Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 135

Austen vs. Bronte

I have been thinking a lot about the present day romance genre, especially in its new incarnation in paranormal YA, and though I love Austen, I think that Bronte is currently the rage. Here is a little test to see if the book you are reading is Austen vs. Bronte.

1. Does the novel take place in
a. a drawing room or any place indoors?
b. the moors or where wind may mess up your hair?

2. Is the main conflict for the romance
a. a problem that is related to money.
b. a problem that is related to social

becoming more efficient

I was talking with a writer friend recently and discovered to my horror that she had spent 18 hours a day for three weeks working on her last novel revision. I cannot do this. I have been tracking my hours spent writing for the last four years, and the most I have ever spent in one day is about 6.5 hours. I can do that for about one week before I start to throw up at the sight of my computer. 3 hours a day is my goal. I don't know if this means I am lazy or that I am super efficient. 15 wa

30 minutes a day

This summer was very hectic. In a good way, really. I loved spending time with the kids and it is probably good for me to get out of my habit of keeping a schedule the same every day. During the summer, there were always tons of things we had to get to, but every day it was different things.

Anyway, with all the races and lessons, camps, vacations, shopping, classes, and so on, I gave up on cleaning. I did laundry and dishes and that was about it. So now I am forced to look at my house and r

One excellence

I remember in high school, I was good at everything. Math, Chemistry, English, German, Drama, Choir, Spanish, French, History. Well, not swimming. But everything else. It was so exciting. I had this feeling that I could do everything the rest of my life. I see 13 and 15 in this same place right now. It's exciting, but it's false.

There is a huge difference between a professional, adult excellence and the kind of high school excellence that I enjoyed so much. The difference is time. Not j

writing your own reviews

On the last few projects I have begun to write down what I think my agent, editor, or critics will have to say in advance. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if I had a gut feeling about what was wrong with a project and was ignoring it, or if I would simply be blindsided by new criticisms I had never suspected before.

Guess what?

It turns out that overwhelming, the criticisms are things that I have written down over the course of working on the project. Yes, there are occasi

school pride

15 came home from her first official day of high school (here it starts in 10th rather than 9th grade). It sounded horribly boring to me. They spent most of the day in the auditorium listening to lectures, then with their "team," playing games designed to "build friendships." Why is it that people think artificial stuff like that will do anything more than build artificial friendships?

Anyway, the most cutting observation 15 made was this:

Why do they think we should care so much about school p

planning for the unexpected

At the retreat last weekend, one of the writers asked how you plan for all the unexpected things that come up while you are trying to do what you had planned to do for a given time period. She meant that there are always unexpected revisions that you have to do, and that when you are going to do a school visit or a tour, the day before you're supposed to leave, you find out a list of things that someone else was supposed to do that they didn't, or you are trying to do a collaboration and it tur

Jordanelle 2009 race results

A new Cervelo P2 TT bike=$6000
New Adidas running shoes for 15=$100
Prescription goggles for 15=$45
Dad's borrowed wetsuit=free
Taking first in the all female relays at our first attempt=Priceless

I have to say this was the best triathlon race I have ever done. There is nothing like seeing your daughter pop out of the water and start running to you in transition. She did so well, and then I got to do the bike and run after she handed off the timing chip. Also, the nice weather didn't hurt, either.

UTAHALF results

My husband and I both did this race this year. The standard distance is 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run. But the weather was horrible. I can't decide if this was worse than the 95 degree Ironman weather I faced 4 years ago, but during the race it certainly felt worse.

First, the swim started almost an hour late because of waves, wind, and the inability to set the buoys. I wasn't nervous until I actually started swimming. The further out we got, away from the docks, the worse the w

more on lying and telling the truth

One of the questions I asked the other authors at the retreat last weekend was what they do when they are asked point blank by an author what they thought of his/her book, which they have read.

Some of the responses:

1. I am not in the audience for your book.
2. Oh, I didn't have time to read it. Sorry!
3. Find something good in it and mention that. Anything!
4. Tell the truth, but preface it with the information that you hate almost everything you read.
5. Lie point blank and say how much you loved