To Post or Not To Post.....

A very wise woman once told me never to talk about politics, religion, sex, or money at a cocktail party unless you like an argument or want to go home with a drunk.

The internet is like a great, big cocktail party, except we’re all usually in our pajamas and don’t often see the repercussions from our words, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If you are a writer, or a public person, you need to heed these words. It’s for your own good. Honestly.

Things you might not want to talk about online:

1.     Politics. I completely understand being passionate about the subject, but choosing one side means isolating the other. If you are a writer, you don’t want to alienate half of you audience.

2.     Religion. You’ll never know who you’ll offend with this one so just don’t go there. Yes, I would love to hear about your experiences as a Wiccan high priestess, but some of your readers might not. They may try to convert you to their religion or even (egads) stop reading your books. As I said already, don’t go there.

3.     Sex. There is definitely such a thing as TMI, and there is also such a thing as too many racy photos. Moderation is the key. There is a difference between a sexy post and a trashy post – and one person’s sexy is another person’s trashy. Be careful.

4.     Money. No one ever asked me how much I made until I became a writer. Since then, I’ve had several people bring it up. Directly. It’s very strange. Don’t talk about money in your posts. Don’t brag about how much you’ve made or whine about how poor you are. No one wants to hear it.

5.     My perfect life.  Everyone is happy you are happy, but no one has a perfect life.  There is a fine line between sharing good news (with a proper dose of humor and modesty) and bragging. Make sure you don’t cross that line.

6.     Kids.  This is a tough one for me. My in-laws and many of my friends live overseas and I share lots of info (sometimes too much info) about my children because I want them to feel more connected to our lives. Not everyone online is a doting grandmother or a loving uncle, though. Sharing too much might not only be boring, it can also be dangerous. And never EVER share anything that could be potentially embarrassing to your child. Some of my writer friends use code names for their children to avoid using their real names on line. I often call mine the extremely original “oldest son, middle son, and youngest son.” Do what works for you.

7.     Negative Stuff.  In general, keep it positive. If you are negative, make it funny. Don’t say mean things about people. Don’t post about your misery. It’s just as annoying as posting about your perfect life.  I’ve read posts that sounded like a cry for help, and others that were just sad. And needy. Don’t pretend to be happy if you aren’t, but don’t air your dirty laundry in front of strangers. There are people out there who don’t have your best interests at heart. If you are in pain, call a friend. Don’t send it out into the void.

8.     Your books. This might seem counterproductive, but talk about something besides your books online.  My super agent, Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency, said to follow the one-third rule. Talk about your books one third of the time. Talk about (and promote) other books one third of the time. Use the remaining one third of the time to talk about something else.  If you talk about nothing but your books and your writing all of the time, you will lose readers. And friends.

9.     Gross stuff. I’m really sorry about the gaping wound on your foot, but do I want to see it? No. Please – NO.

10. Share your passions and be yourself. This may seem like the opposite of what I advised above, but it’s important to talk about what you enjoy. I love coffee, books, and wine (not always in that order), and I post about those things often.  Very often. Maybe too often. But it makes my readers feel a connection to me, because they know my enthusiasm is genuine. Be real. Be passionate. But don’t be annoying.

No matter how hard you try, or how diplomatic, kind, and light-hearted you might be, you will insult someone eventually. When it happens, apologize and move on. Don’t respond to negative posts. Ignore them or delete them. If you jump into the mud, you’ll get dirty, too.  And getting clean again in a public forum is a difficult thing to do.

Mindful Writers

I joined the Mindful Writers group completely by accident.  My friend (who shall remain nameless and blameless) told me she’d signed up, and let me know there were only a few slots left.  Edged on by the possibility of seeing my friend every week, as well as by the thought of breakfast (the meetings are held at Eat ‘n Park), I thought, “Why not?  It might be fun.”  It ended up being so much more than fun.

I had no idea what to expect, and was shocked by how long the meetings lasted.  They were held every single week from 9:30-2:30.  Five solid hours.  I wondered what on Earth we could be doing for five long excruciating hours at Eat ‘n Park.  That basically covered breakfast, lunch, and nearly hit dinner.   I thought it was odd, but decided to try it anyway.

Our instructor is a fellow Pennwriter name Madhu Wangu, and I liked her as soon as I met her.  When I first heard her name, I thought she was a Jedi, but my children soon corrected me.  Mace Windu is the Jedi.  Madhu Wangu is an author and a professor with a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and a post-doctoral Fellowship from Harvard.  She could be a Jedi.  She's actually cooler than Mace Windu.

We started the meeting with a prompt. I worked away diligently, hoping that this wasn’t the sort of thing I would eventually have to share with the strangers sitting around me at the table.  The group assembled was a real mix.  There were some familiar faces from Pennwriters, but there were some people I’d never seen before.   There were a few men, but it was mostly a girls' club.  I tried to relax and just write.

After a few minutes, Madhu told us that it was time for a guided meditation.  We listening to a recording of Madhu’s soothing, soft voice as she led us through breathing and relaxation exercises.  I’d done meditation and yoga before, so I was very comfortable with it, but I liked that this particular method was geared towards writers. 

When we the meditation was over, we opened our eyes, and Madhu told us to go back to the prompt we’d been given previously and try to write on that again.  What happened was sort of miraculous.  What had been a series of random, meandering thoughts, now was something completely and utterly different.  I wrote sentences, more like bullet points, that were clear and precise and organized.  It was like my mind had been decluttered.  Everything was suddenly so easy.

As soon as the prompt writing was over, Madhu announced that we could begin to free write for the next four hours.  My friend, the one who’d told me about the group, had a look of absolute panic in her eyes.  “Four hours,” she whispered.  “I don’t know what to write.  What am I going to write?”

I had to work on an edit, and wondered if that would be appropriate in Mindful Writers.  I decided there was no right or wrong.  It was what I needed to do, so I did it, and the experience was amazing.  I wrote for those four hours.  Madhu almost had to kick me out of Eat ‘n Park.  I was able to do exactly what I’d hoped to do, and it had actually been quite easy and enjoyable.

The fun didn’t stop there.  After Mindful Writers, I had to go to my son’s soccer game.  Then I made a huge dinner for my family. After dinner, I decided it would be a good time to cut the grass.  I thought I’d be exhausted after writing all day, but I was actually energized.

This might now work for everyone, but I’m really happy about how it’s turned out for me.  I’m still a newbie.  I’ve only gone three times, but I look forward to each meeting and I don’t want to miss.  I think there are several reasons this works so well.  First of all, the meditation really does clear my mind and help me to focus.  Secondly, there is a positive energy that is produced when you’re sitting in a room full of people working towards a creative goal.  I guess it’s also like the difference between doing yoga at home versus doing yoga in a class.  When you do yoga at home, you are still stretching and strengthening your body, but being in a class adds an extra element to it.  Thirdly, other than a delicious breakfast, there are no distractions at Eat ‘n Park.  We’re in a conference room, which is fairly quiet, and there are none of the distractions that exist when I write at home.  The laundry.  The dishes.  The errands.  I can’t do any of those things while I’m at Mindful Writers, so they are simply gone from my mind.

If you are interested in trying out Mindful Writers at home, Madhu does have CDs and audio downloads available.  Check out her website:  http://www.mindful-writers.com.

Namaste.

On Writing Contests

I love entering writing contests.  Early on in my writing career, someone told me my work would get more attention if I already had something published.  It could be anything, they said.  Enter a contest, they said.

That was when it began.  I sent a short story to the now defunct Writers’ Journal magazine.   Writers’ Journal was great.  It offered a variety of contests and published the winners.  For one particular contest (“Write to Win!”) you had to write a short story using a prompt.  I decided this was a good place to start since the direction had already been provided.  The prompt I used was “The lights went out….”. 

It was a great prompt.  My fingers flew over the keyboard until I realized I’d nearly exceed the limit on my word count and I was only halfway through the story.  Eventually I had to edit out about 80% of what I’d written.  I whittled it down as far as I could, but had very little left to work with by the end.

The ending sucked.  I cringe when I read it now.  My husband looked confused when he read it.  “That’s it?” he asked.  “It ended a little….abruptly.” 

He was being kind.  The ending wasn’t abrupt.  It was like taking a freaking leap off a cliff.  It was ridiculous.

I’d written it in a few hours and sent it in on the last possible day.  It was too late to fix it.  It was already in the mail.  I shrugged and basically forgot about it.

A few months later, I’d just gotten home from a day at the pool with my three boys.  We were still in our damp bathing suits, a little high on sno-cones and worn out from being in the hot sun.  I grabbed the mail on the way into the house, and I noticed a copy of Writers’ Journal in the mailbox.

I was confused.  I didn’t subscribe to Writers’ Journal.  I bought it in the grocery store when it came out quarterly.  I decided I must have subscribed and forgotten (not uncommon since I have the short term memory of a gnat).  I opening the magazine and leafed through it, still in my soggy bathing suit.  My kids were running around, attacking each other with Nerf guns or some other such thing.  I was ignoring them, because with three boys if I didn’t ignore most of the running around and hitting each other with projectiles I would go mad. 

And that was when I saw it.  My name on the page.  My words in print.  I’d won.  My stupid little story with the horrible ending had won first place.  It was one of the most exciting moments of my life.

My kids were terrified, mostly because I was screaming, but not at them.  They froze in the middle of their Nerf gun battle (which had morphed at some point into a wrestling match).

“Mommy, are you okay?” 

Later I realized that screaming like a crazy person might be an effective tool in getting them to stop before they killed each other, but I’ve never been able to replicate the exact sound I made that day.  It wasn’t human.  I screamed so much I was actually hoarse.  And that was when the addiction began. 

Out of the seven stories I’d entered into Writers’ Journal, I won four times.  The other wins involved less screaming and more happy dancing around the kitchen.  One of those stories (“Pretty Is”) won third place in a science fiction contest and became the basis for a young adult novel. 

I like contests.  Contests are fun (when I win, at least).  But there are a few things you should know before you enter.  These are contest caveats.

1.   Contests have fees.  Often the prize for entering is only slightly more than the entry fee, and the bigger the contest, the slimmer your chance of winning.  Don’t enter if you are purely doing it for the chance of winning the $25 grand prize and can barely afford the $15 entry fee.  Find a contest that doesn’t charge a fee (like Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award Contest), and enter that instead.

2.  Try local contests first.  I won a prize at the first writing conference I ever attended (Pennwriters) and it was one of the happiest days of my life.  I did not expect to win, but there is special joy in being found worthy when judged by your peers.  Pennwriters offers several contests, Novel Beginnings, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Short Story.  The winners are announced at their yearly conference, which is one of the best conferences around.  Find something like Pennwriters and enter it. (www.pennwriters.org)

3.  When the judges provide feedback, use it.  This is one of the best parts about losing a contest, getting another set of eyes to look at your work and give you advice.  Use that feedback wisely, though.  Print it out.  Look over it carefully.  Choose what you want to use and discard the rest.  This is your book.  Make it as good as you can, but never lose sight of what you are doing.

4.  Don’t obsess over negative feedback.  If every single judge tells you that your work is crap, it most probably is crap and you should listen.  But that is normally not the case.  Most judges are fair and try to be helpful.  Every once in a while, you get a rogue, nasty judge who rips your work apart and leaves your heart in shreds, too.  Read what they have to say.  Decide whether or not it’s true, and move on.  Listen, but have confidence in your own ability.  

5.  Be thankful.  Often you are given the opportunity to write thank you notes to the judges.  You may have to swallow your pride to thank a judge who seemed to be purposefully mean, but do it anyway.  I recently thanked a judge who loved my book (easy to do).  She wrote back, and we became friends.  I feel like I’ve met a kindred spirit just because I wrote that little thank you note.

6.  Try and try again.  Winning a contest won’t necessarily mean your book will be published, but it might put it in front of the right people.  A friend of mine was recently named a finalist in YARWA’s Rosemary Contest.  She was delighted, not only because it was super awesome that she made it to the finals, but also because the judge was an editor from her dream publisher.  Look at who will be judging these contests.  If one of the judges is an agent or an editor you’d really like to work with, it’s a chance to get your work in front of them.

Contests are not for everyone.  Some people consider them worthless, but I completely disagree.  Any chance I have to share what I’ve written is exciting for me, but I have a naturally positive disposition and I’m really good at ignoring negativity (some people call it delusional, I call it being an optimist).  Know before you enter that you may not get the results you were hoping for and just do your best.  You might be surprised.  You might get published.  You might make a new friend or a valuable contact.

What do you have to lose?

The Gypsy Pie Curse - In Honor of PI Day

After my son reminded me several times today that it was PI Day (March 14 or 3.14), I thought I’d surprise him and make pie.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I decided on banana cream (because everyone likes banana cream), and pecan because there was a never ending bag of pecans from Costco in my fridge. 

I’m an experienced baker.  I’m not a novice.  I know how to cook.  But pies…well, pies…

It began with my oven catching on fire.  Not the oven itself exactly, but a piece of crust from the shell I was baking for the banana cream pie.  This was not an unusual event in our house, I’m sad to say.  We ended up with a house full of smoke the last time I attempted pie as well.  I don’t know why I expected this time to be any different.

Due to the unique configuration of my new oven (which reminds me of a Klingon death trap), there was no way I could get the little piece of burning pie crust out of the bottom.  I tried and ended up burning my hand almost immediately.  And it was emitting so much smoke that my youngest started to keep watch outside for fire trucks.  

I decided to abandon all hope and set the oven for self-clean.  It burned the heck out of that bit of pie.  I was unable to open the door to the oven for about an hour, but eventually all was well and my pie shell was back in the oven.

The banana cream filling turned out perfectly.  The pecan was a bit of a challenge due to some very sticky corn syrup (think Chevy Chase with sap on his hands in Christmas Vacation).  Thankfully the weather was warm today.  We were able to open all of our windows and a strong spring breeze blew through our house, taking away all remnants of my kitchen mishap.  We were back to normal.  But I should have known better.  Every time I try to make pies it ends up like this, and there is a very good reason. 

I was cursed by a gypsy.

I’m not making this up.  It really happened.  When we were newly married and living in Istanbul, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for our ex-pat friends.  It was a potluck, I was pregnant, and I was put in charge of pies, because pies were my forte.  I was good at making pies back then.

The day began with a near disaster.  We had two cats (Thelma and Louise), who liked to get a breath of fresh air every morning on our balcony.  We lived on the 4^th floor, which was actually the 5^th floor by American standards.  That morning, I let Thelma and Louise out, but only Thelma came back.  Louise had fallen off the balcony, landed in the parking lot, and broken her leg.

We had thirteen guests coming for dinner (bad number – what was I thinking??), and my husband had to take Louise to the vet to get a cast.  I was home alone, and when the doorbell rang, I thought it was my husband.  It wasn’t.  It was a gypsy.

She was an old lady, selling scarves.  I pretended I couldn’t speak Turkish and attempted to close the door.  I didn't have time for this.  I was in the middle of making pies.  She stuck her hand in the door to stop me and asked me over and over again to buy one of her scarves.  I was kind of scared.  I continued to pretend I couldn’t understand her, and that is when it happened.  She muttered something in a language I’d never heard before and spat on my doorstep.

I closed the door, a little shaken by the encounter, and went back to making my pie crusts.  It was a horrible failure.  The dough crumbled in my hands and no matter what I did, it would not stick together.  I started again, with fresh ingredients, and the same thing happened.  The clock was ticking, our guests were about to arrive, and I had no pies.  I found a box of puffed pastry in the fridge and used it for the crust instead.  It was a horrible failure.  The pumpkin filling was perfect, but the crust was awful. 

I’d been cursed by that gypsy.  She had doomed my pies to failure.

This went on for ten solid years.  Finally, I decided I was going to break the gypsy pie curse.  I measured carefully, kept my cold ingredients cold and worked quickly.  The results were marvelous.  I created a pie crust that was flakey and buttery and absolutely perfect.  The curse had been broken…or so I thought.

The fourth book I wrote is called Traveller, and it is about gypsies.  Granted, it is sci-fi and my gypsies are alien mercenaries battling monsters to save the earth, but they are gypsies nonetheless.  I noticed something as soon as I finished writing the book.  I think I must have offended the ghost of that old gypsy woman who surely was long dead by now.  The curse was back.  Once again, I couldn’t make pie.

At Thanksgiving my pies were a failure (and I may have had 13 guests once again - never a good idea).  At Christmas I didn’t even try (because I had pneumonia, not because of the curse).  Today, on PI Day, it was my final attempt to overcome the curse.  It didn’t work.

I guess I’ll wait until the final edit is finished, buy a scarf from a gypsy when I visit Istanbul again this summer, and hope that is all it takes to lift the curse once and for all.  It couldn’t hurt…right?

 

 

 

 

 

Post Novel Depression

Writing a book is an amazing and sometimes all-consuming endeavor.  When you aren’t actively in front of your computer working on your book, you are thinking about it.  And as the words grow and build pages with your story, you become filled with a huge sense of joy and accomplishment.  Of course that is tempered by the times you are banging your head on your desk because you can’t figure out what will happen next or how to tie in an important plot point.  But when it is finished, and polished, and edited, you send it off with a smile and (in my case) a happy little dance that is vaguely reminiscent of Snoopy’s happy dance.  You may even hum The Charlie Brown Theme Song as you do it.  That’s okay.  I don’t judge.

And then it hits you, Post Novel Depression.  In my case, it happens about five minutes after I send my new book off to my agent, and immediately following the happy dance.  Suddenly, I have nothing to do.  The focus of the last few months of my life (other than kids, husband, making food, driving to various activities, cleaning the house and going to work) has been THE BOOK.  Now it’s gone.  I usually sit back down at my desk and stare at the computer screen, kind of like the little girl in Poltergeist stared at the static on the TV.  I’m suddenly lost, and I'm…mourning.

I miss my book.  I miss the funny, quirky characters I’ve created (even though I sort of hated them at times when they refused to do what I wanted).   I even miss editing.  Editing is no longer a dreaded activity for me.  Once I have direction and have set my course, I secretly (egads!) enjoy it.  It feels like doing a puzzle, and I’m a huge fan of puzzles.

After the initial sadness of Post Novel Depression hits, it only gets worse.  That is when you move on to the dreaded question:  What will I write next???  Suddenly, your heart is filled with fear.  What if I never write anything ever again?  What if the first five books were flukes?  What if I don’t hear the call of the muse and get another story stuck in my head that simply has to come out?

This is the stage in my grieving process when I start to get a look of panic in my eyes, and force myself to remember that this has happened before.  I can’t force the muse.  Eventually, she will show up.  I decide it is an excellent opportunity to clean out my closet.  Or do laundry.  Or put the books that fill the twenty seven book shelves in my house into alphabetical order, separating them by genre.  Or maybe by characters - one shelf for vampires, one for monsters, one for shape shifters, one for highlanders (separating time travelling highlanders from those who simply have mystical powers).  Sometimes I decide to clean out my linen closet.  My grandmother used to iron her sheets.  Maybe I should iron my sheets, too.  That might be fun.

It’s around the sheet ironing phase that I begin to realize I’m losing it.  I need to be writing, or I might start organizing my son’s sock drawer by color and shape.  Again.  That is when I remember I haven’t written a blog post in, uh, months, and sit down at my computer.  And it feels so good to be writing, even if I’m only writing about not writing. 

Post Novel Depression doesn’t last forever.  It’s over as soon as the new idea hits and you start to write again.  Worrying about it won’t make the muse come any faster.  Go back to your old notebooks.  Look over story ideas you jotted down years ago and see if there is something there that might work.  Take bits and pieces from those old ideas, put them together and see what comes up.  Go on Pinterest, create a board called “Inspiration” and pin every single thing to it that sparks you.  You might find something that works.  Worst case scenario, you’ll find a recipe for something like a killer mojito that will make the process just that much more bearable. 

It will happen again, and the more you relax, the sooner it will come.  And if you use this time to do a little cleaning and organizing with your bottled up creative juices, where is the harm in that?  Just don’t iron your sheets.  That is when you know you've gone over the edge and into the dark side.

Random Acts

I did not know anyone who died at Sandy Hook.  I didn’t know their friends or families, either.  But I am a mother, and I remember what it was like having a first grader.  Those gap toothed smiles.  The sweet little hugs.  The nervousness I felt sending them off to school in the big yellow bus.  When those children were murdered on that cold December day, it shook something deep inside of me.  And when I read about the heroism of the teachers who died, it made me want to do something myself.

I decided to do twenty six small things before December 14, 2013, each a tiny dedication to those who died.  I started out making meals for friends who were sick or had suffered a loss, but that was something I always did, and it wasn’t really a sacrifice at all on my part.  Also, when I did these things, people thanked me for them and it brought me personal attention.  I didn’t want that.  I wanted to do something for someone I didn’t know.

I began donating to charities, but even that was too easy.  I just clicked on PayPal or sent a check.  It didn’t hurt.  It wasn't really a sacrifice, and it wasn't personal.  I'd always donated to charities, especially children's charities, and will continue to do so, but I wanted to find something I could do that meant a bit more.

I finally decided to donate my hair to be made into a wig for cancer patients.  I had long hair already, and I knew a friend was having a fundraiser at her shop in October.  I made this decision sometime in January, and it gave me months to grow out my hair.

What I didn’t expect was as my hair grew longer, I sort of grew attached to it.  I loved the way it brushed against my back.  I enjoyed winding it up in a bun or braiding it.  It was thick and long and I’d never dyed it.  It was the perfect hair for a wig, but as October approached, I grew more and more nervous about losing it.  I’d become sort of vain about it.  My friends told me how much they liked it, and insisted I keep it long.  Strangers complimented me on it.  Even though it had become a pain to take care of, I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to part with it. 

I let people know I was growing it out and why in the hopes that it might make them consider donating their own hair, but also to keep me accountable.  I was secretly afraid I might not go through with it, and I was so close to reaching my twenty six random acts.  Every time I saw a photo of one of the Sandy Hook victims, or of their grieving parents, it reminded me about what is really important.

Getting my hair cut, it turns out, was really no big deal.  A few snips of the stylist’s scissors, and it was gone.  I immediately loved the way it felt so much lighter, and brushed against my cheeks as I turned my head back and forth to look at it in the salon mirror.  I couldn’t understand why I’d been so nervous in the first place.  It was only hair, and it will grow.

Today I saw a quote on a page on Facebook dedicated to one of the children who died at Sandy Hook, Daniel Barden (https://www.facebook.com/WhatWouldDanielDo).   “Today I will change my way of thinking from, ‘I have to do this, I have to do that,’ to ‘I GET to do this, I GET to do that.’  Even life’s little changes and mundane tasks hold beauty, meaning, and offer opportunity.  We learn this from Daniel.”

I still have a few acts left to perform, and this quote reminded me why it is so important.  Each little thing we do, whether it is making a meal or helping someone in need or even donating our hair, may seem very insignificant in the scheme of things, but it can also mean a great deal to the one person it helped.  And aren’t we lucky indeed that we GET to do them?

If you are interested in learning more about Sandy Hook and the Sandy Hook Promise, here is their website:  http://www.sandyhookpromise.org/