Tag Archive for: Final Approach

Please Like Me Anyway

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by Rachel Brady

Three things never get easier for me:

1. Small talk
2. Fundraising
3. Book promotion

I can’t grow plants, carry a tune, or do plenty of other things either, but the things on this list seem to present the most handicaps for me in life.

Small talk is tiring. Expending energy to have non-conversations exhausts me. I prefer to save my enthusiasm for other exchanges that actually have a point, or at least some real, honest-to-goodness entertainment value.


Fundraising is an enigmatic blend of Love and Hate. I want to support all my causes and be a part of the solution, but how do I do that without annoying humankind? I don’t like making shoppers avoid eye contact or causing homeowners to feign absenteeism when I ring their doorbells. (“Just give me your order forms, kids. I’ll buy all the cookies myself.”)

But the worst is book promotion. Don’t tell my publisher, but I would rather stab myself in the eye with a pencil.

My first book was in print before I told anyone I knew that I liked to write. Admitting to trying to write a novel felt pompous somehow, so I did all my writing in secret. This was fine until it actually got published. Then I wanted everyone to know. But I didn’t want to have to be the one to tell them. It is strange how something that was personally so rewarding also made me extremely self-conscious.

Letting the world know that a new book is out, for me, sounds something like this: “I wrote a book and I hope you will read and enjoy it but don’t misunderstand me I’m not pressuring you to buy it oh nevermind forget I brought it up please like me anyway here’s my card.”

In publishing, they tell us that nobody will buy a book they don’t know exists. Authors are encouraged to market ourselves, speak widely (I think this includes small talk), maintain a web presence, use Facebook, tweet like crazy people, place ads, schmooze, network, hob-nob, and wash cars on street corners in bikinis. Whatever it takes to get the word out.

It really suits some people. For me, everything about book promotion feels uncomfortable and awkward so I’m trying to think of creative ways to get other people to do it for me. I’m bartering books for banter over at my blog for the next week. And I would would really appreciate it if you guys would stop over and help me out.

I’ll give away a book here today too. Leave a comment to enter. It shouldn’t be a pep talk like, “Go get ’em! Be confident!” because that doesn’t work on me. Rather, I think the signed copy will go to the commenter with the best “Foot in Mouth” story. Because, really. Who doesn’t enjoy a good Foot in Mouth story?

One last thing. If you are a librarian or book club groupie, or if you know one, I always have a standing offer to send a signed copy of either of my titles to folks who introduce Emily Locke to their reading groups.

This concludes my awkward “I have a new book out” post. Please like me anyway.

She Said/She Said: Sixteen Degrees of Separation

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She Said/She Said: Sixteen Degrees of Separation by Maggie Barbieri and Rachel Brady

We’re doing this blog a little differently today because I had the pleasure of sharing a hotel room this past weekend with the lovely and talented Rachel Brady. The song asks “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” and insinuates that it’s Mary Richards, but I’m here to tell you that it’s Rachel Brady. A more positive and uplifting person you will never meet. Besides the whole getting up in the morning to exercise thing, I thought we would be completely compatible as roomies.

I was wrong.

I checked into the room around dinner time on Thursday night after a five hour drive to D.C. The air outside was thick and muggy, unseasonably warm for a night in late April. When I entered the room, I felt as if I had entered a cabana in Belize, moisture dripping from the humidity affixed to the plate glass window overlooking the street below. Surely, Rachel wouldn’t want to be melting in this incredible heat, not to mention having her already-curly and gorgeous hair grow in size from just two minutes in the room? Before even stopping in the restroom (something I do frequently, if only to wash my hands, as Rachel learned), I headed to the thermostat and promptly dropped the temperature from seventy-four degrees to fifty-eight degrees. In about fifteen minutes, the room had that lovely arctic chill that I have come to expect in all of my sleeping quarters. (And yes, my husband sleeps in sweatpants and sweatshirts most of the time so as not to succumb to hypothermia.)

I immediately got into bed with a bag of pretzels and a glass of wine and proceeded to watch television until Rachel showed up a little after nine o’clock. As I had predicted to her when we first spoke, I was almost asleep even though she was still full of energy and ready to head down to the bar.

She was kind enough not to mention that the temperature in the room was akin to that in a meat locker and hastily retreated to the lobby bar where drinks—and heat—were in abundance.

I fell asleep as soon as she left, peaceful under the down comforter, and clad in fleece pajama pants. Some time around two in the morning, I awoke in a pool of my own sweat, wondering how the temperature in the room could have shot up so dramatically in such a short period of time. Now, Rachel’s hot, but was she that hot?

The next morning, I checked the thermostat, set to seventy-four degrees. After some tense interrogation, Rachel admitted that she had nearly frozen to death in bed and got up, using her cell phone as a flashlight, and turned the temperature to seventy-four.

We were sixteen degrees apart in the comfort zone.

We negotiated. I cajoled. Rachel cried. I think I passed out at one point. How could we reach consensus? Finally, we decided that we would set the temperature at sixty-four, even though that was way too hot for me and way too cold for her.

Did I mention that Rachel’s an engineer by day? Did I mention that I can only fiddle with things, or fix them, if I have a butter knife? I’m not accusing her outright, but the temperature was set at seventy for the entire weekend and I couldn’t figure out how to lower it.

Coincidence? I will let you decide.

~ ~ ~

Hmmm. Rachel here. That is not exactly how I remember it. Except for the complimentary parts. Let’s go with those. (Thanks, Maggie! )

This is what really happened.

I rolled in sometime after nine on Thursday and found Maggie cozied up in bed, watching TV in our room. We spent a few minutes catching up and talked about all sorts of stuff, but the only piece relevant here is her passing remark that she “could sleep with the window open when it is 35 degrees outside.” She said it drove her husband nuts.

“You mean you leave it open a crack, for fresh air?”
“No,” she said. “I pretty much leave it wide open. Then he closes it during the night and I wake up sweating.”

Soon afterward, I went down to the bar to see which of my writer friends I could find. An hour or two later, I came back to the room. Maggie was sleeping.

And it was nippy.

My epiphany came on slowly. Under a thick comforter, in flannel pj pants and a cotton tee, and even wearing socks, at first I didn’t know just how cold I was. Thought I could gut it out. Have you ever been so cold in your bed that you don’t want to roll over because then you will have to warm up a new cold spot, and it’s just too dang cold to suffer through that process again?

Most of me thought that the room temp was probably due to some glitch in the thermostat’s auto timing feature. I didn’t remember seeing my breath earlier when I’d brought up my bag.

But a small, kind of worried part of me feared that maybe Maggie hadn’t been exaggerating about that 35 degree, open window remark.

What to do.

If it were an auto-timer glitch, I might shiver needlessly all night. If she’d done it on purpose and I switched it back, she would sweat all night instead.

Better her than me.

Maggie had a good sleep going. I decided to fix the temp and then just play dumb later if she brought it up. The room was pitch black, so by light of my open cell phone, I crept to the thermostat, aimed my phone at it, and was surprised and horrified to find it set at 64 degrees. Definitely, an auto timer glitch then.

I changed it to 74 and went back to bed. In the morning, I confessed all to Maggie. She said, “Oh that. I actually prefer 58 degrees but I thought I’d meet you in the middle.”

?!

I did math. “That means you think 70 is room temperature to regular people. This is sixteen degrees of separation.”

A long discussion ensued, mostly through tears of laughter. We knew we had Wednesday’s blog covered.

Maybe living in Texas has made me soft. But I offer this evidence in my defense, Maggie. Just sayin’.

I should also add here that Maggie is unequivocally the more gracious and flexible of the two of us, meeting me far to the right of Middle, usually at 70 degrees.

Interesting paradox there. One of the coldest rooms I’ve ever encountered, but one of the warmest friends.


From the Trenches: When Every NaNo Second Counts

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Monday, the last day of November, will end National Novel Writing Month, also called NaNoWriMo, or for those beaten down by its grueling schedule who can no longer manage the extra syllables, just NaNo.

Every November for the last ten years, crazy writers worldwide have undertaken Chris Baty’s challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Novels in their completed form, like the one you’re probably reading this week, are usually between 70,000-90,000 words and, generally speaking, many authors produce a book each year. So while 50,000 words is short by industry standards for book-length fiction, it’s gargantuan in terms of what most writers can swing in thirty days.

In his own 50,000 word book No Plot? No Problem! Baty explains how this mammoth task can be tackled. The book is a riot and I found it totally uplifting and inspiring. Even if you think you’ll never participate in NaNoWriMo I’d highly recommend his entertaining book for people who want to shake up their writing routines.

To summarize: During the month of November, writers put down 50,000 words—no editing allowed. He stresses that there is a time for writing (November) and a time for editing (December and onward). When we write passages that will never make the cut, rather than delete them, we are to italicize them. This is how we’ll know what to take out later. But for November, all the words stay in the manuscript because the name of the game is output, not quality.

Between you and me, I italicized thousands of words this month.

Professional writers fall on both sides of the NaNo fence. Some say it’s better to write carefully and well, editing as you go, because there will be less work waiting during the revision phase. Others embrace the stream-of-consciousness approach and say that there’s a creative part and an editing part to the writing process, and that when we’re being creative we must suppress our inner critic.

At Bouchercon, I talked to writers from both camps and told them I was planning to do NaNoWriMo this year. Half of them told me to go for it. The others cautioned that it was the worst thing I could do. But my mind was already made up.

I’d known about NaNoWriMo for years but had never tried it because in previous Novembers I’d always been in the middle of a project. The idea behind the exercise is not to write 50,000 more words of a project you’ve already started, but rather to start from scratch. As it happened, this year I finished the first draft of one project in October, which left November ripe for the picking. I figured all I had to lose was one month, and my writing output being what it normally is (not much) this was a no-brainer. I had nothing to lose and a potential story thread to gain.

The reason I decided to do it is because I’m a chronic over-editor. If I don’t force myself to move on in a story, I will tweak and improve and play around with early chapters forever, at the expense of not producing anything new. This doesn’t make the revision process faster, either, as those Bouchercon writers suggested it would. In the last book I wrote, for example, I massaged the early chapters until I thought they were absolutely perfect. Then my cherished critique partner convinced me to start the novel in Chapter Four. (He was right.) So where’s the economy in that?

No, the reason NaNoWriMo appealed to me is that I had a vague, general idea about what I wanted to write about in my next book. I wanted to write a mystery based on a love affair and I wanted to set it at a hockey rink. Being a mystery, someone would die, but I didn’t know who, or why, or how. This is not the sort of ambiguity upon which my editor looks favorably.

The first step of starting a new book is sending her a synopsis. In a synopsis, we basically tell the whole story to our editors in a couple of pages, including the twists, misdirections, and ending—none of which I had—and this way we can find out ahead of time if something major should be changed before we spend the next year wandering off into the weeds. So my reason for jumping into NaNo was to figure out what was going to happen in the book. I didn’t actually plan to use any passages I produced because I believed Chris Baty when he said, “Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap.” (I’m here to tell you he was right.) Rather, for me, NaNo would be a success if I came away with enough material to kluge a synopsis.

Enter real life. A few weeks ago, a colleague remarked that he thinks I organize my thoughts by writing. We were talking about the scientific papers we co-author, but his observation struck me as applicable for my fiction too. I decided that if I was lucky, I’d come out of NaNo with a 50,000 word outline, basically. I was willing to throw away all those words if my thoughts about the next book would finally be organized. Or even closer to organized.

But what about setting realistic goals? I work. Have kids. I’m training for a couple races. And there was my addiction to Facebook to consider.

I also had a lot of weekend commitments that took me out of town in November. So I modified my NaNo goal to 30,000 words. Before NaNo, a successful writing month for me produced 10,000 words of much higher quality so I thought that aiming for 30,000 words of drivel might be a fair compromise.

Finally, let’s not underestimate the convenience of letting our standards slide as things get tough. I draw upon my marathoning experience for illustrative purposes:

Before the race: “I’m gonna set a personal record!”
At Mile 10: “I feel so good. I’m invincible!”
Mile 19: “Guess I went out a little fast. If I finish as least as good as last year, that’ll be fine.”
Mile 22: “Why am I here? I hate running and all my friends are at the movies. I want their Junior Mints.”
Mile 24: “I’ll finish when I finish. Hell with it.”
Mile 26.2: “I missed my goal, but I’ve finished something most people will never start.”

That’s kind of how this month went for me. The New England Crime Bake conference over the weekend of November 13th and 14th set me back. When I came home, there was so much to catch up on, including kids’ activities and sports, and Thanksgiving events at their schools (that took up my lunch hours, during which I had been writing NaNo stuff before). Long story short, the words just weren’t coming as fast as they had earlier in the month. I decided to give myself a break on the word count and focus on just writing something every day, which is another thing I don’t usually do.

So how did I do? When this posts, I’ll have three days left, so I’m not done putting words down for this experiment. But at the time of this writing (Tuesday) I’ve penned 25,300 words on 95 pages, have a structure for the story, an interesting new character, and an idea about a motive. Whodunit details remain sketchy, and I won’t be using any of the words I actually put down. But over the holidays I hope to produce that synopsis.

I missed eight writing days in November. Ready for the excuses?
1. One day I was out of town for the Ft. Worth Mud Run.
2. The next day I just didn’t feel like doing anything. Happens.
3. One weekend I was at Crime Bake—too busy talking about writing to actually do any.
4. One day I got home from work and went straight to my daughters’ basketball practices, after which I came home and collapsed.
5. Another day I chose the gym over the keyboard. That was a sanity call.
6. This week I decided, rather abruptly, to paint my dining room. That took out another couple days.

Observations: Some days I wrote a couple thousand words, others I wrote a couple hundred. I wrote more longhand in November than I ever have before, scribbling words in a spiral notebook I carried around in my purse. I discovered that longhand works for me, and I’ll keep that notebook handy for long waits and unexpected downtime. I also learned that I can walk to a picnic bench near my lab and eat lunch outside while I write. I’ve never mixed business (day job) and pleasure (writing) in the same hours before, so this was a neat discovery, like stealing an extra writing hour out of the day.

By my admittedly low and sliding standards, NaNoWriMo was a success. My writing habits are more flexible than I once thought. I’d never written 4,000 words in one sitting and this month I did it twice. Before NaNo, I was unwilling to write flat dialogue or low-stakes scenes, so when I got stuck I left the keyboard, perhaps not to return for days. But by giving myself permission to explore a story in a rambling, blindfolded fashion, with no expectation of quality, I explored more possibilities. Several of them stuck and will stay in Book 3. Who knew?

Based on the last month, I’d say that if you are a disciplined writer who routinely turns out a word count with which you are satisfied, this is probably not something you need to explore. If you are that writer, then you already have a method that’s working for you. But if you’re like me, paralyzed to move ahead in your story unless you know what is supposed to happen next, then NaNo is a good exercise in pushing forward through the uncomfortable parts of a storyline. Recently I was one of several guests on a Blog Talk Radio show called What’s Write for Me. We talked about our experiences with NaNoWriMo and what it meant to each of us. If you’re thinking about NaNo or just curious how it went for other writers, click over and have a listen.

With luck, I’ll be between projects again next November because I’d really like to give this another go.

Parting words:
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
— Leonardo da Vinci

Rachel Brady

Atkins Editing: Thick Meat, No Bread

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Rachel Brady is celebrating the release of Final Approach this week with five days of freebies at her blog. Click through to Write It Anyway and enter to win your choice of prizes. Today’s the last day!

Lately I’ve been thinking about revisions, but more on that shortly. First I’d like to thank the Stiletto ladies for inviting me back. I feel like a lucky freshman invited to sit with the cool seniors in the school cafeteria. Our lunch conversation today has to do with how editorial comments are like food. Slide up your tray and have a seat.

Not long ago I found a post about critiques in which the sandwich technique was explained. The suggestion was to structure a critique the way you’d build a sandwich—in this case, with constructive criticism sandwiched between two positives.

For example: “I like the story idea, but your characters could be fleshed out more. Nice use of dialogue, though.”

Or maybe: “Nice hook. You might consider condensing the restaurant scene . . . it ran on a bit long. But I liked that paranoid waiter.”

You get the idea.

I favor this approach and promise everyone reading this that I will remember and apply it forever, now that I have experienced Atkins Editing.

Earlier this month, my editor looked over the early pages of Book 2 and served up an enormous, Dagwood style, meaty sandwich. Turkey! Ham! Pastrami! Salami! (For purposes of my story, let’s pretend these are bad things.) Only problem with the sandwich? No bread.

My first reaction was to eat cookies but finding none in my house, I self-medicated on pretzels instead. Calorically speaking, this was lucky. Where editorial feedback is concerned, I later decided, cookies should be treated like handguns. Let’s put a 24-hour waiting period between revision comments and cookies. At least in my house.

Enter irony.

The same day I got the pages back, an interview I’d done for Novel Journey ran. Upon learning of my writerly depression, my friend Cathy was quick to send back a quote from my own interview. She’s sassy that way:

NJ: What is your best advice on maintaining a good editor-author relationship?

Me: Trust your editor. Accept that writing and editing are different skills. A talented editor can make your work shine if you’re willing to step back and seriously consider her suggestions. You both want the same thing: the best story possible.

I read the words and wondered who in her right mind would say something thing like that. But that was the problem. I wasn’t in my right mind again yet. The high protein, zero carb non-sandwich was still too deli fresh for me to think straight.

There is a happy ending.

The next day I received an e-mail from my editor explaining that she’d jotted her notes on the manuscript hastily before leaving town, intending to use them as reminders to herself later when she wrote my revision letter. The marked manuscript went into the office mail before she elaborated on her notes. This misfortune resulted in my unwrapping all that ham.

Her letter was very reassuring, altogether kind, and gave me the same warm feeling as joining Maggie, the Evelyns, Marilyn, and Susan at the cool table. There was a sandwich afterall. It started with, “While there is much to like I am uneasy on several counts.” Bread.

It helped to understand her intentions: “This second novel is always the hardest to write, and by far the hardest to sell. Everyone cuts the author a break with a first novel and comes out with knives sharpened for the second. You don’t want to give anyone grounds for disappointment or carving up the book.”

My favorite was, “I hope you don’t think I’m negative about your work, I like it. I’m trying to help you dodge the critical traps that beset most authors.” Bread with mayo—technical advice coupled with mentorship and foresight.

There are lessons here.

Trust your editor. Embrace carbs. Bon appétit.

Rachel Brady

Fuse Beads, a Metaphor for Writing

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My kids are gung-ho these days for an arts-and-craft activity called fuse beads. This involves a tub of 10,000 multi-colored plastic beads that the kids meticulously place on forms to create rainbow colored dogs, fish, or other designs of their choice.

I have mixed feelings about this craft. When the kids are using them, the beads inevitably roll en masse onto my kitchen floor and scatter, creating a spectacular mess that apparently disturbs only me. Worse, no fuse bead creation is complete until it has been covered with wax paper and ironed. The heat melts the beads together so that each lovely creation can be preserved forever. That’s nice and everything, but kids can’t iron so we all know who gets this job.

I tolerate these inconveniences because as a mother and a writer, I believe it’s important to foster creativity in kids. It takes my three-year-old son about a half hour to complete a design. His intense concentration during this time is incredible and when I watch him dig for the right color, or move a bead from one peg to another because the first choice wasn’t satisfactory, I know I’ve chosen a good use for his time. It’s great for his coordination and imagination and beats the heck out of watching TV.

The other day we sat at opposite ends of our kitchen table. My son worked on a multi-colored bead fish while I caught up on bills and letters. A 10,000 Maniacs CD played on the stereo and each of us worked without talking, both concentrating. Then he looked up and said, “Mom, want to see my fish?” It was barely started, but I told him how nice it looked and we returned to our work.

A few minutes later, he broke his silence again, wanting only my approval and encouragement before carrying on. It occurred to me then that, except for the mess involved, my little boy and his beads are much like me and my writing. We both have an idea how we want our project to turn out. We’re willing to spend the time it takes. Rearranging pieces to get the right effect is not only necessary, but fun. And we both want an outside opinion partway through, just to be sure.

Usually, I feel what I call “Mom Guilt” where my writing is concerned. My kids are still young (ages 3, 7, and 8) and even if I’m not at my laptop writing, I’m frequently away somewhere in my thoughts, plotting. Since my mental energy is often divided between my children and my work-in-progress, I sometimes feel I’m letting the kids down. This exchange at the table was the first time I recognized that being a writer had the potential to improve my ability to parent.

In the half hour we sat together, he must have asked my thoughts on his fish at least a half a dozen times. Having the same conversation with a three-year-old every few minutes is tedious. There are only so many ways I can express that a fish is pretty or colorful or awesome or cool. What previously would have been a repetitive exchange became meaningful when I finally made the connection between his pursuit and mine. Empathizing with his need for input, I became more patient, encouraging, and sincere. It felt really good to have an old conversation in a new way with my little boy.

The revelation helped with the Mom Guilt issue, but didn’t address the gazillion fuse bead creations overrunning my house. It was here I found the second parallel between fuse beads and writing. With three kids, all craft zealots, artwork piles up around my house all the time. I save my favorites but have to remind myself as I’m clearing out paintings, sketches, or bead creations, that there’s simply not enough room to keep it all. “It was the experience that mattered,” I tell myself, anytime I’m gathering up craft shrapnel for covert disposal. The value is not always in the art itself but in the time spent making it—the exercise in creativity, constructive use of their time, and the satisfaction of bringing a mental image to physical form.

I’m beginning to view my scenes like my kids’ copious artwork—as creative exercises, constructive uses of my time, and a physical manifestation of something imagined. Whether I use those scenes or cut them, the time spent exploring ideas is golden. I learned a lot from those obnoxious little beads.

Rachel Brady

Rachel Brady’s debut suspense novel, Final Approach, will be released in October or can be pre-ordered from Amazon. A graduate of Wright State University and The Ohio State University, Rachel works as a biomedical engineer when she’s not writing mystery and suspense fiction. Her interests include health and fitness, acoustic guitar, and books of all kinds. She lives outside of Houston, Texas, with her husband and their three children. Visit her on-line at http://www.rachelbrady.net/ or read about her experiences as a new author at her blog, Write It Anyway. Fellow internet junkies can follow her on Twitter or add her as a friend on Goodreads.