Brand New Me

Time to put this dish on the shelf! I've graduated to a "big girl" website. Please come visit me at my new home soon!

Take me to mimi's new site!

Identity Crisis

*sigh*

If you're a semi-regular reader of the dish, you can probably tell that mimi has been going through a funk. An existential crisis. A "who am I, and remind me why I'm writing this blog?" moment. Or moments. Or months, if you want to be candid about it.

All mimi can claim is an insane work schedule and, indeed, a bit of an identity crisis. For the blog, that is. mimi has always been a Jill of All Trades type rather than a one-and-done personality. Likewise, the dish covers everything from writing to teaching to home life to rants about whatever gets mimi's goat that particular day. Once upon a time, it featured yummy-looking men every Friday in a popular feature called "The Bed List/The Dinner List." Hmm. Revivals are good for Broadway...

At any rate, identity is being considered and reviewed as we speak. By the time school starts (because that's really New Year's Day every year if you're a teacher type), mimi should have herself and her blog figured out. Then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled posts. Sound good?

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

As one YouTube comment stated, "this is brilliant wrapped in bacon." Love. Hilarity. Thanks to JoAnn Ross for the tipoff!

I Write Romance

mimi is always amused by the looks she gets when a well-meaning questioner finds out that she reads and writes romance. There's never a way to explain it that suits folks. You see, it's hard to think clearly when you're working around a bundle of stereotypes.

Luckily, mimi has Eileen Dreyer--who writes romance as Kathleen Korbel--to explain on her behalf. Check out her fabulous article posted at cnn.com.

Yeah. What she said!

Fresh Apples

mimi has been a hardworking girl for lo, these many years, and since this is the last year of National Board bonus money, it was time to upgrade. The nice people at the Apple store have sent me (courtesy of my credit card, of course) this lovely wee MacBook.

So shiny! So pretty! So fast! mimi is v. excited about possibilities and has already downloaded a fresh new copy of Scrivener so she can keep working on the book that is taking foreeeeeeeeeever to revise. Maybe revising will be more fun now that I have a new toy. Let's hope.

The Word Series

Props to Novel-T, which has created a lineup of American literature-inspired T-shirts. The baseball-themed shirts feature iconic characters and writers, like Hester Prynne, Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and writers Whitman, Poe, and Thoreau. Each "jersey" features an icon befitting the player, like a whale (duh), a Captain's "C," paintbrushes, and a raft. My favorite is the international "no" circle/slash for Bartleby the Scrivener, who would, of course, "prefer not to." Clever, clever stuff. English teacher squee out of control, basically.

Even better, Novel-T donates $1 of the purchase price of each shirt to 826NYC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills. Now that's a team I can get behind!

The Passing of a Legend

Yesterday brought the sad news that one of my all-time favorite authors, Dick Francis, passed away at the age of 89. I've blogged about my Francis Fangirl status at length--and seriously, if you love mystery and you haven't read any of his books, you're cheating yourself of a treat--but today is a wee celebration of his life and work.

Francis, a former steeplechase jockey and rider for the Queen Mother, turned to writing after he could no longer ride. Thankfully for us, he applied that knowledge to a series of novels set in the British racing world, one each year from 1967-2000, with a few additional titles co-authored with his son, Felix. Francis books are a wonderful blend of tightly-plotted mystery, great research, and clean writing. Francis created everyman heroes who tapped inner reserves of strength and intelligence to outwit a colorful series of bullies, murderers, crooks, and deadbeats. These heroes mastered all kinds of professions, from painter to glassblower to investment banker to, yes, jump jockey. The ride, as it were, was always a thrill.

Godspeed, Dick Francis. Thanks for your body of work, and for being an author to emulate.

Roundup

Closing the book on 2009--it's been a good year. Interesting. Weird. Frustrating. You know, the usual. I did manage to read 135 books (some re-reads, but mostly new titles). I'm finally unstuck with the current WIP, and even though it's moving more slowly than I'd like, it's moving. We took a family trip to Washington, DC (awesome!), rode/survived the train, built a jillion memories. Tonight, we're dropping the ball and watching fireworks at our friends' house and hoping to stay out of trouble, haha.

New decade tomorrow, fresh start, clean slate. Gotta love a new year.

Romance is the Shizz, Y'all

Check out this terrific blog about romances posted to DailyKos by Laura Clawson, a self-proclaimed romance lover who also happens to be an Ivy-League Ph.D. with, as she says, "nary a pink sweatsuit in sight." She does a great job deconstructing many myths about romance novels and their readers. You know, the "porn for housewives" and "rape fantasy" memes that are so tiresome. As an aside, why is it that voracious male readers of bulletproof superspy novels are never mocked for their inability to become either 1) bulletproof or 2) superspies?

Brava, Ms. Clawson!

Logjams

mimi has finally had a breakthrough of sorts. I had to go all low-tech, printing out a calendar, but I can see holes in ye troublesome mauscript and now have some inkling of what to do with them!

See, this is the trouble with a NaNo book. You get so busy lunging from beginning to end, you don't see the pitfalls because you skip right over them. I've set a book in the fall and given my heroine an October birthday, and yet her birthday doesn't get a single mention aside from the sentence where she mentions that she was born during the World Series. And since this is a book about a woman recovering her identity, she'd probably have issues with being alone and divorced on her birthday. Hmm. There's a scene or two right there.

Cardboard foil character needs some work as well. She's basically a cutout evil blonde right this minute. Hero's impossibly heroic, too. Need to bang him up a bit as well. Good. Torture I can manage. Finally, finally I get some movement.

Too bad the novel squirrels are playing hell with my sleep schedule. Can't sleep, so I'm not waking up when I'm most productive. Waking later, so my morning is rushed and crazy. Oy. At least I have some direction now. That's gotta mean something.

Redesign in Progress!

As you can see, we're undergoing a revamping here at the dish. A new look always takes some tinkering, so be looking for expanded book and blog lists as the days pass. Let me know what you think about the new look!

Revision Blues

I used to be so positive about revising. I loved printing out copies of a draft on the backs of old paper, whipping out a favored pen--in purple, turquoise, hot pink, or some other fun color--and having at it. Revised pages had notations, additions, scribbles up the margins and on the back, arrows pointing hither and yon as I moved around sentences and paragraphs. With my first book, my key revision tools were a pair of scissors and a roll of Scotch tape. I literally cut-and-pasted the opening to that book to cure a bad case of backstory dump.

Now I'm in the doldrums, to borrow an image from one of my favorite children's books. I can't seem to move forward or back. My tools have upgraded since the scissors and paste days (all hail Scrivener!), but now the process is bogging down. I'm not sure exactly why, but I suspect the culprit is (gulp) NaNoWriMo.

A peek at the sidebar lists three books, all in the revision stage. These three books were all birthed during the frenzy that is NaNoWriMo. None is complete. Their stories are--I did manage to get to "The End" on all of them, but they're in varying states of crazy. Read long enough, and you'll find plenty of all-caps notations like SOMETHING NEEDS TO HAPPEN HERE or NEEDS A BETTER TRANSITION or something like that. My mind knew where to go, but NaNo doesn't provide you with enough time to mull over things, and let me say, my natural writing process involves lots of mulling. I spend twice, even three times as much time thinking over a chapter as I do committing it to paper.

I think the problem lies in the discovery. I am a seat-of-the-pants style writer. I have a general idea of where I'm going (usually a very clear opening scene and an equally clear closing scene, with a lot of mist in the middle), so I've found it easy to write a general synopsis of the book. As I go along, ideas will pop up that I incorporate into that bare skeleton. I used to cut up the synopsis, too--I'd tape pieces onto separate sheets of paper representing future chapters, then when inspiration struck, I'd scribble that dialogue snippet or piece of business on the appropriate chapter and go on my merry way. In that way, Scrivener works as an electronic replacement of my battered red clipboard. I can jot ideas on a new card and rearrange at will as the book takes shape. I'd keep at this, chapter by chapter, as surprises revealed themselves, characters did unexpected things, and odd bits of business found their homes. Writing that way, every book built momentum toward the conclusion I'd already envisioned, and first drafts were darned close to finished length. Then, out came the pens.

Now, I have three "finished" plots, thanks to NaNoWriMo, and the revision has been painful. I think my brain thinks those books are complete and doesn't really want to fool much with them. Of course, when you reread you find all kinds of wrong that need fixing, but it takes so much longer than it used to (or seems, anyway). It's not fun. And I used to be the "Revision is FUN!" poster girl. Hmm.

So, do I abandon NaNo and the rush of getting something completed, or go back to my old, slow ways? Anyone else out there have the same issues? mimi could use some help.

Emo Vampires

My thoughts exactly. Sort of. "I'll be back when the world grows a pair...of fangs." *snerk*

No, No, NaNo

Alas, mimi has come to the devastating decision that she will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. This is where mimi's latent OCD rears its ugly head because now her three-year streak has been broken. Plus, this year's icon has fun colors instead of last year's barf brown, alas.

However, it's still a barrel of fun, so if you've been pondering, hie on over to the WriMo website, sign in, and dive in. It's fun, you get tons of writing done, and you get a cool web badge like this one to display when you "win."

But not mimi, not this year. She has to stop listening to the siren call of the new hot idea and finish the dang rewrite already. Pray for her. The siren at Chez mimi is awful loud.

Slackerville

mimi has been a very naughty monkey about keeping up with her blog lately. At least twice a week, she has a brilliant idea for a blog topic, and then whammo! Craziness at home or school and it flies out the ol' ear nary to return. Now that the pile of grading is no longer casting a shadow so long she believes she lives in permanent shade, mimi should be better about updates. But you know what they say about "should."

Best Seller ≠ Best Writer

mimi is obsessive when it comes to her reading. If I pick up a book, I generally finish it. Of course, that takes some vetting. I'll browse an opening chapter or back cover copy before I commit (mimi is not a reading ho). Once I commit, though, I'm in 'til the end. Normally, this is a good thing. Unfortunately, not so much with the book I finished last night.

The book in question was a paperback original by a New York Times bestselling author. I've read books by her in the past and enjoyed them. I actually got to meet her this past summer at a publisher-sponsored booksigning, and I'm sorry to say that her personality didn't match her work. One of the most humorless women I've ever met, and that's saying something. But I like books and I like reading and my sister likes her, too, so I went away generally happily with her books. Happily until last night.

The book in question featured a plotline I like, so that was fun. Interesting opening. Then I hit the swamp. Research dumped in, paragraph after paragraph. Brand names sprinkled hither and yon for no discernable effect except to have brand names. Clunky sentences. And I mean clunky. I read one out loud, and my ten-year-old daughter recast it better. An alpha hero who's really an asshat. Bitchy women wearing their "Spunky!" T-shirts who weren't fooling anyone. But I struggled on, and when I got to the end, I didn't get the sigh. Usually I get a sigh. Often, tears. But a sigh, at least, that everything worked out the way it should. This time, not so much. Our heroine wasn't a Mary Sue (although she was close, with all that "My life is so screwed up!!" flailing about), but he was still an asshat at the time he suddenly realized He Loved Her, and she took him anyway. Blech.

The lesson? "NYT Bestseller" on the spine of a book doesn't guarantee a great read, even if it's the type of book you usually adore. Some authors are mean. Having an author brand is no substitute for clean writing and characters who aren't asshats. Sorry, Ms. Author, but you've lost a reader. And mimi's learned some things to apply to her own writing career that she needs to go apply right now.

The Gobi Desert

About 150 pages into her last novel, The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton wrote in her diary,

What is writing a novel like?
1. The beginning: A ride through a spring wood
2. The middle: the Gobi desert
3. The end: A night with a lover
I am now in the Gobi desert.

Honey, I'm camped there with you, and I think the camel ran off.

One plus to meeting tête-a-tête with Dream Agent at RWA National is the immediate feedback on the current projects. One minus is the conversation in all its nonverbal communicative glory...the facial expressions that disabuse you of any hopeful notion you might have concocted from an email exchange or even a phone call. That, alas, was the result. Instead of WIP 1, we're shifting to WIP 2...the one that's stranded in the Gobi sans camel. Urk.

WIP 2, aka "the baseball book," died the death before the end of my second go-round with NaNoWriMo. Great premise, not enough steam. Rereading said WIP during the train ride home, I realized that it suffered from several flaws: the backstory dump. The excessive navel gazing (all women's fiction has a degree of navel gazing, but...). The trips to nowhere. The pointless scenes.

Thankfully, the idea engine is slowly cranking to life. The endless construction project next door to Daddy's house gave me an idea for my foil character. I was able to extend a surprise metaphor and make it work better. The characters are becoming rounder and less cardboard. Okay, so I have to rewrite the whole thing. It can't get sold if I don't, right?

Sadly, Wharton never finished The Buccaneers--she died when she was about 3/5 of the way through. Let's hope the same won't be true for me.

RWA National Recap

Whew! One more RWA National Conference in the rearview mirror. This was a networking year for me, so that meant fewer workshops to report on. Here are some highlights from some of the workshops I did attend:

Outwitting a Muse Who Just Won't Behave - If the girls in the basement (as Barbara Samuel O'Neal is likely to call them) or the squirrels (as I'm likely to call them) are misbehaving, try a vacation. Try an artist's date, listening to music, taking a vacation from writing, and reading in different genres from what you normally write. Eventually, your creative monkeys will be dying to get back to work.

The Serendipitous Spark - What thoughts bring you delicious feelings and joy? Listen to them. Read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink for an appreciation of instant recognition and how you can trust it. Self-care is vital to the creative process and enabling you to hear your inner voice.

You Say Tomato, I Say To-Motto - Determining the motto for your central characters can help you with other story elements like setting, behavior choices and actions, conflict, theme, and character growth. For example, what happens when Mr. Do the Right Thing meets Ms. Life's Short, Eat Dessert First? Distilling your character's motto will help you craft backstory and provide heft and believability to their decisions.

Beyond the Basics: Differences Between YA and Adult - If you're thinking of writing for adolescents, be sure you're asking the right questions. The main thing is to remember that teens are not adults, but don't underestimate them! They are very savvy readers and thinkers. If you think you want to write YA because "those kids today" need some straightenin', then the YA market is not for you (they won't buy what you're pushing). A surprising fact: the YA build for titles is slow, and the publishers expect that. The handout for this is excellent.

Our Favorite Flavors - This workshop compared similarities and differences between romantic suspense, historical, romantic comedy, and paranormal books. Unfortunately, it was cut short because we had to evacuate the building! Fortunately, they had a terrific handout that highlighted their major points.

Although I was pleased with the sessions I attended, the number I attended was down from previous years, partly because I was full-on networking, and partly because the workshop list didn't really blow my skirt up. Guess I need to put up or shut up...so I'll be submitting ideas of my own for next year's conference. Wish me luck!

#writerfail Redux

For all I adore technology, I'm not a first adopter. It took a couple of years before I finally bought a cell phone, and I was practically the last person I knew to start texting. Although I belong to several email loops, I was a Facebook holdout until recently. I'm still on the fence about Twitter. After reading Jennifer Weiner's post about Alice Hoffman and how not to use Twitter at Huffington Post today, looks like I won't purchase my tickets to the Twitterverse anytime soon.

The short version: well-known novelist Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic, Here on Earth, and many more titles) erm, disagreed with her hometown paper's review of her latest novel, The Story Sisters. Maybe disagreed isn't the word, for her response went way beyond mere disagreement. After unloading on the critic and the paper in a series of tweets, she finally tweeted the critic's name and phone number and encouraged her readers to call up Mean Ms. Critic and complain. Vociferously. Then she nuked her Twitter account and sulked off for some pasta with a chocolate chaser. (I guess. Okay, I'm projecting here. That's what I do when the mean girl hurts my feelings.)

The lesson to be learned from all this, writer friends, is that you don't have to be unpublished to suffer from a classic #writerfail. Unlike the yet-to-be-published crowd I carped about in my earlier #writerfail post, Ms. Hoffman has "made it." She's a bestselling, multi-published author. A couple of her books have been made into movies. She's allegedly reaping the glorious benefits of publication, yet her Twittersnit proves that on the inside, she's no different from the rest of us when it comes to her work. She's defensive, cranky, and willing to lash out to protect the baby.

And that's the problem, isn't it? I marvel sometimes that I, and fellow writers, get so bent out of shape when faced with conclusive proof of our lack of universal acclaim (rejection, bad review, hack-and-slash critique session, etc.). As readers, we're quick to reject and belittle writers and genres we just don't care for, so why should we, as writers, take everything so freakin' personally when faced with the fact that some reader out there just doesn't like us? We can't all be the popular girl at the dance. Right now, all the cute boys (NY publishers) are dancing with the hot goth chicks (the paranormal/urban fantasy writers) and the edgy techno boys (e-publishers) are making out with the erotica gals while we romantic comedies/chick lits/Western historicals sigh at the ceiling at the edges of the publishing gym. Our lack of dance partners doesn't make us any less wonderful, just not the flavor of the month. And seriously, people who get all cranky about getting their coffee just so don't have any business acting like spoiled brats when someone else expresses a preference.

Perhaps that kind of reaction is self-inflicted. We writers go on about how our current WIP is our "baby" and then react like tigresses when we realize someone thinks it looks like a lizard. Someone will. That's the nature of the beast. The big question is, are you writer enough to write for yourself? If so, a bad review won't be the end of the world, or the beginning of an online snit that will last into time and all eternity. If you're writer enough, you're already worrying about the next project.

So what have we learned today? Write what you know. Write what you love. Learn the Southern belle's secret weapon: the indulgent smile. Practice saying, "Bless your heart" instead of "F you." And for goodness' sake, eat the pasta and chocolate before you tweet.

Off to the Races

The reworked idea for The Five Step Plan and the proposal for Life After Little League are now on their way to Dream Agent. Let's hope she's happier with the rework--if she is, I can salvage some main story elements. If not, we're talking total rebuild (which I'm not wanting to do, but...). Now I'm back to the YA ideas. Who knew designing an entire fictional high school would be so complicated! That "write what you know" advice sure can throw a wrench in the works when you're not looking.