writing life

Good Students and the Dreaded Group Project

I had a bit of an epiphany this morning about why authors tend to find publishing frustrating.

I would guess that a lot of published authors were good students in school, the ones who turned in good work on time and got As. We learned that if you do what’s expected of you, do it well, and do it on time, you will succeed.

But publishing has very little to do with how well you do it. Yeah, you have to meet a certain standard to get a book published in the first place, but quality has no direct correlation with success. A brilliant book may never sell to a publisher at all because it doesn’t have any good marketing hooks, because another book with similar subject matter was recently published and bombed, because there’s nothing really like it in the market to compare it to, so the editor can’t come up with comp titles for selling it in-house and the marketing team nixes it. A less-than-brilliant book on a hot topic may sell at auction. Even once books are published, you never know what will take off. I’m sure we’ve all noticed massive bestsellers that aren’t at all well-written, that are derivative and corny. And there are books that get consistently positive reviews and even win awards but that don’t sell very well. Writing a really good book is no guarantee of success.

Even turning things in on time isn’t such a huge deal. I learned that publishers expect authors to be at least a month late with their books. They love it when an author hits deadlines, but that doesn’t necessarily do you any good. I did get a slightly better publication date once when someone else slipped a deadline so badly that the book had to be rescheduled and my book was done early, but they still dropped me at the end of my next contract. If you’re a big enough bestseller, deadlines don’t matter at all anymore. They’ll just take the book whenever you decide to get around to giving it to them.

Your typical A student feels like something is totally out of whack when doing good work and doing it on time ends up meaning very little, especially when they see the person who, in effect, paraphrased someone else’s paper and turned it in late getting a better grade.

But to make matters worse, publishing is like the dreaded group project. The writer may do the bulk of the work in coming up with the idea and actually executing it, but then someone else in the group is responsible for putting it together in the right format and putting the right cover on it, then someone else is responsible for presenting it to the class—and then the class votes on what grade you get. You can put your heart and soul into doing the paper, but then you’re in trouble if the person who was supposed to present it got sidetracked with cheerleading practice and forgot she was supposed to do it, so she stumbles through the presentation and makes it sound boring, or worse, doesn’t bother presenting it at all. Even if your whole team is putting their all into it, you never know how the class will react. Maybe they’ll really vote on the best project. Maybe they’ll vote for the popular kids who put no effort into it. Maybe there will be an assembly on the day you’re scheduled to present your project, so everyone’s distracted and doesn’t pay attention.

Independent publishing may be a little easier for the “I can do it all myself!” types to cope with because they can choose their own teams and they’re in charge of those teams, but the class is still voting on the grade.

Maybe the ones who survive publishing with their sanity intact are the ones who were bright but not particularly good students because they weren’t motivated by grades. They might or might not bother with the work and didn’t worry about jumping through the academic hoops, instead focusing their mental energy on things they found intrinsically interesting and rewarding.

Speaking of discouraging things, I have a column today at Fiction University on coping methods for dealing with discouragement. Because I came up with this analogy this morning, I didn’t mention the idea of knowing your own worth and not worrying about outside measurements, whether it’s grades or book sales.

writing

On Target

I’ve finally made it back to my old proven working schedule, writing before I do anything else in the morning, and I’ve already written almost half of my target word count for the day. I guess the proven schedule really does work, as much as I hate it.

I write in an application called Scrivener. It’s designed primarily for fiction writers and has a lot of fun little functions I’m still discovering. One thing I like is that it works like a binder where you can keep all documents relating to a project, so research notes, character lists, etc., are all in one handy place. You can put each scene in a separate document and the software compiles it all into one Word document when it’s done (it’s a pain to write in separate documents in Word). While you’re drafting, it’s easy to jump to other parts of the book if you need to fix something, and it’s easy to move scenes around. There’s a spot on each document where you can write notes about what the scene’s about, and there’s a mode in which you can see those notes as notecards, which helps for plotting. You can lay out the scenes you know by writing on the notecards, then go back and actually write the scenes.

One of my favorite features is the project tracker. There’s a little window you can bring up where you enter your target word count and target daily word count, and it shows your progress. The bar starts as red, gradually turns orange, then a yellowish color, and gradually turns bright green as you near your goal. Or you can set a target word count and a deadline and which days of the week you plan to write, and it will calculate how many words you need to write a day to hit that deadline. It recalculates if you go over or under your daily target. One of the great joys in writing life is going over one day and then opening the application the next morning to see that the daily target has gone down. It’s a great motivator to do just a little more. The closer you get to the deadline, the bigger the impact going over (or under) the daily target has because it’s spread over fewer days.

I also like that there’s a quick reference panel you can bring up without leaving the document you’re in. I use that for a character list. When I come up with a character, that person’s name and any vital info I need to remember go in the list. Then it’s easy to check when that character appears again and I need to be sure of his name and how to spell it or if I need to remember something like a character’s sister’s name that was only mentioned offhand once earlier in the book.

You can put pictures in the documents, too—not to appear in the final compilation, but showing up in the notes on the side. There are places to put reference photos in the binder, and there are character and location sheets where you can put photos, but if something is critical to a scene and you need to refer to it frequently while writing the scene, you can put it in the notes for that document.

Today I’ve already watched my daily tracker turn yellow, and the project tracker has gone from red to orange. My daily target word count is dropping gradually. It’s already below my usual daily output, so I feel like I might be able to draft this book this month. Then again, I haven’t hit the dreaded middle slump yet. So far, I’m still getting scenes in my head every night and am just having to transcribe them the next morning.

TV

Left Behind by Peak TV

I keep seeing articles about how we’re in a phase of “peak TV,” and it’s odd because I’m watching less than ever. There do seem to be some quality shows, but most of them require some kind of subscription. Broadcast TV has withered away to almost nothing, mostly clones of the same crime shows and a lot of reality TV, aside from the superhero lineup on the CW. Even cable service isn’t enough anymore, since a lot of the good stuff is on the various streaming services. There are shows on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and now Disney+, and then there’s going to be an HBO service and probably a few more. We’re back to the cable dilemma, where getting access to the one thing you want to watch will require paying for a bunch of stuff you don’t want. At least with the streamers, it’s mostly on-demand content, so you can watch it whenever, and you can start and stop the service when you want, so you can binge that one show and then cancel the service. It’s not like having to get an entire cable package to watch one program, and then you’re stuck with it for at least a year.

But there hasn’t yet been anything I would subscribe to something to watch. Most of this “peak TV” is way too dark for my taste. I have Amazon Prime because I figured that was the most cost-effective option for me. It has a huge variety of stuff to watch, so my only issue is whether I can get a particular thing. If it’s just a case of needing something in general to watch, there’s more than enough content. Plus it comes with free e-books every month, access to magazines, and a decent music streaming service. And free shipping, but I actually don’t buy much from Amazon. That’s my last resort. I’ve enjoyed Good Omens and The Tick on Prime, but both of those shows are over. There are a few other original shows on that service that I plan to watch, but I haven’t been in the mood for them yet. Most of it looks way too intense for the mood I’ve been in lately. I started The Man in the High Castle, since I read the book ages ago, but Nazis in America is way too close to real life right now and it was more than I could deal with. The same goes for the shows on other services. I see people raving about them, and I shudder.

I may eventually get Disney+ for their Star Wars shows and other Disney content, but at the moment I’m too busy to watch a lot of TV and I’m going to let them work the bugs out first (I’ve heard they’ve had some launch woes today).

I’d love to see more variety in tone in the offerings. More comedy or at least light-hearted shows. Something fun and quirky, along the lines of Good Omens. I have noticed that when creators are given free rein, they tend to veer toward darkness, possibly because that has been equated with quality, and if you’re trying to get respect and critical acclaim, that’s the way to go. Anything fun is likely to be dismissed as “popcorn” viewing and not taken seriously. The streaming services are offering creators the funding to make their dream projects, so we’re getting a lot of dark stuff. I’m okay with a bit of darkness or serious subject matter. I just want a sense of fun to go with it. Good Omens was about the possible end of the world, but it ended up being very life-affirming and joyous.

Fortunately, Prime has a lot of reruns of older things that are fun. I may need a Pushing Daisies marathon. We’re also getting close to (well, actually we’re in, but I’m ignoring that until Thanksgiving) the Christmas movie season, and a lot of the older ones I liked before Hallmark came in like a steamroller and started the blandification are available on some of the free streaming services. And I have a lot of DVDs. But mostly right now there are books and there’s the classical radio station.

writing

Taking Dictation

That book really took off over the weekend. I can barely keep up with all the stuff my brain keeps coming up with. Whole scenes are playing themselves out in my head. I got several thousand words written on Saturday. Now I need to do a little revision and regrouping because I got ahead of myself and skipped over some things that need to happen before other things can happen.

Although I’m mostly winging it, I’ve realized I do need some structure. I’ve taken some advice I’ve read and am writing a short synopsis from the villain’s point of view: what they did and why and what they’re doing in reaction to the other events in the story (using the singular “they” here to avoid any potential clues, like the gender of the character — I don’t want to spoil the book before it’s even written!). That allows me to have something of a timeline in mind to use as a framework and gives my heroine something to bounce off against.

I was on such a roll that I skipped an event I’d been planning to go to on Saturday since I didn’t want to risk losing all the stuff in my head before I got it written down. And that turned out to be a good thing because I noticed an odd burning smell in my car when I drove home from church Sunday. That’s about a fifteen-minute drive on neighborhood streets, so it could have been potentially bad if I’d driven halfway across the metro area at highway speed — and it would have been after most repair places would have closed for the weekend, so I’d have been in big trouble if I’d actually broken down. I don’t plan to go anywhere today (I have more scenes to transcribe, and there’s a front coming through, so the weather is nasty), but I’ll run over to my neighborhood mechanic in the morning for them to check it out. None of the warning lights have come on, but it’s not a happy smell.

Now I’ve got a cold, gray day, perfect for plotting mayhem and murder while wrapped in a blanket and with a cup of tea by my side.

writing life

Mental Writing

It seems there’s one thing the weighted blanket is no match for: a book that wants to write itself. But I don’t mind that kind of sleepless night. I pretty much just have to transcribe the first few chapters that wrote themselves in my head last night, and before I even got out of bed this morning I’d written the back-cover copy for the book.

First, I need to create the town because the location is a little vague. I know a few of the places, but I need to be a lot more specific and concrete to figure out the logistics. I’ve spent the morning Google touring the area where I’m setting the book. I’m stealing elements of a couple of different real towns, the location (more or less) of another town, and then making up a lot of stuff, but being able to “drive” down the roads via Google maps made it easier to visualize what I’m hoping to create (and saved me a day trip).

So, I guess I’m doing National Novel Writing Month again (unofficially) and adding difficulty points by starting late, not getting around to even plotting until several days into the month. That gives me a deadline to shoot for to have a rough draft done. I’m going to try to have a couple of books done before I launch, so what I may do is draft the second before revising the first. That way I’ll know what characters and places I need to establish in the first book.

This is my favorite phase of the writing process, making up all the stuff, just before I start actually writing. I’m not plotting too heavily. I know who the bad guy is and why, but I don’t know the process. If “pantsing” works for so many mystery writers, I may try it this time and see if my writing feels more spontaneous.

Life

Alien Flowers

We’re having a weird weather year in which we seem to have mostly skipped fall, going straight from summer to winter. We’ve already had a freeze, which is really early for us, and this means that we’ve missed the main reason I love fall: good weather for being outdoors. It went straight from too hot to too cold and damp. My morning glories had barely started blooming when the freeze hit. I had one in a pot small enough to bring inside, and that one is still blooming. Another I was able to move up against the house in a sheltered area, and it looks like it might bloom, maybe even before the next freeze next week. The third I couldn’t move because I put one big trellis between two smaller pots, and I couldn’t get the whole thing moved. There are some leaves left, but I doubt it will bloom.

pink coxcomb
The “cock’s comb” formation of a celosia plant.

My big success this year was in growing celosias, which was entirely unintended. I bought a packet of “annual cutting mix” seeds and threw them into some pots that already had dirt in them. A couple of them turned out to produce zinnias. The rest produced these crazy looking flowers that reminded me of science fiction movies and shows in which the aliens have invaded earth and are terraforming it to suit them, with weird alien plants taking over. I looked up all the plants listed on the seed packet, and none of them seemed to match. I finally figured out they were celosias, also known as coxcomb (though only one of mine went into the cock’s comb formation). Those weren’t listed on the packet at all.

I’ve also seen them described as “Dr. Seuss plants,” since they look like the kind

pink and yellow celosia flowers
Are they alien, or drawn by Dr. Seuss?

of flowers Dr. Seuss drew. They weren’t what I was expecting, and they aren’t really what I would consider “cutting” flowers. They keep changing as they keep growing, and the blooms stay rather than blooming and then falling off, so I haven’t been able to bring myself to cut any of them. I want to see what they do next. Supposedly, they make good dried flowers, so I may try that when the season really and truly ends.

I love sitting on my patio, surrounded by all my flowers. I had never thought of myself as the gardener type, but the plants bring me a lot of joy. I just wish I had a longer season for them this year. Our summers are so brutal that we don’t tend to get the good flowers until September, at least. This year, they didn’t really bloom much until October, and then we got a freeze at the beginning of November. I’ve had maybe three good days to sit or work outdoors in between the heat and the cold.

Today’s a gloomy, wet, cold day, which I love, but I prefer it to come after a good stretch of pleasant fall weather. I’d hoped to take a little vacation and go hiking in the Oklahoma mountains, but every time I have a stretch of days when I could do that, the day I’d be spending hiking is forecast for a bitter cold front and rain.

In case you’re having a gray day wherever you are, enjoy some of my flowers, with photos taken on a nicer day.

Life

Sleep Solutions

Sleep issues seem to be a common problem with writers. I guess it’s because we have trouble shutting off our brains. Lying in a dark room with no distractions and nothing to do is the perfect opportunity to work out those thorny plot problems, according to our brains. I’ve been experimenting with ways to help me sleep better, and my latest discovery may have done the trick.

I found a weighted blanket on sale at Tuesday Morning and thought I’d give it a shot. I’d done some reading about these, which are supposed to help ease anxiety and make you feel more secure for better rest. They were originally developed to help children with autism. In a way, they’re like swaddling or like a thundershirt for pets, using close pressure that’s like a hug to ease tension. I noticed how much better I was sleeping when it got cool enough to put the comforter on the bed, and I remembered that I used to put my sleeping bag on top of the comforter to give myself more warmth and weight, so when I saw this blanket at a reasonable price, I thought I’d give it a try.

It was hard to judge at first, since I got it last week when I was going to that conference, so I had all the little “will I get up in time to catch the train?” worries. It was really cold, and I must say that the super-snug blanket made it even harder to get out of bed on a cold morning.

But the last two nights have been some of the best sleep I’ve had in ages. I don’t remember doing my usual 3 a.m. wake up. When I wake during the night, it’s just to roll over, glance at the clock, and go right back to sleep rather than lying there awake and thinking for a while. I don’t know if it’s the blanket or just that I was tired.

The blanket I got is smaller, more of a throw, and I did use it one night when watching TV. For a change, I just sat there and watched rather than getting sidetracked and going online or doing other stuff like that. Again, I don’t know if it’s the blanket or if I was actually engaged in what I was watching. It’s also nice for reading.

Of course, the down side may be that this is going to be yet another thing that makes sleeping away from home difficult. I already have the issue of flat beds now that I’m used to my adjustable bed, and now I’m going to feel exposed when I don’t have twelve pounds of blanket lying on me. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the summer. I’m considering sewing some kind of weights to my knitted lace blanket to give me some weight without warmth.

writing life

The Mystery Convention

After a very busy week, it’s nice to get back to something like a “normal” schedule. I let myself sleep in, as it’s been more than a week since I didn’t have to get up and go somewhere in the morning, but now I’m trying to go by my usual working routine.

The mystery convention was interesting, though not quite what I expected. For one thing, I was probably in the youngest quarter of all attendees. I felt rather like a child. For another, I wasn’t entirely sure where it fell on the fan vs. writer spectrum. A lot of the panel descriptions made the panels sound like they’d be writing panels with how-tos and advice for writers, but then they ended up being more for a reader perspective. I still got some good info and learned a lot about the way mystery writers and readers think, but I didn’t get the nuts and bolts I was hoping for. I think most of the benefit for me was that hearing the discussions gave me ideas, and that made the vague mystery idea I’ve had in the back of my head start taking concrete shape.

As big of a mystery reader as I’ve always been, I hadn’t heard of (or hadn’t read) most of the speakers. I’ve now got a list of books I want to look for. I did get to meet Rhys Bowen, who writes the Royal Spyness mysteries, but that was in the hospitality room rather than on any panel. And I got a lot of scoop about writers I had read from Felix Francis’s talk. Of course, he talked a lot about his father, Dick Francis, but because of growing up with his father and because of the people he knew, he was also able to talk about going over to Agatha Christie’s house or visiting P.D. James. It sounds like as a kid he was very curious about writers’ processes, so he was able to talk about how they plotted their books and how they worked. I graduated from Nancy Drew straight to Dick Francis and Agatha Christie, so it was fun hearing all those stories.

I was rather surprised to learn how many mystery writers are “pantsers” who just write rather than plotting out the book in advance. I’d have thought that would be the one genre where you have to plot and plan. There seemed to be huge extremes between having everything planned out on color-coded notecards or Excel spreadsheets and just making it up as they go. Surprisingly, Agatha Christie was apparently a pantser. She made sure that every suspect actually could have been the murderer, with motive, means, and opportunity, but didn’t decide who actually did it until late in the writing process. Was Murder on the Orient Express a case of her not being able to make up her mind? And I guess And Then There Were None was a case of flipping it and making all the suspects victims.

In a way, I suppose it makes sense that if the writer is surprised by the conclusion, the reader is more likely to be, while if you know it all going in it might be harder to avoid being too obvious. My books haven’t technically been mysteries, but I have gone in thinking the culprit would be one person, then realized midway through that it was too obvious, so that person became the red herring, and then someone else became the culprit, with some editing to set it up.

I’m not sure I’d travel out of town to attend this convention again. Even if I start writing mysteries, I’m not sure the demographics are in line with my readership. I did get recognized a few times by readers who saw my name and knew who I was and commented about loving my books, which was cool. So I do have some readers there. But I doubt there would be much promo value without the backing of a major publisher. Most authors were only on one panel each, and then there were the publisher giveaway signings. That’s not a lot of exposure from an author perspective, but there’s also not a lot of business/education going on. There might have been more networking if I’d stayed at the hotel and attended the evening events instead of commuting, but networking isn’t my superpower, so I’m not sure I’d have got that much out of it.

But I did get some new books to read and I need to look up a few authors at the library.

Going Downtown

It never seems to fail that when it’s the perfect “stay at home and write” weather, that’s when I have to go somewhere. Yesterday, I had to speak to a university class, which meant driving across the metro area in the cold rain, and then back at the beginning of rush hour. Today, it’s raining even harder and is even colder, and I was planning to go downtown today to check in for the mystery convention so I wouldn’t have to worry about it in the morning.

But, given the weather forecast and the fact that it would be at least a two-hour excursion even if I were able to just go to the head of the line and catch the next train back, I made the executive decision to just deal with it in the morning. It’ll be cold then, but it won’t be raining.

In all this researching of train schedules, I found that the old option may be the best. For a long time, the only train from my city to downtown Dallas was the big commuter train that stopped at the downtown station, about 25 minutes or so from my house. I was so glad when they got the light rail through my part of town, with the station only about 15 minutes away.

But when I was looking up the train schedules, I found a notice saying that the downtown light rail tracks will be closed on Saturday. On a normal day, I’d have to take the train to downtown, then catch another train that goes right to the train station at the convention hotel. On Saturday, I’d have to take the train to near downtown, catch a shuttle bus to the downtown station, then catch another train to the convention hotel. I figured it might be worthwhile to go downtown and catch the big train, which is on different tracks and goes straight to the convention hotel. That’s when I saw that the commuter train is a 19-minute trip to downtown, while light rail is 40 minutes to downtown, plus waiting for another train to get to the convention hotel (which adds maybe 10-15 minutes). The downside to the big train is that it only runs once an hour during the day, every half hour during rush hours, while the commuter train runs every 20 minutes. But I’ll be traveling in rush hour. Even with the extra 10-15 minute drive to the station, it’s a faster trip, and I won’t have to wait at a semi-sketchy station to change trains. I’ll just have to be absolutely certain to catch the train, so no lingering after panels.

We’ll see what I can learn about how to write a mystery, and what I can learn about plotting a mystery that I can use in my other writing to build tension and suspense.

No posting the rest of the week because I’ll be downtown in panels.

Books

Reconsidering Darcy

Yesterday, my book group discussed Pride and Prejudice. I’m not sure how many times I’ve read it, but there are so many pop culture takes on it, so many adaptations, so many memes, that sometimes it’s hard to remember what comes from the book and what’s been added along the way. Reading the book again is like a revelation, stripping away all the baggage and getting back to the source, and I always notice something new.

I’ve never been a huge Darcy fangirl. I remember thinking of him as a jerk the first time I read the book (but I was reading the book for a course on satire, so I wasn’t reading it as a romance. I was looking for the snark). I found Colin Firth quite attractive in the miniseries, but I still wasn’t entirely sold on the character. As much as I love the book, I’ve never been one of those women swooning over Darcy or wanting to travel in time and meet him or even to meet the modern version.

But I noticed on this reading that the text is pretty clear that a lot of what Lizzie read as pride was actually social awkwardness, with the pride and snobbery used as a kind of social armor. It’s a lot easier to say “I’m not going to speak to those people because they’re beneath me” than to pull together the nerve to speak to someone when you’re feeling awkward in a crowd where you don’t know a lot of people. He’s got enough social grace to manage to look aloof and proud rather than tripping all over himself and being a dork, but basically he’s a dork who hides it well. That makes him a lot more endearing. But at the same time, he’s terrible at reading people, but arrogant enough to think he’s correct about people, which is a problem when he imposes his views on others.

I know Austen Twitter has started promoting Darcy as the poster boy for recognizing privilege and getting over it, and that is a strong thread in the book, where he starts from a place of assuming he knows best and Lizzie will be glad to take him, then realizes where he screwed up, and then sets out to change his ways and his attitude, then show her he’s changed, even using his privilege to help without expecting credit for it. He really has a satisfying character arc. The contrast between his first proposal, all, “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,” and the second proposal, “My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever,” is like a master class in how to talk to women. It goes from being all about him and her being obligated to listen to being about her and giving her the power not to listen.

But he wasn’t all gone in the earlier proposal. There’s a line that I love: “He listened without attempting to interrupt her.” That’s rather swoonworthy.

Plus, the best description of a slow-burn romance, when Lizzie asks him when he fell in love with her: “I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

I guess I’m Team Darcy now.