Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 121

30 More Life Hacks Tested

Part 3 of life hack ideas being tested to see if they work.

Topics, Topics Everywhere, But Not a One to Write

I've kind of been stuck for blog topics again. I'm blaming my insomnia for this. I go through stretches where I don't get more than a couple of hours of sleep a night and my brain doesn't function well when I'm in this place. So once again, I went in search of blog topics for fiction writers. One of the suggestions: Interview a character.

Cool, I thought, this I can do. Then the problem becomes who do I interview. I search my brain only to see characters trying really hard to blend into the woodwork. Imagine them all avoiding eye contact. One heroine is studying her fingernails, a few of my guys are looking at the floor or the ceiling, a few are edging backward. Yeah, this is going well so far. It's like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when the teacher says: "Bueller, Bueller, Bueller" and there's no response.

Since I want these characters to cooperate with me when I write them, I decide that this isn't the subject I'm going to push them on. They don't want to be interviewed, that's fine. There are more blogging ideas.

Describe your office was another suggestion. Um, no. I don't even go in my office if I can avoid it. It's a disorganized mess compounded by never putting things away from when I moved in. I did take a picture of my office, but I'm not sharing that disaster until I have an after picture to show it all put away nicely.

Looks like I'm on my own. Hopefully, I'll have a more interesting idea for next time.

Facebook Manipulation

My least favorite types of posts or graphics on Facebook are what I call manipulative messages. I think we've all seen them. The graphic that says: I love my children. Share if you love your children too. Or other similar messages that people somehow feel compelled to then share on their pages.

Please, people, stop falling for this. It's extremely manipulative and I'm cynical enough to believe that it's started by some page trying to promote itself. Once you click like or share, what are the odds that FB is going to start putting more messages from this entity into your feed? Even if it's not a blatant attempt to gain reach, it's still so annoying to keep seeing this.

Then there's the other form of manipulation. The graphics that end with something like: Only 3 percent of the people who see this will repost it. Do you care enough about issue X to share? 

The instant I see that little bit of emotional manipulation, I guarantee you there is no way on earth that I'm going to click share. There have been times that I really liked the message and I was planning to post it on my page until I saw that at the bottom. Nope, that would be like sharing one of those graphics that say if you share you'll have good luck, but if you don't, you'll have bad luck. Luckily, that chain message manipulation seems to be all but gone.

There's one last manipulative little post that I see cropping up more and more. Sometimes it's on a graphic, but sometimes the person is actually typing it in. You know the one: I want to see how many real friends I have. Comment/like/share if you're a real friend.

Just don't. Please. Talk about manipulative. This puts your real friends into an awkward position. They might not want to click or comment at all, but now some of them are going to feel compelled to do this in case you really are judging the depth/realness of their friendship by a ridiculous FB post. I wish people would stop putting others in this position.

There are plenty of variations of these things I mentioned and I can't stand any of them. I doubt I'm alone on this one. So come on, fellow Facebookians, please stop encouraging the manipulators--whoever they might be--and stop sharing/liking/commenting on this crap. The grumpiness you prevent might be mine. ;-)

Can We Avoid a Digital Dark Age?

Frissons Nocturnes

Last Saturday was one of those days with a million things to do. I had to run to JC Penney to exchange a broken curtain rod. The decorative knobs on the end were glass and one of them didn't survive shipping. I also had an appointment for a haircut and a bunch of stuff to try to get done in between. By the time I got home last in the day, I had a headache and was kind of crabby.

Then I saw a box.

I hadn't ordered anything, so I wondered what it was. Curiosity had me barely taking my jacket off before I was opening the package. This is what I found inside.


Yes, a French language edition of one of my Harlequin stories, but I didn't know which one. I don't read French, but my heroine's name was unmistakable. The novella included in this anthology collection was Phoenix Burning. This is so cool and the cover is awesome!

If you're able to read French, the story is available in France and in Canada as far as I can tell, but possibly available in any country with a lot of French speakers.

Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the South Pacific

I don't know if this is big on anyone's radar map since cyclones (hurricanes) on the other side of the Pacific Ocean rarely rate more than a one or two-sentence mention on the news in the US, but on Friday the 13th a monster hurricane slammed into countries in the South Pacific. Of all the countries in the path of this killer storm, it appears that Vanuatu got the worst of it. You can find a bunch of pictures of the damage on this website for Australian news.

So far the death toll stands at 8 in the capital city of Port Villa. According to the BBC article I linked to, about 75% of the houses in this city have been damaged or destroyed. Fears are that the death toll will go much higher because there has been no contact yet with the islands that took the direct hit. The numbers of people who lost everything will definitely go up as rescuers reach the other islands.

Cyclone Pam also caused damage in the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and there's a state of emergency in Tuvalu because of flash flooding. As of Sunday evening, the storm was near the coast of New Zealand, but reports say it was considerably weaker by then.

I've been to Kiribati among other South Pacific nations--maybe that's why I feel an affinity for the area and the people. If you can, please consider helping them. CNN has a list of charities working in Vanuatu, a number of these from Australia, who has the lead on helping their neighbors. The Australian Red Cross has a donation page setup for Vanuatu. If you can, please consider making a donation. If not, please remember the people of this area in your prayers. Life is going to be very difficult for them for a while.

Daylight Saving Time: How Is This Still a Thing?

I loved this video! Thanks for sharing it, Valerie! OMG, I bust out laughing at one point. Thank you, Kaiser Wilhelm. ;-)

Things I Miss

There are some things I miss from my house in Minnesota that surprised me when I moved into my new house in Georgia. I never would have guessed these things would be as big as they've turned out to be.

I miss the utility sink I had in my laundry room. I noticed its absence when I toured the house I bought, but if you'd asked me, I would have said I never used the utility sink and I didn't really need one. I grossly underestimated how often I used this sink and I want it back. Unfortunately, there's no room for one in my house.

Another thing I miss from my laundry room is the upper and lower cabinets I had. My plan--if I can save enough money--is to replace the wire shelving I have now with real cabinets.

But even if I do add cabinets, I still won't have room for a counter top--something else I really miss. This is another thing I desperately miss. I was able to fold clothes on it and I could also keep the tote bag that I haul to and from work on there, keeping it out of sight from the rest of the house.

Also missing from my laundry room: A closet. I kept my coats and cleaning supplies in there. My cleaning supplies are on the wire shelving in the laundry room and my coats are in the hall closet, but it's just not as nice as having everything handy to the garage and out of sight.

I miss my large linen closet. The one I had in my hallway in Minnesota was probably three times the size of the one I have here. Again, I grossly misjudged because I thought I didn't have that much to go in the linen closet. Mostly because my closet in MN looked so empty. I soon found out why my closet looked empty--its size. I'm jammed to the gills here.

I miss my flooring. I can't stand carpet and only had it in the bedrooms up in Minnesota. Here I have it in my great room and I hate it. I wish I could afford to get it ripped out and replaced with hard wood to match the foyer and kitchen.

In my old house, I had a good sized closet next to the front door for guests to hang their coats. I also stored things in there like the vacuum cleaner which is now in my hall closet.

Storage. I don't miss my basement that much, but I miss the vast expanse of storage space I had because of it. My kitchen cabinets are jammed because things I don't use often and used to store on shelves in my basement are in there. I need to buy a sideboard or something.

My built-in china hutch. Again, I underestimated how much I relied on this for storage until I suddenly didn't have it. Buying something to replace it is another item on my list.

This one is small, but oh, how I miss it. My kitchen faucet was a sprayer, too, so I didn't need to pull out a separate sprayer to clean out the sink. Here, I have that separate sprayer and oh, how I hate it. I get annoyed every time I have to reach over there and yank it out. If I could figure out how to install one I like without leaving a hole in my granite counters where the sprayer is sitting now, I would do it in a heartbeat.

This list doesn't mean I don't love my new house and it doesn't mean that there aren't features I have here that I didn't have in my old house. I have learned, though, that when you have a house built for yourself, there are a lot of things done that you don't even have to think about again. Right now, I spend money a little bit at a time to change the things I'm not in love with. Some of them, though, like the utility sink are things I'm just going to have to live with.

The Writer's Toolbox: Character Sketches

A number of years ago, I was talking about using character sketches and had another writer tell me this meant I wasn't a character-driven writer because character-driven writers don't use/need character sketches. The idea, especially back then, that I'm a plotter was hilarious. I've become less of a seat-of-the-pants writer as time has gone by, but even so no one who saw my process would ever accuse me of being a plot-driven writer.

Why would anyone limit their arsenal by declaring character sketches off limits to character-driven writers?

I will use any tool available when I need it and I don't give a rat's patootie about what type of writer would or wouldn't use it. Do I use character sketches all the time? No, although there are times I wish I would have at least for basic information like height, hair and eye color, etc. Even with pictures, sometimes it's nice to just see words describing the hero and/or heroine.

When I wrote Ravyn's Flight, I did use character sketches for all my characters--secondary and primary--and I filled them out completely. I really didn't need to do this for the book because my h/h were literally with me 24/7. I heard them talking in my head every waking minute of my day and I even had dreams about them. These character sketches ended up saving my butt when I started working on Eternal Nights, especially for Stacey and Alex. The four-year gap between the two books meant my memory of a lot of these details was gone. I did still have to reread RF a couple of times for things I'd forgotten, but it would have been harder without those sketches.

This also came in handy when it took me 18 months to sell a story I'd been shopping around, especially since I wrote two other books and a novella before I was able to start it. If you're going the traditional publishing route, who knows how long it will take to sell? With so many characters and projects darting in and out of my head, anything that helps with details is a good thing.

That said, right now I'm working on a project where my hero has been extremely close-mouthed about himself. I'm actually stuck because he's so blank to me and I need to do a character sketch for him, but I don't want to. :-) I've kind of gotten spoiled over the past seven or eight stories because I haven't needed to stop and take the time to do a sketch. I'll suck it up and do it because I don't know him well enough and I need to have that intimacy with who he is.

The funny thing is that I know him better as a teenager than as an adult. Unfortunately, I'm writing the man, not the boy.

When I first sold, I had an author who'd been published a good twenty years tell me that my writing process will change and that I shouldn't fight to do things the way I've always done them. That I should go with the story.

This has been some of the best advice I've ever received because my process changed dramatically from book to book the first five or six years I was published. I would have tied myself up in knots trying to force myself to do it the way I'd always done it in the past. Because of her wise words, I was able to let it go and do whatever I needed to write.

My advice--to add on top of the go with the advice from my author friend above--is don't open your toolbox and throw away options because of labels. Or because someone told you this type of writer doesn't need this tool. Use whatever you need to use and to hell with labels and rules.

12 Facts That Will Blow Your Mind