Tag Archive for: writing

Brainiac

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by Bethany Maines

I was staring at an app advertisement on my phone the other
day when a brilliant idea for a novel came to me.  I’m not going to tell you what it is, because it’s awesome
and I don’t want the net gremlins to steal it.  But as I pondered the awesomeness that was my own idea, and
then shining beacon of sheer stunning gloriferousness that is my brain  (Yeah, I just made that word up.  What are you going to do about it?), it
occurred to me to wonder – what would happen to me if I didn’t have my brain?
And ok, yeah, obviously, dead. Plop.  But what about if I had someone else’s
brain?  We all look at the world
from the unique transponder of our brains. We see the world differently, if
only by a hair, than the person sitting next to us. 
For example, I have a friend who is somewhere around seven
feet tall.  That’s not an
exaggeration, that’s his actual height. 
We met in college and we had several classes, including life drawing,
together. (Life drawing, for those who haven’t been to art school, is code for
“drawing naked people.”)  For one
semester our life drawing instructor was a curly haired, 5’2” dreamer who once
suggested that zoning out while driving on the freeway was a good place to get
creative ideas.  (We don’t have
time to really go into that statement.) 
Anyway, at some point, she went around to my friend’s drawing board and
suggested that his perspective was wrong. 
He checked, he double checked, he thought about it, and then politely
suggested that he really did have it right.  She stared up at him, she stared at the model.  Then she drug a chair over next to him
and climbed up on it.  “Oh, nope,
you’re right.” Your perspective is just different when you’re an extra two feet
up in the air. 
Two feet and an entire picture changes. If I had someone else’s
brain, surely the ideas I have for writing books would be totally
different.  If I had them at
all.  But since I love my ideas, I
love my brain, I don’t think I’ll be heading to Dr. Frankenstein’s lab to test
out that experiment.  But go ahead
and thank your brain today, because it’s awesome.

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Trust Yourself

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By Evelyn David

My son got married a week ago. His bride is everything I could hope for. It was a beautiful wedding, held outdoors in a gorgeous setting (see photo left). It rained five minutes before the ceremony was to begin, but stopped fairly quickly. The hotel staff dried the seats and a rainbow emerged just before the bridal procession began. Blessed indeed.

During the dinner, my son gave a brief speech that left me close to tears. He thanked his bride’s parents for the warm, loving welcome to their family, then turned to thank my husband and me. Surprisingly he made special mention of an event that had happened 20 years earlier.

It was his first time at sleep-away camp. He was scheduled for a four-week session, but on Parents Visiting Day, two weeks in, he said he hated it and wanted to come home. We spent several hours trying to convince him to stay, and finally agreed that if he still hated it in a week, we would pick him up. He thought that was fair and to be honest, since even he acknowledged that he was actually enjoying himself at least some of the time, I felt sure that he would decide to remain the last two weeks. But seven days later, he called to say he wanted to come home and my husband duly drove two hours each way to retrieve the reluctant camper. A deal was a deal.

I got a fair amount of criticism from other parents when I told them the story, but my gut instinct was that this was what our son needed. Conventional wisdom about making him “tough it out” didn’t fit my child. So I was especially touched when in his wedding speech, our son talked about the love and support we’d always given him, including he laughed, picking him up from camp.

What does all this have to do with writing? It’s to trust your instincts when it comes to your characters and the stories you have to tell. Ignore the conventional wisdom about what works and what doesn’t, what’s currently popular and what’s not. Create the world that works for you. You know YOU best. Believe in your talent, creativity, and determination, even when, or especially when, faced with criticism or rejection.

Trust your gut. Who knows? You might even get thanked later.

Marian, the Northern half of Evelyn David

———————

 Kindle e-book – http://tinyurl.com/ZonedK

Brianna Sullivan Mysteries – e-book series
I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries– Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
The Dog Days of Summer in Lottawatah– Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
The Holiday Spirit(s) of Lottawatah– Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Undying Love in Lottawatah- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
A Haunting in Lottawatah – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Lottawatah Twister – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Missing in Lottawatah – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Good Grief in Lottawatah – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Summer Lightning in Lottawatah – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Lottawatah Fireworks – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Leaving Lottawatah – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords

The Ghosts of Lottawatah – trade paperback collection of the Brianna e-books
Book 1 – I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries (includes the first four Brianna e-books)
Book 2 – A Haunting in Lottawatah (includes the 5th, 6th, and 7th Brianna e-books)
Book 3 – Lottawatah Fireworks (includes the 8th, 9th, and 10th Brianna e-books)
Book 4 – Leaving Lottawatah (includes the 11th Brianna e-book and some special features.)

Sullivan Investigations Mystery series
Murder Off the Books Kindle – Nook – Smashwords – Trade Paperback
Murder Takes the Cake Kindle – Nook – Smashwords – Trade Paperback 
Murder Doubles Back Kindle – Nook – Smashwords – Trade Paperback
Riley Come Home (short story)- Kindle – Nook – Smashwords
Moonlighting at the Mall (short story) – Kindle – Nook – Smashwords


AUDIOBOOKS 

I TRY NOT TO DRIVE PAST CEMETERIES
THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER IN LOTTAWATAH
THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT(S) OF LOTTAWATAH
UNDYING LOVE IN LOTTAWATAH
A HAUNTING IN LOTTAWATAH
MURDER OFF THE BOOKS
MURDER DOUBLES BACK

Dreaming

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by Bethany Maines

The other night I dreamed that fellow Stiletto Gang author
Linda Rodriguez rewrote the back-story on the main character of my Carrie MaeMystery series – Nikk Lanier. 
Nikki is a twenty-something red-headed linguistics major turned superspy
with an overbearing mother and a steady boyfriend who works for the CIA. 

Notice how none of that background
involves a whirlwind marriage and divorce from a blonde lawyer and the adoption
of an African orphan?  But by the
time my dream Linda was done that’s what Nikki had.  And in my dream, I kept thinking, “Maybe I could make the
divorce work, but what am I supposed to do with a baby?  I can’t just send it back!”  And then I woke up in a cold editorial
sweat trying to figure out I was going to jam all these changes into Nikki’s
next adventure that I’m 30,000 words into with no place to add in a spare baby.

What I love is that in my dream, never once did I question
why Linda was rewriting Nikki’s backstory, and it certainly never occurred to
me that I could just reject the edits. 
Nope, once Linda wrote it down, it was set in stone.  Never mind that Linda and I have never
actually met in person or done any writing together what-so-ever.  In my dream, the changes were done and
that was that.  The other odd thing
about my dream was the very real dual reality of Nikki’s reality.  Linda may have written it, but I
couldn’t send the baby back to the orphanage because Nikki would be upset, and
what would her friends think? 

But once I woke up, calmed down and then stopped laughing,
it occurred to me to wonder.  Do
other authors dream about other authors? 
Do they dream about their characters?  Is my brain off the deep end or just averagely crazy? We may
never know the answer to that one…

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Writing, Promotion, Life

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All of the above battle for my time.

I’m in the process of writing my next Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery. I try to work on it every day–but things like laundry, making arrangements for a trip to promote a book, coming up with promotions, planning a blog tour, etc.

While writing a police procedural there are times that I have to do a bit of research. I’m fortunate to belong to PSWA and it’s easy to get on the listserve and ask any question about police procedure that I need to find out. The answers will flood in from many law enforcement professionals.

Though not an outliner, I do have a good idea of where I’m going with the mystery–though at this point, I only have a vague idea of the outcome. Because this will be #11 in this series, I have continuing threads about the characters that I need to address.

As thoughts come to me, I always jot them down, because if I don’t I might forget.

I was overdue with my Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery. I don’t really have due date with the publisher, but I was so late sending in a manuscript, I got an email asking if I had one. I’ve turned it in and it’s been assigned to an editor with a possible launch date at the end of September.

And of course this means I must get busy with planning the promotion.

And then there’s life.

My husband does like to spend some time with me (and I with him) so we do take off and go to the movies and out to eat. He usually  comes along with me on any promotion trips and we turn them into mini-vacations.

We have a huge family–and many live nearby, one daughter, a son, five adult grandids, and 7 great-grands.We see them a lot and enjoy spending time with all of them. One daughter lives in Southern CA and two of her kids live with her. We try to get down there when possible.

And our eldest daughter is farther away also, Southern CA, but about a 6 hour drive. Her two adult kids are there with their families–and five more great-grands. And yes, we go there when we can.

There you have it–a busy life for this old lady, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Marilyn aka F. M. Meredith

Creativity vs. Time

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By Bethany Maines
When I was in college there was a hierarchy of artsy-ness. The fine artists looked down on the graphic designers, who looked down on the production people, who had to make do with looking down on people outside the art department. Web designers and Illustrators had to float around the edges and hope that no one eliminated their department before they graduated. I could never figure out why the fine arts students were so high and mighty – they were at a state school studying painting. It seemed wildly clear to me that their degree was a complete waste of daddy’s money. Graphic designers were just as creative as fine artists; we just happened to be practical enough to want jobs after graduation. Such sentiments were far to mercenary for the art department where creativity only had to serve it’s own purpose and things like deadline’s, client needs, and money were all too, too pedestrian to be considered. Which seemed silly to me since even if you became a wildly successful painter you were going to come up against deadlines (we need 12 paintings for your gallery show in September!), client needs (the White House says the portrait can’t be a nude), and money (don’t worry your pretty little head about money!), why not learn how to manage these everyday things?  Wouldn’t that make you more successful?  The resounding answer from the art department seemed to be that such thoughts would stifle the creativity.

And when it came to art, I had no problem shaking my head at their silliness. The only place I allowed myself that kind of indulgent largesse was in writing.  I would be out tip-toeing through the tulips of my imaginary worlds for months at a time. But as I have gotten older and more experienced in the craft of writing I have discovered two problems with this.  One – the product frequently is not what is needed.  Too much wandering down unprofitable by-ways and I come back to the main plot of the story with about 100 pages of random stuff that don’t serve the story at all, but because I’ve just spent months on them, I love them too much to cut.  Two – I don’t have the time.  I now have a husband, a daughter, and a business to attend to and they all have a legitimate claim to my time.  And how is the dog supposed to get any attention if I’m off typing… again? (He has to look really, really cute.) 
So, my solution?  Schedules and outlines.  Those two foes of creativity have now become my friends.  With a strong outline my writing is faster and more productive than the days when I sat down at the computer wondering what to write today.  I’m not sure how anyone else manages (and I’d love to hear other people’s experiences), but I’m hanging my hat on a schedule and an outline.

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Twenty-One Days Does a Habit Make by Debra H. Goldstein

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Twenty-one Days Does a Habit MakeExercise has always been an anathema to me. I hate the idea of glistening, smelling, or messing up my hair. My idea of joy tends to be sedentary: reading, writing, talking or watching a show. Unfortunately, recently I was forced to embrace the concept of exercise. I shuddered at the thought and then wondered if I should buy some cute clothing to make it palatable.I rejected the idea of spending a penny on something I knew would be a temporary activity. Instead, I went to a shoe sale at my favorite store that carries a wide selection of 6.5 Ns and spent my clothing budget on something I would enjoy. You may recall, in my earlier blogs, I have admitted my “I’m not going to buy anything” resolve slips for two things: shoes and books. Nothing I purchased resembled a sneaker. My logic was simple – why waste money on something that would soon be relegated to a back shelf. For twenty-one gym sessions, I groaned, made jokes, and thought about ways to avoid the treadmill, free weights, and recumbent bicycle, but on the twenty-second day something funny happened. I woke up looking forward to wasting my time at the gym. By the thirtieth day, a Sunday, I felt something was lacking when rain forced me to cancel my plans to take a long walk. Who would have thought I would be the poster child for “do something twenty-one times and you’ll develop a habit?” Not me. The reality is that I think exercise has become a habit. The problem is that it is encroaching on other elements in my life.Exercising and allowing for recovery from it cuts into my “hit and miss when the mood moves me” writing style. This type of writing style requires waiting for the muse to strike. There is no predictability of what project will be undertaken or when. Excuses and other activities leave few hours for writing, but there are even fewer available because of the amount of time taken up by exercising.What to do? The answer seems simple enough. If twenty-one days produced a desire to exercise consistently then, perhaps, the same method can be used to make my writing efforts more balanced.  I’m three days into the experiment and so far, I’ve finished a novel (keep your fingers crossed), wrote and submitted a short story, and tackled this blog. I don’t expect years of work habits to be discarded overnight, but I have a funny feeling that eighteen days from now I will be boasting two new habits. If so, expect me to report that I’ve bought a pair of real exercise pants (and maybe a new pair of sneakers) plus written something I’m pleased with. In the meantime, I’m curious. What have you done for twenty-one days that has resulted in a sustained new behavior? Do you think I’ll make it? 

The Case for It’s

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By Bethany Maines

Recently, I was ranting on Facebook about my hatred for the periods in a.m. and p.m as well as the comma between city and state in addresses (see what you miss by not being my Facebook friend?) and one of my friends posted a link to Weird Al Yankovic’s new song “Word Crimes.”  As a long time Weird Al enthusiast and a Facebook friend to several editors and writers I had already seen the video (click here if you haven’t).  The video parodies “Blurred Lines,” Robin Thicke’s insanely catchy hit from 2013.  If you haven’t heard that one, then you probably weren’t living in America all of last year, but here you go – Blurred Lines.  (Warning: may not be suitable for work and my cause you to get in arguments with your feminist friends over whether or not the song is “rape-y”.  Double Warning: If you use the word rape-y at me, I will smite you.)  But back to the story, as I watched the Weird Al version again (because why wouldn’t you?) I was caught by the line “You do not use “it’s” in this case!”

But why don’t we?  Yes, yes, the current rules state that “it’s” is a contraction.  “It” is not possessive; “it” cannot own anything.  But I say, “Listen up English – if you’re not going to provide me with a gender neutral pronoun, why can’t I use the defacto pronoun already in use in conversation – it?”  Clearly, the language is lacking such a word. English should stop being stuffy and allow this clearly needed possessive to enter the dictionary.  I’d willingly delete “tweep” from the Oxford-English Dictionary if I could have “it’s.”  Who’s with me?

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Gremlins – Don’t Feed at All

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By Bethany Maines

The premise of my Carrie Mae Mystery series is that in the
sixties, while other ladies were burning their bras and inventing Tupperware,
Carrie Mae Robart founded a door to door / friend to friend cosmetic selling
empire – Carrie Mae Cosmetics. Her goal was to give women financial
independence without having to work outside the home. However, the more women
she met, the more she realized that there were some problems that couldn’t be
solved with just money ­– some problems needed a fist in the face. So Carrie
Mae set up the Carrie Mae Foundation. Financed by proceeds from the cosmetic
sales, the foundation is part non-profit – working on pro-bono legal cases and
lobbying government on women’s rights issues – and partly a women only,
black-ops, elite fighting force. The heroines of my stories Nikki Lanier, Ellen
Marson, Jenny Baxter and Jane Rozmarek are part of that force and they travel
the world, fulfilling the Carrie Mae mission statement: helping women
everywhere.
Now the thing you’ll notice about this premise is that it’s
only partially based in reality.  I
mean, sure, it’s possible for a woman in the 1960’s to found a peer to peer
make up sales company.  Not that I
know of any… ahem.  But sadly, it
has apparently never occurred to anyone to found an elite fighting force for
women as part their non-profit. (If someone knows of one, please email me
immediately; I would like to join up.) 
The problem with all of this lack of reality is that I have to make it
sound plausible when writing. And that means all the other bits have to sound
real. I have to research the guns and the locations and I try to make sure that
my characters emotions feel authentic. 
But if I spend too much time in reality, I suddenly look at my own
premise and think, “That’s ridiculous! 
I can’t write that.” 

That’s right; I tell myself, “I can’t.”  Those are some of the worst words in
the English language.  (Although,
they’re still not as bad as, “We need to talk.”) I’m two books and two short
stories, and half a manuscript into a series, and… I can’t?  How does the Can’t Gremlin sneak into
so many places?  I thought I was
well fortified behind the Walls of Fantasy; girded by the Armor of Gumption; defended
by the Holy Force of Imagination. 
And yet… I can’t.  Why is it
so hard to get that jerk of a gremlin out of the house? Can’t have an elite
fighting force?  You might as well
suggest that a woman can’t write books. The cycle of Can’t can be extremely
hard to break, so when I get too down in the Can’ts, I like to read other
people’s books.  There’s nothing
like a good trip through someone else’s imagination to leave the Can’t Gremlin
in the dust.  But still, I know
he’s just waiting around the corner to trip me up.  Which is why I prefer to visit reality infrequently and for
only brief periods of time.  Feel
free to visit me any time, but leave your gremlins at the door – I can’t be
bothered with Can’t today.
Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and
Facebook.

Does Writing Sour Reading? – by Debra H. Goldstein

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I can’t remember when I couldn’t read.  Picking out letters from the newspaper, storybooks, or off milk cartons made my day. My mother introduced me to the library at an early age and I still can recall how excited I was the day I printed my name and received my very own library card.  

Young Girl Sitting & ReadingMy reading speed also made reading rewarding for me.  I would race through the summer reading program award minimum in a few days and then quickly read enough books to guarantee winning whatever prize I desired.  Reading also made it possible for me to endure boring junior high and high school classes – it wasn’t unusual for me to check out a book before school, read it during the day, and take a different one home to read at night.  A good book always helped me relax during college exam days, when traveling for work, on vacation, or for a few minutes before bed.
PuppiesMy joy in reading changed when I opted to make writing a career.  The pressure of deadlines and wanting to write meant my reading time became more limited.  It also became less enjoyable.

The more I learned about writing, the more critical a reader I became.  I had always analyzed a mystery to figure out whodunit in advance of the writer revealing the culprit, but now I found myself examining each page for the technical way the author hid clues. Weaknesses in voice, plot, or character became so much more pronounced that there were times I feared I couldn’t force myself to finish a book.  When a book dragged, I wanted to take a green pen and cross out the offensive paragraphs.  The few times I found a book that read like the old days, I savored my time with it and usually grabbed more books by the same author.

I have talked to other authors and discovered that some rarely read for fear of stealing an idea while others read books in genres different than they write for the same reason.  Other writers believe that the more they read of any type of book, the better a writer they become.  Think about your reading habits – has writing or wanting to write changed them?

Why Do I Keep on Writing?

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That’s a good question, one I must ask myself periodically.

I spend a good percentage of each day in front of my computer either working on a new book, editing, or promoting whichever book is out now.  And guess what? I don’t make much money. And what I do make is spent on promotion.

No, my publishers do not send me out on book tours, though they both do some promotion, the greater share is up to me. I’m the one who arranges my in-person events and does the majority of the on-line promotion.

So what do I get out of all this work?

1. I love to write. I enjoy visiting my characters and finding out what is going to happen to them next. The only way to do that is to write the next book. My writing is not confined to my novels, believe it or not, I get a kick out writing blog posts, like this one, and others where I guest.

2. I love meeting people and making new friends. Of course this happens at book events and at conferences and conventions. (Going to a mystery con is very much like attending a huge family reunion.) The Internet has given me the ability to make many new friends, many I’ve known now for a long time.

3. And of course my books have fans–fans that enjoy my books, have favorite characters, email me, read my newsletter and comment, fans that encourage me to write the next book.

4. Because of the conventions, conferences and places I’ve been invited to teach and speak, I’ve traveled many places I’d never have visited otherwise from the West Coast to the East Coast, many cities in-between, and Hawaii and Alaska.

5. I’ve learned how to do many things I might never have tried if it hadn’t been for my writing career from many computer skills to giving presentations and classes about books, writing and publishing. For ten years I taught writing for Writers Digest Schools, and I just recently retired from many years of being the program chair for the Public Safety Writers Association’s annual conference.

6. And most of all, I’ve met many challenges, grown as a writer and a person, and had a great time doing what I wanted to do.

Marilyn aka F. M. Meredith