And Scene

As many of you have probably guessed from my total radio silence these past few weeks...

TWINDOM HAS ARRIVED!

The babies were born on August 20th - yes, that's right, exactly one day after I posted about how weird it was to be a not-parent-parent, stuck in the in-between stage.

These babies have an exquisite sense of timing. (Oh, and we had a boy and a girl, for those keeping score.)

At any rate, this means I am officially on an extended hiatus from social media. I wish I could give you all a date when that hiatus will end, but the truth is that I'm so sleep-deprived and newborn-crazed that I bounce between thinking I should blog about this right now! and I'll never be able to blog again!

So, for now, we'll just say it's a hiatus of indeterminate length. I apologize that I won't likely return your visits for a while, and I know I'll be kicked off of the IWSG list soon, but I'll be back eventually, and will look forward to catching up with you then.

Off to tend to Twindom...

And, scene.

The In-Betweens

I was sorely tempted to post another 'gone writing' banner and beg off of blogging today, but then I remembered, "oh right - twins!" and thought I'd better blog while I still can.

My wife and I are astonished floored delighted weary so happy that those babies are still in utero, given twins' propensity to arrive rather early. We're at the point when they could arrive anywhere from today (no joke) to two weeks from now, and we've been at that point for a good solid two weeks - most twins arrive as early as 28 weeks and as late as 39, with more than half being born by 35 weeks - and while I'm psyched for the extra time to get my to-do lists from miles-long to just feet, this is a very weird way to live.

"Do you want to have dinner on Saturday?" friends ask.

"Um, maybe?" we reply.

"Let's schedule an appointment for the week after next," my acupuncturist says.

"Right, and what was your cancellation policy again?" I ask.

I book clients at my day job, and wonder if I'll actually be there for our appointments. I look forward to settling down with my library book (The Empathy Exams, currently) and then wonder if I'll have a chance to finish it before it's due - and how much I'll end up owing if I don't have time to return it.

All because, you know, babies.

I'm not complaining, really - I just wish I knew when, so I could settle down and live and get things done. But since the Fates laugh at even the idea of me knowing, I have to stay in this weird in-between place. Not yet a parent, but not not a parent. Working and planning and crossing items off of lists, and trying not to hold my breath every time my wife so much as frowns.

This, of course, is all incidental when compared to the Real Anxiety: that my life is about to change so utterly and wholly that I may not recognize it anymore; that I myself am about to change, too; that my family is about to double in size; and, most of all, that I cannot fathom what any of this is going to look like. 

I can imagine. I can extrapolate. I can guess. But I won't know until they're here. I am stuck, between parenting and not, between one stage of life and another. I am in the in-betweens. We both are.

So, we wait. And we plan, and hope, and complete tasks. And we wait.

Random Writer Thoughts

In honor of summer brain (which in my case involves lots of daydreaming, little writing, and a giant waterspout of weird thoughts,) here are some totally bizarre, utterly non-linear, sometimes senseless, rarely useful, and always random thoughts today:

1. What is the opposite of a pet peeve? You know, a little thing you especially like? Don't say 'favorite,' because that's different.

2. I really, really, really love semi-colons (My CPs will attest to this. They may also swear and complain about it.) They're just so useful. They're like the Swiss Army Knife of writing.

3. My pet peeve on romance stories (see #1 above), by which I mean any genre that contains a romance plot, be it sci-fi, literary fiction, horror, whatever: sex scenes that do nothing to further the plot. Don't get me wrong; gratuitous sex is fine - if you're writing erotica. In that case, sex it up. But if it's a romance plot, please, make the sex plot-worthy. Let something happen - character progression, relationship progression, etc. - during it. I am not talking about books that actually are in the romance genre, because I am not the expert on how to write those. I'll let the actual experts speak on that count.

4. I want a literary tattoo. I've wanted one for years. The problem is that I can't decide on which quote to get. Should I go classical, and choose some snippet of Sonnet 65? Should I go modern/fantasy/political, and have some wise nugget of Ursula Le Guin's inked on me? Or should I do poetry, in which case Mary Oliver or Adrienne Rich feel like my favorite options? I have no idea. It's impossible to decide. Which is why I don't have one yet.

5. My favorite smells in the whole world: wood smoke. Old books. Leaves in autumn. The sea. Honeysuckle.

6. This poem. (see #4 above)

7. Is there anything better than settling down with a book you've been looking forward to reading, with uninterrupted hours stretching in front of you? I think not.

8. Bless the public libraries. Many times in my life, when I was too poor to buy all the books I wanted to read, libraries gave me a way to still have #7 (above.) Since I can, I now buy books more often and support authors and indie bookstores, but I continue to use, and appreciate, the library.

Thanks for staying with me to the end, my dears. What random thoughts are you having these days? Do you know the answer to #1, or have a vote on #4? Any input on #3?

Insecure Writers: Getting Over Submission Phobia

It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for The Insecure Writers! The IWSG is an online group created by Alex J. Cavanaugh for writers. You, too, can join us anytime!


As I mentioned last month, I am successfully avoiding insecurity because I am so damn excited about my writing group. We meet once a month, and apparently we share a similar schedule to the IWSG, because once again we just recently met, right before the first Wednesday of the month.

BUT, that's not what I'm writing about today. Well, sort of. Peripherally. It's related. Relatedly.

Whatever.

I want to write about just doing it.

Not Nike, no.

Submitting,

Yes. Submitting your work. Querying agents. Sending stories/essays/poems to magazines or publishers or literary journals or (paying) blogs.

Here's what I've realized, first-hand, in only two months of meetings with my group: some of the most talented writers never get published, because they never submit. I realize this isn't exactly earth-shattering news - I've read about this phenomenon myself - but now that I'm seeing it happen right in front of me, it's throwing me for a loop. These writers I'm meeting with are so damn talented, but some of them aren't published, because they're not submitting.

You know when you open a journal/magazine/website/anthology, and read a piece, and think, 'well, that's OK, but I know I can write something better.' Well, you know why that piece is published? Because the author submitted it. Shocking, I know. Most likely, that author submitted to a ton of places. Most likely, he or she fielded 10, 20, 50, 100 rejections in the process. Most likely, he or she drank too much/cried too much/swore to give up, too, and then kept going.

And got published.

So please, IWSG-ers, don't be Those Writers, the ones who pen gloriously and submit never-ly. Please get your stuff out there. Rejection will come, and you'll survive it - and then you'll be published.

I challenge you to pick a piece you've been sitting on, that you know is finished, that you know, is good, and submit it. Right now.

Just do it.

Do you submit, or are you submission-phobic? What piece are you holding onto? Where are you going to submit, right now?

3 Things Writers Should Never Do

Don't you like declarative, forceful blog post titles like that? They're so confident and bossy. It's like my inner eight-year-old gets to come out and tell everybody what to do.

BUT. On with the DECLARATIVE DIRECTIVES!

These are all things you should never do in your writing, not in general. Man, that would be a long list, wouldn't it? They are also things that are huge pet peeves for me, and I do quite a bit of editing and proofreading, both for my betas, CPs, writing group, and friends, and also as freelance work on the side. Which means I have rather a large amount of experience, and am not completely unqualified to write this. It also means that this is not the only list of things you should never do, but is instead a small sampling of Stuff That Pisses Me Off, Which You Should Avoid Doing Because It Also Pisses Most People - Including Editors, Agents, and Other Important Industry Types - Off.

1. Ignore Grammar Rules

This one could be broken down into about 4,573 (as a rough count) separate common grammar issues, but instead of boring you all to tears, I decided to lump them all together. I am not referring to the poetic license type of ignoring grammar, but the much more common, and MUCH more annoying ignorance/laziness that leads people to eschew all basic grammar rules. I see everything from missing quotation marks to bad or missing paragraph breaks to sentence fragments to tense changes to inappropriate apostrophes and more.

Here's the bottom line: it makes me focus on your grammar (or lack thereof) instead of your content, and that is a very bad thing. There's no way I'll be engaged by your story if I'm not focused on the content. Please, use all the resources the electronic world provides, from style guides to grammar sites to the grammar check in Microsoft Word. If you need help, ask for it. Even when you're sending things to betas or CPs, save them some time and do your basic proofreading first, so that they can focus on the meat of your work, and on catching the little typos that slip past even the most strict grammarians.

2. Go For Melodrama Instead of Drama

(Small caveat: unless you're writing Gothic Romance or absurd comedy, in which case, go for it.)

For the rest of us, this is to be avoided at all costs. I define melodrama, personally (and for the purposes of this post) as unearned emotion. In other words, a scene that comes three-quarters of the way through a long story, in which Joe is screaming at Betty because Betty has been deliberately pushing his buttons and provoking him and trying to get him to explode is probably earned (probably. But still should be watched.) However, a scene that comes in the second chapter, after we've just met the characters, in which Joe is screaming at Betty because Betty just doesn't understand him and oh god the pain is probably melodrama.

I'm saying the emotions have to match the stakes, and have to follow an arc of rising tension that leads us to the big emotional moment. That arc can take place on a small scale in one scene, but the emotion should be subsequently smaller, too. The bigger the rising arc, the bigger the emotion. Earn that drama. Earn that weeping or the screaming or the throwing things (unless it's comedy, of course.)

Why? Because you need to take your readers with you, and let their emotions and investment rise, too, so that when the big moment happens, they're just as devastated as your characters. Don't rush it. Build it.

3. Favor Facts Over Emotion

This is the 180 degree opposite of #2, in which you throw all drama out the window and tell your story in a dry, yet thorough and detailed, way.

Your plot points are stellar. Your story lines are masterfully woven together. Your writing craft is exquisite and careful and exacting. And yet people read your work and yawn, because they have no investment in your characters.

We need emotion - we are (most of us) emotional beings. The why of an action is just as important as the how. So Joe can throw a plate at Betty, but if we don't know how he's feeling when he does it, or understand his motivation, it will just be one more dry fact.

Color things up. Shake 'em up. Just not too much (see #2 above.)

That's a small sample of MY pet peeves. What are yours? What else drives you crazy when you read/edit/offer critiques?

Summer Break

No,the babies aren't here yet, but I've been buried by my to-do list and need to take a brief blog break this week. I'll be back next week! If I don't get to visit you in the next few days, I promise I'll be by next week. Have a great day, y'all!

Your Summer Reading List

Peeps! Guess what?? You wrote this post.

Yup, you really did. Well, maybe not in a sit-down-at-the-computer-and-bang-out-Liz's-posts-for-her kind of way (which, btw, I'd be totally open to letting you do,) but more in a I-compiled-responses-from-you sort of way. But EITHER WAY, the end result is that I now have a really freaking cool, reader-approved, first-hand list of book recommendations.

See, last week I asked you all to recommend books that I should read this summer. And so many of you gave me so many great tips and ideas that I got super excited about it, and decided I should put them all together and share them back to all of you! And of course, to make it more fun, I included the blogger who recommended each book in the list.

So here it is, straight from you to you:

Your Summer Reading List

Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree, by Greg Iles

These came from Susan Gourley/Kelley, who said, "Both books really highlight the terror of the deep south during the civil rights movements in the 60's and how so much hate and inequality still lingers today."




Secret Worlds, Anthology compiled by Rebecca Hamilton

H.R. Sinclair recommended this 21 (21!!!) book set, which looks like a collection of paranormal romance novels from a bunch of bestselling authors. Which really, with 21 (21!!!) to choose from, the odds are pretty damn good you'll like at least a few of them.



Anything by Kate Morton

Ok, yeah, I cheated - that's an author image, not a book image, but to be fair, M Pepper Langlinais did recommend all of her books, specifically for summer reading, and it appears that Ms. Morton is too prolific for me to show her titles here. So, go check her out, and pick one, and report back! I'm thinking of starting with The House at Riverton.




All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Loni Townsend opted out of making a recommendation because my tastes are too serious for her or something. I have no idea why she would say such a ridiculous thing (nevermind that I said it myself,) but she then had a change of heart and decided to give us one, anyway. This was hers, although she hasn't read it yet. Let's see: blind kid? Holocaust? Yep, right up my alley.



Lisette's List, by Susan Vreeland

Jenni Enzor stepped away from her (fantastic) MG recommendations to give us this one, which is, as she says, "about famous paintings hid in Provence during World War II." It's fiction, though, don't worry!




Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley, by Charlotte Gordon

It's not in paperback yet, so this one might make my fall reading list. It's non-fiction, yes, but what a story! Ava Quinn recommended this examination of the famous author and the daughter she never knew, saying, "[It's] history and feminism all rolled into one."



Marlene Dietrich by Her Daughter, by Maria Rivera

Maria Rivera is Marlene Dietrich's daughter, of course, so this biography is straight from the source. Birgit recommended it as one of her favorites: "It is not a scathing book done by a daughter but a revealing look at this enigmatic woman."





The Diviners, by Libba Bray, and Unwind, by Neal Shusterman

Madilyn Quinn has such a long TBR list (I hear you, Madilyn; mine is so damn long I don't even look at it anymore, which totally defeats the purpose of having it) that she had to recommend both of these. I'm not complaining! They're both YA: "The Diviners is historical fiction while Unwind is a sort of dystopian biopunk thing."



Anything by Marian Keyes

I had to cheat again and and give you an author pic, because Diane Carlisle recommended everything by Marian Keyes, saying she loves her style and voice.








A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan

I'm excited about all of the books on this list, but this one really tickles my fancy (that's a very weird expression, isn't it?) I love books that play with genre, and I will always be a sucker for fantasy, so this fictional memoir of a Victorian-era woman studying dragons is right up my alley. Mason Matchak chose this, saying, "...it's oddly charming, especially if you like classic British stuffiness as both plot and character points." Which I do. Score!



The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate

Sarah Brentyn recommended this book, and I almost jumped out of my seat when I read her comment, because I loved this book. In fact, it was on my reading list last summer, and it was a wonderful summer read. It's MG, but adults will love it, too.





The Sophie Katz mystery series, by Kyra Davis

I do love these two-for-one - or really multiple-for-one - recommendations. This one for a series of books about a writer-turned-detective comes from Shannon Lawrence, and it looks like a lot of fun.






And that's it - but that's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself! Too bad the credit is all yours ;)

See anything on here you want to read? What else would you add?