Coffee Observation

Coffee and I are lovers with a dysfunctional relationship. We break up. I move on to green tea and water. Coffee and I get back together when days and nights of raising this bundle of demonic joy leave me wrecked and exhausted. So it is that coffee and I are once again in the throes of passion.

But yesterday, as I cleared four half-drunk cups from my desk, I realized something. In total, I "might" drink a cup. Maybe. Maybe 1.5 cups. My pattern is: brew pot, pour cup, add creamer, add sugar, bring to desk, inhale scent, sip, it's too hot, wait, sip maybe four sips, forget it's sitting there, sip, it's too cold.

The fact that I NOTICE that I, in fact, am NOT a coffee drinker, but someone who likes having it there, who goes through this whole exercise, who will even brew a second pot and STILL not drink it, is just . . . the ideal thing to put in a book.

In fact, that's how I go through life. Noticing people's oddities. My own oddities. I have a phobic character in my work-in-progress who can't get on an elevator. He's terrified, so he takes the stairs, even if it's a skyscraper and it's 45 stories. But he CAN go on the subway. When his new love interest asks him why, when the subway is even more claustrophobic than an elevator, he responds, "I like trains." Real people in real life invent all these rules that govern how they function in the world.

Jerry Seinfeld was the king at noticing all the oddities of humans. So was the late George Carlin. Seinfeld once said, "The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise." I live on a golf course. I can attest to that. One of my favorite George Carlin observations was, "Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

So what's some observation you've made in real life . . . that has made it into your work? Or if you're not a writer . . . Seinfeld-style, what's something you notice about people that's just plain odd?

Peace,

E

P.S. As many of you know, I have Crohn's disease, and a blog pal of mine is running a race in my honor--a half-marathon. It's creeping up soon. Here's his race site. Here's an old blog post about my life with this disease. If you can give . . . thanks. There are millions of people with this disease, and there is no cure.

Grave Robbing

I admit it. I rob graves.

Last week, I showed a friend of mine two chapters of a book I might want to work on. He loved one of my lines. But it was too literary for the character. It PAINED me no end to admit he was right. PAINED ME. It's a GREAT line. But it's got to go if I'm being true and honest with the writing.

"Save it," my friend said. "Use it in another book. Just not this one."

Yesterday, Zoe commented here that she's grave robbing from an old work in progress for a new one. And I realized I rob the graves of old manuscripts and unfinished stories ALL THE TIME.

One entire chapter of Invisible Girl was lifted from a book I never finished. The first line of The Roofer was written when I was 16 or 17 and I trotted it through several books and ideas until I found a place for it. I have dozens and dozens of nothing more than ideas in files, half-done scenes. I rob from them all the time.

I wonder if non-writers know that we authors do this. That we borrow bits and pieces from here and there, words we love but know aren't right for the book we're working on. Words we love, bury, then go to the grave and exhume them again, hoping this time there is life in them.

Thoughts?

Missed Stitch

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know I like to knit. Badly. I mostly make scarves and hats. I'm working on an afghan. I like to knit because it keeps my hands and mind busy as a way to deal with stress, but not so busy that I can't talk or have music on, or even sit with Baby Girl while she watches TV in my room.

But today . . . my post is less about the rainbow assortment of balls of yarn in my closet (I can tell you, it's a relatively inexpensive addiction, and I cannot pass a store with yarn and NOT buy yarn, even if I have no idea yet what the hell I will knit with it). But it is about . . . the missed stitch. You see when I started knitting, I was just happy to end up with a sevicable SOMETHING at the end. Much like, I think, beginning writers. I didn't see the flaws--or barely did--because I was so delighted I had actually put hundreds and hundreds of knit stitches together and made SOMETHING. Even if it was lopsided. And had holes in it.

Then I learned to purl (for the non-knitters, it's a different kind of stitch). Once you can PURL, you can now do ribbing and patterns and "cool stuff." Much, I am sure, like learning about deeper characterization, or how to show not tell. At THIS point, I would look at my old knitting and want to vomit. Well, maybe that's extreme, but you get the idea. For example, I am knitting my friend Bruce a scarf. For a year now. Because every time I finish one, I decide it's not good enough for him, because he is such an honored friend. Now it's summer, so I have until fall to make one I like enough to give to him. I am on my 4th (count 'em) scarf. I rip the others apart. Much like as your writing advances, you want to chuck everything you ever wrote before and cringe that you actually QUERIED a real, LIVING, BREATHING editor with that piece of sloppy knitting that was your first scarf.

Finally, you start getting really good (I'm at the "not half-bad" stage). But then . . . you miss a stitch. You don't notice it at first, but you get a couple of rows up and realize you have a missed stitch. A mistake. Something that's NOT WORKING. Now, had this been your first pathetic attempt at a scarf, you'd leave it. Hell, it's a scarf. It's SOMETHING. But no . . . now you know. So NOW you have to undo rows, working with a crochet hook to fix the dropped stitch.

Over at Mark Terry's blog (and as far as I know, he doesn't knit), if you read the last two or three posts, you can see he is working on a new book, and he's given it to beta readers and maybe (just maybe) it has some problems.

Now, Mark has two choices. Submit with what's possibly a missed stitch. Or gingerly go through the entire manuscript with some new "fix" or stitch or angle (change the age of the character, maybe? write it geared to a different genre, perhaps?). But the problem is, just as with yarn, you are working with long threads. You have to pull that missed stitch, that problem through the WHOLE thing. You can never, if you drop a stitch, just go to that ONE spot and "fix" it. It impacts the rows above and below. So it is with a fix in a novel. As an experienced editor, a lot of times, I can spot when a writer has applied a "fix" because it's not pulled all the way through. Or it feels tacked on, like just slapping an extra stitch on the end of a row. I've shared here before about working with a writer a few years back who tacked on a HUGE character flaw for his detective because the editors didn't think the detective was unique enough in an overcrowded genre. The add-on was a gambling addiction. But gamblers have a HOST of problems and as an addiction it is considered as tough or tougher than heroin to beat. It also has psychological ramifications. You can't just have a guy like to bet on the NY Giants and one day "get over it" and call it an addiction. It's never that simple a characterization. It's never that simple a fix.

So this is my knitting analogy. Now I am off to work on my afghan. I am using FLEX needles and four strands at once now. In other words . . . I'm gettin' fancy.

Peace,
E

Existential Angst

This one is for my pal, Mark Terry. But though I've put his name there, I could have put hers. Or hers. (Gotcha!) I could have put any number of my writer friends. In fact, I should just put a link to every writer I know and those I don't out in the blogosphere.

First, two definitions:

Angst: A kind of fear or anxiety; Angst is German for “fear.” It is usually applied to a deep and essentially philosophical anxiety about the world in general or personal freedom.

Existential crisis: A concept in existentialism describing a state of panic or feeling of intense psychological discomfort about questions of existence. It is presumably more common in cultures where basic survival needs have been overcome.

Is there any profession, any hobby, any way to pass your time . . . that involves more of "head . . . meet desk" than writing? Why do we DO this to ourselves? We love writing with a passion, most of us. Give us a good writing week and we are practically dancing. Give us a bad one, a case of I-Suckitis, a day when we can't seem to write a SENTENCE that is servicable, let alone a paragraph (my yesterday) . . . and we are having a full-blown existential crisis.

Now, in reality, I don't have a lot of ANXIETY about writing. It's the rest of my life that sends me careening down THAT particular slide at the playground. But there is often a sense of WHY am I doing this? Am I any GOOD at doing this? It's a profession that invites people--total strangers--to have OPINIONS about you as writer. Your work. And if you get famous enough, like J.K. Rowling famous, opinions about your life.

This is fun? Writing something and asking people to JUDGE it? Over at Book Roast yesterday it was a fun free-for-all. And then . . . ONE commenter (you can read through to his) made a seemingly innocuous comment. "Interesting excerpt."

My first thought was "interesting how"? Interesting as in you see an ugly baby and say, "Wow! That's some baby."

Then the commenter said the excerpt was "raw." I thought "Raw how? Raw as in unpolished? Raw as in it needs an editor?"

Now . . . this really isn't about that commenter (who said nothing unkind at all). It is about how angst-ridden a writers' mind can be. It's about the oddity of it as a profession.

So . . . what sets you off on an existential crisis? Do you ever wonder . . . why do I do this? What's it all for? Or in the immortal words of Dionne Warwick, "What's it all about, Alfie?"

VISIT ME AT BOOK ROAST

Okay, I hope I've rarely boasted (modesty is a virtue). I know a few times at the beach, I've been toasted. On my bike, I have coasted. But I have NEVER been roasted.

Until today.

Visit me gang, at the BOOK ROAST. I hope I survive.

http://bookroast.blogspot.com/

Are You a Hermit?

I admit it, when I am hunkered down for a deadline, I am a hermit. I emerge from my house for nothing. I chain myself to my computer. I am in my head and in my characters' lives 24/7.

And so which is it? Chicken or egg?

Because here's what's going on in my life. My Baby Girl, whom you all know as a poet and a sweet child, is being bullied by a couple of older girls in my neighborhood, led by the Queen Mean Girl herself. It's enough to make me vomit. And make me put my house on the market, and if it wasn't such a downturn, I swear to you the For Sale sign would be in my yard.

But my immediate reaction is pull my kids in close. Don't talk to neighbors. Close ranks. I generally LIKE hermithood. I genuninely LIKE my fake world in my fake stories. Stick me in the attic like Jo. So did I become a writer because I had this tendency to avoid "real" people for the company of "fake" ones? Or is it part and parcel of BEING a writer?

I don't know. But tell me, blog pals . . . are you hermits?

Voice

Last night, I shared with two friends two different pieces of writing I am contemplating working on. The pages I gave my friends are little more than 15 pages of one, 5 or 6 of another. What struck me is that you would never know in a million years the same person wrote them. They asbolutely bear no resemblance to each other.

One, a coming-of-age late-YA set in a mob family, is my voice. It tumbles out of me. It's me. Not my exerpiences, but bits and pieces of stories and fragments, but it just spills out of me--I can write ten pages in an hour without blinking, without trying even. The voice is my own. Me. I can't explain it, but me.

The other, also a late-YA is mine--but me pretending to be her. Until I AM her, but she is not me. That's what it is. She's not separate from me, but instead I'm her writing the book. Some people call it channeling a voice. I call it the Method technique--much like inhabiting a part on the stage.

But here's the thing . . . both voices are in some way very honest, I think. It's not about inventing a world for me, but instead BEING in that world and writing about it, if that makes any sense. I am not separate from it, but in it, living the voice in my head.

So the other day, I got one of those writer newsletters in my email box. The writer was well-known and I started reading the excerpt, and then stopped. And it wasn't the hook, it wasn't the setting. It wasn't the opening line. It was the honesty or the voice. I didn't believe it.

I can describe my process here. I can explain how yes, I can write 20 books across four genres, branch into YA, and have every voice be different. And yet still mine. But I can't tell someone else how to do it. I just know that this is the best way I to describe what it's like for me. And I just know if you can't establish a unique voice, you might as well pack your toys up and get out of the sandbox.

Thoughts?

Give It To Me Straight

Three times in my life I have worked as the personal editor or ghostwriter for men of fairly unimagineable wealth or fame. Personal fortunes measured in the tens of millions, which is more dough than I can REALLY imagine, though I like to envision how I might spent it (a horse farm, horses, running a camp for disadvantaged kids).

Each of these men paid me to be honest. Brutally honest.

Almost verbatim--though none of them knew each other--they said over a meal, a cocktail, or the phone, "Every person in my life works for me. They're all yes-men. I tell them to be honest with me, but I know they aren't. I understand the dynamic, I don't blame them, but I need YOU to tell me if this is a good idea, if I can write this book."

Imagine that you had to PAY for one of your friends to give it to you straight, no bullshit. As an outsider, I really could. I wasn't on the payroll long-term. I was honest. In my own way. I don't "do" snark in critiques. I don't demoralize. I tell the truth, but it is always gracious (at least I think so.)

Someone said to me recently (you know who you are), "Why didn't any of my critique partners tell me this before? Don't WAIT until I pile up the rejections. Tell me NOW."

A good critique partner is worth their weight in gold. They will tell you what you don't see. Forest . . . meet trees. When someone emails me a pitch, I can usually see in under 2 minutes what the pitfalls are. Forest . . . meet trees. That there's no solid hook. Hello, trees? That the dialogue is clunky or the real story starts on page 7. Hello?

And the next time you feel like whining about what your beta reader says . . . imagine if the only person honest in your life was one you had to PAY to be. And imagine . . . the next time you give a critique . . . that you ARE being paid by a multi-millionaire to give it to him straight, no bullshit. And he means it.

Thoughts?

The Perfect Heroine

So I think I'm on my last "perfect" post, unless I write about the perfect dog, which is a title taken by my deceased dog Honi, who WAS, indeed, the perfect dog, and at least a dozen people who knew her told me so, so then it must be true.

But what makes a perfect heroine?

For me, it is that she is utterly imperfect. Messy, quirky, neurotic, wise-mouthed . . . (hmm . . . sounds like someone I know). Better yet, she is NOT self-absorbed and cares about something bigger than herself. Billie Quinn worshipped at the altar of Chemistry and solving cold cases. Cassie Hayes sacrificed for Work. Ava in The Roofer for Family. There was always something in my heroines that they cared about far mroe than themselves.

I hate to say it, but the above reason is very often why I don't read romance and was selective about chick lit. Because so much of it, or too much of it, felt like it was all about ME (not me, per se, but Heroine). Wanting to get married, find a boyfriend, get revenge on a old boyfriend, whittle down to a size 2, shop, go to the hot spot, whatever it was . . . it wasn't from MY world. I just don't care about those things. And I generally don't care to spend my time around people who do. You want to talk politics, social causes, books, family . . . I'm with you. Well, except politics. That leads to fights.

But, dedicated to a cause or something bigger than herself, my heroine must be deeply flawed and the journey for her is discovering that flaw and repairing it. Not perfectly. But enough that she is wiser by the end. She is also, throughout, loyal to a fault. And smart. And usually funny.

So that's my perfect heroine. And when I think of books I have loved that resonate through me, I think of Jo in Little Women . . . and you know? She is a perfectly modern heroine in this vein. Loyal to a fault, funny, headstrong . . . but flawed in acting and speaking without thinking, and sometimes a little selfish. A perfect heroine.

So what's your idea of a perfect heroine?

The Perfect Hero

I must be a perfectionist, because I am on a roll with this "perfect" theme. So what the heck. What makes a perfect hero--to you?

Because my perfect hero isn't yours and isn't yours. I find this kind of character to be the most intensely personal of all sometimes. I like my heroes to be crazy-smart (as in, so smart that they're almost in that weird category). Lewis LeBarge in my Billie Quinn books comes to mind. So smart he couldn't fit in anywhere EXCEPT with the left-of-center eccentrics he surrounded himself with.

He doesn't have to be strong. MacGyver is a good example. Getting by with his brain. I like the ordinary archeologist, like Indiana Jones who figures out the escape route by smarts, not brute force.

And my hero will never, and I mean never ever, be a laywer or a cop or a D.A. But most especially a cop. In fact, in my books, if you want to know the bad guy, look for the person in the uniform.

Now, I realize that's ME. There is a whole subset, for example, of Harlequin books with cop heroes. I know lots of people whose dads were cops and D.A.s and so on and were terrific men (think Atticus Finch--now THAT was a lawyer you could believe in!). But I believe, to the very core of my being, what John Acton believed:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

I believe that. Which is why I cheered in V for Vendetta. Which is why I love the anti-hero most of all. My feelings this way mean if I see a cop in real life, I hyperventilate. If a cop car pulls in back of me, I usually look for the nearest exit on the highway or the nearest store parking lot to pull in until the cop passes. I believe power corrupts in religion and in the military, and in politics. And so perhaps, in the end, I am an anarchist.

BUT . . . my hero--and perhaps mine alone--disdains power and he fights for the little guy. He's Robin Hood. He's the smart guy who takes on the bully.

I realize my feelings about politics and authority figures colors my hero. But that's why I think it's such a subjective thing. My HERO is just as likely to be a bookie or a criminal. Which is perhaps different--I know it is in romance or women's fiction. My hero is also likely to be not the handsomest man in the room. In fact, he's the one with the bad nose that's been broken in too many bar fights or Golden Gloves matches. Maybe it's shaped by my dad, who never met an authority figure he liked and never backed down from a fight. And his nose is left of center a little.

So tell me . . . who is your Perfect Hero?

The Perfect Villain

Oh, what the heck . . . continuing with this series of posts, what makes the perfect villain?

My answer to this has changed over the years. A lot. I think my answer has changed in direct proportion to life experiences, to things I've witnessed, maybe, to how I have changed as a person. Call it my Villain Journey.

You see, I used to, when I was about 25, 26, 27, 28 . . . read exclusively--and I mean exclusively--serial killer thrillers. Thomas Harris . . . Derek Van Armen (I don't believe he ever wrote another book after his first, brilliant Just Killing Time book), a couple of John Sandford's tossed in. Then, one night, I was reading Just Killing Time and I got the medical condition known as The Creeps. I couldn't shake 'em. The Creeps took over and soon, I was an insane woman, checking under my bed, in my closet, locking and re-locking all my doors and windows. I even checked under my couch, which, for the record, was TWO INCHES of space, but I thought perhaps a serial killer could have taken out some of the stuffing and secreted himself away in there. I checked in my washing machine. In my dishwasher. I knew, for me, there was one cure for The Creeps. STOP READING TORTURE PORN. Because that, to me, was what it amounted to. It seemed, again to me, that most of these books were evolving as ever more creative ways to torture people, to prolong their anguish. And I was "done." I haven't read one since and don't ever intend to. Serial killers may be the "perfect villain"--just not for me.

So I moved on. I became enamoured of this series by Robert K. Tannenbaum--until eventually his ghostwriter left it and the books, frankly, started to suck. Nonetheless, I like the D.A. character in this book, and there wasn't one villain but many. So it became more about the hero matching wits with various villains. However, in a couple of them, conspiracy and politics were woven so my new villain was the Zealot.

Zealots scare me. Look at this story from CNN today. People like this terrify me. I don't want religion in my kids' classrooms. If I did, I would pay to send them to a private religious school. But there are Zealots of every religious stripe, and every cultish belief. And I consider it a form of insanity. So . . . they became my new Perfect Villain.

Finally, I am working on my newest work in progress, which I have not even announced the sale of yet, mostly because I've been so busy. And the tagline is that it's a tale of obsession. In it, at one point, a jealous man destroys the ONE thing a woman loves. My new villain model is the lover or friend who betrays. The husbands who kill their wives, the wives who put arsenic in their husband's oatmeal. Somehow that idea of the "perfect" facade hiding sinister secrets (like the Scott Peterson case) intrigues me.

So that's my Villain Journey. What's yours? Who is your Perfect Villain and why?

The Perfect Happy Ending

Continuing my theme, I'll confess right here I always read the last page of a book first. Well, I don't do that with physics texts. But pretty much anything else, I do. Last page of a mystery. Most especially, last page of any book with a romantic entanglement. I like my happy ending.

When my best friend goes to the movies (she doesn't have children and can get out to a LOT more movies than I can . . . plus she is a NetFlix queen and we both adore films) . . . my usual question to her afterwards when she phones me (we live far apart) is "Can I go see it?" That is shorthand for "If there isn't a happy ending, I'm not going." If she says yes, then I delve further. "Is is MY kind of a happy ending? An 'all the bells and whistles' happy ending?" Shorthand for "Or is it a so-so happy ending, like the end of the Fabulous Baker Boys where you think perhaps they MIGHT rekindle their romance but it's ambiguous" (and I did love the movie, but . . . it wasn't an 'all the bells and whistles' ending).

So it is that I am an Ending Cheater.

I am not sure when this End Cheating started, but I think it PROBABLY was about the time I had Child #3. Because by then, my entertainment time was starting to dwindle to near-nothing. When I had one child, I occasionally hired a babysitter. I got out with my friends, I went to movies. With two . . . same story. When #3 came along, she was a wonderful surprise, but it meant two in diapers at once, and I just never was entirely comfortable leaving my kids with sitters unless it was their aunties--two in diapers is a handful. So I didn't get out as much. Then there was a longish stretch--one child a teen, one a tween, one a well-behaved little girl. I could go out again. And then . . . well, if you are a regular blog reader, you know the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse rode roughshod through my house and delivered me a Demon Baby. Getting out? HA! I'm delighted if I get though an entire shower without interruption. Hence . . . if I see a movie of any sort, or read a book of any sort, it's limited by time and exhuastion. I want to be 100% positive it's worth my time investment.

So I cheat.

Any other Ending Cheaters out there? Why do you do so? And are you in search of the Perfect Happy Ending? What about your works in progress? (I'm usually inclined to give mine the bells-and-whistles variety--but not always).

The Perfect "Meet Cute" Story

Okay, so yesterday was the tale of how I almost committed the perfect murder. Now for the perfect "meet cute" story.

This is also absolutely true.

I was waiting tables. I had a "best customer." A man who owned a Cadillac dealership who always requested my table and always ordered the most expensive thing on the menu AND a pricey single-malt scotch. I ordered his meal at the window of the kitchen, signing my check with an "E"--slammed it on the counter there for the chefs to hang up and cook. Picked up the steak. Served it. I asked for it "mid-rare." It came out as shoe leather. Best customer was unamused. I, single mother, worried I had just been screwed out of my best tip of the night, AND had disappointed my best customer. I took said steak and FLUNG it through the kitchen window in a fury, narrowly missing the chef's head. He turned around. We've been together ever since.

A "meet cute" though slightly temperamental story (this was before I was all peace and love, you know?).

All romantic comedies--or most of them--pivot on that "meet cute" story. That "we hated each other at first sight but now we love each other." That "two strangers meeting in an unusual way."

So . . . no perfect murder today, but share your "meet cute" story if you have one. Or . . . from your work in progress. And if your meet cute morphed INTO the perfect murder, well, then share that, too.

The Perfect Murder

This is an absolutely true story.

Years ago, when my daughter was three, I was at work and received a phone call.

"Are you trying to kill me?" came the breathless voice on the other end.

"What?"

"Have you taken a contract out on my life? Are you trying to kill me?" asked my significant other. With a voice filled with horror and panic. Like he wasn't kidding.

Now, I will admit . . . my relationships have never been particularly easy, but I thought, perhaps, a contract killing was a stretch.

"First of all, if I was going to have you killed, I wouldn't do it while my child is home." (True enough, but perhaps not the answer he was looking for.)

"But if you hired someone . . ."

"What happened?"

"I just started the garbage disposal, and it blew up and burned all the hair off my arms and face. It shot flames to the ceiling! It exploded!"

"Oh." Just "oh."

"What do you mean 'oh'?"

"I forgot to tell you something."

"Yeah?"

"Last night, I was trying to light some candles in the kitchen on the windowsill, and I dropped my lighter down the garbage disposal. I was afraid to put my hand down there. I thought it would somehow chop my hand off. So I was going to tell you when you got home after work, but it was close to 2:00 a.m., and I was half-asleep, so I was going to tell you this morning. But I forgot."

"You didn't do it on purpose?"

"No. But it is the perfect murder."

I thought about it. Everyone who knows me knows that I light candles all the time. If I had dropped TWO lighters down the garbage disposal . . . I would have been a free woman. And gotten away with it. The explosion would have ripped apart my kitchen. I would be counting his life insurance money.

Thus the perfect murder. Who KNEW that lighters explode in the garbage disposal like that? And now that I have posted this on my blog, any of YOU who use this method to kill your spouse or loved one . . . will have a hard time explaining yourself to the police if the cops find out about this blog post. But think about it. You visited http://www.ericaorloff.com/. No internet searches for murder methods or staging a suicide. It would have to be a very clever cop who traces your murder method to my forgetful episode many years ago.

I admit it. I think about the perfect murder all the time. Tom in The Roofer was seen building bookshelves before his little hit. There was a reason for claw hammers and electric saws. Because that often trips up a murderer. The back story. It has to be simple. And logical. Look at the Lacey Peterson case. Did anyone REALLY believe he was out fishing that day?

So tell me . . . have any of your books contained the perfect murder? And remember, whatever you 'fess up to here . . . you can't use it in real life.

Peace,
E

Pleasant Surprises and Unpleasant Realities

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."
~Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman is one of my personal heroes--a physicist whose theories are an enduring legacy to the field of quantum electrodynamics. He also was appointed to the team that invesitgated the Challenger disaster, and he was so critical of the final report that he wrote a minority report urging NASA have a complete overhaul. He was ignored. He passed away in 1988, but his contributions endure. And that quote? Brilliant.

It applies as much to NASA and physics . . . as it does to writing and life. In life, I found I grew as a person by leaps and bounds when I stopped mentally justifying my failures as a human being. When I was cross with my kids, I blamed it on being tired. But really . . . there aren't many excuses in life, just failures.

So it is with writing. I have to say, I pressed "send" on the Magickeepers, delighted with the knowledge that I think I nailed it. Certain scenes just came out SO good. Certain emotions. And a BIG surrpise (to me anyway) occurs in the climax. Holy cow, but the kid was fathered by someone else!

But there is one scene that . . . I am not sure about. I think it "tells" too much, even if the scene is touching. We'll see what my editor thinks. Because every time I turn something in, I have that nagging doubt about x or y. Each book has its pleasant surprises and those unpleasant realities that it needs more work.

Getting honest is the first step. Honing an inner critic that you can rely on it the second step.

Thoughts?

More on SNIS

Yes, more on Shiny New Idea Syndrome. A quote to ponder:

"A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."~Oliver Wendell Holmes

In my life, I can remember a few moments that very much embody the Holmes quote. One time was when I read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I was in the hospital battling Crohn's disease, and as usual, I approached hospitalization like I was being punished and said to my doctor, "How soon until I get out?" Hospital was like prison, at least in my mind. I viewed every stay as pushing myself as fast as possible to get released, and beware any poor doctor who said, "Maybe Tuesday," because by Monday night, I'd be bugging them to process me out. But this time I was hospitalized, I was in such bad shape that the doctor was measuring my stay in WEEKS and MONTHS, not days. His answer was "You're going to be here for a long while."

I was understandably devastated. By about day five, I was so homesick, I didn't think I'd ever get better because I had a broken heart missing my daughter (an only child at the time) so much.

A friend of mine recommended the book, and I was so sick, I remember I could maybe get through a page or two at a time. But eventually, as I got better, I whipped through it. Then I proceeded to start all over reading it again. And then again. My copy has pages falling out and is held together by rubber bands. And I remember the most unusual sensation. My brain felt like it had exploded. The concepts were so amazing, so true, so life-altering, that I knew my life would be measured by who I was before the book, and who I was after.

So it is, in a smaller way, with SNIS. Once an idea is up there in my brain, it becomes this living thing. There's no putting it "back"--no pushing it into a closet or beating it back into submission. Even if I NEVER write the book that's dying to be written, my brain is forever changed by it's being there. Which is one of the wonders of creativity and the human mind.

So has an idea . . . or a book . . . changed you? Stretched you to new dimensions? Thoughts?

Happy Father's Day

I was doubly saddened that Tim Russert died Father's Day weekend. It's hard enough to lose someone, let alone near a particular holiday. And of course, after I married my third husband, Anthony Bourdain, I had always intended the very brilliant Tim Russert to be husband #4. He will be missed by so many, particularly today--not just Father' Day, but . . . Sunday . . . and Meet the Press, where he always struck me as well-prepared and never "in your face."

The following is a passage from Tim Russert's book, Big Russ & Me (#1 on Amazon today).

I always go to [my father's home] for Thanksgiving, and in 2004, a few months after the book came out, we were loading up the car to drive to the airport when Big Russ came over to me to say goodbye. For as long as I can remember, Dad and I had always parted with a handshake and a half hug. But this time he gave me a huge bear hug and he said softly, "I love you" – something I had never heard him say before. I was fifty four years old, and all I could think was, Boy, I wish I had written this book thirty years earlier.

It seems that when I meet men of a certain (ahem) age, most of them never got the benefit of hearing a lot of "I Love Yous" from their dads. I consider myself lucky that I always did.

My favorite story about my dad, or one of them anyway . . . was about my 13th birthday. My father used to travel for months at a time to places I had never heard of: Vietnam, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon. Phone calls were spotty back then. And we were conscious of it costing like . . . tens of dollars per minute, so all I and my sisters got to do was line up, shout "I MISS YOU!" over this fuzzy international phone line, and pass the phone to the next sister. This was in the era of Telexes (which my kids don't even know what they are), which we would send to his hotels sometimes. We got postcards from places very far away with exotic stamps, and I still have all of them, I think. And always, no matter how far away he was, he found a way to get home for each of our birthdays. Even if it meant flying for three days straight with layovers.

My thirteenth birthday, my dad couldn't work it out--he would be flying for 48 hours across time zones from Pakistan, but there would STILL be no way to get home for my birthday. He said he'd make it up to me, but I was crushed. CRUSHED! When he finally got home, two days AFTER my birthday, he brought a beautiful bracelet (which I still have). I thought what I would forever remember about my 13th birthday was that my father missed it.

I was wrong.

Now that I am an adult, and realize how exhausted he must have been, and realize now all the sacrifices my MOM made to make up for his traveling, and how tired and stressed they both probably were, what I remember most was that he tried so hard. Had there been a way, a flight, a boat--you name it--to be there, he would have. That he traveled without sleep, with jet lag, to lonely places far from his girls, eating strange food and sleeping in sometimes less-than-safe places, sometimes even war zones. And that he tried to move heaven and earth to be there for our special days. And in a way, his missing it despite trying his hardest is more memorable. Because I have to be honest, I don't remember any of my other birthdays. I really don't. But that one I do. Because I knew I was loved enough for someone to try to do that.

The father characters in my books are a lot like my dad. He inspires most of them--Frank O'Neil, and Skye McNalley's dad, Billy Quinn's dad. Not a businessman or "ordinary" dad among them, not mushy or particularly easy to get along with, but fiercely loyal. The kind of guy who would fly across every international time zone to try to be there for your birthday.

HAPPY FATHER"S DAY to all the dads out there. And to mine.

So tell me . . . how are you spending the day? And what are the dads like in your works in progress?

Saturday Morning Kick in the Ass

Get your book done.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
~Pablo Picasso

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
~Aristotle

The best way out is always through.
~Robert Frost

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
~Mary Shelley


THERE. Consider your ass kicked. Now go and write.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

Where are you in your work in progress?

Scribbling Down Ideas

So I was in the middle of Oldest Daughter's graduation ceremony. I was crying. I was listening to her play violin with the orchestra.

And the first line of a new book flew into my head.

To be sure, I always suffer from Shiny New Idea Syndrome. They don't make a rehab for that, do they?

And this new idea is one I have been toying with--just toying in my head--for a few months. Originally, I thought it was a work of women's fiction. But now I am thinking it's a late-YA. And then . . . the first line! The first wonderful, fabulous line which means it's now more than just this cloud of an idea. It's SOMETHING.

I looked in my purse for something to write on, and ended up tearing off a piece of cardboard from the box I keep my Epi-pens in. I wrote it down . . . the first line. And stuck it in my wallet.

My Significant Other looked over at me like I was nuts. "What are you doing?"

Meanwhile, I am STILL sobbing over Oldest Daughter. Still there at the graduation. I leaned over and whispered, "New first line for a book."

By now, my family just knows I am weird, so he just nodded.

But inside, I was elated. In the midst of this crazy day, I get my first line. Not only that, I got the two main characters Clear as a summer day.

This happen to anyone else? Where do you scribble when you get an idea at an inconvenient time? Do random lines come to you out of nowhere? Are we really ALL just insane?

Support

This is an "out there" post, and I am really just curious, so . . . chime in at the comments.

Sixteen years ago, we moved from an area of the country where there were NO Mexican-Americans (there were two in the phone book with my kids' last name--us and their uncle), to an area of the country (near Miami) where there were Latins galore. My kids' last name had 15 solid pages in the phone book. It was really great. We moved from someplace that never, ever felt like a melting pot, to a place where it was a rainbow of cultures--Cubans and Hatians, and Venezuelans and Brazilians and . . . you name the country, it was represented.

So the first week in our new house, the cable guy comes. We ordered "basic" cable. He comes in, he starts chatting. Nice guy. Latin. He looks at the job order more carefully and says to my Significant Other, "Oh . . . you're LATIN! Hey, man, que pasa." All of a sudden, my Significant Other was the recipient of a series of cool handshakes and an animated conversation.

Cable man goes out in yard. Cable man comes back in. Cable man winks at family of Mexican-Americans. Cable man says, "Hey . . . you got ALL the channels now. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax. EVERYTHING. For free. I put this little thing" (he holds up something that looked like a large silver bullet with a hole through the middle) "on your line, man. Around here, the Latins gotta stick together."

He leaves. I had amazing cable for three years.

Everywhere we went, when people heard my kids' last name, which is akin to the Mexican version of "Smith" we got free desserts. Extra ice cream at the ice cream store. You name it. If somehow a person in a service position heard we were Latin--and if they were Latin--it was like this secret world of . . . we gotta stick together.

So four hurricanes, three more children, and sixeen years later, we move BACK here. The Latin "Smith" page of the phone book is now two pages not two names. But it's still not a Latin-friendly place. At all. Outright snubs and comments, all sorts of things, especially in the anti-immigration political climate.

So it is that when Baby Girl and I watch any kind of competition show--whether it's American Idol, which she and Oldest watched devotedly, or this show, at the outset, she always looks for a Latin person to root for, and her secondary choice is someone gay. If they are kicked off, then she finds a third choice. It's actually kind of funny. Our way of "sticking together." Not that we're gay but we have so many friends who are so . . . we root the gay-way.

So here's my BOOK question. Do you ever buy, or gravitate, toward a book or author because of what they represent to you. Now . . . it doesn't have to mean you are Latin and buy Latin authors, or African-American and buy African-American authors. Maybe you have a certain disease or certain problem, and you choose memoirs by people you relate to. Maybe you saw such-and-such an author on a talk show and they said something about their personal life and you feel "represented" when you buy their books. Maybe it's someone from your area of the country, your hometown. Maybe you support erotica authors because it's what you write. Or some other "niche" in e-books or indie publishing.

Do you ever buy a book to SUPPORT a niche, or support an AUTHOR for a reason other than what's necessarily between the cover? Just curious.

Happiness

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

- Allan K. Chalmers


Happiness . . . Oldest Daughter.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEPHEN PARRISH!!

This guy is . . . a number so huge, I can barely type it.

The big 5-Uh-Oh.

Fifty.

Makes me kind of nauseous typing it because some day in a few years, I'll be that huge number. But then, he'll be older than THAT, and I can still call him an old man, so that's okay. So he's turning 50. It's after midnight here, and he's already up over in Germany, eating his Wheaties or whatever it is old people eat for breakfast. And he is so beloved in the blogosphere that I heard from not one, but three different people reminding me of this auspicious occasion. People I have never met emailed me about it.

How did I get to be pals with Stephen? I followed links, of course. And I even remember his post that day. Stephen's blog, for those who don't know, started out about writing. It's still, a lot of times, about writing. And Stephen writes the most beautiful essays. But along the way, the blog acquired a fairly political slant. As often as I go there and well up at a beautifully worded essay, I will go and read an extremely well-written one on politics.

So it was that I wouldn't comment there for a while. Because if there is anyone you don't want to disagree with, it's Stephen. He's a great debater. So I visited. Often. And realized he and I, as far as I know, never disagreed politically. But I still wouldn't comment because there were people who seemed to live for disagreeing with Stephen, and I didn't want to enter the fray. Eventually I did. Once in a while, I find I can't help myself, even though just as often I remind myself not to respond because it gets so heated over there. But still, the guy writes on, defending gay rights, taking on all comers about the war and immigration and racism. And reminding me that there are people out there who seem to care passionately about this country and who are patriots, but who aren't afraid to speak out about important issues.

And along the way, at some point, even though he lives really far away, Stephen became someone I call a friend. We've chatted online. On the phone. And over email. And he is just a very impassioned writer who seems to invite a lot of affection if this cyberspace surprise party is any indication.

And that . . . when all is said and done says two things to me. That the community of writers is a pretty affectionate lot much of the time. And that the Internet can be an amazing tool to bring people all over the globe together.

Oh, and another thing. That one guy can have a lot of friends and be a pretty special person. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLD GUY. We all love ya! (And Miss Snark herself sent him birthday wishes over here. A round of gin and a kiss from George Clooney for everyone--even Stephen.)

Time Travel

A quote from Einstein:

Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.

So what was Einstein saying? Einstein proved that time is relative, not absolute as Newton claimed.

So today is relative. Oldest Daughter graduates high school.

She used to be Baby Girl. But now? There's another Baby Girl, an Oldest Son, and a Demon Baby. And today, Oldest Daughter moves on to a new adventure in life.

Time is relative. I just don't know where it goes.

Thoughts?

Tell Me Everything

One my desk sits a picture of my Grandma Irene in a Mets T-shirt. She's a frail-looking 80ish, give or take, and her Mets--HER Mets--were her life. Keith Hernandez was her personal dreamboat.

I was at Game 7 when the Mets won the World Series. I took the train out to Shea, and rode the train afterwards. Rather than get off at my stop, I ended up getting out in Times Square. If I recall correctly, I think I danced in the street with a cabbie from Turkey. New York City was delirious with joy.

The next day, I went to visit my grandmother. She opened the door to her apartment, dragged me by the hand, sat me down at her kitchen table and said, "TELL ME EVERYTHING."

To be sure, she watched the game. Just as she faithfully watched every game on TV. But she was looking for something MORE. So I started with how I got the tickets (an unusual story that I will spare you all the details, involving scalped tickets, a pair of illegally bought sneakers, and other assorted insanity). Next there was the fact that I spent my LAST DIME on the tickets and was literally, in my pathetic little apartment at the time, scraping together quarters for train fare. I moved along to the train ride (drunken Mets fans). Banging on the train walls and doors . . . the noise, the anticipation. The sheer tremor that ran through the fans.

Next, arriving at Shea. The weather. The seats. The BOSTON fans (boo, hiss) who sat next to me and taunted me the whole time. The fights in the stands. The smell of pretzels and beer. All of it. BEING there when they won. The pile-up on the field (THE JOY!). The train ride home. Kissing total strangers. Dancing in Time Square. Everything.

She wasn't in a rush. In detail, the story from beginning to end takes a solid two hours. Minimum. One baseball fan to the other.

I remember that when I write. Because I think, if you do it well, when you tell your story, your reader should live vicariously through the characters. By the time I went to Game 7 of the Series, there was no way my grandma could have gone. She was too frail (open heart surgery), too fragile. Too old. In her heart, she had all the enthusiam. She loved Keith Hernandez like a high school girl with a crush. But she couldn't have been there. So she got to go through me.

THAT'S what writing a story is like.

Tell me everything.

Thoughts?

Time

I need an extra day in every week.

No getting around it. I do.

But since that's not possible, I'll just have to go zen here.

Here's a quote about managing time and commitments.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
~Lin Yutang

So . . . my non-essentials, lately, have included making beds and doing laundry.

How about you?

BECAUSE

Yesterday, I jokingly said I would invent the television show "NO EXCUSES" for writers who can't find the time or energy to write, make everyone live with me (or, more specifically, Demon Baby and three other kids) for a day, and see that it IS possible to write no matter what, and then they'd go back to their relatively sane lives and they would suddenly find the time and inspiration to write. I was only half-kidding.

Sometimes I wonder if I sound like I am complaining on my blog. I'm not. Once in a while, like everyone, when I haven't slept through the night in four or five days (like this week). When the laundry has piled up and Demon Baby has decided he is a scientist and wants to conducts "experiments" (like yesterday--do you know that if you add copious amounts of maple syrup to orange juice, the orange juice takes on a decidedly eerie color and texture--and gets--his word--"spooky"?). When I am tired and pressed against a deadline, I can feel like complaining. BUT, really, most of this blog, whether the tone comes out all the time or not, is really just a rolling of my eyes at the universe, laughing at the absurdity thing. Because in the end, you just write.

Last night, I made meatballs from scratch, fed my kids, drove to church for a three-hour meeting (VERY exciting . . . I am planning a diaper drive--food stamps don't cover diapers, you know; coat drive for kids in the cold weather; and Christmas Mother toy drive . . . THREE social ministry events in four months. Very cool.), and still had to come home at 9:30 p.m. and WRITE. And on the way home, in the dark, Demon Baby looked out the window and asked, out of the blue, "MOM? I have an IMPORTANT QUESTION."

"What's that?"

"WHY DO DUCKS POOP?" (Note, I felt like I had fallen through a portal and landed on Ellen's blog.)

I said what all tired parents say. "Because."

He said what all smart little kids say.

"But why because?"

So I explained how pretty much every creature that EATS must then . . . well, you know the biology. This answer he was satisfied with.

But the FIRST answer is my no excuses answer. You write BECAUSE. You don't need some lofty reason. Some "I would perish without writing." Some "I write to get my stories down on paper." Because when you have all that, it's easy to have days when you don't FEEL like it, when you're too tired. When you don't have a story dying to be put down on paper. You write BECAUSE.

I don't get to pick when I mother. I mother 24/7. And in this house? I DO mean 24/7. I mother because I love my children. But I mother BECAUSE. Not because why. Not for some "I find my purpose through mothering." I mother because I birthed four children, love them, and they need mothering. Because. I have the lofty reasons. I do. I have expounded on them here. But there are days when I want to mother about as much as I want to walk through duck poop. I mother because.

Those three social ministry drives I want to do? Diapers . . . coats for kids who can't afford them . . . Christmas gifts for kids and seniors who otherwise might not be able to afford them? That is a great goal. But don't get me wrong. After six weeks of a diaper drive, coordinating it, driving the diapers to various homeless shelters and food banks, STARTING a new drive for coats . . . there WILL be days when I want to bitch that I am too tired to do it. But I do it because. No excuses. No "I'm too busy." Because it everyone bitched like that, no one would help.

Just like if everyone was too tired to write . . . no books would get written.

No excuses.

Do it because.

Duck poop or not. Lofty reasons or not. Just BECAUSE.

Thoughts?

The Writing Channel

I am madly in love with this man. Like 99.99% of my physics-related crushes, he has no idea. But he's researching blackholes and he's a genius, and I'd love to have dinner with him. Unfortunately, he lives in Austin. Oh, and I have four kids including a Demon Baby. BUT . . .

The reason I discovered my new genius-crush . . . is DID YOU KNOW THERE IS A SCIENCE CHANNEL???? I had no idea. None. Not only didn't I know . . . I didn't know I GOT it. (I get 400 TV channels, most of which I have never clicked through.) At any given time, I can now obsessively watch science, physics . . . astronomy. I am beyond thrilled. A science channel!!! They should give my new love Karl his own show. I would watch. Though I might be an audience of one. I don't know. How popular ARE these channels?

Which leads me to my fun question of the day. Don't you think they should have a writing channel? Not a BOOK channel. I know they have that. I mean a writing channel on craft. Interviews. All things writing. We can have a Grammar Gal. A hunky Participle Man.

So . . . if we WERE to have a writing channel, are you hosting a show? Who would you have on it? Co-hosts? Sets? Use your imagination.

Me? Even though I don't do science writing . . . I'm hosting Science Writing with the Science Stars. That way I can have Karl on my show. (Clever, aren't I?)

After that, I think I would host a show on Writing at Book Even if You Have a Demon Baby. It will be called . . . .

The NO EXCUSES SHOW.

And I will just have people on who want to write but say they can't find the time, and I will give them a life makeover so they DO find the time, mostly by dragging them through MY life so they see, "My GOD, if she can do ALL that laundry, have time to make meatballs and sauce from scratch (today's agenda), and deal with that Demon Baby, WHAT on earth is my excuse?" I will make guests do housework, deal with homework issues, and make food for not only Oldest Son, but his posse of adolescent boys (who ate a WHOLE pizza yesterday--just two of them, actually).

So there you go. Channel E for Erica.

So what's YOUR show?

And isn't Karl cute?

Shrink

I once knew a shrink who was quite possibly the most screwed-up individual I had ever met. Engaged something like six times to six different women in two years and never went through with any of the weddings. That kind of screwy. And I used to think, "Who the HELL would go to this person for advice? Who in their RIGHT MIND would lie down on a couch and talk to this guy, who is clearly nuts?" But therein was the answer. Because clearly, some of his patients weren't in their "right mind" and so maybe he was able to get away with it. Or . . . maybe he was really good at what he did (I was never a patient, so I have no idea--not that I am EVER in my right mind) and it didn't MATTER that the man was completely off his rocker in his personal life. I just don't know.

So it was that two days ago, eating lunch at my desk (and thus, effectively not able to type . . .), I instead went blog hopping until I was done eating. Using my mouse, I click, click, clicked away. And there it was. By linking, from this blog, through a series of other blogs, I came upon a woman charging for writing coaching. And she was clearly, like my shrink-friend, a little nuts. She was unpublished, her writing, at least from her site, was . . . I don't know, confrontational or just . . . not quite what I would look for in a writing coach. She had few credits that I could see. And it was the second time in a week that I had found someone like this.

And so I started wondering. What do you look for in a writing coach? In an editor?How do you pick? Can you trust someone who's never published a book before, or whose BEST experience on their resume was editing a newsletter for a local real estate agent? What do you look for in your critique partners? I mean, there are some spot-on beta readers who have never written a complete book before?

So this is a wide open post today. What are your thoughts?

Lake Roads

When I was a little girl, I spent my summers with my grandparents at their lake cottage. It was a tiny little bungalow, and we gardened and fished and I caught tadpoles. In all my life, it is the happiest place I have ever been, the only place I long for now as a grown woman. I've gone back to find it (it was sold after my grandfather died) and the people chopped down my oak tree, so it's not the same. But still, it calls to me. When I was in labor with all four of my kids, that was my "happy place" during Lamaze. I brought a picture and tried to relax and go there in my mind.

But what I remember, among many things, were the roads. The lake was in the middle of this little township, and so all things, necessarily, were built in circular fashion around it. Therefore, pretty much ANY road you were on . . . was somewhat circular, or ran perpendicular to the circle roads. So anywhere you drove, unless you knew where you were going . . . you didn't know what was around the next bend. Ever.

Such it is with writing. I was emailing my pal JVZ yesterday about those unexpected surprises in writing. I am turning in the first Magickeepers book this week or early next (I am working through some Russian translations with a wonderful linguist that will change a few word choices--importantly so). And I had no idea the book would go as dark as it has in spots. By page 100, poor Koyla has almost been murdered. But even more so, the leader of the magicians, Damian, was envisioned by me as a hero. I loved him as I imagined him. But as the book took shape, it is his brother Theo that I now realize is the TRUE leader. He is smarter, a better magician--but he chooses to teach because that is more important to him than leading in some flashy way. And the more I wrote, the more I saw how narcissitic Damian is, that he never doubts himself, that he doesn't really CARE with a compassionate heart. I saw that really the fact that he is gifted has blinded him--because being the "best" anything--best athlete, prettiest woman, smartest scholar, or in his case most talented magician--can mean that your entire life everything you ever tried came easy, so much so that you came to expect it. So much so that adversity never toughened you. What's perceived as toughness is really just lack of compassion and sheer arrogance.

I see Damian, now, as a tragic figure for his own lack of insight. I see him as a character who represents the type of political figure who is dangerous. I see him much darker, much less positively than I thought I was writing him.

Sometimes writing is like that. It's the lake road. The road you can't see clearly until you are already around the bend. And then there's always another bend, another turn. You know what road you're on. You just aren't exactly sure what you'll find.

That's the fun of it, of course. But sometimes the lake road is so unexpected--in a darker way. Around one bend at my grandparents' was the "haunted house"--a house that had burned down and was never rebuilt, overrun with field mice and, I was convinced, a witch. Damian is like the haunted house.

So tell me, have you ever traveled down a lake road in your writing? Or has a book you've read turned 'round a bend you never could have imagined?

Lies

A couple of years ago, I was invited to attend a lecture given by an FBI profiler. It was rather fun--each of us in the audience got a remote control-looking thing with A/B/C/D buttons on it. We were shown a clip of a real-life situation the FBI was involved in. One was a scene of panic--an arson case. One, if I remember correctly, was about drug dealing. There were a few others. In any case, in each clip, SOMEONE was lying and we have to press the buttons in answer to the questions. Most of the questions were simple. "Is this person telling the truth?"

I didn't do so well.

In fact, most of the audience did abysmally. EXCEPT a scattered handful of teens (more on that later).

Then we were able to listen to the lecture of WHY person x or y was lying. And WHY we failed the test. These are a few things I learned . . . .

Most adults have an internal voice that tells them "trust/don't trust." But on a subconscious level, because we have been trained to have manners, we talk ourselves out of it. We think, "I shouldn't think this person is lying because his race is different from mine, or he dresses like that." We are so busy, internally, second-guessing our decision that we often don't come up with the right answer.

Teenagers, who haven't yet matured enough to give a crap what anyone thinks, are EXCELLENT profilers. In fact, when the FBI chooses profilers, they are statistically speaking the youngest recruits. By 28, most profilers' careers are finished. They move on to other things . . . (obviously some don't--but most profilers are MUCH younger than any of us would picture).

Simplest lies are best. Professional liars know this. Good liars know this. BAD liars give more information than they need to.

In fact, liars sometimes are SO overcompensating, they will make that ONE mistake, that obvious mistake and get caught. For example, they might say, "I wasn't home at the time. I didn't even HEAR the alarm." When, in fact, if they weren't home, how would they KNOW the alarm went off.

There is some physiological measurement of lying. Sweating, eyes darting upwards. Blinking too much.

So here's what I know. Don't lie to me.

Here's also what I know . . . many liars have a "tell."

And here's another . . . when writing characters who lie, it's a tricky thing. I had one major character in one of my books lie, and readers didn't find out until a plot twist 50 pages from the end. Readers were irate. THEY don't like being lied to any more than we do. Yet, sometimes, we have to have those lies in there for plot.

Thoughts?

Authentic Schmootz

As a New Yorker, I have my Yiddish expressions. I'm not Jewish, but the fact is you can't grow up near Manhattan without picking up some Yiddish, some Spanglish. And my favorite word is schmootz. As in (as a mother), "Come here, Demon Baby, let me get that little bit of schmootz off your face." Then, like a true mom, I use a little spit to wipe away the chocolate or whatever it is that is on his cheek or chin. Come on, all moms do this (maybe without the Yiddish). Now they even have THIS. (You MUST check this link out.) What an inspired bit of genius for THAT product.

Now here's the thing, there are some details so spot-on that without them, frankly, I don't buy a character. Maybe the mom in your work in progress doesn't wipe away schmootz, but there are some things about moms that are universal. And I don't mean mothers. See . . . anyone can be a mother. It takes a special kind of woman to be a mom.

As a student of life, I look for the authentic details to get "just right" about my characters. Until wine became trendy in the last 10-15 years, with people actually--besides the very upper class--becoming interested in tastings and so on, no self-respecting man ordered wine in a bar. As a former bartender, I know. They ordered beer. NOT that some didn't, but if you wanted, in a character, say a cop, to have made him a bit different--give him a nice pinot. Because that was uncommon. And white wine was a chick drink. And I can tell you, still, only a woman will order the abomination that is a white zinfandel (sorry to anyone who likes the stuff, but it's not real wine).

As writers, we notice the details without even noticing that we're noticing (at least that's what I think . . . I don't even realize how much I notice about scenes and people until I go to write later, and I don't take notes). In THE ROOFER, when Ava sticks her finger into the nicotine glaze on the walls of the bar, that was real. I know. I did the same thing.

Only a mom will use her sleeve in a pinch to wipe a runny nose and not think about it. Only someone who hates to lie will come up with something complicated when telling a lie. Lying makes them nervous. They embellish so it sounds better. Liars--habitual liars--know the simplest lie is best.

Anyway, you get the idea. So what's one authentic bit of schmootz or detail from your work in progress? And how many of you are rushing to buy that product I linked to? Come on. You know you want to.