I Don't Want to Know

I was working on my story bible yesterday, and I realized that one of the key elements of my young hero is he wants to know . . . and he doesn't want to know. And that, I think, is how many of us are.

His mother is dead, and while his father and grandfather will speak of his mother, they never speak precisely of how she died. That sin of ommission is common--I've seen it in my own extended family. And then the internal battle is do you really want to know?

Secrets and lies are part of most lives. And many of us sit right down at the dinner table with them. We break bread with secrets and lies; we go on holiday with them. We "know," maybe from the time we are a child, like my hero Koyla, that something is "not quite right." That there's more to the story, that the fairy tale being woven for us cannot be true. It isn't true. But . . . we decide that we rather like things the way they are. And if we find out the truth, then we may be forced to confront it. Life will never be the same.

Wives wonder if husbands are having affairs. Some doggedly search for evidence, but others may decide that going through pockets and cellphone records would mean having to DO something if he is having an affair. So it's easier to accept the lies.

Husbands wonder the same thing. Is that old college friend really "just a friend"? And maybe it's better if they don't know.

Adult children wonder . . . they have vague memories of jumbled secrets from childhood. But do they really want to know what happened that night dad pushed mom against a wall? Or dad hid something in the trunk of the car--something in a black bag? (I'm getting creative here, but you get the idea.)

Children are just as capable of making this deal. And so Koyla is conflicted. He knows that there, on the other side of the chasm, is the truth. And he senses that the truth will shatter him. It will hurt more than even not having his mother around. So he would rather live with the pain he knows than the pain he doesn't. He's comfortable with his pain. It's as familiar as a cherished blanket. But that pain over there on the other side of the chasm will be cold. No blanket.

Of course, Koyla's journey is our human one. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And so sometimes even that horrible pain--the worst pain of our lives--actually brings us somewhere better and stronger. We find we DO have the strength to face it. And we're more confident, stronger, braver for it. Koyla will find that out.

When I was a mother with an infant daughter, I decided I really couldn't bear to live in a house with holes in the walls anymore--punched in by my then-husband. I couldn't imagine leaving. I didn't have a job. I was very sick (didn't yet know I had Crohn's disease). I "knew" or thought I did, that living a life of quiet desperation was far better than what was over "there." I put on a smile and pretending everything was okay--so much so that 99% of the people in my life were shocked when I decided to leave my husband. But that 1%--specifically, ONE very, very astute friend--had seen it. At the dinner table. Actually, it was at the poker table. She saw, in one evening, the secrets and lies and she KNEW what I was living with.

When I write about Koyla, I know where he's going. I know where the journey ends, three books or so later. I know he's going to be scared as hell. But I also know he's going to be all right.

Have you ever wanted to know . . . but then again . . . didn't?

The Horror of It All

Right now, horror has a name.

My laundry pile.

More precisely not MY laundry pile but the pile of laundry collected, Communist-style from the "collective" that is my family of six. It makes me shudder.

But that's the brilliance of the horror genre. Finding the frightening in the mundane. To that end, BAMBI was named, by Time Magazine as one of the top-25 horror films of all time. Brilliant. Heck, it scared the crap out of me when I was 6 or 7. So did Disney's Snow White. Stepmom wanting the HEART of Snow White? How cannibalish! And yet all wrapped up in technicolor sweetness.

Of course, the movie that terrified me more than anything? Those damn flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.

But, like all horror, I can find good scares in the mundane. Like my laundry. However, CLOWNS top my list. Along with cockroaches (but not spiders), rats (but not mice--unless they are very large mice), the dark (don't like it), enclosed spaces (am claustrophobic, though I recently conquered a big fear and rode the subway in NYC after not having done so for 20 years thanks to panic attacks as I would descend the stairs into the bowels of Manhattan), and people who stand too close to me--I find that creepy . . . gimme my "space."

So how about you?

Daydreamer

All my life, I have been a daydreamer. I would think nothing of going to bed early with the express purpose of making sure I had a half-hour or so to daydream before I fell asleep (which I guess makes me a night daydreamer). I would think nothing of reclining on the grass outside during the day, staring up at the clouds and daydreaming. Or sitting in the doctor's office waiting room having whole conversations in my head related to an imaginary happening. Which I guess makes me sound crazy, but I rather like to think it's because I'm a writer--always have been even when I was a kid.

For me, daydreaming is a way of sorting out how I am feeling about something. It's great fantasy. It's a way of sorting out my stories for writing. I indulge daydreaming and find it's a great stess reliever, and Lord knows I need stress relief.

My daydreams tend to unfold like movies. They go in order, sort of like storyboards, but I skip the boring parts. There's dialogue and setting . . . and usually there is nothing to do with the activities of daily living--no laundry, no dishes (they magically get clean), no bills to pay, no children whining that there's nothing "good" to eat in the house, and most especially no significant other. He's never in them, I would say likely because he doesn't ever contribute to making my life easier as far as bill paying, laundry, and most especially cleaning of any sort, etc. So it would make sense in my daydream that he would vanish, in favor, likely, of someone who helps around the house for those imaginary activities of daily living, which magically get done anyway in daydreams. In fact, I guess my daydreams are really about gay men (all my gay guy pals are GREAT housekeepers) who happen to be straight for the purposes of a daydream. My daydreams occasionally involve winning the lottery, and usually involve living someplace QUIET with horses. My kids are sometimes in my daydreams, and they are always perfectly behaved and happy in them.

My daydreams are vivid enough to lift my mood or depress me. I can cry over a daydream. And I wonder . . . do most people daydream? Only writers? Only crazy people?

So . . . do you daydream?

Normal

I wouldn't know normal if it came up and slapped me across the face. I just wouldn't. For a variety of reasons.

And I like it that way.

But . . . I had a mini-revelation while driving yesterday. I realized that the theme of "being normal" runs through not only my books, but many others. Because for characters who don't fit "the norm," there is a longing to be like everyone else. Whereas I embrace my eccentricities, many characters do not. In High School Bites, which I wrote under my YA pen name, Lucy just wants to be like everyone else, instead of destined to be a vampire hunter from a long line of women who hunted Dracula himself. Adolescence, where most teens struggle with learning their place in the world, is ripe for insecurities about what is "normal." So YA literature often explores that. But even look at Jason Bourne. His character wants out of the spy game. He wants to know who he is. To get back from normalcy.

On the flip side, there are many people who are "normal" who long to be more than normal. People who desire extreme fame and fortune, or who are stuck in a small town, longing for the lights of the big city.

I never wished for normal. But now I see the theme everywhere.

Thoughts?

Like Butter

Yesterday was a monumental day in the life of Erica Orloff. I learned how to use my rice steamer.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I only learned to use the coffeemaker last year. I used to buy McDonald's coffees--extra large--six at a time, and then microwave them as needed. I owned a coffeemaker, but the contraption overwhelmed me. So, I have had the "Rolls Royce" of rice steamers, a gift when I went macrobiotic over a year ago . . . but always had to ask Significant Other (the giver of the gift) to make my rice. Turns out all you have to do is put two cups of water to one cup of rice. Close the steamer. Press the white rice or brown rice button. And wait. That's it. Voila! Rice! As a macrobiotic eater (most of the time), rice is a staple, and so I am delighted. But Baby Son has had medical issues and was diagnosed with "Failure to Thrive" meaning my baby couldn't gain weight if he tried. And trust me, we stuffed him. So . . . he is on a high-fat diet thanks to the doctors at Children's Hospital--and high fat is the exact opposite of macrobiotic. So he gets butter on his rice. Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Adding butter yesterday, I was at the last of a stick, and was using the waxed paper to spread it on Baby Demon Boy's rice. Because I am "cooking challenged," the P.C. version of I can't cook at all, I ended up with butter all over my hands. (And if you have somehow concluded that smearing butter on steamed rice isn't really "cooking," then clearly you are not as "cooking challenged" as I am.) So I went to rinse off my hands. Butter is not easy to get off your hands, and it felt like I was slathered in thick moisturizer, and I was suddenly carried away to a book. To the MOMENT I read it.

I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale 22 years ago. The details of it remain vivid. I can't tell you, for sure, the names of all the characters, but the real details remain. Deprived of anything to enhance beauty, the captive Handmaid saves little bits of butter from her meals, secreting it away in her spare pair of shoes, to use as moisturizer on her dry hands. That little detail, and how her hands ached for the butter . . . felt so tragic in the confines of the novel. Twenty-two years later, it remains part of me to such an extent that I don't even look at a simple item like butter in the same way.

The best of books will do that. Plot details will fall away, character names will fade. But the best of books will have a moment of heart-wrenching pain, or a moment of pure undistilled joy--defined not by the words of emotion but the small details--and will remain. Those moments when real book lovers will say, "I'll never forget . . ."

So, do you have an "I'll never forget . . . " moment from a book? A movie? In your own work in progress . . . a moment you are aiming for?

Coming Up for Air

I am a putterer.

According to the dictionary, this means:

1. to busy or occupy oneself in a leisurely, casual, or ineffective manner: to putter in the garden.
2. to move or go in a specified manner with ineffective action or little energy or purpose: to putter about the house on a rainy day.

This isn't really an accurate description for what I do, then. First of all, when I putter in the garden, it's not ineffective. I am tending my plants and helping them grow, getting rid of weeds, plucking off dead blooms. When I putter in my house, it's PURPOSEFUL (in direct contradiction to definition #2). I usually tackle something I've been putting off awhile. Like filing. Or cleaning my desk. Or organizing my research. Or going through my kids' clothes and packing away the summer stuff and taking things to Goodwill and so on.

But, purposeful or not, I adore puttering. I listen to my iPod and decompress by moving from project to project, usually just feeling JOYFUL that I am home, amongst my pets and my kids and my things. Home without some deadline looming oppressively. Home and free to be creative.

Which brings me to this post. I've been working on deadline for a while now, stressing over proposals, working on the story bible for my new top-secret project, and so on. Deadlines until I couldn't see straight. In fact, until my left eye developed a very un-Zen-like nervous twitch.

And finally, I got caught up. And finally, I got to come up for air. To me, coming up for air means getting to putter, to let my mind wander where it wants to, to play with my birds or to brush one of the dogs, to deadhead my flowers and sweep the front steps. And somehow, I am a better writer for days like today.

Anyone else?

More Editing How-To's: Dialogue

More editing how-to's.

I like writing that is spare and lean. And there's nothing worse than looking at a page full of "he said's" and "she said's" when reading dialogue. However, I remember when I was first writing, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to write lengthy dialogue without the occasional reminder for the reader of who the heck was talking. That's when I learned to tie an action to a speaker. When I became an editor, I found out most of the publishers I worked with preferred this method, too. And when authors didn't so do, when they had a lot of he saids and she saids, their dialogue somehow seemed "clunkier."

Okay, so how do you do this?

"I don't understand why you are so damn difficult."
"That's part of my charm."

This has no identifiers. Now, if this was part of lengthy dialogue, you wouldn't want to have a whole bunch of lines without knowing who was speaking. Ever do that "line counting" thing? Going backward in dialogue when you are reading to figure out who the heck is speaking? That's not good either. And you like to know who speaks first.

"I don't understand why you are so damn difficult," he said.
"That's part of my charm," she replied.

Kind of clunky. And if you have a lot of he saids/she replied/he offered/she added, it gets even clunkier. Plus you run out of different ways to basically say "he said." So you tie an action to the speaker.

He reached for case file. "I don't understand why you are so damn difficult."
"That's part of my charm."

There's no confusion, but you eliminate he said/she said entirely. He has the action. It's his dialogue. He owns it by default there. You can even put the action after the piece of dialogue.

"I don't understand why you are so damn difficult." He picked up the case folder and flung it across the room.
"That's part of my charm."

I understand that an occasional he said/she said is a quick touchpoint in dialogue. But when I edit and see a ton of dialogue "markers," I usually tell writers to get rid of them, and this is the method most often used.

Any other dialogue tricks up your sleeve? Do you do that "line counting" thing in dialogue-heavy books? (Or am I the only one?) Thoughts?

Peace,
E

Who Said This?

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.”

This quote is a template for being a writer if ever there was one. I mean, yeah, there has to be talent. But no "special" talent. If you have a medium amount of talent, you can train yourself to be better.

Curiosity? I always rank intellectual curiosity as the number-one tool in a writer's arsenol. You can't write if you have nothing to say. Or, you can't write WELL if you have nothing to say. You will sound like the ignorant fool that you are if you refuse to be intellectually curious. After my post of yesterday, I have opinions on sheep and those who herd them.

Obsession. Yes, I think writers need this. Why else do you rise at dawn to bang out a thousand words? Why else do you think of your work-in-progress day in and day out. Why else do you DREAM of it?

Dogged endurance. Oh, yeah, we all need that. Lots of it. As I watch a dear friend go through rewrites. As I go through rewrites . . . you need endurance. To break in to the biz, you need even more.

Self-criticism. Need it. You have got to be able to look at your work with a fresh eye, a critical eye. I truly pity the writer who cannot "see" it when a work needs overhaul.

So who said this gem of wisdom?

Ready?

Albert Einstein.

Thoughts?

Peace

They want to start this club on school property. Public school. I am so upset I can't write. I can't think. I can't see straight. My stomach is churning. I need some serious, serious calming down.

So . . . today, I simply salute this news.

And I say . . . may true love rule.

Peace,
E

P.S. Were you surprised by J.K.'s revelation?????????

When Subtle Won't Work

Had some face time with editors this week. (Thus my spotty blogging.) Here's something to keep in mind.

I think writing should be subtle. Heavy-handed isn't my typical choice in what I read, and it's not, I hope, what I write. I think my writing has gotten more subtle as the years go on. For instance, there is symbolism in all my books (and if you go back and search for past posts on symbolism, you'll see the discussions of that), but if the reader doesn't "get" the symbolism because it's subtle, that's okay because the book still works with or without it.

I always advocate show don't tell. That's where being subtle is important . . . the nuances and quirks and "whispers" of a character that let us know what's important.

But when it comes to pitching your book, subtle won't work. Here's why. One editor told me this week that she was amazed at how many ideas I can come up with. Different ideas. Ideas that over lunch sound like unique concepts. Not like every other book. (Example? In Freudian Slip--November '08!!--a recovering heroin addict in a coma is assigned a cosmic social worker case of a woman who is grieving as the anniversay of 9/11 approaches, and along the way the heroin addict is helped in his mission by a heavenly Albert Einstein, who has an affinity for electronics and PowerPoint . . . and God, who is a woman with an inability to handle the music of ABBA, so when angels and demons wish to carry on private discussions, they head to Greenwich Village to a certain bar where the jukebox only plays ABBA and the bar remains neutral turf . . . I could go on, but you get the idea this is off the wall . . . a love story with quirks galore.)

Another editor said, "I am so tired of the same-old, same-old." In romance or chick lit, that includes the runaway bride, the bridezilla, the woman whose had loss and must start to date all over again, the woman dating the younger man, etc. In mysteries, the cop-turned-detective. The private investigator without a license who does it because of x or y. You get the idea. When my agent has things turned down, one of the most common reasons editors give is . . . "I'm afraid though the writing is excellent, this book/character won't stand out in the overcrowded detective genre/romance genre/paranormal genre, etc.."

And you can tell yourself or tell an editor, "Mine is different BECAUSE . . ." and fill in the blank. I've seen one overconfident blogger believe HER runaway bride unsold novel is different because SHE'S a great writer and everything that's come before her has been poorly written. But in the end . . . you aren't just pitching to an agent. Or an editor. If an agent takes it on, and you are fortunate enough that an editor adores it (and we're talking both of those things being tough in and of themselves), the editor still has to pitch it to committee (another hurdle). And then, if all the stars are aligned, it has to be pitched to the marketing team and publicity departments. Then B&N and the chains so they determine how many copies to order. Then it gets reviewed and it means reviewers have to describe why your book is different in the overcrowded genre. And so on.

The reason it seems like books with a hook get published is precisely those odds.

So you gotta hook 'em.

Thoughts?

What if . . .

. . . You couldn't write.

I mean . . . what if by some alternate universe, some curse put on you by a witch, some freak of brain function, you suddenly, tomorrow, woke up and couldn't write fiction?

What would you do instead? How would you express yourself?

I've been thinking about the creative . . . I mean, I know people who are creative cooks, or quilters, or knitters, or who do Martha Stewart-esque crafts. And I definitely give credit for creativity in all its forms. BUT . . . writing has this other "communication" dimension. Knitting doesn't. I liken that dimension to music. But that wouldn't be an option for me. I can't sing. I can't compose a song.

And the desire to communicate creatively is so intense, it's not like I could sublimate it entirely into my knitting--no matter how much I like making my kids hats. Eventually, there just wouldn't be enough cold days for my creativity.

So I would say that I would take photographs. I think that comes closest. I would tell a story, just in a different way. Which I guess means the storytelling is what's most primal for me.

Thoughts?

Keeping It Real

Cliches.

We know we're supposed to avoid them.

Yet I still see them in writing I critique. And I most especially, and unfortunately, see them in romances. When was the last time you described a man in your life as having "sinewy" thighs? Um . . . not me.

What about all of the other cliches that seem to creep into love scenes? Romances? Mysteries? Whatever the genre.

Here's what I think. To avoid cliche, don't focus on writing. I know that sounds odd. But focus on keeping it real. Suppose, for instance, you have just met the most wonderful new person. Think of how you would describe him or her to your friends. Now think about ways to decribe him or her to a blind person. Then someone from another culture. Focus on the traits that seem most important. Focus on what you would really say. Focus on, the way when you're in love, you notice something cute or special--pick one trait, one aspect and make that really stand out. You've just called your brother who lives across the globe to tell him you're getting married--what do you tell him about your intended? How do you make him or her come alive for your brother even though he's not going to meet this person until the wedding day? You get the idea. If someone is special, they deserve more than a cliche.

Villains deserve no less. I have a villain or two in my own life, and trust me, I don't have to fall back on cliche. I can make them come alive with one or two very precise stories. In ONE story . . . one single moment in time, I can tell you ALL you need to know about someone who is a villain in my life. In one moment, one story, you would get the idea. I don't have to fall back on overused adjectives.

How about you? How do you keep it real?

More Editing How-To's--Life Speeding By

Since my blog post of two days ago generated so much discussion (and great tips and word lists for myself--thanks everyone!), I decided to post on another editing pet peeve.

There is nothing mroe satisfying to the secret, lurking English teacher in me than slashing a red line through an entire page. Whip out the pen and voila . . . the page is gone. I do it often when editing authors . . . and I know they cringe. But . . . sometimes I just have to. And one of the biggest things that will get me joyously slicing through a page is scene setting.

Why?

Scene setting has a time and a place. For instance, in THE ROOFER, when Ava went into John's bar, in a scene-setting, she discussed the nicotine-encrusted (and I DO mean encusted) walls, the moosehead above the bar that had turned sooty black from smokers, the Hiroshima cloud of smoke hovering above everyone, the single light bulb in the bathroom, the vague smell of vomit in the air. It was time to set the scene of Hell's Kitchen. Scene setting wasn't appropriate in chapter one--that was an Irish wake. The most important part of that scene was the Irish wake itself--as a writer can't assume everyone has been to one. That wasn't the PLACE to explore Hell's Kitchen. I had to exhibit patience, even though Hell's Kitchen was one of the most improtant features of the book. But the time for that was the "downtime" start of the next chapter when Ava and Tom went for a drink.

In general, the most common time I slice with red pen, especially, in scene-setting is when life is SPEEDING by. What do I mean? If a detective and her partner walk into a crime scene, and the book is written from her POV, and as they enter the building, its walls awash in blood from a serial killer, and a man is fleeing the building, and the cop and her partner give pursuit, I don't care HOW good her power of observation is as a detective, from 100 yards, she is not going to notice the most minute details of her suspect (like eye color if it's dark), and she is not going to take the TIME to notice the chintz chair, the magazines on the coffee table, the knick-knacks on the shelves of the dead person's home. It's just not going to happen because that detective will be out of there in less than five seconds. Her adrenaline will be rushing. It isn't time for scene setting, it isn't time for heavy description--all that will pull a reader out of the scene. It's time to MOVE. Life is speeding by and all the rest of that "stuff" that writers sometimes love to describe can come LATER.

Thoughts? Time and place?

Just For Fun

My best friend in the entire world is just about the most creative person I have ever met. She also, for whatever reason, finds me endearing despite the fact that I have four kids that gobble up my time, a house that is chronically messy, and relatives who take her money during poker games. Well, for that last item, she can't really fault ME so much as . . . well, the fates. And cards. And the fact that my mother is extraordinarily lucky in cards AND a good bluffer. Unlike my father who is both unlucky in cards AND can't bluff. But I digress. My best friend is an AMAZING writer, an unbelievable critique partner, a fantabulous baker (!!!) and is godmother to my youngest daughter. She has been there for me through illness and catastrophe. AND, I constantly brag about how creative she is in SO many facets of life--not just writing. And so, for proof, here is her pimped-out Halloween cube. She designed this herself, put it up, and yeah, she's awesome. So here, without further ado, is Pammie's Pimped-Out Cubicle.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Sit Down

I was blog hopping and came across a writer who posted the first chapter of her work online. It's with an e-pub, and let's say the excerpt was 1,000 words. I would cut 500 of them. If there's one thing that will drive many editors nuts, it's excessive wordiness. Why take 50 words when 25 will do? Eliminate unnecssary adverbs, adjectives, and prepositions, and be vigilant about it in your work.

Examples?

You don't have to sit down. Just sit. The "down" is implied.

You don't have to inhale a breath or exhale one either. If you are inhaling and exhaling, BREATHING is implied. So is air, unless you're an alien and can breathe some other gas.

Once you mention an eye color or hair color, unless there are fifty characters in your scene that we need to distinguish between, we shouldn't read the color again. We know. She has blue eyes. We get it.

Don't "take" things. Don't "take a step forward." Simply "step forward." Don't "take" a breath. Just breathe.

Don't "steal" things either. Don't "steal a glance." Just glance already.

Chances are if you have a "was" or "is" you can rewrite the sentence to a more active verb. Example . . .

"The thought was terrifying." How about "the terrifying thought . . . " and continue from there. Better YET, if you have described the scene well or the terrifying thought, then guess what? You don't need to TELL us it's terrifying. In fact, if the terrifying thought causes your heroine to shake or tremble, it's enough to have them shake or tremble without telling us it's the terrifying thought that did so.

Don't have people say something arrogantly. Write the dialogue so we KNOW it's an arrogant statement.

Don't arch an eyebrow upward. If it's arched--the eyebrow went up.

Good editing isn't usually noticed. BAD editing is. A good editor will rip all the excess junk out of your writing. You may miss it if you have ingrained habits that led you to write this way. But your readers won't.

So sit. Don't sit down. And edit accordingly.

Thoughts? Any other editing pet peeves you care to share?

Why Fiction Matters

This is a true story.

When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, I had not yet gotten my diagnosis of Crohn's disease. In one awful night, while I was unaware I was pregnant, I was rushed to the hospital for a host of x-rays on my stomach, truly in horrific pain, heart rate up near 180, blood pressure through the roof in pain. Long story short, between those x-rays and the medications prescribed . . . again, I had no idea I was pregnant (thus I am a lesson for high school-age girls everywhere who believe in their birth control), when I DID find out I was pregnant, the doctor urged me to have an abortion. In fact, she refused to keep me as a patient unless I at least considered it, and was pretty rough on me.

But that was NOTHING compared to what was in store for me. You see, at the time, I went to . . . hmm, a church of Christian faith. I won't name it, except that I guess I kind of have to as priests are involved so that singles it out somewhat. And so, in a crisis of faith, I called my priest. And in between sobbing, and pain, and pouring out what had happened, and how sick I was . . . he told me that I would, basically, go to hell for even CONSIDERING such a thing. In fact, I wasn't considering it, not because of religion but because of . . . wanting a baby. But . . . nonetheless he was nasty to me. And on Sunday, two days later, when I showed up for church, he looked at me in the third row as he delivered the most scathing and condemining sermon I had ever heard on "murderers." Women who considered or had abortions. And he used the word. Murderer. Over and over. And I remember looking around and thinking I couldn't be the only woman who had health issues related to pregnancy.

But that's not all. As I went on to decide to have my baby despite all the risks to my health, I left the church. In fact, I refused to have anything to do with religion for five years or more. I didn't pray. I didn' t have much faith in anything. But . . . interestingly, within two weeks of delivering that sermon, that priest took a leave of absence. Within a month, he was dead.

Of AIDS complicated by alcoholism.

None of this is meant to condemn a church, a religion, a person, a closeted gay man, a political position, a moral position. Before anyone bombards me with messages or hate mail or anything, I said this was a true story and it was my story. I was left, as I went through my pregnancy overwhelmed with fears over my unborn child's health, to deal with the nuclear fall-out of this information in light of how viciously I had been condemned. And it meant my journey as a spiritual person was very complicated. It's perhaps a testament to faith that I am who I am now, a praying person.

But here's the thing . . . when I think of why fiction matters, I think of how I touched on--however briefly--the issues of Catholicism and faith in Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven. Michael was a devout Catholic, struggling with his faith in light of his homosexuality, while Lily was facing the prospect of death without any faith at all. I wanted to explore faith as part of my characters' world. Fiction gives us a vehicle to do that. I think about books like The Kite Runner exploring politics and the Taliban and definitely haunting me. I think of The Handmaid's Tale and its more-realistic-than-ever tale of oppression of women. I think of Waiting, and its story of oppression and political allegory in China.

And I am aware of how compassion and anger and debate and mourning and grieving and empathy are stirred by novels. Fiction matters because it can make a world so foreign from your own seem real. It can bend your compassion and help you understand, in perhaps a way that journalism can't always. It can make you uncomfortable as you try to determine where you stand on an issue. It can bring you into a world where you have to look around and feel something. It can help you understand the "other" side of a debate. I think Jodi Picault does that in many of her books. Talk about going somewhere gray, somewhere where "right" and "wrong" have no meaning and are in a sticky middle ground.

This really isn't about my story . . . but it is about how I worked through some of my story through my fiction. I no longer think back on that time in anger at all. I think back with compassion and sorrow and a peaceful heart. But this post is about that part of my fiction and it's about how my worldview has been shaped by some fiction authors. How I feel things deeply when I read.

Sometimes fiction is pure escapism. But sometimes, simply, it matters. It unites us, it divides us, it makes us debate, it makes us cry. And that's a good thing, I think.

Has some work of fiction helped you? Has it meant more than simply "a book"? Have you explored something that in "real" life you hadn't quite figured it out, but in your fictional world you have?

Save the Cheerleader . . . Save the Comedian

Last night, three kids slept over the house, in addition to the four I have. Yeah. Think about it. So while I was up at midnight, waiting for them to settle down and go to sleep, I watched Dimitri Martin on Comedy Central. If you've never seen him, he is really, really sardonic, with a dry delivery, and he is quite funny. I mean, his hobby is composing palidromes. (He's also, you can tell in an instant, super smart.)

Anyway, there was this finale to his act in which he talks about where he gets his ideas. "People are always asking me . . . and so now I am going to tell you." And so he sings this silly song, which is acted out on stage, and includes fairies and wizards delivering him pieces of paper containing one-liners. As a writer who is always asked, "Where do you get your ideas," I always laugh at this part (I've seen the special before). And somewhere in his act is a throwaway line about his not being cool in high school and the cheerleaders wanting to have nothing to do with him, so he turned to comedy.

And in fact . . . I don't know any former cheerleaders who have become writers. I am sure you are out there. But my experience has been a lot of writers START OUT solitary and different . . . and just get more so as time goes on.

Now, another thing about this comedian is he has sold a couple of screenplays. That's another thing . . . I find writers are often talented in other areas. My best friend is a writer, but she also is an amazing visionary when it comes to costume design and interior decorating and baking and art and gaming. Me? I can't draw, sketch or craft to save my life.

BUT . . . I have a secret--well, not so secret now--dream to go to film school when the baby is in school full-time provided no more babies arrive between now and then. So FOUR years from now, say, I want to go to film school to make a documentary. I know what my film will be called. I know my interviews. I know what I want to say and how I want to edit it. I SEE it, and it is something I really, really, really want to do--and have wanted to do for at least three or four years now. I can't claim that I am creative all the way around, but I do think it's within me to work in more than one media. I have written a screenplay (a bad one a long time ago), and I plan on writing one this winter and entering it in this screenplay contest.

So . . . do you feel different as a writer? Not one of the cheerleaders? Do fairies magically deliver you one-liners and opening lines to your novels? And are you creative in another area?

Tattoo You

Seems a lot of my friends have tattoos. My bestest friend does. And I would say about 50% of the time, I would like one. The other 50% I don't think about it. Nothing in particular holds me back. I've spent so many years off and on hooked up to so many I.V. drips, tubes, and machines, that needles don't scare me in the slightest. I don't know if my not getting a tattoo is a lack of motivation or, more likely, that my father would kill me. And yeah, he'd get over it, but maybe it's something best left for when he goes to that great Hell's Kitchen bar in the sky, where the beer is always cold, flowing and FREE. Then again, longevity is on his side of the family, so he could likely live to be 90. In which case, sooner or later I might just get one and the hell with it. In addition, he went blind this year, so it's not like he could SEE it.

If I got a tattoo, the picture is what I would get. Bonus points if you know what it is. First correct guess, in fact, will win one of my backlist titles. So guess away.

However, I wrote this somewhat lighthearted post because I was thinking about SPY'S post. What makes a writer? When do you get to call yourself novelist or author? What's the difference between people who identify themselves as authors versus those who say they are writers? And I got to thinking about identity.

Then I got to thinking about my grandmother. You see, if she was here, today, and we had ONE day to spend together (which, until we figure out how to bring people back from beyond is not going to happen), I don't think I would mention a SINGLE WORD about being a writer. Because I don't think she would be particularly proud of my having a book. Or 20 books. I don't think she would care one way or the other. And I wouldn't waste my breath telling her about them. It's not that she wouldn't be proud or happy--it's just I don't think she'd measure me any differently for "accomplishments." She loved me for being Erica. That's it. I mostly just had to breathe and show up to play 500 Rummy, and she loved me. Unconditionally. I was lucky that way to have her. So if we had one day together, instead, I would tell her all about my kids. THAT mattered to her. About my prayer life. About going to church. About what I ate--she liked to talk about food. About my guy. We'd laugh a lot. We'd play cards.

And I realize, somehow, that writing is a vehicle for me to have the life I have. To sit in my pjs and make up stories. To be here for my kids 24/7, much as days like today, I need that tattoo (guessed yet?). You see today, one of my babies had FOUR teeth pulled, and the 2-year-old decided I was paying too much attention to poor toothless, bleeding girl and so he decided to have a meltdown SO intense for THREE hours that I was ready to call an ambulance. For myself. So I could go to a place with rubber walls and white coats and QUIET. You see, life has changed of late here, and long story, but I'm now, for all intents and purposes, because of night shift work, a single mom. And with four kids and only one of me, it's grueling.

So anyway . . . I thought . . . what is my identity? Does it matter what I call myself? Am I simply a happy human being? I used to think I wanted a tattoo that said something about who I was. Now . . . . I think I would want one that was about something beyond. That transcended labels.

So if you got a tattoo, what would it be? Do you HAVE one? And do you own this label of being writer? Author? Novelist? Is it important to you?

Love Canal

I was once at a kids' basketball game, and a mother sat in a lawn chair near me on the sidelines. My kids are not particularly into sports, except for one who adores softball, and so the basketball game was more for the sake of exercise. Afterall, my child at the time was all of 5. He couldn't dribble. He couldn't do a lay-up. He could maybe get the ball from point A to point B without dropping it and it rolling away. And that was great. Except this mother . . . she screamed at her son the whole time. "You loser." "You better get that ball, you lazy bum." SCREAMING at the top of her lungs. I sat there and wondered if I could call the police for emotional abuse, but I was already working in the foster care system and knew, frankly, the police had more to worry about than a toxic mom. They wouldn't DO anything. And it was my little angel, my darling girl, who was four, who came up to me and said, "How can that mother expect her son to have any self-esteem if she screams at him like that?" Before anyone wonders about the truth of this story, my kids have really high vocabularies, so yes, she was that young, and yes, she had that line of thinking. And the mother heard. And it shut her up. But I knew it wasn't over for poor little Bradley on the baseketball court. He had to go home with the mother equivalent of Love Canal.

You see, there is overt evil in life. There are people who ooze evil. There are gang members wearing their colors, murderers carrying weapons, people you might cross to the other side of the street when you see them. Our prisons are full and overcrowded. You don't have to look far to find darkness.

But there's another kind of darkness--and it's what I am striving for in my work in progress. It's Love Canal. It seeps out underground, over time. No one can see it, smell it, or taste it in the water, but it's there like a cancer. In alcoholic homes, for instance, often the family pulls together in an effort to make it appear, from the outside, that they are "perfect" when in fact every night after work, Dad drinks himself into oblivion and then gets nasty. There are millions of girls and boys across the globe being sexually abused, but putting up the front that they are okay, even as the damage is hurting their soul day by awful day. There are whole churches that have hid sexual scandals, schools that somehow have let predators into the classroom. That's the evil I am exploring right now. In my book, it's the mother who has torn apart her daughter every day until the poor girl can't believe she's worth anything. But the mother is on magazine covers. She's respected in her field.

Love Canal . . . .

Thoughts?

Heard

A long time ago, in a marriage far, far away, I was very, very sick. I didn't yet know I had Crohn's disease, or even that it was as bad as it was, burrowing into my system and making me sicker and sicker. But I knew, deep down, something was very wrong, even if the doctors didn't yet know what was wrong with me (I had one rocket scientist tell me the fact that I lost 25 pounds in one month when I wasn't even trying was simply "stress"). And there was ONE night . . . And I can't even recall what it was--maybe dinner wasn't ready or the laundry wasn't done. To be honest, and I always strive to be on this blog, I think I wasn't in the proverbial mood. And the man I was married to said, "Come on . . . you're not THAT sick." And, in one moment, the final one of many moments, I knew I would take my infant baby and leave. And I did.

But this isn't really about that marriage. It's about being heard. Because, truly, isn't that what we all strive for? We don't want to be minimized. We don't want to be dismissed or discounted. We want to make connections with others and be heard.

I think the transformation of my writing occurred when I went from minimizing my own work, to feeling I had something to say. That somewhere inside me was a story that I wanted to tell. That it wasn't a hobby. It wasn't about some journal-esque process of self-discovery (which is all well and good, but wasn't my journey). What I wrote wasn't the blatherings of a mother with baby spit-up all over her shirt (well, maybe it was). That what I had to say could be funny and endearing and sad and poignant. And that I wanted to write my words down. I wanted them in print.

Now, it didn't really matter if the only people who ever "heard" me was my critique group for a while. Though I aspired to be published, I was also looking to simply say something. But then I did get published--and I think that happened when I stood a little straighter, when I decided I would be heard whether people around me liked it or not. (And often they didn't.) Whether it made me unpopular or people decided I was a b*tch.

Time passed . . . and oddly enough, I am "heard" so much in my own world--with my children and my significant other . . . even those disobedient dogs . . . with my girlfriends, with my guy friends . . . with the people who mean so much to me . . . that I am not particularly "difficult" anymore. I am more at peace. And my writing has gotten, if anything, deeper and more cutting to the core of who I am and what I have to say.

So that's been my journey. I honestly feel when I decided I had worth in what I had to say that the doors to publication opened for me. I wasn't a 25-year-old mom with a dark secret of a house full of holes in the wall where my husband lost his temper. I was THAT sick, but that also didn't mean I couldn't write. I had something to say. And it had meaning. That was MY journey. But I ask . . . what is it you need to say? Are you heard?

Peace,
E

I'm Not a Lawyer and Other Rumor Control

So a couple of things . . . .

One of the reasons you have an agent is that pesky document called a contract. There are all sorts of things to work out--movie rights, licensing agreements, how many copies sold before it kicks up to a higher percentage of royalties, and so on. I'm not a lawyer, but after years and years of seeing contracts and dealing with them, I bet I could muddle through on my own okay--though I MUCH prefer my agent being the pain-in-the-ass my publishers deal with rather than me being said pain-in-the-ass.

But contracts aside, people wonder about other legal issues. Like . . . can someone sue you if you depict them in a book? Most of us have heard of the the Running with Scissors case in which the Turcotte family sued the author saying that all of what he said happened didn't, in fact, happen, and the family had been defamed. Or the James Frey case, in which his memoir turned out to have seriously altered the truth in grandiose ways. As an aside, if you have ever loved an addict, is that so surprising? Well, I'm not a lawyer, but my take on it is, frankly, as we have been discussing, truth is subjective, and even more so, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. A memoir cannot be taken as the God's honest truth because there is no truth, only subjective truth. Too much thinking for pre-dawn. However, both of those books now carry a coda. Burroughs agreed to call his a "book," not a memoir. Frey's carries an addendum note.

But what about fictionalizing your own life? I have multiple (!!!!) published author friends who have been confronted by family members (one at a signing!) who have accused them of depicting them in a bad way in their novels. In every single case, my novelist pals have insisted to me that they were blindsided by these hysterical claims. "The mother in the book isn't my mother." I have had multiple readers who know me see fragments of my life in The Roofer and wondered how my family handled it. In fact, it's dedicated to "The real Roofer." Actually, the book is a love letter to some people, and they took it that way. So no one in my family confronted me at all. But had they, I would have said, rightly, that there were FRAGMENTS there. No portrait was complete. Could any of the people in question have sued me? They COULD have but it wouldn't have gone anywhere. I used no real names, and there was nothing to hang their hat on because the burden of proof--and I'm no lawyer--would be that ANYONE reading that book could then quite easily figure out who the characters were and were thus defamed. (And were any of those people public figures, they don't have a snowball's chance in hell.) A quirk, a trait, an attribute, even something specific like "A left-handed man with a glass eye" wouldn't be enough to have strangers draw a direct connection.

On the flip side, legal issues aside, we've been talking about honesty. If you DO mine your life and you DO become published, are you okay with that totally naked feeling once the book comes to light? For so many of us, we create for years alone, or maybe with a critique group. But think TOO hard about this question and you'll censor yourself and not write an honest book. So just be fearless is my motto. My mother is my best friend. I mean, I have my bestest girlfriend, but I talk to my mother for a full hour each day. Every day. Sometimes longer. These are not obligatory "I have to call my mom otherwise she will guilt-trip me." These are "I want to call my mom and tell her this or that and laugh with her." She's my friend AND my mom, and I suppose calling her each day is cheaper than therapy. She also does NOT read this blog, so this rosy picture of my mother isn't because she is now reading this. I could say she was a b*itch and it wouldn't get back to her. But, in fact, she is NOT a b*tch. She is really, really, REALLY pragmatic and practical, yet she loves Christmas in a completely magical way. She is a gourmet cook (friggin' amazing) and she teaches me knitting stuff (I have now made a HAT and not just scarves). She is funny, a decent poker player, can bait a fish hook, and curses like a sailor if she's mad. She like happy movies, reads a book a day, at least, and is very, very, very funny. AND . . . if you decided to "discern" who my mom was by reading my books, you would think my mother is a horrible person, a terrible mother, evil, the whole nine yards because dramatic tension is important and it's far more interesting to have a difficult mother in fiction than a great one. That's why in some of my books I write in the acknowledgments that mom is great because I don't want people speculating.

In other bits of rumor control, I have heard more times than I care to count that Editor X acquired Suzy Q's book because Suzy Q wrote a vampire book/erotic historical/spy book featuring a woman/fill in the blank because the concept was "hot," but the book isn't well-written. The author isn't talented. It's just a so-so book. Look, I have spent my entire life around editors and agents, and authors and small publishing houses, and public speakers and so on. Every once in a while, an editor will tell me they bought someone's SECOND book, which was not as good as the first, but they are a household name and it will sell strongly, and they have six months or so to edit it, so they presume they can shore it up. But I have never, and I mean never, heard an editor say "I don't believe in Book X but it's a hot concept so . . . I bought it." In general, and especially now when so many decisions are done by committee, a book has to be signed off on by the editor, their boss, marketing, the editorial team, and so on and so on. No one is going to go in front of 15 people and say, "This book really isn't good, but you know, vampires are hot." Do some books that aren't, in some people's opinions, very good, get swept along on a trend? Sure. The chick lit market flooded. But someone--some editor, some editorial assistant, someone--still thought the book was good. And I think when people devalue an author that way, it's wrong, sour grapes, jealousy. No editor is going to say, "Let me buy this piece of garbage because it has a vampire in it and let me pass by these ten worthy books by these as-yet-unheralded geniuses." In fact, be comforted by this, because it means editors look for TALENT. Yes, do they want it to be a hot concept, have a hook, want it to stand out . . . but they also want it to be well-written.

So there you go. Thoughts?

Dante's Third Circle of Hell

I love my kids. I really do. There's probably not anything I wouldn't do for them. I would walk through the fires of hell. Thus . . . I spent yesterday at a concert with these young men. I tried to go with an open mind. But, in fact, hell doesn't begin to describe it. Every song sounded the same, the sound system sucked, and mostly what I heard were teenybopper girls SHRIEKING. High-pitched shrieking. I spent $20 for tickets--multiplied by younger daughter and two friends--and $25 on T-shirts. It was 95 in the shade. And when these young men came out for a bow, I stood up, screamed, "THANK YOU!" and then I was shrieking. Shrieks of joy.

Which goes to show you, even hell has an end.

We've been talking on the blog about mining your life for your books, stealing people's traits . . . and when you write comedy, I would venture to say it starts to get personal. I think the best stand-ups are the ones who talk about their real life. A comic riff, like Seinfeld, on nothing. Or everything. In my comedic books, I have riffed vicariously through my characters on egotistical authors, thongs, the self-help guru who will sleep with any young thing but his wife, turning the big 4-0, the fact that I can't cook, fear of flying, the time I took six xanax to get on a plane flight and lived to tell about it (they were only .5 milligrams, and for the record, they did NOTHING to calm me), evil mothers-in-law (she actually temps in hell), the way the NY Giants screw me every season, my insane love for the Yankees, and disobedient dogs. And so, I imagine, I will one day use my visit to this particular circle of hell in a book.

And while I was there . . . I was strangely comforted by that thought. You see, those are two hours I CAN NEVER GET BACK. And so it's nice to know, "Heck, I can use this."

OH! AND . . . on the way home, the girls were starving and BEGGED me for food from this restaurant. I had never been to one. Never eaten their food. Never knew! I was appalled!!! Do you know they have a cardboard stand-up cut-out of a COW in front? My baby son said, "Look, Mama, it's a MOO." And I was struck by the fact that they have a cute black and white "moo" out front . . . and yet people were driving through to EAT the cute moo. This reaffirmed my commitment to vegetarianism. AND please? A moo? Sick. SICK! What is this company thinking putting poor Mr. Moo there? Oh, yeah. Material.

Thoughts? When life hands you a bit of insanity, are your comforted by the fact that it's material? And how was YOUR weekend.

And special birthday wishes to Spy and Karmela.

Stealing Your Trait

I think writers go through life with the strangest of intentions sometimes. Say you meet someone with a very odd quirk. Or a fascinating story. Or an obvious thread of insanity. Someone else might just note it. Might even be uncomfortable around it. Me, I just steal it.

The whole reason I stopped conventional medicine for Crohn's disease was an aggressive doctor who insisted I get into clinical trials (like THAT goes well for the patients most of the time) and insisted I'd get cancer. Soon. Because of all the medications in my lifetime. He had a tic. Now, I know lots of people who have tics. But he couldn't look me in the eye and he kept clearing his throat every other word. "Well, cough . . . Mrs. D. . . . cough. . . . you . . . cough . . . have . . . to . . . cough . . . understand . . . cough . . . you will get . . . cough. . . . cancer . . . cough . . . with . . . cough . . . your . . . cough . . . history . . . cough . . . they all . . . cough . . . do." Well, f*ck you and the horse you rode in on, Doc. So now I do Chinese medicine. And will I have a cold amd impersonal, tic-coughing doctor who can't look patients in the eyes and thinks he's God in a future book. Hell, yeah!

I'm editing a book on visual design for a publisher and much of the beginning of the book underscores how we do--or don't--remember faces. When I write, I have no particular face in mind. People have become, sometimes, traits, to me. I can tell you I once had a waiter tell me his fiance called off the wedding two days before it was to occur under pressure from her family. And he was a little odd--talked too much, incessantly actually. I can recall his face--I could maybe even pick him out of a line-up, but it was the weird way he told too much of his life story to strangers that I remember most.

Or the time I stopped to help a woman with a flat tire. I said, "I can't change a flat, but I can wait with you and wave traffic around, and call someone for you." And she instead pressed a number on a piece of paper in my hand and said, "Call my boyfriend. But he's married. So call once. Hang up. And then call back. Just in case his wife is there. That's our signal." (This was pre-cellphones; most people didn't carry them all the time.) I can't tell you what she looked like. What kind of car she drove. It was over 10 years ago. But will I someday use that? Sure.

So what about you? Do you go through life stealing traits and stories, then bending them and sticking them in your work?

What's Your Show-Me?

I have a new opening for a YA I am working on (draft #2). Throughout the whole book, astronomy weaves a web--star-crossed lovers, the rings of Saturn, shooting stars. Mystical elements of the cosmos. And my teen heroine says her mother always taught her to wish upon a star.

We've been talking on the blog recently about back story dumping . . . and I was thinking about it. There are some things that tell people a lot about someone--with a single gesture, a single sentence, a single action. As a writer, we look for those things to use in our work.

Though I don't believe you should judge the proverbial book by its cover, there are little quirks about me, or little "show me's" about others that tell a lot. At least in my world where I am always thinking about these things.

Like . . . do you wish upon a star? I still do. All the time. And you are either someone who does, or someone who doesn't. In my YA, I want the mother to be a fragile soul who believed in dreaming, whereas the heroine's father isn't. In fact he is cold and rather cruel at times. He'd never wish upon a star.

I still pick up lucky pennies. So do my kids. And if someone says something bad or talks about death or something horrible happening, I knock wood and insist they "take it back."

Even though long-stemmed red roses are extravagent, I like daisies, lilies of the valley, and I put the dandelions my baby son picks me in a tiny vase that I got as a wedding gift from one of my dearest writer pals. I don't "sometimes" put the dandelions there. Always.

I save my kids' baby teeth, letters to Santa, and notes they write me. I also have the dog collar of my most beloved dog who died a few years ago on the shelf in my office. All of these little "show me's" will tell you that I am sentimental. I've dated men who arrived in Porsches or BMWs and were rude to the waiters and though one even wanted to buy me a fur coat (okay--as an aside here, if you read this blog you would know that was a SURE way to make sure I NEVER wanted to see him again) . . . 99% of the time I never went out with them again. Unsentimental men to a fault. But the electrician who arrived in the rusted and battered blue station wagon and remembered my dog's name (different dog), and who offered to fix the wiring on my father's house, well, him I wanted to see again. Which is not to equate wealth with being bad or manual labor with being good. It's just a gesture of a fur coat says one thing. A gesture of remembering this obnoxious little dog and being willing to help my parents is another.

Most of us have something that . . . well, that's the line in the sand for us. The ONE thing if you discover about someone that will tell you that you likely won't be good friends with them. For me, it's people who talk snidely to children. It's okay to tell me you don't like kids, but be rude to them . . . hmmm. Be rude to a waitress and I'll be downright uncomfortable. I've been that waitress. And I learned more from people's "show me's" than probably anything else I've ever done. I worked at a country club in New York where the members were so God awfully inhuman to the staff, and to all you people who ate there, I can assure you the waitstaff (not me . . . but those waiters know who they are) were spitting in your food. And I can honestly say that the members sort of deserved it (I was a teen at the time--different perspective on life, but even in hindsight, members were abusive in language and demeanor to staff). No, they didn't deserve their food being spit in, but they did deserve a wake-up call as to what it means to be a decent human being.

"Show me's" in my books are the little "tell's." Like in poker. When my father bets big--he has NOTHING. I mean not even a friggin' pair. It's his tell. And since he is blind and can't read this blog, I can reveal that I know it. We're going to have to get cards with BIG, GIANT numbers now . . . I think he will be able make them out. But his tell? It will be the same.

So what "show me's" do you use in life? In your books? Wish upon a star? Pick dandelions? Tell me.

Don't Answer the Phone

When I was fifteen or sixteen, I used to rent slasher flicks or go to them with my boyfriend. I have no idea why I liked getting scared out of my mind--and of course, now, in hindsight, I realize the movies weren't even all that scary--they were more gore than suspense. But I got scared and hid my eyes anyway. And in just about EVERY slasher flick, there is a scene where you want to scream, "Don't go into the house!" or "Turn on the light!" or "Don't answer the phone!"

Well, I must have taken that to heart because I never answer the phone. Ever. It drives my significant other nuts. It will ring . . . and ring . . . and I am not usually even motivated to look at Caller I.D. And if I do look at Caller I.D., if I don't recognize the number, there is no way in hell I am answering. In general, I answer for Mom, my agent, my best friend, the kids. I'll answer for school, but those are never good calls--either someone threw up and needs to be retrieved or someone is in trouble. Teachers never call to say, "Wow, your kid is great." (Though they do send home notes saying that, which is nice.)

I don't think it's actually a vestige of slasher flicks . . . but it is a quirk about being a writer. I don't like to talk, to break my mood. I like being left alone. Needless to say, it's no small wonder why I don't work in corporate America. I like solitude.

Other quirks? I hate using the mouse. I would rather hit backspace a thousand times than move the mouse and correct a single letter. So, yeah, I will retype whole sentences if a letter is wrong at the beginning of the sentence, rather than move my right hand over to the mouse.

I have to have my iPod on. I put it on shuffle . . . and see what comes out of the stereo (I have a docking station). I have DAYS worth of music, so it could be Beck, Arcade Fire, the new Annie Lennox, or Alexandre Desplat. Pretty broad variety. It could be Sarah Vaughn, Django Reinhart . . . or Kanye West. And without music I just tend to find myself staring at my beta fish. Her name is Blossom and she's lived a really long time for a fish. Either that or my significant other is buying beta fish and replacing the dead ones so that I don't get sad.

Other writer quirks in my day? I usually have candles lit--reminds me to pray.

I usually check CNN in certain un-Buddhist-like hopes that a certain politician will be felled by food poisoning. No such luck. I can check CNN twice an hour. I never used to, but post-9/11, I guess I feel the world is more volatile. So I check the headlines . . . and then go back to writing.

I drink water. Not soda. Or I will drink tea or coffee--but I never--EVER--finish tea or coffee, and usually have to go for a re-heat in the microwave--after which I might have one more sip anyway. I like my liquids hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth.

My writing snacks? Yogurt. String cheese. Granola. Steamed rice. I don't eat junk.

I blog hop when I want to procrastinate about writing. Or when I have no inspiration.

I used to write in my pjs, but now I get dressed because otherwise, I just feel like a slob. I keep thinking I am going to go buy stylish track suits of some sort so that I can dress in that and be comfortable--but I never do. So it's jeans . . .

My watch, my clock, and my computer clock are on three different times. I still look at the clock, though it's off by more than an hour (will be more on time when Daylight Savings is over). I never look at my watch. I often look at the little numbers on my computer screen. Then I mentally calculate how much longer I have to write before all four kids are here and the house is noisy.

I check craigslist a LOT. I don't know why. I check "Pets" but I have enough pets (though I recently acquired a new baby lovebird named Sweet Pea on craigslist . . . she was free). I also hired a handyman who is doing the mile-long list of home projects the man I live with would take three years to get to--if EVER. Maybe I should marry a handyman next time I walk down the aisle. But then he'd probably fix other people's houses and STILL not fix mine, so what the hell. I also got a couple of freelance writing jobs that way.

When the mailman comes, I race out there. It's the one time I get up from my desk. I wait until he pulls away, though, because I think he's kind of creepy. Unless it's the lady mailperson, because she is actually very friendly and nice. I RARELY have good mail--all bills. But I am always looking for checks--the life of a non-nine-to-fiver who relies on advances and royalties and freelance.

I have pets so that I don't feel alone. But then go back to the Don't Answer the Phone thing--I like being alone/solitude/not talking. But the dogs and fish and birds don't count--I talk to them, but as of yet, they haven't talked back. I also have a python. She doesn't count either. I hate her--and never talk to her. I think she KNOWS I don't like her and is just waiting to bite me. She creeps me out. Oldest son loves her. He also has a newfound love of tattoos (though he is too young to get one . . . I also think when he finds out needles are involved that will end the fascination, but one never knows).

Anyway . . . no phone, talking to the dogs, racing to get mail . . . those are some of my writerly quirks. How about you?

Hints and Whispers

If I was going to state the number-one flaw of most writing I've been asked to edit over the last 20 years, it's probably the adage of show don't tell. I mean, I have edited grammatical nightmares, writers who never met a comma they didn't love, and writers who apparently have never met a comma, or gave them all away to the writer who loves them. But practical matters of grammar and punctuation and typos galore aside . . . show don't tell is one of the hardest things to get across to new writers or writers who haven't yet mastered it.

I consider show don't tell in the same category as back story dumping. It's all this telling and not enough showing. And I think, myself, I finally "got" it about the twentieth time I highlighted three pages of text and pressed "delete." Believe me, I get it. I think of it like this . . . I recently had dinner with a new friend, and part of the process of getting to know someone new is revealing your past--"here's my back story." How you got from birth to here, in ten major highlights. Someone asks you, "Why did you move to Virginia?" I could say "Because." But really, I am more likely to tell you the back story of the four major hurricanes, the back of my house that blew away, the roof perpetually losing tiles and leaking, nursing a baby in a closet as a category 3 blew through town and being unable to get diapers for another week. I have a back story. We all do.

And as a writer, and as a person, I understand that it is really fascinating to put it all out there. BUT . . . you often cross the line into "telling" category. You can tell the hurricane story in a flash of dialogue in your book. BUT, you wouldn't want to then add three pages of the actual EXPERIENCE of the hurricane. That's what I mean when I said I hit delete. Now I understand that all that back story doesn't belong. Instead, what I am left with is hints and whispers. Just enough that the reader can guess and surmise, enough to let the mood waft through the book. Enough to keep people reading until, little by little, the WHOLE back story comes out. I have a book now in which the entire journey of the heroine is to discover who her mother really was as a person, and readers will not know until the LAST page what the mother's whole back story is. That's 300 pages of whispers.

Go back to the dinner with a new friend. Even as they tell you all that back story, the hints and whispers are there. Think about it. You ask, "Do you have any siblings?" They say, "I have one sister and a brother. My sister lives about ten minutes away. We're really close. My brother . . . well, hmm . . . you know, he married this woman and we haven't spoken in ten years." Hell yeah, there's a story there. But it's, perhaps, a story for another day. You have time to get all the back story. Maybe even a whole book.

Thoughts? Hints and whispers in your own book? Your own life?

Empty

My oldest daughter is a violinist who plans on studying music in college or at a conservatory next year. Considering I can barely play a few Bach pieces on the piano, and cannot sing in tune, I find this talent pretty astounding. She has perfect pitch. From the time she was 3, she would cover her ears if she heard an off-key note. It's a gift. But I once asked her what it was LIKE having a talent like that.

She said, "You know when you have a good cry, and afterwards, you feel kind of relieved, you feel empty?"

THAT I understood.

"Well, that's how I feel after I am done playing. I feel peaceful. Empty."

Now I got it.

Today, I am working on a book that when I open the file, I feel this tremendous relaxation, like "I'm home." Like when I travel, which I HATE doing, and I go to NYC and I run around like a madwoman meeting editors and my agent and seeing old friends, and then I come home, and I walk through the door, and hear my kids' voices, and put my bag down . . . and I sigh, a peaceful sigh, because I'm "home," and all of the things that means. Then I go to sleep in my OWN bed, and when I get between the flannel sheets, I FINALLY feel myself relax. Well, that's how I feel when I open this file.

And when I am done writing a chapter, I feel empty.

Thoughts? Can you describe what it's like?

Under My Rock

If you've ever gotten up at 4:00 a.m. to write because you are on deadline, or you have ever lost sleep over your work in progress . . . if you've given up all sorts of free time and activities to pursue writing . . . if you have agonized over whether or not you are a hack, whether or not you even HAVE a book in you, or THIS book in you, you have probably asked yourself . . . WHY? Why do it?

As I tell elementary school kids when I talk about writing . . . a writer isn't something you BECOME. It is something you ARE. You may become a better writer, or a publishable writer because of long hours practicing your craft, but you were born a storyteller, a communicator, a writer.

Which brings me to this blog post. I know writers who have been working and working, unpublished for a while, when they each got a request from an editor. In a couple of cases, it was a request from an agent. Those editors and agents wanted to see "the full." And . . . in each case the writer "choked." Never sent it. Talked themselves out of it. Didn't actually have it finished and didn't ever finish. Whatever the scenario, it's a hell of a lot more common than you might think.

And somewhere along the way . . . I think, for them, they froze when the writing became less about the PROCESS--"Hey, I'm creating"--and more about the GOAL--"I want an agent; I want to be published." And somewhere, that shift became a death knell on creativity. The writer froze. It stopped being fun.

So now what?

Well, for me, when I am "stuck" someplace in that regard, I have to look at WHY. And usually, when I lift up that particular rock in that particular dark recess of my particular mind, and shine a flashlight at the creepy-crawly bugs, what I find is FEAR. Because if you SEND your great magnum opus to an editor who requests it or an agent who wants to see more, and they reject it, you can no longer avoid the truth--which MAY be that you're not ready. Which MAY be that all those insecure voices in your head are right. And so . . . you freeze up.

Or it may be something else entirely.

I know writers that never, ever finish anything. Ever. They convince themselves that it's no good and move on to the next great idea. And they keep doing that over and over and avoid the agent search. They don't have to get a professional opinion. They've already got a veritable Greek chorus of opinions in their head.

So how can you make the shift from writing for the process of it, to writing for a goal? And keep it fun, still a joy (if joy include