P.J. Fox's Blog, page 30

He’s Not Scary, He’s A Little Boy

pjfoxwrites:

Yes. This. All of this.

Originally posted on Jameson's Journey:

We’ve had some encounters recently that have inspired me to write this post.  This is something I hope everyone reads and shares.  This is a message that doesn’t just pertain to Jameson, but to all children who are made fun of and singled out for their differences; and I am pretty sure their parents feel the same way I do.

I want to begin by saying that I don’t hold anything against these children, or their parents.  I understand that it can be extremely awkward when your child is the one making fun or being mean to another child.  But, the next time this happens I hope these parents do more.  Because although I cannot take offense, I would be lying if I said it didn’t hurt.  It does.  It hurts to see my child be made fun of, knowing that this will be a big part of his world…

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Behind Because…

I haven’t been writing much this week, as real life has intruded.  My son is on the mend, thanks to Divine Providence and excellent medical care, but has been quite sick.  So for those of you anxious to hear that I’ve finished my stand alone novel and begun (finally) working on The Black Prince…I’m sorry to disappoint you!  But, as difficult as some might find this to credit, despite my spending my days writing about cannibalism and the dark arts, being a mom is my A-1 calling.

My “real” life is, I’m thankful to say, completely dull.  I spend a lot of time scratch-baking chocolate chip cookies and taking my son (and his friends) to offensively wholesome events.  I coach.  I shop at Downeast Basics.  The most alt thing I have in my wardrobe is a pair of rhinestone cowgirl boots.  Yes, I am from the Southwest.

Writing (much like losing weight) is an endurance sport.  Someone recently commented that writing for a living “must be relaxing” and, truthfully, it’s not–even when one’s children aren’t sick.  Being in business for oneself, whether writing or running a hardware store, isn’t easy.  Because there’s no one to turn to for help when things go wrong and, conversely, you usually have quite a few people depending on you.  Freedom is a wonderful thing but in no ways free.  In any sense of the term.  The freedom to do what you want every day can also, if you’re not careful, be the freedom to tank your career.  Or as I did when I myself was so sick a few years ago, lie around while bedridden reading true crime and noshing on junk.  And, subsequently, my “freedom” led to my gaining a hundred pounds.  Fifty of which I’ve now lost.

Now that my son is on the mend, I hope to get back to work in earnest on Monday.

How To Write A Sex Scene

Sex.  My books have it.  Some have more sex than others.  The Price of Desire has a lot of sex.  My forthcoming stand-alone novel has a lot of sex.  And, believe it or not, writing a sex scene can be quite challenging.

Here are some tips.

First, before you begin, you need to know three things:

Your market,
Your audience,
Your goal.

I’m presuming that, if you’re reading this, you’ve at least contemplated publishing your own work.  Which is great!  But publishing–whether on your own or traditionally–means knowing the rules of the game.  You need to know, not your limits, but the limits of your prospective publishers.  Because yes, there are rules.  Too much sex isn’t always a good thing.  And I don’t just mean in the sense of weakening your narrative.  Publishers, whether you’re talking Amazon or Random House, might (or might not) publish erotica, but they won’t publish straight up porn.

So what’s the difference?  That’s a tough one.  Generally, erotica is porn with a plot.  While many books (read: Fifty Shades of Grey) might seem to have no plot, there is in fact some connective tissue linking the sex scenes.  Some reason that you, the reader, are at least ostensibly supposed to care about the people involved.  In other words, there has to be more to your book than masturbatory material.

Moreover, Amazon is right in line with the rest of the publishing world in restricting the sexualization of certain taboo subjects: most notably incest, bestiality and rape.  Which isn’t to say that these subjects are entirely taboo; there are a number of literary works dealing, at least, with incest and rape.  Flowers In The Attic would be one example.  However, Flowers In The Attic is emphatically not erotica.  That a book contains sex scenes, of whatever type, doesn’t automatically make it erotica; many literary works, from Ulysses to IT, feature some form of sex.  The mistake that many rookie writers make, though, is in assuming that the fact of their taking their work seriously frees them to write whatever they want.

Or indeed, that calling something “erotica” means that, ergo, there are no holds barred.

So the first question you have to ask yourself is: am I interested in mainstream publishing?  If yes, then you have to abide by these guidelines.  And use common sense.  There are a number of sites where you can publish your work (including a number of porn sites), if your work tends to the, ah, niche.  But if you want to publish on Amazon, or indeed be salable on Amazon, then you need to tighten the reins a little bit.

As far as “how much is too much,” that’s a subjective call.  And one where beta readers come in helpful.  Provided you listen to them.  When in doubt, though, err on the side of caution.  You don’t actually need a thrust-by-thrust accounting to make a scene hot.  You may not, in fact, even need a thrust-by-thrust accounting.  Which leads us to the next question…

What’s your audience?

Are you, in fact, trying to write erotica?

Over the years, I’ve received a number of manuscripts where I honestly couldn’t tell what genre I was supposed to be reading.  This is a bad thing.  Yes, thinking outside the lines can be a good thing, but there’s a difference between being formulaic and being sensible.  It isn’t “creative” or “different” to vomit words out onto the page in any old order and hope for the best.  As a writer, you’re a storyteller; and, past a point, whether you’re actually telling a story isn’t subjective.  When readers have to struggle, just to figure out what’s going on, you’re not doing your job.

I’ve asked a number of people, “is this erotica?”, only to be met with the response that it was “a romantic comedy,” or “a police procedural.”  To which my response is simple: then if it’s not erotica, then you need to stop writing erotica.  Books that aren’t erotica–in fact, books that are–should never begin with discussions of measurements, skimpy outfits, pouting lips or luscious breasts.  Either write a book about sex or don’t; have the courage of your convictions.  Don’t write a “police procedural” that leaves me feeling like I just received a stripper-gram.

So what’s your goal?

A sex scene is like any other scene: it has to serve a purpose.  Like I said, the book itself doesn’t have to be erotica for the scene itself to be hot.  And maybe your goal is straight up to write masturbatory material.  That’s fine.  But you’ll still get a better reader, er, response, if you yourself have some sense of what’s supposed to be exciting.  Just “here’s boobs!” isn’t exciting.  Unless you’re fourteen.

So now you’re ready to write the scene.  Great!  You need to know:

Why the characters are having sex at all,
Why they’re having sex at this point in the story,
What kind of sex it is,
And, yes, how it furthers the plot.

A classic problem with sex scenes is a classic problem with writing in general: writing about the same thing, over and over again, can get repetitive–fast.  The same people having sex over and over in the same way is boring.  Nobody cares.  When I was in college, one of our roommates had an enormous collection of old VHS porn–yes, VHS.  Porn was not allowed in our apartment (we were all religious, except for this cat) so our problem roommate would sneak it in.  He once threw out an entire week’s worth of groceries that the rest of us had bought, to make room for his porn collection.  In the cabinets.  In the kitchenette.  Shortly before we finally succeeded in kicking him out, I happened to walk in on him watching a Shakespearean title that, I believe, was something along the lines of Handjob Hunnies #8.

He and I didn’t really talk much, but on that one occasion I asked him: how could he bear to watch this?  It was literally the same thing, over and over: first person shooter perspective (no pun intended), but with some pathetic, obviously non-sober girl giving “you” a rub.  How did it not bore him to tears?

As his answer wasn’t fit for human consumption, I’ll move on to the main point: that unless you can answer all four of the questions above, your sex scenes will quickly be less Last Tango In Paris and more Handjob Hunnies #8.  Even in Fifty Shades of Grey, the characters have sex for a different reason, and with (theoretically) a different emotional investment each time.  In that book, their having sex furthers the plot because it’s the only way they can communicate.  Christian Grey apparently believes that orgasm equals love; if his beloved doesn’t have one, then clearly she hates him.  Which, since all he has to recommend himself is his penis, in this masturbatory ode to capitalism, might be a fair point.

But I digress.

Once you can answer each of these four questions, the actual mechanics of writing the scene should fall into place.  Who they are and why they’re having sex will set the tone.  Is it hesitant first-time sex?  Scared sex?  Comfort sex?  What’s their relationship to each other?  Do they love each other?  Hate each other?  Somewhere in between?  Is this sex entirely consensual?  Is one or more of the characters confused?  And, on that note, what response are you trying to evoke?  Lust?  Loathing?

Writing sex–whether as straight-up erotica or as a break from the (other) action in your science fiction, romance, whatever–doesn’t mean taking a powder on the normal rules of writing.  It’s not “easier” than “regular” writing.  Sex is a part of life and, therefore, is going to in some respects at least be part of most stories.

But, as always, how you tell the story–and how well–is up to you.

Understanding Your Character’s Point of View

The vast majority of disputes seem to arise from one or both sides being unwilling to acknowledge the validity of the other side’s point of view.  There is what they “know” to be “true” based on the depthless wealth of their own experience, and then there is “wrong.”  Invariably, people tend to interpret others’ actions not through the lens of common sense but through the lens of what they believe such behavior would mean from them.  As in, if something doesn’t immediately make sense to them, then clearly it’s nonsensical.  Which is how, historically, disorders like PTSD have been so easily minimized.  “I don’t have it,” goes the logic, “therefore you can’t have it, either.”

Which is the basis of the advice to write what you know.

I’ve talked before, in I Look Like This Because I’m A Writer, about how this kind of thinking leads to narrative mistakes.  For example, romanticizing poverty.  In particular, I discussed an article I’d read where a very clearly adult woman purported to offer expert advice on how children experienced poverty.  According to her, they experienced it entirely through the lens of feeling sorry for their martyr mothers.  There was no suggestion that either a) they might not have fully grasped that they were poor or b) that they might have experienced the condition with some reference to their own wellbeing.  This is a perfect example of how people substitute what they think other people should feel based on nothing more than armchair coaching.  And will then, oddly enough, rigorously defend these imaginary points of view.

Wouldn’t want to let the facts intrude.

The thing is, people often have their own stories to tell.  Stories they will tell, if you let them.  If you can, for example, stop rhapsodizing about being poor long enough to let an actual poor person tell you about their life, then you just might learn something.  I, for example, did grow up poor.  My childhood, with all its ups and downs, is something that I–as an adult–view as a source of strength.  And humor.  When people ask me how I got so good at picking berries, the actual honest-to-God answer is that I once spent a summer doing forced labor on a berry farm.  Which yes, I really do find funny.

It’s a lot easier to judge people than it is to try to understand them.  Too often, we interrupt others’ narratives to judge them–to question whether it’s “okay” that someone who’s experienced something you never have might find it funny, rather than to learn why they do.  What kind of coping mechanism that is, and how it might have helped them.  And, as writers, we often do the same thing with our characters.

Writing realistic characters means creating multidimensional people and then letting them make choices.

Spend too much time sermonizing, moralizing, and wondering what people “should” do and you’ll end up with a series of very bland, very boring caricatures who are very much the same.  Indistinguishable, indeed, one from the other.  If that’s what you want, then fine.  But the work of bringing real people into the world begins long before you’re ready to set the proverbial pen to paper.  It means doing research.  Not googling things; real research.  Writing a story about someone who’s experienced a particular circumstance?  Get out and interview people who’ve been there.  Writing about living in a particular place?  Get out there and visit.

To create a real person, you have to know enough about that person’s circumstances, and their relationship to those circumstances, to understand what makes them tick.  To understand what would and would not be out of character for them.  I have a degree in medieval history; I combined that knowledge of, and passion for the subject with my own imagination to create a fantasy version of medieval England.  And I populated it with people I understood.  In both Isla and Tristan, in The Demon of Darkling Reach, there’s a strong sense of being other.  Of not fitting in.  In the stand-alone I’m working on now (before I start The Black Prince), there’s some of that same sense of other but in a different format entirely.  That book is set in the present day, and is in some ways much darker than The Black Prince Trilogy.  In some ways not.

None of the books I’ve written are, I suppose, precisely cheerful.  Although I do hope people enjoy them.  I hope, too, that they root for the characters and perhaps see something of themselves in those characters.  Oddly enough, I knew I’d succeeded–in character creation at least, if not as an author–when the one star reviews started pouring in.  People were leaving me terrible reviews because they were mad at my characters, and mad at the choices they were making.  And as rough as that was to experience, being the person who created–and loved–the hated character–I had to recognize that they were being treated like real people.  People who were capable of deciding for themselves.

Which was precisely what I’d set out to accomplish.

In my books, I write about situations to which I in some way relate.  The link may be attenuated, but its there.  You’ll never catch me writing a book about a perfectly adjusted person who hails from a perfectly well-adjusted background because, quite honestly, I wouldn’t know where to begin.  I write about anger, and struggle, and feminism, and developing your own sense of self, about longing and yearning and risks (and a healthy dose of strange) because that’s what I understand.  That’s where I’ve been.

Unexpected Consequences of Exercise

There’s the good–improved health, weight loss–the bad–chafing–and then there’s the stuff nobody thinks of.  The, not so much ugly but completely unexpected.  And, yes, sometimes ugly.  Before a lot of things happened that aren’t interesting, and that derailed my health, I was athletic.  No olympian, but I enjoyed sports.  Now that I’m getting back into the swing of things, health-wise, once again, I am once again enjoying sports.  Specifically for me, running-type activities (which includes cross training with the TreadClimber, which is my favorite piece of fitness equipment ever).  Will what’s happened to me happen to you?  Who knows.  This is hardly medical advice and everyone’s body is different.  I work out–and hard–60 to 90 minutes per day, 6 to 7 days per week.  Not because I feel like I have to although let’s get real here, moving around a bit is pretty vital, but because I legitimately enjoy doing so.  That 90 minutes is often some of the best 90 minutes of my day.

I’ve said this before but nothing–for me–kills stress like a serious workout.  And by “serious workout” I don’t mean a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood.  I mean the kind of pulse-pounding, knock your socks off workout that leaves you more drenched in sweat than you thought possible.  Which, for some of us (especially at different times in our lives) has been a walk around the block.  The secret is to keep pushing yourself, to keep challenging yourself.  Never rest on your laurels.

But, that all being said, it’s also really important (I think) to laugh at yourself.  Because, let’s face it, sometimes exercise is gross.  When you’re pushing yourself hard, every day, you may or may not…

Start craving weird food.  For me that’s, among other things, hummus.  Which I traditionally do not like, except when I’m a) pregnant or b) training for an endurance event.  The rest of the time I’m pretty much like, gross, why.  Then, for whatever reason, I start placing demands on my body and it’s like a switch gets flipped.  I literally cannot stop eating hummus (well I can, but it takes a supreme effort of will; I decided to write this post because I literally needed a way to distract myself from eating all the hummus in the house because, calories).  I also find myself craving black beans, and other sources of protein.

There’s some interesting information on protein here, via the No Meat Athlete.  I’m not a vegetarian, at least not in the strictest sense; I will eat meat, and occasionally do, but generally meat is a once a month thing for me.  I enjoy turkey on Thanksgiving, and the occasional burger–a craving that’s eased up since I started taking iron supplements (and yes, talk to your doctor before taking any supplements)–but as a general rule I’m happier with beans.  The other night, I found myself cramming fistfuls of Cheerios into my mouth.

As I’ve gotten back into shape, my cravings have changed.  My yearning for cupcakes is, at this point, purely psychological.  The food I’m actually craving is all pretty healthy.  Which, looking back on it, I realize was always the case.  When I was (yes, don’t laugh) a college athlete, my meal of choice was a vegetarian burrito and a smoothie.  Not one of those fake sherbet-laden fruit-flavored milkshakes but a real smoothie.  I lived, at that point, on a steady diet of fruit, beans, avocados, corn, rice, and more fruit.  With, because this was college, the occasional pizza thrown in.

The more demands you place on your body, and the more attention you pay to your nutrition, the more interesting this subject becomes: what your body actually needs, and how it’s trying to tell you what it needs.  It can be enlightening to discuss your observations with your health care professional.  And also to, the next time you think you want refined sugar, check if you actually want protein instead.

Spontaneous colon cleansing.  Colonics are dangerous.  But so is all the random, er, crap that hangs out in those miles of intestines you’ve got stored away inside.  Want to expel decades old detritus like never before?  Start running.  Yes, runner’s trots are a thing–but honestly, after a few years of inactivity, hitting the pavement can really get things going.  Which, to be honest, can get pretty gross.

Skin problems.  Exercise-induced acne is a thing.  So is chafing.  I recommend compression shorts.  The problem is that, once you start losing weight, your compression shorts may stop compressing and indeed fall down around your ankles while you run.  Don’t let this happen to you!  It’s not “splurging” to buy–and continue to buy–clothes that fit.  Especially when your next door neighbor’s thug of a middle schooler likes to stare at you while you’re on the treadmill.  Through the window.  With binoculars.  And you may or may not have seen the sun glinting off the lenses.

Finding out that you actually enjoy this.

Have I missed anything?  Is this the most boring post you’ve ever read?  Chime in!

Marketing Ideas That Are A Waste of Time

A lot of so-called “marketing” is really just a combination of ineptitude and guilt.  Waxing poetic about your rent being due so Aunt Bertha will fork it over is not “marketing” your book.  Indeed, telling all your relatives–directly or passively aggressively–that they “have” to buy your book is also not marketing your book.  Any strategy that revolves around people actually knowing you, and caring who you are, is not marketing.  A real marketing strategy focuses on a single, fairly straightforward principle: asking yourself, what’s in it for the other guy?

With that in mind, here are some things that many would-be authors do, all of which are a waste of time:

Trying to generate sales from friends (and relatives, and coworkers).  This will produce one sure-fire result: awkwardness.  And, quite possibly, depending on how ham-handed you are, resentment.  Telling people they need to spend money on you is never a good program.  Neither is acting as though the people in your life are somehow responsible for your success.  The hard truth is, most people will not buy your books.  Whether they know you or not.  I make a living from my writing and I can tell you right now, I’ve sold maybe a dozen copies–if that–of my various books to people I actually know.

Most of the people I know don’t read my books.  Virtually no one at church reads my books.  Because there is swearing (one of my best friends doesn’t read my books for that reason), and violence, and sex.  The fact is, even if your book is absolutely fantastic, your friends aren’t necessarily going to be your target audience.  They might not be big readers; they simply might not like that genre.

Moreover, even if you do somehow convince everyone you know to buy your book that’s–what?  A few dozen people?  To make a living from selling your work, even a very modest one, you have to sell books.  Every day.  The median household income in the United States is somewhere around 45,000.  To achieve that gross figure (gross, remember, not net; there’s still taxes and healthcare to contend with), you’d have to sell north of sixty books per day.

Preaching to the converted, as it were, is not a way to do that.

Joining various review swap sites.  Occasionally, I come across a book on Amazon that has a sales rank somewhere north of 500,000 and multiple five star reviews.  Most of which, unsurprisingly, tend to be very vague.  This is because the author, rather than focusing on writing a good book and then focusing on writing another one, focused instead on signing up for every tit for tat review group he could find.  Or tried to bully his friends (again with the friends!) into reviewing his book.

Guess what: this does not work.  You can tell which reviews are real and which aren’t.  The people who take time to actually write reviews–of books, at least–on Amazon tend to fall into three distinct categories:

Super fans,
Trolls, and
Frustrated authors.

The super fans will tell you exactly what was good (and bad) about the book.  No holds barred.  They, and rightly, feel like they have a claim on you and your time, and on your work product, because they’re investing their time (and emotion) in you.  The trolls will also tell you what’s bad about the book–almost always with one star attached.  And the frustrated authors will announce that a book “needed an editor” because there was too much description of, say, life in the middle ages in a book about life in the middle ages.  Or they’ll call out slang as “too modern” when phrases like “fuck you” actually predate the Roman Empire (“go fuck yourself” comes to us courtesy of Republican Rome).  They just want you to know that they can write and you can’t.  Or that they have something to teach you–and the rest of the world–about writing.

Unfortunately, very few people review a book simply to let the world know that it’s good.

Good reviews are incredibly helpful to sales, yes–but only if they’re real.  When fans contact me to tell me they’ve enjoyed my book, I always ask them to please consider leaving an Amazon review.  I ask once, and no more.  They will, or they won’t.  But I don’t press the issue, because what I’m asking is a courtesy.  These people have already, and very generously, donated a portion of their hard-earned paychecks to my welfare.  And I’d say that, on the average, perhaps one out of every ten people who contact me in some fashion leave a review.

In terms of unsolicited reviews, expect to sell–or give away–between a hundred and a thousand copies of your book before you get your first.

And recognize that prospective readers aren’t stupid; stroke-off reviews are ignored.

Paying for advertising.  This is something I discuss, at length, in our upcoming guide to self publishing.  Just don’t bother.  Paying for advertising, for the most part, stems from a premise created through magical thinking: that having something shoved in people’s faces will make them want it.  Which, that can work…if they already want it.  But when no one’s ever heard of you, or your book, seeing that it exists isn’t going to be enough to inspire them.  What makes people want your book is other people wanting it; other people saying, this is a good read and worth your time.  Rather than pouring money into advertising, you’re much better off–if you’re self published, and have this capability–giving your book away for free.

It amazes me, how many people have no problem with the idea of hurling money at advertising campaigns but balk at the idea of losing ten percent of that money in potential book sales.  Yes, when you give a book away for free, you’re losing the two dollars per book that you might have otherwise earned.  Which should only bother you if these are the only books you ever hope to sell.

Otherwise, what giving your book away for free accomplishes is introducing you, and your writing, to a larger audience.  If they like your book, then they will come back for more.  Which is where the advice to keep writing comes into play.  When The White Queen came out, I made The Demon of Darkling Reach free for five days.  During that time, I averaged somewhere in the 500’s (or above) per day; when I reached 3,000 free books, I stopped counting.  Which, yes, that’s quite a bit of change.

Except it’s not money I, therefore, somehow missed out on making.  These are several thousand people who never would have heard of The Demon of Darkling Reach except for it having been free.  My actual sales greatly increased after the free period was over, because my gamble paid off: people liked the book.  It was, and is, a good book.  Many of them went on to buy the sequel.

And that’s the false dichotomy: the choice wasn’t, make six thousand dollars in five days or lose six thousand dollars in five days but, rather, sell a handful of books because no one’s ever heard of you or help the world to know who you are.  Worrying about your earnings potential before you’ve developed any name recognition is putting the cart before the horse; before you have name recognition, you have no earnings potential.  Focus on letting the world know who you are and on convincing them that you’ve produced a quality product; worry about how many thousands of dollars you can make later.

Because ultimately, the good news and the bad news are the same news: there is no magic bullet.

The surest route to success is to write (and then write another) good book.

Teaser For A Thousand And One Nights

What follows is the first chapter of A Thousand and One Nights, my forthcoming stand alone novel.  I’m still working on the manuscript; what you’re seeing here is a rough (pre-editing) cut.  If all goes according to plan–which it hasn’t so far, real life has taken me away from writing more than I’d like in the past couple of weeks–I should be finished soon.  And then on to editing, and then off to the copy editor, and then onwards and upwards!  In the meantime, though, I thought you might like to know what’s going on here…

ONE

What saved her from being birdlike was the sense about her, an almost ineffable aura that clung to even her smallest movements: grounded, almost ponderous as she sat in her chair and surveyed the room. She didn’t slouch, but she was relaxed; she’d rested her back against the uncomfortable wood and her arm along the back of the chair next to her. In front of her was a cheap green folder filled with articles she’d printed at the library.

Incongruous, in a nightclub.

Belle had been named for the selfsame character in Beauty and the Beast. Not even the fairy tale; the Disney classic that had been a classic for some time when she was born. The film had been a brainchild of her mother’s era, and Donna Wainwright had been determined to pass along the sense of adventure and sheer fantasy—escapism—that the heroine’s journey had given her. She wanted, she’d told her overtly serious child, for Belle to have an exciting life. And Belle had excelled at school, and in ballet, but so far Belle had not had an exciting life. Unless excitement could be measured in grades and scores. Belle had, at twenty years of age, done little except study.

She’d approached ballet as she approached everything else: with intent. And she was as graceful as the wind bending the willows. Talented enough for Julliard. Or so her teachers—and her mother—told her. Belle didn’t accept compliments easily, and tended to reject their veracity simply because they were directed at her. They embarrassed her, a girl who preferred to be invisible. Her innate desire to recede into the walls might have eventually conflicted with her chosen career path but at seventeen she’d suffered an injury that made further dance impossible. And so, always a gifted enough student, she’d turned to academics with the same fervor with which she’d once approached ballet.

She’d succeeded. Again. Although she’d hardly seen either success as success; ballet, because she’d been cursed with a weak knee and academics because they weren’t her passion. But Belle was also keenly aware that she had to make a living for herself. And the best education possible—or at least the best grades possible—from the best university possible opened doors. Or so she lectured herself in the wee hours, when the papers swam on the desk before her and she was dangerously close to propping her eyes open with toothpicks because coffee had long ago lost its efficacy.

Which was how she’d come to be sitting in a nightclub in Prague.

Belle had left her prestigious Boston-area university for a study abroad program in Dresden. She was a month into a semester long program and had so far managed to make one friend. The friend who’d brought her here, to this smoke-filled hellhole. She glanced down at her folder and then up, and out at the crowd—mostly below her, from where she sat on the balcony—without really seeing anything. Dresden had been a good choice because, as the woman had explained when she’d stopped into the study abroad office, there was no competition.

Because Dresden was part of East Germany until Germany reunified in 1990, five years before Belle was born and 23 years before she’d enrolled in college, Dresden hadn’t had time to build up the kind of study abroad cache that attracted students to programs in places like London. Better students, in her mind. People who, with scarcely two decades under their belts, had more confidence than those twice their age. Belle sat in class with future presidents and present revolutionaries, people who already spent their weekends volunteering in free legal clinics and saving the whales. They lectured her confidently on how they planned to change the world; they had the answers.

Belle, herself, had no answers; only a vague sense that she was doing something wrong. She rolled out of bed and dragged herself to class in her pajamas and sat next to girls who’d somehow managed to affect perfect hair and makeup at eight in the morning. She solved differential equations and debated the causes of the French Revolution and each separate activity was interesting enough but when viewed on a longer timeline…for her, they led nowhere. It wasn’t that she saw no purpose in education for its own sake; unlike her mother, she’d never eschewed learning about the French Revolution because what are you going to do with that. Her mother had suggested becoming a dental assistant.

The last time, the night before Belle had walked into the surprisingly dusty office that advertised adventure and picked Dresden almost at random. Nobody else wants this? Good. And some weeks later she’d been surprised, even so, when she’d gotten an email telling her that her application was accepted. Starting the next semester, Belle was going to be a proud student of Technische Universität Dresden. Charmingly known to all who attended as TUD. There are humanities courses, one of her professors had told her. In a tone that was meant to be encouraging. And, Belle supposed, there was running water as well.

The city described in brochures as “charming” and “off the beaten track” was an unappealing mix of buildings that looked like left-over sets from The Illusionist and the sort of concrete cubicles that had defined life under communist rule. There were also a few halfhearted attempts at modern architecture, although with no real viewpoint as far as style. She hated going to movies at the so-called Modern Cinema Building, a name that belonged in Dresden’s communist past if ever there was one, because she felt like it was going to tip over. If she never saw another oversized horror of plate glass and poured concrete, it would be too soon. She’d remarked on this fact to her rather intellectually moribund roommate, who’d just stared at her. Cubism, Belle had said patiently.

What?

And so that had been the end of that.

Belle had no particular interest in international relations, which was what she was studying, but at least she was out. Of Cambridge and Boston across the river and the bad vegetarian food and the yelling and the smells and the sense that the walls were closing in on her. Boston smelled like concrete and fumes from a thousand different outlets and even the trees in the city’s famous common didn’t seem all that green. Once, Belle had taken her lunch to a shaded spot under a tree and a squirrel had stolen her chicken nugget. It ran right up her leg, wrenched the tiny breaded patty from her fingertips and chattered at her indignantly as if to scold her for being so stupid in the first place as to eat in public.

She had, in the intervening time between that first week in Massachusetts and her eventual escape, discovered that the squirrel had been right. She’d had her food stolen from her by other squirrels, geese, small children and homeless people. She missed home, which was Scarborough, Maine.

She hadn’t wanted to go back there—the University of Maine was entirely full of people who wanted to get good jobs being dental assistants—and she’d needed to escape. So she’d picked the program most likely to accept her, and signed her name on the dotted line. Her scholarship covered it; and, indeed, she’d been one of only two other applicants from the whole school. Her advisor had offered that getting to other cities from Dresden is quite easy.

The thing was, though, that when you didn’t know what you wanted all places looked pretty much the same. There was food and there were things to do and there was a place to curl up and read a book. And there were people, and there were lines, and there were a thousand and one petty annoyances: the kind of thing you ignored when you were happy but found exceptionally grating when you were not. Belle found herself standing in line, fuming at the fact that some underpaid sales clerk had printed up a sign that said day old “bread” because whatever cut-rate high school he’d gone to had taught him that quotation marks were merely pretty little decorations that could sometimes be used for emphasis. And the fact that milk was five cents more expensive here than at the other market but when she went to the other market she had to take the scary bus with the man who barked like a dog and the prostitutes who were mean to her.

The side of Cambridge that the tourists didn’t know existed, and that her mother refused to believe existed.

The articles she’d printed out were all on ancient Sumeria. Her assignment was to write a paper either supporting or refuting the theory—championed by two men named Barry Buzan and Richard Little, who were now dead—that the interaction between various ancient Sumerian city-states in fact functioned as the first “fully fledged system of international relations.” Alternatively, she could argue that the modern concept of international relations dated to the Peace of Westphalia. She should have, she realized now, printed out something detailing policy changes in the Holy Roman Empire—which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire—between the Treaty of Westphalia and the Treaty of Utrecht so she’d have had something to read on the way home.

She was, rather optimistically, planning on finishing the contents of her folder at this very table.

Even though she hadn’t started yet.

She had, instead, been woolgathering. She tapped her fingers against the tabletop, which was sticky. Dresden offered a full year program; perhaps she should inquire about staying on. Her German was improving rapidly; she might be able to transfer out of the English language program for the next semester. Then she could avoid Easter and Honey Baked Ham and her mother’s probing questions about what exactly she was going to do with a degree in international relations. She’d tried to explain that ivy league schools didn’t offer degrees in things like information technology. And, even less successfully, that she wasn’t even sure she was majoring in international relations.

And she hated ham.

She sighed. The water in her glass tasted like aluminum and the lone ice cube it’d come with had melted. She opened her folder, pulled out the first of the articles, and laid it carefully down on top. Then, rooting around in her purse, she produced a highlighter and a pen.

She tried to concentrate. She really did. But the club was so loud.

It reminded her, vaguely, of a coffee house she’d frequented in Harvard Square: a place called Café Algiers. Café Algiers was part of a building that looked alright on the outside but appeared to be falling apart at the seams inside. The space that the café occupied was tall and thin, with a mezzanine level that could be accessed by a canted spiral staircase. There were decorations replete with the sort of inlay that could be found at bazaars all over the world and at Disney World. And at places that advertised things like authentic Egyptian handicrafts. Above the sandalwood and mother of pearl, most of which was imitation and produced in India, hung pressed glass lanterns in various garish colors. But the coffee was good and there was a bathroom that hardly anyone ever threw up in.

The balcony, she decided, was what reminded her of her old haunt. Nothing else looked the same. But at Café Algiers, like here, she could sit in the shadows, ignored for the most part, and peer out at the rest of the world. Nobody ever used the balcony, or so it seemed, at either place. When Belle studied at Café Algiers, she did so alone and before the oncoming rush of the nighttime crowd. She could sit and read for hours and be the only customer, a situation which suited her just fine.

Here, she’d been abandoned shortly after her friends—who couldn’t believe that she’d brought homework with her—found the table. Well, friend. Charlotte, who went to another Boston-area school and who was in a sorority and who had opinions on such issues as whether the coveted thigh gap was a tool of feminine oppression.

Belle, who still ate like a ballet dancer, had never considered the issue. She was no athlete, not now, but she ran five mornings a week and did calisthenics to strengthen her knee. Which, annoyingly, still gave out on her at the most inopportune times. She’d fallen down a flight of stairs on her way to a midterm last semester. Sometimes she had flashing images of herself as a hamster, flinging herself forward against her exercise wheel, not realizing that she wasn’t going anywhere.

She put down her highlighter. She’d read the same paragraph over five times and still had no idea what it was about. Her eyes reflected the glow of the club lights, even as she sat in shadow. It was so dark on the mezzanine level that she could barely read; the other tables were mostly empty, in stark contrast to the undulating press of bodies down below. Belle’s eyes were large for her face, a mass of planes and angles just on the edge of being beautiful. She had blue eyes, like her mother, eyes that flashed gray in some lights and almost black in others. Her shoulders and ribcage, like her face, were thin. Her wrists were thin, too, as thin as twigs and looked like they might snap just as easily but her fingers were long and graceful. And strong, from years of sculpting.

The activity that, were Belle to allow herself to admit it, was her true passion.

The activity that had been discouraged from day one by her mother and virtually everyone else as a nice hobby, but a waste of time. Michelangelo was dead, and he was the only sculptor who had ever mattered. Surely nothing she produced, a product herself of a shallow era where people fell in love with Justin Bieber and obsessed over thigh gaps, could have any value. And, as Belle had sadly noted, the sizes of most people’s dreams were measured in money. Maybe, she told herself as she sketched designs inside of flyleaves and on the backs of napkins, after she found a job. Learned to feed herself. Earned enough stability where she could pursue her dreams without shame.

If such a time ever came, whispered a voice.

Belle ignored that voice. By putting her nose to the proverbial grindstone, she’d found that she could allay fears over her future. Most of the time. She hadn’t gotten to the point of decision yet; she was doing what she was supposed to be doing right at this point in her life. Going with the flow. She was a junior in college; she still had another year and after that, there was always graduate school. Surely by then she’d have found a career that gripped her. Or, at least, one that she could bear the idea of pursuing.

Mostly, when Belle contemplated her future, she saw a black hole. Which was why she tried very hard not to do it, only letting her anxiety break through at times when there were no distractions. Like standing in line at the ill-stocked market near her home. Or now.

Gradually, she realized that her anxiety wasn’t solely due to the overwhelming feeling of quo vadis; she’d also, in the back of her mind, developed the distinct sense of being watched.

What Losing Weight Has Taught Me About Writing

The good, the bad and, to coin a phrase, the ugly.

Here’s my list:

Little changes add up.  It can be discouraging, staring at that blinking cursor.  And 500 words a day doesn’t seem like a lot.  Because it isn’t–just like one workout a week, or a month, isn’t a lot.  The secret isn’t to kill yourself in the gym every day for a week and then give up, because you’ve made yourself so sore and sick and tired and you still aren’t Giselle Bundchen.  Just like the secret isn’t to lock yourself in your (hopefully figurative) garret and do nothing but write until you can’t see straight.  Because there is no secret–except consistency.  People who write a little, and then a little more, every day, end up with books.  People who spend time searching for fad answers don’t.
You won’t believe how quickly real changes start appearing.  Yes, there’s that “this sucks and nothing is happening” phase.  But if you can power through that–and the way to do it is to do a little bit each day, and then a little more–then all of a sudden you’ll look in the mirror and see real change.  Or look down at your manuscript and realize you’re 30,000 words in.
Setbacks happen.  Whether they’re permanent is up to you.  Attitude matters.  Because, ultimately, it’s attitude that shapes the journey.  If you’re not committed, absolutely committed, to success then you’ll never get there.  It’s commitment that gets you over the hurdles.  Not an aversion to hurdles.
Not everyone is supportive.  I lost friends when I published my first book.  I lost friends when I lost the first 40 pounds.  Some people were outright nasty; others were just passive aggressive.  Like I was doing this to insult them.  When you’re the guy sweating in the gym, looking ridiculous on one machine after another, it’s easy to make fun of you.  Just like when you’re the guy suffering over your writing, it’s easy to dismiss you.  Except…then the book (or the bikini) comes out.  Not everyone is willing to accept that this is simply the product of hard work.
There is no magic bullet.  There is no “right” way to write.  Dicking around, looking for the perfect approach to writing is just one more way of procrastinating.  You have to, you know, just do it.  Same as if you’re working out 90 minutes per day, most days–which I am, at this point–it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing.  Getting your heart rate up is a lot more important than finding the supposedly “perfect” workout routine, just like putting fingers to keyboard is a lot more important than obsessing over whether you’re sitting in the right chair.

Just do it.

100,000 Words and Counting…

101,102 to be precise.

The past few weeks haven’t been the most productive, writing-wise, so I’ve been excited to get back into my usual routine this week.  With end of summer activities, the start of school…I really feel like I need a nap and have been more or less constantly fighting the urge to take one.  Still, while this week hasn’t been my most productive writing week ever, it has been productive.  There’s still a significant portion of this story to write, so it’ll be interesting to see where I end up splitting it into two.  I probably won’t decide until the entire first draft is complete.  I’m also not sure, at this point, if my working title is the title I’ll stick with.  We shall see.  I maintain, though, that strange as it is this story will appeal to a lot of people.  It’s my first modern day effort!

Those of you who follow along know that my goal is 2,000 words per day; sometimes I get lucky and write more than that but sometimes, I don’t.  So, by the end of today, I’ll probably have a whole…103.  Is that discouraging?  Sometimes, particularly when you’re excited to see how a story turns out.  And yes, that happens to the author, too.  But I’ve come to think of it, in light of my recent activities, like losing weight: every little bit counts.  A thousand words here, a thousand words there, and suddenly you have a novella.  Keep pushing, and that novella lengthens into a novel.

Question: would anyone be interested in reading a sample chapter or two?

The P.J. Weight Reduction Challenge Update 4

For those of you who’ve enjoyed–or at least tolerated–following along with my weight loss efforts, another update.

It’s upsetting to be a skinny person all your life, whether a bona fide in shape skinny person or a skinny-fat skinny person, and then suddenly be fat.  And to have your doctor tell you that you are, in fact, obese!  When this happened, denial set in.  I didn’t realize, until I’d gotten over my denial (which was brought about by seeing some extremely unfortunate pictures of myself just, you know, standing there and doing nothing), how bad it was.  Or how much I’d let myself go, simply by refusing to acknowledge the fact that this was a real problem for me.  That I wasn’t 18 anymore and size 18 clothing on a 5’9 person weren’t all that glamorous.

Which isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with being any size–there isn’t.  The right size for you is the size where you’re healthy, and confident in yourself.  Screw what the magazines say, and screw unrealistic expectations–of beauty, and of everything else.  But for me, this was never about thigh gaps or convincing myself that I was worthy.  It was about feeling good about myself, both inside and out.

And that, because our culture is so image obsessed, is a sadly overlooked aspect of weight loss and of health in general: it’s not about looking good according to some arbitrary standard, or even about living longer, but about enjoying the time you are alive.  I used to be fairly athletic; when I stopped moving around all the time, I started to feel…gross.  And the more gross I felt, the easier it was not to move.  The health conditions I do have started getting worse, and I developed a couple of new ones.  Nothing major, but still unpleasant.  I was exhausted all the time, and for no good reason.  I could have been a size 5X or a size zero, and it wouldn’t have mattered: the point was that I wasn’t myself.

A couple of friends of mine have commented on my dedication to exercise, and how they find it both inspiring and vaguely intimidating.  My response is that motivating yourself to get out there and work it every day is easiest when you focus on the immediate benefits of exercise: not of losing weight, or of regaining your health, because those are long term benefits, but of banishing stress.  Banishing (for me, along with medication) anxiety and depression.  Banishing the afternoon “I need a nap” slump.  Feeling like a wrung-out towel but also like a goddess.

Losing weight and regaining your health are awesome, and I’m trying to do both, but those are arenas where you see only the slowest of changes–and only over a very long timeline.  It’s not like you’re going to hop on the TreadClimber, hop off, and have lost an inch around your waist.  But after an hour on that baby, I’ve busted stress like nobody’s business.  Give yourself a reason to do something every day, that has immediate benefits on that day, and you’ll want to do it every day–just like you formerly wanted to eat cupcakes every day.  Oh, wait, that was me.

Stress is a huge part of my life, for a lot of different reasons, and I used to cope with that stress by eating.  Which doesn’t make me proud to admit.  Now, I cope with it by killing it in our home gym.

Have I lost weight?  Yes.  I was an 18; now I’m a 14/16.  You can’t spot reduce, but most people’s bodies drop fat from different places in–for lack of a better term–a preferential order.  Mine loses from the top down.  Hello, reduced bat wings!  Being in the in-between phase makes finding clothes hard, because some things get tighter as you both build muscle and lose fat, and some things are suddenly so loose that they’re falling off.  But really, it’s not about the clothing size, or the scale.  It’s about finding out who you are under the layer of apathy, denial, and inactivity.

Is anyone else on a similar journey?

How’s it going?