Ruth Harris's Blog, page 14

Downhill (Or Not What It Used To Be)

Has anyone else noticed everything going to hell in a hand basket or is it just me?From Edward R. Murrow to Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann.From Audrey Hepburn to Lindsay Lohan.From Julia Child to Rachael Ray.From Ernest Hemingway to EL James.From Dr. Freud to Dr. Phil.From Rockefeller and Vanderbilt to The Donald.No wonder I’m so p*ssed off. Not just because I’m about to turn sixty and not just today but just about all the time and just about everywhere.On line at the supermarket where I have to pack my own groceries.At the gas station where I have to pump my own gas.On hold listening to a robot telling me my call is important.At the twenty minutes of trailers and commercials that precede every movie.At the ads that precede internet videos.At cell phones and their rude, clueless users.At Metro cards that don’t work on first swipe, at double length buses that make Manhattan’s terrible traffic worse.At a decade that began with Enron and ended with Bernie Madoff and Too Big To Fail.You name it, it bugged me.And, right now, you could add Ralph to the list.
Just because we’d been married since about forever did it really mean he had to go on a diet, start exercising, and buy a fancy new wardrobe?How come he had more—and more expensive—beauty products than I did?Since when did he spend more time in front of the mirror than I did?Was it really fair that, almost sixty, he looked like Gregory Peck while I, just a few years younger, was beginning to look like Phyllis Diller?Why did women who weren’t even born the year we got married look at Ralph with goo-goo eyes and why did Ralph have to look back?“The male menobleep,” diagnosed Julia Makins, my bff who’d been married three times, divorced twice and widowed once.Still, I wondered what happened to Ralph and me. The sizzle was gone, domesticity had set in, time and gravity had had their way with both of us.Or was it just me?
I remember college like it was yesterday and our first apartment, a fourth floor walkup, in a neighborhood so crummy the local gang members didn’t even hang out on the corner. I remember my first job at Click magazine and the day Ralph retired from the NYPD. I remember when and why George Profett, the city’s most neurotic billionaire, hired Ralph to be Profett Media’s Vice President in charge of Security.I remember all those things—and more—but the more important question is, why don’t I remember how I got to be almost sixty?What happened to all those years between college and now? How did they go by so fast? What was I doing? Why didn’t I notice?When, exactly, did I get to be invisible?When did empty taxis start passing me by and when did the feral perfume ladies in Bloomingdale’s no longer bother to assault me with a spritz? When, exactly, did people stop listening to me—even when I knew more about the subject at hand than anyone else in the room?When did my shoe size go from 7 to 8 and my bra size from 34 to 36 even though I hadn’t gained any weight (well, not much, anyway)?When did I stop reading Vogue and start sleeping in flannel pajamas all year because our apartment was cold in the winter and Ralph blasted the air conditioner in the summer?Was I one of those women who had let herself go?Was I about to get dumped for someone newer and younger?Did I need bikini boot camp, a face lift, a Brazilian wax?Would a new hair color, a different shade of lipstick or a pair of crotchless panties get Ralph to pay attention to me?As it turned out, what it took was none of those things. Instead what made the difference was a murder in Shanghai, a dire threat from George delivered in a cheapo Vietnamese restaurant, a gung-ho war correspondent with a humongous pair of 36 Double D’s, a washed-up Martha Stewart wannabe trying to make a come back with the help of a red balconette bra and a showdown with a one-eyed, one-lagged Afghan warlord who didn’t speak a word of English.It all began the day I bought a fake Chanel bag from a sidewalk vendor on East Fifty-third Street. I was thrilled with my purchase and knew Ralph, a label snob, would be impressed. Anxious to show off my new bag, I headed for the office, moving faster than I had in years.So fast, I didn’t notice I was being followed.


Now the news about Anne R. Allen and me:  The first weekend of March, Anne will be teaching a seminal so we've decided to swap Sundays to give her time to focus on the seminar. Instead of our usual schedule, Anne will be posting this Sunday, February 23.  Her subject:  Self-Editing 101—13 questions to ask yourself when you edit your first chapter.  I'll be posting at Anne's blog on March 3.  

And here's the hype:  My newest, THE CHANEL CAPER, is a romcom mystery thriller starring a Baby Boomer couple.  In a nutshell:  James Bond meets Nora Ephron. Or is it the other way around?

Here's a peek at the cover:

The story behind the story: where do you get your ideas? ZURI

The question readers ask writers most often is: Where do you get your ideas? Last week, Anne R. Allen wrote about how her struggles with weight and diets led to her novel Food of Love. This week I'll answer the same question and tell you how I got the idea for Zuri—basically, it was born via a series of accidental collisions.

Kindle   NookOut Of Africa, set in Kenya and based on the famous book, stars Meryl Streep as the Danish writer Isak Dinesen and the young, golden Robert Redford as her lover. It's one of my favorite movies—grand romance, gorgeous African settings, beautiful clothes, brilliant recreation of a vanished way of life and drama on an epic scale. What's not to like?
I watch Out of Africa every now and then and had just seen it when, flipping thru TV channels one evening, I happened to see a clip of a baby rhino running around and exploring his (or was it "her"?) surroundings. Rhinos had never been on my radar but I was blown away by the little rhino’s appeal and grace.
A rhino? Adorable? Absolutely.
I was also aware via newspaper and magazine articles—like my Dad, I'm a news junkie—that poaching was decimating the rhino (and elephant) populations of Africa. In addition, I had seen a TV story—I believe it was on Sixty Minutes—about the healing work being done by African animal orphanages. These four separate elements came together in my mind and the idea for the story took shape.
The need for research was obvious. The writer's best friend, Google, led me to the newest studies of animal intelligence and communication, pointed the way to articles about the lethal techniques of poachers, details of rhino husbandry and veterinary, and the dangers of wildlife rescue. I also read up on Swahili, Kenyan wedding rituals and cuisine—and that was just the beginning.
The research was fascinating. Did you know that the illicit trade in wild animals is third only to the illegal trades in drugs and weapons? Or that rhino horn—it’s actually keratin, the same material found in feathers and nails—is considered a miracle medicine in Asia, and is, in fact, of zero medical value? The price of rhino horn, driven by booming Asian economies, is now more expensive than gold. 
Even then, I still wasn't finished. Where was the love story?

Therefore: Renny Kudrow, the "wildlife whisperer" and sexy director of the Kihali Animal Orphanage, and Starlite Higgins, the talented vet with a horrifying secret. Their relationship gets off to a rocky start when Starlite almost causes Zuri's rescue to fail and the two must work their way through a very rough beginning to a happily-ever-after ending.
Zuri—the word means "beautiful" in Swahili—is the name of the lovable and courageous baby rhino who is the book's heroine and she, too, enjoys a happily-ever-after ending.
So, readers, have I answered your question? Do you have a favorite movie based on a book? Do you have a favorite book you wish would be made into a movie? Have you ever been enchanted by something (or someone) you had never paid attention to before? Do comment and share your views. I would love to hear from you!

6-pack abs & buns of steel. Starving & bingeing. Is feeling fat the same as being fat?

Today: The Story Behind the Story by a survivor of the diet wars, the sane & sensible Anne R. Allen

FOOD OF LOVE—a novel about friendship, size acceptance and a small nuclear bomb

Does anybody remember the size acceptance movement of the 1990’s?

Fashion magazines like Mode and Radiance featured gorgeous models with non-surgically-enhanced curves. The plus-sized Emme became a supermodel and motivational speaker. Romance publishers issued whole lines featuring curvy women who didn’t diet to find love. Helen Fielding’s BRIDGET JONES DIARY and Jennifer Weiner’s GOOD IN BED topped the fiction bestseller lists. Books like Geoffrey Cannon’s DIETS MAKE YOU FAT and Susan Powter’s STOP THE INSANITY let us know 98% of diets result in weight gain.

The movement urged women to put energy into living instead of dieting. It reminded us that nobody who’s starving can work at full capacity. It told us that if women channeled the energy we were putting into hating our bodies into changing the world, we could make a difference.

I wrote my novel FOOD OF LOVE during that era—just when a diet drug combination called phen-phen had to be taken off the market because it, well, killed people (but left a fashionably skinny corpse.)

I wanted to point out the ironic truth that women—no matter what culture, sexual orientation or race—are united by one thing: the compulsion to diminish ourselves by dieting. I showed how women inflict this insanity on ourselves and each other—as one character says, “women are always complaining how the menfolk are oppressing us, but you know…we’re pretty damn good at oppressing our ownselves.”I didn’t want to write something preachy. Or another “men are jerks” saga.

So I combined satiric social observations with a roller-coaster plot involving an aging supermodel, a conservative talk show hostess, a hot KGB agent, a small nuclear bomb, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

Two different agents took it on and tried to sell it, but it didn’t pigeonhole neatly into a prescribed genre. Finally in 2001 I found a medium-sized independent publisher in the UK who loved it. I think the book might have taken off if they had been able to get US distribution. But one of the owners of the company died under mysterious circumstances (yes, fodder for another novel—coming out soon) before the book had a chance to find a US audience.

Soon afterward, New York pronounced romantic comedies “over” and plump, life- affirming heroines were replaced by vampires, zombies and the hungry undead.

At the same time a new cultural mindset emerged—carefully orchestrated by the multi-billion dollar weight-loss industry. By the mid 2000’s, the concept of body acceptance had been erased from our consciousness. We were again being told that starvation (and/or surgical enhancement) was the path to happiness.

I suppose it helped that our romances were all about falling in love with vampires, zombies and other assorted dead people.

Boomers were told the natural weight gain—which has been happening to aging human bodies since we were swinging from trees—is “unhealthy.” Children as young as six were put on diets that destroyed their natural appetite regulators. We didn’t let them run free and exercise, then shamed them for being fat. Fad diets like Atkins came back with a vengeance. Fat people were humiliated for entertainment and dieting lies got new life with the 2004 debut of “The Biggest Loser.”

Personally, I lost faith and fell for the lies again: “It’s not a diet—it’s an 800-calorie-a-day ‘lifestyle’.” I was swayed by those nightly news reports about the obesity “epidemic”—which turns out to have been created by reducing the medical definition of “normal” weight, inflated by the natural weight gain of aging Boomer bodies. I was shamed by those decapitated images of people who dared walk our streets without buns of steel or six-pack abs.

After three years of starvation dieting and the subsequent craving, depression, and binging, I’d gained thirty pounds and looked for help in the size acceptance movement again. But I discovered most of their websites were dead and/or had been vandalized. I Googled “Emme” and couldn’t find one entry. It was as if the whole movement had never existed.

But last year something happened that gave me hope. The brilliant actress Melissa McCarthy won the best actress Emmy.

I’m not a big awards show fan, and the TV was on only to accompany my laundry-sorting. McCarthy’s sitcom, Mike and Molly was barely on my radar. But as I stood there folding my plus-size clothes, watching her walk regally across the stage, I shocked myself by bursting into tears. Here was a beautiful fat woman—seriously fat, not simply un-skeletal—winning an award over the likes of Amy Pohler and Tina Fey.

I couldn’t stop crying. It was as if some huge shift was happening in my own consciousness as well as that of the Academy voters. I had a glimmer of hope that maybe things were moving back to sanity. Later that evening, I Googled Emme and found she has a new website, Emme Nationfull of new messages to women about honoring ourselves, no matter what size the bodies our genes and age dictate.
This all happened the same weekend that FOOD OF LOVE finally made its US debut—thirteen years after I wrote the first version.

I am so blessed that a small publisher liked my blog enough that they contacted me and asked about my out-of-print books—and then liked them well enough to offer a contract. With a fresh edit and a gorgeous new cover, the book is as relevant today as when I wrote it—maybe more so, because a whole generation of young women haven’t been able to hear its message. Most women still need to learn to stop “oppressing our ownselves”—and love the bodies we were born with.
FOOD OF LOVE is about living life to the fullest and honoring our own passions—whether for food, music, faith, or an all-consuming romantic love.

So, readers, please tell us if you've fought the diet wars and let us know if you've won or lost. Have you made peace with your weight or are you still struggling to meet an ever downward-moving "ideal" weight? Do you rank every mirror you pass as a "thin mirror" or a "fat mirror" and when's the last time you had dessert?



Anne R. Allen is a former actress and the author of six romantic-comedy mysteries:  FOOD OF LOVE, THE GATSBY GAME, and the Camilla Randall Mysteries:  GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY, SHERWOOD, LTD, THE BEST REVENGE and NO PLACE LIKE HOME The first three Camilla books are available in a boxed set. She has also written a guidebook for authors with Catherine Ryan Hyde (author of the iconic novel Pay it Forward.) HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…AND KEEP YOUR E-SANITY!

Anne blogs with Ruth at Anne R. Allen’s Blog…with Ruth Harris.

A Boomer's Lament: The Fonz and Archie Bunker, the California raisins, the Bouffant & the Beehive.

A BOOMER’S LAMENTI remember the Fonz and Archie Bunker.I remember when LBJ meant the President (Lyndon B Johnson) and not a basketball player (LeBron James).I remember the California Raisins, Louis the Lizard and the Budweiser Frogs.I remember when the NY football Giants moved to the NJ Meadowlands.I remember pin curls and garter belts.I remember Dick & Pat, Jack & Jackie, Ronnie & Nancy, Jimmy & Roslyn, Bonnie & Clyde, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Ken & Barbie.I remember when you had to get up & cross the room to change the channel.I remember gas station attendants.I remember streakers, est and transcendental meditation.I remember consciousness raising, encounter groups and the Manson Family.I remember Bullitt, The Godfather, and The French Connection.I remember Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd and Marvin Gaye.I remember Sergeant Pepper, Tricky Dick and Flower Power.I remember the Bouffant, the Beehive, the Shag, the D.A, The Wet Look, The Dry Look and Greasy Kid Stuff. I remember Joy, "the most expensive perfume in the world" and  "Modess...because"I remember the Atkins Diet, the Scarsdale diet and the Beverly Hills diet.I remember Pan Am and TWA.I remember disco and Donna Summer, hula hoops and Rubik's cubes.I remember lots but I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, where I put my glasses and why I went into the kitchen & what I meant to do there. So, my Boomer friends, what do you remember? And what kinds of things do you forget? Coming Attraction: On Sunday, Anne R Allen opines on Googling yourself. Vanity? Or just plain smart?

DANGER: Writer at work...Where do Bestselling Authors Create their Masterpieces?

Oh, come on, you fantasized about the glamour, didn't you? When you first harbored those secret desires to be a writer, you pictured yourself in a little villa in the south of France, maybe? A woodsy cabin by a New England lake? At least an oh-so-romantically seedy flat in a major metropolitan area? 

And there were the afternoons in Paris cafes. Jetting off to tropical climes to do a little deep sea fishing or big game hunting. Or maybe you'd get to solve crimes like TV's Jessica Fletcher or Richard Castle.

Thing is—have you ever seen those TV and film novelists actually writing books? Of course not. For the same reason they don't have TV shows about watching paint dry.

As Ruth Harris shows us this week, a lot of real writers' lives are pretty boring. And living with us can be kind of a pain. But she's found a few who have some exciting tales to tell...

DANGER: Writer at Work
by Ruth Harris

Anyone who has ever lived with a writer knows it ain’t easy.

Moody? Check.

Preoccupied? Check.

Cranky, quirky, obsessive, prone to long silences and short bursts of typing? Ditto.

And those are only the subclinical descriptions.

We kill people, make them miserable, give them impossible challenges, break their hearts, subject them to rainy days and stormy nights, vicious enemies, terrible wardrobe choices and soul-shriveling bad hair days not to mention fires, floods, avalanches and tornadoes. We do nothing but cause trouble and then pile on more. We’re dangerous for sure.

But what goes on behind the scenes? Are our own lives as dramatic and crisis-ridden as our characters? Do we live on the wild side? Do we battle zombies and assassins? Are our love lives as passionate as the characters we write about? I asked a few writers to confess their quirks, their routines, their oddball habits.

Some of us (Michael and me definitely included) are—there’s no other way to put it—b-for-boring. We stick to a regular routine, sit at our computers and beaver away. We’re soooo boring we’re not even competitive about it although Vanessa Kelly, bestselling author of Regency romance, claims she and her DH, Randy—they write romantic suspense as VKSykes—are THE most boring writers on the planet.

“We both write in our offices on our computers, and I sometimes write on my Alpha Smart. The only thing I’ll sometimes do is take notes or write when we’re driving in the car somewhere – Randy is doing the driving! We will brainstorm together when we go for a walk, but that’s about it. All the quirkiness seems to go on in our heads!”

Anne R Allen says: “I’m at the keyboard at 8:30 every morning, seven days a week, with a big cup of English Breakfast tea with almond milk and Stevia. If I'm writing something with an urgent deadline, I ignore the Internet entirely. Sometimes I ignore the entire world. For long periods. I remember one time going outside after a long intense writing session and wondering what weird weather pattern was going on now--all the trees were blossoming, and here it was November. Then I realized no: my book was set in November. In the real world, it was April.”

Mark Chisnell, thriller writer extraordinaire, is much more adventuresome. He races yachts and climbed halfway up Mount Everest in sneakers(!). “I work normal hours and I have a grown-up office with a desk, book shelves, filing cabinets but I wasn't always so organized. I wrote and rewrote my first novel,THE DEFECTOR, in a multitude of strange places, but the early draft was done in the South of France. It sounds idyllic and very Graham Greene, but I had gone down there to work for a magazine that went bust. So I was trapped in a rental agreement I couldn't escape, with no job and very little money in the bank.

"I wrote the novel to make the best use of a very bad situation, but circumstances had a lot in common with the freezing garret of legend. There was no desk in the room, so I improvised by using a chest of drawers—awkward as there was no gap for the knees. It was winter and the building was designed for summer residence, with thick brickwork to keep it cool, and no heating; every hour or so I would have to go outside to warm up enough to keep my fingers mobile and typing. I remember that the only time I was truly warm in that place was in the bath. I finished the novel just as I escaped the lease and fled back to England.”

DDScott, bestselling rom-com author and founder of WG2E, doesn’t fool around with English Breakfast tea: “I do luuuvvv to write in cocktail lounges while I'm enjoying Happy Hour. I actually fill my cocktail napkins with tons of ideas then take 'em home and slip 'em into a special box just for that very thing. Then, when I need an off-the-wall, over-the-top idea, I know just where to look. :-) Martinis and other such fabulous glasses full of liquid courage make for killer muse therapy!!!”

Some, like Claude Nougat, founder of a Goodreads group devoted to Baby Boomer fiction, even break the law. “I had a light bulb placed over the bath tub, thus going against every law in Italy (apparently it's unsafe to place a bulb there!!) because I used to love to read in the tub! I did try to take notes while I was in my bathtub but I had no pen and had to get out, dripping wet and cold, to get it. I slipped on the mat coming back into the tub. I slid into the (by now tepid) water but managed to splash some water drops on the paper, making half of it unusable. I tried to write but having forgotten to take along a slate or something hard, I couldn't do it. Just a couple of miserable squiggles. So I had to hold it up against the wall to try and write. More water seeped into the paper, leaving me no place to write anything beyond three or four words.

“By then, exasperated, I got out having thoroughly forgotten what I wanted to write. Yes, I hate bathtubs!”

In addition to Claude, the law-breaker, DD, the lounge lizard, and Mark, the broke and freezing writer who had better experiences in the bathtub than Claude, Roy Street, who writes Daphne du Maurier-award winning romance, mystery/suspense and paranormal genres with his wife Alicia, also lives—and writes—dangerously.

“Alicia and I like to keep physically active while we write, taking frequent breaks for things like push-ups or jogging in place. Having been a pro dancer, Alicia keeps a portable barre in the study where she works.

“I prefer shadow boxing. When we were working on a novel that featured a boxer I decided to up the ante to deepen the ‘show-don’t-tell’ aspects. I asked my friend Aubrey, who was an ex-pro boxer, to come over and spar with me. Not only did he graciously oblige, but he knocked me out. Fortunately, it took only a handful of minutes for me to revive and, yes, return to my keyboard. Loaded with inspiration . . . and a sore jaw.”

So, Scriveners it's YOU TELL US time: What are your writing quirks? Have you ever broken the law, gotten knocked out, or frozen in the South of France? Or are you just…sorry, but I don’t know how else to say this…the b word like Vanessa, Randy, Anne and Ruth?

We have 5 Opportunity Alerts this week:

#1 Tech-Savvy Author Workshop: If you live on the Central Coast of California and you’re interested in learning about blogging, building platform and everything a 21st Century author needs to know, Anne will be teaching at a seminar called THE TECH SAVVY AUTHOR with Catherine Ryan Hyde, screenwriter and radio personality Dave Congalton and a whole crew of smart techie folks on March 2nd.

#2 Interested in having your short fiction recorded for a weekly podcast?There’s no pay, but it’s fantastic publicity if your story is accepted by SMOKE AND MIRRORS. They broadcast about three stories a week. Spooky, dark tales preferred. No previous publication necessary. They judge on the story alone.

#3 Cash prizes for flash fiction. The San Luis Obispo NIGHTWRITERSare holding their annual 500-word story contest. Anybody from anywhere in the world is welcome to enter. Prizes are $200, $150 and $75. This is a fantastic organization that boasts a number of bestselling authors among their members, including Jay Asher, Jeff Carlson, and moi. (Well, some sell better than others :-) ) Deadline is March 31st.

#4 $3500 Grand Prize for literary short fiction. NO entry fee. The deadline for the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Contest for short fiction is February 1st.

#5 $2000 Grand Prize. NO entry fee. Call for Entries—The Flying Elephants Short Story Prize, sponsored by "Ashes & Snow" artist Gregory Colbert. ::: AndWeWereHungry , a new online literary magazine, seeks literary short stories for its debut issue fiction contest. THEME: "And We Were Hungry....," or "Hunger." For isn't it, to quote Ray Bradbury, hunger or "lack that gives us inspiration?"  Prize: One grand prize ($2000) + three finalists (each $1,000) + eight runner-ups. Deadline: March 31, 2013.

8 Tips For Turning “Real Life” Into Fiction—Make-overs, personality transplants, plots, plot twists & a search for meaning

One of the questions writers hear most often is: Where do you get your ideas? We—certainly I—don’t always know but in the case of Decades, the story of a scandalous love affair, the idea came from real life.
Writing a novel based on a real life situation is a lot more than just regurgitating a story you happen to know—even if it’s a whizz-bang, humdinger of a story. The challenge is turning real people, real events and the messy confusion of real life into fiction.Having no guidelines at the time I wrote Decades, I had to figure it out for myself. I made plenty of mistakes along the way but had several advantages I wasn’t aware of.1) Know your craft—and how to use it.It’s absolutely basic but bears repeating: compelling fiction needs conflict, structure, resolution. Decades, originally published in hard cover by Simon & Schuster, was my first “big book,” but prior to writing it, I had been writing professionally for over ten years—weekly articles for men’s and male adventure magazines and original paperbacks, mostly Gothic romances and romantic suspense, under a variety of pseudonyms.In the process—and hardly intending to—I learned how to write action, conflict, character, emotion, and sex; how to grab a reader from the first sentence and how to create cliffhangers that would compel the reader to continue. That knowledge of the nuts and bolts of craft, inadvertently learned, would be the invaluable underpinning of the novel.2) Be a good listener—and don’t gossip.Coincidence—and real life—provided the inspiration for Decades. The coincidence was that I happened, quite by accident, to know each of the three main characters, two much better than the third. The three were:  a successful but restless husband at the Is-this-all-there-is? stage of life; his wife, the insecure, inexperienced rich girl he marries on his way up; and “the other woman,” younger and quite glam.At the time the events in real life took place, I never thought to write about them. After all, a married man cheating on his wife is not exactly stop-the-presses news (unless the married man is a politician in which case all h*ll breaks loose!). Two of the people involved in the triangle confided details of “their” version because they knew they could trust me not to gossip. They didn’t know—nor did I—that years later, haunted by their stories, I would turn their drama into fiction.3) Just because “it really happened” doesn’t mean it’s good fiction.In writing a novel based on real life, I faced the same challenges a writer does with any novel—the need to create believable characters and a dramatic plot—with the added twist of having to structure the formlessness, confusion, and messiness of everyday life into the demands of a novel. Knowing the “real story” turned out to be both a blessing and a hurdle.4) Protect the privacy of your “real life” characters.Of course I changed names but, as I wrote, I realized it wasn’t enough to change John Doe into Jack Delaney. A radical name change—to Anthony McMartin, for example—helped guarantee JD’s privacy but, from a writer’s point of view, had the secondary effect of freeing me from unwanted reminders of the “real” John Doe.In addition to the name change, I spent a lot of time and thought changing physical descriptions, biographical details, personality traits, and back story. 5)  Help your reader relate to your story.IRL the “other woman” was a stylish, never-married single girl with a high-profile job and social life to match. In the novel, I wanted a character more representative of wider experience so I left out the glitzy fashion-world details.Instead, I portrayed a woman more characteristic of the era who marries young, has two kids, then, immersed in diapers and domesticity, questions her earlier decisions. She divorces the husband who was her college boy friend & learns (the hard way) how to conduct herself in a challenging and competitive business world newly-open to women.Each of the other characters received a similar makeover. I made the husband handsomer and more successful than he really was. I gave the fictional wife a talent even she didn’t recognize—a talent that, in the end, rescues her.6) Give your characters room to roam.IRL the story took place mainly in Manhattan but, as I wrote, I found the setting too confining. In the novel, the characters do live in New York, but I added completely imaginary scenes in Florida, Nantucket and the Caribbean. Using different settings helped me show how the characters behaved in different geographies and in different social milieu.Trust me, a week in the Caribbean with a wife is much different from a week in the Caribbean with a girlfriend in the middle of a steamy affair!  For the novelist, pure gold!7) Expand the scope of your story.Almost any “real life” story by its nature, tends to be limited to the people involved. (Unless your story is about someone who happens to be President of the United States and has the worries of the world on his/her shoulders.) As I drafted the novel and its plot and characters gradually took shape, I wanted to explore how the unintended consequences of an illicit love affair affected people not directly involved.I ultimately created a teen-aged daughter torn three ways—between her charming, straying father, her loyal, devastated mother, and the come-hither lure of contemporary culture, in this case, the go-go Sixties.8)  Look for the larger significance of your story.I don’t mean you should hit your reader over the head with The Meaning Of Life. The final element that transformed real life into fiction came to me as I was halfway through the draft and realized that the age differences between the married couple, the younger “other woman” and the teen-aged daughter led naturally to portraits of three transformational, mid-20th Century decades—and to the title.By the time I was finished with name and personality changes, biographical transformations, plot twists, and historical research, the characters had taken on their own, fictional lives. The plot moved with its own energy to a far different conclusion from the one in real life, and I was able to portray massive personal, cultural and social transformations in an way critics would call “absolutely perfect,” "powerful" and “gripping.”The rewards were beyond anything I’d imagined but, trust me, it did not come quickly or easily.Decades—which I have revised and edited for today’s reader—is available in Kindle and Nook editions. So, readers, did this help answer your question about where writers get their ideas? And, writers, have you ever used real life experiences in fiction and what tips can you share?Coming Attractions:  On Saturday, January 26, I’ll be at WG2E with a new report on Formatters and Formatting—important info for writers and essential for our readers who deserve an elegant, high-quality presentation.On Sunday, January 27, you’ll find me at Anne R. Allen’s. My subject? Danger: Writer At Work. Meanwhile, right now Anne is dispensing her usual excellent advice, this week on blogging: 5 Blogging Rules Authors Can Ignore…and 5 You Can’t

5 Blogging Rules Authors Can Ignore…and 5 You Can’t

Do all aspiring authors need to blog?

The answer used to be: Only the ones who want to get published.

Now, agents and publishers are letting up on the requirement.

Recently, agent Rachelle Gardner changed her stance on blogs.“A few years ago, the standard wisdom was that authors, both fiction and non-fiction, should have blogs in order to gather an audience and build relationships with readers. Now, not so much. As social media and online marketing have evolved, my thoughts on blogging have changed. I think each author needs to carefully consider whether blogging is an appropriate vehicle for them.”

But she added that you need to be on social media somewhere. She says Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Google  can help you establish yourself if you find blogging too daunting.

But if you’re a Boomer like me, you may find those other platforms MORE daunting. For the non-tech-savvy, blogging is the easiest to master. It’s also the social media platform that gives you the most control.

This week social media guru diva Kristen Lamb devoted a whole week of blogposts to explaining the reasons why “blogs are probably THE BEST use of an author’s time when it comes to building an author platform using social media.”

But some writers start to blog too early in their careers and find it’s a time suck that keeps them from their primary writing goals.

So when should you start blogging? I don't think you have to worry about blogging if—

You’re at a stage where you need to put 100% of your writing time into learning your craft and getting that WIP onto the page.  You’re a student who loves your creative writing class and hopes to be a writer someday, but you’re not sure what genre you’ll want to write or if you'll want to write novels, screenplays, poetry or whatever..You’ve written a NaNo novel and a few short stories but you know you've got a lot to learn and you're not ready to start submitting things yet. You’ve been to a few writers conferences and you’re working madly on edits on your first novel and you’ve got this new idea you’re just dying to get on paper...
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with blogging if you’re at any of those stages. For some of us, blogging is fun. Having fun with words is good at any stage of your writing career, as long as it doesn't keep you from your primary writing goals.

But don’t feel pressured to jump in yet. Blogging is a commitment. Don’t start if you don’t have the time or discipline to follow through.

When should you definitely think about a blog? When you’re sending out queries or getting ready to self-publish.

You will need a website anyway. (Sending out a query when you don’t have a website is shooting yourself in the font. Many agents and editors reject on that item alone.) A blog is a website—while a Facebook, Google , Twitter or Pinterest page is not. Nothing that requires membership counts. And a blog hosted by Blogger or Wordpress is free as well as being interactive—as opposed to a static website. So it counts as “social media.” It’s a two-bird stone.

I agree with Kristen Lamb. I think blogging provides the most effective long-term strategy for writers to get their names out there into the marketplace and interact with the public.Why?
You’re a writer. Blogging uses a skill you’ve already got: putting words together to make sentences. Other social media are subject to faddism and rapid changes. (Facebook has become much less effective now that you have to pay to reach more than a handful of readers. Other social media sites may follow suit.) Blogging is the social medium that gives YOU the most control over your brand.But blogger-authors usually make one huge mistake: we follow rules established by other types of bloggers.

I made this mistake myself. Thing is: as an author, you are not blogging to monetize, so a lot of those rules don’t apply. You're blogging to make yourself an interactive home on the Web—a place for agents/fellow writers/fellow bloggers/publishers/editors/readers to find you and communicate with you. It's a place to establish your brand.

And your brand is YOU.

This means:

1) You don’t have to blog every day.

Or even every week. Or on a schedule. (Although a schedule will give you a better chance of building a readership.) But it’s all good. For more on this, read my post on The Slow Blog Manifesto.

2) You don’t have to keep to 300-500 words.

Make your post as long as it needs to be to cover the subject. If you go over 3000 words, you’ll probably lose some readers, but Porter Anderson writes more than that in every one of his posts at Writing on the Ether and he's one of the most respected bloggers in the business

3) You don’t want a cutsie title that masks your identity.

The number one reason for an author to have a blog is to get name recognition, so for heaven’s sake, PUT YOUR NAME ON THE BLOG. I know I hammer away at this, but still 70% of the writing blogs I visit don’t have the author's name in the header—and almost that many don’t have an “about me” bio page to give us any idea of who heck they are.

The reason you’re blogging is the opposite of anonymity. You want people to be able to put your name (or pen name) into a search engine find you. Don’t make them rummage in their memory banks trying to remember if your blog is called “Songs from the Zombiepocalypse”, “Lost Marbles” or “MommiePornCentral". A whole lot more people will find you if they can just Google "Your Name."

Every minute you spend blogging anonymously is a minute wasted. Let the public know who you are and where you are and why we should be reading your stuff instead of the other 10 billion blogs out there.

And ALWAYS put your contact information prominently on the blog. If you’re selling a product, it’s just plain dumb not to tell people where to find it.

4) You don’t have to blog about any one subject. Your product is YOU.

For a long time, I believed all the stuff about how you have to have a niche. So this is a niche blog. It's serving us well, but it hems us in. We may try branching out into other territory in the coming months. Notice the new "Opportunity Alerts" at the end of the post.

Remember people surf the Web looking for two things: information and entertainment. Your blog can spin a good yarn, make people laugh, provide information, or all three, as long as you are putting it all out in your own honest, unique voice. (But I generally advise against fictional yarns—see below.)

A great example of a highly successful blogger is Nina Badzin, who blogs about books, parenting, religion, career choices, and so much more. Her posts are engaging and charming and often get picked up by the Huffington Post. Why? She’s smart, funny, honest, and totally herself.

One caveat: one of the least interesting topics to readers is your writing process. Hardly any potential reader wants to know your daily word count or your rejection sorrows. Other writers may stop by to commiserate, and you do want to network with other authors, but don’t make your writer’s block or attempts to get published the main focus of your blog.

You’re a writer, so they want your well-written observations on things: your unique voice talking about the things you feel passionate about. The research you’re doing on medieval armor. Your theories on why raccoons are going to take over the planet. The hilarious adventures of an erotica writer/PTA president.

NOTE: If you’re not a published author writing for an established fan base, DO NOT post bits of your WIP hoping to get praise or critique. That’s because:
You’re blogging to GIVE entertainment and information, not GET praise or free editing.If you’re not published, that book can never be sold, because you have given away “first rights.”5) You don’t need a lot of images.

Don’t waste lots of time looking for the right photo (or risk getting sued for using copyrighted material.) If your blog is about travel, or fishing, or antiquing, yes, take lots of photos, but if the post is about books or ideas—don’t sweat it. You’re a WRITER. The blog is going to be a showcase for what you can do with the written word. We’ve never used images on this blog, and we’re doing pretty well.

If you do use images, make sure they are in the public domain. Try Wiki Commons or WANA Commons

But there are some blogging rules you'd be wise to heed:

1) Learn to write good headers. A “good” header does a number of things:
Asks a question or provides an answer. Attracts search engines. Makes a good Tweet (even if you aren’t on Twitter, you want somebody else to tweet it and spread the word.) Promises the reader something of value: information or entertainment Note: One-word and enigmatic titles may delight your muse, but minimalism won’t attract blog readers. Also stuff that’s unfocused, doesn’t inform, and nobody’s likely to Google.

Titles like “Scribbles”, “Alone,” or “Sad Thoughts” are not going to get you many hits. These are not words or phrases people are likely to search for, and they don't entice or offer anything. Look at the titles of our top ten blogposts for ideas on what works in a blog header. Numbered lists and questions work best.

2) Always include share buttons Those little "f" "t", "g 1" and other buttons that allow people to share your brilliant words to their Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts are the way you will build a following. Put them up there even if you personally don’t use that kind of social media.

3) Always post a bio and contact info—and your @twitterhandle, if you have one. Also include a way for people to follow the blog as a “follower” or by email and rss feed. (All this stuff is available in your "gadgets" menu on your dashboard if you use Blogger.)

4) Remember social media is SOCIAL. Be welcoming to your visitors and visit other blogs. Respond to comments. Make commenting as easy as possible. You can’t control all the Blogger/Wordpress hoop-jumping, but if you haven’t had a barrage of spam, you can turn off the “word verification” or “CAPTCHA”. That will triple your comments. (Especially from people with older eyes who can’t read those %&*! letters to save our lives.)

And don't neglect your neighbors. Nobody’s going to know you’re there if you stay home all the time. Get out and visit. Social media is about networking. Choose a few high profile blogs to visit regularly and notice whose comments interest you. Go to their blogs. Eventually you’ll make some friends. Who knows—it could be a potential collaborator, blog partner, or somebody who’ll recommend you to a publisher or agent. Or just a great friend who can support you through the tough times.

5) Learn to write 21st century prose. People skim on the Internet. You need short paragraphs, bullet points, lists, bolding, and lots of white space. Draw the reader's eye through the piece.

What about you, Scriveners? Do you have a blog yet? When did you start to blog? Can you think of any other “conventional blogger wisdom” that’s not true for author-bloggers? 

We have 5 Opportunity Alerts this week:

#1 Tech-Savvy Author Workshop: If you live on the Central Coast of California and you’re interested in learning more about blogging, building platform and everything a 21st Century author needs to know, I’ll be teaching at a seminar called THE TECH SAVVY AUTHOR with Catherine Ryan Hyde, screenwriter and radio personality Dave Congalton and a whole crew of smart techie folks on March 2nd.

#2 Interested in having your short fiction on a weekly podcast? There’s no pay, but it’s fantastic publicity if your story is accepted by SMOKE AND MIRRORS. They broadcast about three stories a week. Spooky, dark tales preferred. No previous publication necessary. They judge on the story alone.

#3 Cash prizes for flash fiction. The San Luis Obispo NIGHTWRITERS are holding their annual 500-word story contest. Anybody from anywhere in the world is welcome to enter. Prizes are $200, $150 and $75. This is a fantastic organization that boasts a number of bestselling authors among their members, including Jay Asher, Jeff Carlson, and moi. (Well, some sell better than others :-) ) Deadline is March 31st.

#4 Want to find out about the latest ebooks? TODAY'S E-READER BUZZ is a new way to read about the latest releases. When you subscribe, you could win a gift card or a copy of my new Camilla mystery, No Place Like Home. 

#5 A Blog for the Multi-Talented. An interactive blog for your photos and stories. Different themes each month. STORIED IMPRESSIONS. In intriguing new blog from Gretchen Fogelstrom. (although I've told her she needs to make her name bigger!)

Another successful author goes indie.

I tried to post this comment on Huffington's Post story about successful writers like Barbara Freethy who've gone indie but HP's log in doesn't recognize me so here it is:


I'm another successful TradPubbed author gone indie.  My books (DECADES, HUSBANDS AND LOVERS, LOVE AND MONEY, MODERN WOMEN and THE LAST ROMANTICS) were million-copy New York Times bestsellers, translated into 19 languages and published in 30 countries. My U.S. publishers include Random House, Simon & Schuster and St. Martin's Press. Over the years, I reverted the rights because my publishers weren't interested in them. I had no idea what I would do with those rights but felt strongly that I wanted to control them.

Then two things happened: The first was that I couldn't sell a new book (a romantic comedy-mystery featuring a Baby Boomer couple). Although editors "loved" it, they didn't "see a market for it." I was known for my women's fiction and a romantic comedy was out of my genre. The second event was the advent of ebook publishing. The rights I had reverted suddenly had a place to go.

I've indie published my backlist and am about to publish my Baby Boomer romantic comedy-mystery, THE CHANEL CAPER. In addition, I've written and published two thrillers, HOOKED and BRAINWASHED, both written with my husband, Michael. We've also indie published Michael's two national print bestsellers, THE ATOMIC TIMES, a memoir about his experiences as a young soldier sent to "observe" the US H-Bomb tests in the Pacific Proving Ground, and ALWAYS ON SUNDAY: An Inside View of Ed Sullivan, the Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra & Ed's Other Guests, his memoir of his years working on the Ed Sullivan show.

Once authors experience the freedom to write in various genres, the ability to create their own covers, control their own brand and the infinite shelf life of their books, they will not return to the strictures of publishing-like-it-used-to-be.  —Ruth Harris

The Number One Mistake New Writers Make

Most complaints about authors by agents and editors as well as reviewers can be boiled down to the same offense. It's the major reason so many reviewers won't read self-published books by unknowns.

What is that mistake?
Rushing to publish too early.
Nobody wants to read a rough draft. Your story idea may be great, but wading through amateurish writing vs. reading professional work is the difference between grading a student paper and picking up your favorite author's book for a relaxing read.

Also—no matter how polished your writing—you're unlikely to get an agent or a readership unless you know something about the business of getting your work into the marketplace.

So if one of your New Year's resolutions is to get that NaNo book published, make sure you include the steps of writing a few more books and educating yourself about the business first.

Unprofessional gun-jumpers waste time for reviewers, readers, editors and agents. They can sabotage their careers by condemning themselves to the slushpile or no-sales hell—and risk branding themselves forever as mediocre writers. They can get themselves dismissed as ignorant whiners who can't take criticism and think writing a book is a magical get-rich-quick scheme.

How do I know this? Because I was a gun-jumper myself.

I totally relate to the huge pressure you've got to get this career on the road, NOW:
         You’ve got the external pressure:
From your mom, who thinks the fact you’ve written 80,000 words of anything is so noteworthy she’s already written up the press releases.From your significant other, who wants to know when exactly his/her years of sharing you with that manuscript are going to start paying a few bills.From your friends, who are getting kind of embarrassed for you, when you keep telling them you’re a writer but have nothing to show for it. You hear stuff like, "How long can it take to write a book anyway? My mom can type 55 words a minute!"From your critique group, who are so tired of helping you revise that WIP …AGAIN, they’re screaming “Send it! Away! Immediately!”From online indie publishing zealots who say "every minute you're not published, you're wasting money."
And the internal pressure:From your battered self-esteem: How many more years can you take those eye-rolls you get every time you tell somebody at a party you’re “pre-published,” and you’re only delivering pizzas until you make it as a writer?From artistic insecurity: You won’t REALLY know you have talent unless you’re validated by having a published book, right?From financial insecurity: It’s tough to pay off the loans for the MFA when the only paying writing gig you’ve had since you got the degree is updating the menu for your brother-in-law’s fish and chips place.From your muse, who says: “This is pure brilliance. The world totally needs this book!”
We’ve heard them all. But I've finally learned the trick is learning to ignore them. We have to learn to listen instead for that small inner voice when it finally says:
“I’ve got a handful of polished books that will stand up to the snarkiest reviewer.”“My ego is enough under control that I can refrain from responding to the most clueless review—and I’m willing to rewrite again for my editor or agent."“I’m a professional. I know how the publishing industry works and I’m ready to turn out at least a book a year, promote it, and live my life on deadline.”At the beginning of the e-publishing revolution, some of the biggest self-publishing gurus hammered us with all that stuff about how, "every day your book isn't published, you're losing money." I think the gurus intended to speak to traditionally-published mid-listers who had out-of-print backlists.

Unfortunately, it became a mantra for every beginning writer with a practice novel in their files. Whatever the reason for the advice, it's not wise to follow it any more.The "bubble" in which the random amateur's 99-cent self-pubbed ebook could make the big time has deflated.

These days, every time you edit, you're giving yourself a better chance at a long-term successful career. (Up to a point. Don't re-edit the same book for a decade—a mistake I made. Write new ones. You'll get better with each manuscript, I promise.)

I cringe when I read comments from beginners who consider themselves qualified to write a novel or memoir because they know how to write legal briefs or medical reports or academic papers. These are entirely different skills from writing narrative. Grammar skills are necessary for a novelist, of course, but they're not at the core of storytelling.

Learning to craft book-length narrative is a long, intense process. As I've written before, a writer needs to put in Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours" in order to develop real proficiency.

We also need proficiency in the business we're trying to enter. These days, being an author means not only knowing how to write, but understanding the business of publishing.

I was reminded of this recently because my publisher wants to look at some of my older manuscripts. I dug out the many drafts of the book I'd worked on for way too many years. It wasn't quite as bad as I feared, although it's still not ready for editorial eyes. (An editor can only clean up something that's already there. We can't expect them to work miracles.)

I can now see my biggest problem was ambition that exceeded my skills. Most first novelists can't handle sweeping sagas that span fifty years like my magnum opus.

But to my embarrassment, I also found some truly awful query letters I sent out on that book. I'd been querying without having a clue about genre or where my book would fit in the marketplace. Or what kind of writer I was or wanted to be.

Now I'm grateful for all those rejection letters. Not only was my book not ready—I was not ready.

Recently I saw a comment thread on a writing forum started by a young writer who is now about at the stage in her writing that I was when I wrote those letters.

But she had already self-published her book—and just received her first review: a two-star. I read the review and the "peek inside" sample and saw the reviewer had actually been kind. He said he liked the premise but the author didn't seem to know what a novel was.

The heartbroken author wrote, "I don't know how there can be anything wrong: my sister liked it just fine." When advised to unpublish and hire an editor, she said she couldn't afford one.

I remember thinking like that.

But at the same time, I would never have thought of trying to get a job styling hair without getting trained as a beautician. Or working as a chef without a long apprenticeship. Or going on a professional golf tour if I couldn't afford golf lessons.

This is the hard truth: we have to become professionals before we enter the marketplace.

I hope this young author will take the kind advice other authors offered up. (One suggested she try CritiqueCircle.com—which I've heard great things about, too. It's not a substitute for an editor, but it's a start.)

If she doesn't, she could get a few more bad reviews, no sales, and decide to give up. But if she goes back and spends a little longer learning the basics, she might have a great writing career ahead of her.

There's something to be said for the old query system that made me slog away for years before I found a publisher.

Easy self-publishing doesn't mean the learning process has been shortened. Learning to write narrative takes way longer than most people realized.

Self-publishing guru Kristine Kathryn Rusch put this very nicely in a recent post.

 "Do you remember how much work you had to do to learn how to read a novel? It took you years to get to “big” books of more than 20 pages...It’s much easier to read a novel than it is to write one. Why do you think that writing a good one is possible on the very first try? If you want overnight success, this is not the profession for you. If you want a writing career, then learn it... It takes practice, practice, practice, learning, learning, learning, and patience, patience, patience.

And the wonderful Kristen Lamb also blogged about the subject this week. She points out that Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours equal pretty much the length of time it takes to write three books. (That's how many I'd written before I got my first publisher.)

 " ...all you indie/self-pub authors who put your first book up for sale and you haven’t sold enough copies to buy tacos? Keep writing. 10,000 hours. 3 books. Traditional authors? Three books. Rare is the exception."

This post isn't meant to discourage anybody. It's meant to urge you to learn to be the best writer you can be—so you can have that career you've always dreamed of—not one unpolished book languishing in agents' slushpiles or the Kindleverse, unwanted and unloved. You owe it to your book to do it right.

What about you, scriveners? Did you try to start your career too soon, the way I did? What advice do you have for eager new writers who are anxious to dive into the marketplace. 

Blog News: I see that we've reached 1300 followers! I remember when I thought if I could just get 50 followers, I'd feel like a success. Everything is relative, isn't it? Welcome new followers!
Next month we'll have a guest post from bestselling indie phenom Mark Edwards, who with his writing partner Louise Voss rocketed to self-pub stardom and landed a major deal with HarperCollins. Mr. Edwards attributes their success equally to a compelling story and a compelling book description. He's going to tell us how we can learn to write professional copy to sell our own books.

The Songs We Sang, The Clothes We Wore, The Way We Made Love—And The Books We Write

I'm up on Romance University today with ideas about how writers can use social, political and cultural history to give readers more to relate to—and to add dimension and conflict to their books. Think early Elvis, garter belts and Spanx, Mad Men, Homeland and Downton Abbey. Do stop by, visit & comment. Things get fun & lively at RomanceU!