Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 235

How NOT to Tell a Fairy Tale Story

I'm still in allergy la-la land. It's supposed to rain tonight, so if it is all the mountain cedar that got blown in from west Texas, I should feel better tomorrow. If it's a cold, maybe it will have run its course by then. I may have to start wearing a hazmat suit to direct the children's choir. Supposedly, after the first year or so of working with kids, you stop getting sick so often because you've built up an immunity to all the germs they spread around. I'm actually worse in my second year. As much as I enjoy working with the kids, I may have to reconsider it if it keeps making me sick.

Last night, since I wasn't feeling up to much of anything else, I decided to watch Red Riding Hood on one of the HBO channels. I hadn't heard great things about it (most of the reviews considered it a Twilight take on fairy tales), but I'm on a bit of a fairy tale kick lately, and there wasn't anything else on, so I gave it a shot, and I discovered The Movie So Bad That HBO (or maybe the satellite) Attempted Suicide Rather Than Show It. About halfway through the movie, the picture started pixilating badly, sometimes blacking out entirely or wobbling. At first, I thought I was losing yet another converter box that wasn't able to unscramble the signal, but all the other HBO channels seemed to be working fine. It was just this one movie, and it was to irritating to watch that way, so I gave up (and possibly preserved my sanity).

This was essentially a SyFy Saturday night movie, with bonus teen love triangle. We had the quasi-medieval setting, using what looked like the infamous Ye Olde Renn Faire Village set from all the quasi-medieval worlds ever visited on the Stargate series. We had attractive young people carved from wooden planks in the lead roles, capable Canadian actors with science fiction pedigrees in the supporting roles (Michael Hogan from Battlestar Galactica and Michael Shanks from SG-1 -- making me feel very old because he's actually a bit younger than I am and was playing the father of one of the love interests), and an acclaimed British actor slumming it in a highly promoted cameo role while feasting on the scenery. We had bad CGI monsters that only pop up occasionally because of budgetary reasons, so most of the movie is people acting scared of the monsters that might be out there. And we had absolutely horrible dialogue that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be hip and modern or quaintly old-fashioned, so that only the Canadian pros with extensive science fiction experience and the slumming British actor feasting on the scenery could pull it off with any aplomb. The carved wooden puppets playing the young people didn't stand a chance.

I think the SyFy Saturday night movie would have trimmed out the love triangle because it had very little to do with the plot and, besides, who needs character development when there are monsters? Not that the triangle really added any character development or even was a real "triangle." Our "Red" was in love with the brooding loner who had a knack for getting her to break the rules, but her family was betrothing her to the guy with a steady job who came from a well-off family. Her plan to run away with McBroody was foiled by a wolf attack on the village. Note to filmmakers: when casting for the two points on a love triangle, it's a good idea to get actors that the viewers can actually tell apart. Both were sort of low-rent Robert Pattinson types with similar coloring, who wore similar clothes and who had both made copious use of Ye Olde Hair Gelle (for that artfully tousled, semi-spiky look that was very in during the Middle Ages). When "Red" was upset about the betrothal, I couldn't figure out why she was upset because it looked to me that she was being made to marry the guy we'd just seen her running around the woods with. It took me a while to realize there were actually two different guys. I say if you can't tell them apart, go for the one with the job.

Then there was the rave scene. Seriously, they're celebrating killing what they think is the wolf that's been terrorizing the village (but obviously isn't because there's still an hour to go) by holding a rave, in which the kids dance together in what looks a lot like the dancing in the episode of Parks and Recreation where everyone got drunk on "Snake Juice" at the Snakehole Lounge and Ann and Leslie were fighting while doing very aggressive dancing with whatever guy they could drag to the dance floor. Only this movie wasn't supposed to be funny. Meanwhile, Ye Olde Village Bande is playing modern-sounding goth-lite rock on their authentic period instruments. Even aside from the dance scene, this movie had to have the most jarringly anachronistic score since Alan Parsons did the soundtrack for Ladyhawke (I love Alan Parsons' music outside of movies, but I would love a recut of that film with a more appropriate soundtrack because the music nearly ruins it).

Unfortunately, HBO started throwing up right when Gary Oldman showed up (maybe he was gnawing on the pixels instead of the scenery), so I'm sure I missed the really epic awfulness. I bet the girl ended up with the brooding outsider because that's how this sort of thing goes. I hope the other one didn't get killed because I liked him better.

And I still want to write a SyFy Saturday night fantasy movie. Maybe if I throw in a teen love triangle, I could get it on the big screen!

An Allergy-fueled Downton Abbey Recap (no spoilers)

I thought I posted this earlier today and could swear I saw it up, but now it's not there, so I'll try again!

I finally finished what I think will be the last major draft of The Book That Will Not Die. I'd planned to start re-reading today it to make sure it still flows together (since there are months between the time I last read/worked on the beginning and the time I worked on the end), but a front blew in a dust storm from west Texas last night, and as a result I'm sneezing my head off, so I may give that set of people in my head a day off and spend the day with allergy drugs and doing some reading of and about mysteries. I'm not really up to editing today, and I'm definitely not up to forming words and putting them together in sentences that make sense (it's taken be about ten minutes to write this paragraph).

I had something planned to discuss today, but that forming words and sentences thing is being a problem, so I'll wait until I can do that better. So, for now I will discuss Downton Abbey in the only way I'm capable of at the moment:

Ooooh, pretty house. Pretty grounds. Pretty people. Pretty dresses. I wonder if I can do my hair like that. Pretty jewelry, and I don't even like jewelry all that much. Sigh. Thwarted love. Pretty people. Ew, evil, yucky, mean people. Meaningful gazes. Witty quip from the Dowager. Pretty people. Sigh. Ugh, now I have to wait for next week.

That oh so articulate recap is brought to you by whatever pollen/allergen blew in from Lubbock.

The Imaginary People in My Head Take Over

Okay, so maybe today will be when I get the book done. I did some tinkering with the previous scenes, then got the next scene outlined in detail and then outlined the rest of the book, so while I didn't move forward in the manuscript, I think I still got a lot accomplished. I still have a little previous scene tinkering to do after changing my mind about something, but I should be ready to rock and roll and I don't have anything else that must be done today.

One thing I realized was holding me back was my clinging to a few elements that I thought were essential. Once I let myself let go of those, I figured out a better way to do things that made a lot more sense. Some of that involved going back to my original research (in the spiral notebook, which is why those are so essential), which offered some better alternatives. All this thinking started yesterday as a procrastination method, but now that I've done it, I'm pretty sure I'm eager to write today.

If I'm really good, I'll finish in time for TV night. Otherwise, I'll take a TV break (I can't miss Grimm) and then pull a late-nighter.

I'm sure I have other things to talk about, but I seem to have reached the stage where the book takes over the brain to the point I can't really talk or think about anything else. I'd better finish today or early tomorrow because I've got a party Saturday night and it would be nice to be able to interact with the real people around me rather than the imaginary people in my head. Then again, the geek quotient at this party will be rather high, so they might not even notice that I'm mostly interacting with the imaginary people in my head because they'll be too busy interacting with the imaginary people in their smart phones.

A Mole Boy Breakthrough!

I've been having this problem all week with feeling like it was a different day of the week than it actually was. Yesterday felt like Thursday all day, though I did go to choir instead of to ballet, so I seem to have kept it straight. I had a real breakthrough with the preschoolers, though. Mole Boy came out of his shell! Not only did he not cry at all, but he never went into his corner or his hiding place under the chairs and he participated in everything from the start. And then he spoke and interacted with people. Although we call it "choir" it's more of a general introduction to music, with some very basic music theory. We were playing a "concentration" game using various musical symbols (the clefs, different kinds of notes and rests, etc.). The little kids generally take a while to catch onto this game, not realizing that what you want to do is get a look at as many cards on the table as possible so that when you turn another one over, you'll have a better idea of where the match might be. Most of the kids keep turning over the cards that have already been turned over. But Mole Boy caught on right away and got really excited in coaching the others in where the matches were -- "No, it's over there! That one!" I feel like that was a major breakthrough. I don't know if I can take any credit other than in maybe creating and maintaining an environment where he eventually felt safe enough to relax, but it was still kind of cool to see the change from hiding and crying to leadership.

I didn't get much writing done, though I did plan the major showdown scene, and that then brought up some things that will need to be changed in previous scenes, so I decided to get a running start and go back through the previous 50 or so pages to fix those things and build to the new scene. I still have about 20 more pages to go through before I get to new stuff. Today I don't have any errands and have nothing on the to-do list other than writing. I also don't have to cook because I have tons of leftovers. I just have ballet class tonight. So I should get a good amount done if nothing distracts me.

I want to get this done so I can start digging into this mystery idea. I checked a bunch of "how to write mystery novels" books out of the library and will begin studying soon. However, I discovered that it's difficult to find school supplies when it's not August or September. Do you have to buy it all at the beginning of the year without restocking during the school year? I couldn't find a plain spiral notebook at Target -- the kind they have in packs of five for a dollar in August/September. They just had the fancy ones with stuff like various teen pop stars on the cover. I resorted to buying a binder so I can take my notes on notebook paper and then put them in the binder, but I really prefer spirals for this kind of work for the portability. I do my brainstorming on loose-leaf paper because I can rearrange it, but I like to put my research in spirals. I'll have to check one of the office supply stores.

Speaking of organizing material, have any of you writers out there tried Scrivener? It's software created by a novelist to organize research material, brainstorming type notes, character information, etc., and then link it all together with a manuscript. It looks like it would be a good way to keep details straight for something like a long-running (hopefully!) mystery series. But it also looks like it would allow for some truly epic procrastination. You could spend all day creating note cards and arranging them on the virtual cork board and then linking them and cross-referencing them with your research materials, and you'd feel like you'd done an entire day's work without adding a single word to the manuscript. Not that I can't do that sort of thing without technological help. Since I do better thinking and brainstorming away from the computer and writing by hand, it might result in a duplication of work, transferring handwritten notes to the computer, but then that added step might help synthesize free-form brainstorming into more concrete plot or character points that would then be a lot easier to keep track of. Then there's the fact that I'd have to use it on the new computer, but I write on the old computer. I guess I could always refer to the new computer as needed, but keep the distraction away while actually writing and then copy and paste my work into the new computer. Again, duplication of effort, but all the planning might speed up the productivity. They offer a free trial, so I may give it a shot and see if it fits my process, and then it's not very expensive software.

And now speaking of procrastination, it's time to get to work.

Hate at First Sight

I'm feeling very righteous. I just forced myself to walk to the library to return a book. I dithered for a while and even tried to tell myself I could just drop it off at the drive-through on my way to choir tonight, but then I reminded myself that it wasn't about the errand, it was about the exercise, and I'm more productive on days when I get some exercise, especially exercise in the sunshine. My productivity yesterday came after a walk to the post office, bank and Indian market.

I did finally get over the distraction and got some substantial work done yesterday. I'm tantalizingly close to the end, but I suspect I still have a lot of writing to do. When I was at this point in the initial draft, I thought we'd just blown up the Death Star, and now all we had to do was return to base, have the happy reunion and then get our medals. It turned out to be more like Return of the King, with all the loose ends that had to be tied up. But with the rewrites, it's more like we've just blown up the truck with the Terminator in it and think we've won, but then we see that the metal skeleton is still coming after us, so now I still need to write the showdown in the factory. Except instead of it being like the horror movie staple of the villain not being dead yet, it's more like the villain you defeated turns out not to be your only (or biggest) problem, only I can't think of a good pop culture analogy for that. I may not finish today, since it's choir night and I have to run a couple of errands before choir, but tomorrow is a possibility, and then there may be hiking on Friday.

I'm still doing my market research reading on the paranormal mysteries, and I discovered (or articulated) another book pet peeve: hate at first sight for no good reason. I can see hate at first sight when there is a reason: he's Darth Vader, attacked your ship and is taking you prisoner or even he's the cop who suspects you/your best friend/sister/brother/mother/father/employer of murder and doesn't seem interested in looking beyond that to the real killer. But I can't get into a book in which the heroine just hates someone from the start for no reason other than the author needed to throw in some conflict. That's something you normally see in romances: the gorgeous guy comes to town and smiles at the heroine, and that pisses her off to an insane degree, though that's usually a sign that she'll be in love with him by the end of the book (then again, so is hate with a cause. In general, the guy the heroine hates most or who hates the heroine the most at the beginning will be the guy she ends up with). I was surprised to see it in a mystery, and even long before anyone found a body. The heroine is basically being a bitch for no good reason (and that's not the true opposite of doormat), and though we do eventually get a reason why she's touchy with people in general, it's far enough into the book that I would have stopped reading a lot earlier if I weren't reading to study the plot structure and use of paranormal elements.

Speaking of finding the body, I grew up reading Agatha Christie and the like, where the story pretty much starts with the discovery of the body (or it at least happens within the first chapter), but I'm surprised at how far into the book the murder seems to happen in a lot of the current books, especially since modern attention spans are shorter and you're generally encouraged to start the action as soon as possible. In this book, we don't get to a dead body until halfway through the book. I suppose some of this has to do with the fact that I've been reading mostly first books in series, so we have to establish our heroine and her situation before plunging her into a murder investigation. We didn't much care about Miss Marple's personal life, but the personal stories are almost as important as the crimes in today's series. Still, I think someone should probably be dead within the first 50 pages.

I think my January agoraphobia is kicking in because there's a conference in New York in a couple of months that I usually go to and find very valuable, and I've been dragging my feet about registering. It is very expensive, and this is shaping up to be a financially uncertain year, as one of my ongoing writing contracts has ended and my new client hasn't started tossing work at me. Not to mention the complete lack of action on the publishing front. But then that lack of action means I probably need to go. The networking and business info could be very valuable. I just can't bring myself to commit to traveling there, with all the hassle that comes with that these days, staying in a hotel and sharing a room (because the conference hotel is way too expensive to go solo -- I'd have to get a room elsewhere and commute to have a room to myself). And airfares are really high right now. I wonder what the tax rules are for frequent flier miles -- if you use them for business travel, can you deduct the value of the trip or just the fees you actually spend?

Now, off to fight the Terminator in the factory, or some more relevant and accurate cultural analogy.

Distractions

My task for the day yesterday was the makeup drawer in my bathroom, and I found that I am apparently reluctant to throw makeup away, even if I no longer use it. In my twenties, I succumbed to the siren song of the Clinique Bonus Pack, where you could buy a foundation and get a handy little travel case filled with sample sized skin lotion and other treatments, plus eyeshadows, blushers and several full-sized lipsticks. You never had to buy any makeup other than the foundation. But then they changed the price threshold for getting the bonus pack, so that it was a dollar or so over the cost of the foundation, which meant you had to buy something else in addition to the foundation. Since I already had just about every shade of lipstick they made, I figured I could move on to some other kind of makeup. Considering how long ago that was, I just threw away every Clinique item in the drawer, and that emptied a lot of space. What I was really surprised to find was a Merle Norman blush because that had to date back to high school, when the Merle Norman makeover was a kind of rite of passage (and a big reason why most of the girls in my school looked like they were in the circus, or at least on stage, and why my senior portraits involve a truly scary eye look). I have no idea why it was still in there, as it's certainly beyond use and I have no sentimental attachment. I guess I have issues with throwing away things that haven't been used up. I was also surprised by how many hotel hand lotions I have in there, and I found a few other things that I should have been using but forgot I had. I need to find a way to organize that drawer (possibly using some of those Clinique Bonus Pack cases) so I can find things more easily and put away more of the stuff that's on the counter.

Other than clearing out that drawer, I don't feel like I got a lot accomplished. It was a day when I needed to focus, and I got a bit of news that threw my focus off. Not bad news, but the kind of thing that made me start thinking about something else, which led to research, which led to more thinking, which led to composing e-mails in my head. I think I have managed to figure out the ending for The Book That Will Not Die, but I couldn't seem to focus enough to actually write. I know the person who sent the e-mail wasn't deliberately trying to sabotage me, but it was frustrating since there was no real time urgency to the message and nothing I could do about it at the moment, since it was mostly a heads up about something I might need to think about in the future. So my response was, "Really? Today, of all days, you decide to drop that on me and kill my productivity?" Though that response was in one of those mental e-mails that I didn't send. I might have done better if I'd written some of those mental e-mails, but on the non-Internet computer so they couldn't accidentally be sent. Then I would have them out of my brain instead of still composing them. I've read about a study saying that people feel better after writing a letter about something than they do after venting to a friend. People actually feel a little worse or angrier after the friend venting, but composing a letter, even if it's one you never send, does better for getting the anger out of your system and clarifying your thoughts. Not that there was actual anger here, just a lot of points that need to be clarified, and a little bit of "someone on the Internet is wrong!"

Speaking of Internet, as a word of friendly advice, do not visit the web site for a certain very famous anti-breast cancer organization (I'm afraid to even type their name online because they'll start stalking me again) or for their famous several-day fundraising walking event. Because then every single ad on every single Internet site you visit will be for that event, and the amount of pink will make you gag. We were talking about the walking thing in ballet class and couldn't remember the exact (rather high) fundraising requirement, so I was looking it up, and then I regretted doing so. I support their cause, and I even dealt with them when I worked at the medical school, and the people who run it are good people, but if I've gone to their site, I already know about them. I don't need to see their ads everywhere. I cleared cookies, cleared my browser history and finally resorted to clicking on any ad that wasn't for them. Now I'm getting a lot of clothing, furniture and jewelry ads, but I can deal with that. When your marketing makes people afraid to mention your name or visit your web site for fear you'll stalk them, you're doing it wrong.

Down with Doormats!

So, it's Monday, and I didn't manage to finish the draft on Friday, mostly because I started trying to work and realized I didn't have it all figured out. I had a few breakthroughs over the weekend that may have brought it closer to something I might be able to write, but I still have a few things to figure out.

One breakthrough came from thinking about something I don't like in books. I was reading a book and getting increasingly irritated and realized that yet another one of my hot buttons is the doormat heroine (you almost never see a male character like this). I realize that the character has to start somewhere and presumably will grow a spine over the course of the book, but it's hard for me to care for a character who brings a lot of her problems on herself by letting everyone in her life walk all over her. It's even more irritating when she finally decides to assert herself and does it in a stupid way by disregarding the knowledgable advice from people who care about her well being as still more of the kind of control she's trying to escape and puts herself under the power of someone who's going to walk all over her ("You can't tell me what to do, so I won't read the fine print in that contract you're warning me about before signing it. See, I've learned to stand up for myself. Oops, I think I just signed over my first-born child and the rights to every thought I'll ever have, so I guess I'm stuck."). I reached the point where I had to skim the book (I needed to reassure myself that she'd grow a spine and a brain, so I couldn't just put it down) because reading it was too irritating.

Then while stewing over that, I realized that while my main character is in no way a doormat, she is a nurturer type who tends to put other people's needs ahead of her own, and the negative side of that is that she has a tendency to take control because she feels like she knows better than others, and then people get used to that and start expecting her to just do things for them. I've reached a situation where anyone would hit the breaking point and tell everyone to take care of their own messes because she's done with it, and I realized that's what this scene needed.

I still have one big event that needs to happen, but I'm wavering on when and why it should happen, but maybe I'll figure it out when I get there.

In other news, I watched Black Swan on HBO over the weekend, and I may not be smart enough for movies like that because I'm not sure I got it. I guess I figured out what was going on, but I can't figure out why anyone thought that would be interesting enough to make a movie out of or what they were trying to say with it (because it seemed like the kind of thing that was supposed to be saying something). And I can't believe there was ever any doubt about how much was a dance double and how much was really Natalie Portman because I thought it was pretty obvious. The only times they really showed her face when she was dancing were when they zoomed in on and circled her so that we only saw from the shoulders up as she frantically waved her arms. Not that there's anything wrong with that, since there's no way an actress who has not been primarily a dancer could possibly dance at the level of the kind of ballerina who'd have the lead in a major production of Swan Lake, and the "really, she did all the dancing herself!" campaign pre-Oscars just made them all look silly. And now I want to see a real production of Swan Lake and I have the score stuck in my head.

Meanwhile, in the last couple of days it seems like the spammers have decided my blog is a good place to sell handbags. I've been deleting tons of spam comments about handbags. Which is ironic because I've pretty much been carrying the same bag since about 2004. I bought a new one a little more than a year ago and sometimes use it, but more because of function than style. And I buy most of my purses at places like Target and TJ Maxx and refuse to use anything with obvious designer labels.

Now, to work, since I got a reasonably early start on the day. Buy purses now!

Making Mysteries Magical

If I'm really, really good and don't have any major distractions this afternoon, I might actually finish this draft of The Book That Would Not Die, and this might actually be the nearly final draft, aside from another round of proofreading to make sure all the changes flow together and then maybe some revisions after I give it to some beta readers. I only have about 30 pages left, but then these are the 30 pages that are the wall I seem to hit every time, where I can't quite get the book to end the right way. I think the changes I've made in this round will help an ending come together, and this morning when I was doing my awake-but-not-up daydreaming I think I came up with the solution to part of my problem.

Unfortunately, it seems when the writing is going well, everything else falls by the wayside. I totally stalled on the organizing project. I think part of it was I hit a task I wasn't very motivated to do, in addition to being more focused on the writing. I may put that task back in the jar, then pick something else and move on. I'm bad about starting with great enthusiasm and then stalling out, but this time I'm going to just pick myself up and get started again. At least I've maintained what I've already done.

It turns out I was right that the book I was reading would be one where I was left wanting to see what happened next for the characters. It still may not be my absolute ideal, but it is a paranormal mystery where I may be somewhat hooked on the series because of wanting to see where it goes from here.

However, now I'm curious as to just how paranormal you can get with these things. Most of them seem to be in the realm of "paranormal" rather than going all the way into fantasy. The paranormal element mostly seems to involve the heroine having some level of psychic ability. There's the one where she's a full-on psychic who can read things about people's past and future, but most of them seem to have a very specific, limited skill, like the ability to get information from certain kinds of objects or the ability to find lost things. A lot of them have the ability to communicate with or at least hear ghosts -- in fact, that often comes along with the other specific skill. There is one series about a woman recruited and helped by angels to right wrongs. The closest we get to magic seems to be "new age"-style witches, who mostly have the general psychic abilities and intuition that come with the psychic characters in addition to talking about herbs and throwing in the occasional "goddess" reference.

Though some of this may be a selection bias, as I started my reading list based on books that were in the "people who bought this also bought these" list for my books on Amazon and then branched out from there via lists with those books. That might weed out the vampire detectives and stuff like that. A bookstore visit may be in order to really peruse the available titles.

The trick seems to be to give it enough "other" to make it paranormal without it being enough power to make solving the mystery too easy. The idea I have has a lot more worldbuilding than I've seen so far, where a lot of the paranormal element is inherent in the setting and makes it more difficult to gather viable evidence of a sort that will hold up in court. Most of the mysteries I've seen are about using paranormal abilities to solve ordinary crimes, but what I've been thinking of is paranormal abilities being used to commit crimes, and the sleuths having to work around that to solve them and bring the perpetrators to justice. The fact that it is weird means the cops may have to rely on the civilian sleuth (who may or may not also have abilities) to help work around that while the cops stick with due process. I wonder if that would fly.

But first, I must finish the current book. And then it's a good TV weekend. We've got new Grimm tonight, new Once Upon a Time and the next installment of Downton Abbey.

More Mysteries: The Personal Element

It finally occurred to me that I've been getting up at the same time every morning, regardless of what time I get to bed and regardless of whether or not I set the alarm, so I may as well stay up later instead of spending so much time in bed. That turned out to be a very good plan, and the book I'm working on must either be a "night" book or it's something about this time of year (my winter books tend to be "night" books) because I got a lot more done in an hour and a half after I got home from choir rehearsal than I did all afternoon, and then I woke up feeling a lot more alert this morning at the same time I usually wake up.

Speaking of waking up to the alarm, I've finally figured out that "Wow, Mom, I didn't know you had a sister" radio ad after hearing the whole ad. It turns out that my still mostly asleep brain misheard some of it when I heard it out of context. There were actually two speakers, both pre-teen or teen boys -- or the radio ad version of teen boys, which means voiced by adult women, or possibly woman, as the voices aren't very different (when I heard the end of the commercial without realizing it was a conversation, I thought it was all one woman talking). Boy 1 asks Boy 2 what he's doing, and Boy 2 says he's waiting for his mom. Then he goes on, for no reason I can discern, to talk about how different his mom has been since she started taking these supplements that are good for her skin and hair (because that's the sort of thing teen boys talk about all the time). Then Boy 1 says, "Whoa, I didn't know you had a sister!" and Boy 2 says, "Hi, Mom," then mutters, "See what I mean?" And then the announcer tells us about these miracle supplements. I'm curious about the situation and setting for this conversation. Where is Boy 2 waiting for his mom? Outside the vitamin shop where she's buying her miracle supplements? Or maybe he's in the mall, waiting outside Forever 21, and then Mom comes out in a miniskirt and midriff-baring shirt, prompting Boy 1 to think she's Boy 2's sister rather than his mom. I feel rather sorry for Boy 2. He's probably going to need therapy. Then I realize that I'm the age my mom was when I was a teenager and I wonder if I'm dressing in a way that would be gross to my teenage kids (if I had them). And I'm way overthinking a microbudget radio ad, but this is what happens when I hear something while my subconscious is still off in dreamland. I try to turn it into a story.

And speaking of overthinking, I'm continuing my analysis of paranormal mysteries, and I think I've figured out part of why no one series has totally grabbed me yet: The main thing that gets me hooked on a mystery series isn't the mystery element. It's the personal element -- what the heroine is dealing with in her life outside the mystery and particularly the romantic relationships. It almost needs to be a character and situation I'd enjoy even without the mystery element so that the mystery then mostly lends additional tension and complicates her life while maybe also giving her a reason to interact with and get to know the love interests. I know the heroine is going to solve the mystery and survive (unless maybe there's a series about a ghost who solves crimes after being killed during an investigation). What keeps me coming back for further books is to see how her life is progressing. It's like when I was a kid and hooked on the Nancy Drew books and I kept trying to find the last one (ha!) to see if Nancy and Ned ever did more than smile politely at each other at fraternity dances and to see if Nancy ever did anything more with her life than live at home with her dad and solve mysteries. She was obviously very intelligent, so why wasn't she in college with Ned? (This may have changed with the later books, but the ones in my school library when I was a kid were published in the 30s through maybe the 50s.)

But there's a delicate line there in the relationship arena. I'm kind of disappointed when the main relationship is pretty much a done deal by the end of the first book in the series, so for the rest of the series they're just an established couple. If the relationship is resolved and the heroine's figured out her life in the first book, then there's nothing that has me anxious to read the next one. On the other hand, it can get ridiculous if things are strung out too long, particularly with romantic triangles where the heroine is into both guys or even sleeping with both without making any decision and if she hasn't really learned any better how to deal with the situations she keeps finding herself in, like a certain bestselling series that shall remain nameless in which the heroine doesn't seem to have learned anything or figured out which guy she wants in something like eighteen books. I think my ideal might be that there are a couple of viable options in the first couple of books, but then the events of those books help make the choice more obvious to her, and then for a few more books there's a slow build as that relationship develops. I'm even kind of a fan of the bait-and-switch, where initially there's the one who seems like the obvious romantic interest with all the overt sexual tension, but then there's also a quieter guy who's steadily there, and then the obvious one fizzles out because there's no substance under the sexual tension but then things gradually build with the quiet one.

I've seen this sort of personal life development in the non-paranormal mysteries I've read. For instance, I grab the Rhys Bowen "Royal Spyness" mysteries as soon as I find them (note to self, check library for new one). I barely remember the cases, but I'm enjoying watching the heroine deal with having a title but no money, so she's secretly running a housekeeping service while regularly having tea with the queen, and there's the guy who's always there for her but practical matters make it nearly impossible for them to end up together. The book I'm currently reading shows some promise, though I'll have to see how the situation stands at the end, but I'm wondering about the fact that I haven't yet found the "personal" side that grabs me in the five or so paranormal series I've sampled. Do they think the paranormal stuff alone will be enough to hook readers? Do they not want this kind of thing? Is this genre more influenced by romances, so readers want their romantic resolution in the first book? If I wrote what I want to read, would that hook people into the continuing series or would they think it too "soap opera"?

I've also discovered that I seem to have a thing for cops -- and local cops, not private investigators or federal agents. If one of the romantic possibilities is a cop, that will end up being the guy I pull for (there's one series that disappointed me because I thought they were going to do the bait-and-switch thing and the cop would be the quiet one, but then all the surplus guys were paired off with the heroine's friends by the end of the first book, so the best friend got the cop I liked for the heroine and she ended up with Obvious Guy). And then I realized that although I haven't known a lot of cops, I do tend to get along very well with the ones I do know. In fact, one of my choir buddies is a cop in my city, and I had dinner with him and his family last night. It's not just the uniform, either. I haven't seen any of my cop friends in uniform (except when my choir buddy played Officer Krupke in the youth group's production of West Side Story when they decided they wanted real adults playing the few adult roles to make it more of a contrast to the kids, and having a real cop playing the cop added even more realism). (Note to self: see if he knows any single men on the police force.)

Sharing Your Work

It's a new year and time to get back to the every-other-week writing posts. For those who are new here, every other Wednesday I tackle writing topics. (You can also subscribe to these posts via e-mail.) I'm open to questions or topics you'd like to see me address.

I have a reader question this week: How do you bring yourself to show your work to others or even submit it to editors and agents?

Letting others see your work can be scary. Writing is intensely personal. You've poured your heart and soul onto those pages, and that can make you feel like you're giving the world a window into your inner being that makes you very vulnerable. With a first book, in particular, there's a real high that comes with finishing. In that moment, your book has limitless possibilities. You imagine agents fighting to represent it, publishers throwing huge sums of money at it, you see the book cover, and you then see piles of copies at bookstores. You imagine the bestseller lists and the crowds at your booksignings. You dream about the movie deal and meeting your current Hollywood heartthrob (who's starring in the film) at the red-carpet premiere, then starting a hot romance and walking the red carpet together at the Oscars, where the movie based on your book is up for all the awards. But there's a lot of fear under those fantasies because you know that you can only maintain that perfect fantasy world if no one else sees the book. The moment you get feedback, reality will intrude. Someone might not like it. Agents and editors may reject it. It may not even get published, and if it does, it might bomb. Reviewers and readers may hate it.

So don't let anyone see it -- not at first, anyway. It's only in TV, movies and comic strips where an author types "The End," rips the page out of the typewriter or off the printer, sticks the manuscript in a box, puts it in the mail and then gets a contract and a check while he's still at the mailbox. When you've first finished a book, you can't be at all objective about it. So put it aside for a while -- at least a month -- and go do something else. Work on that Inconvenient Midpoint Idea that popped into your brain to distract you when you were in the middle of this book. Write a short story or an article. Catch up on your reading, TV shows and movies. Read how-to books on the aspects of writing that you found challenging with this book. Catch up with the things you may have let slide while you were writing, like housework, hobbies or your friends and family. In short, try to forget about your book and fill your head with other stuff. Then take another look at it. If you still think it's the most brilliant thing ever, put it away again because you're not yet ready. Not that you have to hate the whole book, but at this point you should be able to spot things that need to be fixed.

After you've done another draft, then you can start showing it to people. If this is really, really scary to you, start with someone who is likely to love everything you do, like your mom or a good friend. You're not looking for real feedback, just getting over the fear of someone else reading your work by starting with something safe. Then you may be able to branch out. Show it to a friend you can trust to be honest with you -- the kind of friend who'll tell you that those pants you're trying on make your butt look big when you go shopping together. You don't necessarily need a detailed critique from this friend, just an honest opinion about whether or not it works and what your friend likes or dislikes about it. Depending on how you work, you may want to find a writing group that does critiques, look for a critique partner or find an online writing community where you can submit work for critique. This kind of feedback not only helps your writing improve, but it also helps you toughen up and get used to hearing negative things about your work. You also learn to discern which suggestions to take and which to ignore, which will come into play when you're dealing with an editor. Another good way to get feedback is to enter manuscript contests, where your entry is anonymous and judged by published authors and industry professionals. Be careful with these, though, because there are a lot of scams out there. Look for contests run by writing organizations and be wary of contests where publication is the prize because that often sticks you with unfavorable contract terms.

Then it's time to put it out there into the world. These days, there are a lot more options than the traditional route of trying to find an agent or taking your chances with a publisher's slushpile. You can now publish your work yourself online, but check your motives about that. If you're doing that because you want to avoid rejection from publishers, then you're setting yourself up for a meltdown when the reader reviews start coming in. If you're doing that because you don't want any mean old editor to change one word of your precious manuscript, then your'e setting yourself up for failure. A self-published book still needs to be edited by a professional because you'll be competing against a lot of other books of professional quality.

I may be a dinosaur, but I would still recommend at least testing the waters of traditional publishing before you self publish. You never know what reception you'll get unless you try, and going through the submission and rejection process helps you develop the perspective and the thicker skin that will prevent those author meltdowns that tend to go viral, when the author can't believe a reviewer would dare say anything negative. Submitting to agents and editors can also help give you a sense of where your book fits into the market. If you get form rejections, then it's possible that there's nothing too special about your book that would allow it to stand out even as self-published book. If rejections criticize your writing or specific aspects of the story, it may not be ready for publication. If you get the "I love this but don't know what to do with it" kind of rejections, where the problem is more with the market than with your book, then self publishing may be viable.

And if all this still sounds utterly terrifying, there's nothing wrong with writing for your own enjoyment. You only have to let other people read your work if you want to make a living at it.