"Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs." ~ Michael Chabon
"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on." ~Louis L'Amour
"As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall." ~Virginia Woolf
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." ~C.S. Lewis
"The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative." ~Doris Lessing
"Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer's life."
~Stephen King
"You know, I'm a storyteller. We are storytellers. And ours is an ancient tradition, contemporized by the cinema and the capturing of light. And we should all be very proud of our place in society. On any given night, millions of people across the world buy a ticket for adventures that only we as storytellers can provide. We release burdens, we galvanize emotions, we make people laugh, we make people talk over breakfast. This is a great job and I want to encourage every one of you in this room to give everything you can to the story. God bless narrative. God bless originality."
~Russell
Crowe
2002 SAG Award Winner
"When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
~Kurt Vonnegut
"Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done." ~Anne Lamott
"America is now wholly given over to a d****d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand." ~Hawthorne's 1855 letter to his publisher William D. Ticknor, quoted in Pattee, Fred L. The Feminine Fifties. NY: Appleton-Century Co., 1940. p. 110.
A xebec was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading. It would have a long overhanging bowsprit and protruding mizzen mast. It also can refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.
The value of mental-training games may be speculative, as Dan Hurley writes in his article on the quest to make ourselves smarter, but there is another, easy-to-achieve, scientifically proven way to make yourself smarter. Go for a walk or a swim. For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower. But the newest findings make it clear that this isn’t just a relationship; it is the relationship. Using sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons — and the makeup of brain matter itself — scientists in just the past few months have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility. Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does.
My good friend Loreth Anne White sent me a link to this article from which I’ve snipped the above. I’ve talked before about how much I love walking. As long as it’s outdoors. Because I cannot STAND to walk on the treadmill. So stupid when I could be in the air conditioned living room watching the big screen TV. Walking to me is about being outdoors. Usually in the sunshine and slathered in sunscreen, but even gloomy days will do, and misty days, and frosty cold ones, which we almost never get here.
I can’t even tell you how many words I’ve dictated while walking. I used to walk at lunch while working the day job, sometimes on the downtown streets, sometimes on the health club track. I specifically remember dictating a lot of LOVE IN BLOOM on that track. And I’ve walked the dogs in the neighborhood and dictated, two birds with one stone, and all. I’m quite sure people think I’m strange, but moving doesn’t require thought, so it’s the perfect time to let the muse have her way. And then there’s the part about my brain working better, and having more energy, and sleeping like a baby, and not wanting to turn to junk food (or at least as much) when I’m stressed.
I’ve slacked off the last few months, but am determined to get back to it. I feel amazing when I’m moving, even if it makes it doubly hard to sit and write when done!
From my backyard (and yes I know they’re really fruit, but I’m all about the irony)! Click for the bigger versions, which are pretty good considering I used my Blackberry!
UNDENIABLE (available now for pre-order in print at Amazon and Barnes & Noble; electronic versions to come closer to release date) will be released October 2, 2012 from Berkley Heat. Heat is Berkley’s erotic romance imprint, and they publish such authors as Lauren Dane and Jaci Burton, and many many more. This means Undeniable is quite hot and spicy, a bit of 50 Shades of Grey on horseback, as it were – or at least in a barn, though now that I think about it, that sex scene is in the second book of the series. Though both couples do make creative use of pickup trucks!
This makes it a bit hard to give a sexy excerpt but I’ve posted a short PG-13 rated one after the cut.
Several weeks ago when I was complaining about my back being stiff after a long day of writing to a deadline, the husband dared challenged me to do a series of toe touches to stretch. (And honestly, I meant to include “stretch” in Saturday’s S sampler.) I guess he didn’t think I could, but I can. I can bend at the waist with straight legs and put my hands flat on the floor. I’ve always been very flexible. No idea why. So I did them. Maybe ten. And then later I did ten more. And then I got to the point where every time I got up from the computer – to use the restroom, to get a drink or lunch, to walk outside and say hi to the cats, to put in a load of laundry, to check the mail – the first thing I did when I stood up was to do twenty or so toe touches. My back has stopped hurting completely. I don’t groan when I stand up from the desk, but I also don’t sit for more than thirty minutes at a time. And I’ve learned after the week spent at the dining room table doing taxes and killing my shoulder in the process, that these days, I really do need to write at my desk. It’s not particularly ergonomic, or at least not planned to be, but it keeps me from aching in all the wrong places. I’ve had the same desk chair for ten years at least, and I love it. It’s a standard secretarial model, but it’s got a big wide seat for my big wide seat. I still like to write in the backyard, but these days I find I need to use pen and paper because neither my laptop or Alphasmart can be situated at the right angle to keep my wrists from complaining. It sucks getting old and decrepit, but I’ve got to say, toe touches have saved me a lot of pain and suffering. Just taking those few minutes several times throughout the day has helped my back, my shoulders, my arms and my legs. And it’s so easy! No gym or even shoes required!
Sunshine
I don’t know why, but my writing flows so much better when the sun is shining. I’m sure it’s the natural light fighting the mild case of SAD I get when the weather is gloomy. I could never live in Seattle, heh, so I grin and bear the heat of the Texas summers.
Sleep
I’m very fortunate to work from home on my schedule. My kids are grown and gone, my husband doesn’t leave for the office until 9:30, getting home around 7:00. I don’t set an alarm clock any longer. I did for a gazillion years. I’m finally sleeping enough to keep my brain functioning at its best, and it’s showing in my work. It’s cleaner, deeper, more thoughtful. I lost many hours of sleep in the past, writing at 3:00 a.m. before leaving for the day job, and I know many many authors write on similar schedules. But sleep is vital. get as much as you can! And if you don’t believe me, there’s this study:
Belenky’s high-tech brain images show that sleep debt decreases the entire brain’s ability to function — most significantly impairing the areas of the brain responsible for attention, complex planning, complex mental operations, and judgement.
Support System
Every writer needs a strong support system, though not every writer will find it in the same place. Again, I’m very fortunate that my husband is behind me 100% through all the industry ups and downs. I also have a handful of close writer friends to whom I can say anything about what’s happening in our careers. The trust network we share is invaluable.
Slow and Steady
I’m not a speedy writer. I don’t fast draft. In my entire career I’ve written 20 pages in a day one single time. I’m comfortable at 5. Maybe 7. But I also polish as I go. It’s how my brain works. When I get to the end of a book, I’m done. Slow and steady works for me, and my process is exactly how James Rollins describes his in the video below.
The wind was brittle, bitterly cold. She sat on the park bench, waiting, the wool of her coat and pants no match for the cold seeping up from the cement. Her toes were frosty, her fingertips near to frozen, her breath formed a cloud when she exhaled into the cold air.
Yes, I wrote that. Just now. With very little thought. Yet if I saw that same paragraph in a book I would grumble. If I saw it in one of my own finished works, I would weep (and I have, because no matter how many editing passes, bits of bad writing always slip through)! Why? Because of the overuse of the word cold in that one single paragraph. It’s unnecessary and smacks of inattention. I once read a paragraph on the first page of a book that described a character’s short white skirt three times. Again. Unnecessary. We got that it’s short and white the first time, just like we got that it’s cold outside up above in the first line. This is, for me, what comes out in my first draft. When revising, I’ll roll my eyes when I run across passages such as this. I was in the moment while writing. I was feeling the cold. I wasn’t thinking about word choice as much as sensation. The words frigid, frosty, chilly, or icy were out of reach. During revisions, however, I will rewrite and rework to keep the above from happening. And, yes, this sort of repetition is totally different than words or phrases repeated purposefully for rhythm or emphasis. The above is just lazy writing. It’s so so SO easy to make different word choices, to give a different feeling to the snippet with an evocative selection of descriptive words.
The wind was brittle, bitterly cold. She sat on the park bench, waiting, the wool of her coat and pants no match for the icy chill seeping up from the cement. Her toes were frosty, her fingertips near to frozen, her breath formed a cloud when she exhaled into the frigid, biting air.
"Every time you write, you go to a construction site in your head. The words are waiting there, like a couple truckloads of loose bricks. They're not going to build themselves into anything, no matter how often you talk to your hands or mouth-breathe or get in touch with your inner Tinkerbell. You pick up the bricks. You mortar them together on a page. You build a story out of them. And that's it. The sweaty, nerve-wracking, non-glittery, unglamorous, orc-free work of writing."
~Paperback Writer
"Writing’s not rocket science. It’s a helluva lot harder. Because once you learn all that rocket science crap, you can (at least in theory) build a rocket. On the other hand, you can read every writing book known to man and attend classes and work with critique partners and get pages of editorial input and still end up with a book that doesn’t quite hit the high notes. Scary, but true." ~Karen Templeton
"My New Year's resolution is to focus on the book and forget all the crap that surrounds the writing business. To lose myself in a story, and not give a damn if it makes any lists, has a good sell-through, gets glowing reviews on Amazon, pleases my editors, hell, even pleases my readers. I want to love what I'm writing so much that none of the rest of it matters, and if I don't, I won't write it. Life's too short to abuse the muse." ~Anne Stuart
my hands flat on the floor. I’ve always been very flexible. No idea why. So I did them. Maybe ten. And then later I did ten more. And then I got to the point where every time I got up from the computer – to use the restroom, to get a drink or lunch, to walk outside and say hi to the cats, to put in a load of laundry, to check the mail – the first thing I did when I stood up was to do twenty or so toe touches. My back has stopped hurting completely. I don’t groan when I stand up from the desk, but I also don’t sit for more than thirty minutes at a time. And I’ve learned after the week spent at the dining room table doing taxes and killing my shoulder in the process, that these days, I really do need to write at my desk. It’s not particularly ergonomic, or at least not planned to be, but it keeps me from aching in all the wrong places. I’ve had the same desk chair for ten years at least, and I love it. It’s a standard secretarial model, but it’s got a big wide seat for my big wide seat. I still like to write in the backyard, but these days I find I need to use pen and paper because neither my laptop or Alphasmart can be situated at the right angle to keep my wrists from complaining. It sucks getting old and decrepit, but I’ve got to say, toe touches have saved me a lot of pain and suffering. Just taking those few minutes several times throughout the day has helped my back, my shoulders, my arms and my legs. And it’s so easy! No gym or even shoes required!
a character’s short white skirt three times. Again. Unnecessary. We got that it’s short and white the first time, just like we got that it’s cold outside up above in the first line. This is, for me, what comes out in my first draft. When revising, I’ll roll my eyes when I run across passages such as this. I was in the moment while writing. I was feeling the cold. I wasn’t thinking about word choice as much as sensation. The words frigid, frosty, chilly, or icy were out of reach. During revisions, however, I will rewrite and rework to keep the above from happening. And, yes, this sort of repetition is totally different than words or phrases repeated purposefully for rhythm or emphasis. The above is just lazy writing. It’s so so SO easy to make different word choices, to give a different feeling to the snippet with an evocative selection of descriptive words.
