You’ve Got Personality

I had no idea what I was going to write about today until I read Alex’s blog yesterday.

Then it came to me. On-line personality tests. Why not just dump out my strengths and weaknesses for the world to see?

There’s so many of these things out there, I don’t know where to begin. They are hardly scientific—at least, most of them seem fairly simplistic. For example, I’m right brained. Woo woo, big surprise there. (But you may be surprised that I’m not extreme right-brain–only 62%.)

There’s the “big five” test.

And one of the many ennegram tests. (I’m #3: The Achiever.)

About ten years ago, I worked for a guy who was a big proponent of the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Greg had married into a large, close-knit family that had a family run business in the agricultural area. They hired a management consultant to help solve some problems inherent in running a family business. You can just imagine, right? Growing up with the same people, working with the same people, living in the same town with the same people, bringing in spouses to help with the business, and kids were being born—arguments are inevitable, but when you’re family there is no firing or quitting.

The consultant suggested they each take the Keirsey test (based on the Myers-Brigges personality types) so that they could understand the other people in the business/family. Apparently, the results were accurate and helped the family members see how the other people thought, resulting in more patience and ultimately fostered a better working and living environment.

So Greg was big on the test and suggested that all of us on staff take it.

I was surprised at my results, but when I read the book cover to cover (Greg gave it to me), I realized I definitely fit about 80%+ into my “temperament.”

According to the Keirsey website:

Each temperament has its own unique qualities and shortcomings, strengths and challenges. What accounts for these differences? To use the idea of Temperament most effectively, it is important to understand that the four temperaments are not simply arbitrary collections of characteristics, but spring from an interaction of the two basic dimensions of human behavior: our communication and our action, our words and our deeds, or, simply, what we say and what we do.

As a writer, and someone interested in human nature in general, I’m very interested in why people do what they do. As someone who likes to get along with others, understanding they whys and the hows of people’s thought processes and where they are coming from, helps to keep a modicum of peace, especially in a work environment.

I know many writers who use the Temperament Sorter to help them with their characters. I’m not one of them. But hey, if you like to ask your characters questions, go for it! As a personality test, I think this is one of the most accurate I’ve seen based on people I’ve worked with.

So for fun–because I’m on deadline (again, surprise) I’m going to run another contest. Guess which of the 16 temperaments I am and you get a copy of any book in my backlist. I’ll give up to five books away, randomly, to those who guess right.

More about the Myers-Briggs/Keirsey Temperament Sorter:

There are four basic temperaments, and each temperament has four parts. Click on the temperament for more information. First, a run down of what the Myers-Briggs letters stand for. (pg 12 in the book PLEASE UNDERSTAND ME II.) Everyone is one or the other:

E= Extraverted or I=Introverted

S= Sensory or N=Intuitive

T=Thinking or F=Feeling

J=Judging or P=Perceiving

From the website (and you can click through for more detailed information)

Artisans

All Artisans (SPs) share the following core characteristics:

Artisans tend to be fun-loving, optimistic, realistic, and focused on the here and now

Artisans pride themselves on being unconventional, bold, and spontaneous.

Artisans make playful mates, creative parents, and troubleshooting leaders.

Artisans are excitable, trust their impulses, want to make a splash, seek stimulation, prize freedom, and dream of mastering action skills.

Artisans are the temperament with a natural ability to excel in any of the arts, not only the fine arts such as painting and sculpting, or the performing arts such as music, theater, and dance, but also the athletic, military, political, mechanical, and industrial arts, as well as the “art of the deal” in business.

The four SPs:

ESTP (Promoter)

ISTP (Crafter)

ESFP (Performer)

ISFP (Composer)

Guardians

All Guardians (SJs) share the following core characteristics:

Guardians pride themselves on being dependable, helpful, and hard-working.

Guardians make loyal mates, responsible parents, and stabilizing leaders.

Guardians tend to be dutiful, cautious, humble, and focused on credentials and traditions.

Guardians are concerned citizens who trust authority, join groups, seek security, prize gratitude, and dream of meting out justice.

Guardians are the cornerstone of society, for they are the temperament given to serving and preserving our most important social institutions. Guardians have natural talent in managing goods and services–from supervision to maintenance and supply — and they use all their skills to keep things running smoothly in their families, communities, schools, churches, hospitals, and businesses.

The four SJs:

ESTJ (Supervisor)

ISTJ (Inspector)

ESFJ (Provider)

ISFJ (Protector)

Idealists

All Idealists (NFs) share the following core characteristics:

Idealists are enthusiastic, they trust their intuition, yearn for romance, seek their true self, prize meaningful relationships, and dream of attaining wisdom.

Idealists pride themselves on being loving, kindhearted, and authentic.

Idealists tend to be giving, trusting, spiritual, and they are focused on personal journeys and human potentials.

Idealists make intense mates, nurturing parents, and inspirational leaders.

Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self — always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.

The four NFs:

ENFJ (Teacher)

INFJ (Counselor)

ENFP (Champion)

INFP (Healer)

Rationals

All Rationals (NTs) share the following core characteristics:

Rationals tend to be pragmatic, skeptical, self-contained, and focused on problem-solving and systems analysis.

Rationals pride themselves on being ingenious, independent, and strong willed.

Rationals make reasonable mates, individualizing parents, and strategic leaders.

Rationals are even-tempered, they trust logic, yearn for achievement, seek knowledge, prize technology, and dream of understanding how the world works.

Rationals are the problem solving temperament, particularly if the problem has to do with the many complex systems that make up the world around us. Rationals might tackle problems in organic systems such as plants and animals, or in mechanical systems such as railroads and computers, or in social systems such as families and companies and governments. But whatever systems fire their curiosity, Rationals will analyze them to understand how they work, so they can figure out how to make them work better.

The four NTs

ENTJ (Fieldmarshal)

INTJ (Mastermind)

ENTP (Inventor)

INTP (Architect)

It benefits writers to understand basic human temperament, at least from a character point of view. Reading the book (versus the less detailed website) provides insights into character traits you might not even be aware of, simply because they’re not in us. This is particularly helpful when you find your secondary characters all alike or stereotypical. And when all else fails and you need some conflict, try putting an Artisan with a Rational and watch them explode.

I was going to try to guess what all my Murderati partners in crime were, but it was much harder than I thought. I’m pretty sure that Alex is an Artisan Performer, that Alafair is a Guardian, Toni is a Idealist, and Tess is a Rational; I’m certain that Rob and Pari and Stephen are introverts and that Dusty and Brett and JT are extraverts. But when I tried to break it all down, I realized maybe I don’t read people as well as I thought, and rather than embarrass myself, I would just quit here. But if any of my compatriots want to participate and take the online test and share . . . I’m sure everyone here would enjoy it! You have to register to take the online test, but it’s free.

And again, if you can figure out what I am (and yes, it does fit surprising well and I’ll tell you why at the end of the day) you get a book from my backlist. Enjoy!

Chameleon or True Blue?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I find myself now, for various reasons, in a sort of therapy (is that vague enough? Because I can easily be more vague…) which requires that I regularly talk about my thoughts and feelings, and things like How I Am.

Some of you who have met me in person have noticed and called me on the fact that I rarely talk much about myself – I’m very good at turning the conversation to YOU so that I don’t have to disclose anything. (Or maybe more because I have no idea How I Am. Remember, I started blogging about story structure primarily so I wouldn’t have to talk about myself anymore… and anyway if I’m at a conference the answer is always the same – I’m deliriously happy. Who wouldn’t be?)

To a certain extent all writers are good at this, turning the conversation onto someone else, because hey, it’s character research. Maybe in fact all good writers are good at it, and only the annoying ones that you would never read anyway talk about themselves all the time (and I know you all know who I mean).

But in this therapy I am very good at talking about myself. I disclose all kinds of things. I even cry. Because I am nothing if not a good student, expert at discerning what a teacher (or director or choreographer) wants from me.

When I was doing improv I had directors who called personal disclosures like the ones I am now engaged in “California Scenes”. It wasn’t a compliment. A California scene is when you just dump every sordid detail of your character’s life onto your scene partner – and never actually tell the real truth.

The thing is, what truth? What real?

What I mean is, how do I know what’s me when I just spent four hours in what was basically a dissociative state as a sixteen-year old girl tracking a potential mass murderer through the back tunnels of a shopping mall? I can tell you her feelings, but those aren’t really my feelings. Except that for the last four hours, they were.

When you spend most of your waking day being someone else, and most of the rest of it dreaming, who are you really?

This is I think why, for so long, actors were shunned by society and not allowed to be buried in hallowed ground. (That I suppose and all that unhallowed sex). Because they’re not really real. You never know who they are. But then what about us writers who play EVERY part, constantly, plus sometimes an omniscient narrator on top of that? How much less real does that make us?

When I and my siblings were in high school, my brother once brought home a Cosmo magazine with one of those great Cosmo quizzes (you know you all love them): Are you a Chameleon or a True Blue? And said to my sister and me: “Right there is the problem. I’m a True Blue and you two are Chameleons.” And okay, yeah, we didn’t even have to take the quiz to know that he was right. But we did take the quiz, and he was right.

Day to day I’m actually quite fine with my Chameleon nature, because it IS who I am. But I’m less comfortable with it in therapy; it makes me feel like I’m lying. Maybe because in the group I seem to be surrounded by True Blues. But maybe those people have a very strong sense of who I am, and I’m the one who doesn’t.

Now, we all write ourselves as characters, to a certain extent or another. I certainly am not as much any character I’ve written as Cornelia is Madeleine Dare, not even in the same universe, but I can point to certain characters in certain books and say definitively that they’re more me than others. I’ve noticed our readers play that game, too (just the other day someone here commented that she sees Tess when she reads Maura Isles, and really, who doesn’t?). Only at least with me, they’re mostly wrong. People think I’m Laurel MacDonald because there are places in THE UNSEEN where she says things in my voice, and I used a lot of my California-to-North Carolina experience in the book. But she’s a lot prettier than I am and also worlds less sure of herself… she’s softer, so much so that I don’t much relate to her. I’ve also had people say to me, “Do you know someone like Robin (in THE HARROWING)? Because she seems so real but you’re not at all like her.” But actually I am very much like her, but that’s just one half of me, and the other half, that masks her, is another character in the book.

I am very grateful for the conference circuit, which for me provides a very grounding, real-life balance to the all that writing and dissociation I do. I can find myself again in large groups of people (well, especially if there’s dancing), and when I am forced to talk about myself (on panels, etc.), I remember who I am, apart from the random dreamlike state that writing is.

But I guess this is what is puzzling me. Are ALL writers Chameleons, or are some of us True Blues who easily snap back into our “real” selves once we turn off the computer for the day? Are some people with “real” jobs as much Chameleons as actors or writers, playing a completely different part or parts during the day, at work, which parts are as much a dissociative state as writing?

What do you think? Are you a Chameleon or a True Blue?

And for bonus points, writers: which characters that you’ve written are most like you? Readers, which characters do YOU think are most like the authors who write them? And most importantly, why do you think actors were not allowed to be buried in hallowed ground?

– Alex

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Alex will be in New Orleans this Labor Day weekend for Heather Graham’s unmissable Writers for New Orleans Conference, teaching Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, paneling, and (thank God) being herself by playing a pirate wench and riverboat prostitute with Heather’s Slush Pile Players. Pitch sessions available with editors and publishers Leslie Wainger, Adam Wilson, Eric Raab, Ali deGray, Kate Duffy and Helen Rosburg.

Tales of Woe in Glitter Town

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

The funny thing about development executives in Hollywood is that most of them aren’t writers. Becoming a development exec is the route one takes to become a film producer. That was the trajectory I was on had I continued climbing the ladder at Wolfgang Petersen’s company. I was there for about five years, beginning as an assistant, rising to Story Editor and finally settling as his Director of Development.

If I had stayed I would’ve eventually become Vice President of Development and ultimately a producer, or I would have made a move to become the president of a company where an actor, director or writer had his/her development deal. Or I might have segued to the studio to become a Creative Executive, Story Editor, Director of Development or Vice President.

What I did instead was what every writer/development executive I knew ultimately had to do: I got the hell out.

I knew around a hundred development execs. We went to all the parties, we tracked projects, we exchanged notes and recommended screenwriters we’d been reading. Sometimes we competed for the same project. We were buried in our work. It was a 24/7 gig. After a full day at the office I’d typically take two screenplays home with me to read at night. I read anywhere between ten and twenty screenplays every weekend. Sometimes I’d have a novel thrown in, just as a nail in my coffin.

Out of those hundred execs I knew, only three others were writers. For us the job was more difficult. We were on the writers’ side.

We knew what it took to deliver that 120-page screenplay. We understood the agony of facing the blank page.

I think the writer has it the hardest. At least the director has a place to start. He’s got a “blueprint,” provided by the writer. The production designer has the screenplay and the director’s vision to work with. The film editor has the footage; the result of everyone’s efforts, built upon the foundation of the screenplay. Everyone has something to refer to, except the writer. The writer faces the demons alone.

We writer/development execs often fought on the side of the writer against what we knew was a losing cause. The system wasn’t always set up to recognize good writing. It recognized attachments. Was there an actor attached? A studio? A major producer? A director? Who’s the agent? Often times it were these very attachments, or elements, that kept the projects from succeeding. Too many cooks. A producer will make the screenwriter change the hero’s gender because his deal is with Nicole Kidman, not Hugh Jackman.

When I was working on the movie Outbreak (Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, starring Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, written by…well, that’s another story…) we were rushed into production because a competing project with the same storyline was going up against us. We had a big studio, big producer, big director, big actors. They had a big studio, big producer, with Ridley Scott directing, starring Robert Redford and Jodi Foster. Theirs was based on the bestselling book The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston. Ours started off based on the book, but when the producer didn’t get the rights to the book he decided that any story based on the outbreak of an infectious disease was fair game. He decided to create his own.

This was the perfect example of the tail wagging the dog. Everyone seemed to forget about their respective stories, their non-existent screenplays. Each side made a mad rush to be first to the finish line. As it happened the rush was to the starting line. Both productions advertised the exact same production start date in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. The industry awaited the head-on collision as only the film business can—with relish.

The screenwriters credited on the movie Outbreak are Laurence Dworet and Robert Pool. These were the credited writers on the screenplay that came to our production company in an effort to get Wolfgang attached as the director. From the beginning it was all about the idea of the story more than the script we were handed. I never saw a second draft by Dworet and Pool, although the draft I saw might have been their tenth draft, for all I knew.

Our company immediately set upon getting someone to rewrite the script, which was par for the course in Hollywood. Ted Tally was chosen (wrote the screenplays for Silence of the Lambs and All the Pretty Horses) and we were off to the races.

We had problems with the Tally draft and then he was on to another project, so we brought in another set of writers, I can’t remember their names. Their draft didn’t impress, so we brought in Carrie Fischer to punch up the dialogue. Meanwhile, The Hot Zone, which had become Crisis in the Hot Zone, was going through its own devolution. Redford and Foster apparently couldn’t agree on their script and the rumor was that each wanted the screenplay rewritten to make their character the principal role. The story took back seat to the attachments.

It was a race to meet the date to begin principle photography. Nobody had a produceable script. We hired Neil Jimenez (River’s Edge, The Waterdance) to begin a page-one rewrite while we were in the middle of pre-production. Ultimately, Crisis imploded, its stars unable to agree on the script. Yea, we had won! Now what? There was no way to stop the machine.

Poor Neil wrote day and night, faxing pages in at four in the morning for each day of production. Us development folk in the office alternately cried or laughed, and both reactions were appropriate.

Wolfgang is a talented director. He pulled it together. It wasn’t his best film, but it wasn’t bad. If he’d had a better screenplay it might have been great. But it really wasn’t about the script, anyway.

And I tell this tale to illustrate what, exactly?

It’s one of many reasons I stopped being a D-Guy. It’s one of the reasons I stopped writing screenplays. The whole environment was so rarely about the one thing I truly loved – storytelling.

Movies are a director’s medium. I know a number of successful screenwriters. I don’t know if I know a happy screenwriter. I think the happy screenwriters are the ones who direct their own screenplays. Artists expressing their visions. Otherwise, they’re writing blueprints for a director to do as he/she pleases.

I left to write a novel. I had this crazy idea that I might be able to tell a story the way I wanted to tell a story and that someone would actually want to share the vision I had in my head. I figured I’d write something similar to Philip Roth. I didn’t care if it sold. I just wanted the freedom to express myself. Thank God I read those thousands of thriller screenplays at Wolfgang’s company. Thank God that Three Act Structure was embedded firmly in my mind.

The point is if you’re a storyteller you’re a storyteller. I had to get off the D-Guy treadmill and do what had to be done. As did the other three writers I knew who had D-Guy or D-Girl gigs. The ones who stayed either burned out or became VPs, producers or presidents of companies with development deals. A lot of them drifted off into sane, stable careers. I didn’t know any who had become novelists. I didn’t know any screenwriters who made the jump, either.

Until I met Alex and Rob. Something tells me they’re a lot happier now than when they were in the “game.” They are storytellers, and people are loving their stories. This wonderful give-and-take with the audience is something I never experienced writing screenplays in the film industry.

Anyway, this is Part One in what will eventually be a series of tawdry tales about the glamorous world of Hollywoodland. It was a nightmare, but it was fun. I still love developing screenplays, usually for smaller filmmakers outside the reach of the giant attachments that make Hollywood such a charming place to do business.

I remember having this terrible epiphany – I realized that Robert Altman’s The Player wasn’t really a satire. It was a documentary. When I recognized myself on the screen I knew it was time to get out.

WORD LUST

I admit it. There are words that when I hear them, they trigger special endorphins in my brain. They make me salivate, not with base hunger, but with a desire to know their secret. See they all have a similar meaning. Don’t get me wrong, there are other words that get me going, but these…? These captured my imagination when I was young and have never let go.

I probably heard the first of this group when my father would read stories to me before I went to sleep. It was probably in an older story, because, to me, the word is an older one, not one that comes up in everyday conversation. When I heard it, it instantly sounded magical to me. I could almost feel the word rolling around in my mouth.

Parcel [pahr-suhl] • noun

1. an object, article, container, or quantity of something wrapped or packed up; small package; bundle.

There are other meanings, but that’s the mean that’s important to me.

Parcel brings to mind a package wrapped in thick brown paper wrapped with twine. What could be inside? An ancient journal? A box full of coins? A secret invention? A bomb?

I love that word. To a lesser degree I also love package, container, tin, and suitcase. All hold mysteries that you long to be revealed. But out of that group, parcel still reigns supreme for me. It makes me feel warm inside, and evokes endless possibilities.

The other word that can get a similar reaction out of me, is a word in the same general theme. I probably first heard it in association with a western, because it just has that western feel. But it is also a word that can be used in other genres. In fact, I’ve used it myself many times simply because I love the feel of it. The sense of something different it brings.

Kit [kit] • noun

1. A set or collection of tools, supplies, instructional matter, etc., for a specific purpose: a first-aid kit, a sales kit

2. The case for containing these

3. Such a case and its contents

What a great word. Again, like parcel, a kit contains mysterious items. Only in this case, it’s groups of items that are related. The above mentioned first-aid kit, for instance. It could also be a manicure kit, a photography kit, a surveillance kit, a survival kit, a removing the body kit.

I love this work. Because to me, someone who has a specific kit usually is a pro at whatever that kit is for. And what exactly do they need to complete their job? How specialized are the items that make up the kit? Is the kit organized with neat little containers for every tool? Or is it a grab bag of items piled on top of each other?

Love, love, love.

Okay, ‘rati. Let’s hear it from you. What are some of your favorite words, and why? I’m looking for the words that make you stop for a moment and roll around in them.

Once again I’m on the road, so if I don’t respond in a timely matter please forgive me. I promise to check out all your words and comment as soon as I can.

Leaving Out the Parts People Skip

One of our best American writers, Elmore Leonard, has famously said that he tries to “leave out the parts people skip” when he’s writing. Anyone who has read a Leonard novel knows that they are lean, move quickly, and certainly don’t require any skimming.

But what exactly does that mean?

People start skimming when they lose interest. When they want you to get on with things. When they’re not as engaged by the story as they should be.

So how do you keep them engaged? I have a few ideas:

Keep your prose style simple and economic and clear

You can certainly be clever and artistic, but never sacrifice economy and clarity for the sake of “art.” Much of that art, in fact, is writing in a way that the sentences and paragraphs and pages flow from one to the next, giving the reader no choice but to hang onto every word.

And clarity is always important. If a reader is confused about what is going on, she may well give up on you.

Don’t bog your story down with too much description

Descriptive passages can be quite beautiful, but your job is to weigh whether or not they’re necessary. Are they slowing the story down?

One of my favorite writers of all time is Raymond Chandler. But when I read his novels, I sometimes find myself skipping entire paragraphs. Chandler seemed to have this need to describe a room or character in great detail, and while that may have been part of the job is his day, I think it’s much less important now.

Gregory MacDonald, the author of the Fletch books, among others, once said that because we live in a “post-television” world, it is no longer necessary to describe everything. We all know what the Statue of Liberty looks like because we’ve seen it on TV. We’ve seen just about everything on TV, and probably even more on the Internet.

So, I think it’s best to limit your descriptions to only what is absolutely necessary to make the story work. Meaning: enough to set the scene, set up a character, or to CLARIFY an action.

Let’s face it. Saying something as simple as, The place was a dump. Several used syringes lay on the floor next to a ratty mattress with half its stuffing gone is often more than enough to get the message across.

If you can, describe a setting through the eyes of whatever character controls the scene (meaning POV). If you include the description as part of that character’s thought process, colored by his or her mood or personality, the description then becomes much more dynamic and also reveals a lot about that character.

One man’s dump, after all, may be another man’s paradise. And showing how a character reacts to a place is much more interesting than a static description.

Tease your readers

One of the biggest mistakes I see aspiring writers make is that they try to reveal too much about character motivation and story too soon. Your job – as crass as it might sound – is to manipulate your reader. Too keep her reading. Turning those pages.

Imagine meeting someone for the first time and she tells you everything there is to know about her. Where she was born, where she went to school, how many affairs she’s had, how many brothers and sisters, her favorite color, her favorite food –

– you get the point.

What makes people interesting to us is that all of these things are revealed over a long period of time. We get to know them gradually, rather than all at once. They are a mystery that we have to unravel.

The same holds true with storytelling. You manipulate your readers by constantly creating questions in their minds. Why is she doing that? Where is she going? What happened to her in the past that makes her afraid of confronting him?

If we know it all up front, we”ll lose interest fast.

Give your characters a series of goals

Most stories will involve a central character who wants something. In a thriller, for instance, that may be something very big. The hero wants to stop the bad guy from, say, blowing up the federal building.

But if that’s all the story is about, then I’m yawning already.

If you give the hero a series of goals, smaller points he or she must reach – both internally and externally – before finally reaching that ultimate goal, then your reader will never lose interest.

A great example is the third DIE HARD movie. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

The bad guy has something nefarious up his sleeve. But in order to distract the police from that ultimate goal, he sends them on a series of wild goose chases involving high explosives. Because our heroes are moving from one goal to the next, we’re never bored. In fact, we spend much of our time on the edge of our seats.

In the meantime, the main hero suspects that something is up, and as he tries to puzzle it out, we’re right there with him. We have only as much information as he has, so we’re not about to abandon ship until he (and we) knows the truth.

But more importantly, we also have a dynamic relationship playing out on screen between two characters played by Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. These two men must work together reluctantly, and because we find them engaging, our stake in the outcome of the story is even higher.

Which brings me to my final point:

Create compelling characters

If you don’t create characters who are interesting in themselves, who have internal struggles we can relate to, who have fears we understand, who have a goal that makes sense to us on a personal level, then it doesn’t matter how cleverly you plot your novel. We won’t care.

If you need help creating compelling characters, take a look at my article on Creating Characters that Jump Off the Page.

Hopefully all of the above will help you “leave out the parts people skip.” And if you want to find out how the master himself does it, go pick up an Elmore Leonard novel today.

But be warned. He does it so well, it’s seamless. So you’ll have to pay close attention…

writing through distractions

Let me tell you about what my week looks like.

Saturday: my brother and family arrive from Texas, and stay with us. I love having them here, and we’re having a great time. Saturday night, cook dinner for five.

Sunday: Mom joins us and we all go sailing for the day. Cook dinner for six.

Monday: take Mom to doctor’s appointment. She’s having problems, and needs more tests. Cook dinner for six.

Tuesday: both sons arrive with significant others to stay with us for a week. Have to remake beds. Mom needs to be driven to hospital for x-rays and blood tests. Will cook dinner for ten.

Wednesday: brother scheduled to leave. Will be down to only four house guests. Mom needs to go to hospital for M.R.I. Mom needs prescriptions refilled. Dinner for nine.

Thursday: Birthday party for younger son, with grandparents invited. Son wants tacos with hand-made tortillas. Cook dinner for nine.

Friday: drive Mom to Portland (hour and a half each way) for her ophthalmology appointment. Take her shopping for summer clothes. Home in time for dinner with sons.

Monday: sons scheduled to leave. Guest beds need to be stripped, sheets washed. Now it’s my turn to go to doctor for medical tests. (Having upset stomach for past month — wonder why?!!)

Tuesday: Frantically pack for three-week trip to Turkey.

Wednesday: Catch flight for Istanbul.

Am I getting any writing done? What do you think? Even though I have the uncomplaining help and support of a wonderful spouse, life is full of so many distractions that sometimes writing is impossible. It takes time to get into the creative zone you need to write a new scene. It takes time to hear those voices, visualize the action, hone the words. I can’t do it in ten-minute snatches. And as I get older, I’m finding it even harder to write through distractions.

When I was a twenty-something medical resident, working 80-hour weeks, somehow I managed to fit in some writing when I had a spare moment. On nights when I’d be on-call, or when I’d get an hour’s breathing space for lunch, I could produce at least a few paragraphs. But I was writing short stories and articles then, not novels, and I can get focused much more quickly when the piece is compact and the story is less complicated, with fewer plot and character issues to juggle.

After my sons were born, I dropped back to working part-time, but with both a toddler and a baby in the house, I had a whole new set of distractions. I juggled two feeding schedules, tried to synchronize nap times, felt my IQ melting away as I shuffled around in a sleep-deprived state, the “ABC song” continuously playing in my head. And yet, amazingly, I managed to write. I completed my very first novel (albeit not a very good one) when my sons were only two and four years old.

I still don’t know how I did it. I’m sure there were times when someone’s diaper didn’t get changed in a timely fashion, or someone had to yell “Mommy” a few too many times before I heard him. I feel guilty about not being totally, mentally there for them when my mind was far, far away. I wonder if they incurred some lasting emotional trauma, being the children of a writer. Then I look at these sons of mine, and I see two wonderful, independent and self-sufficient young men who grew up washing their own clothes, changing their own sheets, and cooking their own breakfasts.

I think there’s something to be said for laissez-faire parenting.

I hear from many aspiring writers who haven’t managed to actually write anything yet because their lives are too busy. “When I retire, I’ll write that book,” they say. Or when the children are out of the house.” And to a certain extent, I can sympathize with them. It’s impossible to write when your kids are tugging and whining at your feet. Or when your elderly mom needs your constant attention. Or when your job leaves you so exhausted at the end of the day, you can barely rustle up the energy to eat dinner.

I used to believe that if a writer really wants to write, he will — no excuses allowed. But my position has mellowed over the years, because the pace of life in America has sped up so much over the past few decades. Kids now have to be driven to countless after-school activities. Employers and customers demand instant turnarounds. The ailing economy means many people have to work far too many hours.

So for those writers who are feeling guilty that they aren’t writing because life has overwhelmed them, I absolve you of that guilt. Sometimes it truly is impossible to write. Maybe you have to wait five years until the kid heads off to kindergarten, or figure out a way to unburden your packed schedule, or ask your spouse to shoulder some of the load. Maybe you need to start saying no more often, to tasks you don’t really feel committed to.

If you’re not actively writing, take comfort in the fact that, on some level, you’re still working. Even while your kids are screaming or you’re stuck in traffic, somewhere in your brain, some writing gear is probably turning. Maybe that red-faced, tear-streaked toddler will be perfect as a character in your next scene. Maybe the traffic gives you time to mull over a plot point.

And when you finally do get back to your desk, you’ll be all the more ready to write.

Left Coast Crime 2011 and other GREAT MURDERATI NEWS!

This is a good week. We have enough in place that I get to announce the details of Left Coast Crime Santa Fe. In addition to that, I’m absolutely delighted to tell our ‘Rati readers that starting next Monday, August 31, Alafair Burke—yes, you read that right—will be joining our blog.

Left Coast Crime 2011: The Big Chile

First off, let me introduce you to a new word: “chile”. Yep. Lower case. In New Mexico that’s how we spell what most of the rest of the country spells chilli or chili. So don’t pronounce it a la Southern for “child.”

Guests of Honor
When I was thinking about guests of honor, I wanted to make sure we’d have a variety of crime fiction subgenres represented. I also very much wanted to make sure that all of our guests had a tie with New Mexico—that they “got” what my state is all about. I’m very excited to announce this line up:

Martin Cruz Smith – Lifetime Achievement

Margaret Coel and Steven Havill – Guests of Honor

Marv Lachman – Fan Guest of Honor

Steve Brewer – Toastmaster

Dorothy B Hughes and Frances Crane – Ghosts of Honor

Pretty wonderful, hunh?

Dates
March 24-27

I plan to have at least one side trip, maybe two, before the convention starts. Right now I’m thinking of a combined trip to either Los Alamos and Bandelier National Monument OR Taos (the pueblo and town). We also might have a specialty writing day such as LCC 2010 is having on that Thursday.

Convention Hotel
La Fonda on the Plaza

This incredible historic hotel epitomizes New Mexico to me. Think adobe. Think hand-painted Mexican tiles in the bathrooms. Think saltillo tiles, a restaurant with huge sky lights and a lovely fountain in its center. La Fonda is unlike any other hotel you’ll ever visit or stay in. We’ve negotiated the rates for standard rooms down to $179/night. This is a great deal, especially since the hotel is right on Santa Fe’s world famous Plaza.

I’d encourage anyone who wants to stay at La Fonda to make their reservations EARLY –you can do it today!—because rooms will fill up fast. I can tell you right now that we are definitely going to have at least one overflow hotel. Of course there are many places to stay in the area – many far more expensive — and even a few motels a little further away, but La Fonda is a once in a life time experience.

Website and Registration
We’ve got the LCC 2011 website up–though there may be portions that aren’t quite ready for primetime yet–but you can register right this minute if you want. We’ve tried to keep the prices reasonable and there are benefits to signing up early.

We are definitely including the buffet awards dinner and at least one continental breakfast in the convention package. I plan to include a second continental b-fast, but that will depend on how many people sign up and what we can afford.

Programming
If you’ve got ideas or comments, either include them here or send them to me privately. At this point, with more than eighteen months’ lead time, we’re fairly open to suggestions. Now is the time to make your voices heard. No guarantees that we’ll be able to accommodate every creative concept, but we’d sure like to make this convention memorable for all the right reasons.

Volunteering
If anyone wants to take a larger, planning piece of this puzzle, let me know and I’ll email you privately (provided I can find your information).

AND NOW FOR ALAFAIR

I feel sheepish giving so many details about LCC and so little space to Alafair, but what can I say about this fabulous and accomplished writer? Only this: I wasn’t looking to give up my solo blogging on Mondays. I liked being the only ’Rati who didn’t alternate with someone else.

It took an extremely special person to make me reconsider.

There’s no question in my mind that Alafair will add a wonderful voice to our mix. She’ll bring a depth and level of excellence that just makes my heart sing.

Alafair will post her first blog with us next Monday, August 31, and thereafter will alternate Mondays with me.

I know you’ll make her feel welcome. All of us at the ‘Rati are absolutely delighted. We hope you are too.

***************************************************************************************

I think that’s enough information on a Monday morning.

— Tell me what you think about Left Coast Crime 2011: The Big Chile

— Tell us what you think about Alafair joining the ‘Rati.

A new writer’s journey…

One of the things that we love to do here at Murderati is showcase fellow writers whose work we admire, who are Good People. I have had the best fortune in meeting so many Good People over the last few years, people who reached a hand out to help me, who graciously gave me some of their time or space on their blog, and did so with a “Pay It Forward” attitude, and so it is with great joy that I get to introduce the Murderati group to a debut author who just impresses the hell out of me: Leanna Renee Hieber.

It’s fantastic when you meet a new author and you think, “Wow, this is such a fun person to hang out with,” and then you read her work and think, “Geez, and she’s so delightfully twisted, and talented!” This incredibly beautiful woman writes about everyone’s favorite serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. With a ghostly twist:

What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Hidden in the dark heart of Victorian London, the Romanesque school was dreadfully imposing, a veritable fortress, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met its powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadows, of the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She saw simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gift. This arched stone doorway was a portal to a new life, to an education far from what could be had at a convent—and it was an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death…

I met Leanna about a year-and-a-half ago at RT, when she was helping director Morgan Doremus create video interviews of various authors in attendance. They had me laughing within minutes, completely forgetting my phobia of being in front of the camera (I am used to being behind it), and they made the experience enormously fun. (If you were to see the videos, I look like I’m constantly about to laugh. I am so freaking thankful Morgan didn’t do a series of outtakes of all the faces I made at them, or the time we all doubled over in laughter and one of us who shall remain nameless fell off the stool.) (Also, I did not realize my bangs had completely consumed my face. That was pre-Lasik and I was, apparently, legally blind. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

I recently interviewed Leanna because I love her work, think she’s a fantastic new writer and thought her journey would inspire.

INTERVIEW:

So let’s just get an overview of your tastes as a writer… if you were to go to that Great Coffee Shop in the Sky, who do you want to meet most?

C.S. Lewis, Tolkein and the entire 19^th century canon of Gothic writers. I can’t pick one, I’ve folded my adoration for each and every one of them into my muse. The whole Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood too—and their coterie – this means you, Christina Georgina Rosetti…

Writers always like peeking in on other writer’s writing rituals… we’re nosy creatures, after all. What’s yours?

I don’t always have this luxury but this is my best-case writing scenario as I’m working on the Strangely Beautiful series: While showering I’ll shift my thoughts into longer sentences with British accents. Then I’ll put on music (piano music, Phillip Glass soundtracks or 19^th century classical composers) and light at least one of my two stained-glass lamps. Preferably a candle is lit. Must prepare and sip a cup of clove tea: the precise scent of my Professor hero. Wow, I guess I’m like I’m the method actor of writing books…

Along the way from first words onto the page through to publication, writers face rejection. Tell us a little bit about your journey and what your favorite rejection story would be.

I started my first novel somewhere around the age of 12. Ray Bradbury once said “Write 1,000 pages, bury it in the ground and you can become a writer.” I chose a fireplace instead. There are a few things about me that will make it obvious as to why Strangely Beautiful is my break out series. I can hardly remember not writing, not loving ghost stories, or not being weirdly obsessed with Europe in the 19^th century.

Come September it will be about nine years from the moment young Miss Percy Parker waltzed through a wall much like a ghost, into my mind, and I couldn’t sleep or stop thinking about her. She couldn’t have had worse timing, I was working often 14 hour days with the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. We’d be on the road touring Julius Caesar or Midsummer Night’s Dream to some sleepy high-school class and I’d be in the company van scribbling away like a madman. I was surrounded by wonderful ideas, artists, and so much great theatre that I couldn’t help but channel that energy into the first draft of the book, giving it some legs that none of my previous works had. It also gives it a bit of a dramatic flair and sparkle that those who know me quite recognize as a personal touch. But from those first scribbled notes, it was a long road ahead…

Percy, Alexi and The Guard were there all the while, waiting in my wings as I hopped around the professional theatre circuit, my favourite friends to come home to. I moved to New York with the hope that I’d figure out which passion should come first, theatre or books. I was at a Broadway callback and all I could think about was Percy. That was that. Thanks to dear writer friend Isabo Kelly I’d already joined the very-helpful RWA NYC chapter and threw myself into networking, got an Agent, met other helping hands like Marianne Mancusi and eventually one of the best in the business, editor Chris Keeslar, and Dorchester became the perfect house for a cross-genre work like mine.

Favourite rejection? After considering Strangely Beautiful, set in 1888, one editor rejected saying “It’s a little too Victorian.” That still makes me smile fondly.

I love that. Your book is very cross-genre. (I know the feeling.) What does that mean to you?

Allison Brennan wrote a great post on this topic here a little while ago. Branding is very important to an author, and to a reader. We want to make sure the right books go into the right hands. It can be very limiting to an author, however, when only one word is applied to a work of fiction. I hope that fantasy, historical, Gothic and romance fans (as well as those who enjoy blends of light horror, suspense and mystery) will find my book because I feel all will find a part of their respective favourite genre represented in the ways appropriate to the narrative. It’s hard to appeal to a whole fan base and yet I wouldn’t do without the genre label. The spine of my book says Historical Fantasy and I think that’s about right. The wonderful thing about the word “Fantasy” is that it is an open and over-arching word, and often Fantasy incorporates a romantic through line at the center of its questing adventures. A descriptive title and a cover that exactly fits the story really helps.

It took a long time for a marketing department to take a chance on this book. As I’d said, it was a 9 year journey from idea to bookshelf, and several of those years were spent with marketing departments and editors saying “this is really good, but it’s too much of this– or not enough this…”

Well, thank goodness someone took a chance, because this is a unique world which deals with crime fiction and fantasy and horror in a way I found wholly fascinating and original! Tell me, what sort of promotional things are you doing as a debut author?

1. August 22^nd I kick off my Haunted London Blog Tour at the Bradford Bunch. The tour hops various blogs until September. Each day I’ll tell a different ghost story. Many spirits “Ghost-star” in my book, each of them a documented London haunt. They don’t get their full due in the book, as they’re quite familiar to my Guard of spectral police, but their tales are too fun not to tell– like telling spooky stories around a roving campfire. Each day I’ll give away a signed book. Schedule can be found here: http://www.leannareneehieber.com/haunted-london-blog-tour-book-giveaway/

2. The morning of Release Day, August 25^th I’ll kick off a Virtual release party at www.RomanceNovel.tv, my video interview will go live and we’ll do a bit of a chat/book giveaway.

3. NYC Reading/Signing on Release Day! At the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble on August 25^th at 7:30pm I’m thrilled to be doing a reading and signing with the inimitable Edgar winner Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime, Stoker winner Jack Ketchum and thriller author Anna DeStefano

4. Running a contest on my website, a 3 question quiz about the Shakespeare references in my book, starting Release Day, 8/25 and running for the next three weeks. Winner has a choice of either a replica of the Phoenix pendant Percy wears in the book, or a gift certificate. The second name drawn receives the second item. Details: http://www.leannareneehieber.com/contest/

Thanks, Leanna, for letting me bug ya with questions. And now in the spirt of all writers who have had rejections, I’ll refer back to that previous question and share one of mine. Someone who read the first book in the Bobbie Faye series sent me an email that he thought it was funny as hell, extremely well written, and he absolutely “hated that woman” and “didn’t want to spend another minute with her. Ever.” That just completely cracked me up, and I loved it, because it was an honest response and a personal one. I respected that he just did not like tough female characters, but the books ended up selling the next week, which took the sting out of the rejection. I’m sure I’ve had worse, but I still think about that one and smile. No one is ever going to love everything (nor should they) and everyone isn’t going to love one single thing, all of us at the same time (nor should we), and as new writers, we need to remember that. And write with our passion.

So how about you, ‘Rati? What’s the best rejection you’ve ever gotten (and it can be something you realized in hindsight, something that ended up being a Good Thing.) Doesn’t have to be about writing… let’s hear it.

And as a bonus, all commenters are eligible for a free copy of Leanna’s book, THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER as well as a signed copy of my first in the Bobbie Faye series, CHARMED AND DANGEROUS. (Contest runs ’til midnight, Pacific Time, tonight — Sunday. Winner announced here on the blog after that.)

The Poignance of Summer Places

By Cornelia Read

For the last ten days or so I’ve been enjoying the final remnant of my robber-baron ancestry–my paternal family’s “Great Camp” in the Adirondack Mountains. We just call it Camp, though the quasi-official name is Three Star Camp, since Grandaddy Read retired from the Navy as a three-star admiral.

This is the longest I’ve been here at a stretch since 1972, when my dad and his girlfriend Martica brought us up here for a month from her place in the Bahamas, before he moved into his VW van behind the old Chevron Station in Malibu for about a decade. It’s also the first time I’ve been here since I started writing my novel A Field of Darkness, back in 2001.

Camp is the most beautiful place in the world to me, and I usually describe it to friends as “my spiritual homeland.” It’s also where the final confrontation in Field takes place, and in his dying moments, the bad guy burns the whole place down.

This freaked the hell out of my actual relatives, as you might imagine, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time this trip explaining to various aunts and cousins and what-have-you that I wrote it that way not because I have any pyromaniac tendencies–or indeed any unrequited poor-relation pissed-offness, per se–but because that is the very worst thing a bad guy could do, in the Islamic Republic of Cornelia’s Fictional Universe. Well, in addition to being a serial killer and stuff, but I hope that goes without saying.

Camp was built in 1907 by my great-grandfather William A. Read, a year after he took over a seventy-four-year-old investment bank and renamed it after himself. It became Dillon Read in 1916 after he died, then SBC Warburg Dillon Read when the Swiss bought it, and then some more Swiss bought that or whatever and now you probably can’t even get a t-shirt. So it goes. We are an illustration of the old adage about “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” or, as my college pal Derek Guth once remarked, “y’all are like rich gone to seed or some shit.” Amen. (see VW Camper, above.)

Here is my fictional version of its origins:

Camp was on its own “pond” to the south, a fish-shaped three-mile length of water called, redundantly, Little Smalls. Great-grandfather Lapthorne had bought the five thousand acres surrounding this in about 1892, when building “Great Camps” was just becoming fashionable among the rich who wanted to summer more rustically than was possible in Newport or Long Island.

He commissioned a sprawling lodge of dark wood on the edge of the water, connected to its outbuildings by a series of covered walkways through the forest. There was an icehouse and a boathouse, servants’ quarters above an octagonal dining room, and an old stable that had been converted to a garage, complete with a Deco gas pump out front.

I haven’t been thinking about the financial stuff too much while I’ve been here, though (other than hoping my house deal goes through before my next rent check is due, and that I have enough gas left to get home to New Hampshire on Wednesday).

I’ve been thinking more about the poignance of summer places, those locales we bond with in early childhood: cabins or beach houses or rented cottages which ever afterwards imprint us with nostalgia for fireflies and the sandy back seats of station wagons, for having to wait a whole half hour before you can go back in the water, for being told you have to come out again far too soon because your lips are blue, for whatever treasured place it was that made you chant “are we there yet?” with such brimming expectancy, because it always took so very long to arrive.

It’s those early years when you learn all the secret places, the treasures you think you alone have discovered–maybe a long-empty maid’s room above the kitchen…

Or a tiny cove alongside the boathouse…

Or a chair that everyone else is too big to sit on, anymore…

Maybe it’s your favorite old boat…

Or some tiny detail that couldn’t be anywhere else…

Or just a certain quality of light…

…out on the lake, or looking over it from the land…

Maybe it’s getting called back to the dining room, from the far shore…

Or a lonely afternoon when it’s too rainy to go out, and everyone else is up at the house, playing Sardines…

And then you come back as a grownup, and it’s time for the next generation to make the place their own…

What’s been the best thing for me about this visit, though, was sitting out on the dining room porch talking with Peter Riegert, who’s optioned the film rights on Field. It was really cool to have someone so invested in the story talk with me about things he sees things in it that never occurred to me, like the fact that all the people who are murdered are attacked in the throat, because the whole point of the story is my protagonist trying to find her voice. Whoa, dude…hardcore insight.

It’s a pretty fine experience to share time with somebody smart who gets why this place became the impetus for a narrative, the fuel behind a novel. His take is that I had to burn it down because Madeline had to choose between her past and her future, and that was the only way.

In real life, I still want both. Maybe I’ll figure that out in book four.

E.B. White wrote of his own childhood summer place in the essay “Once More to the Lake”:

Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweet fern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design…. It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity and peace and goodness.

His description of returning to the lake each summer is wonderful:

The arriving (at the beginning of August) had been so big a business in itself, at the railway station the farm wagon drawn up, the first smell of the pine-laden air, the first glimpse of the smiling farmer, and the great importance of the trunks and your father’s enormous authority in such matters, and the feel of the wagon under you for the long ten-mile haul, and at the top of the last long hill catching the first view of the lake after eleven months of not seeing this cherished body of water. The shouts and cries of the other campers when they saw you, and the trunks to be unpacked, to give up their rich burden.

My own far-less-elegant words for returning to Camp were as follows:

Coming into the Adirondack Park was like driving suddenly out of Appalachia and into the forests of Bavaria. From the nearly treeless expanse of the Mohawk’s run between Syracuse and Albany, the road plunged into a landscape dense with brooding, wizard-hatted pines and spruce.

The ill-kept two-lane road jumped and dove ahead of us, revealing, from between the stands of evergreens beginning to blacken in the ebbing light, sudden glimpses of great, still, pewtered lakes or flashes of deciduous trees whose fall color was so intense I continually mistook them for fire.

To that, in this place, I’m always tempted to add a passage Nelson Aldrich wrote in his book Old Money:

In the end there may not be much more to the special gift of aristocrats than the old image of casual grace…. Worse, the image can’t seem to stand by itself. Its light must have a field of darkness, some dull impasto of despair with a glint of violence flashing through. Without fear, the image lacks shape and substance, and dissolves into a pale, thin air of American possibility. With it, the image comes clear, and so does the gift of courage.

‘Ratis, which is the place for which you’re the most nostalgic, and why? Have you ever written about it?

How Social Networking Kills the Creative Spirit

by JT Ellison

You want to hear some hard truth? Do you promise not to get mad at me? Promise?

Okay then. Here it is. Your social networking habit? It might be hurting you.

Yes, I know it’s fun. Meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends, discussing the price of tea in china with strangers, staffing up your mafia, finding out your Princess personality, etcetera, etcetera. But every minute you spend on Facebook and Twitter (I’m not even going to try and list the gajillion other social networking sites available) is another minute you aren’t writing, or reading. Nurturing your creative spirit.

The Muse is a delicate flower, a fickle Goddess. She must be treated with respect and dignity. She must be nurtured, given the proper nutrients: water, sunlight, fertilizer, a touch of love. If properly taken care of, she will reward you with great things: a bountiful garden of words, a cornucopia of ideas. But if you neglect her, she will forsake you.

And none of us want to be forsaken.

I read an essay last week that broke my heart. It was one writer’s honest, true assessment of her burgeoning Twitter addiction. She openly admitted compromising her family time so she could spend hours a night talking to strangers on Twitter. Her online world became more important that her real one. And I get it. I see how easily that happens. Especially when you’re a new writer, and networking is so vital to your future success. (I am so thankful Facebook and Twitter came along after I was already published.) A little encouragement—that tweet that gets retweeted, the blog entry that starts people talking, that link you sent that helps someone else—it’s heady stuff. A classic, undeniable ego stroke, and for a lot of us, that’s just plain intoxicating. (Yes, some of us not so new writers fall into the Twitter trap too…)

But when does it become a problem?

I can’t answer that question for you. You may want to ask yourself some hard questions though. Namely, how much time are you really spending online? Can’t answer that offhand? Spend a week keeping a log of all your online activity. Not just Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads and Shelfari. Track your email consumption, your blogging, your blog reading, your Yahoo groups, your aimless surfing and your necessary research. Be honest. Don’t cheat. Add that time up at the end of the week and take a candid, truthful look at the results. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how much time the Internet takes.

Then ask yourself these questions:

Is the Internet as a whole compromising my writing time? Am I reading less because I’m spending more time online? Why am I doing this? Am I reaching out to strangers because I’m not feeling the same sort of support at home? Am I lonely? Blocked? Frustrated?

Because here’s the heart of the matter. Writers? Our job is to write. And I don’t mean pithy status updates and 140 character gems that astonish the world. I mean create. I mean writing stories. I mean taking all that energy and time you’re spending online playing and refocusing it into your work.

You know why it’s so easy to say that and so hard to back it up with results? Because Twitter and Facebook are FUN! And you’re talking to other writers, so you can sort of kind of tell yourself that this is really just research, background. You’re learning, right? You’re connecting with your fans, with your readers, with your heros. Very, very cool stuff.

Listen, if you get inspired by social networking, if watching successful authors launch successful campaigns helps spur you on to greatness, fabulous. I have been greatly inspired by some posts, links and attitudes on Twitter. I think it’s so important to try and have a positive experience out there in the world, and I follow people who exude positivity, who are following the path I want to follow.

But if you’re forsaking your Muse, taking the easy way out, then you have to do a bit of self-examination and decide if it’s really worth it. I am “friends” with people who are online every single time I open my computer and go to the sites. And I can’t help but wonder – when are they working? When are they feeding the Muse?

An editor is going to be impressed with your finished manuscript, submitted on time. The jury is still out on whether they’re impressed that you can Tweet effectively or that you’ve rekindled that friendship with the cheerleader who always dissed you in school.

The thing about social networking is a little goes a long way. I love Twitter. It’s my number one news source. I follow interesting people, I’ve made new friends, and more importantly, I’ve gained new readers. It’s a tremendous tool for me. But I’ve also (hopefully) mastered the art of Twitter and Facebook. I can glance at my Tweetdeck, see what I need to see, read what I need to read, then move along.

Facebook, on the other hand, became a problem for me last year, so I gave it up for Lent. I spent six weeks only checking it on Tuesdays and Fridays. The first two weeks were hell. I was missing out! Everyone was on there having fun except me.

And then it got better. At the end of the six weeks, I added things up. I wrote 60,000 words during my enforced Facebook vacation. That was enough of an indicator to me that it was taking time away from my job, which is to write.

Now Facebook is a breeze. I’ve separated out my friends, the people I actually interact with daily, so I can pop in one or twice a day, check on them, then keep on trucking. I’ve set my preferences so I’m not alerted to every tic and twitch of the people I’m friends with. I don’t take quizzes or accept hugs. Ignore All has become my new best friend. Because really, as fun as it is to find out that I’m really the Goddess Athena, that aspect isn’t enriching my life.

I read Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART recently and was so struck by his thesis, that artists fight resistance every moment of every day, and the ones who are published (or sell their work, etc.) are the ones who beat the resistance back. Twitter, Facebook, the Internet in general, that’s resistance. (And to clarify, resistance and procrastination aren’t one and the same. Read the book. It’s brilliant.)

For professional writers, the social networks are a necessary evil, and as such, they must be managed, just like every other distraction in our lives. I still have my days when I find myself aimlessly surfing Twitter and Facebook, looking at what people are doing. Getting into conversations, playing. But I am much, much better at feeding my Muse. I allot time in my day to look at my social networks, but I allot much more time in my day to read. And most importantly, I have that sacred four hour stretch—twelve to four, five days a week—that is dedicated to nothing but putting words on paper.

There’s another phenomenon happening. The social networks are eating into our reading time. Readers have their own resistance, their own challenges managing their online time.

Yes, there are plenty of readers who don’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts, who may read this and laugh. But many of us do, and if we’re being honest with ourselves, every minute spent conversing online is another minute we aren’t reading. I can’t help but wonder if this is what will ultimately drive the trend toward ebooks, since one out of every three readers prefer to read electronically now. One in three, folks. That’s a large chunk of the market.

So how do you turn it off? How do you discipline yourself, walk away from the fun?

It’s hard. But what’s more important? Writing the very best book you can possibly write, or taking a quiz about which Goddess you are? Reading the top book on your teetering TBR stack, or reading what other people think about said book?

For writers, you have to set your priority, and every time your fingers touch the keyboard, that priority really should be writing. The rest will fall into place. I hypothesize that while the Internet is taking a chunk of reading time, most readers still read a great deal. Which means we need to keep up the machine to feed them, right?

Does this post sound like you? Are you easily distracted? Frustrated because you can’t seem to get a grip on things? There are a bunch of great tools out there to help you refocus your creative life. Here’s a list of the websites and blogs that I’ve used over the past year to help me refocus mine.

Websites:

The Art of Non-Conformity

Books:

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

The Creative Habit – Twyla Tharp

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life – Winifred Gallagher

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Take fifteen minutes a day off your social networking and read one of these. I promise it will help you reprioritize your day.

Because really, what’s the point in being a writer if you don’t write?

What do you think, ‘Rati? Are you overdoing the online time? Any tips for making the best out of your Internet experience? How do you find the balance?

Wine of the Week: 2008 Quattro Mani Montepulciano d’Abruzzo