Need, Desire and Motivation

by Alexandra Sokoloff

The first thing any acting student learns in terms of creating a character and building a scene is to ask the question: “What do I WANT?” – n every scene, and in the story overall. When I was directing plays (yeah, in one of my mutiple past lives) and a scene was just lying dead on the stage, I could always get the actors to breathe life into it by getting them to clarify what they wanted in the scene and simply playing that want.
This is something that starts in the writing, obviously, and should always be on the author’s mind, too: Who wants what in the scene, and how do those desires conflict? Who WINS in the scene?

But even before all that, one of the most important steps of creating a story, from the very beginning, is identifying the protagonist overall desire and need in the story. You also hear this called “internal” and “external” desire, and “want” and “deep need”, but it’s all the same thing. A strong main character will want something immediately, like to get that promotion, or to have sex with the love interest. But there’s something underneath that surface want that is really driving the character, and in good characters, those inner and outer desires are in conflict. Also, the character will KNOW that s/he wants that outer desire, but probably have very little idea that what she really needs is the inner desire.

One of the great examples of inner and outer desire in conflict is in the George Bailey character in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. From the very beginning George wants to see the world, to do big things, design big buildings – all very male, external, explosive goals. But his deep need is to become a good man and community leader like his father, who does big things and fights big battles – but on a microcosm, in their tiny, “boring” little community of Bedford Falls, which George can’t wait to escape.

But every choice he actually makes in the story defers his external need to escape, and ties him closer to the community that he becomes the moral leader of, as he takes on his late father’s role and battles the town’s would-be dictator, Mr. Potter. George does not take on that role happily – he fights it every single step of the way, and resents it a good bit of the time. But it’s that conflict which makes George such a great character whom we emphasize with – it’s a story of how an ordinary man becomes a true hero.

In SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Clarice’s outer desire is for advancement in the FBI. And Harris conveys this desire in what is a brilliant storytelling trick: He has Dr. Lecter tell her so. “You’re sooooo ambitious, aren’t you?” He purrs. And “I’ll give you what you most desire, Clarice. Advancement.”

It’s brilliant because it makes Lecter all-knowing, but it also clearly spells out Clarice’s desire, which the audience/reader really does need to know to commit to the character and relax into the story. I’m a big believer in just spelling it out.

But what Clarice REALLY needs is not advancement. What she needs to save a lamb – the lamb that haunts her dreams, the lamb she hears screaming. In the story, the kidnapped senator’s daughter Catherine is the lamb, and Harris uses animal imagery to subtly evoke a lamb and the scene of the slaughter of the lambs that haunts Clarice.

And again, Lecter is the one who draws this deep need out of Clarice.

Also Clarice’s need and desire come into conflict: what she WANTS is advancement, but in order to save Catherine, she has to defy her superiors and jeopardize her graduation from the academy.

It’s usually true that the external desire will be a selfish want – something the protagonist wants for him or herself, and the inner need will be unselfish – something the protagonst comes to want for other people. This is a useful guideline because it clearly shows character growth.

So I bring all this up this morning because I’m looking for good examples of inner and outer desire, especially inner and outer desire in conflict, and I wanted to throw that out to the collective brain, here.

On another topic entirely, the lovely and talented Michelle Gagnon made a comment a few days ago that I thought was worth following up on.

She said that she wasn’t convinced of the usefulness of drop-in book signings – and cited that clerk we all have met – young and clueless, who couldn’t care less that a real live author is standing in front of her, offering to sign books.

Well, it so happens I’m on a mini tour, yesterday and today – my friend, paranormal author Jenna Black and I drove from Raleigh to Virginia Beach yesterday to do a signing at the grand opening of the Virginia Beach Books-a-Million. We hit four other area bookstores on the way yesterday and are doing another eight today. Is it useful? Oh, hell, yeah.

Even though the very best time to do this is when you have a book just out and the stores are more likely to have a number of your book in stock, this trip has been gold for me. Virginia Beach turns out to be a very bookstore-heavy town, they love the supernatural and paranormal, and our reception has been fantastic. The stores that didn’t have the books ordered them in on the spot, and we’ve had multiple requests for signings when our next books come out in December.

I feel like I’ve cracked another market that wasn’t particularly aware of me (I’ve never done any events in Virginia before) and I have a new buddy to make these drop-in trips with.

I do want to say that the key is NOT to rely on the first clerk you talk to but to ask to speak to a manager or CRM. Most will be thrilled to see you, really.

So my other question of the day is – do you do bookstore drop-ins, and do you have helpful tips for those on the fence about it?

We’re off on the rounds now, but I’ll check in later today.

– Alex

A Murderati Interview with Red Room Founder Ivory Madison

J.T. Ellison

I am honored to have Red Room founder Ivory Madison here today. If you’re not familiar with Red Room, click on this link and check it out. (After you read the interview, mind you.) I’ve been a Red Room author for many months now, and I’ve found it to be incredibly easy to use, and chock full of fascinating people. I love how I can upload my reviews, my media, my interviews, book covers, tour schedule, book synopses, blog entries… you get the idea. It’s a clearing house for some of the most influential and interesting authors of our time — Amy Tan, Salman Rushdie, Po Bronson, John Stewart and Peter Coyote are just a few of the contributing members. I was entranced by their idea of a writer’s society, a network of authors, readers, editors, publishers and agents who all come together in a single clearinghouse to share their lives, books and ideas. It’s taking the blog concept and turning it into a vital resource for the writing community. Red Room celebrates their authors, shows a new respect for the literary world, and manages to have a healthy sense of humor. All wonderful reasons to join the community.

And not only is a cool place to hang out, the site itself is a masterpiece. The dedicated staff of Red Room maintains an ever-changing site which not only looks beautiful, but is functional and easy to use. It’s especially good for people who don’t like technology, because it is simple and straightforward. They take the guesswork out of having a web presence.

Ivory Madison is the architect of this online world. She is an eclectic, fascinating woman with the drive and vision only seen in few people. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming the ultimate Renaissance woman, Ivory Madison, to Murderati. And now, on to the show!

____________________________

Ivory_madison
Tell us a secret about Ivory Madison that no one knows.

I realized recently that most of my fiction is about ineffective female assassins.

What is Red Room all about?

We call redroom.com “the online home of the world’s greatest writers.” It’s an online community created by writers for writers, and it grew organically out of our real-life writers community, the Red Room Writers Society.

Redroom.com, as you know since you’re very active on the site, lets you quickly set up a free, elegant website even if you don’t know anything about computers, and once you’re in, you reach new readers, colleagues, and friends. Some writers are already getting more than a hundred times the traffic they got on their freestanding websites. We like to say, “You take care of the writing, we’ll take care of the technology.” We’re rolling out new features every day to help you manage your life, your writing, and your media. I want writers to have all the tools they need in one place.

Beyond the technology aspect, it’s a great place to share useful information and to learn, to get educated about the writing world, to make connections, to have fun. And most importantly, once the website has paid advertising, we’ll be giving a portion of the proceeds to the causes each and every author supports.

How does Red Room differ from the Red Room Writers Society?

I founded the Red Room Writers Society six years ago to help writers, including me, finish their books. I created what I called my “Writers Studio” program, where writers met at a beautiful mansion and sat quietly and finished their books. It was a supportive community and it was a practical framework for achieving your goals. But community support and a practical framework for writing and promoting your career should be free and easy for everyone in the world, not just a few lucky people in San Francisco.

Redroom.com is the natural extension of the Red Room Writers Society. It’s a beautiful mansion for writers, online, where we can provide all this to everyone, for free. We’re aiming to build an international cultural institution for writers and readers. The internet makes the concept scalable and the time is right.

Every time I look at the author listings on Red Room, they’ve grown exponentially. Are you looking for more authors to join, and what’s your criteria?

Yes, after just six months live, we’ve got over a thousand authors and ten thousand members, many of whom are readers, aspiring writers, and industry professionals including literary agents and editors.

We want everyone in our community to join as a member, and some can apply to become Red Room Authors. The criteria is more of an art than a science. In general, a book published by a reputable publisher will do it, but there are always exceptions, like an extraordinarily successful self-published author, a distinguished journalist with no book, or a prize-winning screenwriter. We’re planning to launch other designations to recognize all different kinds of writers, not just book authors.

Why invite-only?

Our community is for everyone, the aspiring writers, self-published writers, and published authors, but we only allow the published authors to have the designation “Red Room Author.” That part is invitation-only, that’s true. Here’s why: Finding an editor at a publishing house who supports your work by publishing it, rather than self-publishing, is a process that creates a filter. It’s not a perfect system, but it helps readers distinguish the level of quality of the work. When you look through the “Red Room Authors” in our community, you know you’re looking at writers who have achieved something. We go through a process evaluating every single author. You know we created a filter to help you find writers who have achieved something, either because of their writing talent, market success, or some other way that they contribute to the diversity or value of our community as a whole.

Red Room is staffed by an incredibly talented group of people, all of whom are twenty-nine. Something significant in that number? And do you fire them when they turn thirty?

Ah, you’ve read the “About Us” page. Well, there are a few reasons we say everyone on staff is twenty-nine. First of all, most writers hope to publish their first novel before they’re thirty…so I’ve told the entire staff they’re not allowed to turn thirty until they finish their first book. And another reason is that I’m a comic book writer, and in comics, superheroes never age beyond twenty-nine. I like everyone at Red Room to feel like a superhero. Also, I think I can still just barely pass for twenty-nine, so I am going to keep saying it until people make me stop.

You have an exceptionally eclectic background. What’s the favorite hat you wear – singer, entrepreneur, writing coach, graphic novelist, literati, screenwriter, lawyer, spirited teacher of billiards???

You have no idea how eclectic my background is, JT. But we don’t have time here to get into it. I love doing all the things you mentioned, and in one way it can hold you back to have too many interests, to be a dilettante, but in another way, everything I’ve ever done has prepared me for this job—building Red Room. But at heart, more than anything, I’m a writer. Gloria Steinem, one of my heroes, at the end of the day, says she’s “a writer.”

And where do you find the time to do all that you do? What’s your secret? Can we buy some?

Sure, send me a check and then I’ll call you with the secret.

Okay, it’s ruthless prioritizing and logical next action steps. Every day, every hour. I’ve put many things on hold in order to build my dream. The secret to success is focusing on the next immediate action step in the right direction, at all times. That’s all. What will give you the highest ROI [Return on Investment] on your next five minutes? Your next hour? Your next year? Your most ambitious dreams are possible if you take a pragmatic approach to making them happen, and if you’re willing to accept the trade-offs.

In the past two years, I had to give up two other businesses in order to make this one a success. I had to work a hundred hours a week for a year to get redroom.com off the ground. But I made the right decisions for me, and took small action steps every day towards the highest priority goals I had committed to achieving. I’ve achieved more in the last two years on my list of life goals than in the past twenty, so I know it’s under our control if we move like a snail or at the speed of light. There’s nothing holding us back.

What’s your typical day like?

This is going to be so boring. Okay, I get up at 6AM, work from home on email and phone (focusing on East Coast contacts), and sometimes catching up on business reading, until 9:30AM. Then I get dressed and I walk the five blocks to work, with my fiancé, Abe, stopping for a quick breakfast somewhere, and we’re usually in the office by 10AM. I’m there until 10PM or later probably six nights a week, working closely with every department. I only go to lunch or dinner if it’s business. Then once everyone else has gone home, I flip a switch on the bookcase and go down a secret passageway built underneath my office, and follow a secret staircase down to my compound, where I change into my costume, jump on my motorcycle, and fight crime all night.

You’re currently recording an album with pianist Richard Hall – a compilation of jazz standards. Do you think it’s easier to record an album or write a graphic novel?

Richard and I were almost ready to record the album, had done all the arrangements and rehearsals, and then I realized—due to my ruthless prioritizing—that it would have to wait until the graphic novel was finished. So I took a year off of singing. The graphic novel just got wrapped up, was released in serial comic book form, and the book version is slated for release in January 2009. I have one other personal project in line and then I’m going to get back to the album. To answer your question, I am going to assume recording an album is easier because I haven’t done it yet and don’t know any better.

What’s the literary scene like in San Francisco?

It’s amazing. Wonderful. Best in the world, I think, other than New York. I’m from here, so I’m biased in our favor, but I had been living in New Orleans for many years, and so the city’s literary scene was new to me when I returned ten years ago.

Several pillars of the local literary community here were crucial to the creation and success of redroom.com. When I founded the Red Room Writers Society back in 2002, I met many writers who wound up becoming friends and the inspiration for what was possible on a global scale for writers. Jane Ganahl, an author, friend, and the first person I hired to help me invite authors to redroom.com, cofounded Litquake, the city’s premier literary festival—through Litquake, I met hundreds of authors who eventually helped me build redroom.com. Also, my friend, Po Bronson, is not only a successful author, but also famous for his community-building in the writing world, helped me from day one with great advice about what writers wanted and needed online.

The downside of any literary “scene” is that it means readings and parties and events and classes, which means you’re at the party, not writing. Writers have to find time to finish what matters most to them, which for most writers means writing projects, not dinner party projects. Unless supporting other people’s writing is your top priority, your writing has to come first sometimes. I strongly believe you can write anywhere if you just do the writing and forget about the penumbra around writing. Moving to San Francisco or New York will not make you a novelist any more than moving to Hollywood automatically makes you a screenwriter. Marketing is different from writing.

Where do you see the future of the book heading?

Let me begin by saying that books are magical objects of art that change lives and aren’t getting phased out by any technology, ever. Take a subway ride in New York. Everyone from every walk of life has a book with them (and last month when I was in New York, half the books I noticed on the subway were written by Red Room Authors!).

I think most of the predictions I read regarding the trends, many driven by technology, of where publishing is headed are generally correct (we did one ourselves called The Future of the Book). But they are wrong if they say people are reading less—they aren’t—and when they say the physical book will be entirely replaced by ebooks—it won’t. Each market has micro-markets within it, too, so while new book sales might be down, used book sales are up, and while independent bookstore sales are down, online book sales are up. So the trends are complex and sometimes can both advantage and disadvantage a player at the same time.

What’s your favorite author story?

Bill Hayes, one of our authors, came over to our office with a signed book and a bottle of good French pink champagne to thank us for creating the website because he loved it and appreciated us so much. I don’t think that happens at Facebook or LinkedIn.

Outside of the writing world, what captures your interest?

Well, everything I love has to do with writing. My biggest loves are history and philosophy and feminism and lexicography and I discovered them all through books and authors, and I think of them in terms of books and authors. I’m very nostalgic, too, and for fun I love old music, film, and comic books, mostly from the forties. I like documentaries and weird antique books. I love old architecture—Abe and I have an 1887 Victorian. Our Red Room offices are in an old Victorian, too.

When you were a little girl, what did you think you’d be when you grew up?

Ivory Madison.

You want more details…okay. When I was about seven years old, I thought I would be the first female president and an architect and a film director and a lounge singer and Batman. I drew pictures of my headquarters, which was a large building with gargoyles on it. So, if I define those dreams very loosely I can say I sort of made it. I’m president of redroom.com, I designed the website architecture, I was the art director for my graphic novel, I did get to sing at the Plush Room, and I wrote Batman for DC Comics. I have some bookends that look like gargoyles reading books, perched up on top of the bookcases in my living room.

What books are on your nightstand?

Abe and I have towering stacks on each nightstand of at least forty interesting books and we should just admit we won’t have time to read them. The only books I wind up reading these days are business books. Books with titles like Structuring Mergers and Acquisitions, Execution, Wikinomics, Getting Things Done, Marketing Metrics, Traction. And when I get exhausted, I remember that “the antidote to exhaustion is whole-heartedness,” and I take an hour with a pop philosophy book, books on Toltec wisdom and Buddhist philosophy. The only fiction I make time to read these days is when my friends write books and I’ll get in a lot of trouble if I don’t read them. I don’t want to name names—we have a thousand authors!

What’s your favorite line that you’ve ever written? Read?

That I’ve ever written? Maybe this one from my short story, The Time I Tried to Kill the Poet Laureate of the United States:

On day seven of my trial, the judge said that he would put me away for life if I used the term Kafkaesque “even one more time!” (His anti-Semitism was transparent, so I took to wearing a gold felt star on my jacket to underscore it.)

The story is still unpublished, although I’ve read it at Litquake and other venues. The protagonist is a self-righteous pseudo-intellectual, kind of an Ignatius O’Reilly [from A Confederacy of Dunces] crossed with one of the more innocuous Edgar Allan Poe narrators. I keep thinking I should submit it to Story, but due to my ruthless prioritizing, I haven’t even found out yet if anyone thinks it’s publishable.

My favorite line I’ve ever read? Well, that’s an impossible thing to choose, but the first thing that comes to mind at this moment is the poem “Modern Declaration” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem begins with, “I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things/Never having wavered in these affections,” she declares, “…that I shall love you always/No matter what party is in power/No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied interests wins the war/Shall love you always.”

And finally, tell us honestly… Are you big in Japan?

No. But there were 564 visits to redroom.com from Japan last month. My goal is to help you find your readers, colleagues, and friends wherever they are in world, and so maybe next year I won’t be kidding when I say we’re “big in Japan.”

____________________________

Founder and CEO Ivory Madison is a writer, editor, and entrepreneur living in her hometown of San Francisco. A former management consultant to startups and the Fortune 500, Madison has finally combined her love of writing with her business acumen. Before launching redroom.com, she founded the Red Room Writers Society in 2002, where she personally helped hundreds of aspiring and professional writers complete their books. As a result, Madison was named Best Writing Coach by San Francisco magazine. Trained as an attorney, Madison was Editor in Chief of her Law Review, interned at the California Supreme Court, and served as a Law Fellow at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Her adventures have also included episodes as a New Orleans, restaurateur, radical feminist politico, and torch singer at the Plush Room. Her noir graphic novel, Huntress: Year One, will be published by DC Comics in January 2009, but is now available in its six-issue serialized form. It tells the origin story of a strong female superhero. Madison is twenty-nine.

The Story Behind the Photo – “Ivory Madison steals away from her duties as founder and CEO of redroom.com with fellow writer Robert Mailer Anderson. Actually, this photo by David Allen became the poster for The San Francisco Film Noir Festival in February 2007. Ivory and Robert have a platonic relationship, they are acting in this photo.”

Interlude

By Brett Battles

It’s been a pretty interesting several days here at Murderati, what with Toni’s post about how controversy is handled, Naomi’s entry about change, Tess’ post about keeping or firing agents, and Rob’s bit yesterday about book trailers. Not only were the great posts themselves interesting, but the discussions that occurred in the comments sections were fantastic!

So I was faced with a problem. How in God’s name was I going to keep up the string of great topics. My answer? I decided I wouldn’t. It just seemed like too much…well…work. And, honestly, perhaps what we really need today is an interlude – a day when we can all just sit back and not strain our brains.

So I thought we could talk about creativity. Not necessarily written creativity, but creativity as it’s expressed by people who aren’t necessarily writers. And when I say talk about creativity, what I really mean is showing.

Okay with you? Hope so, because it sure as hell sounds like a good idea to me. Just to focus myself a little bit, I decided on the subtopic of creative interpretation. So let’s have at it.

This is very cool. A lot of you might remember the movie TRON from back in the early 80s. I actually have a personal story about the movie that involves a friend who to this day has not fully forgiven me for taking him to see it. But I don’t really care, I enjoyed it. And, apparently, so did these guys. In fact, they liked it so much they decided to recreate one of the chase scenes…only instead of computer graphics and special effects, they decided to use…wait for it…cardboard:

Pretty amazing. Talk about a creative use of everyday materials!

Our next creative endeavor is by artist Michel de Broin, who re-envisions an ’86 Buick by removing all the “superfluous devices”:

From those ultra cool folks who brought us the animated videos by the Gorillaz – designer Jamie Hewlett and musician Damon Albran – here’s a piece they did for BBC Sports. They’re vision of the Olympics:

And finally, a little music. Not an original piece by the artist, but like all the above, an interpretation.

Sometimes it’s nice to look at other methods people use to be creative. I don’t know about you, but I feed off of creativity whether it’s a story I’m reading, a painting I’m viewing, or a song I’m listening to. It can be almost anything. The creativity of others is inspiring and energizing.

Honestly, I could have posted hundreds of more visuals, but thought I’d give you a chance to jump in. Tells us about creative works that have inspired you, include links if you can but it’s not necessary.

And remember, today is a relaxed day at Murderati. No formal attire necessary.

Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You

by Robert Gregory Browne

I spent most of Saturday working on a book trailer.

For the record, I have certain reservations about them. First, I think they can be misleading in a way. And by misleading, I mean to the average YouTube viewer who stumbles across your trailer and thinks WTF is this? Is it a movie? Ooooh, it’s a BOOK.

Then he clicks away, wishing it were a movie instead, because a movie gets him excited, but a book — eh, not so much. Books require work.

Second, for those who actually like to read books and are excited by a book trailer, I think the reading experience can be ruined if the trailer in question uses faces. Once you use a face in a trailer, you take the risk that the reader has a preconceived notion of what your characters look like. Since I generally like to leave that up to the reader, showing faces — for me, at least — is a no-no.

That said, here’s a trailer that I think is VERY WELL PRODUCED, shows faces, yet makes me want to go out and buy the book:

The above trailer works very well, in my estimation. It tells the premise in a dramatic way, is fast, constantly moving, and actually gets me excited about the book.

I have seen trailers out there that are long and boring and look like they were made by someone’s twelve-year-old stepson with the beginner’s version of Flash. And authors paid money to get them made.

And that’s another reservation I have about book trailers. Many of them are poorly produced and do not reflect well on the craft. Even bad movies tend to have good trailers, and I’d say there are lot more good books than movies, so why so many bad book trailers?

Now, the following is NOT a badly produced book trailer. And I have to say the book sounds like it could be a good one. But my problem with it is that it just gives WAY too much detail. Instead of getting straight to the point, it spends too much time explaining what the story is about:

Again, WELL produced, but do I really need to know all that going in? Why not simply tease me? Yes, the artwork is nice — and apparently comes straight from the books — but, again, less is more, folks.

Finally, here’s the trailer that I made for my own book. No, it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s what I think of more as a TEASER than a trailer. No faces. A quick idea of what the book is about, a few blurbs and I’m outta there:

Now, I have no objectivity here, so I can’t say whether this is a good trailer or bad. But my publisher’s marketing people like it enough to use it, so I’m happy about that.

But then comes the next question. What do you do with a trailer once it’s done? Put it up on YouTube and its clones in hopes that someone will stumble across it? Had I not gone looking specifically for trailers, I never would have known about the above examples or the books they promote.

Do you put it up on Amazon? That’s probably a good place for it, but again, the problem is HOW DO YOU GET PEOPLE TO WATCH IT? Once they get to your Amazon page, yes, they might watch the trailer and even be compelled to buy the book, but if they’ve already gone there, they obviously already know about your book.

So, unless you can come up with some super viral gimmick, I doubt that many people WILL watch it.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from making one. Because it’s the thing to do. And it COULD help. It hopefully won’t hurt.

Because, hey — what the hell do I know?

I just work here.

“Should I Fire My Agent?”

by Tess Gerritsen

Recently, several different writers seeking my advice have asked me this very question. It’s a question that makes me squirm, because there’s no easy answer.It’s like being asked, “Should I divorce my wife?” The wrong advice could be disastrous. And the problems these writers told me about weren’t clear cut enough for me to comfortably give a firm answer one way or the other.
They complained that the agent wasn’t selling their work fast enough. Or the agent wasn’t communicating often enough. Or the agent no longer sounded enthusiastic about the manuscript. These writers were growing more and more uneasy with the relationship, but they didn’t know if things were bad enough yet to call it quits.

The indecision was driving them crazy, and they wanted me to tell them what to do.

Which of course I can’t, because I’m not in their shoes. But I can tell them my experiences with agents during my career.

I’ve been published for twenty-one years, and I’m on my third literary agent. I think that’s probably about average for a veteran author, although I have no firm data on that; it’s just what I hear from talking to other authors.

My first agent came highly recommended to me by an editor. He had a big name in the business, and I was overjoyed when he took me on as a client. He sold my first book (to Harlequin) and I assumed we’d have a long and happy association. The book was published, had good reviews, and I sat back and waited for sales figures.

And waited and waited.

A year and a half went by. I received no royalty checks or royalty statements. I was a meek and extremely naïve young author, so I assumed this was simply business as usual. I wanted to know what was happening, but I was terrified of offending this high-powered agent, so I was hesitant to even call him and ask him point-blank what was happening. Instead I wrote a polite letter or two (this was before the age of email), asking him how the book was selling. His replies were something along the lines of, “there are no royalties because the book didn’t sell all that well.”

Finally, at a conference, I met another Harlequin author whose book had come out the same month mine did, and she said that she’d already received several royalty statements and checks. Even if I wasn’t receiving checks, she said, I should be getting royalty statements.

It was now two years since my book had come out and at last I was starting to get suspicious. You probably think I sound terribly dense, but at the time I didn’t know any other writers. There was no online network, no easy way to ask for advice. And the last thing I wanted to do was challenge my agent because I was afraid of losing him. I was like an abused wife in a bad marriage, desperate to stay married, unwilling to even admit that I was being abused.

Finally, I got up the courage to call Harlequin directly and ask if they had, just by chance, issued any royalty statements. Oh yes, they said. And they’d sent my agent two thousand dollars in royalty checks as well – money that my agent had been pocketing for two years.

When confronted with the facts, my agent told me that there’d simply been a clerical error in his office – that for two years, his staff had sent my royalty statements and checks to another client with a similar name. Ha ha, what a careless mistake, but these things happen. At last, he mailed me the money he owed me.

That’s when I fired him. But it had taken me two years to do it, two years of agonizing over my decision. Only later did I learn that this same agent did the same thing to a far more prominent, internationally bestselling author – to the tune of millions of dollars. So as a victim, I was in good company.

For a few years, I went unagented. Since I was still writing romance for Harlequin, I was able to sell my next few books directly to the publisher, without having to pay a commission to any agent. The arrangement made sense, as long as I kept writing category romance. But as the years went by, my aspirations grew. I wanted to write bigger books, mainstream books, and I knew I needed an agent to make that move.

So I signed on with Agent #2.

She was prompt and professional, and we had a good working relationship. But her health was a problem, and within a few years, she retired. Before she left the business, she recommended a number of agents whom she admired and she suggested I query them.

That’s how I ended up with Agent #3, who has been my agent for thirteen years and has guided me and helped build my career into what it is today.

Every writer’s career runs along its own individual trajectory, but I think there are a few lessons one can take away from my own experiences with agents.

The first lesson is obvious: fiscal dishonesty is an immediate firing offense. If you have proof that your agent is fooling around with the books, or withholding money, you must end the relationship. This decision is an easy one.

Lack of communication is another one that ranks high on my list of unacceptability. If you must call or write repeatedly before your agent responds, then something is seriously wrong. I’m not talking about the weeks when she’s on vacation or in the hospital; I’m talking about times when she’s in the office and simply avoiding you for days on end. This is not the kind of agent you can work with.

Dishonesty about submission information would also be a reason to fire an agent. If she refuses to tell you where she’s sent the manuscript, if at all, then how do you know if she’s doing her job? How do you know if she’s gotten offers and turned them down? Agents need to be frank with you about the progress they’ve made with selling or not selling your manuscript. If she’s not circulating your work, if it’s just sitting on her desk, then what’s the point of having her as your agent?

Finally, there’s the matter of enthusiasm. Sometimes, an agent may take on a client with great excitement, and then fail to sell the manuscript. Over time, she may lose faith in the story, or in the client. And that loss of faith may come through in her voice when you talk to her. This might be remedied if you then deliver a second manuscript that’s terrific – and get her excited again. Or her disillusionment may grow to the point where she’s just going through the motions of sending out the book. Or she starts to hunt for ways to gently tell you she no longer wants to represent you. This break-up is one of the hard decisions, because there’s nothing inherently wrong between you. It’s like a marriage between two people who have simply drifted apart, and it may take months or years for it to finally end.

And yet, end it probably will. Whether sooner or later is the question.

Now, I’ve written this entirely from the writer’s perspective. I’m sure agents have their own stories to tell about nightmarish writers or difficult breakups. I do hope they’ll write me with their stories (yes, anonymously if you’d like). I’d love to hear an agent’s point of view on this topic.

May the Change Be with You

NAOMI HIRAHARA

As Murderati contributors Alexandra Sokoloff, Toni McGee Causey, and Robert Gregory Browne were dancing the night away with romance readers in San Francisco in the beginning of August, I was in Los Angeles’ Century City with 900 children’s storytellers at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators national conference.

I left one day with a wheelbarrow full of ideas, but probably the biggest epiphany I had was when Margaret Peterson Haddix, author of the Shadow Children and Missing series, explained why she gravitates towards writing about and for young people. “They’re always experiencing changes; they are always evolving,” she said. That’s true, I thought. That’s why they make such dynamic characters—they can be unpredictable, their emotions can suddenly lead them in harm’s way or perhaps a light-bulb moment.

I think we adults can sometimes benefit from being more childlike—in exposing ourselves to changes and risks that may not make sense to people around us. For most of my early career, I seemed to always have to make changes in increments of three.

For example, after working at a small community newspaper for three years, I quit and looked for work in public relations after hearing from other writer friends who felt that work less taxing and more financial rewarding than journalism. (I was working on my first novel at the time.) One of the jobs I interviewed for was to be a technical writer at a public relations agency. The job involved interviewing engineers about digital technology, high-definition television and computer graphic effects. What did I know about those areas—zilch. So I felt ill-prepared before speaking with the agency’s partner. It turned out, however, he was a former journalist as well.

“If you’re a good writer,” he told me, “you can write about anything.” He then offered me the job. His confidence in me was shocking at times—about three months into my new position I was sent solo to Auckland, New Zealand, to cover a turnkey operation of a new television station. (Yes, I learned what “turnkey” meant in the engineering world. As well as “beta test site” and how many lines were on a typical analog television screen.)

Change then came another three years later. I returned to the newspaper as its editor and after six years left for a writing fellowship in Wichita, Kansas. My native Angeleno friends were in a state of disbelief. Going to Wichita from Los Angeles was apparently the equivalent of voluntarily entering a Siberian jail. But those nine months were incredibly fruitful, both personally and professionally. And during my last month of the fellowship, I got a call from a museum in Los Angeles. They wanted to commission me to write a biography on a businessman. What did I know of this businessman, who at the time was in his eighties? Just surface information. Was this to be a hagiography, a “biography of saints”? Or a real representation of a man’s life?

At least I’d be hired to write, I told myself. That was better than other options, which included possibly teaching or returning to public relations. It turned out that was a splendid decision, eventually leading to the writing and publication of multiple of nonfiction books which has helped in my mystery writing career.

The point I’m making is as writers we need to keep our options open. We may think that we are either above or uncomfortable writing in a certain genre or subgenre, but what are your presuppositions based on? Stereotypes or ignorance? Open the door to change. You can always choose to close the door, but you need to at least see clearly what’s on the other side.

If you’ve ever said “yes” to a new professional or writing experience, let us know in the comment section.

Thanks to Pari’s hospitality, I’m going to be at Murderati next Monday as well to follow up on this theme of “change.” Please come back!

JAPANESE WORD OF THE WEEK: honki de (displayed during the “I Survived a Japanese Game Show”)

Seriously? Seriously! Just like the mantra of Meredith Grey on “Grey’s Anatomy” during its disastrous third season. Like you’ve got to be freakin’ kiddin’ me. Another similar word is maji de, a shortened version of majime de (you can’t be serious!).

controversy sells

by Toni McGee Causey

Or does it?

You may not have seen the discussion of a publisher pulling the book, The Jewel of Medina, off the publication track in May due to a potential backlash. Author Sherry Jones wrote a fictionalized version about Aisha, the young wife of prophet Muhammad. According to The Wall Street Journal article four days ago, an extreme controversy arose once the ARCs went out for blurbs, and one particular person whom the author had hoped would give it a positive spin, Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas in Austin… hated it.

Ironically, the author of the Journal article is Muslim, and laments the fact that the book was pulled, saying, "This saga upsets me as a Muslim — and as a writer who believes that
fiction can bring Islamic history to life in a uniquely captivating and
humanizing way."

Ms. Spellberg, an American, said:

the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work… I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last
Temptation of Christ,’" the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a
novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I
don’t have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with
the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a
sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."

There are quite a lot of Christians who would say that the latter description is exactly how they perceive that adaptation, and there were protests, far and wide.

Ms. Spellberg alerted the head of a popular Muslim site about her concerns about the Jewel of Medina, who posted about the book without having read it. It snowballed from there within just a few days, if not hours, to the point where editors and publishers felt there was a very real threat of potential retaliation if the book went out into the public. In a letter to the editor
of The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Spellberg denies having been the sole
responsibility for the novel being pulled and says she felt "[i]t was
in that same professional capacity that I felt it my duty to
warn the press of the novel’s potential to provoke anger among some
Muslims." (I’d be very curious to know what other press she notified.)

Also from the WSJ article:

Meanwhile back in New York City, Jane Garrett, an
editor at Random House’s Knopf imprint, dispatched an email on May 1 to
Knopf executives, telling them she got a phone call the evening before
from Ms. Spellberg (who happens to be under contract with Knopf to
write "Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.")

"She thinks there is a very real possibility of major
danger for the building and staff and widespread violence," Ms. Garrett
wrote. "Denise says it is ‘a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff .
. . a national security issue.’

The book was pulled from the marketplace.

I have to say that the part about all of this that surprises me the most is the surprise over the fact that there would be potential retaliation. There are extremist groups in many religions. Hello? Crusades? KKK? The death threats made over The Da Vinci Code?

So if you "can’t play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography," that begs the question, what exactly can you do? And who’s sacred history is fair game?

The globalization of communication (i.e., the internet) has not only changed how fast we can communicate about a controversy, but just how much information is available out there. Within a very short time, Sarah over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books had been emailed a copy of the prologue by the author and then Sarah led a very interesting discussion of the work on her blog–where readers of Muslim faith felt (I believe) a welcome spirit to comment, pro or con. That same globalization, however, allows for rumor, gossip, ridicule, lies and threats to be circulated with equal abandon–and that latter aspect is a threat to any sort of real learning we might have of others.

In a day when a cooking show star, Rachel Ray, can have a commercial pulled because she wore a scarf that someone then tagged with negative comments, we have to wonder: where are we going from here? I don’t think anyone in their right mind, if they were speaking to Rachel Ray directly, would have had the thought that she was pimping for murderous extremism–yet, they felt safe enough implying that (or, in some cases, outright accusing it) of the star while "reporting" on the internet. Michelle Malkin, who started the insanity, said:

Ray hawked Urban Outfitters scarves on her website before appearing in
the Dunkin’ Donuts ad. If she (or whichever stylist is dressing her)
wasn’t aware of the jihad scarf controversy before she posed for the
Dunkin’ campaign, she should have been. [italics mine]

Because absolutely everyone should investigate the background of every item of clothing they wear in public, lest there be some sort of potential negative association?

And every book ever published ought not offend anyone.

This is not a case of censorship (the publisher was free to publish, they chose not to), nor is it a case of oppression (the threats had not been made yet), nor is it a case in the Ray example of actual promotion of a violent act (seriously, like I need an example here?). This is a case of fear.

We’ve managed to become a country who feeds and chokes on fear.

The thing is, where art goes, so goes a culture. Art leads the way. Art–writing, pushing those boundaries, painting, photography–informs, questions, makes us think. Are we becoming a nation who feels that our side–and only our side [whatever that side is]–is right and there’s no room for allowing for the fact that the other side just might have some intelligence and be willing to have an open discourse? Are we becoming a culture where art is only commerce?

Art is a dialog.

And we’ve pretty much stopped talking and started shouting and ridiculing.

I don’t know of a single person who really had a change of heart because they were shouted at and ridiculed, and I don’t know of a single side who made themselves look better by being a bully. I also don’t think we learn anything by agreeing with each other and portraying everything down party lines. Where’s the individuality in that? Where’s the humanity? We’re not a homogeneous blob of people–we’re each unique, with unique experiences, both with our own religions and politics, as well as experiences with others. Do we all really want to be a big homogeneous blob? Do we think the rest of the world really ought to pick up and think exactly the way we do? How interesting is that?

So where are the lines drawn? Is it right to publish a book which possibly disrespects a religion? Do we say it’s okay to target one, but not another? Have discourse about one, but protect the other? Is it wrong to have a text which fictionalizes that religion? Or does it open a dialog? Do we really want other people vetting what we read and see and deciding if we’re smart enough to understand it and whether or not it’s accurate? Where do we draw the line between freedom of speech and inciting to riot?

Murky, sure.

But as artists, I think we’d better figure it out and start leading the way, because otherwise, the fractionalization of this country into sides incapable of progress because the whole is broken into pieces is just going to increase.

Where do you think the lines in the sand should be drawn?

How brave should artists be?

-toni

 

Romance Writers of America National Conference

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Last weekend Rob, Toni and I were all at the Romance Writers of America National Conference in San Francisco.

Now wait, you’re saying to yourself. This is a MYSTERY blog, right? And you three are thriller writers, aren’t you? So what were you doing at a romance conference?

(Rob of course has an easy answer – it was 3000 women to maybe 20 men.)

People continue to look at me askance when I say that I attend the romance conferences and am a member of RWA, and that’s fair enough. I read Stephen King and Shirley Jackson, Ira Levin and Ray Bradbury while I was growing up and even though I did pick up some gothic romances because of intriguingly spooky covers, I never had the slightest interest in the Harlequins with their “clinch” covers.

But I read everything Anne Rice ever wrote for years. “That’s not romance,” you cry. Oh, really? I submit to you that that’s exactly what Anne Rice wrote. Romance is a huge umbrella for many subgenres, and RWA knows that that includes thrillers and mysteries and supernatural – and authors like Allison Brennan and Lisa Gardner and our own Tess Gerritsen. It’s the rest of us that seem a little slow on the uptake, here.

This was my biggest clue that I needed to investigate the romance community and business: Our publishers go to the romance conferences in droves. I have never seen such a presence of editors, publishers and agents at any other genre conference. And they put much more money into the events and giveaways and promotions – it’s very clear that THEY think RWA is important.

And it’s not so scary. Really.

Here’s a quick summary of my time.

Arrived Wednesday afternoon, not having completely realized that the conference STARTED on Wednesday, so raced straight from Oakland airport to the SF Marriott, arrive just in time for librarian/bookseller mingler (for my money, that in itself was worth the whole conference). My case of THE HARROWING disappeared in five minutes, and the rest of the time was spent chatting, fueled by copious amounts of iced tea and lemonade.

The mingler was followed by the mass Literacy Autographing – there must have been 400 authors there in that ballroom, lined up at tables in alphabetical order. Other cons could take a cue from this arrangement – it is a LOT easier to plan to come to just one or two huge signings where you know you can easily and quickly find your favorite authors and browse all the others at leisure. Plus a mass autographing can be advertised to the public – and believe me, readers come – the line to get in to the hall snaked down one whole floor of the hotel, up a staircase, and down another floor.

I was surprised at how many people I knew there – this was my first RWA but I did know a lot of people from Romantic Times, Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans, and even my Raleigh RWA chapter (now that was a trip, to see Raleigh friends in San Francisco).

It was a staggering program, really. There were sessions with the buyers of Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Books a Million, there were spotlights on all the publishing houses, all of whom had 4 to 6 editors in attendance, talking about the specific needs and policies of their houses as well as their personal taste in books, genres, queries and pitches; there was a half-day screenwriting workshop with Blake Snyder, author of Save the Cat!, there were pitch prep sessions and agent/editor appointments all week long. The only thing missing was, well, men – which meant RGB and Matthew Shear were at a premium.

I went to a lot of the publisher spotlights, which I found fascinating, and got a lot out of Lisa Gardner’s rewriting workshop (she broke down how she took two years to turn THE PERFECT HUSBAND into a breakout, mainstream thriller when the book she’d initially written was a Harlequin… um… Silhouette? One of those lines).

Friday was party day – starting at 4 pm at the authentic SF speakeasy, Bourbon and Branch, for thriller author Kelli Stanley’s launch party (not part of the RWA program but a happy coincidence). What a fabulous venue and fabulous party, in the secret library (revolving bookcase and all), with its stunning tin ceilings, antique bars, Deco glass chandeliers that looked like enormous sea anemones (you wouldn’t want one of those things falling on you, let me tell you…). Suddenly I was surrounded by mystery writers our Simon Wood, RGB, Michelle Gagnon… Kelli was her noirish self and it was great to see Diane Kudisch of the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore and Janet Rudolph of the Mystery Readers’ Journal… Janet was skeptical when I kept telling her she HAD to come to the RWA parties but she was a total convert by the end of the evening.

Because RWA knows how to party, and publishers spend the big bucks to entertain there. The St. Martin’s party was at a very stylish Asian Fusion restaurant called the E & O. Mouthwatering appetizers and St. Martinis… way too good, but I knew the minute I hit the Harlequin party I’d be dancing all that alcohol out, and so I did. The HQ party was at the Four Seasons and it was fun walking into the ballroom with Rob and seeing his chin hit the floor – you really don’t get it until you see it, how all out Harlequin goes. And what I really love about the HQ parties is that they don’t even pretend it’s about anything else but the dancing. They’d brought up a DJ from LA who just GOT it – he happily spun his way through the classic dance songs – Raining Men, Play that Funky Music White Boy, Lady Marmelade, Brick House, Dancin’ Queen, and hundreds of women never left the floor for the entire evening.

Saturday was another signing with St. Martin’s (the publishers all donate cases of books to give away to readers…. think about it) and my paranormal panel with Heather Graham, and then Nora Roberts’ pre-RITA award cocktail party. Heather and I managed to sneak out and get into the Frieda Kahlo exhibit at SF MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, which was also worth the whole trip right there… they always publish the pretty paintings in those coffee table books, and Frieda is not about pretty. It was a knockout exhibit.

I had a great time seeing my brother, who lives in SF – one day for lunch on the pier, and again on Sunday (foggy and chilly) for a field trip to the Chihuly glass exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park – psychedelic, translucent pieces that made me feel I was underwater half the time and in Wonderland the other half. Then caught up with my friend Siegrid from Berkeley and ended the night in a biker bar, because SF is about nothing if not about contrasts.

All in all a wildly productive and wildly wild time.

Try it some time – you may find you like it.

So the question of the day is – what’s your opinion/impression about romance novels? Do you read them? Wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole? Have you taken any notice of how romance-driven the publishing industry really is?

– Alex

A Dislocated Sense of Place

J.T. Ellison

Home is where the heart is, right?

I’ve been thinking about what "home" means to me lately. The past few weeks on Facebook, I’ve had a run of luck reconnecting with some of my friends from high school and college, which has in turn overloaded my senses with a bevy of long-forgotten memories when the names and faces pop up. We’re all twenty years older, but that’s just few enough years that you can still readily recognize people.

You see, I don’t live where I went to school. I moved away from both my childhood home and my high school and college home. Which means that here in Nashville, there’s no one around from my childhood.

And in many ways, that’s a good thing. It’s funny, I thought I had changed dramatically, that I was this completely different person from the one I was back then. One quick inbox from a respected friend from high school shattered that illusion. I am the same person — a little smarter, a little more worldly, definitely a lot more in tune with my heart — but I’m still the geeky girl who didn’t feel like she fit in. Not all the way. The one who listened to the fears and hopes of people from every clique, and never got into any of them. Still the same woman who encouraged her friends, believed in them, knew they could be whatever they wanted to be, yet never, ever discovered exactly what she wanted. Who never got completely comfortable in her skin.

I mentioned this to hubby the other night. We were eating in a fine Nashville establishment called Rhumba, and I was watching a woman out the window. She was sitting at an outside table, smoking, tattoos parading up her left arm, her hair died auburn and cut in a nifty bob, her white tank top skimming her muscled and tanned back as she rested her tattooed arm on the seat next to her. I saw a glint of metal near her mouth, a lip ring, most likely. Hubby said, "That’s a lot of ink." And I spilled out with,"Yes, but she knows exactly who she is and is completely aware of herself. I respect the hell out of that. I wish I did. I’ll be forty next year, and I’m still not there."

I’ve met women like the one I was admiring along the way: the self-assured, the glamorous, the perfect ones, the quirky. Their lives seem effortless. Their hair is always perfect, or perfectly rocked out, they never pay for a drink, they have fascinating stories. I watch and wonder how they do that. When did they hit the moment when they said "This is ME. This is my identity. This is who I was meant to be. Screw what other people think."

I’ve always been fascinated with the counter culture mystique, felt more of an affinity with them that the Junior League crowd I used to was run with. The goths, the wiccans, the punk rockers, the role-players. I can’t help myself, I admire them. I love that they live off the grid, in worlds of their own making. That’s probably the important part of that — worlds of their own making. These women choose to pierce, or tattoo, or paint their face white. It’s a statement about who they are.

Yes, I’ve flirted with the edges — have a couple of tattoos and a piercing or two, thought I was damn cool. But I never had the guts to make it happen for real. I never fully embraced the alternative lifestyle. I couldn’t dress right, I didn’t have the guts to have people stare at me. The feelings of coolness fluttered away and left me feeling like a poseur. Honestly, I can’t even loosen up enough to dress up for Halloween, how could I do that on a daily basis?

I never fully embraced ANY lifestyle, really, outside of the desire to be the best wife I could be. I was quite the little Suzy homemaker for a while there, once I learned how to boil water. I took to marriage like a duck to water, feeding and growing on love. That, at least, hasn’t changed.

But in the little ways that count, I have changed. I may not be an anti-establishment alternative lifestyle girl, wearing my Dr. Martens with a short skirt and ripped leggings, but I do know my own mind. I am probably too opinionated now. Show me your problem and I can find sixteen equally amenable solutions for you. Become my friend, worm your way past my defenses and into my heart, and I’ll be there for you for the rest of your life.

So what does any of this have to do with writing?

My mom asks me all the time why I don’t write a political thriller. And
while I’ll admit to having a corker of an idea for one, I’m reluctant
to set a book in D.C. Check that. I’ve been hyper-resistant to even considering the idea. I’ve never been able to put my finger on the reason why. The journey back through time on Facebook brought it all to the forefront.

There’s too much of ME there. Firsts, lasts, good and bad. Joys, regrets. I lived in D.C. for 15 years, most of them formative. All my big "First
Times": Friendships, boyfriends, jobs. I’ve never been one to dwell on
my past, instead prefer to look forward. I guess I feel like setting a
book in D.C. would be akin to revisiting a ghost of myself. It’s not me
any more. And instead of writing the story, I’d be mourning the loss of the girl who did wear the combat boots and ripped leggings, who wanted to dye a pink streak in her hair, who somehow ended up working in the White House, wore blue suits with white hose, carried a Coach briefcase and was a categorical bow-head. Yikes.

Nashville was a much easier set up for me. There is no history for me here, no background. No people who knew me,
who’d seen my mistakes, watched me grow up. I guess, in a way, I had
nothing to lose. I could recreate myself through my setting. Since I was new to the area, I experienced it through fresh eyes. I’m still discovering parts of my adopted hometown that surprise me.

Hemingway
said:

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had
really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel
that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the
good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and
the places and how the weather was."*

That’s what I’ve been trying to do with my books.

I think if you can tap into that, your books will be a success. If you can make a reader FEEL your setting, to experience it as fully as they would watching it on the screen, you’ve succeeded. Do you have to know yourself to be a good writer? Of course not. I’ve come to believe that life is a journey, made up of bits and pieces of experiences that shape us into who we become, yet never stop us from evolving into what we can be. But you must give your reader the proper setting for the story. To build a world for them.

Will I ever go home, write a book where my invisible footprints still linger? I don’t know. Writing has become that journey for me, my very own road to discovery. But I will continue to strive to realize the settings I do pick, to make sure that I give them every ounce of me that I have to give. This is what I’ve been realizing over the past few months.
There’s really no way to go home again. But would you want to?

What I finally figured out is that home is truly where
the heart is. It’s not a place, it’s a state of mind.

Where do you call home? Do you write about your hometown? Readers, do you prefer books set in places you know well or don’t know at all?

Wine of the Week: 2003 Campe della Spinette Barolo

*Ernest Hemingway, "Old Newsman Writes," Esquire, December 1934, pg. 26 (courtesy of my good friend Peggy Peden)

——

On a lighter note, huge, MEGA-congratulations to Last Comic Standing Iliza Shlesinger!!!! Way to go, girl!!!!  Thanks for all the laughs.

The Mass of Expectation

by Zoë Sharp

It’s five A.M., winter, and a bitter rain is beating against the glass. Outside the covers, the room is as cold as the inside of a meat locker. Your husband/wife/lover is a soft embrace with a comforting heartbeat only a thought away across the pillow, and you want nothing more than to tuck in, hold on, go under.

But your alarm has just gone off, an hour and a half before you know you HAVE to get up for work. There seems to be no reason good enough, right now, to deny yourself another ninety minutes lying here. It’s safe, it’s easy. And nobody expects you to want or do anything different.

But you get up anyway.

You struggle into unwelcome clothes and stumble down a darkened staircase, trying not to put on the lights, trying not to wake the house. You totter out into the wet and the cold, and you force yourself onward against a fierce wind that seems determined to tangle itself around your legs and weight your feet like clay, against great flung coins of rain that pelt into your face at every stride, denting your skin and stinging your eyes until you have no idea who you are or where you’re going.

And you run.

At times like these you not only wonder why you got started on this madness, but how. Maybe it started out as little more than a half-formed whim expressed out loud. “One day,” you said, “I want to enter a marathon.” And maybe someone else, someone close to you, said, “Well, what’s stopping you?”

If you were lucky.

So often, though, when that kind of ambition is announced, it’s met with blank looks. “What on earth do you want to do something like that for?” Or, worse, with ridicule. “Yeah, right!” they snort. “You? You’re too old/stupid/lazy! You’ll never keep it up!”

But still you set your alarm that very first morning, and you crawled out from beneath the covers. For a long time, you stood on your front porch staring out into a misted curtain of rain, trying to find the courage to take that first uncertain step.

Most probably, you didn’t take it.

Instead, you turned back, let the door latch quietly behind you, and crept back into bed. The sheets hadn’t even had time to fully cool. Your husband/wife/lover rolled over as you slid under the covers, and muttered in their sleep. They hardly even knew you’d been gone. “It was a stupid idea,” you told yourself. “Of course someone like me can’t do something like that.”

But the next morning, you set the alarm again. And this time you got to the end of the driveway before you turned back, still dissatisfied with how little you seem to have achieved, but without that same hollow ring of cowardice that haunted you before.

And so it goes on.

Progress isn’t linear. Some days you’ll breeze through the entire route you’ve set yourself. Others you’ll sweat and stagger to the end of the driveway again, returning utterly exhausted out of all proportion to such a paltry effort. And some days, when that alarm goes off, you’ll pull the bedclothes up over your head and totally ignore it.

You might be wondering by now just where this story is going, and it’s all about determination. The kind of determination you’ve got to have in order to write a novel. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel that’s snapped up by a publisher to become an instant bestseller, or something that never makes it past faded typescript form in a box under your bed. You’ve still got to sit down and get on with it, word by word, from the empty first page to the final full stop.

And I use the description of ‘novel’ carefully. I started out writing non-fiction and, from my experience, that’s easier. Instead of the sweepings-up out of your own head, you’re tasked purely with telling someone else’s story. If nobody else thinks it’s worthy of reading, then the blame is jointly shared between the writer (for not telling the story in an interesting enough way) and the subject (for not having an interesting enough story in the first place). Each, of course, will privately push more of the blame onto the other.

But fiction is different. Fiction is make-believe, and there’s always the fear in the back of your mind that your imagination simply isn’t up to the job. Because, unlike training for a marathon – my clumsy analogy at the start of this post – you don’t necessarily see any improvement as you go along. You don’t get ‘fitter’, more capable of achieving that perfect bit of description, that snappy piece of dialogue. In fact, in some ways it gets much harder to keep going, the closer you get to the end. After all, the thing takes on a mass all of its own.

The mass of expectation.

Imagine the feeling, when you stood on the front porch that very first morning, that you have it within your grasp to be the next Olympic gold medallist in your chosen sport. All you have to do is take that first step, and you’ll be on your way to the podium, with the national anthem blasting across the stadium and the president hanging that coveted ribbon around your neck.

Equally, before you’ve put a single word on the page, your novel has the potential to be the next Pulitzer/Nobel/Booker/Duncan Lawrie-winning entry. After all, first novels are fought over by major houses, and they do go on to win rakes of major awards. We are constantly handed news clippings by well-meaning relatives telling how some teenage first-timer submitted the first three chapters and an outline, only for their agent to be bombarded with six-figure offers and phone calls from Hollywood over the film rights.

But the truth of it is, that the more words you put on the page, the more the potential of your book diminishes. By the time you’ve written the final word, it no longer has all that potential. Rewrites aside, the bulk of the story, the voice and the shape and the tone, is there.

Good or bad, it is what it is.

You may have spent several years ‘training’ by this point. It could even be decades. Forcing yourself to carve out little niches of time to write, perhaps enduring the scepticism of friends and family, all with dogged determination. But until you submit your first typescript – until you enter your first marathon – the truth is that you have no real idea whether you can do this or not.

And regardless of whether your book is ever destined for the shelves in the bookstores or not, just getting it done is an enormous achievement, a huge continuous leap of faith.

For me, it’s a compulsion. Someone called me a self-starter recently, but I look at all the To Dos left undone at the end of the day and feel that I write at the expense of other things, rather than as well as them. And while part of me would love to have the kind of determination to actually get out of bed early every day and train for that marathon for real, I know in my heart of hearts that I don’t have it. For me writing is my one overriding obsession.

So, what drives you to write? Do you carry that determination to other aspects of your life, or is it your obsession, too?

This week’s Word of the Week is more of a phrase – cold feet. A common expression for loss of nerve, the expression comes from the German author, Fritz Reuter. In 1862 he wrote a scene in a novel involving a game of poker. One of the players realises he’s going to lose but doesn’t want to throw in his hand and thus lose face, so he complains that his feet are so cold that he cannot concentrate on the game. This gives him the opportunity to leave the table with his honour intact.

You may also recall in my last ‘Rati post that I offered a copy of TELL AN OUTRAGEOUS LIE to the most inventive improvised weapon suggestion. I have to say that although there were some brilliant – and scary – suggestions, it came to a toss-up between Jake Nantz and K. Prescott. So I literally tossed a coin, and Jake won. Email me your snail-mail address, Jake, and I’ll either put a copy in the mail to you or, if you’re going to be at Bouchercon in October, I’ll bring it with me. You may receive it quicker that way!