A few things:

 1) I was in Beverly Hills a while back, to see the doctor, I had to park in one of the public parking structures.  As I was pulling out in The Falcon (my Jeep), I passed Michael T. Weiss in his car.  He was making a turn, and he slowed down to do so, so I got a great view of his face.  He still looks good, which was awesome.  I LOVED him on The Pretender and it makes me sad that he’s been playing bad guys recently.

And not too long after I saw the guy, he shows up on Burn Notice!  It was great to see Michael T. Weiss and Jeffrey Donovan together again.  I was inspired to look up the show and see just how many episodes Donovan was in, as Kyle, Jared’s messed up brother.  I was shocked to see that it was only three TOTAL episodes!  He must have been mentioned more than that, for him to have been as pervasive in my memory as he is.  Or he was just that awesome.

2) A friend forwarded me an e-mail about this writing program called Skyword.  Skyword hooks writers up with different websites that are looking for content and they pay you based on hit counts for each article that you write.

I applied to write for gather.com and I was chosen to write for the news and political channels of the site.  I’m really enjoying it- I pick my own topics, do my own research and then submit my articles to be published on the site.  They have editors that read for content and they do edit articles as needed, which is a great service. 

I’ve already started to make money, although it’s a very small amount at this point.  But cash is cash, and it spends.  This is the first time I have ever been paid for my work.  Woo!

If you are interested in writing for the same program, check it out here.

Some of my currently posted articles are here:

a) Black Valedictorian Forced to Share Honor with White Student

b) Married Lesbian Couple Save 40 Teens from Norway Killing Spree

c) Murder of Gay Student Ends in Mistrial

d) After 66 Years, Nazi Secretary Reveals All

e) New Jersey Bullying Legislation Hits Hard

f) West Memphis 3 Released After 18 Years

3) Keep Calm and Finish Your Damn Book

Beth and Deb linked me to this post, via twitter, and it hit so many buttons for me, it isn’t even funny.

First, I love the art.  It reminds me of Hyperbole and a Half, which is awesome, and the actual content just really speaks to me. 

I mean, I am that person.  I freak out about all the people that are better/wittier/funnier/darker than I am and that have great books out there, getting read and possibly sold by a major publisher.

In fandom, I always get sad when my stories don’t get the kinds of comments that other stories do, some that aren’t as good as mine but get a billionty more comments.  And I wonder if people just don’t like me, like you do.  Or if I’m that uncool kid that people just put up with because it’s the internets and you can’t really kick people out until they become REALLY creepy or crazy or dangerous.  Am I that girl that you went to school with that had the terrible hair and smelled like peas? 

And then I wonder if it IS, in fact, the content of my work that just isn’t getting the response that I want.  If my stories are okay but not good, even if they aren’t BAD.

As an aside, I had a story that was due for a fannish challenge and I knew that I had to get it done, as it was for someone else and I would be gifted with a story of my own.  You never want to be that asshat that DOESN’T meet the deadline, okay?  And I thought I had a good story but I asked an amazing friend to beta read the thing for me.  She’s totally awesome and totally honest and she didn’t like it.  Like, at all.  So I had to break it down and really try to find what the story was I was actually trying to tell.  In the end, I had a much better story that I actually really loved.  I still did not get the kinds of comments that I was expected, based on the fandom and the characters involved.  My ego is ridiculous, okay?  I get that.  But man, I just wish I could write a story that not only connected with ME but connected with everyone else.

And that’s what I think this post is really about.  I question my worth as a writer based on the feedback from other people (or the distinct lack thereof).  I also question my worth based on my own comparison of my work/blog/twitter/facebook to that of other people, just like the blog talks about.  I psych myself out, creating all this doubt that doesn’t need to be there. 

What is the answer here?  The answer is just write the damn book.  Just tell the story the way I want to tell it, the way that I see it in my head, and just get it on the page.  Don’t worry about what other people will think about that paragraph or that character turn.  Don’t get caught up in all the peripheral stuff, like blogs and twitter and stuff.  Just focus on the work.  Because in the end, that’s all you have to stand on and it will have to be enough.  Make sure that the focus is on the work and just get it done.

That’s what I’m taking away from the post.

4) Speaking of Keep Calm and Finish Your Damn Book…

I’m trying to get my edits done on The Drake submission so I can send it out.  I’m struggling with too much information.  I’ve been thinking about the problems with the story and how to fix them for months and now that I need to actually sit down and pound out the fixes, I’ve got almost too much information pouring into my brain.

I need to rework the synopsis- crap, I have one, that I can just edit.  Maybe.  Or maybe it would be better to just start from scratch.  Ack!

Add to that, I need to update my first three chapters to incorporate the changes that I am making in the synopsis.  Let’s be clear- the changes are important, if only because they will help make the story not suck.

I feel both empowered, mostly because when I do have ideas hit me, they are pretty good and I am making a lot of fixes, but also like my hands and feet are tied.  When I sit down to actually type out the new words, I freeze up and I don’t know why.

Am I intimated by the amount of work this will require?  Am I afraid of getting it wrong?  I have no idea, I just know that I need to get my act together and get these pages out so that I don’t miss out on this opportunity.

5) My Kindle.

I love my Kindle.  I take it with me almost everywhere and I can read anything I want without anyone commenting on the cover, because I don’t have a cover.  I also am saving myself a ton of paper and ink costs by putting fanfic on my Kindle instead of printing it out to read away from the computer.

In fact, fanfic is what I use the Kindle for more than anything else.

Since my husband has been out of work for 1 year and 9 months (aside:  he was recently hired to work for a great place here in LA and starts on 9/15.  Another post to follow regarding this!) one of the things we’ve cut out is the book buying.  Granted, I do get amazon.com gift cards and can use those but I am pretty picky about what I pick up, because I know that my budget is so limited.  So, I’ve been very slow to add actual published novels to my device.  I have a lot of free stuff and a lot of samples of what amazon.com has available, but not a lot of purchases.  To be very clear, I do not pirate e-books.  It never does, as they say, to shit where you eat.

But the fanfic?  Oh, HELL yeah.  Lots of it.  And I’ve been collecting some of my favorite stories for re-reads and getting all the long Big Bang stories downloaded so I can read them at lunch, at work.  It’s the perfect little device for the avid reader of all types.

If you think you are interested in a Kindle but are concerned about the various format issues, be sure to download the program Calibre. 

Calibre is a FREE program that will help you manage your various e-books, files, etc.  Calibre can also convert files to other formats for better reading.  For example, I have a number of pdf files that I have converted to Kindle format (modi).  I have also purchased e-books from non-amazon.com sites that only offer pdf or epub formats and have converted those to Kindle as well, using Calibre.  I love it.  

And for all you fanfic readers out there, if you get your fix from An Archive of Our Own (AO3), you can download works in all e-book formats, including Kindle, so you won’t need to convert, just click and save.  Just another reason that the site is so amazing.

6) My short story.

I had submitted a story to an anthology and it was not accepted by that anthology.  Which is okay.  Not everything is for everyone.

But I submitted the piece to my crit group and it didn’t get that great of a response from them, either.

So, that is a sign that the stupid thing needs a lot of work.  On the plus side, now that I’m not writing it to fit into specific parameters, I can increase the word count and make positive changes without worrying if I am working outside the theme of the anthology.

The downside is that my husband really liked the story.  He was my beta reader and he was the one that suggested the current ending.  Apparently, my crit partners felt like it wasn’t a complete story, instead of an ending the implied additional action after the story was technically over.  That is not good.

I’m wondering if their reaction to it is based on reading preference.  They prefer the romance genre, that demands a HEA, and the husband prefers to read sci-fi and fantasy stories, that can be ambiguous and possibly sad or tragic.  That’s a different audience and one story would create very different reactions from both types of readers.

I am not discounting any feedback on this one- I am taking everything into account, including that it’s currently in present tense but it might work better in past tense.  This is something worth exploring.  I do have some experience in changing the tense, as I did with First Lady and the Dead Presidents.

I need to make the ending really pop, so that even if I don’t write in all the action that I thought I was implying before, than at least the reader would have a better understanding of what actions was supposed to be happening, as opposed to thinking that the story wasn’t even complete.  *sigh*

A lot of work, but worth it.  I love the characters, I love the world, and I want to see this in print somewhere other than my computer screen.  My plan, after I take it apart and rebuild her, is to send it to one of the guys that rejected the story from the anthology and see what they think about it after the overhaul.  If he’s willing. 

I will report back as things happen!

I signed up for the Get Your Words Out challenge on LiveJournal again this year.  I talked about that here, earlier this year.

I made the choice to go with the INSANE goal (that’s what they call it there, just FYI) of 350,000 words in one year.  I did the same thing last year and missed it by a mile but it was fun giving it a try.

I think this year, I planned more rolling in to the year but I have been less effective and less productive in my writing.  I think there are a number of reasons for this but the reality of the situation is that I have not put in the writing time to be on track to meet my goal.

On the left side of this page, you can see my progress meters.  I set goals for each month and for the year, and I have yet to meet a monthly goal even ONCE.  Which is a bit disheartening.

This month, I set the goal as the number of words I would need to write to catch up to where I should be, had I been on track for the previous 7 months.  This may seem self-defeating but what I wanted to do was to see how big of a chunk I could take out of that massive number if I just kept at it.  I may not get to the top of the mountain, but how far did I climb before I had to stop?

I am currently only at 13% of my annual goal, so I need to get moving.  I would love to hit 50% of that goal by the end of September, if not before, so I’m trying to figure out what kind of plan I would need to enact to hit that bar.

Next month, EVA is running their annual “Beat Janet” contest.  The goal is to write more words than published author (and EVA member) Janet Tronstad.  The person who beats her by the most words wins a prize.  I think I will set a more reasonable word count goal for my sidebar in September, with the hope that the drive to both beat Janet and that stupid bar will get me really revved up and writing.

This past week has been great.  I met up with one of my FAVORITE fanfic writers ever, in person, and was inspired to write just by sheer proximity to her brilliance.  I attended both the monthly OCC meeting and the annual EVA retreat at Monrovia Canyon Park.  Both events got my writing brain really working hard (my husband swears he can smell the smoke!).

On top of all that, I am working hard to finish my edits for my submission to an editor and my Apocalyptothon story was due on 08/13, with any and all final edits due by 08/20.  I’ve been pounding out the words on so many different things.

And you might be saying, but Alison?  Can you really be effective if you are bouncing from project to project?

Continued

I’ve been reading reaction posts and review of the season finale of AMC’s The Killing all morning and I’ve noticed one thing- none of the people complaining about the season finale seem to be X-Files fans.

There is all this shock, disappointment and complaining about the end of the episode “Orpheus Descending”, about how nothing was answered and only more questions were asked.

(There are vague spoilers below for The Killing.  Here be dragons, enter at your own risk.)

Continued

I entered First Lady and the Dead Presidents in OCC’s Orange Rose contest.  The results were returned on July 9^th.

I was on vacation at the time, so it’s taken me longer to get to my own score sheets and to my responses to the judges comments.

I was not a finalist, sadly.  The bar was incredibly high this year.  The highest possible score a person could get was 165 and to be a finalist, you needed an average score of over 156.

Yeah, you read the correctly.  Over 156.

My average score was a 125.  Boo.

The contest is pretty cool.  The first round judges are all published.  FIRST ROUND.  ALL PUBLISHED.  So the feedback is pretty great, even if you don’t get to the next level.  It also allows for a lot more pages than other contests- a total of 55 pages, including a synopsis of no more than 6 pages- which means the judges get a much stronger feel for your world, your characters and your story.

My scores were pretty interesting. 

As a refresher, First Lady and the Dead Presidents is technically women’s fiction.  It has romantic elements but it is not a romance, per se.  My heroine, McKinley, is forced to return home toOhio from her TV writing job in LA to deal with the death of her estranged father.  She thinks that she can just fly in, bury him, and get out.  But some insane sisters, a booby trapped will and a hunky bartender/electrician with dreamy eyes make an easy escape not an option.  Can she get back to her life and, more to the point, does she even want to?

The story is not a strict romance.  I want the focus to be more on the family story, as opposed to the romance, so I would classify this as women’s fiction as opposed to romance.  The story is in first person and is a present tense novel.  (I would like to point out that while one judge did not like the first person, not a single one mentioned the present tense.)

So, here we go:

Continued

Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush. —Robert Moss, Dreamgates

I had an editor request pages from me this weekend, after a pitch.  I am very excited at the prospect of submitting and getting a response, good or bad, from a professional.

I started off pitching my current WIP, First Lady and the Dead Presidents, but that project is not in the traditional mold of romance.  It’s more chick lit/women’s fiction, which wasn’t what the editor was looking for right now.  FLatDP is a first person story, which I don’t usually even like to read, much less write myself, but I’ve got a story that my brain is convinced that I need to write so I am.  And it isn’t this editor’s thing, at least right now, but it could be LATER.

So I threw out The Drake, a wild pitch that I hoped would connect and it totally did!  She was interested in the world, the fact that Jack is a shape shifter, and that it’s written as a traditional romance (third person, balance POV with hero and heroine, etc.).

The only problem here is that I haven’t looked at The Drake in over a year.  When I left the story, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end but there were a number of story points that I wasn’t thrilled with.  I’m hoping that I can figure out how to fix those bits so that I can get out a revised synopsis and the first three chapters that were requested, in a timely manner. 

She asked to have them in July, so I think I have a good stretch of time in which to polish and correct.  And all I really need is for her to want to read the whole thing, right? 

After the OCC meeting this weekend, I am under the impression that every book that gets purchased has editing done.  Nothing goes out on the shelf without at least a little nipping and tucking (or implants) here or there.  What they’re looking for is a solid voice and a story that shines, even if it needs a little buff and polish.

That’s not to say that I’m not planning to make this the best synopsis and three pages she’s ever seen.  No, I understand that.  What I really need to remind myself of here is that there is room to maneuver and that I shouldn’t worry myself sick over the whole thing.

My plan for the next week is to re-read the entire manuscript and try to spot the weakest points.  There is a “highlight and flag” method that my girl Christy Finn has used in the past that I need to get more info on, so I can determine where I’m strong, where I’m weak and where I need to shore up the walls to survive the hurricane.

Once I’ve got that done, I’m going to pull out Carol Hughes’ “Deep Story” class notes and really dive in there.  I think that could really help me re-lay the foundation of The Drake and make sure that I have a strong enough world and characters to support the kind of story that I’m telling.

I’ve really been thinking about my plot and I think some of the problems that I was having when I left the story before have been worked out in my head.  I was playing around with the idea of my hero and heroine as soul mates tied together through time, which is something that has come out in my fan fiction in the past as well.  I think its part of my story, so I’m not surprised to see it come up here.

When I say “my story”, I’m referring to the basic story that every storyteller tells.  Steven Spielberg’s stories are about fathers and sons.  JAWS, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, Schindler’s List, even Jurassic Park- they’re all about the relationships (or lack thereof) between fathers and their sons. 

Tom Cruise, if you break down his roles to their simplest form, tells the same story from movie to movie as well.  He plays the talented man who has to prove that he deserves his place in the world.  Top Gun, Far and Away, The Firm, even Magnolia has him fighting to prove to someone other than himself that he deserves what he has.  And maybe that’s a part of it- outwardly he’s trying to prove to others that he has earned his place but really, it’s all about him proving it to himself. 

It’s something about us, as individual people that comes out in the tales that we spin and weaves its way through everything we put down on the page.  We all have something that has shaped us as people and we try to work that out in our art/craft. 

I think the idea of soul mates, of being destined to be with someone, is something that comes out in my work.  I might be wrong- I’m a notoriously bad judge of my own work- but I think that’s at least part of my story.  The rest of my story, I think that’s better saved for a different post but I can already tell that The Drake has the potential to really get all of my stories out and on the page in one text.

I’m excited to see what this editor has to say and the prospect of selling to her and her publishing house is just an amazing opportunity.  Here’s to not screwing it up.

I’m a fan of the show The Mentalist.  If you haven’t seen it, the basic premise is this: A fake psychic, whose family was brutally murdered by a serial killer, works with law enforcement to find said killer, using his skills of deduction to solve other crimes along the way.

Spoilers ahead, in case you are sensitive to that kind of thing.  But I want to talk about story and the proper set up, so I hope you’ll join me.

Continued

There has been some talk, some of which I have participated in (and am waiting on responses to determine if my corpse will be burned in effigy by certain fandom peeps), about River Song of Doctor Who fame.  She is a divisive figure, as far as I can tell, in that people either love her or they hate her with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.  Can you guess where I fall there?

The reason that I have for not liking River Song is that she is a big, fat Mary Sue.

For those of you who have not spent any time in a fandom for movies/TV/books, you may be unfamiliar with this term.

Wikipedia defines a Mary Sue as thus:

“A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. While the label “Mary Sue” itself originates from a parody of this type of character, most characters labeled “Mary Sues” by readers are not intended by authors as such. Male Mary Sues are often dubbed “Gary Stu”, “Larry Stu”, “Marty Stu”, or similar names.

While the term is generally limited to fan-created characters, and its most common usage today occurs within the fan fiction community or in reference to fan fiction, original characters in role-playing games or literary canon are also sometimes criticized as being “Mary Sues” or “canon Sues” if they dominate the spotlight or are too unrealistic or unlikely in other ways. One example of this criticism is Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Continued

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in and sadly, not much has happened for me in the writing world in terms of production.  I am horribly, horribly behind on my word count for the year.

1) Get Your Words Out/Word Count

I am current participating in a program called Get Your Words Out .  You sign up at the end of the year and you pledge a certain number of words for the year.  Every month you log your production and they keep a running tally for you.

There isn’t a prize, much like NaNoWriMo, other than the satisfaction that you have met a goal that you set for yourself.

I set a goal of 350,000 for the year.  As you can see from the wordcount bars on the left, I am not even close to hitting my goal.  I am so far behind that it almost seems crazy stupid to assume that I will ever catch up.

For the month of May, I should be hitting 145,834 words.  As you can see, I am currently at 16,810.  I need to write 129,024 words this month to get caught up. 

This is a bit… crazypants.  But I am putting that as my goal in the wordcount bar anyway.  Because why not?  Why not set a crazy goal?  WHAT HAPPENS IF I ACTUALLY HIT IT?!?!?!?!  Could you imagine how AWESOME that would be?  So, yeah, going for it.

2) 80k in 80 Days.

In related news, I’ve decided to jump in to this additional challenge.  The goal is to write 1000 words a day, for 80 days, and complete an entire novel.  It’s a little less intense than NaNoWriMo  but still accomplishes the same goal- a completed manuscript.  Check out the website- they have articles from writes, encouraging and supporting participants and you can track your word count there in the comments section.  Not as organized as NaNo but I don’t think it’s nearly (hah!) as big of an event. 

I like all the focus on writing that we’re seeing these days.  More and more people are trying to learn the craft and hone their skills.

I know that there are authors out there, esp. published ones, that don’t like all the NaNo-type stuff.  They feel that it takes something away from all the hard work that they do.  But I have to confess, I think that if you can finish a 50k novel in one month, that you’ve shown some pretty serious dedication and hard work, no matter how good or bad the resulting text actually is.

Especially in literary circles, there is this level of pretention, this air of mystery surrounding the writing of a book.  Only super, special people should be authors.  They have special abilities and a different air about them and not just ANYONE can do it.

Which is a bunch of bullshit. 

Yes, it is true.  There are some people who have serious writing skills and anything they put down on paper is pure gold.  Others have to work much hard, polishing and editing to eventually get a product that is good and solid, that people will want to buy and read.  Others are terrible and no matter how much editing they do, a turd is still a turd.  I admit to all of that.

But how does anyone know who has the talent or not, until people start writing?  And who says that only certain people should give it a try? 

And let’s be honest- even when they write shitty books, there are people out there who NEED to write to work out their issues on the page.  I know that I have worked out a lot of things by torturing or killing people on the page.  And I have felt better.  Going abck and looking at the work with years of distance, I can admit that those pages were pretty  bad but at least I was able to get through that tough time and made it to the other side.

That’s worth A LOT  and I can’t stand the idea that some asshole would try to dissuade people from writing because “that’s just not how it’s done”.

Haters to the left, y’all.  TO THE LEFT.

3) Submissions. 

I actually submitted, for the first time ever, to a publisher/magazine.  Now, if you are a long time reader you know that there was a contest that I completed where my manuscript was submitted to an editor.  Well, I have never heard ANYTHING back regarding this and, to be honest and frank, I am SO GLAD. 

My ms was kind of terrible, including the 13 PAGE sex scene that I had written.  I have NO DESIRE to hear how terrible that editor thought it was.

But I was hoping to at least receive some kind of acknowledgement from the editor so that I could officially join RWA’s PRO group.  Basically, that’s for people who have submitted a full length work, whether it was sold or not.

At this point, while I did send off that ms, I am still not PRO.  And I have stopped counting that submission as a submission because a) no response and b) I hate the story.

Now, the submissions that I made in April will not count for PRO.  Why am I mentioning them?  Because they are the first pieces that I really feel that I can stand behind and not be embarrassed that I wrote them.

They’re two short stories of mine, both less than 1000 words, both weird and kind of creepy.  Bear says that one of them is more poem than short story and that once he figured that out, it was so much easier to read.  Not sure what that meant, for sure, but I’ll take it.  He liked both stories, which was a relief.  My greatest fear is that my husband will not like my work.  Weird, huh?  But so far, so good.

I am waiting to hear back from the magazine I subbed to.  They have a turn around average of 27 days but their cut off for their next issue was May 1^st.  So, I’m hoping to hear back from them soon.  *fingers crossed*

And that’s where we stand, friends.  Expect a few posts in the near future on both avoiding Mary Sue’s in your won work and a listing of great writing podcasts that you should check out.

Until then, peace.

My biggest problem is that I can’t say no. I want to do everything. I want to say yes to everything and be involved with it all.

I want people to like me. It’s almost a compulsion, this need of mine to have people tell me that I’m great, that I did a good job. That I am fulfilling (my destiny) their expectations.

I love writing stories and posting them on my LiveJournal because I know (hope) that I will get comments on my writing. I hope that someone will love my work so much that they have to gush about my interpretation of character or my turn of phrase.

This need to be liked (loved) leads me to overfilling my dance card and leaving me little time for myself. For my own writing.

I am a very active member of the Romance Writers of America- three local chapters at the moment, all of which I volunteer with. I am a board member for one. This takes up way more time than anyone wants to admit to you when you first get involved.

They tell you that it won’t be much, just a few hours of your time but it morphs into something bigger than you every imagined and suddenly those hours that you had planned to devote to your novel are spent folding renewal forms or creating spreadsheets for online classes. And you get it all done but you look back and you wonder just where your day went and why your word count on that novel hasn’t even MOVED.

But the thing is, when you get involved, people like you. They learn your name (in their e-mail inboxes) and they learn your face (from all those meetings) and suddenly, you’re part of the group. You are included as one of the cool kids.

Which is exactly what you wanted.

So you keep saying yes.

Continued

In my quest to find amazing procrastination activities, I have been pointed towards an amazing webcomic.  You all know (at least you should by now) that Hyperbole and a Half is one of the best, funniest, most unique web comics/blogs out there.

My favorite post, just FYI to all you fellow procrastinators out there, is The God of Cake story.  No explanation will do it justice, just go and read it.  Do not drink anything while doing so or you will spray diet Coke out of your nose.  NOT PLEASANT.

Add to that list The Oatmeal.  Funny, weird, irreverent- this comic has it all.  Including a quiz to let you know just how many Justin Biebers you could take in a fight when it comes down to the Bieber Clone Wars.

My results are as follows:

Created by Oatmeal