Anne Stuart: "Don't Abuse the Muse"

Over on her "Blah Blog", author Alison Kent has the coolest quote from NY Times bestselling author (and industry legend) Anne Stuart, one so wise I had to share it for your Sunday quote:

"My New Year's resolution is to focus on the book and forget all the crap that surrounds the writing business. To lose myself in a story, and not give a damn if it makes any lists, has a good sell-through, gets glowing reviews on Amazon, pleases my editors, hell, even pleases my readers. I want to love what I'm writing so much that none of the rest of it matters, and if I don't, I won't write it. Life's too short to abuse the muse."

Thanks for the sensible advice, Anne. Love your books, too - dearly.

William Shatner on beginning, endings, and "Why Am I Here?" (followed by a delicious studio smackdown)

With BookExpo 2009 in full swing this weekend, I've got one eye on the twitter and blog feeds in the right hand sidebar, but I haven't gotten the "you are there" updates I'd hoped for. We'll recap the highlights when the dust has settled. Meanwhile, here's my favorite moment from last year's BEA coverage: PW's interview with William Shatner, who was there stumping for his fresh-out memoir.



And then there's this...which I love...so much. (Though I hate that they say on the label "loses it" -- because he's totally in charge. Listen and learn.)

Storytelling in 3-D

Earlier today, I let my college-student son talk me into playing hooky from writing and going to see Pixar's latest, UP, because we both thought it looked like such fun. When we arrived at the theater at 10:30 for the first showing, we were informed they'd rescheduled it for a school group (ACK! Avoid at all cost!) so the next available showing was at 11:30 AM, which would be a 3-D screening. I wasn't really interested in 3D, but I'd read it had improved since I'd last seen it (circa 19-mumble-mumble) and, besides, I love any excuse to spend time with the big kid.

After I picked my teeth up off the floor at the outrageous price ($19.50 for two tickets, because there's no early show discount on 3-D films and also a premium charged for those swell glasses) and we sat through approximately three months' worth of trailers, commercials, and little kids climbing all over one another, the movie finally started.

It was exactly what you'd expect from a Pixar film. Fun with a great (surprisingly but beautifully bittersweet at times) story, well-defined characters, and a wonderful story. And most importantly, the beautiful eye candy, especially the 3D, seamlessly blended into the whole instead of calling attention to itself. The effect, like the special effects from this summer's terrific Star Trek movie, didn't jerk you out of the story or distract from what was otherwise a weak effort.

Yea, I say! Someone in Hollywood has finally clapped on. (Is it too much to hope there will never be another Phantom Menace?)

For those of us who tell our stories using the written word, there's a great lesson here as well. No matter what shiny new techniques you trot out, which cover treatments are designed to showcase the book, or what you do so sell it, all the sizzle in the world won't make a three-dimensional experience from cardboard. You need to pour heart and soul first into rounding out compelling characters the audience will want to succeed and tossing challenging problems and lots of surprises (of Plot Bombs, as Joni calls them) between them and their goals.

Special effect notwithstanding, that's the real way to tell a 3-D tale.

Shavuotapalooza! (Joni's Ten Commandments For Writers)

Happy Shavuot! ‘Tis the season to celebrate the dramatic delivery of the Ten Commandments by consuming delicious dairy products! (Because the Torah nourishes us like milk, you see.) In honor of the occasion, I humbly offer…

Ten Commandments For Writers
(inspired by my hazy memories of Lutheran Catechism class)

1: Thou shalt have no other gods nor worship any graven images.
Artistic integrity uber alles. The worst mistake a writer can make is the embrace of greed or a neediness for fame. When "success" as defined by numbers is the prime objective, it pollutes every creative decision, corrupts the joy of every accomplishment, seduces us into projects we don’t belong to, and distracts us from the organic nature of our art. I don’t care if you’re writing literary fiction or catalogue copy, do it for love of language or don’t do it at all.

2: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain.
Nor vainly bandy random potty-mouth verbage. Overusing profanity dulls its effect. Make every F-bomb count by reserving the word for special occasions. My dad always said (in re the use of vulgarities on the radio), “A truly creative mind has the vocabulary to express itself without needlessly offending members of the audience.”

3: Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Jesus had it right on: “God made Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.” It’s a gift, that day/hour/fifteen minutes of rest, and essential to prolonged periods of poker-hot productivity, not to mention ocular health. Slap a couple cucumber slices on those tired eyes and listen to some Enigma. Take a walk with kids, dogs, or love interests. Watch a “Top Chef” marathon. Go to bed, for crying out loud; whatever you’re staying up for isn’t worth it. Rest is sacred. We’re in a profession where there’s no such thing as “enough” until you say the word and mean it. Harlan Ellison says “Do 1000 words a day. Don’t go for more.” (I shoot for 1200-1400, but what do I know?)

4: Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long upon the earth.
I suppose this should be about not neglecting the family (and it’s a good idea to look up every once in a while and make sure they haven’t relocated to South Dakota without you), but since I’m pretty much the worst daughter in the world, I’m applying this to our literary forebears. A great thing about being the mother of English majors: their required reading takes me back to revisit the classics. In addition to the Dead White Guys, there’s ancient Sappho and scripture and the riches of mythology. We also need to tear our attention away from the hottie literati who dominate the scene these days and revere the icons of our industry - Ray Bradbury, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Stephen King - commercially gigantic writers who’ve conducted themselves with class, grace, generosity, and style.

5: Thou shalt not kill.
Unless it’s essential to the plot. And if it works for the plot, thou shalt not NOT kill, even if you’ve grown attached to that character who, you know in your heart, must die. Death is part of life. Each story must have its true body count, and not one gratuitously bloated corpse more.

6: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Faithfulness and commitment to storytelling must trump the temptation to cheat with suspiciously handy Hum-Vees, wood-chippers, and other naughty little god-in-the-machine devices.

7: Thou shalt not steal.
But feel free to glean, eavesdrop, and spy on life every minute of every day. The best material isn't inside your head or the result of navel contemplation; it's all around you. Standing in line at the grocery store, hanging out in a bar on the Upper West Side, kicked back in the stands of an Astros game...stick a straw in the vast fruit smoothie of humanity and suck like a vampire.

8: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
See #s 1 and 6. Honesty is essential to all good writing, including fiction. A theatre director friend of mine used to live by motto “No bit too small, no laugh too cheap.” That might work for Comedia dell’arte, but it just doesn’t play on paper. Every character, including the less involved comers and goers—the “neighbors”, if you will—must ring true and multi-dimensional. And on an industrial level—it means giving our colleagues the benefit of the doubt. Martin Luther’s explanation of the 8th Commandment says we should “put the best construction on everything.” We work in a tough biz where gossip is gold. Let’s be kind to each other and reserve the backbiting to our morally conflicted characters.

9: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.
You’re screwed if you measure your happiness by the size of someone else’s advance. This business is so random, so universally unfair, and such a capricious SOB, very few (if any) of us are ever going to get what we feel we deserve. A tremendous advantage I’ve had in the publishing industry is the fact that I did not imagine in my wildest dreams that I deserved to be part of it. My career has been a huge surprise party. This isn’t to say I’m willing to devalue my work or accept lowball wages. I’m not! Because I have huge respect for the art and craft of writing. I’m serious as a heart attack about my work. But I keep my eye on MY prize, not someone else’s.

10: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is his.
Like I said above…although there is an upside to envy.

Happy Shavuot! Enjoy some cheesecake, be good, and prosper!

Post a Phobia, Win a Book

Over at Fresh Fiction today, I'm giving away a free, autographed copy of any of my backlist books to one lucky commenter (comments must be at the Fresh Fiction site to win). The creepy-crawly question: which animal/bug/other creature elicits the most chills for you? (And lets remember, phobias don't follow logic, so if you're afraid of fuzzy bunnies after watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, fess up!)

If you'd like to expand the conversation over here to include non-animal phobias (and possibly give me some great ideas for taking readers on a thrill-ride in an upcoming book), this is the place to discuss them...

If you dare.

This Post Brought to You by Your Literary Agent

A reminder to authors everywhere that agents can only sell the raw material they're given to work with. :)



I adore Tony Carillo's F-Minus. Check it out for more laughs!

It's all good (Diversify and thrive!)

I started out writing mainstream/women's fiction, then did a memoir and a weekly syndicated column, which led to a monthly advice column in a national magazine, which I continued while I ghosted my first memoir guru project and wrote another novel, which I edited while plotting my first mystery novel and taking a screenwriting class, which led to other mysteries, other ghost stories...

Schizophrenic or Renaissance woman? I guess it's a matter of opinion. In his wonderful book Adventures in the Screen Trade, novelist/screenwriter William Goldman recommends writing in multiple formats and genres as a way to keep the minds moving, and adds: “Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before."

So in that spirit, let's have a little more writing and a little less conversation.

Hatching Day Blues

So today it's here, release day for my eighth romantic thriller (fifteenth novel overall) Beneath Bone Lake. What's it like, a prepublished friend asks wistfully. Does it really feel like giving birth?

Well, yes, if you're one of my favorite creatures, the sea turtle. Every year, Mama Turtle, ever so graceful and gorgeous in the water, hauls her bulks onto the beach where she hatched, laboriously drags her heavy carcass up to the full moon, high water line with her flippers and slowly, painfully scoops out the hole to lay her eggs. After hours and hours of hard work, she pats the sand over her offspring and treks back to her element, the water, where she will swim and feed and mate so she can do it all again another year from now.

By hatching day, she's already immersed in these pursuits when her offspring dig themselves free and make the mad dash to the water. A host of predators try to destroy them, from crabs to fish and sharks to hungry gulls and stupid tourists ("Aw! How cute! Let's keep him as a pet and throw him in with our goldfish!")

Mama sea turtle has no more control over their survival. She's unaware of how many -- if any -- will make it to their destination, whether they will flourish or get caught up in a fisherman's net or plastic flotsam. The truth is, very few survive.

But it matters not. Next year, she'll still try again, because it's the way she's programmed. She can no more choose not to be a female sea turtle than a novelist by nature can choose to give up writing. And although we always want to hit the lists, win the acclaim, and be assured our creations have reached their audience, nothing will keep us from hitting the shore again until our minds or bodies or our spirits wear out.

Or at least that's how I feel today.

Happy hatch-day,
Beneath Bone Lake.

Some showers are more fun than others (Your invitation to the BBL Buy Blitz)

Colleen Thompson's latest, Beneath Bone Lake, officially hits the bookshelf tomorrow and is now shipping on Amazon and other online book sources. So let me start by saying:

GOFIGHTWIN COLLEEN BOOK!

No one I know is more dedicated to her craft. And no one does more to encourage, support, and mentor fellow authors. Please join me in a Buy Blitz and review shower for Colleen tomorrow. If you're buying the book in store, take a sec to call today and make sure it's on shelves. If you're buying online, please do so tomorrow before 4PM. And as soon as you've read, take another minute to pop back to Amazon and post a review.

Quoth Colleen in the press kit:
"Stretched along the East Texas and Louisiana border, there lies a lake populated by old cypress trees cobwebbed with thick strands of Spanish moss. Inhabited by the ghostly calls of great birds and huge alligators that lurk just beneath the surface, the lake is also home to the sun-bleached, standing skeletons of huge trees drowned as the area first flooded. It's an eerie world, lonely and primordial and beautiful and sometimes frightening. It is also the setting of my next romantic thriller, Beneath Bone Lake..."

Early buzz is buzzing. Just a few of the tasty pull quotes:

“Gripping and engaging from the very first page, Thompson’s novel demonstrates why she's a master of suspense and mystery. The author weaves a well-plotted tale of corruption, horror, violence and the enduring love formed by an impenetrable bond of trust.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“BENEATH BONE LAKE continues Colleen Thompson's fantastic storytelling. The fleshed-out characters, the setting and the suspense will keep you reading page after page.”
—Fresh Fiction

"From start to finish, BENEATH BONE LAKE is a must read for romantic suspense lovers with its edge-of-the seat suspense and its daring romance."
—Merrimon Crawford, Book Illuminations

Beneath Bone Lake combines a tightly-wound plot, fully fleshed characters, and the lush Colleen Thompson landscaping her fans have come to love in her last dozen-plus books.

Jump in the shower with us and check it out!

In Praise of the Sunday Paper

I've had quite enough of Twitter, thank you. I'm also over MySpace and growing tired of Facebook, with all the fragmentary discourse on things I couldn't care less about. (Such as, apparently, the "grammar myth" about the undesirability of ending a sentence with a preposition.)

On Sunday mornings, I want spread my newspaper across the kitchen table. Preferably, a great, big fat edition with lots of in-depth, locally-written articles/series. I want a nice book section, color funny pages, grocery-store and car ads, an occasional slow-cooker recipe, crossword puzzles, and Dear Abby.

I want my week to start on simmer, not a boil (or ten million wisps of steam) and I want to enjoy it at the breakfast table with my tea or coffee and my breakfast. I want to quietly recharge my batteries without the noise or clicking or the backlit screen that makes my eyes sting.

I want that sense of continuity that connects me with my parents', grandparents', and great grandparents' generations. I want to imagine the journalists out interviewing folks with stubby pencils or working in a Lou Grant-style newsroom. (My imagination's shamelessly old school in this area, though I'm well aware the world has changed.)

And I want this tradition to continue, which is why I won't consider letting my newspaper subscription lapse. It's cheap, for one thing, considering what it offers. If I want to economize (always), there are plenty of other "frills" I can cut instead.

If we want great newspapers to happen, we need to vote for our wallets by supporting those that offer depth beyond the wire service stories we can all see online and original reporting. Otherwise, you lose the privilege of wringing your hands and lamenting when your city loses its last print paper.

And the rest of us lose something well worth saving.

Eggers to authors: "When in doubt about the future of the written word -- email me!"

And I thought I was the last optimist in the publishing industry...

Here's what Dave Eggers said to members of the Authors Guild, who'd gathered last week at the Tribeca Rooftop to honor him for his work with 826 National, his nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for kids and teens:

"Nothing has changed! The written word—the love of it and the power of the written word—it hasn’t changed. It’s a matter of fostering it, fertilizing it, not giving up on it, and having faith. Don’t get down. I actually have established an e-mail address, deggers@826national.org—if you want to take it down—if you are ever feeling down, if you are ever despairing, if you ever think publishing is dying or print is dying or books are dying or newspapers are dying (the next issue of McSweeney’s will be a newspaper—we’re going to prove that it can make it. It comes out in September). If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong."

Read more in the New Yorker.

Linking Old Readers with New

I wanted to give you all a head's up that I'm also blogging today over at 2BRead on my thoughts on the new Star Trek movie and how it pertains to the tough challenge of writing sequels.

Please drop by and say hello or share your thoughts by clicking this link!

Tech Report:Netbooks vs. Full-sized Laptops

I have some traveling to do this summer, coupled with a tight deadline and unrealistically-high expectations for my own output. And the thought of dragging around my big, heavy laptop made me groan. Besides, when I go to meetings of the writers' group where I'm the program chair, I invariably forget something (upcoming meeting schedule, the speaker's introduction, uh, the speaker's name), which makes me feel incompetent, scatter-brained, and embarrassed until I bum someone else's computer to look the stuff up online. So I told myself I needed one of those cute little netbooks I've been seeing people tool around with.

But honestly, I just really wanted one, because I've seen a few and fell in love with them. Normally, I sit on my hands until a tech-envy moment passes. I keep myself on a tight budget, and try to differentiate needs from wants.

This time, however, the thought of trying to haul the big laptop (which has recently gone through three motherboards and two power supplies) through the airports convinced me, and I went ahead and ordered an 8.9-inch blue Acer Aspire One, the kind with the 6-cell battery and Windows XP, because I don't want to fool with learning Linux.

After playing with it for a few days, here are a few thoughts.

PROS:
1. Outstanding battery life with the six cell. Better yet, the screen doesn't dim like my Dell's does on battery (you can barely make out the screen), so I can actually see what I'm doing and happily haul it around unplugged.
2. Portability - about 2.3 lbs. compared to over 7. I can pop it in a little cover and slip in into a larger handbag or a tote, no problem.
3. Sleek, without a lot of sticky-outty whatsits (that's the official, high-tech phrase) to catch on everything, so it easily slips in and out of its protector.
4. Cute and cool-looking. I'm usually about four generations behind any tech wave, so it's kind of fun to have the latest little doodad. (Well, not the very latest, but something pretty close that I could actually afford.)

CONS:
1. Teeny screen vs. middle-aged eyesight. It's sharp and clear, and I have good glasses, but this could cause strain if I used it full-time.
2. Teeny keyboard vs. middle-aged hands. The 8.9" keyboard's a bit cramped even for my small hands. I've noticed I was accidentally hitting the number row when attempting to hit the "QWERTY" row of keys. More troubling, my hands and fingers ached from the strain of the smaller board. Thank heavens I didn't try for the 7" model!
3. Touchpad "pinch" feature was randomly selecting and then enlarging or shrinking text on the screen, and I had no idea how to turn it off or even what it was. Which leads me to the biggie:
4. Worst tech support ever. Unlike Dell, Acer has a website that's not at all user friendly and the only support available was via e-mail. The first tech who wrote back about my problem didn't write in English well enough to comprehend, clearly didn't know what my problem was, and said (once I got a translation from a second tech after I sent a rude, frustrated e-mail) that it was a software, not an Acer issue. Plus, he encouraged me to use their phone tech support line for an exorbitant amount of money. There were no helpful user forum, but I finally found something at another site online (thank God for helpful geeks) that showed me how to successfully turn off the "pinch" feature on the touchpad (which doesn't work well with that tiny pad).
5. You have to buy an external CD drive if you want to be able to load your own software. Otherwise, it'll cost a boatload of bucks to repurchase programs such as MS Word, which I already legally own. Fortunately, external CD drives are fairly inexpensive, but it was an unexpected added expense. And I'm cheap, remember?
6. Slower than my full-sized laptop, with only 1 GB of RAM. You wouldn't want to use it for anything more memory intensive than writing, e-mail, or browsing the web. Which is exactly what the thing's for anyway.

The bottom line:
Now that I've turned off the annoying-as-heck pinch function, I love this little netbook. It's perfect for working at Starbucks or the library, hauling to take notes at a meeting, or taking along while traveling by air.

What it isn't is a replacement for my larger, faster, more comfortable-to-use (if temperamental) full-sized laptop. So if you keep your expectations realistic (and aren't unlucky enough to need a lot of tech support), the Acer Aspire One could be a nice addition to your toolkit.