Lora Rivera

Beyond On Love

2012-01-23T00:10:00.001-07:00

Spoiler alert:

I just finished watching the final season of Angel.

Like two seconds ago.

Probably shouldn't be blogging now.

"Drink alcohol,"

they told me.

"It helps."

I won't offer analysis.

not on the ending,

or on plots that get out of control,

not on Big Bads that are really minions for even Bigger Bads --

and how annoying this is for an invested audience/reader --

not on the killing off of characters

or comic relief,

or on good and evil,

on free will,

fighting the good fight,

on champions and heroes, love and hope,

or whether, indeed,

there is "nothing in this world but grief."

It had to end this way, didn't it?

I will say, there's something about love. Beyond romance (or bromance), beyond friendship or kinship or duty . . . That's what I'm left thinking about, as I watch them each die in my mind's eye, finishing off the story. How much they loved each other.

Such a sap, I know. Hope I'm not the only one. . . .

But oh how I want this. This kind of love in life. And if not in life, in art. Maybe it's a Joss Whedon thing. I think Firefly might do it too. Buffy sure does. Makes hell worth living in, worth loving in. And those stakes skyrocket, don't they? Makes the fight worth the dying.

It's why I read. Why I watch shows like this.

And you?

Real characters harbor real dreams... and real fears

2012-01-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I read an article in the Times, "A Poverty Solution That Starts With a Hug" by ope-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. The gist is that while many factors contribute to poverty and delinquency in youth, a perhaps overlooked factor is "toxic stress" that can harm a child even before birth.

"It's not the natural stresses of childhood that pose a problem. Every baby or small child will be hungry or frightened at some moment. [Toxic stress is] the lack of a comforting, stable, protective, adult presence to help a child recover [from these normal stresses] that changes things." -- NYT parenting blog

Photo courtesy of Giglig

Toxic stress can have lasting debilitating effects, preventing the development of healthy coping mechanisms and contributing to behavioral, intellectual, and health problems.

“You can modify behavior later, but you can’t rewire disrupted brain circuits” -- Jack P. Shonkoff, a Harvard pediatrician (link)

Eliminating toxic stress also seems to be a key step toward breaking child abuse cycles.

As a Life Book Writer, working with nonprofit children's services and CPS, I'm always interested in searching out root problems and finding solutions to them.

As a fiction writer, these articles made me think about a post written by kidlit author Pat Esden. She asks the implicit question What is your main character's greatest fear? I've been struggling to get a good hold on my book's MC, and this question really hit home. I decided I'd ask Emily, but that aside...

What a person fears is at the root of a person's hopes and dreams. If I dream about making a difference in the world, going out with a bang, or whatnot, it's because I fear being irrelevant, overlooked, useless.

Thinking about fears, I read Small Voices, Big Dreams' second annual survey, which polls 100 children (ages 10-12) in 36 nations developing nations and 6 developed nations using 6 open-ended questions:

What would you do as president [leader] to improve children’s lives?
If you could grow up to be anything you wanted, what would you be?
If you could spend the day doing anything you wanted, what would you do?
Where do you feel safest?
When you think about staying safe and healthy every day, what is the one thing you worry about most?
If you were the president [leader] of your country, what is the one thing you would do to protect children?

Among other things, the results show that

“Children in the poorest countries are placing their hopes and dreams on their ability to learn, and they want to use their education to improve their communities.” --Anne Lynam Goddard, president and CEO of ChildFund International (link)

When I grow up ....

In developing countries, most children want to be teachers or doctors.

In developed countries, most children want to be artists or professional athletes.

Our hopes and dreams point back to our fears, I believe, at every age.

Our environments dictate these fears, too. And if our earliest environments are saturated with toxic stress? --An odd idea, being suffocated by a lack of something. But isn't that what hunger is? What poverty, fear, disease, war are? ... Lack of food, lack of security, lack of health, lack of peace.... If even before birth, we're missing stability and the sense of safety that equips us to deal with natural stressors, how much more susceptible will we be to the effects of these stressors?

~~~

As a human being, I hope these articles help raise awareness about the need for solutions.

As writers presenting reality as it is or could be, what are some of the things your characters have feared most or wished for hardest?

Always,
Lora

Being Versatile

2012-01-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday!

Which means I should be running errands, not blogging, which I'm supposed to do on Sunday.

But hey! You know how life is. Sometimes you're at home, writing, reading, editing, the works. And sometimes, you're dancing around LA without your hammer.

... Er... Without your hammer...

So that's where I was Sunday--over at Anime LA, performing as Amy Rose again for Random Encounters. The panel went really well. Fun Stuff.

Which might (or might not) be the reason I received the Versatile Blogger Award from YA author and animal trainer LisaAnn Chickos over at Kicked, Cornered, Bitten and Chased. Thanks, Lisa! If you love animals and writing, definitely check out her blog. Always interesting and extremely well researched.

Now, the rules of the Versatile Blogger Award:

In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.
In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.
In the same post, include this set of rules.
Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

~~ 7 random pieces of information ~~

My brother is having himself cryogenically frozen. Only costs about $25K.
My great-grandfather was for serious like a really bad Nazi. Like a really bad one.
My grandfather was a microbiologist who spent his life's research on energy production via the excretions of trash-eating microbes. Yuck.
I have elevated antibodies to crab. Basically, if I eat the pincered folk and then do something that circulates blood faster -- e.g. exercise, drink alcohol, stress myself out -- I break out in severe hives.
The first novel I wrote was 250K words long. At age 18, I printed that bad boy out, packaged it up, and sent it over the transom to Tor. #fail
I love airports
and toe socks.

~~Nominees~~

Most of my fellow bloggers have already received this award,

but I'll go ahead and nominate a few:

@CNHolmberg at her blog, Myself as Written: Charlie's posts are always thoughtful and interesting. I personally love her Link Blitz series. It's fantastic when somebody else does the sniffing around for great tidbits on writing and other fun stuff.
@KristaVanDolzer at her blog Mother. Write. (Repeat.): Krista offers a constant a schmorgesborg of writerly goodies. She is, at present, having a baby, so she's taking a short break for child #3. But expect great things from her. Her Agent Interviews and Agent's Inbox series have been wildly popular.
@Unikornaa at her blog Why I Wake Up Every Day: This isn't a writing blog, but I've found her sometimes racy, always thought-provoking, often heartbreaking stories fodder for my writing. She's graceful and kindhearted, and has become a great blogging friend. Right now, she's going through a tough time, so send your thoughts her way. She's also getting married!

Enjoy!

Are you making New Year's Writing Resolutions?

2012-01-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

Want a little help keeping them?

Join us!

Check in with a motivating team of fellow writers:

Leave your writing goal in the comments here. Then, tweet with the #wipmadness hashtag whenever you need a community. It's a great place for finding friends (and betas!).

I almost forgot to check in this first Monday of 2012. #Yikes #Omens #LetsHopeNot

Brainstorming Techniques,continued...

2011-12-28T17:57:00.000-07:00

Img credit: Magic the Gathering

I intended this post to be an illustration of several (successful) techniques for brainstorming about novels.

I only really had time for two techniques, individual brainstorming, an offshoot of free writing, and the team idea mapping method.

These two techniques were successful in that they produced ideas. But they didn't necessarily give me all the answers to my questions directly.

Okay, so you'll need a magic writing totem:

Aww. Okay, next:

You'll need a pen or pencil, paper, a timer, and a few extra brains....

The steps:
-- If you know exactly what you want to brainstorm about, skip to #5.

Think of a question you'd like to know the answer to. (Individual Brainstorming) In my case, I was at a complete loss even to know what I wanted to brainstorm about. I had a story notion, but no story or even real characters, no structure, no POV or setting or theme. My first question was: "What things might I want to brainstorm about (regarding this story notion)?"
Set a timer for three minutes.
Write down everything that comes to mind as fast as you can. If your page is blank, write, My page is blank. Pictures, diagrams, hearts and emoticons--all this and more.
Circle one of those new questions. Mine was about POV: "What are the pros and cons of keeping my POV character the same throughout installments?" I had already decided that the story should unfold in "episodes," though I didn't know if that meant chapters, short stories, novellas, or novels.
Sit down with at least two other people. Begin the team idea mapping method.
Title blank pieces of paper with your new question.
Set timer for three minutes.
Write down everything that comes to mind as fast as possible (see #3). Try to have everyone stay focused on the question, but straying is fine.
Discuss.
Pick a new question and repeat.

Eventually, you'll produce this...

At this point, you'll hopefully have wrangled up tons of ideas. Each iteration will spring from the last, like mental pathways branching and fracturing.

It's a good idea, when there's a question with two obvious parts, to brainstorm each part. For example, Part 1: pros and cons of single POV; part 2: pros and cons of multiple POVs.

Otherwise, you might spin off wildly on one mental path without ever questioning whether that was the best path to be on in the first place. Also, keeping discussion to a minimum will help prevent evaluation apprehension, or rather, brainstormers feeling unable to produce new ideas that might be shot down by the group.

Again, with brainstorming, success isn't always about finding the "right" answer, but generating lots of possible answers via different minds.

As writers, we're forever stuck in one mind--our own. Brainstorming in groups wherein participants write down all ideas anonymously, good and bad, before discussion is proven by research to foster more creativity.

Last, it's also proven that providing incentives ($, cookies, kitties!) gives better results.

~~Anyone else have any tried-and-true brainstorming tips?

Untested techniques?

Arguments for or against?~~

In the meantime, happy brainstorming!

--Lora

Brainstorming Techniques!

2011-12-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

... Coming Soon.

Testing still in progress.

Meanwhile, hugs & kisses & loves & wishes!

Img credit: Magic! (the Gathering)

O Christmas-book Tree!

2011-12-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

~~~

Amber Plante tweeted this glorious idea a few days ago.

Couldn't wait to try it out.

I'm in love.

From Amber's stream:

Isn't this she so amazingly creative??

Mine's a little shorter and squatter, true....

But it has a bow! How serious is that.

On Narcissism: The Close Third

2011-12-11T10:13:00.001-07:00

Ever received beta feedback like this?

"But what is your MC feeling??? Where is the EMOTION????"

Img courtesy of Christina Rowsell Blog

Sometimes, especially with active scenes in genre fiction, we get so caught up in story that we forget the story is coming from somewhere.

In the close 3rd POV, the story is coming directly from our main character. Who probably is (since God help us, aren't we all) a tad narcissistic.

Everything in our MC's world filters through her eyes.

That's where emotion comes from. Beyond direct or indirect thought, we have a pair of eyeballs, a set of five senses, a goal, a milieu of wants and desires and fears and agendas. This ripe interior architecture can provide the fodder for steeping a story's very narration in emotion.

Consider Anna. She's proceeding down a low-lit tunnel carrying a stuffed manila folder. In Scene 1, Anna's going for a job interview she really wants. In Scene 2, Anna's escaping a villain after stealing incriminating evidence.

Scene 1:

Anna strode through the tunnel, mindful not to hurry too much, break a sweat, and ruin her pristine button-down. She blanched at her reflection in a silvery pool of water on the tunnel floor, illuminated by one of the few overhead lights. God, her hair. She nestled the folder in the curve of her arm, reached up to smooth the stray lock, and moved on.

Scene 2:

Anna slipped along the narrow tunnel, clutching the folder to her sweat-slick shirt. She choked on a gasp as movement fractured the darkness ahead. Under the glare one of those treacherous sparsely-spaced lights, she panted her relief. Only another pipe leaking. The movement had been her own reflection in a puddle of water. She crushed the folder in the crook of her arm and hurried on.

"Screaming Tunnel" by SweetlySick

This isn't a case of muscular prose versus tepid prose. In the first scene, even the cliched "break a sweat" is intentionally mundane but excited. Job-hunting Anna sees everything in her world differently than in the second scene, and the narrative reflects that.

Moreover, characters notice different things in different mind states. If we'd tried a third scene in which Anna's walking home carrying a folder stuffed full of wedding prep info in a delirious ecstasy because her wedding is tomorrow, I bet you she wouldn't notice the low light or even the puddle/pool of water.

Sometimes, when a reader wants more emotion, it might be a good idea to step back and reenter the story through the eyes of the MC. What is she actually seeing? And how does she see it?

How can a narrative's very word choice -- not just verbs and adverbs, either -- reflect interior landscape?

Happy writing!
Lora

A Synopsis Checklist

2011-12-04T10:14:00.001-07:00

Graphic from College Hills

My #wipmadness goal this month is to write one of these devilish synopses. Before diving in, I did some fervent Googling and unearthed a wealth of helpful posts, from which I'll be lifting. Now to lay out my findings.

This is a checklist, not a how-to. Writers should follow-up by reading the cited articles. The two in blue are required reading, IMO. For simplicity, I'm using authors' initials. See References for details.

Last caveat: The following relates specifically to the agent-querying package.

A Synopsis Checklist

Format. 3-5 pages max; double-spaced; 1-inch margins; name, title, contact info on first page; last name, shortened title and page numbers on following pages, just like the MS. (JR)
Tense and POV. 3rd person present. As with queries, some synopses have successfully broken this rule, but in general, it's wise to play it safe. (MG)
Purpose. Your synopsis should show... (JF)

"That the author hasn't gone off in some weird direction that doesn't make sense or suit the targeted genre."
"What makes your story different by how the plot progresses." i.e. Show key selling points.

M.O. Modus Operandi. This nasty bastard should...

Distill plot and conflict to major points, turning points, and characters readers care about. (JR)
Avoid character soup. (ST)
Convey a sense of building doom and escalating trouble. (JH)
Keep tension alive. Use paragraph breaks as cliffhangers. (ST)
Mimic book jacket copy. (NB)
Entice. Read aloud, graf by graf, to a friend. Ask where it bores. (MG)
Be readable. Easy to scan? Lots of white space, no long blocks of text? (CG)

Style.

Simplicity. Plot level to sentence level, keep it easy to digest. (ST)
Infuse the synopsis with your book's spirit and tone. Steal phrases indigenous to your story world. (See article by ST)

Final remarks:

On the one hand, relax. Most writers hate the synopsis, and most agents and editors do too. They'll be forgiving. On the other hand, this is a chance to show that your logic, character development, and world building is impeccable. Enjoy the chance to preen a little under the scrutiny and spotlight.

Good luck!
--Lora

References:

General How-To by Nathan Bransford (NB)
Purpose of the Synopsis by Jessica Faust (JF) of Bookends, LLC
General How-To by Marg Gilks (MG), author and freelance editor
Tips On the Synopsis by Candy Gourlay (CG), award-winning author
PLEASE READ: A Thorough How-To by Janice Hardy (JH) repped by Kristen Nelson
Length and Format byJanet Reid (JR)
PLEASE READ: On Polishing the Synopsis by Suzie Townsend of Nancy Coffey Literary (ST)
Further reading: A synopsis compendium by Gabrielle Luthy.

Editing? Read Poetry. Also, Wipmadness Week 5

2011-11-28T03:34:00.000-07:00

My crit group meets every Wednesday night at a midtown coffee bar. We smuggle in a bottle of red and pour covertly at our table in a back alcove. I highly recommend this form of ego lube, by the way, for those rough moments during constructive criticism.

Img via Desert Living Today

Leigh, poor thing, is massively pregnant, and the baby bump pulled a ligament in her side. So Karin and I sat down to discuss Leigh's story, sans Leigh.

Comparing our chicken scratch, it became hilariously evident that one of us had been seduced. It had to be the reason why Leigh's pages were, on my end, covered top to bottom in annotations, and on Karin's smothered in hearts and this is so effing good.

It was effing good. I'd wrestled with myself the previous night, staring at my handiwork. Are you trying to make her writing like yours, Lora? Be honest. Come on. Are you doing what's best for her?

The answer, it turned out, was yes. We began unfolding pages, word-by-word, and I realized why mine looked like they'd been hijacked by a cartload of pencil-canoodling critbots.

I'd been reading and line-editing poetry for the previous two hours before sitting down to crit group work. It's like meditation for writers, guys, this fine-tuning of one's senses for the critical consumption of the written word.

I was buzzing with hyper-sensitivity by the time I turned to Leigh's story, and no amount of her characteristic sizzling energy could kill my high. I was on fire, y'all. I wanted to bottle up this brain state and market it to practicing writers.

The best I can do is say: Are you editing? Read poetry.

***

So, yes, Wipmadness lovelies, I'm editing. Still. But I'll have Round 2 of the WIP complete by the 1st. Nearly query-ready. Thank you so, so much, beta readers. You know who you are =D

Any mischief managed lately? Where have your WIP and NaNo journeys taken you? Feel free to leave links to any brilliant writerly insights you blogged about this week.

And most important: Who is hosting for December?
UPDATE: Lori Parker is hosting. She'll be welcoming the Wipmadness team on Thursday on her blog.

The Thing and the Other Thing. Also, Wipmadness Check-in Week 4

2011-11-21T03:30:00.000-07:00

My MFA workshop professor stands in front of the classroom drawing little squiggles and lines on the whiteboard.

"In every story," he begins and shadows in this nest-looking object with blue marker, "there's the thing." He circles the nest earnestly. "...And the other thing." He draws a second nest in red, circles it too, then adds two stick figures clawing at each other.

Not kidding

He goes on to illustrate conflict and plot with mumbling inchoate interjections, each followed by a connection of some nest or figure with a dotted or solid line.

Needless to say, I'm bemused and amused by his efforts at sharing this esoteric mechanic for deepening stories. For about four years. And now to attempt an interpretation of the above ramblings.

Let's call this "The Missing Other Thing."

Anecdote 1: I quit NaNoWriMo.

My writing group commissioned a book pulled from a place in my life I haven't grown or learned or matured or simply lived enough to write about yet. As I wrote (complete sh**), I found the stories interesting, plot-wise, but lacking any measure of compelling complexity. My NaNo project was lacking the other thing.

Me and my Bestie

Anecdote 2: Scoring dinner and Irish Goodbyes.

My bestie and I traveled last week through LA, Napa, and San Franscico. She's single, I'm not. She was paying for food, I had hotels. She had a plan: Not paying for dinner or cocktails, not once, and finding some schlep or five to buy for us.

Fun, but left me with an exhaustion migraine and severe ew when I missed my op for the Irish goodbye and got a real Irish goodbye instead (tongue included, which, it turns out, is sexual assault when he grabs your hair the way you'd grab a shirt collar; who knew...). Anyway, point is this scene is full of conversation and innuendo, but as we all know, it makes for boring stories. Why? No other thing.

Anecdote 3: Last anecdote (I promise!!).

I had a text message conversation with a reasonably good friend. The dialogue was full of the general things reasonably good friends might say to one another, but underneath there was this unspoken thing neither of us wanted to dredge up. The other thing.

So, it's easy, right? There's the thing that drives the story, the glamorous trope, the plot or conflict-driven mechanism that makes a story swell, trough, crest and low-tide. Then there's the other thing that makes the story matter. It's what the whole story's about without actually being about it. And I'm not talking theme, here, or subplot. I mean, there's a goal underneath, there's a subtext, and when that subtext resolves (usually coinciding with the plot resolution but not always), the story is over because there's no more subtext, there's no more matter, there's no more other thing.

I believe this other thing is the difference between a story that lingers in your bloodstream a few days or longer and one that barely gives you a buzz.

***

Oy, Wipmadness friends!

I did join you this weekend after the hangovers and exhaustion migraines. I resumed editing the WIP and am still set for finishing by the end of November. Steady, if slow, progress. My food diary went out the window. I believe there were cookies at some point. And wine. And clam chowder. And Ghirardelli sundaes...

Please pipe up if you have any insight into this thing and other thing business. And tell us how the WIPs are working. How are your goals? Those of you braving NaNo, are you beating yourselves silly? It's been kind of quiet on the hash tag front lately...

Wipmadness! (Napa Adventures) Week 3

2011-11-14T01:17:00.001-07:00

The stranger I met in Napa tonight had a fondness for orangutans.

At this moment, my best friend's passed out beside me. The smell of baking cookies pirouettes through the bedroom like an infinite troupe of aromatic helium balloons, bounding, frolicking. Chocolate. Oatmeal. Caramel. A bottle of a sparkling wine's still bubbling on the night stand.

The stranger who paid our entire bill tonight claimed to be writing an article for some swanky New York mag, comparing wine to women -- or women to wine. Was I research? I didn't mind being paid for, but if I was research. . . . I'm a writer, right? I know how these things can go.

Apparently in his youth, the man learned from his uncle's raising of orangutans, giraffes, peacocks; learned to appreciate his wild side, to honor rather than fear the passionate, rarefied touch of the great grape god.

How this week is all connected is rather swimmy. No writing. There were my first four chapters edited. New encouragements unleashed. New books read. New lives lived. Roads not and gladly taken. The week has spun through a haze, with Dionysus swooping in at every angle, gloating without malice, a small, plump god with florid cheeks puffing away as if sobriety itself were an indignation.

Needless to say, the WIP is suffering a bit. It needs another good round of edits and I haven't quite got there. But next week will be better. I still hope to have WIP edits done by the end of NOV.

And you? Any related, tangential, perpendicular, orthogonal stories!? Tell, tell :) How are your writing goals coming . . . or not coming, as in my case?

Wipmadness Check-in Week 2: Almost There

2011-11-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

First order of business: Wipmadness Team Pride!

Crafted by our very own, L.S. Taylor, this blog badge captures the spirit of our endeavor. Feel free to jump over to her blog to copy/paste the image url, or simply grab it below!

A little preamble:

Whenever my husband and I take a car trip, I read to him. This saves on otherwise expensive audio books, keeps us both amused, and allows me to indulge in a little practice for when I'm published and have to read aloud. ;)

Especially when the book drags -- for instance, when it's LoTR and our hobbits are meandering in a forest -- I always finish up a section with an optimistic, "We're almost there, hon!" Of course, the effect is somewhat diminished by his glancing over to find we've barely bitten off the first hundred pages and have five or six hundred to go.

Anyway, #wipmadness peeps, all this to say, we're almost there! No matter what your goals were last week, you are seven days closer to being out of the forest--er, to achieving those goals.

My goals were:

Write 2,200 words a day for NaNoWriMo. Some days were a struggle, but I managed to make the count each day this week.
Stretch my poor, pathetic, immobile ankles. I missed one morning (Wednesday), but otherwise success!
Log my food intake. I only missed one night out with the gals.

This week, Goals 2 & 3 are the same, but I'm changing Goal 1 because, in a nutshell, I've decided to avoid the Sunk Cost Fallacy (see also Sunk Cost Dilemma). More on this later.

So, Goal 3 for this month is to finish another round of edits on McCorduck 7, my MG WIP.

***

How did you do this week? Need to add/subtract, augment, slash, forever destroy anything? Let us know so we can cheer you on!

Warm Wipmadness Welcome and Week 1 Check-in

2011-11-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

Hello Wipmadness folks!

I'm honored to host Wipmadness this crazy month of November, picking up the torch from L.S. Taylor, last month's lovely host. I joined this network of writers through Angelina's blog back in August and learned that the team has been pounding out words together since its inception in March 2011, spearheaded by Denise Jaden.

As Jaye Robin Brown put it, "This is a tool for networking, encouragement, and accountability." Through this supportive team, I've finished a manuscript and found beta readers. Others have done as much and more, evening polishing their manuscripts and snagging agents.

This month, some of us will be frenetically hammering out new stories or finishing up old ones through NaNoWriMo. I'll be among you. Others will continue piecing together worlds at a more natural pace, researching, revising, creating and beta-ing.

This week, let's lay out our goals and keep each other accountable. Don't forget to use the #wipmadness hashtag when encouraging, ranting, and celebrating on Twitter!

My goals for November:

2,200 words a day. Ack! I'm shooting to achieve the NaNoWriMo goal of completing 50K words through the month of November. Week 3-ish, I'll be travelling to LA, Napa, and SF with a friend, so the 2K goal is to try to make for anticipated lost words that week.
Physical Therapy stretches. I'm on a strict stretching schedule to get back 2-3 inches of mobility in each of my ankles and about 15 degrees in my hips. Who knew that wearing high heels all your life could cripple you? My goal: Stay on schedule with my twice-a-day stretch regimen.
Log food intake on MyFoodDiary.com, even while on vacation and stay in the green zone.

What are your goals this month? And don't be afraid to shift them week-by-week. We're all here to help each other succeed.

Oh, and by the way, what do you all think about creating a blog badge for Wipmadness participants? Is anyone graphically inclined? I sort of love web badges and think it'd be fun!

Hugs,
Lora

A Good Place to be Lost

2011-10-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

This Life Book excerpt is fully redacted for privacy. The story is set in the U.S., before the four children moved to Mexico and began their eleven years of transience, on the run from Something Bad.

Watercolor #947 by David Peterson

A Good Place to be Lost

Nyanya took you to the fair. You loved the stuffed animals, especially the teddy bears and horses. After exhausting yourselves with games, you all took a pony ride. You got stuck with the pooping pony. Your sister was right behind it, and she laughed whenever it swished its tail out of the way to lay a big one. After dinner, your mom explained that the family was going back to Mexico. “It’s a good place to be lost,” she said.

You took a bus down to the border, stopping and changing buses frequently, purposefully getting lost, randomly taking new routes to Sonora, Mexico. The first few nights, you stayed in hotels. Your sister said it all seemed exciting at the time. She said no one realized the kind of change that was coming.

Why did you move? Your mother had seen someone. Always, whenever your family moved, from barrio to barrio, city to city, country to country, it was because Nyanya had seen someone who might have ended up hurting the children she loved.

It might be hard to think about it. The time that came next will probably remain guarded in your memory banks forever, in some hidden, encrypted drive.

Sometimes, you might look around your classroom at all the faces. These kids have their own hardships, of course, but they can’t possibly know what your past like. How it was to be constantly on the move. To not have a roof over your head when you’re travelling. To sleep in sketchy hotels, or even out under the stars. To not have enough food and to pray to God to supply your next meal. To settle down and make friends with your neighbors only to get uprooted again because your mother was afraid of Something Bad.

Something Bad stalked your family the way darkness stalks light, always on your heels from town to town.

"Living in Fear" by Philip Wartena Photography

Who was that? They look familiar. What if they recognize us? What if they tell someone who tells someone else? Something Bad might happen if we go outside. Something Bad might happen if we talk to the wrong people. Something Bad might happen if we’re seen in the wrong store or in the wrong parking lot.

Nyanya had to stay on her toes. To eke out a living means to survive in the world through heavy labor, hard times, and the sweat of your brow. Nyanya spent her whole life and much of her children’s lives eking out a living.

You might have felt it sometimes, but you didn’t know all the details. And maybe that’s better. It’s enough to know that Mexico is a dangerous place. As dangerous as it is unique and beautiful.

But this is part of your history. It’s part of what makes you who you are today.

Here are some of the stories of your family’s life in Mexico. (See: An Average Day)

***

The Multiplicity Premise

2011-10-24T11:28:00.002-07:00

A few thoughts from my two current nonfiction #fridayreads.

This post is about the creation of story and the organic process that entangles character-driven action with plot.

First, let me share a quote from Jeremy Rifkin's book The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.

As every author knows, having a story line is just the beginning. It's then necessary to develop the narrative. A good narrative is an organic process that builds on itself and begins to take on a life of its own, often leading an author in directions he hadn't anticipated. (pg. 36)

Rifkin's quote is in reference to government pilot projects and "siloed" agendas that don't fall under the umbrella of a unified go-green-to-save-the-world narrative. Thus, they might be great projects, but there's no urgency to them, and no story for them to find place within.

Next, I want to present the multiplicity premise that forms the basis for Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard C. Schwartz.

It can make sense to think there exists, inside your brain, a society of different minds. Like members of a family, the different minds can work together to help each other [or to harm each other], each still having its own mental experiences that the others never know about. (pg. 16, Marvin Minsky)

Schwartz shows with this premise that Multiple Personality Disorder is simply an extreme polarization of these individual internal entities. We all have these individualized parts, he says, and they sometimes work together and they sometimes don't. That's why you might say, "Part of me loves him and another part of me wants to shove his face in the wall." Actually, this is exactly true!

Photo from Teen Tweens Blog

When we act on emotions, we put one or another of our internal entities in the lead. Often, when we make emotionally charged decisions, we act opposite what the majority of our not-so-extreme parts desire. We will be acting against our Self, our seat of consciousness, which "contains the compassion, perspective, confidence, and vision required to lead" (pg. 40) our disparate parts.

With these ideas in mind, let's turn to characters, the movers and shakers of our written worlds. A certain amount of verisimilitude pervades even our most fantastic worlds. Our art most closely mirrors reality in the way our characters act. If we accept the multiplicity premise, our characters (who are not usually the ideally balanced and harmonized minds a therapist hopes to help her clients become) will act out of emotion with polarized entities swapping the leading role. A Needy Child will sometimes take the reins, giving way to a perfectionist Great Protector, getting hijacked by a Fearless Rebel. A self-deprecating Bossy Schoolmarm does damage control, leaving the Needy Child to lick her wounds.

The narrative -- the organic process by which story skein spools and unravels -- is organic because it's chosen by the human minds involved, specifically those of the characters living within it. In this analogy, characters are dynamic, and authors sit as compassionate, all-perceiving, confident, visionary Self-Leaders, bringing the cacophonous sound of multiple minds finally into accord.

So, authors? How do you deal with characters acting with extreme parts in the lead? Does the plot suffer when art mirrors reality this way? Do we, as authors, need to reel our characters in?

***

Reviews and Interviews: Jeremy Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution
The Huffington Post (Excerpt)
The Huffington Post (Review)
The Diane Rehm Show (Interview)
Energy Bulletin (Audio Review)

Here's what life looked like on:An Average Day

2011-10-12T09:40:00.001-07:00

This is an excerpt, redacted, from a Life Book.

The lives of four children hiding from Something Bad in Mexico.

Photo by Ryan Sitzman

No breakfast.

No lunch.

Sometimes,

to stave off hunger,

you'd boil leaves from the lemon tree.

If you had sugar,

you'd use it to soften the bitterness

of brewed leaves.

On bad days, though,

you didn't have sugar.

Under the door -- a slit --

you weren't allowed to go outside:

Something Bad might happen.

A few generous gifts

sometimes

rolled through.

Grapefruits.

Lemons.

Scraps

from neighbors' leftovers.

You'd wait,

like normal,

for Nyanya to bring home dinner.

Sometimes,

she didn't arrive

until past midnight.

She worked at a restaurant,

would stay till close

to bring home leftovers.

The worst part

wasn't Hunger.

Hunger

you could deal with.

The painful stomach-gnawing

went away after a few hours,

especially if you woke

late

to make the day go faster.

And you did.

No.

The worst part

was watching the others

suffer.

That was harder than being

hungry

--seeing your family hungry and knowing you couldn't do anything about it.

Wait,

wait,

wait.

That was hard.

It was also hard

to drink bad water

from the hose when there wasn't enough

(never enough)

money

to refill one of the big jugs

you got from the store.

But when you're thirsty,

you drink,

even if it doesn't taste good.

Correction:

Even if it tastes terrible.

You'd clean it

by boiling it,

and it would still taste

foul.

Your sister said,

"I have to give it to Nyanya.

She would always bring us food.

At least one meal.

She was a strong woman,

and her children always came first."

The Takeaway: Making Readers Care

2011-10-10T11:31:00.002-07:00

I've been working on a query for the past three weeks, so boiling my book down to essentials readers will care about has been at the front of my mind.

For instance, how do you make people care about
these little purple things? Mitochondria img src.

Apparently, the steps to making people care about a project are universal. Here's the process my brain went through and what I discovered.

I'm passionate about science and the possibility that humans can, through science and other means, better themselves.
Lisa Iriarte tweeted about an annual conference dedicated to making interstellar starflight a reality in the next 100 years. She blogged about it here, and I was sad to learn that much of the conference was inaccessible to the average person. I'm that average person: someone interested enough to attend the conference and donate but not necessarily educated enough to, say, help build a starship.
Then I stumbled on The #SciFund Challenge. Awesome, I thought. Scientists are trying to fund vital world-saving research through crowdfunding, getting average people (me, me!) to care about what they're doing. They're trying to make science accessible.
Then I read this article by scientist and sci-fi writer Elissa Malcohn entitled "Science With Heart: Connecting with your crowdfunders through the language of emotion." And I realized the article could very well say "Books With Heart: Connecting with your readers through the language of of emotion." The steps are the same.

I urge you to go read the article. (Oh, and totally take a gander at the project while you're there. Very cool.)

And for nibbles, here's the the takeaway. In some key ways, these items should find a way into book, pitch, query, synopsis, and marketing plan (including blog/website/book trailer).

1. Sense of wonder: Something unspecified but extraordinary is possible. How can we inject a sense of wonder into our query? Touch the universal? Touch our inner child?

2. Sense of urgency; raised stakes: Researchers are on a quest in a race against time. Characters are also racing against time. Urgency is a must. What will happen if they fail? Stakes are essential.

3. Sense of mystery: Introduction to the species and why it is important. Mystery can be simply leaving a few early questions unanswered--urgency drives us to read on and find those answers.

4. Sense of adventure: Invitation to be part of the adventure. By laying out a character's goals and his/her limitations to those goals, a reader takes part in the adventure. We've all felt it--our own bodies viscerally willing a character to succeed. How can we set up these goals and limitations in a query, pitch, story arc?

5. Sense of belonging: A taste of the experience. Essential for marketing. What can we offer readers in return? Signed copies? A chance to take part in the next adventure? A recipe in the back of the book of some food eaten by your MC? Deleted scenes? Even if we're currently unagented and unpublished, we can be thinking along these lines.

How are you applying these or other ideas to make your book (pitch, query, trailer, etc.) accessible? What ways have you found make a reader care?

Staring blindly at the dark . . . & refusing to listen to the voices

2011-10-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

~ ~ ~

My hubby isn't a reader, and we hardly ever talk about my writing. He doesn't read my published short stories. We don't brainstorm together. I don't share hopes, desires, fears. He doesn't cheerlead or nay-say.

Img from Nankurunasia

He is supportive. He loves giving me time and space to write. But it makes me wonder. . . .

So I asked him straight-out: "Do you think I'll succeed? Do you hope so? Or are you afraid to say anything, the same way I'm afraid to say anything to you? Because talking about it might jinx it?"

He said, "I do want you to succeed. But there're so many writers out there -- good writers, too, I guess -- who try and try and just don't get anywhere. I don't want that to be you."

When your own dark voices suddenly manifest from the lips of someone you love, what do you do?

~ Decision Fatigue ~ Are your daily choices hurting your writing?

2011-09-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Death by 1000 Choices

A NYTimes article on decision fatigue reveals some interesting ramifications for writers. [Skip to "For Writers."]

What is decision fatigue?

The Times article begins with an anecdote: Three prisoners are appealing for parole. The first appears before the judge at 8:50 AM, the second at 3:10 PM, and the third at 4:25 PM.

Only the prisoner who appears first is granted parole.

Why? Basically, the judge's decision fatigue screwed the last two prisoners.

Decision fatigue is the effect of making decisions throughout the day, the depletion of your "finite store of mental energy for exerting self-control" [Times 2]. Willpower isn't a personality constant. Rather, it's in constant flux, and those who exert it early in the day will find it depleted for afternoon and evening tasks.

Decision fatigue usually leads to two responses:

Making reckless decisions (impulsiveness).
Doing nothing (procrastination).

Thus, the judge paroles the first prisoner while his decision-making reserve his high--in the morning--and declines the second two appeals in the afternoon--procrastinating, since they can appeal again. Other decisions from 8 o'clock on have depleted his reserve.

This reserve of willpower can be replenished:

Get enough sleep.
Eat breakfast and small snacks throughout the day: Studies show that an injection of glucose will re-energize the brain's capacity for good decision-making.
Save big decisions for the morning, when your capacity for good choices is up.
Conserve willpower by creating habits: A constant schedule--for getting up, work, eating, exercise, relaxation, and bedtime--will let you bypass small daily decisions, keeping your reserve high for extraneous or urgent decisions you might face. Like hiring someone, or buying a car, or cutting a plotline or character from your novel.

Ramifications of decision fatigue for writers.

Img from Word Wenches

There are three major parts of the writing process: research, drafting, and revision.

In research and drafting mode, the most important thing is getting the butt in chair. Motivation can be a major problem here. (Tips on motivation for writers.) But motivation can also be entwined with decision fatigue. Imagine you've been going about your day making great decisions, carefully resisting Twitter and Facebook, resisting temptations to snack or chat with coworkers or watch the news, etc.

Now, come evening, you must decide whether to put butt in chair. If your decision tank is low, you might 1. recklessly decide to write 10K words (drafting mode) or read an entire book on ghosts in the 18th century (research mode), thus blowing off, say, the report for work due tomorrow or the kids' soccer game you told them you'd attend... Either way, such impulsive decisions often lead to ineffective writing. Or you might 2. decide to research/write later. Procrastinate.

In revision mode, the butt-in-chair decision is equally important. But then you're hit with a milieu of tiny decisions that, if you're deep into decision fatigue, might make your butt-in-chair time essentially useless. You might recklessly decide that you're overusing the word stab: instead of checking each occasion by reading the context to decide whether it works, you impulsively find and replace. You might recklessly cut a chapter or plotline you're annoyed with because this is easier than fixing it; you decide to summarize, present that scene off-screen. Or you decide to leave it in and deal with it later. Let your betas find it. Procrastinate.

Don't write under the influence of decision fatigue!

Instead...

Replenish your decision-making reserve before writing:

Get enough sleep.
Eat a small snack about 15 minutes before writing: This glucose injection will re-energize your brain's capacity for good decision-making.
Save big revisions for the morning, when your capacity for good choices is up. If you have a huge decision to make on a WIP, plan to do it in the morning.
Conserve willpower by creating habits: A constant schedule--for waking, writing, work, eating, exercise, relaxation, and bedtime--will let you bypass small daily decisions, keeping your reserve high for extraneous or urgent decisions you might face. Like cutting a plotline or character from your novel.
Query in the morning! Query when your decision-making tank is full, just as if you were sending out an important resume or doing an interview.

Do you suffer from decision fatigue? Do hundreds of daily choices zap your ability to make important WIP decisions? How do you replenish your tank or fortify your brain against decision fatigue?

On the Commercialization of Hate -- Pardon My Rant --

2011-09-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

All right, pretty cool commercial.

Clean design, smart graphics, brief, edgy.

And for those of us who can't stand the buffering wait, bang on.

But is anybody else outraged by this flippant commercialization of hate? --An emotional force responsible for mundane violence at best. At its worst, it's the seed of racism, murder, war, and genocide.

Obviously, this marketing team has brilliantly captured my attention; thus the commercial is doing its job--making me think of Verizon. But I wonder if it's in the company's best interest for its audience to associate a morally reprehensible marketing campaign like this with its own name and branding: Hate equals Verizon Wireless.

In this age, "going viral" means "being edgy." And success is a matter of viewer numbers. But using "hate" as your catchword crosses a line.

Can't we do without the hate?

Know of any other campaigns with similar strategies?

What's your opinion on the issue?

In light of the Davis Monthan Lockdown

2011-09-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

True Story

A few months ago, I was on my way to sunny California with a friend who worked at Building 4300, the Civil Engineering building at D-M, also called "The Old Dorm." We stopped outside so she could print off a copy of her insurance before the trip. I waited in the car.

A few minutes later, an airman in camouflage stuck his head out the door. Looked right. Left. Looked directly at me. He emerged, shoulders stiff and hunched, hefting an AK-47, thankfully pointed downward. I'd never seen a weapon like that in real life. Sweat started on my forehead; it had nothing to do with the AC being off or the hot Arizona sun.

I had my ID on me, but it wasn't easily accessible. It was packed in the trunk.

The airman in BDUs tracked the perimeter of the building, body coiled, ready for combat. My breath was coming fast by the time he approached the car and tapped hard on the window.

Davis Monthan AFB

"See some ID?" he said.

I stammered, explaining where it was. I made to open the door to get out of the car.

"Don't!" he barked as my fingers touched the door handle. "Stay where you are!" His gun rose slightly and I froze. He backed toward the building, weapon still trained just lower than my seat. His eyes were fixed on me until the moment he slipped inside.

I had no idea what to do. I could only hope it was a drill . . . Did I look suspicious? Was my ID expired?

It turned out to be a joke, I discovered when my friend returned, bristling but amused. "I told him it was stupid," she said.

"Yeah." I felt light-headed. "You think." Frankly, I was pissed.

***

There is an old, partially wood-body AK-47 hanging in the Civil Engineering Building at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, insides gutted and welded shut. The worst you could do with it is smash somebody over the head.

My suspicion: It made quite the national hoopla today.

From various news sources: "Armed intruder . . . . Man carrying an AK-47 . . . Base is on lock down . . . Man holed-up in the Civil Engineering Building . . . No shots fired."

Eh... Where the eff is the Hook? Gouges eyeballs out

2011-09-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

Good novels, like good short stories, contain:

About 250 words per MS page
Interesting, sympathetic characters
Plot or through-line
A hook!

Yes, that thing is bold, underlined, italicized, & exclamation-pointed for extra sparkly emphasis.

The hook needs to be near the beginning of your story if you care about Impulsive readers like me. The shorter the story, the closer to the beginning.

I've been reading Legends, edited by Robert Silverberg, an anthology including stories by Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K LeGuin, etc. The Greats. Unfortunately, I'm disappointed by these most beloved authors. At the entree of each new story, I have to grit my teeth and bulldoze through by sheer force of will. Why? I mulled and mulled, and then discovered something (as one is wont to do while mulling).

In Legends, the Greats are at a disadvantage. Their stories are set in pre-made worlds; they have at their disposal more backstory than perhaps Rowling herself had at then end of Deathly Hallows. Sometimes, this wealth of backstory becomes a crutch.

By and large, the Greats rely on their own names, their fame, and their pre-made worlds to hook readers. But in doing so, they allow their story's hook -- that which compels us by desire and intrigue to read on -- to go by the wayside. This, I realized, is why I wanted to stab myself in the eye while reading much of Legends.

The remedy:

Don't forget the hook.
Open with intrigue. Readers are curious and will respond favorably to even the tiniest (arguably, the tinier the better) hint at bigger, stranger, more wonderful things to come.
Two types of hooks. Hooks can be plot-driven or character-driven, as can books. Know what drives your book, and open with the respective hook. (Unless, of course, you knowingly decide to red herring us; then open with the opposite. *grins*)
Hook us in the first paragraph. A little something to perk up our innately curious ears.
Hook us again. At the end of that first scene, plant another hook, hopefully tying in the first and lacing the story with theme.
Hook us again. Yep, you got it. Next scene, a third beat. Another clearly identifiable plot point.

But isn't this too obvious? Too predictable? I ask you -- when you look at a house, do you expect roof, walls, foundation, windows, doors? And if you found these missing? Um... a thing without roof, walls, foundation, windows, doors -- What is that, like, air?

STRUCTURE IS ESSENTIAL. To houses. And stories.

And the HOOK is an essential part of that structure.

I beg you, weave the backstory later -- weave it well -- and open instead with hook and hook and more hook or you will be sued by readers gouging out their eyes.

And because I believe in reward driving motivation & resulting action, I'll put it this way. Can you spot the hook?

Img by Zynga Games

For further reading:
A great post on the hook by @Mooderino: "The Little Hook."

If you know of any other hook posts, please leave them in the comments and I'll list them! Thank you!!

The 7X7 Link Award

2011-09-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

Oooo, it's all sparkly and colorful!

From the lovely Nancy S. Thompson. Thank you!

You should go visit her.

Blog awards are sometimes a bit wanting in bang for buck, but I like this one. It homes in on a blogger's best posts, in her own opinion, of course. The nice thing here is that readers can easily navigate to important posts without the hassle of searches. The award requires that I list posts categorically. Hope you enjoy!!

Most Beautiful:
"Thoughts on the Eve"
A Christmastime car ride up the west coast.

Most Helpful:

"A Query Checklist"
See if your query conforms to the basic-basics.

A slew of tools for getting your writing mojo on.

Most Controversial:

"Ack! They're gonna destroy the English language ..."

On the evolution of language and literature in this age.

Most Surprisingly Successful:

"GUTGAA Blogfest - First 200 Words Contest"
Didn't really imagine so many amazing blogfesters would be hopping over
to help me perfect those first 200 words of Dark Mettle.

Most Underrated:

"A Dangerous Cocktail"
Kind of a rant on the idea of love...

Most Pride-worthy:
"Starfall 1st Draft Complete: The Writerly Rush"
First time really cracking down and finishing a WIP.

*Clears throat*

And now I hereby bestow this award upon the under-mentioned (mostly b/c they're great friends & I'd love to see their posts).

1. Kara at Playing Beethoven
2. Jaye at Hanging on to Wonder
3. Unikorna at Why I Wake Up Every Day
4. Jen at Unedited
5. Angelina at YAScribe

Hope y'all play along!! xoxo
--Lora

The Future of Gaming . . .

2011-09-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

So one of my beautiful crit partners emailed me today with this link, saying it reminded her of my WIP.

Thanks to Jaye Robin Brown, lovely #wipmadness host this month, I finished the book this morning in a writing duel with Angelina C. Hansen. We finished simultaneously!! How crazy is that?

Anyway, here's the vid:

Warning: May not be suitable for all ages.

But it's pretty sweet. And it does remind me of Jaffrey Pewitt, first underage full Watcher of Area 7.

Why don't I want to write?? The Motivation EquationFor Writers

2011-09-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

Note: The motivation equation is not my original idea.
Furthermore, this post is almost entirely derivative of the cited articles.
I urge you to check them out. Go to Referenced Articles.

****

How to increase your desire to write.

Research has proven that motivation and procrastination can be mapped in the human brain using the motivation equation.

Original article by Luke at Less Wrong

Let's look at a story.

The house is a mess today. Anna grabs her coffee, chugs it black, and runs a hand through snarled hair. She paces between the refrigerator and cluttered dining table awash with bills, manuscripts, writing group excerpts, a mountain of agent rejections, advertisements, magazines, day-old dishes, yes, even stacks of t-shirts, socks, and underwear. Her laptop is somewhere under all that mess.

So is her Middle Grade novel, entering its climax. But who knows whether, if she sits down to write, the words will come out. Who knows whether, if she manages to finish the climax, the novel will need massive revisions. Who knows whether, if she slogs through those revisions, the book will be any good at all, good enough to snag an agent, snag a publisher, snag a readership. And what will all that do for her, anyway? Does any author actually make money today on their work? Is there a point?

She downs a second cup of coffee and decides to do yoga instead.

Mapping Anna's story

Let's map Anna's story in terms of the motivation equation.

E: Anna's Expectancy is very low. She has finished two books, sent them out prematurely with poor query letters to a random selection of agents, and received the corresponding number of rejections. In effort to push herself to write, she stacked them by her computer. Every time she writes, she thinks about them inadvertently. Thus, she does not expect to succeed with this book either, since history has taught her that her efforts fail.

V: Anna does not find her writing time, her butt-in-chair time, very valuable. She doesn't see much in the way of long-term benefits, either, and she's certainly not interested in the large amount of cleaning it would take to actually have a habitable work space. The Value ascribed to writing is very low.

D: The Delay Anna envisions between today's butt-in-chair writing time and any pay-off whatsoever seems to be quite large. True, she might upchuck a few words. She might even finish the book. But since she doesn't find either valuable considering her inhibitingly low Expectancy value, the Delay period until she reaps the heartening rewards for her efforts overwhelms desire to sit down this morning.

I: This factor depends largely on the person. A more Impulsive person will be easily distracted from chosen tasks. A more focused person will have a smaller default Impulsiveness and will need to put in less work to stay on task. Additionally, Impulsiveness can be thought of as one's sensitivity to Delay and reward. Anna's default Impulsiveness isn't written into this story, but one might glean from the state of the dining table that it's somewhat higher than average. Add to that the obvious desire for elusive reward, and you get a high level of Impulsiveness, crippling when multiplied by her perceived skyrocketing Delay.

Avoiding procrastination:

Let's help Anna avoid future procrastination and demotivating attitudes by increasing factors E and V and decreasing D and I. There's robust evidence that these brain states can be changed with practice.

Increase Expectancy with....

1. "Success Spirals." Make small, achievable, but still challenging goals. Note when you achieve them. I like Angelina C. Hansen's "Sentence Pact: Write one sentence. Success! Write another sentence. More success! Repeat." Make sure to decide ahead of time that meeting these small goals counts. Note them, count them, and continue this positive reinforcement over a period of time.

2. "Vicarious Victory." Science proves your mind absorbs the belief in victory just by observing it happen. Watch sporting events, not for team victory but for the players' skill at ball-handling or endurance, etc. Writers, go to readings and listen. Watch someone else write. Weird, but it syncs writing with accomplishment in the mind. Go to the bookstore and pick up books. Don't look at who wrote them. Just feel them in your hands. Let your brain see and feel victory.

3. "Mental Contrasting." THIS WORKS. Watch this video. IT WORKS. But you have to practice. I'm trying very small tasks using this option, one-a-day, increasing my brain's ability to be pulled toward tasks rather than being pushed toward them. I used this step to write this long blog post for writers!

Increase Value with....

1. "Flow." You know that complete joy that can come when you're in the process, feeling the flow of creativity? Practice entering this flow! Free-writing is good to get brain juices going, but it's also good for flow. You can set up your brain to desire this flow by, for instance, practicing free-writing. Recognize that all you want is to train your brain to equate writing anything with flow, and to equate flow with value.

2. "Meaning and Passion." Of course, if you're a writer, you probably know why you write. Lots of us just have to tell stories and bring characters to life, and that's meaning in itself. Maybe we have something to say; then inject this something into your story's theme. Why do you write? Remind yourself of meaning before you put butt-in-chair. While you're driving. While you're walking. Tweet it! Sing it out! And this brings me to...

3. "Rewards." Reward yourself for meeting little goals, for completing little tasks. Reward yourself for thinking about writing... But only if your thought is "I genuinely want to write." Not "God, I need to write." "Good freaking Lord, I haven't written anything all day." Those last two are struggle-infused push thoughts and not naturally-motivating pull thoughts. There's a huge difference.

--How do you reward yourself? Smile. Inwardly or, better yet, outwardly. Laugh! Tweet! (I <3 Twitter.) Jump! Clap! Seriously. I know it's silly, but do this. Let the anticipation build between thought and butt-in-chair action. Eventually, you'll feel like you can't stop yourself from writing. That craving you get for a big, creamy, deliciously happy cupcake? You'll get that kind of visceral desire for writing.

Decrease Delay and your sensitivity to it by....

1. "Setting goals." Which you get to reward upon completion! Little ones, remember.

2. I love #wipmadness for this. Wipmadness was originally engineered by Denise Jaden and is currently hosted by Jaye Robin Brown. You set weekly goals (which for me turn into daily goals), and meet or struggle with them to a round of cheers and encouragements from fellow tweeps and writer/bloggers.

3. Weekly writing groups are an absolute must. Think how a writing group increases Expectancy -- you consistently succeed in bringing in 10 pages, more or less polished, for constructive critique. And Value -- you hopefully like the people you're working with. Seeing them light up with encouragement and ideas for your WIP is thrilling. And it decreases Delay. Once a week, you get the satisfaction of bringing in material. (Check out my crit girls: the lovely and talented Leigh Madrid & Karin Tobiason.)

Pull not Push

If you're like me, you may have trained your brain into doing things by pushing yourself rather than feeling a natural positive energy to accomplish a task.

Kaj_Sotala has written a full article on this. I recommend reading it, as it shows how continually pushing yourself to do something you're naturally unmotivated to do (check the motivation equation for deets) can train your brain into confusion. It will equate pain (instead of pleasure) with tasks that bring accomplishment and success. No wonder writers burn out! "Pushing yourself" might feel intuitive -- "If I don't write, I can't call myself a writer, so I'd better write" -- but long-term this kind of brain state is harmful.

Check out PJ's Mind-Hack video on mental contrasting for a sure-fire way to begin retraining your brain to feel desire (pull) for writing.

Referenced articles:

1. How to Beat Procrastination
2. Pain and Gain Motivation
3. PJ's Mind-Hacking Video

Stay Tuned for . . . The Motivation Equation

2011-08-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

Alas, I've been on vacation and haven't been able to blog.

But I promise I have a good one coming up!

Stay tuned this week for "The Motivation Equation." Tweaked for writers who suffer from procrastination. (Don't we all?)

Vacation Damage Control

2011-08-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

...For Writers

~ Above the Mesa ~ by @3CatPhoto
Canyonlands Nat'l Park

The word vacation evokes two rxns:

1. "Hooray, I don't have to work! I can eat delicious, fascinating food and go see amazing stuff."
2. "Darn it. Writing's gonna tank. Goodbye muse -- being in close proximity to other people for any length of time freaks her out. Goodbye all writing goals (#wipmadness). Goodbye sanity."

Damage Control Steps

1. Get a journal. Attractive is good. Too attractive is bad. You're gonna nasty it up.
2. Take notes in it. From the mundane to the magical. Go ahead and wax poetic over presidential balls and electric cables.
3. Stick crap in it. Hiking in Arches Nat'l Park, I was equipped with my journal, a pencil, two rolls of Scotch tape, and my camera phone (which doubled as a flashlight later on when we got lost on the ridge 7K feet up and sun slipped away).
4. Record your takeaway. Not just the experience. Later, you might remember only one or the other unless you write it down. For instance, here're a few things I took away from that hike:
a. I'm a rookie hiker at best.
b. Trails are hard to navigate. Period.
c. At dusk, one loses depth perception.
The air seems to waver, changing consistency.
d. Moons are bright! Amazing when they rise.
They rise fast. Corollary: the sun sets fast.
e. The Outdoors is scarier at night.
Especially when your hiking partner goes off
with the only light and leaves you
at the top of the ridge. Cold. Alone. In full dark.

A little calendar fun

2011-08-13T13:49:00.002-07:00

Hello blogfellows (which associates weirdly with bedfellows -- won't be using this greeting again)!

My hubby is an aspiring photographer (see his work at Cat Photography) and has taken up the *‎*12 Months in 12 Weeks** challenge to engender creativity and hone his skills.

How am I involved? I herd cats into photogenic poses and help with lighting....

How can you help? VOTE on your favorite photo by "Liking" it on Facebook. The photo links will send you to his FB page. Or leave your fav vote here on my blog. At the end of the challenge, the photos with the most votes will become 3Cat's 2012 calendar!

January ~ Day 1 by 3Cat Photography

January ~ Day 2 by 3Cat Photography

January ~ Day 3 by 3Cat Photography

January ~ Day 4 by 3Cat Photography

January ~ Day 5 by 3Cat Photography

Thank you thank you thank you for your help!

And I hope you enjoyed the photos.

**12 Months in 12 Weeks**

Each weekday for the next 12 weeks, he'll take and post a new photo.

Each week will feature a new theme, corresponding to the months of the year.

At the end of each week, the photo with the most comments, likes, +1s, etc. will be chosen for 3Cat’s 2012 calendar.

~ Ambition ~The Death Knell of a Manuscript?Of the Writer?

2011-08-07T13:15:00.001-07:00

UPDATE:

After 2 long brainstorming sessions with trusted early draft readers, I think I know which scenes to cut. If you can imagine, I was juggling 4 different worlds and had accidentally introduced a 5th! Eek. Run. Fast. I'm definitely cutting the recent addition. And I'm cutting the 4th world, a veritable darling.

And I think I know where I'm going from here.... loosely.

My WIP is getting out of control. Too big, word-count wise. Too thick, theme-wise. Too soupy, character-wise. Too complicated, plot-wise. I'm a pantser, true, so I'm trying not to let it get to me. I'm trying to "just keep writing" until the draft is done.

From One Woman Marketing

I know there'll be massive editing in the future, and I'm okay with that, relishing the thought, really. But I wonder if I shouldn't go kill a few plot threads now while I still have the chance. Before the monster fish pulls my boat under and me with it.

In critique group last week, one of the gals piped up with the dreaded word "ambitious" to describe this project. That's the word polite reviewers use to talk about a book that's bitten off too much in one go, that fails at its (usually multiple and praiseworthy, utterly impossible) attempts. "My, but this book is ambitious!" she'll exclaim before slaughtering the epic tome with is Tolstoy-esque cast of characters and plotlines.

Eek! Run, run, run. Mercy kill.

But part of me doesn't give a damn about word count or manageability (or marketability) and simply wants to see my MC through this hairy mess. But . . .

Any sympathetic or empathetic readers out there? Writers, what do you do when you're 50K words in and realize that OMG it's either me or the book? That the hook is stuck somewhere deep down -- darned thing swallowed it -- and I might just have to let go of the pole?

~ The Liebster Blog Award ~ Bloggity-blog fun!

2011-08-02T23:01:00.001-07:00

Update: I'm so honored to have been nominated by three fellow bloggers!

I usually don't post weekdays, but three fellow writers have nominated me for a Liebster Blog Award! Thank you, Nancy Thompson, Amy Kennedy, and Freya Morris, for filling this blog with a happy fit of squeeing.

"Liebster," according to Google Translate, means "favorite" or "dearest" or some such in German. Pretty awesome, especially as I turned a bit Google crazy thereafter and realized that this award isn't confined to writers. Imagine: blogs exist that do not focus on the aspiring writer's journey. No way. Who'd've thought. Anyway, I'm proud to pass on this virtual tradition, spotlighting up-and-coming bloggers, to my own awardees in the spirit of community and friendship.

The rules:

1. Thank the giver(s) and link back to the bloggers(s) who gave it to you. Nancy, Amy, Freya.... loads of thanks. Look forward to seeing you around the blog-o-sphere.

2. Reveal your five awardees and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers....

5. And have loads of bloggity blog fun!

Awardees:

1. Kara Lucas at "Playing Beethoven - thoughts on life and writing"

She's an agent-repped YA writer focusing on issue-driven contemps, a shrewd editor, a thought-provoking blogger, and a fantastic friend.

2. Cara Ruegg at "An Alleged Author"

She's a writer of YA and MG, an extremely helpful blogger who astonished me with her tenacity at commenting on new bloggers' posts. It's been a pleasure getting to know her.

3. Alexia Chamberlynn at her eponymous writer blog, "The Life and Literary Pursuits of ..."

A beautiful blog, it stunned me with equally charming writing. She's over the 200-follower quota, but I've seen the max at 300, and I'm taking liberties...

4. Jordan Alexander at "Jordan Alexander Writes - a cup of coffee and a clean blank page"

A fun Twitter conversationalist and writer with a marketing agenda and a thrill for words, Jordan deserves some Liebster spotlighting!

5. Ms. Unikorna over at "Why I Wake Up Every Day"

She's a fantastic and often seductive read with topics ranging from the personal, sweet, and familial to the down-right naughty. I've enjoyed our correspondence.

Whew! And now, credit is due to Freya for the style of this post, as I flat-out lifted it from her blog. Thanks, everyone!

A Query Checklist

2011-07-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Graphic from College Hills

Let's skip the "queries are hell" preamble, shall we?

Excellent. Another fact: Assessing queries is a hellish task. This past month I judged a query contest with about 50 entries. This would've been impossible without some sort of objective standard. I put together a checklist -- by no means exhaustive -- that helped me decide.

It might be useful to focus on certain aspects of a query, rather than trying to assess its overall effectiveness.

Categories to consider:

1. Muscular prose (tightness on the sentence level)
2. Overall flow
3. Clear MC throughout
4. Clear stakes
5. Logic of plot points as revealed through query
6. Voice and voice consistency
7. Compelling plot
8. Professional bio/closing
9. Info-dump (cut extraneous facts)
10. Length (adhering to the 250 ideal / 300 max standard)

~ GUTGAA Blogfest ~ First Two Hundred Word Contest

2011-07-25T00:35:00.008-07:00

UPDATE:

A huge congratulations to the winners of the 200 Word Blogfest Contest!!

AN Villasante's Bookend won a 10 page critique from YA author Monica BW. A very worthy win!

C. Lind a.k.a. LINDY's Bound won a query & 30 page critique from literary agent Kathleen Rushall! Congratulations!

AND....

Lisa Chickos's The Mermaid Gene had such a shining opening, Ms. Rushall requested her contact info to ask for pages. Woo-hoo!

Thanks, Deana, for a romp of a month.

I'm excited to participate in a First 200 Words Contest for writers of Kid Lit with complete WIPs. Agent Kathleen Rushall of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency and agent-repped writer Monica BW will be judging this contest.

Deana's blogfest has been seriously mind-blowing for this writer recluse. I'm sending her (probably excessive) virtual hugs right now for welcoming me into a terrific writing community. You guys are amazingly supportive and I can't imagine that I wrote for such a long time without you!

~Fellow Blogfesters: Thanks, guys, for all your super-insightful comments throughout this month, and for your unending encouragement.

Last week, I didn't post my query for this book, as I felt it would be bad form, being the judge. This week, I'm thrilled to hear your thoughts on DARK METTLE.

Photo by OPTUS Electrical

DARK METTLE

YA Urban Fantasy

by Lora Rivera

First 200 Words:

Ava flattened her body against a wall, peering sideways into the vaulted livingroom beyond. It was gray and desolate, just like all the other rooms -- empty but for theshift of air and streak of chalky dust slowly resettling over the concretefloor.

Asnake of ash-brown hair had come loose from her braid. It tickled the back of herneck and she fought the urge to scratch. Soon now. Melissa Carter was doingfar better than Ava had expected or even hoped. True, she didn't think her foster sister would need ninja stealth skills as a rule. But justin case . . . Just in case Ava wasn’t there someday . . .

You can do this, Mel. She held her breath and heard nothing but a dull wind gust against loose shingles. Hermuscles tightened. Then she slinked like a shadow through the stale gloom.

With roof and walls but noelectricity, the abandoned house was dark even at late afternoon.She slowed near one of the far windows that was only partially boarded up byplywood. Here. Treacherously, her fingers leapt for the switchblade she usually kept in herback pocket.

~~~~~

Okay, y'all, have at! : ) And thank you thank you thank you for all your help.

Blogfest Week 3: Queries

2011-07-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

For all of you fellow blogfesters bravely posting your queries on your blogs this week, here's a round of applause. Writing queries is hard work--boiling your 300-pg book down to its essence and then making that essence coherent and interesting. Yeesh. It's essential work, though, and were I at the querying stage with any of my current projects, I'd be tempted to join you. Though that would be a rather glaring faux pas.

Img from Query Shark

In any case, I read the Shark back to front yesterday, before and after watching the Women's World Cup Final (nail biting!), and I've put a few interesting tips together from that source. Tips that might not be immediately obvious. And some obvious ones I don't mind rehashing.

1. RESEARCH YOUR AGENT. Find out if the agent you're querying likes personal greetings: "I read on your blog that..." Some of them hate this and want to get straight to the pitch. Do they like extra bio info: "Having worked ten years as a veterinarian, I have experience ...." Or, "I'm a member of RWA and SFWA, and part of weekly critique group"? Some of them don't give a damn about this stuff and are mainly looking to see, in this graph, if you're published.

2. IF YOU'RE PUBLISHED, list the book's title, pub house, and year. If you're self-published, don't list that you're published. Period. Well, unless you're Amanda Hocking.

3. PLAY IT SAFE. Unless you are 100% sure your non-standard query is going to kick ass with your targeted agent, play it safe. Set up your standard greeting, hook paragraph, bio, and closing.

4. DUN-DUN-DUN. This sound is for the back of your book or your movie trailer or the shrewd class clown of your critique group who realized you like to end chapters with the word Unless. . . . Agents are more interested in knowing what your book's about than in feeling swept away by a query's dun-dun-dun. Honestly, there's not enough room for that.

5. THE HOOK is what's interesting and special about your book and what makes readers want to read more. Don't leave your hook until the closing line. If you're flooding your query with back story and set up, your hook will get lost.

6. CONTACT INFO goes below your name. Always.

7. SEND PAGES. Unless the agent says DO NOT very clearly.

8. TONE. Make sure the tone of your query and book match. A dystopia query isn't going to sound like a chick lit query. The voice will be different.

9. WHERE TO START. You don't have to start your query where the book starts.

10. VOICE. At a loss? Try writing your query from your protagonist's voice in 1st person. Switch back to standard 3rd present tense before finalizing, of course, but this exercise might give you some ideas.

Anybody else have some tips to offer? So much is left to agent preference, it's crucial to be as educated as we can!

Story Chain!

2011-07-13T14:56:00.003-07:00

Deana Barnhart's Blogfest is alive and kicking!

For Week 2, a gang of fellow writers are conswirling our creative consciousnesses in a blog-o-sphere story chain. How fun!

My assignment: "This is the crisis point. So give it to us!" I have to use the words cliff, shout, and tooth pick somewhere in my piece of the chain.

Here's my contribution for Week 2:

Story Chain

Find out what went before: by Rachel Dillon

"Trapped?" gaped Dio. "What do you mean? And seriously, how do you speak dead?"

Roddern looked at her sadly but only said, "The Front Guard fae should be arriving soon. Don't speak too--"

The blue ghost of her father stiffened. It was odd to see, like a cloud coalescing into a solid. Then the ghost disappeared.

In his place were two dark-clad elves, warriors with stern faces and yellow eyes. The torchlight flickered, illuminating their pupils: a shocking green, like the color of Dio's pendant.

"We seek the High Council for audience," said Roddern immediately as they gazed at him. The laughter had gone from his voice, and Dio felt her breath catch in her throat. If he could speak to the ghost of her father, was it because he, too, was...? She couldn't finish the thought.

The taller elf, whose hand smoothly played with the fletching of an arrow, gave a sly smile and glanced at Dio. "They heard she was arriving," he said in a voice soft as moonlight on the flat surface of a polished stone. "They know what she wants."

Roddern shook is head in warning, but too late. Dio pushed forward. What did she want? A new name, her purple book, vengeance against Tony and Sandy for tricking her--"My parents," she said, knowing that it was her true and single wish. She heard Roddern hiss angrily, even as the sly smile pulled into a full, mirthless grin on the elf's strong, handsome face. A row of gleaming teeth appeared in his mouth, sharp as tooth picks. "Where are they?" Dio demanded, hating that smile, clutching the pendant under her t-shirt. "You know where they are!"

Something was happening to the trees. They shimmered first, as if made of water or moonlight, then vanished altogether. The grounded rumbled, trembling, crackling, splintering beneath her feet.

Dio gave a shout and leapt back as a tree root shot upward like a dagger just where she'd been standing. She grabbed Roddern's arm, yanking him with her as she concentrated on lifting off the ground, flying once more.

And a good thing she did: her feet now hovered inches over the mouth of a deep chasm. Where the two Front Guard fae had been standing, there was now only a ragged cliff, bald and sad-looking in the broken darkness.

Find out what's happening next: by An Alleged Author

When inspiration hits...

2011-07-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

I'm out walking and the sky has a molting look about it, hanging between rain and sunset, giving off amber and scarlet feathers here, swirling with little cakes of bluish cloud there. I'm counting nesting birds (6) and chattering ground squirrels (3) and trying rather unsuccessfully to get my protagonist to tell me what exactly he's planning to do next.

I'm just making the turnaround when WHAM! I'm struck in the back with what feels like a rock and a half second later, my whole right side is dripping in something wet and cold. I can't even manage to curse, and I merely make a kind of "Auargh" noise. My spine, where the thing hit me, is smarting like mad. Laughter roars past, and I see the truck blaring away, its bed full of people -- kids or adults, I can't tell -- among them the sniper who caught me off guard for shits and giggles.

First, I'm stunned, then angry, then (rationalizing and trying to act the bigger person) sorry for the stupid drunkards or gang members or whoever. To get your jollies beaming water bottles at walkers! Then, surprisingly, I want to cry. Just for a moment. Because it feels bad to be targeted like this, the bruise already swelling notwithstanding.

And suddenly I know that my protagonist, who's been singled out all his life because he's genetically different, must feel it a hundred times worse. When he's pegged with sanitizing spray bottles and sticky adhesives that ruin his clothes. When he runs across ALL GRUBS DIE carved into the wall... Oh, poor Jaffrey, I think, horrified. I begin the walk home, steeling myself in case the truck made a U-ey and is on its way back. My WIP? I know exactly what's happening next.

Woo-hoo! Blogfest Begins

2011-07-04T10:58:00.002-07:00

UPDATE:

Week 1: "I just had to ask..."

My question is about process. I know we all have different processes, but I've heard most people go with "Write Every Day" (at the same time every day, for some). Anybody out there like me? I try to write as much as possible, which can be a little every day, a lot every two days, loads once a week.... But when I force myself to write every day, I usually end up doing massive deletes.

So... a) what's your writing process, and b) does writing work for you when forced?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy 4th to those of you nomzing hot dogs and hamburgers
and exploding sparkly things!

Img from Ask Maldives

In writer news, if you haven't heard about Deana Barnhart's Blogfest, you should definitely head over. Think a bunch of writer/bloggers joining hands to give each other the tools for success.

Week one is "I just had to ask!" We'll be collecting any 'ole crazy questions we have about writing and the business of writing, posting them on our blogs, and hopefully rocketing around to other signed-up blogs to answer questions.

So, anybody with a burning question? Join in the fun!

I signed up today. It's not too late for you! :)

Petting the Dog

2011-06-26T13:45:00.001-07:00

Topic: A quick tip for rounding out a character

Photo by Stacey Cilia

Good writers will flesh out lush, elaborate worlds with round MCs and supporting characters, each with their own back stories and motivations. But then, out of the shadows, comes this thing. This 2-dimensional face of evil (with horns!), thwarting your beloved protagonist at every step, at all costs, for no other reason than that this dude (or gal) is a real piece of work.

Unless he's a demigod living in the fiery depths of Mordor, this antagonist will need humanizing and fast. I know! *Scrabbling in the screenwriter's toolbox...* Why not have him pet the dog? You know, that adorably sweet, loveable, fuzzy-eared next door neighbor dog with the gimp leg? And for no other reason than that Antagypoo likes dogs. He really does.

And if not the dog, maybe save a baby, or decline squishing the grasshopper at his picnic, or stand up for the stuttering boy in class, or . . . you get the point.

This is not a quick fix. But it will help with antagonists and rough-around-the-edges protagonists alike, especially near the beginning of a book, when we haven't learned enough about the characters to really care about them.

Can you think of famous book or movie characters who "pet the dog?" How about when Harry Potter saves the boa from captivity in The Sorcerer's Stone? A pseudo "pet the dog" moment.

Middle Grade Binge Follow-up

2011-06-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

The results of the Feb MG reading binge are in, thanks to a curious reader and fellow writer. I started replying with this list but quickly realized a comment this long should be its own post. So, here it is! Thanks, Michelle! (Here she is on twitter.)

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen -- Good book, with an interesting premise and loads of suspense. Was a little annoyed with narrative style at times, especially the use of repetition to create tension. But it did create tension...

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman -- Wonderful! I recently saw this book reviewed as "charming"; I absolutely agree. Lovely characters, interesting themes, compelling plot.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling -- I admit books 1 and 2 in this series are my least favorite. The world of magic is stunning, and characters are thoroughly enjoyable and absorbable (if I may), though not round at all in most cases. Pacing was odd, very slow near the beginning. Despite these drawbacks, a very enjoyable book.

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen -- A curious book with possibly too-round characters, causing the plot itself to take backseat. I enjoyed it for many of the same reasons I enjoy adult upmarket fiction, and was glad the MC was so likeable and realistic.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang -- So much fun, kept me on my toes. The artwork and stories are exquisite and humorous. Couldn't put it down and have been recommending to everyone. (Sent it to my deployed husband.)

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan -- Enjoyable, not as a much as I'd hoped. I read it quite ravenously (what's going to happen??), but then felt no desire at all to continue reading the series. I think the characters fell somewhat flat for me.

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer -- Fantastic. A bit squirmy in places; I found the themes rather mature for the intended audience, though not too mature, I think. It was also slow at the beginning. But very good.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin -- How I love this book. It's gorgeous, deeply interior, inspiring. And short enough that even if you have misgivings, you could read it in a sitting; you too will have the chance to fall in love with Earthsea as I have.

"No way... I can't believe this!"

2011-06-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

Before I quit with the craziness (I hope I never really do), there's one more video y'all should see.

From the creators of Needlemouse the Musical and resulting from AJ Pinkerton's writing and directing brilliance and Peter Srinivasan's excellent photography and sound design skills, I give you...

SINGACHU: A Pikachu Song!

Shot on location in Los Angeles.

When you take a break from writing... (Needlemouse LIVE) GEEK ALERT

2011-06-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

...Do something CRAZY!!

(The following is a story and special thanks. Jump straight to the video.)

After leaving CGLA, I needed to get my head screwed back on for returning to the life of an aspiring writer -- writing every day, thinking, living breathing like a writer.

I took a three week vacation to visit friends and family in L.A. and Seattle. And the third week, I returned to L.A. to perform for SEGA of America's Sonic Boom event at Club Nokia on the E3 floor.

The event was amazing. A sea of blue hedgehogs and others dressed to the nines as Sonic characters ranging from classic Sonic, Knuckles, Amy, Tails, and Eggman, to Cream and Cheese, Blaze, Jet, Shadow, and Chaos.

We were preforming Needlemouse: The Musical LIVE for a crowd of about 2,000 Sonic fans. It was overwhelming to take a round about the club in costume and be greeted by flashing cameras and cheers. After walking the path of gold rings back to the dressing room we shared with Crush 40 (a humbling and exciting experience), we geared up for the show. It would last about 3 minutes total and would bring to a close a trip that started in Japan for directors AJ Pinkerton (Modern Sonic) and Nathan Morse (Eggman, Shadow), as the US winners of the Needlemouse 19th Birthday Competition.

I can't say how grateful I am to the fans at Sonic Boom, to SEGA, and to Aaron Webber (better known as Ruby Eclipse), the Brand Manager for Sonic the Hedgehog Generations. Thanks for an awesome opportunity to perform the part of Amy Rose.

And special thanks to Peter Srinivasan (Tails) for securing me the part, and to Casey Dwyer (Knuckles, Classic Sonic, Eggbot) for stepping in at the last minute and bringing the show to the next level.

And here it is! A fan video of Needlemouse: The Musical LIVE!

Watch a video taken from the VIP balcony (without all the fan noise) here.

Don't Miss -- Gearin' Up to Get an Agent Blogfest!

2011-05-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Yoo-hoo, writers!

Check out Deana Barnhart's Blog for the month of JULY...

There'll be critique prizes galore from agents, pubbed and
agented writers, and other industry folk. Oh, and I'll be donating a query critique or 1st 5 page critique to the winner of Week 3. :)

So, what's this Get an Agent Blogfest business all about? It's writers putting our brains and creative muses together to help fellow aspiring writers by...

1. Answering each other's questions. Week 1--Just Had to Ask--will be devoted to posting and answering writerly questions--anything from WIPS and craft to queries and platform. You'll post the question, and participating writers-in-the-know will answer!

2. Inspiring and meeting fellow writers via Week 2's Story Chain. A valiant creative soul will start us off and from there the story will evolve as it bounces around from blog to blog.

3. Critiquing each other's queries. During Week 3's query contest, writers will post their queries on their blog for the giving and receiving of critiques. Should be a fantastic way to network and build relationships, as well as getting some awesome feedback on the dreaded query letter.

4. Critiquing each other's first 200 words--Week 4. The opening of your book will make or break your chance for an agent. For love at first sight, there's got to be at least the illusion of perfection. And hopping around the write-o-sphere offering feedback will be a great way to meet like-minded participants.

Wanna join up?

Just email Deana at deanabarnhart@gmail.com ....
OR send me a note at riverkayscott@gmail.com ....

OR tweet either of us! Here (for Deana) or here (for me).

We'll get you signed up as one of our prize-eligible participants. And don't worry if you can only drop in for a week or two. It'll be great to have you!

Even if you can't join, please help get the word out! Donate a Tweet to the Blogfest

Book suggestions, anyone?

2011-05-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

About to go on a long vacation using my e-reader for the first time (yippee!) -- conserving space.

My current read is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, so something less, er, heavy. Fiction, non-fiction, anything goes! Thanks!!

Subject-Verb Agreement -- In Number and SENSE

2011-05-22T01:51:00.000-07:00

All right, this is a quickie lesson for writers who've barreled past the usual subject-verb agreement problems. For the sake of refresher, I'm writing in present tense:

The books [plural] stacked against the wall topple [also plural] down the stairs in the wake of his sudden descent.

So, subject and verb [plural subject] agree [thus plural verb] in number.

Let's take it one step further. Subject and verb must also agree in sense. Consider this sentence, most recently brought to my attention during a critique group session by my fellow writers, much to my chagrin.

A shadow of dread sliced through his gut.

Think about shadows. Do they slice? Not exactly. They're sometimes sharp enough to slice, but often they're more insubstantial, smoky, swirly, ephemeral, losing and gaining shape. Subject-verb agreement here would have me pick a verb that agrees in sense with the subject.

So I did. The sentence now reads:

A shadow of dread whorled through his gut like smoke.

I took some liberties with the verb, it's true. But here, the subject and verb agree in sense. The subject begins a certain image and the verb strengthens and plays on that image to deepen the feeling.

Let's see your own examples! Lines you've massaged for more depth and clarity via SV agreement.

Blog Interview with Deana Barnhart

2011-05-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

YA witer and blogger Deana Barnhart has generously featured me on her blog!

It was nice to feel welcomed back into the aspiring writer community after having sat at the other end of the desk for a few years. And even if you don't stop by for my interview, be sure to check out the blog as summer writing festivities rev up. I hear there'll be critique prizes--queries and first pages--among great interviews with other industry peeps!

Find Deana Barnhart on twitter here.

Ah, Cheese!

2011-05-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

Right, so I love cheese...

Not only the Tuscan Sun-dried Tomato and Goat Cheese Organic Tapenade I didn't manage to pick up at Sunday's farmers' market at St. Philips Plaza in Tucson. Woke up at 2PM. Yikes, I know.

...But also the beloved cheesy plots and dialogue that make the Sonic X series as enjoyable now as the classic Sonic cartoons were when I was ... younger. I won't tell you how old I was when I finally got rid of my Sonic plush toys. And Tails, too. Who was a girl back then when I used to hunt the Chaos Emeralds with my brother (Avatar: Sonic). Almost all my stuffed animals were girls... Weird.

Stay tuned. Bad poem about cheese follows. Written when stuffed animals ruled my closet.

And now to find our what to do with 7 yards of this red tulle, netting stuff... I promise this isn't totally random. Has to do with uber-secret gig!

And here's the terrible poem about cheese I wrote in 6th grade. All I can say is at least my obsessions have remained consistent.

The Mouse (1997) [Can't possibly put my poor little child self

out there without commenting...]

Ah, cheese...

It smells so good to my little nose.

Sneak and snatch on little toes.

Ah, cheese...

What glorious wonders kitchen floors hold!

To me right there is what men would call gold. [Ugh, "men." I blame it on Narnia.]

Ah, cheese...

A little nibble here; it won't hurt a bit. [Is that a real live 6th grade semi-colon??]

Let's hope that this snack in my stomach will fit. [Oh, the dreaded inverted rhyming line!]

Ah, cheese...

I seem to have problems getting through my door.

I'm so bloated I roll on the floor!
Ah, cheese!

Turns out the chicken was bad.

2011-03-15T20:42:00.000-07:00

Preface: Big Sad Face

My chicken, which I was planning to roast with rosemary sprigs and lemon, smelled like an Easter egg this afternoon, when with gritted teeth I took it out of its wrapping to do the deed. You know, the one where you stuff your bare hand into its chest cavity and scrabble around for its innards... Oy. Almost enough to make me turn to veggies exclusively.

And then the Easter egg part. This was the egg you found in your backyard when you were extra small - the day after Easter. The egg whose shell you peeled back eagerly to discover the nice smooth white flesh you anticipated had turned a strange moldy green color, like that spot behind the toilet you discovered while cleaning the bathroom two weeks ago.

And the smell . . . Alas.

Turns out the chicken was bad.

Woot! "A Time to Live" forthcoming from Existere

2011-03-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

In "A Time to Live," a girl searches for escape in the safety of a strange city,
but she can't run from the cutting pulse of her own shame.

~~~

The story will appear in the Spring/Summer edition of Existere - Journal of Arts & Literature by York University's Vanier College.

"A Time to Live" is an excerpt from my literary Gen-Y novel STARFALL, in a which a seventeen-year-old girl and her single mother must struggle to overcome a history of sexual abuse and transience.

Excerpts of the book also appear in A cappella Zoo as "Calling Rain."

2011-02-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've decided to go on a middle grade reading binge. That means putting down Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and making a quick trip to Bookmans.

Story time!

This is the story of me accidentally impersonating an aunt of an out-of-state 5th grade nephew whose birthday is coming up.

      Me: "Excuse me, could you give me a quick rundown of all the topnotch MG you carry so I won't have to search?"
Counter associate: (to an associate he just flagged down) "She's buying a few books for a middle grade reader. Perhaps you could show her?"
      Associate: (to me as we walk) "About what age?"
      Me: "Oh the usual, 8 to 12-ish."
      "Fifth grade?"
      Me: (revving up to deck out my bookshelves with some tasty MG) "Yes, exactly!"
      "Young man or young lady?"
      Me: (pausing; I haven't considered whether my binge would be boy- or girl-angled. But then, I'd read long ago in my own middle grade years most of the girl MG books, so...)
      Me: "Boy books."
      Associate: "Great! Now what kind of activities does he like?"
      "He?"
      "Your young man."
      "Oh, he's not mine!"
      "He's not?"
      "Uh . . . no?"
      "Are you a neighbor, then? Or a teacher? Because maybe you could bring him in and we could figure out exactly what he'd be interested in. Are you with a church group?"
      Me: (flabbergasted) "I don't - I'm not sure . . . Not a church group, no."
Associate: (a very patient, kindly fellow) "We do get a lot of out-of-staters. Is this, by any chance," (he winks) "a birthday present?"
      Me: (defeated; there's no wiggling out of this) "Um, yes. I'm his, um, aunt, and he's out of state, so I'm not exactly sure what he's into these days. Maybe just . . . maybe we'll just take a look at a broad range of books?"
      Associate: "Absolutely! Right this way, then. I'm sure we'll find something he'll gobble up."

What I bought for my fictitious nephew's birthday:

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Redwall by Brian Jacques
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Just read

2011-02-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

...and thoroughly enjoyed Liza Palmer's

Seeing Me Naked.

Solid, lucid writing. Round characters. Great pacing. Emotionally rich.

Time to do laundry

2011-02-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

It's a fairly common practice among writers and readers to cozy up with a book in a specific location - a carved, pastoral niche in an otherwise crazy day/messy house/restless mind.

With the advent of the e-reader (which I rapturously and erroneously thought would make me some sort of super reader, getting in a few lines at all hours of the day or night - anytime, anyplace), I'm finding my reading niche slowly piling up with laundry. Literally.

If I can make a late New Year's Res (since I only purchased the reader at the tail end of Dec and couldn't know what wonders and devastations it would wreak upon my reading habits, it seems only fair):

Reading niche must remain laundry-free. It's like a prayer closet, a holy, sanctified place, and it musn't be left to the whims of an agent/writer who overestimates the power of a portable, electronic library. Reading niche must not become her glorified clothes basket.

As a side note, my official position on e-readers: they belong in reading niches as much as the next sexy hardback.

Interview with Monica @Love YA

2011-01-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Monica, for a taking the time to do an interview with me!

You can can find more info about how I started at CGLA and what I'm looking for on her blog Love YA.

Monica B.W. is a YA writer represented by Michelle Wolfson of Wolfson Literary Agency.

MSS are like children

2011-01-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

... At some point we have to realize they're never going to be perfect, and we just have to let them go.

Meaning, throw them to the wolves and let them stand on their own two feet...

Or some such.

As an important aside, do your cats love sitting in the middle of your complicated, color-coded, hand-written plot outline??

New Sub File Experiencing Deluge

2011-01-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that agents get perhaps hundreds of new queries a week, and it's a race against time to read, reply, request, assess, and offer before the next agent makes a bid for your promising new author's loyalties.

What I don't know is how they do it! After being officially added to QueryTracker.net (thanks so much, Patrick!), I now receive 5-10 new subs a day. Which is wonderful, don't get me wrong. I love seeing all these imaginative stories and waiting for that something that's solid and has spark. And 50-70 a week is nowhere near the hundreds other agents receive...

And yet, I wonder how I'm going to get through them all. I certainly will. Now worries about that. My system previously has been to tag New Subs and Archive immediately for my "batch days," at which time I read and respond to them all. But I find that I get tired quickly this way, with so many, and I start reading for the rejections, which is obviously unfair to writers and bad for my own treasure hunt. I think I'm going to switch to a daily batch system - That way I can stay fresh for new writers and not feel too bogged down by the sheer number of New Subs.

Thanks to all who've sent my way! And for your patience as I work out the kinks. Keep learning. Keep writing. It's good to be in this crazy, exciting process together.

Ack! "They're gonna destroy the English language!"

2011-01-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

My husband is always ranting about it - the new generation of shortspeak that has us parsing sentences like "txt u 2mwro dnt wat up" (from my cousin's Facebook).

In my sojourn through Egan's Goon Squad (I know, I know, I'll stop talking about it soon, but it is such a good book!), I stumbled into her slipstream story "Pure Language." I read my husband the passage below to assuage any fear that he's the only one nervously watching the transformation of language via social media.

[Rebecca's] new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity," "search," and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?

I don't know myself whether we should be nervous about this transformation of language any more than about the changes bound to occur within populations, species, philosophies, and doctrines. I do believe we should be watchful, however, and try our best to participate while we parse not only the vaguely English messages tweeting across our screens, but also what it means to live in our present world as it barrels toward a future we are all helping to create.

"Pilgrimage" up and running

2011-01-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

Check out my newest story, "Pilgrimage," edited by the wonderful Jennifer Taylor, Fiction Editor for damselfly press.

Here There Be Goons

2011-01-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Is it somehow indicative of my taste in literature that a renowned reviewer in The Washington Post would disparage the story I simply adored? (There are many excellent stories in A Visit from the Goon Squad, and it would be a shame to miss them. Please, please read the difficult and wonderful "Out of Body.")

From The Washington Post:

"Not every leap lands with equal precision, of course. A madcap comedy involving a genocidal dictator who's eager to improve his public image strains against Egan's sophisticated wit."

Yes, indicative.

Perhaps Jennifer Egan sacrifices a few of those sophisticated darlings for the above-mentioned piece of fantastic (in every sense) comedy, but nuggets remain of her rippling themes of idealism, loss and regret, frustration, and the desire for meaningful existence encapsulated in relationships. Heartbreakingly as these themes are illustrated in other stories, they nevertheless compound to lack, over the course of the first half, a degree of realism, even to border on the absurd. Must every character shoot her or himself in the foot or head (depending on where the gun's angled)? As if the game is fixed? As if, indeed, this menacing goon squad visit is inevitable? (The metaphor is Time, and such a visit is certainly inevitable, though its fallout, I'm arguing here, may not be.)

But in "Selling the General" - the collection's sacrificial lamb, it would seem, from a literary standpoint (unless one counted the slide story, which I found both touching and a bit overkill) - these themes thumb their noses at Time's goons, who have come and gone. And may still come, but at least neither regret nor resignation frames this denouement. No plaintive snowfall of the heart makes this story sigh with elegance. "Exactly!" you might exclaim. "It is inelegant, unworthy of Egan's painstaking refinement." Ah, but the story's elegance is in its placement - it sits demurely in the middle of the book; making no lasting statement of importance with its presence that first or last position might have made; eyeballing the tragedy surrounding its purely fun, satisfying, wonderful own sense of the absurd. The flip side of the absurd. Not the real side mirroring life. Reality remains somewhere . . . should I say it? . . . in the middle.

Doubtless, Egan couldn't have pulled off "Selling the General" without the other stories as anchors to its buoyancy, but must we say because it is different, because it doesn't conform to certain constructed "literary" standards, because it looks its goons squarely in the eyes and barks a hoot of laughter, that it's inferior? Let's not. I say, let's cheer for it and love on it a little, before taking a deep breath and plunging into the second half of the book.

"Pilgrimage" to appear in damselfly press

2010-12-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

A new story, "Pilgrimage," will be published in the fourteenth issue of damselfly press on January 15.

Thoughts on the Eve

2010-12-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

En route: Tucson to Seattle. I've been afraid to put down my camera.

Photo by @3CatPhoto

After braving the floodwaters in LA, my mother, my husband and I plunge into the lush rolling hill country of central California. The rains actually accentuate the colors in this region. Verdant greens and translucent rainbows pepper field and sky, and for a few miles, I watch the asphalt flow with the wet reflection of a double bow touching down on either side of us through enbankments of gray-blue clouds.

In Sonoma persimmons ripen orange, red, and pale pink, and throughout Napa's post-harvest vinyards, these autumnal shades crown the tangled woody ropes of winter grape vines. A full moon rises behind a sheen of ghostly fog over the terraced hills.

And now the towering Mt. Shasta at 14K feet, the second tallest volcano in the US, protruding from the nearby Cascades and powdered white after the recent storm. And as we drop into the valley, the city of Weed is surrounded by dry grasses and blowing tumbleweeds.

Christmas Eve now and the radio's tinkling with sleighbells, humming with the throaty voices of Bing Crosby and Burl Ives. 60 miles to Portland and several more hours to our destination. "Why don't you put down the camera; getting dark anyway." Yes, I think. Enjoy these quiet moments after the rush and bustle. Enjoy the journey. The Between is often just as festooned with wonder as the End. Which, don't you know, is always also the Beginning.

"Involved Bending" is live!

2010-12-16T18:22:00.000-07:00

Check out a wonderfully eclectic selection of short stories published by The Cadaverine Magazine, writers from under the age of 25.

I hope you enjoy reading "Involved Bending" as much as I did writing it!

Find the story under Prose.

Audiobooks - Cheating or not?

2010-12-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

I keep a "Read Book List," a sort of challenge against myself, listing all the books I've read each year, classified by genre and medium:
Princess Academy by Shannon Hale - YA - Audiobook.

I reviewed my list preemptively this year and discovered I beat my total for 2009! Then I noticed that a great number of this year's books were audiobooks, and the question arose:
Is reading audiobooks "cheating"?

I don't know why it would be any more than playing soccer for exercise is cheating when one might be running laps instead. It's working different muscles - ears vs. eyes - but the brain is still engaged, albeit somewhat differently. We're still soaking up stories, falling in love with characters, reveling in beautiful language and well turned phrases, and learning new words. Aren't we?

Yet it still seems my gut reaction is to think of listening to audiobooks as cheating. Perhaps I'm remembering high school English class when if you didn't read Romeo and Juliet for Friday's test, you'd simply pick up the video or DVD from Blockbuster the night before. That was cheating. Because you were SUPPOSED to read the text.

But is listening for pleasure cheating? Maybe, and maybe thinking that way is a bit of literary uppityness - only reading is reading. Even though Shakespeare's plays were originally performed. As were Homer's epics. Etc.

Maybe listening isn't a substitute for reading - i.e. If our literary diets consist mainly or only of audiobooks, it might be a good idea to add variety. We need to stretch and grow all our muscles. But cheating? Nah... I don't think so, anyway.

So, yay for 2010 - And may 2011 be an even more story-filled year!

Silhouettes and Shadows Nominated for Best of the Web 2010

2010-12-09T13:29:00.003-07:00

Thanks to Two-Bit Editor Matt Williams for nominating "Silhouettes and Shadows" for this year's Best of the Web, which

“compiles the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that online literary journals have to offer in an eclectic collection in the manner of other broad-ranging anthologies such as Pushcart, and Best American Non-Required Reading."

-- Guest Editor Kathy Fish.

Vibram FiveFingers and Cactus

2010-12-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

First: I apologize to everyone using CACTI for the plural of CACTUS. You're grammatically right, and I'm very wrong. But I just don't like the way the true plural sounds in conversation.

So... I recently bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSOs (all terrain), and being in a nice, hikeable part of Arizona, thought I'd try them out.

Result: Beware of cactus! If you live in a cactusy area and decide to "go barefoot," take extra care. Although the KSOs performed admirably against a few nasty cholla (aka "jumping cactus" according to Tucson natives), they were nonetheless pregnable between the toes, where a mesh fabric provides breathing and stretching room but not toe armor!

Still, it's pretty impressive to stomp on a cactus and come out mostly unscathed. So if you're like me and can't seem to hike without getting impaled a few times, KSOs might not be the best plan for desert (spiny) terrain. Unless you like the adrenaline rush.

Very Long Sentences

2010-11-17T12:06:00.002-07:00

I've been trying to think this one over, and I'm not sure I've come to any satisfying conclusions about Very Long Sentences. Not in the way that I have about, say, dried banana chips, which I've decided I don't like. Or cats, which I like very much. Or trees, goldfish, fingernail polish, adverbs. (I like adverbs, personally.)

But Very Long Sentences, now.... Sometimes, as a reader and writer, when I'm in mood to be impressed with some author for having strung together in such an artful way so many various clauses and ideas -- and the em dash really is quite dexterous because absolutely anything can go inside its little brackets, like a magic pocket in which you can stash whole cities, whole universes even, all safely nested in your original and more or less relevant idea -- I feel exhilarated from the journey, from following the twisty passage of someone's mind, marked so generously by punctuation.

And sometimes Very Long Sentences just tire me out. Sometimes I find them pretentious and distasteful. And confusing! Or not confusing but obnoxious. Often I skip them.

And the worst thing is that the same sentence can have both effects at varying moments. Which leads me to wonder whether there's nothing inherently worthy or unworthy about Very Long Sentences. Whether it's not all in my head.

So, I fall back on statistics. I feel I need hard-ish numbers. People who like Very Long Sentences and people who don't. Tally them up and see who wins, and we'll go -- quite democratically -- with the majority.

It's the best thing in the world--

2010-10-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

--when you realize your high school education failed you and you're luckier for it.

In my case, I didn't "have to read for class" a great many classics: Slaughterhouse-Five, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, 1984, The Great Gatsby... What in the world did I read in high school?

But side-stepping that indicting question, I just finished Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, a marvelous little book about an intellectual kid growing up in 1940s-50s era New York searching for whatever it means to live a genuine life. Though I'm not sure old Holden Caulfield realizes it, even by the end.

There's a scene in which H is talking to his kid sister Phoebe. She's asked him does he like anything at all, and he can't concentrate on answering because he's thinking of a boy who committed suicide--jumped out a window to escape bullying, to keep from giving in to bullying, really. And the scene, coupled with a line from the next chapter, a quote from Wilhelm Stekel about living and dying... it got me thinking.

About bullies, for one, who've been around for ages and ages. And about kids, who've been around just as long. And about the fact that everybody out there is trying to find out what it means to live a genuine life. Especially in this age when everything's so excruciatingly temporary, finding an "identity" can get a little hairy. And it's hard to find out who you are and how you fit in when you're focused only on you. 'Cause then there's no context for you, and things get pretty ambiguous without context.

So it's only when H sets himself aside and watches P go round and round the carousel--when he stops thinking about those hard questions and just lets the world be--that he sort of settles in.

I guess it's harder when the world is so linked to us, all personalized and networked, that we can't really set ourselves aside even for a minute. But I wonder if living genuinely has to do with those moments when the world is too darn big and wonderful to think that we or even our biggest problems could be the center of it.

Something like the way a body moves…

2010-10-09T13:40:00.001-07:00

I have envied those who seem at home in the movement of their bodies. Who walk into rooms and their minds and bodies are equally present, and they know unconsciously that they are powerful in their fullness.

After reading The English Patient I feel that same sense of slight envy turned suddenly to genuine hunger for more of Ondaatje’s rich and unconscious presence. Because there is a sinking that follows in watching Ondaatje move about a room—whether it is Italy or Naples, the desert of Libya or the gardens of a lover’s body. A sinking which is more akin to what I imagine melting might be like than falling into a river. In river-sinking there is too much flailing. And still, at the bottom of the river, I am discrete from it.

But sinking into prose like Ondaatje’s is transcendental, because I am suddenly not merely watching that powerful figure of story as it moves quietly through time but am part of it. Nor am I jostled out of it until the prose stops. And it doesn’t bring attention to itself, even in stopping. These are the best stories, I feel, that come in and go out and leave the mark of their presence in my mind like a bold streak of silent light.

And if I missed them when they walked in, I can always tell when they go because these fully present people leave their absence behind.

His Dark Materials - by Philip Pullman

2010-07-18T21:29:00.002-07:00

A beautifully written, imaginative, thought provoking, and emotionally compelling series I'm sad to have finished.

Seashell Radio

2010-07-13T10:59:00.001-07:00

Lovely, talented, independent band from Tucson. Plus the cellist writes deeply engaging stories--I'm lucky to have taken a course or two with Esmé Schwall at the U.

Seashell Radio... Take a listen to "Plans" or "Black Dress," or really any of them.

What I learned walking

2010-07-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

After stressing over a query letter for hours last night to the point I couldn't sleep, couldn't write, couldn't eat (and I promise, that's extremely unusual), I took a walk. Walking's good for stress, and once in a while, some nugget of truth or enlightenment descends.

Now, this isn't new or genius, but neither is a deep breath of warm, evening Tucson air--down, down into starved lungs.

What I learned? In my query letter... just be myself. Yes, be professional and witty and beautiful--if I can--but at bottom, my book came from inside me and so should my query. What a freeing realization! Yay for walking (and being able to eat).

Writers, we "need to get out of our heads and into the world..."

2010-07-06T16:35:00.001-07:00

"Sometimes I feel that writers intentionally make an effort to fail as business people." --ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors)

From an interesting article on marketing your writing: interview of Katharine Sands of Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency.

Gluten, Kneading, and Writing

2010-07-01T11:59:00.002-07:00

A few days ago I made sandwich bread from scratch under the careful, Nazi-like tutelage of my good friend and food buddy.

I learned a few things:

1. Bread takes a long time! Especially if you're no expert kneader, getting the gluten right so that it can pass the windowpane test (stretch the dough gently until it's translucent but unbreaking), is a monstrous task.
--Well, I should add that it's most difficult for people who aren't "firm but gentle." Which brings me to my next point.
2. Bread takes a long time when you keep tearing the gluten. Rather than working the gluten, letting the mysterious world of chemistry have its way, I kneaded too hard and tore the stuff, which set me back more than a half hour.
3. This is because I'm rough with things!
--When things don't work - or aren't working fast enough - I get rough... and I realized that this extends to my writing. I delete like crazy. Whole chunks, pages, chapters, stories, books. Write, delete, write, delete.

I wonder if I'm tearing the gluten....

Dogs aren't children's predecessors . . . They're the replacements!

2010-06-19T11:26:00.001-07:00

In most U.S. cities, the surest sign that a young married couple is harboring intentions to conceive is the sudden introduction of a pup among the humans, a new little furry member of the family. For about a year (with small dogs, which lose their puppyhoods in about that time) or two (with larger dogs, such as the Rhodesian Ridgeback), married couples learning the ropes at parenthood dote and fawn on their new babies. From expensive toys and bedding to all-day sitters and once-a-week doggy-daycares, proud parents of canine kids are unconsciously mimicking the next mutation on tap for their relationships--that of human parenthood.

Okay, so being a young married woman who's seen countless peers jump off this bridge--in droves, mind you--this is, indeed, anecdotal evidence, it's true.

But, all this to show why, being out here in San Francisco, something caught my eye: The dogs around here are trained! And not ostentatiously well-trained or well-bred, as you might see at a dog show, though there were a few of both... but casually trained. As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Up on Nob Hill, enjoying a surprisingly crisp, sunny day in June at Huntington Park across from Grace Cathedral (the Notre Dame lookalike). And marveling at the swarms of dogs. Groomed, beautiful, charming animals, which--leash or no--sit proudly by their owners, or trot along beside them, or play fetch without getting distracted or running off, or sniff inquisitively in what can only be a predefined radius. No fear of the rapidly chugging traffic below.

And it's because in San Francisco, of the 855K residents, nearly 110K are dogs, reared and raised as meticulously as you'd raise a kid--more so even. And the stats--after a bit of Googling--also reveal that this city has the lowest child to adult ratio in the U.S. (Thanks to National Geographic for that.)

So, in effect, San Franciscans skip the new-furry-member step, and go straight to offspring. That happen to be four-legged and furry-tailed, of course.

Transaction Phenomenon

2010-06-07T14:07:00.001-07:00

The other day, one of my dear readers called me frantically to say that the first prologue I'd written perhaps a week ago and at his direction was much better than the revised one I'd just sent him and why why why did I make those changes?

After discussing it for a while, we moved on to the bulk of the book--the reason he'd been reading the revised prologue: I'd gotten stumped. Overwhelmed. Paralyzed.

(It happens that a plotted book is like woven fabric and that if you begin pulling out threads, or changing the positions of strands, or dis- or re-coloring them, the rest of the woven thing must change to accommodate. And the more you pull—say, in Chapter 1, two strands; in Chapter 2, three, etc.—the more tangle and unmanageable the thing becomes as you go deeper.

Thus, I'd gotten stumped and so begged him to read a half-finished, ugly book.)

In any case, one interesting result of note:

A character we both loved dearly changed over the course of the rewrite due to the single word, sniffed. In the early draft, this word had been paired with the adverb derisively, but in the later draft, I had deleted that word out of loathing for that part of speech. The problem was that Abigail Hunter sniffed often. And she used to sniff derisively often. Now, though, without that word, she was simply sniffing, had lost all her round haughtiness and had become a silly, thirteen-year-old girl, sniffing whenever she was teased. She was a horrible character!

All because I'd deleted a word. Abigail hadn't changed a bit, other than that word. But the transactional experience for my reader had changed. He hadn't gotten the association between the sniff and her characterization, and so had no access to her. He wasn't very happy about it, either.

And so I put it back, that useless part of speech.

Abigail sniffed derisively.

"The Road Not Taken"

2010-04-16T23:42:00.001-07:00

This is a predicament, Mr. Frost, and I'm not happy about predicaments. Because I have a story--well, about seven hundred words of one, which isn't really a story at all--and I don't know which way I should go. And we all know "how way leads on to way." But I don't want to take the wrong way for just that reason! But, I also don't want to get stuck in this yellow wood.

Sad note regarding LIMITS

2010-04-15T12:14:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, due to financial and time restraints, the finalization of the movie and production scripts for LIMITS will be pushed back to the summer or fall of 2010, though the way these things go, we might be looking at longer.

Producer: Peter Srinivasan

Limits: The Movie Production Blog

NSAL Contest!

2010-03-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

My two stories "Involved Bending" and "At Five" (from my half-finished novel Bits of Glass) have won second place in the Clearwater-Tampa Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters!

Being a military dependent, I miss my hometown of Daytona Beach, Florida, and I am extremely greatful to the Clearwater-Tampa Chapter for allowing me to compete in their contest, even though I'm now stationed with my husband in Tucson, Arizona. Can't wait to get a call from him--he's overseas at present--to tell him the good news!

I'll be traveling on April 10th to attend the lunch and reception, where I'm honored to be reading one of the two winning stories.

New Publications!

2010-03-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

Up on Two-Bit Magazine "Silhouettes and Shadows."
At Antique Children "A Childhood Sestina."

I hope you love S&S as much as I do. It's just one of those stories that makes me feel a lot, that has a rhythm and a world that's surprisingly like our own, yet still wholly "crafted," i.e. fiction.

The sestina (found if you scroll down, under "Poetry") came out of a class exercise, actually. I'm not used to writing poetry, so I think the rigid sestina formula helped me get my words on paper.

Stories, Stories, and Deadlines

2010-02-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's bad when you realize you have it in you--when the muse is sitting nearby and not fidgety or flighty or simply unavailable--to knock out a near-finished short story in four hours.

Not bad when you can do it. Bad when you realize you can do it.

Because then you feel like you can procrastinate. And your creative muse is off getting her nails done somewhere. Or building sandcastles. Or making omelets with spinach and tomatoes and fresh thyme.

Whew!

2010-02-22T22:08:00.002-07:00

About five hours of crappy writing later, I'm free of three weeks of writer's block. Thank God.
Hopefully, it lasts.

Story Online

2010-02-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Just a note to let you know that my short story "After Toast and Cake" is up and running at Amarillo Bay, a literary e-zine for fiction, nonficiton, and poetry. Check out their extensive 12-year Works List!

This thing was delicious...

2010-01-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

Served over whole wheat penne pasta....

Sauté garlic, onion, and center cut bacon in nonstick pan with a little olive oil on med-high for about ten minutes, or until bacon crisps up. Add oregano and basil. Lots. For kicks, add crushed red pepper. Add a few handfuls of fresh chopped spinach. Cook down with a dusting of black pepper.

In another pan, boil chopped mushrooms in a little white wine with some fresh chopped parsley. Add diced tomatoes and a splash of lemon juice. Simmer until tomatoes are soft.

Combine dishes, heat through, and enjoy!

Starfall 1st Draft Complete: The Writerly Rush

2010-01-24T18:51:00.001-07:00

Do you get this same rush after finishing a novel? I've just completed the first draft of Starfall, my YA contemp (71K words) about the relationship between a sexually abused mother and daughter—and about wishing on falling stars.

And I got this rush.... It's the tingle you get when you see something you can't quite describe (even though you've been doing just that for the last 220 pages), a tingle that spreads inward and then outward again so that you feel like you might explode. Really, you just might.

For me, it turns into a lip-biting smile. There's history to that, of course. I used to engage in moderate sibling abuse—i.e. I'd haul off and slap my little brother when he said something I didn't like. I know, very bad, Lora. I knew it then, too, because I developed this habit of biting my lip "as hard as" I was about to hit him.

So now, any time I experience intense emotion, I bite my bottom lip.

But the rush. How I love it. Wish I could bottle it up and market it. I bet writers would buy. We need that rush from time to time. Even if the manuscript isn't perfect--When is it ever?--because it means we've trusted ourselves for long enough, stuck with a project to its end, were brave enough to hold onto rough and sometimes flat characters until they blossomed out, onto fragile plotlines until they untangled and found their way home. It means, published or no, we really are writers.

P.S. "Writerly" is a word I picked up from my undergraduate creative writing professor. Means "of or pertaining to a writer," or some such. It sounds writerly, though, so I use it.

Note To Self:

2010-01-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

Next time you decide to practice multitasking techniques by reading submissions on your new smart phone while going for a 4 mile walk... check to make sure it's not going to rain halfway through.

LIMITS is Drafted!

2010-01-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

The screenplay, Limits, is finally drafted... again, after replotting the story several times over the last week. A rough draft, to be sure, but the story elements are all in place for the long trailer. Thanks to all who were very supportive.

The work is far from over, of course.

Beef Burgundy: 3-day Entrée

2009-12-26T17:22:00.005-07:00

Delicious French cuisine: Beef chuck marinated pendant trois jours, with pearl onions, served over fresh pasta.

I can't think of a more appropriate--or arduous--undertaking for a listless writer and her home-vacationing military husband with a freezer full of top-grade beef.

Recipe courtesy of Stacey Moore Cilia, which I won't reproduce here--it's too long. But you can--and definitely should!--visit her food blog at http://food.jitterbeangirl.com/archives/000763.html

to check out the recipe for yourself, or just to look at the beautiful pictures.

Will post my own results, though Stacey's look absolutely delectable.

Very best,

Not meeting her December 24th deadline for Peter Srinivasan's screenplay--Lora Rivera

A Plug for Bill Lancaster's Story "Stuck" and Scott Lynch's THE GENTLEMAN BASTARD SEQUENCE

2009-12-19T10:46:00.006-07:00

Just came out on Tumblr, official website of Texas State University Writing Center. December issue. An enjoyable read if you get the chance and have an itch for round, sympathetic characters.

Also of interest is a fantasy series by relatively new author Scott Lynch. The Gentleman Bastard Sequence is a series of brilliant, entertaining, high-suspense novels about a group of wicked-smart thieves in an exquisitely-wrought world of intrigue, decadence, and danger. Backtracking is worth it in these books, when the world is one big chess game.

Helpful Critiques

2009-12-15T23:35:00.002-07:00

They're difficult sometimes, but worthwhile, right? When you're in the business to discover and cultivate good writers? But is there a fool-proof process, especially when the story/poem/screenplay you're reading isn't absolute genius?

Well, no.

Unfortunately.

But there are some processes out there that seem to make good sense.

Here's one:

http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2009/12/power-of-positive-thinking.html

Chai Holiday Nog

2009-12-14T19:41:00.002-07:00

Delicious and easy Chai Holiday Nog recipe. Great for parties!

Think 1:1:1:1

Holiday Nog brand egg nog
Chai Tea (from tea bag), chilled
1% Milk
Amaretto

Combine, chill, serve over ice, and top with nutmeg or cinnamon. Enjoy!

Eggs, Brother, and Poetry

2009-12-14T17:44:00.003-07:00

My brother just came in--just a little jaunt down I10--L.A. to Daytona Beach, FL.

I poached eggs for him. Because I love poaching eggs. Because I love eating creamy delicious poached eggs. Because he's never had them and because everyone should try them at some point. I think.

(And because I just watched Julie and Julia! A nice movie, worthy of a relaxing evening and yummy wines and cheeses.)

To poach an egg:

Boil enough water to cover egg, add some vinegar, a splash or two. Poke a hole with a push-pin in the fat bottom of the raw egg. Boil in water for 10 seconds. Remove and crack egg open into water very close to surface. Draw egg white over egg gently with a wooden spoon, a few strokes. For a nice runny yoke, poach for 3 1/2 minutes to 4 minutes. For a harder yoke, boil for 5 minutes. (My brother prefers harder yokes.) Extract with slotted spoon and deposit nicely poached egg in a bowl of ice water, just to rinse the vinegar and to solidify the white. Remove. Cut off excess membrane if needed before serving, or it will look like an alien:

Mmmm. (Or rather: Hmmmm.)

On the down side, I'm writing a poetry final on Elizabeth Bishop whose poetry is WONDERFUL, btw. But I'm unfortunately not very good at poetry. And not at all good at writing about poetry. So my paper is four pages long currently, wishing it were much longer. How about ten pages. The length it's supposed to be. Yes. That would be nice.

They're lovely poems, though. Here's one: "The Moose." And another: "The End of March."

New Publications!

2009-12-14T17:30:00.003-07:00

So, a few more updates on publications:

First off, Jersey Devil Press has accepted for its holiday issue "For Piano and Voice." It comes out Friday, Dec. 18.

What I distinctly love about this one? It's delicious. It's pretty. It's just darn pretty. And then there's the wonderful musical aspect to it, and the fact that there hasn't been a lot of experimentation with representing sign language in text expect in highly academic circles. Not much interest to a general readership.

Then there's "Very High Up" coming out in early January from MARY Magazine's Winter issue. A story about constraints and desire, military culture and the humanness of a failed attempt at a perfect marriage. I've a soft spot for this one if only because it's such sensitive material that I've tried to be true to.

Silhouettes and Shadows Forthcoming from Two-Bit

2009-11-22T18:54:00.001-07:00

The "fam" has arrived, and what better time to find out that "Silhouettes and Shadows" has been accepted for publication in Two-Bit Magazine?! I'm quite fond of the story, actually. It may be my favorite, second only to "Calling Rain." The story originated from an anecdote my mother once related to me. She'd been living in New Orleans and had a tiny flat off St. Charles Street. One evening, she left a glass of water on the windowsill and in the morning found about a fourth inch of sediment sitting at the bottom. She told me this when I was young and it stuck with me. And S&S grew out of it. [Shrug] Who can fathom the inner workings of these things...

Novel is drafted!!

2009-11-20T23:51:00.002-07:00

I recently did nothing but eat, sleep, and write... about 26,000 words, which was a pain, but worth it. I settled on about 5,000 a day, knowing it was going to be hard. Let's just say, 3,500 was fine; 4,500 was terrible; and that last 500 a day nearly killed me. Thankfully, I have a writing partner (this one goes out to Bill!) in Texas who called me at intervals for word counts. Otherwise, I don't think I would've been able to finish it.

But it is finished. So now it's screenwriting time. Peter Srinivasan, the brave director/producer of Limits, has scheduled for the first draft to be complete around mid-December.

...And speaking of Limits, the short story the movie is based on has been accepted for publication at Crash. "Limits" will appear in the journal's inaugural issue in January.

And now it's time to finish cleaning house for the "fam," since they're coming in tomorrow for the T'sgiving holiday.

All for now.

(Wishing I was not cleaning house and was at New Moon instead. Though, I'm not brave enough for opening night.)

New Publications

2009-10-09T12:22:00.003-07:00

Hello, all:

Sorry it's taken so long for a new post. I'm getting bogged down with class this semester. Especially since the novel project is requiring so much attention. It's coming, though. I should have a draft by December and a shopable manuscript by May '10.

Quick update:

My short story "Calling Rain" came out this month at A cappella Zoo and was runner-up for the journal's Acospecimen Award. Click on the picture of Issue #3 to purchase or see contents.

"After Toast and Cake" has been accepted for publication in February by Amarillo Bay.

My screenplay, Limits, is being overhauled and rewritten. The plan is to have the new version, a political thriller, complete by the end of November.

I spent the last two days reading and finishing the Twilight series.

All for now.

A Week to Go

2009-08-19T01:14:00.004-07:00

My husband is leaving for the Middle East on Tuesday next week.

I must make a few things clear, first.

He's an Air Force officer.

He's an EWO, meaning he jams communication signals.

He will only be over there for three months. That's apparently the length of time studies have shown airmen to maintain top functionality during flight.

He will sometimes be out on missions for days straight.

Sometimes, he'll wait around in the dorms for weeks.

We've been apart before.... About nine months. This was indeed a gestation period. For tension and resentment, bitterness, fear, longing, shame, frustration. But that squalling child grew up and is now a relatively sedate four-year-old.

Am I afraid of repetition? Not very.

Here, then, are some of the comments:

Are you worried?

How're you coping?

If there's anything I can do...

We'll be praying for you.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

There is not much to be sorry for, I respond to that last, since he will only be gone for three months... unless the person is generally sorry that soldiers fight and hurt other soldiers and try not to hurt civilians, though they don't always succeed. Then, I accept your apologies. (But who am I to receive them, really?) To the others, I don't always know what to say. Thank you, I appreciate that, Your prayers are so kind. But worried? Should I be? Everyone seems to think so. Or perhaps, they simply think that since everyone whose husband goes overseas is worried--whether or not she actually is does not come into mind--I should be worried too. I don't know quite what to make of it.

I will know if I should be worried when he gets back, I think.

Pressed but not crushed...

2009-07-28T13:51:00.002-07:00

Well, okay, crushed.

It's hard to be anything but when you do what you told yourself and everybody else you wouldn't do--get your hopes up about your YA book getting published--and then get rejected.

It was a nice letter, but it's still one of those moments.

Inbox (1)

You stare at it.

You hold your breath. You click on it.

You read it. Again. And one more time for good measure.

You stare away the moisture--those are not tears.

You decide not to tell anybody.

Then you decide to tell everybody.

A big long exhale, and.... Here we go again.

A Dangerous Cocktail

2009-07-26T21:18:00.006-07:00

Recipe:

--1 somewhat serious perusal of St. Augustine's Confessions
--1 rapt viewing of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight

Shake..... (Read the warning label)

What comes out? Well, if you're like me (it helps to dust the cocktail with a good helping of suspended disbelief), you get a tragic, mental, emotional, ripping noise that comes from your gut and ends up hanging, embarrassingly, in the room like a frumpy ghost.

The cats think it's all good fun.

Why exactly are love stories like that (Achilles and Patroclus, Romeo and Juliette, Troilus and Cressida, Layla and Majnun, or Clapton and Pattie Boyde, for that matter) so compelling?

And--forgive me, this is not systematic philosophical inquiry by any means--why does it seem like the story is, at bottom, that which moves us, and not sympathy for the individuals themselves, trapped by their tragedies? It is not the sweet, loyal face of Patroclus that we pine for. Clapton's "Layla" does not invoke a sudden desire to see (extend to the other senses) the object of his personal "brand of heroine." It's the idea of the story that draws us, hungry and battling some inner turmoil we can't quite articulate, to these fictions.

But I've stepped over a line, calling them fictions, as if positing that we don't respond equally to "true" stories. But then, retold, what story is entirely devoid of fiction?

Let that rest, though.

My question: Is it the idea that we cherish, the idea that two people can want each other so badly.... We've certainly felt it ourselves. But if the dream fails for us, as it so often does, was it the dream that we loved or the human embodiment that dream?

And poor Augustine, to hold sexual love as the basest of human desires. Well, it's certainly the source of great suffering; some romantics would give anything for a crack at such love.

So what if, indeed, it is the dream we long for? Are we not, as Augustine would say, blind to the true nature of our desires, which crave the invisible, intangible, unchanging things, the dreams that vanish upon waking, whispers so frail they splinter and dissipate when the story ends, and we are left hollow, seeking incarnations in the place of some divinity? In other words, are we crazy?

Ugh! *stupid cocktail* Why this wretched desire for this opium that wreaks havoc on our capacity to appreciate, er, pretty damned much anything during the time the mind succumbs to the dream?

And afterwards? A lingering throb, the bite of regurgitated bile.

Warning: (1) Serving size is directly proportional to the extent of hangover one wishes to endure days following. (2) Consumption of the above recipe impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems.

Waiting on Debra Dixon

2009-07-21T16:53:00.003-07:00

Debra Dixon, the fiction editor at Bell Bridge Books, has requested a "more detailed synopsis" of my YA Down the Twisted Lane. Hoorayack! Can't celebrate too soon.

Because this could mean one of two things.

1. Debra, like any good editor, one month ago put her newest acquisition under the "stack" (probably electronic but still going by the same old name) of manuscripts "to read." A month later, she finally finishes off Manuscript X and finds my manuscript, still unread, at the bottom. She thinks, "Hmm, the author--this... Lora Rivera--has been waiting for a while. I'll ask her for more to give me more time." So she asks for the only thing she doesn't have (having already the full manuscript, the author's bio, and a short synopsis): a "more detailed synopsis."

Or...

2. Debra, like any good editor, one month ago put her newest acquisition under the "stack," eventually got to my manuscript, read, oh, say, a third of it, and found it quite intriguing and quite complicated. (It is.) So she sends off for a "more detailed synopsis" to see if the thing is at all viable before spending her valuable time reading the rest of the manuscript.

Let's hope for option 2. It's the best.

Personality DNA

2009-06-10T23:16:00.000-07:00

First-Ever Full Request!

2009-06-03T00:33:00.003-07:00

As many of you know, I've received my first-ever full (manuscript) request from Bell Bridge Books for my YA Fantasy novel, Down the Twisted Lane. It's more like middle grade, with YA leanings, actually, as the characters are not romantically inclined, and the pacing is plot driven rather than character/conflict driven. I like the book a lot, mainly because it's simply fun--fun to read, fun to write.

Of course, although for me (a mainly unpublished writer) receiving a full request from an editor is a huge deal, chances are that they'll read it and say "not for us."

It does help, I suppose to be published elsewhere first. Over the transom submissions are barely scanned in the first place, as there're always so many; it's much more difficult to be taken seriously when your submission looks as desperate as everyone else's.

Hooray, then, for my short story, "Calling Rain," coming out in the fall edition of A cappella Zoo, a small literary journal with a focus on magic realism that pays in copies (1). Still, I can use it on my queries now.... "My most recent short story will be coming out in...." Persuasive, and not wholly untrue.

(One would think I'd be ecstatic: all these opportunities! But for some reason--and perhaps it's a testament to some sort of ambition-fed character flaw--I'm not at all satisfied.)

I'm afraid there isn't much more news. Thesis time. A novel or a story collection? That's the question. Novels are more publishable. Collections are easier to put together. Plus, they have the added benefit of "chucking ease"; that is, you can scrap a story or two and not lose the collection. It's much more difficult to be told a character has to go, or two, or a subplot is weak, or the idea plain sucks.

Lora Rivera

Beyond On Love

Real characters harbor real dreams... and real fears

Being Versatile

Are you making New Year's Writing Resolutions?

Brainstorming Techniques,continued...

Brainstorming Techniques!

O Christmas-book Tree!

On Narcissism: The Close Third

A Synopsis Checklist

Editing? Read Poetry. Also, Wipmadness Week 5

The Thing and the Other Thing. Also, Wipmadness Check-in Week 4

Wipmadness! (Napa Adventures) Week 3

Wipmadness Check-in Week 2: Almost There

Warm Wipmadness Welcome and Week 1 Check-in

A Good Place to be Lost

The Multiplicity Premise

Here's what life looked like on:An Average Day

The Takeaway: Making Readers Care

Staring blindly at the dark . . . & refusing to listen to the voices

~ Decision Fatigue ~ Are your daily choices hurting your writing?

On the Commercialization of Hate -- Pardon My Rant --

In light of the Davis Monthan Lockdown

Eh... Where the eff is the Hook? *Gouges eyeballs out*

The 7X7 Link Award

The Future of Gaming . . .

Why don't I want to write?? The Motivation EquationFor Writers

Stay Tuned for . . . The Motivation Equation

Vacation Damage Control

A little calendar fun

~ Ambition ~The Death Knell of a Manuscript?Of the Writer?

~ The Liebster Blog Award ~ Bloggity-blog fun!

A Query Checklist

~ GUTGAA Blogfest ~ First Two Hundred Word Contest

Blogfest Week 3: Queries

Story Chain!

When inspiration hits...

Woo-hoo! Blogfest Begins

Petting the Dog

Middle Grade Binge Follow-up

"No way... I can't believe this!"

When you take a break from writing... (Needlemouse LIVE) GEEK ALERT

Don't Miss -- Gearin' Up to Get an Agent Blogfest!

Book suggestions, anyone?

Subject-Verb Agreement -- In Number and SENSE

Blog Interview with Deana Barnhart

Ah, Cheese!

Turns out the chicken was bad.

Woot! "A Time to Live" forthcoming from Existere

Just read

Time to do laundry

Interview with Monica @Love YA

MSS are like children

New Sub File Experiencing Deluge

Ack! "They're gonna destroy the English language!"

"Pilgrimage" up and running

Here There Be Goons

"Pilgrimage" to appear in damselfly press

Thoughts on the Eve

"Involved Bending" is live!

Audiobooks - Cheating or not?

Silhouettes and Shadows Nominated for Best of the Web 2010

Vibram FiveFingers and Cactus

Very Long Sentences

It's the best thing in the world--

Something like the way a body moves…

His Dark Materials - by Philip Pullman

Seashell Radio

What I learned walking

Writers, we "need to get out of our heads and into the world..."

Gluten, Kneading, and Writing

Dogs aren't children's predecessors . . . They're the replacements!

Transaction Phenomenon

"The Road Not Taken"

Sad note regarding LIMITS

NSAL Contest!

New Publications!

Stories, Stories, and Deadlines

Whew!

Story Online

Eh... Where the eff is the Hook? Gouges eyeballs out