Do you, too, suffer from irregularity?

Since we’ve been TERRIBLE about keeping up with our blog, a quick update: we’ve received our first rejection. Yes, it was a form letter, but it was extremely polite for a rejection. Sort of takes the sting out when people are nice.  

So it’s back to the drawing board researching and finding other agents to send it to. Actually, I should have been doing that all along, but summer has been really good to me, getting a lot done outside. Once the heat drives me indoors, I’ll be spending more time on the computer and hopefully keep up with the blogs a bit better. And agent queries.

Until then, thank you for keeping up with us even though we’ve been less than regular. Irregular.

Those of you who know me well might be expecting a Metamucil joke now. Ha! Fooled you!

Hiatus? No, not really...

“So, are you and Larry on hiatus?” a friend of mine asked at lunch.

I chewed my lettuce more slowly while I thought about the answer. “No, we’re just really, really slow writers.”

Which got me to thinking…I’m not really a slow writer. I’m a slow idea-generator. And Larry? You’ll have to ask him.

Since we started Book Two, we’ve been churning out a scene about every two weeks. At that rate, it’ll take us about five years to complete Book Two. Actually, that’s how long Book One took. Although, we did take a hiatus while I went back to school.

Maybe it just SEEMS slower than the first one. On it we didn’t pick up the pace and begin producing a chapter a month until close to the end. We were motivated. The end was in sight!

Right now, we’re at the beginning, maybe 30 pages in, and moving at a drunken slug’s pace. Sprinkled with salt. On a sunny day. It won’t last. Once we get a few more chapters under our belt and all of the characters introduced, we’ll be able to pick up the pace. Maybe instead of five years, it’ll take, oh….I don’t know…let’s go with ‘fewer’.

In the mean time, I’m back to researching agents and hopefully (this time, I know I’ve sad it before) get our manuscript submitted somewhere. I have a few names I’m considering and a query letter almost complete. Just a few tweaks.

And instead of spending five years on tweaks, I aim to actually take…

…fewer.

She purports...

“She purports that…”

“Wait, what was that word?”

“Purports.”

“Oh, reports.”

“No, purports. P-U-R-P-O-R-T-S”

“Never heard that. What does it mean?”

“Claims. Well, claims implies it isn’t true. Says? Reports? Yeah, reports probably works.”

He sat there looking at me with his mouth open. “Then why not just say it?”

“It didn’t occur to me you wouldn’t know purports.”

Then that very night I saw purports in a book I was reading. See? I’m not the only one who uses it. Vindication is mine!

Word choice. The English language affords us endless opportunity to tweak a meaning or add connotation. The word “dispatch”for instance. Connotation implies a stressful, busy, loud environment. Which is why I didn’t apply for a job I was qualified for. Give me a quiet cube in the corner, and I’m golden.

New words are fun to learn, and generally you can glean the meaning from the context of the sentence. But every now and then I run across an author that really annoys me by throwing in LOTS of words I don’t know. Depending on my mood and access to a dictionary I’ll either tough it out and hope they stop or just put the book down.

So I guess the lesson I learned here is to keep in mind my audience when I’m both talking and writing.

And now I know my audience knows the word purports!

“Excuses, excuses! Just sit down and write!” Not sure if that’s my own internal beratement or if somebody actually said that aloud but it’s been racquetballing around in my head a lot the last two weeks.

Blogs don’t come easy to me, but usually I have at least a germ of an idea that I can develop into something. Met with Larry yesterday and some germination finally took place. Maybe the disconnect of distance between us has dulled my creative blogging spark.

We’ve been working on our second book, and I use the word “working” very loosely. He’s mostly retired, but has a job, and I’m actively looking for work (preparing for and going to interviews is mentally EXHAUSTING, particularly when you keep getting Dear John letters). We both have other irons in the fire, so sitting at a computer and producing endlessly riotous passages slips to the wayside.

Maybe I haven’t been writing because of an annoying health condition that leaves me exhausted and/or listless after what most people would consider a “normal” amount of activity.  Also, there are the chronic migraines which are a separate health issue, but equally debilitating. So I might have two good weeks a month where I feel mentally sound and physically capable during which I race around catching up on all the chores I wasn’t able to do when my health had me down.

So, are my conditions excuses or reasons not to write?

Even for me, that’s hard to say. Are my headaches really always that bad? This week they have been. I’ve been fighting a string of them since Saturday (four days). Even now I need a pain pill, but keep putting it off because they make me loopy and I fear addiction.

Other days I just flat out forget. That’s right, those catch-up days when I feel well enough to be outside doing yard work I forget to fit writing into my schedule. Then I sit down at the end of the day, tired but feeling good about my physical accomplishments, and it occurs to me, “When was the last time I blogged?”

Reasons or Excuses?

Only I know for me, and only you know for you. Don’t let writing snobs make you feel bad when they say, “If you want to, you’ll figure out a way.” They haven’t jogged a mile in your Keds.

Only you know. Just be honest with yourself. 

Who messed with my agent list?

Monday, March 25^th, I decided: “This week I’m getting our book off to at least one agent!” Still in my pajamas, I tromped off to the computer full of committed drive and caffeine. Larry and I had already perfected a pitch, and I had a whole week. How hard could that be?

I decided to research agents as much as I could and select several potentials, because Rejection is Publishing’s middle name, right? A couple of days later I’d researched until my eyes ached and my back rebelled. Time for a break. Go outside and enjoy the sun. I had three more days. Plenty of time.

Unfortunately, Life has a way of interfering, and it did. A lot.

So last week I was back to, “This week I’m getting our book off to at least one agent!” I pulled up my list of agents, chose one, went to the website to confirm submission guidelines, and…

…couldn’t for the life of me remember why I’d chosen this guy. I scanned through the rest of my list thinking I’d just written down the wrong name. Turned out, I couldn’t remember why I’d chosen the next guy, either.

Frustrated, I sent an e-mail to a writing friend of mine, and she made me feel a tad better. She said, “Scary, isn't it? How you put all this time and effort and know-how into researching the perfect agent...then you leave it and come back and wonder who tampered with your list, 'cause else, What Were You Thinking?”

The following day, I went back to my list and found somebody I DID remember. So I reread through submission guidelines, and he said to include the target market and why our book is unique.

Our book is very unique, so that ought to be easy. Right?

Not so much when I tried to put it into words. It was easy to pick out ways that it’s similar to Tim Dorsey or similar to Dave Barry—quirky characters who get themselves into unlikely situations and we laugh while they take care of the bad guys.

This morning I decided, “This week I’m getting our book off to at least one agent!” I still have to write how our book is unique, but that’ll be easier having picked one of my beta reader’s brains over the weekend. I have a few more brains to pick for more clues, but by the end of the week I should have enough fodder to finish the letter.

Hopefully it’ll really happen this week. At any rate, once I produce the paragraph I need, I can include it in all pitch letters bettering our chances for acceptance. For me, writing can’t be rushed, which is why journalism never appealed to me. Paul Masson said, “No wine before its time.” Becky Lawson says, “No query before its time.”

How many !!! are enough?

I just remembered that I have a blog due! Tough to write a blog when I haven’t really been doing any writing! I’m still researching for a project and research basically means reading, and this was a book on poltergeists!

And in my reading I’ve discovered I really hate exclamation points!

Seriously!

I’m not kidding!

The poltergeist book writer includes so many !!! that it’s distracting. The subject matter itself is enough to make the stories dramatic. He does not need exclamation points!

Kinda makes me wonder how I’ve used them in my blogs. I’ve always felt that if you can’t get the emphasis across without !!!, then maybe you need to rework your sentence. If that doesn’t work, then maybe there’s a bigger problem, so look at your scene. What’s supposed to be causing tension? Use that to make your point not an exclamation point.

There are of course exceptions, and even though I made “exception” plural, I can really think of only one—they’re okay to use in dialogue. Sometimes. For instance, maybe there is more than one way a character’s statement can be taken.

Let’s say you’re having a party. And your buddy brings over that strange girlfriend who drama queens everything. The easy-going, well tanned body builder says. “Dude! Your dog pooped on the floor!” Granted, it’s a big dog, so it’s a pretty big pile of poo. But it’s not big deal. You head for the kitchen for carpet cleaner and a roll of paper towels. That’s when the drama queen pipes up. “He pooped on the carpet? Oh no! How will you ever get it out? That stuff won’t work, you’ll need to steam clean it! Nathan tell him! He’ll have to have it steam cleaned!” Of course you can see the whites all the way around her irises and her earnest expression makes you roll your eyes and chew your lip as you spritz.

So basically, if your character is a drama queen you want to have to have overreacting to something fairly tame, then throw in an exclamation point. But use them sparingly, like hot pepper flakes on pizza. Easy to overdo. I overdid it in my example because I love hot pepper flakes. Clears the sinuses, especially in the spring when I’ve been working in the yard.

Dang it. That reminds me, I have yard work to do. You know what that means? Pizza for supper!

         

Monkey Wrenches and Stirred Pots

“Our story is boring.” Larry has said this to me a couple of times recently. Thing is, I totally agree. Our second book is starting out to the tune of a big snore.

Since we’re writing as Pantsters, there isn’t anything guiding us. I think the reason we did so well with the first one is because it started with action and it didn’t let up. We had something guiding us—questions. Who is trying to kill Casey? Why did they want him dead? These questions presented themselves early and often and led to all kinds of amusing and occasionally gruesome situations.

But this story? The only question I’m asking is, “Where is this going?”

Part of the reason we don’t know is that we agreed we wouldn’t pigeon hole it into a genre. We’d just let it flow and see where it went. Well, now both of us agree it’s not going anywhere. You can’t string together a bunch of amusing anecdotes and call it a book—at least not a good book.

So I stirred the pot and took the story in an unexpected direction. Can’t tell you what it is now, because I haven’t heard back from Larry. Which means 1) he really, REALLY hates it, or 2) he’s just been busy. And if he really, REALLY hates it, then we have to talk. We both have to like what’s happening, because if we don’t, our mood will reflect into the tone of our scenes and ultimately, the whole story.

That’s what happens when you have a partner. If it were only me, I’d have thrown in something bloody and gruesome early on. If it was Larry, he’d have thrown in a hard-bodied woman wearing a short dress and a potential love interest. I’m drama and gore and he’s romantic comedy. That’s just the way we roll.

Interestingly enough, that’s what made our last book so good. He tempered my characters’ enthusiastic bloodlust and I tempered his characters’ innate need for romance into a romantic-thriller-comedy-drama-esque story, although it’s true genre is mystery.

Now into the second book, you’d think that we’d have learned what works and start this one out with a bang. Apparently not. And although I don’t think that necessarily makes us slow learners, it makes us Pantsters. Pantsters rarely know where they’re going. It’s the nature of the beast.

It’s also the nature of discovery-—of uncovering something fun and vital that has a life of its own and drags the writer along for the ride.

So far, this one doesn’t, but hopefully with the twist I’ve thrown in, it will give us questions to answer that will get us through the rest of the book.

That is if Larry doesn’t really, REALLY hate it.