point. And definitely the revising process is more cerebral than drafting for me. The drafting is all about the misting along and letting anyone and everything into the story. Revising brings the critical lens to the entire arc of the story. I'm not sure anyone can revise in a subconscious, misty way.

Except.

Okay, I'm a self-confessed sub-conscious, dreamthink, misty writer. I do believe the stories and characters exist in some reality and reveal themselves to me. I rarely feel like I "think" them up. Sometimes I can't logically defend why someone or something is there. The critical lens would have me delete that stuff. The purpose test would demand excision. Goal, motivation, conflict? They scoff at these bits.

This is where my gut comes in. Neither the conscious, nor the subconscious, but the deep part that is most me. If I don't trust that part, then I'm not me, for better or worse. The GMC stuff (see above) arises out of classic storytelling. People like to talk about archetypes of the hero's journey and so forth. The thing is, archetypes, which Jung originally described as subconsciously shared concepts are something, by definition, already exist inside us. We can critically analyze them, but on some levels, they defy conscious definition.

No, I can't always defend the purpose of a scene. Sometimes it's because the scene is junk, or something I needed to write through to get somewhere. But one of the most surprising things I discovered over the ten years I spent writing and publishing essays - the things people keyed in on the most, were those things I had not planned. Scenes or images that just popped up when I was writing. Things that, sometimes, I nearly skipped writing, or thought about deleting later, because they seemed extraneous.

I keep reminding myself of that lesson.

A Day in the Life - Rogue Oracle

We have a new girl on the town. Rogue Oracle is no shy young debutante though. She's sister Word-Whore Laura Bickle's fourth book, the second in the Delphic Oracle series she writes as Alayna Williams.

She seems demure on the surface. Just a sweet, suburban fantasy, with a penchant for fresh herbs.


And lingerie.


She keeps herself spiffed up, with a pedicure for sandal season, because she also leads a secret life.


Taming wild crocodiles!


Consulting with the President and his cabinet.

And

Russian spy! You think it's an accident this book is about Chernobyl? Oh no no no.

Don't be taken in by appearances. Watch her.

Watch her very closely.

Writing as Sacred Space

I got to talking with my writing buddy, Laura Bickle, last night. She's gearing up for the release of Rogue Oracle, the second in her forensic Tarot series that she writes as Alayna Williams.

Dealing with the selling end of stuff is not so fun. Especially for those of us who were never really inclined to be marketers in the first place. Those occasional writers who also love to find more and better ways to get their books out there are blessed with a lucky combination of talents. However, most of the time, the personality and skill combination that makes us good at sitting by ourselves, dreaming up stories is not ideal for the high-octane racetrack of American supply and demand.

It's a challenge.

As we discussed her plans, I made an offhand comment about at least keeping the writing time sacred. The word struck her, because she'd never thought of it that way before.

I tend to think more in terms of the sacred, perhaps because I was a religious studies major in college. The commonalities among religions across the world fascinated me and I searched out those those themes. The sacred is that which is consecrated, from the Latin sacrāre, to devote. It simply means "reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object." Other definitions carry ideas about deities or the divine or the holy. But in its purest sense, the sacred is about devotion.

Not many of us starting writing for the money. We write first and foremost out of love. Love of the stories we've read, longing to tell stories of our own. If the writing itself isn't kept sacred, it can get eroded by the clamor and tumult of the world.

It's not easy, to keep the writing sacred.

It requires sacrifice, a word that comes from the same beginnings as sacred. We all know there's no such thing as something for nothing. Sometimes keeping the writing space sacred means giving up a pleasure, like computer games. Or relinquishing the idea that we can be everything to everyone. Sacrifice is painful, by definition.

Sometimes I think of it as, to create the sacred space, I have to destroy what's occupying that space. It might be something I really enjoy. An overriding idea through many spiritual practices is that greater sacrifices yield greater returns.

That's what creates the sacred.

Extended Architects

This is the sunset from the same night as the Wolf Moon rising photos. Really good show that night. The cast hit every note perfectly.

One of my writing friends and fellow Word-Whore, Laura Bickle, attended a panel last night. She was invited to a university, along with a "literary" writer and an art-gallery owner, to discuss Making Money from Art. Laura was described in the publicity materials as a pulp-fiction writer.

Been a while since you heard that term, too?

She says she didn't mind, but the term is really a slam. It derives from the days when certain, more disposable stories, were printed on cheap, pulp paper. Not like the good stuff you'd want to put in a library. If you've ever been to a discussion like this in an academic setting, then you'll know how the conversation went. The literary writer had one book to his name, but he'd clung to his Vision. Laura has published four urban fantasy books with Penguin in the last nine months, in two different series.

The art-gallery owner was gracious to her and even suggested a collaborative with a fantasy art show and Laura's books. Of course, a woman like that knows something about selling art, or she wouldn't be in business.

At any rate, afterwards, Laura and I discussed Vision. She said she'd learned something, a glimpse in the mirror we both shared. As writers, we sometimes let our Vision get in the way of delivering what the reader wants.

I ended up dragging out my new extended architect analogy.

I know: you can't wait.

Things Writers Can Learn from Architects

1) An architect can have a Vision, but people have to be able to use the building. Don't let your writer's Vision be more important than engaging the reader. Without people to occupy it, a building has no purpose.

2) An architect can design anything they like, but they are bound by the laws of physics. There must be a foundation and bearing walls. They can't just throw in a window in any old spot. Stories have traditional structures for a reason - kind of the physics of the imagination.

3) Originality is great, but if an architect puts the master bedroom next to the front entrance, no one will want the house. People expect certain things in a home, based on how people like to live. They also expect certain things from a story. You can have lovely twists and surprises, but don't turn it so upside-down that they're miserable being there.

4) Architects start with a dream and turn it into a solid reality. So do writers. Our readers occupy our realities. Make those worlds places they want to be.

5) Architects make a living from their work. This means putting as much fervor and art into designing a warehouse as a skyscraper. Not all jobs are big jobs. If you want to make a living at it, get good at designing warehouses, too. No newbie architect gets handed a skyscraper right off the bat. Don't disdain the warehouse jobs.

6) Now, if an architect doesn't care about making a living - say, if she works as a lawyer for her day job and designs buildings two hours before work every morning - then she can design all the skyscrapers she pleases, however she wishes. Whether someone invests in building them is another thing altogether.

7) If an architect sets out to design a house, they don't add on skyscraper and warehouse elements. Writers should know what they want their story to be. It doesn't have to be everything.

Seeing as how this is my new favorite analogy, I could go on forever. I'm also guilty of all these sins. But it helps me to think of how architects work. Yes, all houses are essentially the same. They all have the same elements, the same general lay-out, but within that pattern is an infinite array of ways that houses have unique, gracious and vibrant charm.

Sure, I fantasize about building a landmark skyscraper, one that defines the skyline of a city. Nothing wrong with a little beach cottage though. Simple. Straightforward.

So, what did I miss - any other architect analogies you all would like to add?

Low-Hanging Fruit

We went apple-picking in Tesuque yesterday.

Some friends live on a fairly large property in Tesuque canyon, filled with apple trees. They invited a bunch of us to bring containers and fill them with apples. We shared a potluck dinner. Lovely activity for a golden fall afternoon.

Except apple-picking is hard work.

Lots of bending over to pick up windfall apples, ones shaken from the trees and ones cut off by the pickers. Lots of stretching up to reach the low-hanging fruit - a phrase that has entirely new meaning for me now - and getting tangled in the snarly branches. We only picked for a couple of hours, but it left me a bit tired and sore.

If anyone had asked me how I liked apple-picking, I was ready to say, "this is why my farming grandparents were so hot for all of us to get good educations."

You guys do this, too, right? Prepare the witty remark, just in case someone asks. The only is, people rarely give you the correct set-up line and instead ask you something else completely unexpected that leaves you floundering for a response.

At any rate, I was thinking of my ancestors and how they spent their days. How apple-picking was probably a cake job for them. It kind of throws the whole writing and publishing business into a different light. There the labor is mostly mental and emotional. And yet, still strenuous for all that.

Last Friday I was chatting with Laura Bickle, whose really excellent book Sparks recently appeared here. We were talking about marketing books and publicity, what's the most effective approach to spreading the word about your book, and whether the traditional publishers are falling behind. I told Laura about this, that I'd been meaning to post here, apparently since last January:

Tim O’Reilly, the founder and C.E.O. of O’Reilly Media, which publishes about two hundred e-books per year, thinks that the old publishers’ model is fundamentally flawed. “They think their customer is the bookstore,” he says. “Publishers never built the infrastructure to respond to customers.” Without bookstores, it would take years for publishers to learn how to sell books directly to consumers. They do no market research, have little data on their customers, and have no experience in direct retailing. With the possible exception of Harlequin Romance and Penguin paperbacks, readers have no particular association with any given publisher; in books, the author is the brand name. To attract consumers, publishers would have to build a single, collaborative Web site to sell e-books, an idea that Jason Epstein, the former editorial director of Random House, pushed for years without success.

It's from this New Yorker article, if you care to read the whole thing. The article is on the long side (did I mention it was in the New Yorker?), but very interesting. What grabbed my attention in this bit is the idea that the traditional publishers think their customers are bookstores. I can see how that's the case. Bookstores, and to a lesser extent, libraries, ordered the books and made all of the purchasing and return decisions. It was up to the bookstores to connect with the actual readers.

Now, however, I can vouch that I now buy almost all of my books electronically, from Amazon or directly from the epublisher or the author. As much as I love bookstores, I rarely go into one anymore. When I do, I usually don't see what I'm looking for. I follow the recommendations of friends, book bloggers and other authors. Laura mentioned that Wal-Mart no longer will shelve books in the urban fantasy genre, which is what she writes. The big chain bookstores are failing as we see in the news.

It's a new era. Which is not a bad thing.

Things change. I imagine a lot of us come from farming backgrounds, yet very few of us spend the day laboring to pull our food from the earth. We don't need to. Why am I not going into bookstores anymore? I don't need to.

In reality, the customers for books have always been the readers. Bookstores are the middle-man, taking a piece of the profit for the service they provide. As that service declined - you know what I mean, when you could walk into a bookstore and say "I don't remember the author or the title, but it's about an autistic kid who thinks he witnesses a murder..." and the lovely bookseller could hand you exactly the thing and recommend six others - we have less need for that middle-man.

The one thing I really miss is the fun of it. I loved spending an hour or two browsing the shelves. The smell of leather armchairs and fresh print. That's the point of apple-picking, too, to spend an hour or two in the sunshine pulling fruit from the tree.

But the fastest, cheapest way for me to get an apple? Buy one from the store.

The Sparks Fly Upward

Hi all - Please welcome my dear friend, Laura Bickle to today's blog!

I'm privileged to host the debut of her second book in the Anya Kalinczyk series: SPARKS. Anya is an arson investigator with a most unusual familiar.

Let me tell you, you'll never think about fire salamanders in the same way.

Please welcome Laura and make her feel at home. I just love the post she wrote for us today. As a special treat, I'm giving my own copy of Sparks to a random commenter who says what being in love means to them.

Welcome Laura!


Writing a book is a lot like being in love - good and bad.

Initially, there's infatuation. The flush and excitement of a new idea. This is the easy part - words flow effortlessly. I can spend hours researching or daydreaming about how fabulous the idea is. I make notes, sketches, maps, cut clippings from magazines - I've met my characters, and am deliriously in love with everything they say. The project is, I believe, invincible.

It brings me flowers. I glow.

Then, somewhere around the 30,000 word mark, the infatuation fades. I begin to see the flaws, the inconsistencies, the cracks in the foundation of plot. I'm rolling over in the morning and staring at a book with bad breath that snores. It chews with its mouth open and forgets to say "excuse me" when it farts. It doesn't bring me flowers anymore. It's comfortable. Maybe too comfortable.

I sit in bed, staring at the book, wondering what to do. Should I abandon it for a newer, sexier idea? They're always dancing around in my periphery, seductively whispering: "Choose me."

But I know that it would be the same. I can choose another idea, but in a few weeks, I'll be at the same place, the shiny newness and rose petals replaced by snores and scratching.

At this time, I've got to decide to be committed to the project, to see it through -- even though my story is showing me its scraggly, unwashed underbelly. The challenge is to fall into a routine of writing that isn't new or exhilarating -- it's to focus on the entirety of the work, good and bad, and love it enough to finish.

There are moments that test my patience. A character proves utterly useless around 50,000 words and is savagely eliminated. A timeline problem emerges that requires my heroine to be in two places at once. A loose plot thread dangles with no end in sight. But we get through it.

There are moments that are sublime. Keystrokes fly by through the last chapter. Edits clean the story up nicely, and all of a sudden, my story is standing before me. It's shaved, holding a bouquet of flowers.

I feel the old love for it again. Not the infatuation of the beginning. But deep affection, knowing that we've weathered the writing process and have come out the other side of it victorious.

I straighten its tie, kiss it on the cheek, and send it out into the world. I hope that others will love it as much as I do.

-Laura Bickle has worked in the unholy trinity of politics, criminology, and technology for several years. She and her chief muse live in the Midwest, owned by four mostly-reformed feral cats. More information on her urban fantasy novels is available at www.salamanderstales.com.