Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 133

Phelps' flipper feet

At my book club this week, we had a discussion about whether or not Michael Phelps' enormous "flipper" feet were responsible for his amazing successes in the pool. We were discussing OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell, which I think is an amazing book that changed my perception of what matters in life, "talent" or hard work. I am not sure that I believe in "talent" anymore. I think that what we have called talent for a long time is really something else, a combination of factors that are much le...

Ugh! Self-promotion stuff!

I know I'm going to forget this because I'm going to be away the week before, so I'm posting well in advance. I will be at a book signing on October 10 at the Sugar House Barnes and Noble from 12-3. Others there will include John Brown (new author, SERVANT OF A DARK GOD), Brandon Sanderson, L.E. Modesitt, Dan Willis (I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER), Jessica Day George and Patrick Rothfuss. If you don't want to come for me, you probably will want to come for one of them.

I have a nice new review f...

three devices

I went to a writing class ten or more years ago and was told the importance of these three things:

1. deadlines
2. crucibles (characters forced under stressful circumstances to work together)
3. secrets

The students were encouraged to write books where we had these three things because they added to reader interest in the book. They were sort of best-seller marks, the kind of things that readers can't put down.

So I read books now and think about whether the ones that I love are using these devic...

translation

My piano teacher asked me yesterday at my lesson how I had learned to read notes so quickly. I stared at her and thought this very strange, since I still struggle, after nearly three years of playing piano, to understand her when she tells me to play a "G." Gradually, I began to understand her.

She has a friend who is learning to play the guitar. It is very slow going because she is always saying to herself, as she reads the music, C chord, that is these notes, and recites them in her head,...

bad poetry in novels

I am wondering why it is that so many novelists (especially in fantasy) feel the need to add bad poetry to their novels. I have written a few bad poems in my time. I would probably have written more, but I decided to write bad novels instead, because that took a lot longer. I once had an author accuse me of having a poem in THE PRINCESS AND THE HOUND and I disagreed. It was just nice prose, in my opinion. With some left justification.

I like good poetry. Although, to be honest, it takes ...

deep goodness

One of my very good friends and I were talking last night about why she hates romance novels. She doesn't mind romance if it's a component of a good novel, but she can't stand Austen or Bronte and doesn't make much distinction between them.

Anyway, one of the interesting parts of the discussion was our agreement that we wanted characters in novels to have a deep goodness. This does not mean that they are perfect. This does not mean that they face no real struggles. We want them to be in li...

more pics

While I'm at it, here are a few more pics from the old days.

This one is of me in sixth grade:



You can see how hard I was trying for a more feminine look. Also, like many girls in sixth grade, I looked like I was older. I had hit my full height and was close to my college weight. (In high school, people claimed that I had begun to shrink already. But no, they were just continuing to grow and I was not.)

I worry about my daughters looking too old. I remember getting attention from older bo...

tomboy?

Yes, it is indeed #3.

I remember distinctly buying that shirt and those pants (which you can't see) at Sears for my birthday in the boys department. My math teacher thought I was a boy that whole year. My name doesn't help much, since it's so unusual it has no gender connotations.

I was actually growing that hair out from the cut in third grade. My mother, with 11 kids, could not afford to pay anyone to cut our hair and she never did seem to get any better. The boys got my dad, who used cli...

metteharrison @ 2009-09-16T19:47:00

My mother sent me some old photos of my childhood last week. She also accidentally sent me a whole bunch of my brother's photos. When we were 9(me) and 10(him), people used to ask us all the time if we were identical twins. I tell my kids this and they laugh at how stupid it is. He's a boy and I'm a girl. How can we be identical?

So, I showed them these pictures and suddenly, it wasn't so stupid anymore:







Care to guess which one is me?

villains

As a writer, one of my hallmarks is probably the way that I treat villains. There is usually a villain in my books who is doing something terribly wrong, and whom the hero/heroine has to stop. But I work hard to make my villains well drawn, so that they are the heroes of their own story. There is a reason that these villains have become who they are in the present-day of the story. Each villain has a purpose. I think most villains think they what they are doing is the RIGHT thing, at lea...