Insecure Writer's Support Group

Insecure Writer's Support Group

It's SOOOO freaking unreal how much  can change in a month!!!

 Last month (here) I wrote about how bummed I was. Revisions to Book 1weren't going worth a shit. Really.  Yeah, that book. The one no one was interested in. I was convinced it was crap. My writing was crap. My writing career would never happen. It was all crap. 

Sort of like: 

In fact, I became so unhappy with the whole concept, I shoved it off to the side and started working on some new projects. And, like the dumb-Ass I am at times, I also did this completely lame #Pitchmad thing on Twitter for my second book. Why not? I was already prepared for the inevitable response - 

But here's the thing - the publisher liked it. THEY LIKED IT! I was all "OMFG" and "ROFLMAO" and - well... it wasn't pretty. Happy, very happy, but not necessarily pretty. 

And then... AND THEN!!! I was offered a contract. Not just for Book 2, but the entire trilogy. THREE BOOKS, people. A THREE BOOK CONTRACT!!!

 Well knock me down with a shot of Scotch -  You can read all the details (here). 

Which of course, made me all - 

So yeah, a lot can happen in a month! 

And what am I doing now? Well, I'm well into the second book in the PHASMs trilogy, with a deadline that seemed "do-able" at the time but is starting to make me cringe. I'm also working on the developmental/content edits my editor sent back last week - I love saying that - "MY EDITOR" and I'm also outlining book three in the series. 

I've sent in my cover design questionnaire, my author questionnaire and my bio and I'm working on a list of places for book signings and other publicity for my publicist. Yes, I love saying that too - "MY PUBLICIST." I'm such a fucking geek.

My publisher (another thing I love saying) is anticipating a March/April release, with a preceding cover reveal and lots of fun to get everyone excited and chomping at the bit to read the book. 

Because... 

And do you really need a reason for a Chuck?

I'm doing my part as well. I'm running a contest the entire month of August to let YOU guys - all of YOU - pick my author photo. Hey, you might win an Amazon Gift Card too, but you have to leave a comment or "like" my Facebook page to do so. You can go (here) for the contest. After all...

And, because I don't have enough going on in my life right now, I've also joined the Masquerade Crew as one of their talented, multi-faceted and always helpful book reviewers. Yay me! 

So, am I still an Insecure Writer? Oh, HELL yeah! I probably always will be. In fact, Sunday I was all freaked out and trying to figure out how to get the damn edits done: by line? By page? By issue? Crap - I had no freakin' idea where to start. I mean, my editor was nice enough to color code everything and send a master list - sort of like a "cheat sheet" for completely trashed authors to go by - but still, where the hell do I start? 

It came dow to this: 

Fortunately, I was commiserating (without alcohol, thank you very much - she lives too far away) with my friend JD (NO! Not Jack Daniels - didn't you read the whole "without alcohol part?) and, being the author/mentor/fellow OCD personna that she is, she pried me off the ceiling once more and gave me sage advice. Which I never would have figured out myself, because I was too busy hyperventilating and squee-ing like Miss Piggy at a bacon sale. 

Tackle the big things first - the content stuff. The adds and deletes. The rest will follow. 

So simple. So direct. So - JD! Oh - did I mention her third novel is coming out at the end of the month? Yeah - she's pretty awesome. And she has a contest going as well - check it out: (here)! Between her and my cp CP, I'm actually getting some work done. Of course, my Scotch input has drastically declined. But don't worry - my Rum intake is making up for it! 


So - I'm off to the editing cave to do more damage revisions... in the mean time, help me pick my author pics! Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors! Just don't tell my ex-husbands! Yes - plural. Let's not go there, 'kay?  Go here -----------> CONTEST!!!

The Power of LUV!

I generally try to stay away from the sappy, sensitive, tender sort of thoughts and feelings. It's not that I don't have them, I just feel kind of awkward and weird showing them most of the time. I guess that comes from a lifetime working and hanging with the guys (who, by the way, I've learned are way more sappy, sensitive and tender than I ever could be.)

Yet, every once in a while, the urge to just snergle up and LUV someone breaks through the veneer and leaves me feeling all kind of wet and limp, like a dish towel. The last few days, with the support of the Insecure Writer's Support Group has been like that. Kind of amazing, how much encouragement and support you guys have given me.

And not just them - I've received awesome, supportive vibes from "friends" I've never met, all along the way. Like Val at flyingplatypi who has become a Twitter and Blogger friend and can always be counted on for a hug, a laugh and a shot of Tequila. And a bunch of other folks whose entree' into my life has been eerily well timed and curiously meaningful.

It all started with a fateful weekend at a writer's conference right here in my home time. I went to the conference not sure what to expect - I did some rogue read and critique workshops. I sat in on many, many seminars. I tentatively and nervously spoke to a few agents and to lots of other writers. And fate - or coincidence, or the Muse Fairy or someone looking over me introduced me to two people who would prove to be very important to me.

I met Mark Koopman's at a Rogue Read and Critique. That's where you sit around from 9 p.m. until good knows when in the morning reading your work, listening to other people read their work, and giving each other feedback: the good, the bad and the ugly. And Mark and I just seemed to connect. Maybe it was the fact that he had me read part of his book and I was laughing so hard half way through it the almost had to give me CPR. Maybe it was the crazy, late hours. I dunno. But Mark has become one of those stalwart, pat you on the back and interject good humor and sage words of advice kind of friends that we all need. Don't tell him I said this, but he's a really great guy. And, oh yeah, he's the one that introduced me to the amazing Insecure Writers' Support Group.  So I kind of owe him a drink. Or seven.

The other person I met is my CP, CP. She's my ace, my bud, my little sistah from anotha' mistah. We exchanged contact info at the conference, but I couldn't tell you where at the conference we met or what we talked about, other than possibly doing some critiquing. We didn't even exchange emails for almost a month after the conference, and didn't actually meet for probably another month, only to find out when we did meet that we lived three blocks apart from each other. Like, no shit, three blocks. And had so many, many delightful, engaging quirks in common, the least of which are excess amounts of swearing and alcohol. She's just - well, she's my Bud - and she keeps me keepin' it real.

And there's one more person who's arrival into my small universe has been amazingly well-timed as I venture forward on this writing thing... my friend Justine. I actually met Justine via her blog, via Sarah Fine's blog. She had a post one day that just lifted my soul (yes, I have one of those) at a time when it needed lifting. I sent her an email about it, and she responded. And I sent her another email. And she answered that one. And I read her books, and couldn't wipe the smile of my face. And we emailed some more. And we started following each other on Twitter. And now we are friends...though we've never met. And that really makes me smile.

And Fate keeps swinging along, cuz in May of next year I'm going to RT14 in New Orleans. CP is going as well. And I'll meet Sarah Fine and Stina and Nicole and Jaime and a whole bunch of awesome people I've met online - and guess who my room-mate will be? Yup - Justine.

Yeah. Gonna be a whole lotta love going on in the Big Easy. And all because of a little fate, a dash of coincidence and the power of WERDS!!!

So, here ya go - a well timed verse for Saturday's TOONZ!

How it works....sometimes

GOOOOD MORNING Faithful Followers.

I really wish I had sufficient PC skills to attach Robin Williams voice to that sentence, ala Good Morning Vietnam...

Yes, I know. It's shocking, it's 6 o'clock in the morning and I'm vertical, semi-dressed and almost in a good mood. Please, enjoy it while it lasts - it's like a cloud on a hot, dry day: it can disappear at any moment.

But while it's here, let me tell you that this week has been exceptional. Ex-Cep-Shun-All! A bit like...

Hmmm - senese a theme going on here? Might have been the gaggle of Marines that were hanging out in front of my office yesterday. Yes, God gifted me with Marines. Ooodles of them. They were scrumptious, yummy even! Tasty, like savory cupcakes without too much sweet frosting. MMMM, mmm, mmm. 

Aw, there I go digressing again. 

So, you ask, why was last week all "Good Morning, Vietnam," besides the fact it's one of my favorite movies of all time? Well, because it was a bit of good and bad, bitter and sweet. 

First, work was tough. Really tough. I can't go into specifics cuz I need to keep my job until I sell millions of books and become rich, but it just was. Stupid problems that should never have occurred, abject failure to follow policy and a lot of whining and complaining. And that was just on the government side - let's not even get into the contractors!

But, writing was good. My muse, the Valkyrie, must have swallowed mushrooms or got laid or something. She was soaring all week, higher and higher, bringing back the good stardust and sprinkling on my head and hands. She was generous and effusive and before I knew it I had 26 pages of a new novel safely tucked away, another 13 pages on the almost new story, 40 pages of the first novel revised and a 4,000 word short story completed.  

"Wait," you ask, "What do you mean a 'New Novel'? Weren't you already working on a new novel? And what's this 'almost new story'?"

Well, that's why I'm going all Adrian Cronauer on you... Let me try to explain.

1)  Book One: I finished it around the first of the year, shopped it around, got some nibbles, got a request for full, got turned down, sent it to my friend and author Justine and got four pages of tiny, tiny font feedback so I could go fix it. Which is what I'm doing now and I'm about a third of the way.

2) Then came Book Two: I finished it a couple months ago, didn't shop it around, was working on revisions to it with my critique partner CP, stupidly entered PitMad on Twitter, got a request for partial, got a request for full, made CP madly finish her critique, dashed off all the corrections and sent it in. And am waiting for results. And went ahead and submitted to a few other folks cuz why the hell not, I'm a writer, that's what we do.

3)  Short Story One: dashed off after dashing around the block with the dog one day. Submitted to about a dozen magazines, turned down by all but three, those three still pending. If they decline, I promise to publish here. 

4)  New story one, or "almost new story" was an idea I wanted to explore in a voice I hadn't used before. Girl after my own heart with much tequila, surfing, sex and general fun.  The Pro-tag cusses like a sailor (gee, go figure) and eats like a teenage boy. She's smart, stubborn, OCD and will make you snort coffee out your nose. Yup. She's me - back in the day. Story was coming nicely and I new where it was going to go as well. Probably about 10% written.

5)  Short Story Two: I'd been turning this around in my head since March, unsure how to actually get it started, but it finally found it's way out and I've sub'd to a small handful of magazine's to see if they are interested. It's pretty weird, which means it's pretty authentically me. It's not all snergly and there's almost no cussing, but it's still pretty "me."

Then along came New Story. THE story. It started with a single, completely out of context line as I was laying in bed the other night. I mean, the sentence could have gone anywhere, or nowhere. But between thinking it as I dozed off and waking up the next morning, the story had formed and was just dying to escape. I wrote the first chapter during lunch at work that day. And it kept coming. It's still clamoring at the tips of my fingers, begging to get out. It's AMAZING too! ROAR!

I can't wait to sub it out, 'cuz I have confidence this one is going places. And it's so damn fun to write - I even get to make up words and lot's of other cool things. I can't tell you much, but it's a mash-up of genres and the feedback so far is GOOD!  This is the one that had me crawling out of bed three times last night to add a line here, a paragraph there. I finally decided to just leave the damn computer on so I wouldn't have to wait for it, thereby risking the precious WERDS that were trying to make it out of my head. 

So, there you go. That's the sort of week it takes to make me feel this way. Not so hard to understand, right? I think, with that, I'm gonna take The Terrorist for a walk, so I can get back to writing.

Peace out, Ya'll! Here's your Saturday Tunes - make it a good one!

The one that was supposed to be about writing...

Today I was going to do another post about writing. You know, that thing I do when I'm supposed to be doing other stuff? The thing that (I hope) will let me retire in a few years and just DO IT?

But here's the thing - writing is also reading. Reading your own work, reading other people's work; published, not published, fiction, non-fiction, editorials and tweets. You can't write without something to write about. Maybe something you saw or heard or read yourself. Because there are no original thoughts.

Think about it - what's the last original thought you had? I'm willing to bet that, given time and resources and the willingness to really look inside at the source of that thought, you would found it came from somewhere else. Some external trigger.

Sure, you put an original spin on it; you personalized it and colored Barney orange instead of purple, but in reality, all you're changing are the details.

People have been arguing this for years, but when you look into it, it's depressingly real. A good discussion on the subject, and a list of the seven original plots, can be found at Poe's Deadly Daughters, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll list them here:

1. [wo]man vs nature
2. [wo]man vs man
3. [wo]man vs. the environment
4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology
5. [wo]man vs the supernatural
6. [wo]man vs. self
7. [wo]man vs God/religion

There is also some argument that this list should be expanded to include an additional seven, as follows, but I see these more as adaptations of the same, original seven:

1. Overcoming the monster
2. Rags to riches
3. The quest
4. Voyage and return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

I know what you're saying: wait a minute, I thought you weren't going to write about writing? I thought you were going to write about reading? (say that three times fast, in your head, with a double scotch in your gut. THAT will get you going!)

Ahem - back to the subject at hand: the reason this came up was because I had finished reading two books that I thought were remarkably similar to my first book, only the details were different. Then I got to thinking how those books (and mine) were similar to a play I watched. A play by that good time bard, Will S. 

So, when I'm reading (which I do voraciously), am I just absorbing another telling of an existing plot? Is it reinforcing that plot line in my head? Maybe - it's certainly a possibility, but if that were the case, why would my story be any different than any other story? Why would I read multiple books in the same genre? 

Because of the DETAILS - those sneaky little things like setting, period and character that really make the book, or anything else, worth reading. If I don't create a unique character with quirks and traits and GROWTH (you have to admit, Justine; that was well played!), then there's nothing new to read. It's my manipulation of those elements that make MY story better or different or funnier or more poignant than somebody else's story. 

So, what are you doing to turn your "recycled" plot into something fresh and new? I'd love to hear about it!

What bad mood?

Ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed? I mean, really, really on the wrong side of the bed?

This morning I woke up cranky as hell. I didn't roll out on the wrong side. I freakin' levitated straight to the shower. This was not going to be pretty.

I drove to work in typical San Diego style: heater on in the morning, A/C in the afternoon. Yeah, tuff to deal with. What do I have to bitch about?

I was in a funk. My first novel was out on submission. A dozen queries, 5 requests for partials and 1 request for full. Pretty good, you say. Awful, I say.

Here's the truth: I was extremely lucky to get any response to my queries. It just doesn't happen that way. Then, to get a request for a full MS? Un-freakin' believable. But I did. And now I wait. And I'm going nuts.

I haven't written for like a week. I have an unfinished second novel staring at me every time I turn on my computer. I have two other 'starts' - a couple pages each. And last night I worked on another piece I've been thinking about. I've been wasting time, doing 'research' as I told/fibbed to my husband. Researching why I'm in such a bad mood.

And then I clicked over to Justine Dell's blog. God Bless Justine. I started reading some of her older posts, even as far back as 2010, about the whole writing/reading/quirying/submitting grind. And she just - fixed my bad mood. She helped me regain both passion and perspective. She's amazing. I just ordered both her books. My way of saying thanks.

So, next time you need a swift kick in the ass to improve you mood, check out some of your blogging/writing friends. Check out some new friends. Dig through those archived posts. You might find something you can use.