Archive for January, 2011

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Things My Teenger Says: To Everyone But Me…

Monday, January 31st, 2011

You realize about the time your child reaches preschool that the parenting role you’ve been playing at (that’s to that moment been all about getting your child to that point) is spinning out of your control. Your job now becomes all about helping your child walk away from you with confidence and strength and security, knowing you’ll be here waiting and welcoming and ready to dive back into his life whenever he needs you.

“It’s ok,” you whisper to him, “it’s time to grow up…”

boy growing up

It’s his life now, more than it’s your life with him. You’re the first to realize it. He won’t even notice the change, it’ll happen so slowly, one tiny step at a time. But for you, the next ten years will be zooming on fast-forward, while you stay a few steps behind him, watching and carefully wiping the tears and bandaging the skinned knees and buying new clothes as soon as he grows out of the ones you just bought him a month ago and driving him to and fro from each of the adventures that help him grow up and help you learn to let go. (more…)

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Posted in Things My Teenager Says | 8 Comments »

Gone fishin’

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

Days like today weren’t  meant for deep introspection. They’re meant to sit in a boat and stare at water with your best friend while you pretend to be catch dinner.

Gone Finshing

I FaceBooked my wee hours of the morning, breakfast-making drama–shudder. Then after I watched my son’s 8:30 a.m. tennis match, we proceeded to cram so much into the schedule by early afternoon, the best I could do after that was FaceBook the awesome shoes I wore for the rest of the day, even doing dinner dinner dishes, to give me a little (well, big) boost.

shoes

Dinner, BTW, comprised of sliced fresh pears and AMAZING fresh white cheddar for my husband and me, and pizza for the teenager. That should tell anyone who knows how much I love to cook how exhausted we are around here. So, I’ll be doing my version of goin’ fishing for the rest of the evening–taking in a home movie (most likely Salt) and a glass of wine with my husband/best friend.

‘Til then, hang with your buds and wear amazing shoes yourself ;o)

Live it up for me!

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Posted in Shoes are My Heroin, What About Everything Else? | 3 Comments »

Waterfall Challenge: My Dick’s Creek Adventure

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Sometimes life, and water, is about the journey. How many times have I said that? Well, I’m saying it again. Dicks’ Creek (Boyd, 110) seemed like an interesting idea for a waterfall destination. It didn’t really sound like a falls at all. Turned out, it was an ADVENTURE instead. It was an amazing revelation you have to see for yourself one day.

Hiking the half-mile wild, meandering, non-existent trail in to the water and then out again, I had lots of time to wonder why there wasn’t a picture of the falls in Boyd’s book. Was I being toyed with? Was there really nothing to see, despite the EXCELLENT rating in the description?

Didn’t really matter, because the FOUR MILES of dirt, back-country, mountain roads I drove in my Nissan sedan just to get to the parking spot had been fun enough already to make the trip worthwhile.

It was beautiful country. Fields and undisturbed farmland.

cows and high country farms

 VERY interesting mailboxes and property markers.

Address Marker for the mail truck

Yes–that is a rusted out truck between two lamp posts on the side of a dirt road, with the homestead’s street number  painted on the front so the mailman (and few other’s I’m assuming that venture this far in from the main road) can find the place. (more…)

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Posted in Waterfall Challenge | 3 Comments »

Publishing Isn’t For Sissies: Don’t Let Change Kick Your Ass

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

In today’s volatile publishing market, an author has to listen, make difficult choices quickly, and take risks with conviction–or change will run right over you.  In this series, I’ve talked a little so far about the changes in Dorchester Publishing’s direction and my author’s perspective of what’s happening–while I listened and pep-talked myself into make my own difficult choices. This post is the beginning of sharing the risks I and my agent have taken as a result , and the crazy ride we’re on now, leading to the May digital and trade release of Secret Legacy.

chaos-theory

I’ve said enough already about the spammers and naggers and nay-sayers who aren’t personally involved in the crisis Dorchester and its authors have faced since last fall–this paragraph will be may last say. I feel tremendous empathy for all the writers who’ve been caught up in the crush of this change and have been, like me, trying to keep the air supply going to their own Dorchester careers, both past and present, or at least trying to get out of the chaos with something more than a sense of failure.  I have, however, no respect for the industry “experts” and social media taunters who took public potshots at Dorchester’s management for supposedly robbing it’s authors blind and betraying its readers for years. That’s simply not what happened, and anyone who bothered to listen, really listen, could have seen that. Every author involved in Dorchester’s shift from mass market publishing to its direct-to-digital/trade format was entitled to the anger and shock and frustration they felt and expressed in those first few weeks. The rest of the rabble had no business giggling and jeering from the sidelines and passing judgement and stirring up panic that only made the authors’ circumstances more difficult to face. Shame on you. Okay, I’m done.

From now on, for me and everyone who follows Publishing Isn’t for Sissies, this blog space will be about–

  • Listening to what’s happening, what intelligent people are saying about it, and what’s being predicted
  • Making difficult, time-critical choices none of us wants to have to make, but them’s the breaks in the show, and
  • Taking risks with conviction, because what else are you going to do but pack it in and go home?

Let’s start again at the beginning, with the simplest moment of all in this journey. Simple and wicked fast and devastating: (more…)

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Posted in Publishing Isn't for Sissies | 7 Comments »

How We Write Wednesdays: Layering Motivation Into Plot

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Last week, we had a great discussion about motivation. How it takes more than basic plotting to get your protagonist believably through his or her scenes. She can’t  just be doing things. The reader must identify with why she’s doing what she’s doing. Her motives. Her goals. What’s stopping her from getting where she needs to go. Make that come alive on the page, and you’ve got yourself a plot, a story, that a reader won’t be able to stop reading.

But how do you develop motivation on such a deep level? Since it’s Wednesday, Jenni’s taking the reins of this How We Write tangent over on her blog. I’m sure she’ll be nice. I mean, maybe there will be a bit of snark and revenge in her post, after I used one of her manuscripts as my example last week. But I’m a big girl. I can take it ;o)

Plotting-Revenge-Is-Fun

Seriously, she’s talking more about the brainstorming we did together while she was reworking her work-in-progress, and you don’t want to miss it.  Today, you’ll hear what happened AFTER we broke through and she started discovering why her protagonist was doing all the dark, driven things she was on the page. (more…)

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Posted in How We Write | 2 Comments »

I can’t help it. It’s Kinetic…

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

I shut down the electronics in my home last Thursday, while trying to finish some online tasks before travelling. I was laughing about it to a friend, when her blank stare registered. Hadn’t she heard about me? The jokes that over time stop seeming like jokes? Oh dear. Electronics don’t get along with me when I’m stressed, I explained. I can’t help it. I has something to do with kinetic energy or something, and … My friend, also a writer, blinked slowly. Then smiled. Cool! she said, then pumped me for more information about the strangeness that is me and how I’m thinking of spinning it into storytelling.

I’ve been fascinated by the kinetic energy around me (the energy of movement),long before I knew what it was or that it seemed to seethe in and out of my life in somewhat predictable patterns. The kinetic energy of an object, I explained, is the energy the object produces while its in motion.

kenetic cougar

But what happens if the energy rush comes before the movement? What happens if things around you start going haywire, but nothing’s really moving? Until you walk by it, or turn on the computer, or try to connect to the high speed Internet the way I was when I WAS TRYING TO GET OUT THE DOOR LAST THURSDAY!!!

Eh-hem. (more…)

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Posted in The Psychic Realm, Thrills and Chills | 3 Comments »

Things My Teenager Says: Don’t start with me…

Monday, January 24th, 2011

Who knew this was what motherhood was really about?

motherhood

We’re at the gym, working out. Only he’s more watching whatever he’s found on the TV’s attached to the cardio equipment than he is actually feeling the burn. I get his attention without being so obvious I’ll embarrass him and remind him with hand signals rather than words that we had an agreement about still getting exercise every day, now that it’s too icey and cold to snag a workout on the clay tennis courts he prefers.

His response this time–a silent look that could mean anything. But I know what he’s saying. Because I’ve given him the same sideways glare when he’s pushing too many buttons at once and I’m warning him to back off.

We’re at the store, and I’m asking what he wants for dinner because too often lately he’s complaining we never ask.It’s an independence thing, though he never complains and eats everything in site regardless, and I want to encourage the drive to make his own choices. He only grunts now, though, because he’s doing his homework in the back seat of the car so the flood of take home commitments doesn’t rule those few hours after dinner.

I ask again, and there’s that look over the top of his laptop screen. “Don’t start with me…” he’s saying without saying it.

It might seem disrespectful to some. But like I said. I understand his recent grasp of expressing himself, even when he’s frustrated, in proactive rather than reactive ways. (more…)

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Posted in Things My Teenager Says | 3 Comments »

Surround Yourself With Inspiration…

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

I’m back from the Low Country RWA group and visiting my fab. writer friend Nina Bruhns, and listening to Mark Mynheir talk writing craft (character, plot, pacing…). I was in a groove before I left. Writing up a storm. Was it a mistake to break away for my little excursion when I knew I’d lose days driving down and back, so I could with folks that inspire me in between? In this time of massive change and insecurity in publishing? Not on your life.

mark

That’s Mark, challenging us to dig deeper into our stories and find the very best of our characters and plots and themes to show the reader. Not because you’ll be able to sell a better book, because no one can promise you that. Not because even if you contract the book with a publisher, you can be sure anymore the book will come to print any time soon (read back through my Publishing Isn’t For Sissies posts, if you need a little refresher of just one experience with the volatility of the last year in publishing).

But because as writers, we’re promising our readers, whoever they end up being, even if we have to some day publish our stories ourselves or post them on our blogs or write them sentence by sentence up on Twitter, the very best story we can give them.

That’s why we write. That’s the kind of inspiration we need to from time-to-time break away from our frantic pursuit of The End to revel in. Mark and the LCRWA and Nina gave me that break this weekend. And now that I’m able to travel again, I’ll be seeking out even more writers this year (to teach and to learn with). Because that’s how we remember what’s most important in what we do. The communication. The dream. The experience that our words become for someone else, and how that fills us up creatively.

You know me. The business is important, and I focus on it a lot.

But the writing… Never forget the writing. And never forget to surround yourself with people and places and things that drive your creativity to greater heigts. As often as you possibly can. Make it part of Revising Your Year like I have. Then be thankful like I am for everyone who’s helping you on your way.

Thanks my friends, for all you do to inspire me every day!

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Posted in Anna's "Soul of the Matter", Publishing Isn't for Sissies | 3 Comments »

Shoes Are My Heroin: Name That Designer!

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

More booties to drool over. Manolo Blahnik, Valentino, and Stuart Weitzman. But everyone’s being shy today, even though some of their names are so flamboyant you’d think they’d be flaunting their designer lables in neon. So this post will be a riddle–you tell me which designer goes with which shoe. The winner receives a book of their choice from my backlist!

I’ll give you the names of the shoes themselves and as much description as I can without giving anything away, then you’re on your own. Leave your guess in the comments. I’ll pick a winner after a few days and I’m sure everyone who wants to play has had their chance. I’ll choose randomly from those who link each shoe with the right designer. Good luck!

These are for day, and maybe not technically booties. They work for night, too, with the right skirt. But mostly I like to wear them with colored or black opaque tights and fun jeans when I’m meeting girlfriends for lunch. Don’t think they’re comfortable enough for day walking? Everyone’s a critic. The name will slay you: Ghillie ;o) The box describes them as mink pearl kid leather platforms…who’s their daddy?

cutout laces (more…)

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Posted in Shoes are My Heroin | 3 Comments »

Friendship, Fries and Creativity…

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Taking time away from the every day. That’s the top Revising a Year  life lesson I’m holding myself accountable for this year. That and journaling each morning (which is why you’re hearing so much from me all of a sudden, in case you were wondering). Both commitments are my choice and supported by those who love me. Not just because last year was a trying journey for all of us. But because it taught me how much my friendships and creativity and freedom mean to me. That can happen when those incidental things are off limits for too long.

friendship_fries

Well, ok. Friendship, FRIES and creativity are my focus this year. I make these three things a part of my life as often as possible now, in addition to focusing on family and writing and teaching and business. Call them splurges, but I call them necessary. Treating yourself sometimes is necessary.

It’s important, I’ve realized, to feel inspired. And that doesn’t always happen just because you’re working hard and fitting everything you can into every minute of every day. Some days you need need to make a point to break free, drive with the top down, dance with your best friends, dream, and, yes, eat greasy fried potatoes. Especially the potatoes. (more…)

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Posted in Anna's "Soul of the Matter" | 9 Comments »

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