Dear Alan, a love letter...

Earlier this week I was tired and out of ideas for something witty to write on Twitter, much less in a novel, so I decided to do what a lot of people do on Twitter and quote someone else.  I found the following quote by Anna Quindlen to which I shouted, Amen!

People have writer’s block not because they can’t write,

but because they despair of writing eloquently.

My Twitter posts also get posted on my Sara FB page, and my dear friend Alan [friends since high school, which was a long time ago], replied, "the cure: JUST WRITE! The judgmental part of your brain is wanting to get it right and its suppressing the creative side. Next time, just write me a letter... and after a few minutes the words will flow, and I'll still treasure what you wrote."

And so, Alan, I'm writing you a letter.  If we weren't so old and hadn't been friends for so long and... for several other significant reasons why not, I'd say it's a love letter.  But in reality, it is.  This is my love letter to you and to all of my friends who have shored me up when my head was going under for the third or fourth time.  To all the people who have held out a hand and said, hang on.  And I'm not just talking about writing.  I'm talking about everything, about my life.

Rare photo of me smiling.
And because this is from my year book,
Alan wrote over his face. I don't remember
him being a Black Panther, though.

1977  -   I was 17 and Alan was 16.

Some dance or another.  1977

Alan, you were there with me through high school, and whether you know it or not, you helped me survive
high school and my life at home. We both had issues we were dealing with, and being teenagers, we didn't know how to express our feelings, but being with you felt comfortable. You made me happy, and that's saying a lot for back then.  And just so I mention it.  Damn, we were skinny and beautiful back then.  Still beautiful, though, both of us.

Following in your footsteps have been many, many people. I won't name them all, because knowing me, I'd forget one of them and then hurt someone's feelings.  I hope they know who they are.  If they don't, then I've fallen down on my job.

There have been real times when I didn't want to live any longer, but I've always had someone call or reach out, and it never came to that.  

And because of all these people making calls, because of all these people holding me up, I'm now able to write. I don't write memoir, that's still too close, but I do write about what I know, about pain and worthlessness. About doing without in the midst of plenty.  About uncertainty and fear.   

About not being able to let my fear and self-doubt show.  

Most people only look at the surface. So I know that the people I call friends have fought a hard battle to get this close to me, and still many of them don't really know me.  Even my therapist got frustrated with me because I wouldn't share everything he thought I should.  As Desi [of An Untold Want / Counting Crows] says, once that door is open, I may never be able to close it again.  Of course, she says it more eloquently, but then again, this is a blog, not literary fiction. So give me an f'in' break. [sarcasm, okay, sarcasm]  

Desi does end up opening the door, but then again, I let my characters be braver and stronger than I ever was, than I am now.  I let them do all the things I wish I had done.  All the things I wish I could do.

With that said, I love you Alan, and each and every person who has ever been there for me.  And when I do become rich and famous, you can say, I knew you when you were weak and now you're strong.  

And rich.

And famous.

And owner of a private island, where only you all can come and visit.

One of those Duh Moments...

Have you ever had one of those duh moments?  You know, where you think why didn't I realize that before, like five years before.  Yeah, well, I had one of those recently.  Not today, but I was thinking about it today while I was doing some re-writing.

Problem is that it's going to be hard to talk about it without giving away the changes I've made, but just so you know, it deepens my story significantly.

In my duh moment, I realized that I could have Maggie do something [again, not telling what], and originally I only thought, well that makes the story more complex, but what I realized later is that the something she does finally gives me the reason why the MacAllister curse is broken, hence a better ending.  I always felt like it was cheating to not spell out why the curse gets broken, but I really didn't have a clue myself why it was broken.  [Okay, if you didn't suspect that the curse will be broken, sorry, but don't be silly, of course it will be--plus telling you this gives nothing away, story wise.  Even my stories have a happy ending, per se.  Personally, I think Couillon has a happy ending, but that depends on your point of view about...  not telling, or will give away the story.]

So I know you're asking yourself why it took so long for this duh moment to happen.  I mean, really. Theoretically, the book has been finished for over a year.  But the lack of closure has nagged me for a long, long time.  So go ahead and ask why, but, let me ask this first.  Have you tried writing a full length novel?  Yes, then you know how you get involved with the characters, and they create the story, at least in literary fiction.  Well, this was something Maggie didn't want to tell me, I guess.  Or you could say, since I've never experienced it [thank goodness], it wasn't in my book of knowledge. After all, we write what we know.

I stumbled across the idea while I was reading someone else's novel.  That protagonist was in a situation I won't describe because it would give too much away.  Anyway, while reading, I thought, what if?  [I do that a lot with books and movies.  About half way through a book or movie I either guess the ending, or, in my head, I re-write the ending.]  In this case, I guessed the ending which lead me to what Maggie does, and the answer to why the curse is broken.  Yay.

So part of what I've been doing in this re-write is layering in Maggie's thoughts about what she's done, leading to a much much larger last chapter [or what was the one page epilogue before]--which still has to be written.  The last chapter will also have a short excerpt from Rose's diary, which answers the question about the curse, and reveals to Maggie, at least, why it's broken.  Now I just got to come up with Rose's voice.  And write that last chapter.

Tag, I'm It!

Okay, so here's a fun little game that hopefully will spread the indie word. Being IT means that you share information about your work in progress also known as WIP.


The Rules
1.) Give credit (including a link) to the Author who tagged you.
2.) Play by the rules, therefore you must post the rules!
3.) You MUST answer all 10 questions (below) some are quite hard but do your best.
4.) List five other Authors with links at the end that you have tagged so that the game can continue.


Link Back
The indie writer who tagged me was Beem Weeks author of Jazz Baby. He has an author site here on GoodReads where you can learn all about his writing.


Q1.) What is the title or working title of your WIP?

An Untold Want

Q2.) What genres does your novel fall under?

Women's fiction, no, not Chic-lit, more like literary fiction with a bit of romance in it.

Q3.) What actors (Dream Cast) would you choose to play the characters in a film version?

Assuming a dream cast means that the laws of physics (aging and death) don't apply (e.g., some are too old, some are dead), here's who I would have in the cast:

Maggie: Susan Sarandon or Vivien Leigh
Liz: Holly Hunter or Uma Thurman
Desi: Audrey Hepburn, definitely Audrey Hepburn
JD: Even though I'm not crazy about him as an actor, JD is fashioned after Clint Eastwood.
Rowan: Edward Norton or James Dean
Suzanne: Delta Burke, definitely
Libby: Kate Winslet or Helena Bonham Carter
(Libby is a difficult one to cast, as I don't like her much.)

Q4.) What is the main outline for your book?

Have you heard that there are only two stories? Someone comes to town or someone leaves town. This is the story of someone coming to town.

Basically, girl grows up in denial about her family's lifestyle. Now in her 40's and never married, with a teenage daughter, she meets the younger man. She wants to fall in love, but is afraid of what the neighbors will say and of the family curse which fates all men who love women in her family to an early grave. Troubles happen along the way as girl learns to accept herself and then figure out to do with her life.

Q5.) Will your book be Indie published/self published, or represented by an agency and sold to a traditional publisher?

Indie. I've tried the agent route, and haven't had any luck finding someone who "loves" my work. It doesn't fit a particular genre. And even though Donald Maass is preaching that literary and genre should find a happy medium (and I agree with him whole heartedly), no one seems interested and I kind'ov got tired of trying.

Q6.) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I don't write in chronological order, so there wasn't really a first draft per se. Actually, the novel was finished and then so many things changed in the editing phase, and then so many more thing changes. So I can't say there ever was a real first draft. End to end, the process has taken about eight years (part of it involved learning the craft). But really if you count only the time I was actively writing, it took about two years.

Q7.) What other books in this genre would you compare your book to?

A friend said this novel is a cross between The Witches of Eastwick and Steel Magnolias. I like to think that my writing is somewhere between Sarah Addison Allen's The Girl Who Chased the Moon and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. It has magic and witchcraft in it, but it's not fantastical realism. And it definitely not urban fantasy. (No vampires, werewolves, or zombies.) An Untold Want is about a family of Southern witches, real witches, and what life is like for the current matron in the family who tries to ignore her magical heritage. Maybe like Kate Morton's works, except set in the southeastern US.

Q8.) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Author wise, I have to say I started this journey wanting to write like Alice Hoffman. But my friends are my true inspiration. They keep me going. They bolster my confidence.

Finally, my Granny was a fine story teller, and I think I get that need to tell stories from her.

Q9.) What else about the book might pique readers attention?

Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll? I don't know. God, I'm telling on myself. I'm sure no one under thirty ever says that.

There are historical inserts (e.g., diary excerpts) that help tell the story. So it has the feel of a historical novel, while the main story still happens in the present.

There are a couple of steamy sex scenes, but nothing over the top.

The story is told from the point of view of three women, two of which are teenagers, and it traces their steps toward self-worth.

Q10.) Five other Indie Authors you have tagged

I'm going to cheat and only list two authors, but two authors you should look into.

E.J. Miller: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7061254.E_J_Miller
Martin Hengst: http://www.goodreads.com/martinfhengst, http://solendrea.com

Becoming Sara...

The past couple of weeks, I've been setting up author pages. [There's a list to the right of this post.]  I'm everywhere.  Or should I say Sara is everywhere, or soon will be.  It's kind of funny seeing my face on an Amazon or GoodReads web page, especially with Sara's name beside the picture.  I'm starting to have a bit of an identity crisis. 

I twitter as Sara.  I have a Sara Facebook page.  The only thing crazier is that my cat, BlackBeary, has her own Facebook page [and a loyal following of friends] where she talks about how beautiful she is and about her contempt for the human race, well except the ones who make single malt scotch, her favorite spirit.  Next thing you know, she'll be twittering.





I almost forgot about my "Good Rules for Blogging".  Here's a picture of BlackBeary doing her WTF? No Fancy Feast face.  I wish I could say I meant to take that picture, but it just happened.




So, back to me and Sara.  Other than the name change, Sara is probably more me than my Nellie personal is.  I worked in consulting for many years, and even though I have stopped being a sure, we can do that type of person, I did learn how to hide behind a facade, behind a smiling face.  My friends may say that I don't hide stuff well because I do tend to show my emotions, quite easily, especially in animal movies, and I tear up when I get really mad, but I also have things that no one, except maybe my brother, knows about me.  Sara has shared some of those things in an oblique way, through fiction. 

I've never understood why someone would want to write memoir.  At least with Sara, people can only guess at how much is real and how much is fictional, at how much, as Stephen King says, is the truth inside the lie.  Just to clarify, if you've read Couillon, I have never killed anyone.  Yet.

But on the other hand, in a world of 30-minute sitcoms and Dr. Phil television therapy, I'm sure a lot of people question why anyone writes literary fiction any more.  Most people are more interested in plot these days than character development.  And when you're good at both [i.e., Stephen King], you're called a second-rate writer.  I dream of writing as bad as Stephen King does. 

When I asked my friend Lisa, who is critiquing my novel [An Untold Want, a.k.a., Counting Crows], how she was feeling about it, in other words, is she bored, interested, is it too slow, she said, "I am intrigued, and I do like the characters. I care more about the characters than I do the plot line, which isn't either good or bad, just is."  I will admit the plot takes a long time to fully develop, and I know this is silly to say after the fact, but what I was aiming at when I started the story is for the reader to identify with the characters.  Not necessarily like them, but to understand why they're the way they are and what they want to change.  Same with Couillon. 

So I think I'm accomplishing what I want.  Whether anyone likes it, reads it, cares about it, that's not my problem, not really.  Readers don't owe me anything.  I hope they will read it and like it, and possibly even care about the characters, but that's not why I wrote it.  Well, not completely.  There is a part of me that wants to be a bestselling author.  That part of me wants the reader to not only like it, but love love love it, and convince all their friends to read it.  So again, there's the split in my personality, that identity crisis rising up and waving its arms. 

So let's just say that Sara wants to be world renowned, while Nellie is writing for the pleasure of writing.   It's an uneasy alliance, but it works, for me at least.

~o~

This is the picture you're going to see most everywhere. This is me at Mama's Mexican Restaurant in downtown Seattle.  Why yes, it is the home of the E'vis room.  Decor leaves a little to be desired, but the food and drinks certainly make up for it.  BTW, I cut my friend Kathleen out of the picture.  Just so you know I wasn't drowning my publishing sorrows in tequila all by myself.  This was actually the night we went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Removed Post

I went ahead and removed the last post.  My friend, the lawyer, convinced me that it wasn't smart.  Not that I'm known for being especially smart, well not politically.  So I'm listening to counsel.  I am smart about that. 

Milestone

Sometime between yesterday and today, I passed the 4000 hits mark on this blog.  Considering it's not about celebrities or the latest fashion trend, or whatever, I consider that an accomplishment.

Thanks everyone who has come to this page, even once!!!  Love you all!!

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

I've been thinking about this whole Twitter thing for awhile, about how effective it actually is, and then when I had a conversation with a fellow writer today, I cemented my belief system about marketing via Twitter.  I'll be using novelist as an example, because I'm a burgeoning author, but needless to say, novelist are not the exception. Lots of people are doing this, for a myriad of items, from acne cream to classes on how to promote yourself on Twitter.

On Twitter, I see so many people advertising their books, including myself, and I've been wondering, a lot, if it is the least bit productive. There's all kinds of pitches. There's the READ MY BOOK pitch, the one that is in your face.  There's the I've just written the Great American Novel and you should read it pitch.  And then there's the So-n-so said This is the Greatest Book since the Iliad and you'd be a fool not to read it pitch. These can all be interchanged or combined.  And none of these are bad, until someone decides to tweet it flood-style.  Buy my book.  Buy my book.  Buy my book.  I've gotten to where I ignore certain tweeters almost immediately because they've saturated my sense of appreciation for their message.

I usually pitch once a week and try to add some humor.  For example, I'll tweet something like What better #read on Good Friday than a story about obsession and #voodoo? Ok, maybe a stretch. Read COUILLON anyway.

And that brings up a question I've been pondering. Do people actually read other people's tweets?  I don't think so. I am following less than 350 tweeters [I have very few compared to most, some in the 100K range], and I can't even read a tenth of the tweets I get. That's when I have time to read tweets.  So if I'm not reading their tweets, they're probably not reading my tweets.  Which begs the question is this worth doing.

I even asked the question, in a tweet, if any of the authors I am following feel like they have sold books based on Twitter pitches. I got zero response. Which, to me, emphasizes both of my points: pitches don't really work and no one reads other people's tweets. Unless you're already a celebrity. I'm never going to have a real following until I'm a celebrity, but I'm never going to be a celebrity without a following.  Kind of like the old credit catch-22 [it was like this a long, long time ago], if you don't have credit, you can't get credit. [Now days, anyone can get a credit card, even my ex-husband.]

Now, I'm not dumping on Twitter. I've built a hand full of relationships there, and I enjoy a lot of the tweets. Just not the marketing ones. Besides Twitter, there are also tons of Facebook pages out there that do same.  And blogs. For example, many FB pages are centered around indie authors. I liked several of those pages when I was told I needed to get into social media if I'm going to be somebody.  My problem is that all I see on those pages are posts from other authors pitching their books.  No readers.  Just writer.

So am I going to dump Twitter or FB?  No, absolutely not.  But I'm also not the type to flood the twitter-verse with Buy my Book messages.  I don't know what it'll take for me to start selling books, but tweeting to other authors ain't it.

I'd love to hear from other authors, not represented by agents/publishers, as to how they market their work.  But just finding those people is a job in and of itself.  I followed GoodReads discussion groups for awhile, too.  You know what I found?  I found that with all this tweeting and group participation, I didn't have time to write.

So if you have some sure fired way of marketing your books, please please please share the information.  I'm not looking for the easy way, but I am looking for the most effective way.