Occupational Hazards

Quote of the Day: Shirley Hazzard, on the Occupational Hazards of being a writer:

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of.

The occupational hazards of writing are something my writer buddies and I discuss frequently. Every job, hobby, or past time comes with its own unique quirks. Writing, I think, comes with exceptional hazards. Here are a few of the ones I have experienced.

1. An irrational phobia of a blank page or computer screen. I must have wordage...I love the look of a blank page for about 30 seconds...then I must fill it up!

2. Never being able to simply read a book without my internal editor occasionally popping up to scream, “There’s a mistake!! I saw a mistake!!” or “How can she get away with all those adverbs? My crit group would shred my manuscript if I had all this stuff in there!”

3. Never being able to take simple pleasure in going to a bookstore or library. Sure I can still browse the shelves and choose the perfect gem to borrow or add to my collection. And of course bookstores and libraries are still my favorite places in the world to be. But somewhere in the back of mind is the unavoidable daydream of seeing MY book on the shelves next to those I am looking at. And while I am browsing for something to read, my internal researcher is checking up on what’s out there, who is publishing what, what titles are filed under what genre, and a million other things other than simply finding a book to read.

4. Never being able to answer the question, “So what do you do?” without getting strange looks, eye rolls, and a few dozen ridiculous, weird, or obnoxious questions, story ideas, requests for you to write something for them, or the ever popular “oh yeah, I’d do that too if I had the time.”

5. Never being able to open your email inbox or physical mailbox without at least a slight flop of the stomach or skip of the heart…after all, a publishing contract complete with an advance check for $25,000 or an offer of representation could be sitting there just waiting for you. Right? :D

6. The danger of being considered mentally slow or just plain weird because you have the tendency to stare off into space at odd moments or walk around the house muttering to yourself about (or to) fictional people that no one else believes exist (but we know better, right?) ;-)

7. The danger of your significant other jump to the wrong conclusion when they come across all those sticky notes that you leave all over the house that say things like “be sure to hide the murder weapon where no one can find it” and “break up after huge fight over how to say pall bearer” (this one actually happened to me – my husband saw that note on the fridge and said, “We are breaking up over pall bearers?” Poor guy…I still crack up over that one. :D

So how about you? What occupational hazards have you come across since entering the wonderful and strange world of writing?


This is one of the hazards of trying to write at my house...his name is Cyrus...and he would prefer that I spend my time petting him, not writing. Or reading for that matter. He sees an open book of any type and this is what he does. :D

Friday Funnies

Quote of the Day: A writer's life is not designed to reassure your mother.
~Rita Mae Brown

Okay, I have files full of funny little writer stories and lolcats n dogs that just crack me up. Since I don't normally post on Fridays, I thought I could use this day to share some of my favorites. Enjoy :)




(a friend emailed this one to me, so I don't know the original author)

A writer died, and due to a mix up in the hereafter, she was allowed to choose her own fate: heaven or hell for all eternity. Being very shrewd for a dead person, she asked St. Peter for a tour of both.

The first stop was hell, where she saw rows and rows of writers sitting chained to desks, in a room as hot as a thousand suns. Fire licked the writers' fingers as they tried to work; demons whipped their backs with chains. Your typical hell scene.

"Wow, this is awful," said the writer., appalled "Let's see some heaven."

In a moment, they were whisked to heaven and the writer saw rows and rows of writers chained to desks, in a room as hot as a thousand suns. Fire licked the writers' fingers as they tried to work; demons whipped their backs with chains. It looked and smelled even worse than hell.

"What gives, Pete?" the writer asked. "This is worse than hell!"

"Yes," St. Peter replied, "but here your work gets published."

Blog Chain - When You're Feeling Less Than Fresh

Quote for the day: There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in trouble." And it may be true. ~Hunter S. Thompson

Time again for the blog chain. Christine posted an excellent answer before me, so be sure to head to her blog if you missed it.

Carolyn hit us with a good one this week:

How do you keep from telling the same story over and over? What are your tips and tricks for finding fresh ideas and adding new twists to your work?

My first reaction....ummm, I don't know :D Second reaction.....*shudders in fear* maybe I don't! Third reaction....calmed down, thought about it, and came up with this.

I just do.

Ha! Well, I guess it's not that simple. To be honest, this isn't something I've run into much yet. I just started "seriously" writing a couple years ago. And though I have been writing my whole life, the only projects I put a lot of work into were my non fiction projects. My fiction was just for fun, for family, and for me.

But I did notice, just the other day, that I had my character in a situation and the words that came out of her mouth were what I would say...not what she would say. And incidentally, they were something my last MC might have said (as she is based in part on me). So I had to stop and think about how Kesi would react...not Min, not me, but Kesi. (Christine had a great discussion on voice of characters in the post before me).

As for not telling the same story over and over...well, so far it hasn't been an issue for me. I like to explore new settings and time periods. Setting one book in 1855 and another in 2009 gives you a ton of room for new ideas.

But even if the particular theme in a book is similar...angst over relationships, romance and the thrill of first love, bad guy trying to kill good guy...I try to explore it in a different way. I give the characters different motivations for what they are doing, give them different reactions to what is going on. In one book, a character might be staring down the barrel of a gun and be terrified and in the next book they might be laughing, knowing they can take the guy down before he fires off a shot. The bad guy holding the gun might be there out of hate and jealousy in one book and out of pain and despair in the other. Either have a similar situation with different characters or similar characters with different situations. When you are talking about human (or non human...gotta love fiction writing!!) emotions...the possibilities are endless!

And, I think this is where genre hopping helps me out. I know a lot of publishers frown on genre hopping - though perhaps not if you use a pen name for the different genres. But for me, switching genres keeps me fresh, keeps me interested. When I was working on TREASURED LIES and I'd start to get burned out, I'd take a break for a week or so and write a couple children's picture books. It was fun, it was something totally different that allowed me to explore a different part of my creativity.

I've found a few times with my new book, if I start to feel burned out, start running out of ideas, I take a break for a day or two and work on a non fiction project. Working on something so completely different allows me to continue working, but I can come back to my fiction project fresh, with new ideas and new perspectives.

My next book will be another change of pace for me. Still YA, still Urban Fantasy, but instead of focusing on the teen angsty dangerous stuff, it will be more of a comedy. Something totally different for me to explore in a genre I am familiar with.

The fabulous Elana is up next, so head to her blog for her thoughts on keeping fresh!

Sometimes Fortune Cookies Freak Me Out

You know, sometimes fortune cookie fortunes are eerily accurate.

My son's - You are a lover of words. Someday you will write a book. (this would have been cool for me, but even cooler for my son....just like his mama) :D

And mine - You can't get "lucky" without hard work. (Now this just struck me as particularly accurate, because when it comes to the publishing world, I do think a lot of it is luck. Your ms hitting the right editor or agent, on the right day, at the right time. But of course, no amount of luck in the world is going to help you if you don't work hard at getting that ms polished and out the door in the first place.)

Wow, I am stalling way too much if I am contemplating fortune cookie fortunes THIS hard :D Off to write!!

Work in Progress Wednesday

Quote of the day: Write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you are writing, and aren't writing particularly well. ~Agatha Christie

This week went okay. Not well, but okay :) I had a couple rough days, but did as Ms. Christie advised...and just sat and wrote. Some days it was torture to get out the few lines that stained my page. Other days, forcing myself to just sit down opened the floodgates and I beamed with pride when I finally put down the pen.

I am now on my fifth pen, 25 pages into my second notebook, and have an idea for a new book that is clammering to get out (but must wait until this one is done!) :)

In non fiction news - I had an idea for another book, one that I already have most of the material for. Don't know why it didn't occur to me before. So, I am working on getting the proposal put together for that and getting the manuscript pieced together and finished. I can do the non fic stuff while my kids run around, so I save the fiction writing for when they are gone or asleep :D

How is everyone else doing?

How to Write Good - Advice from the Experts

Today has been one of those days, so I am going to post a few quotes out of the book of advice for writers I have sitting on my desk. Some of these crack me up but are actually good advice :D

Avoid run-on sentences that are hard to read.
No sentence fragments.
It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
Don't use no double negatives.
If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, "Resist hyperbole."
Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.
Kill all exclamation points!!!
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Take a bull by the hand and don't mix metaphors.
Don't verb nouns.
Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

How to Write Good
~ from William Safire's Fumblerules

When you catch an adjective, kill it. ~ Mark Twain

Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

Tell almost the whole story. ~ Anne Sexton

The trick is leaving out everything but the essential. ~ David Memet

And one of my favorites (this actually is exactly what I did in my first book when I had written myself into a corner - and it worked beautifully!)

When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun. ~ Raymond Chandler

(or as my friend Kristal told me - if you get stuck, shoot someone) :D

Where to Begin...courtesy of Elana

Okay, I really hope Elana doesn't mind that I am totally stealing her topic here - but as I was responding to her blog post this morning, I realized my short little answer was turning into a post of my own. So, here we are.

Elana asked the question, "How do you start writing your story?"

This question made me stop and think for a second because, up until now, I have always started at the beginning. Occasionally, I would write a scene that went somewhere else, but for the most part I tried to start as close to the beginning as possible and keep things in order.

And it just didn't work for me. I'd get stuck somewhere and just stew over it forever instead of moving on to something else. I suck at beginnings, really. I will spend as much time editing the first 3 chapters as I will on the entire rest of the book, I kid you not. And I was always, ALWAYS stressing over coming up with that perfect first line. And the consequence was four books that never made it past chapter three.

I have started and abandoned those 4 books in the last year, trying to write from start to finish. My new book was different though. Now, I just don't worry about it. I start with whatever wants to come out at the moment, and then I work backwards and forwards and I start filling in the gaps. (and knowing how OC I am with schedules and being organized, the fact that this crazy method of writing is working really well for me cracks me up to no end, but hey, if it works, I'm not going to poke at it too much) :D

For this one, I actually wrote what I thought would be the first five pages first, not because they were the beginning, but because it was the scene in my head at the time. When I was done, I thought, "hmm, sounds like a good beginning"...turns out they are really right smack dab in the middle. But I wasn't sure where to go from there. So I wrote another scene that was in my head. I figured it would be in the middle somewhere. Turns out it will probably be my ending scene. So, I had some end stuff, a bunch of middle stuff, and hardly anything for the beginning.

This should have freaked me out. But it didn't. It worked for me. I took that middle stuff and worked backwards, filling out the stuff I knew needed to come before it, the stuff that I needed to build up to what happens in the middle.

I can't tell you how exciting it has been writing this book. I am always working on something, there is always something going on in my head. And when a scene pops up, I grab my notebook and write it down instead of leaving myself notes for later (which never worked - it was frustrating in the extreme to look at these notes, knowing there was a good scene there, but not being able to remember exactly what it was).

Once I have a scene down, I figure out what I need to do to get to that scene and what needs to happen afterwards to link up to the other stuff - and IT'S WORKING! It is working better than I would have ever thought possible.

I will write a bunch of scenes in order for a while, but I don't ever feel like I am stuck because if I can't figure out what goes next, there is always another scene lurking that I can work on in the meantime. So, while I still experience the inevitable highs and lows and pauses that Real Life throws at me, I have continuously worked on this book since the day I started it. And the best part...I think I might actually finish it! :D

Right now, I have most of my beginning done. I have actually got my beginning up until the middle and a few scenes that will go at the very end. I'm starting to work on the second half of the middle stuff while still stewing over that perfect opening scene (which I haven't figured out yet).

So, my advice for those struggling with that perfect opening (or at least what works for me) - don't stress over the opening so much. It will come eventually. Just write what's in your head - stew about what comes first later (or while you are working on the rest of it). I like stewage time, don't get me wrong, but it has a tendency to derail me if I let it take over. So I just don't anymore :) And I am loving every minute of it :)