By Allison Brennan

I never make New Years Resolutions or goals or promises.

The primary reason is unattainability–most goals or set too low or too high. If you set a goal too low and achieve it, could you have done more or better if you’d set it higher? Or not set one at all? Essentially, you have an excuse to be lazy because subconsciously you know you’ll meet your resolution and won’t push yourself.

If you set a goal too high, you’ll feel like a failure if you don’t achieve it. 

Some goals are simply not attainable, like, “I will sell a book/find an agent this year.” Selling a book is almost completely out of the author’s hands. You can write the book, vow to send out 100 queries to agents, but ultimately you have no control over whether someone offers you a contract or not.

I have enough stress in my life that I don’t need to heap on more worry in the form of a list of goals or a New Years Resolution. I know me, and I’ll glance at that list and either 1) know I’ll be able to do it, but procrastinate; or 2) know the goals are virtually impossible and stress over them.

My good friend Roxanne St. Claire loves setting goals. She calls herself a “goal junkie” and if you, too, love goals, read Rocki’s article from last year at Murder She Writes. And she offers great advice on how and why to set goals. For example, her first point:

A goal is not a dream. It is attainable solely by your own hands and it is in your control. Getting an editor to buy your manuscript or readers to buy your book aren’t goals, no matter how much they feel like they are. Submitting your manuscript to a specific number of editors or finishing back to back books in your fantastic series are goals.

But I still can’t do it. I even have problems writing a to-do list for a single day. People tell me that when they cross things off their to-do list that they feel productive or happy. Not me. If I had on a list, “Write ten pages today” and I wrote ten pages and crossed it off, I’d think, “Would I have written more if I’d listed more on my to-do list?” I can’t even plot out a scene let alone a whole book–and maybe lists make me think I’m plotting out my life. It gives me the willies just to think about it.

Some people thrive on lists and goals. More power to them. I’m not one. They drive me batty.

What about you? Like or hate lists? Like or hate to make New Years Resolutions? 

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT . . . 

Saw HOLMES last weekend. FABULOUS movie. I loved it. Well worth the $10 (or, for me, $30.75 because of my two teenagers, plus $19.50 for popcorn and drinks . . . )

 

Fandango sent me a list of their Top 10 2010 most anticipated movies:

1. Ironman II. 

Saw the trailer. It looks a little darker than the first (which was pretty dark) but I’ll probably see it. My son wants to because he loved the first one. He’ll be 9 when it comes out. I really like Robert Downey, Jr. HOLMES solidified him as one of my favorites.

2. Alice in Wonderland

I keep going back and forth on this one. I love Johnny Depp. Hated the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Like Burton, but don’t know if I can put aside watching the original Alice and adapt to the non-cartoon version.

3. Tron: Legacy

When the original Tron came out, I loved it. But that was 1982 and I was 13. I’m sure with the computer graphics of today and the special effects, it will be fantastic on screen, but sometimes movies like this forsake the story for the effects. It’s on my list to see.

4. A-Team

Um, unless someone I know and trust gives it a major must-see thumbs up, nope.

5. Twilight: Eclipse

No. But my daughter will probably see it twice.

6. Clash of the Titans

Saw the preview at HOLMES. Will most likely see.

7. Robin Hood

Russell Crowe seems well cast and I loved him in Gladiator. Will probably see.

8. Toy Story 3

Andy goes to college! He leaves Buzz, Woody and the rest of the gang in a day care center. Tops my list of must-see movies. I can hardly wait! I might even bring the kids . . . 

9. Inception

A-list actors but . . . not sure about this one. Again, will wait for review from friends.

10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I

I haven’t seen the others, but my two old kids have. Doubt I’ll go.

 

What about you? Looking forward to any of these? 

BIG NEWS: Launched new website over the weekend. Love it. Still tweaking and adding content.

Ballantine created a widget for my new book in two sizes. I’ve never had one before. It’s kinda cool. 

By Allison Brennan

I never watched Law & Order when it first aired, and to this day I’ve only watched a handful of the original L&O episodes. But in 2005, after I quit my “day job” and started writing full-time, I used to watch re-runs late at night as I came down off my caffeine high. The spin-off that hooked me was SVU. The original L&O has many of the same elements as SVU, but SVU has–for me at least–the most interesting characters, both the series stars and one-show stars.

Anyone writing crime fiction, mysteries or thrillers should at least invest a couple hours watching L&O, though I think the lessons learned would benefit most commercial fiction writers. There are other shows that “teach” the same lessons (HEROES, for example) but L&O is the most obvious.

1) Enter Late, Leave Early

Most writers want to over-explain. They like hefty set-ups, establishing character and backstory, and “setting the scene.” If you watch L&O you’ll see they start each scene just after the beginning of the scene. They don’t show Olivia and Elliott driving to the scene of the crime, they show them AT the scene of the crime–often after the CSI team have gone through it to give them information they need.

Sometimes, you want to show the painstaking CSI investigation–to establish clues or a red herring. But most of the time, it’s unnecessary. L&O has done a great job in showing us the parts of the investigation we need to see to stay invested with the story, but keeping other parts off-scene in such a way that we know it’s going on, we can “almost” see it, but it’s not in front of us. We never think they aren’t covering all the bases even when we don’t see them working each piece of evidence. Truly, masterfully done.

Leaving early is just as important. I’m a big offender of this–sometimes, my characters think too damn much at the end of scene, prolonging the story. While it’s important to get inside your character’s head, it’s best to do it as much as possible during the action of the scene to avoid long narratives between scenes. Scenes should answer story questions as well as ask story questions–so going into the scene you give your reader information and/or answers; then raise more. Leaving a scene “early” provides a great venue of such story questions, as well as cliffhangers to get the reader to turn the page, start the next chapter, finish the book.

WARNING: Entering late and leaving early is a great way to keep your story moving at a brisk pace. But after reading hundreds of thrillers, I’ve noticed that some never let up. You’re worn out because there is NO downtime. Sometimes, you SHOULD move into a scene slowly or wrap up a scene more completely, or even offer a “quiet” chapter so that your reader isn’t overwhelmed with one action after another with no let-up. I’ve found that these less frantic scenes are well-suited for right before or right after major story turning points, such as crossing the first threshold, the mid-point, or before (or after) the black moment (all is lost.)

Strong pacing is important, but strong pacing isn’t non-stop, story-on-steroids pacing

2) Shades of Grey 

I have always been fascinated by moral dilemmas. My first Lucy Kincaid book, which has been postponed to Spring 2011, deals with a complex moral dilemma. We in society often have sympathy for people who do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and often we have compassion for people who take the law into their own hands when they’ve played by the rules but were victimized.

Any one remember Dirty Harry? Wasn’t it MAGNUM FORCE that had cops killing criminals who’d beaten the system? On the one hand, it’s the worst betrayal of trust and duty to have cops kill in cold blood; on the other hand, many of us believe it’s unfair–and plain wrong–for violent offenders to beat the system and walk the streets, knowing that they’ll kill again.

We believe in the justice system because it is the most fair, but at the same time it is flawed. When I first learned decades ago that John Adams defended the British after the Boston Massacre, my gut feeling was how could someone fighting for Independence defend murderers? Yet, Adams believed so much in the system of a fair trial that I realized that his defense of the system was one of the backbones of our fight against British tyranny. If we denied them a trial, we were betraying the country we were trying to create. 

Few situations are black-and-white. We all have opinions and values that are important to us, but rarely is there a case in which anything we believe is all-or-nothing. It’s the shades of grey that make a story compelling–because life is never simple, nor most of the decisions we make, nor our values which have taken a lifetime to develop.

L&O explores many of these shades of grey, which makes the stories “page-turning.” Tonight I watched an episode from a few weeks ago called HARDWIRED about a group of predators who believe that sex between adults and pre-pubescent minors can be “love” and “consensual.” During the trial of the leader of the organization that was similar to NAMBLA but different, they had a girl testify that when she had a sexual relationship with the leader (when she was 11 through 14) that she consented, that because of him and his love for her, she got out of her abusive family home, moved in with her grandmother, and ended up staying in school and getting her Masters. While we all would (hopefully) agree that a sexual “relationship” between an 11 year old girl and a 30 year old man is vile and wrong, we can’t help but think what might have happened to the girl had she stayed with her physically abusive father, that the school and her drunk mother failed her, and this sick pedophile helped her get out of the situation. Fiction, yes, but we all know that there are good people in bad situations. It doesn’t make the relationship right, but it makes us pause and wonder how we, as society and human beings, could fail in such an atrocious manner that an 11 year old girl sees sex with a 30 year old as her only way out of a miserable life.

This is just one example of the “shades of grey” that L&O explores so well–without over-explaining or being preachy–that I find intriguing, and speaks directly to the next, and perhaps most important point:

3) Characters Are People Too 

In a one-hour drama, it’s hard to convey well-rounded, full characters who you believe really exist. In a series it’s easier, but every show runs the risk of two-dimensional stereotypes. CASTLE is my guilty pleasure, and it’s probably the worst at surface characterization. I just can’t help myself, I like the show. HEROES does a better job at creating characters who are neither all-good or all-bad, who are complex and flawed and sometimes do the right thing for the wrong reasons; or the wrong thing for the right reasons. But L&O is masterful at characterization. The series repeat characters have grown over the series, but in many ways they haven’t changed drastically. We understand them and how they will react in certain situations, and that is comforting even when they don’t act as we would. They are staying IN CHARACTER. The supporting cast provides just as much depth. They don’t agree on everything, they argue their points effectively, they are not all perfect or all flawed. And even more important, they don’t have to agree on everything and they can still work together effectively. 

But it’s the guest stars, whether famous or not, who make the show. Some bad guys are just bad. Some are bad but you have sympathy. Some are more complex than others. Some lie, some don’t. They are REAL. You feel like you’ve really caught a snapshot, or a short video, of their life. If a one-hour (44 minute!) program can create REAL, complex characters on television, we as authors should be able to do the same in a 100,000 word novel–while adhering to point #1 above. They use stereotypes effectively to keep the story moving (not everyone needs a backstory shown, like the traffic cop who relays information, of the paramedic who has two lines) but smoothly, so you don’t *think* stereotype. But the characters important to the story have depth.

So what have you learned from your favorite TV shows? 

By Allison Brennan

I bought UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King the day it came out. I had to. I’d heard a birdie tell me it was up there with THE STAND, which is still to this day my favorite book.

I can’t say that I’ve loved every story King wrote, but since he’s pleased me far more than displeased me, I am a loyal reader. It was a King book that was the first, and only, time I read a book for pleasure twice. (THE STAND.) And the first time I began but never finished a book because I just couldn’t get into it, was also a King book (INSOMNIA.)

But when I heaved the 1074 page tome titled UNDER THE DOME out of the Amazon box, I had a tingle. It felt different than the last few books of his that I’ve bought but haven’t read. I opened it up. And I swear, if I didn’t have a looming deadline and five kids to transport and feed, I would have sat down and read it straight through, rising only for potty breaks and water, because of the first three pages. It’s pretty much what I did when I discovered THE STAND in 1982. Except then I was 13, had no children, no job, and could spend fourteen hours a day reading if I wanted to.

It was the POV of the woodchuck that sold me.

I read THE STAND over Christmas break when I was 13, and I am hoping–praying–that my deadline is met, my kids are well-behaved, and I’m done reading the debut novels for the Thriller Awards. I want nothing on my plate the week between Christmas and New Years so I can read this book.

Epic novels usually mean big stories that take place over years or generations. They may be one meaty book (like GONE WITH THE WIND) or a series of books (like John Jakes American Revolution series.) But epic also means larger-than-life, or a big story that perhaps doesn’t extend to the original hero’s great-grandchildren, but details a single story so completely that you could have lived it.

Few authors–perhaps no authors outside of King–can “get away with” writing a 1074 page novel and have success. Some of the YA novels are meaty, however. Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy began at 500 pages, then 600, then the final story over 800. My YA daughter devoured all three books–1900 pages–and would have read them one right after the other if they’d all been published when she started the series. In fact, she said each book got better. I think she re-read them all as well.

800+ pages is still rare.

I’ve been thinking about this as I write book two in my Seven Deadly Sins series. There are two primary types of series. A series with the same characters but each book is written almost as a stand alone; while the characters may grow through the series, nothing pivotal happens in one book that is going to make a reader coming into the middle of the series balk. The other type is a series that builds on itself, that what happens in book one lays the foundation for book two and so on.

I’ve been trying to straddle the two types of series. SDS can’t be a series of quasi-stand alones because each book is built on the initial situation in book one, chapter one where the Seven Deadly Sins are released from Hell as incarnate demons. I’ve resolved this problem for book two in part by moving the location plausibly from my fictional town of Santa Louisa to Los Angeles, and the change of setting has definitely helped create a whole and separate story that is still closely linked to the first.

Yet, when I held UNDER THE DOME, I considered what if . . . what if I could have written my series as one epic novel? The thought had never occurred to me before because it simply isn’t done. Much. And it would have taken at least a year to write, if not longer, plus time to edit and produce a 1000+ page book. Few authors could survive more than a year or two without a book on the shelf with their career still intact. Especially not a mass market author like me. Considering that ORIGINAL SIN, the first book which checks in at a mere 464 pages, took me longer to write than any of my 12 previous novels, I don’t think the two year window would have been unrealistic.

It’s a moot point, obviously, but something that has been on my mind for a few weeks. I’ve come to the conclusion that 1) mass market commercial fiction may publish epic series, but not epic single novels; 2) some authors transcend publishing “rules”; and 3) some genres–like fantasy and YA–can support longer novels (600+ pages) which may or may not be “epic” but have a sense of being larger-than-life, meaty, worthy of a reader’s precious time.

But just like long books may lose readers because of the size, so do short books. My mother was sorely disappointed in a couple recent books by some of her favorite authors that were only around 200 pages. She felt she didn’t get enough story or depth for the money. And if I were to spend $20 on a hardcover, I’d probably be kind of ticked if I felt the story was truncated or superficial.

However, one of my all-time favorite books is a very short book. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand comes in at 68 pages. The Cliff Notes for ANTHEM are longer!

How do you feel about big books? Short books? Epic novels or epic series? Do you re-read favorite books and if so, which is your favorite re-read?

 

Yes, I’m late this morning. I’ve been fighting a cold–and I really do mean fighting–so I’ve been going to bed early and completely forgot to post my blog.

How do I fight a cold? I sleep more, take Airborne and E-merge-C (not sure on the spelling, but it’s essentially Airborne with Vitamin C) and zinc. The cold is there, but it’s subdued and going through its cycle sort of behind the curtain or in the background. This has worked for me for almost every cold for the last couple years as long as I start it up at the first sign of that tingle in the back of my throat . . . 

So I titled this blog “Whoops” thinking that I’d apologize, ramble a bit, and then ask a question because I really didn’t want to talk about vanity presses and self-publishing anymore (And yes, there IS a difference, even though I do not generally encourage writers to self-publish.) If you’re a writer, you’ve really been off-line if you don’t know that Harlequin has partnered with Author Solutions to funnel rejected writers to a vanity publishing scheme. 

But then I realized that “Whoops” fit for the Harlequin move, so reluctantly decided to summarize this week’s big news.

When all major writers organizations (RWA, MWA, SFWA and this morning Novelists, Inc) come out and oppose the move AND remove Harlequin from their approved publisher lists, you know this is a big deal.

I don’t want to go into all the details because frankly, I’m tired of it and last night was the only time I got any productive writing done since Wednesday night, partly because of the cold and partly because of the thousands of emails I’ve received from various writers groups. I blogged about it at Murder She Writes on Thursday

I’m posting NINC’s public statement here (it’s not yet on the website but I just received the email) because I think it’s the best argument against vanity publishing, and provides links to more information:

Novelists, Inc. Responds to Disturbing Developments in Publishing:

Vanity publishing is not new, although the Internet has become a lucrative feeding ground for vanity publishers. Presented with enough enthusiastic jargon and color graphics, a hopeful author might well be convinced that he has stumbled upon a fantastic new way of bringing his stories, his voice, to the reading public.

Alas, the truth is that vanity publishing is still the same old opportunistic hag dressed up in new clothing, with the added flash and dash of savvy marketing. It still exists to part dreamers from their money, with very little hope of return. The dangled bait never changes, the creatively couched language suggesting that all these good things “could, may, might possibly, perhaps” happen for you if you choose one from column A and two from Column B on their à la carte menu of pricey services.

There is now a new, deeply disturbing twist being applied to this age-old money grab. Publishers with brand names, currently enjoying respectable reputations within the industry and with the reading public, are putting both on the chopping block in order to get a share of the vanity publishing market.

It takes years to build a respected name and reputation in this industry. Losing that respect happens much more quickly, sometimes overnight. 

No authors’ organization can prevent a publisher from setting up a vanity publishing division. Writers’ organizations can, however, speak firmly and clearly about the sort of egregious business practices that reflect badly on our entire industry.

Ninc strongly advocates that any and all publishing houses that now operate or are in the planning stages of creating vanity publishing arms do so ethically and responsibly, while adhering to accepted standards of full disclosure. This includes not using the same or a similar name for the vanity division of their royalty-paying publishing house.

Ninc further strongly advocates that these houses either cease and desist or do not institute the practice of steering hopeful writers who are rejected by the royalty-paying divisions of their companies into the open arms of their vanity publishing offshoot.

To do otherwise demeans the publisher’s brand and robs credibility from every one of its conventional, contracted authors.

For Those Considering Vanity Publishing

Novelists, Inc. (Ninc) is an international organization devoted to the needs of multi-published authors of novel-length popular fiction. Ninc has no unpublished members; all are experienced, savvy, and educated in the various perils and pitfalls that await the unwary writer in search of an audience.

So why is Ninc addressing the subject of vanity publishing? That’s simple. We care about writers. All writers. And we care equally for their audiences, the book buying public.

Vanity publishing, by definition, involves bringing together a writer eager to have his work in print and a company eager to charge that writer for printing the copies. Vanity publishers don’t care if the book is good or bad. Vanity publishers will print anything the writer will pay them to print. Quality and sales potential of the work are not priorities; in fact, they aren’t considered at all.

Ninc’s advice to hopeful authors remains what it has always been: work hard, learn your craft, and network with other writers to share knowledge and information. And remember, if an offer to publish your previously rejected novel and thus become a “real author” by handing over a check sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

NOTE:

As long as there are people desperate to be published, vanity publishers will exist, and profit-motive companies, no matter the size or prior reputation, may at some point decide that if a starry-eyed dreamer and his money are soon to be parted, why not hold out a hand for their share. All Ninc and other professional writers’ organizations and consumer advocates can do, and thankfully are doing, is to educate people on the subject of vanity publishing. Please, before you open your wallet, take some time to open your eyes. Here are some places to begin educating yourself:

http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/vanity/

http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22

http://www.writing-world.com/publish/vanity.shtml

http://www.panmacmillan.com/Authors Illustrators/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=An Easy Way to Lose Money

http://www.sff.net/people/lucy-snyder/brain/2005/05/is-publisher-just-middleman.html

http://ezinearticles.com/?Publishing-Scams:-Six-Red-Flags-That-Scream-Rip-Off&id=81336

 

Publishing is not easy; no one said it would be. The only people I’ve found who are upset with RWA and the other organization for making a stand against Harlequin (and Thomas Nelson’s West Bow vanity press deal with A/S) are unpublished writers who seem to think that we’re trying to stop them from being published. If you do your research and understand that you’ll be spending thousands and thousands of dollars and have to do all the work yourself (writing, editing, marketing, distributing, selling, yada yada) and probably not sell more than 100 copies, then hey, it’s your money. But know that not only after you pay them to print (and pay them to edit and pay them to cover design) they still take anywhere from 25-50% of the NET PROCEEDS. 

 

Self-publishing differs in that the author essentially is the end customer–they have the books printed, warehouse the books, market and sell the books, but once they have that book in their hands the self-publishing press doesn’t get another dime. All money made from the sale goes to the author. And if an author wants to be a bookseller and sell out of their trunk or online store, hey, that too is your right. It’s not as bad as vanity publishing, and actually a good idea for some projects like church devotionals and school fundraisers and family histories and some special niche market books–but for most commercial fiction and non-fiction, this is a very difficult path to follow. Some people want to do everything. I, personally, don’t. I want to write. That’s all I want to do. That I have to update my website and do book signings is part of the business, but it’s not the reason I became I writer. Writers write. So if you go into self-publishing with your eyes open, fine, but it’s not easy and it’s a rare writer who is successful in earning back their outlay.

I know there’ll be people coming up trying to defend each model. I got in one tiff with a writers who said that self-publishing and traditional publishing are simply two equal choices. Nope, they’re not. In traditional publishing, money goes TO the author. Writers get PAID. In self-publishing, the writer PAYS EVERYTHING. End of story. Not equal choices as far as I’m concerned. And Vanity Publishing? The writer pays MORE for everything and loses half the “profits” as well.

My favorite blog on the issue comes from Ashley Grayson, a literary agent. Though the whole blog is worth reading, in part he said:

“Publishing a successful book requires editorial judgment, investment of resources, dealing with book-selling channels that increasingly demand a bigger share of the cash flow, and appealing to fickle readers. The self-publishing model is sooo much simpler. There’s only one customer, the author, and he or she buys all the books which are never manufactured until purchased. Of course this is a growing segment of publishing; the publisher gets money, takes no risk and retailers are not actively involved.”

So what do you think?

 

By Allison Brennan

 

I just finished a 4,000 word short story that’s going in a special edition of ORIGINAL SIN that will be exclusively at Walmart, and then later I’ll give it away free on my website (sometime before CARNAL SIN comes out at the end of June.) This is the fourth short story I’ve written (fifth if we count my 38,000 word novella). I’ve learned a lot about short stories since, but mostly I learned that they are damn hard to write.

Short is not my strong point. When I was in high school American History, I had a fabulous teacher (Dwight Perkins) who gave me an “A-” on my final essay because I, “so eloquently said in 10 pages what could easily have been said in 5.”

Why did I ever think I could write a short story? I didn’t even consider writing short stories when I started writing-I wanted to write a book. I meaty, 100,000 word novel. But in Stephen King’s ON WRITING, he lamented the death of the short story and what a wonderful medium it was. And I reflected how much I enjoyed reading short stories, from when I was a little kid through adulthood. To this day, some of my favorite stories are short stories. “A Sound of Thunder” and “He Built a Crooked House” by Ray Bradbury; “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson; “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe; “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut; “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain; “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” and “Quitters, Inc” by Stephen King. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, what I can think about off the top of my head, the ones I think of from time to time when a theme or image from the story plays out in my life. If I took the time to cull through my shelves I would likely find a dozen or more short stories that I could call a favorite.

So when I was asked to write a short story in KILLER YEAR edited by Lee Child, I jumped at the chance (not to mention that it was being edited by Lee Child. I mean, I’m not an idiot. Most of the time.)

“Killing Justice” in KILLER YEAR was 5,800 words (over my allotted limit, but since my “mentee” Gregg Olson came way under his word count, JT was kind enough to let me keep my words.) Kind? Well, maybe not, because that story could have been better if I knew more about short stories. 

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the story. It takes place in the California State Capitol and takes what I know about politics and deals and legislation and puts them in a very short story about a subject I care deeply about: child predators. But the structure of the story was like a novel-multiple viewpoints and multiple scenes. This doesn’t work well when you have less than 6,000 words.

My second short story was “A Capitol Obsession” in TWO OF THE DEADLIEST edited by Elizabeth George. Yep, you guessed it, I took a setting I was intimately familiar with (the Capitol) thinking that would be easier to write the story. I had more words to play with-7-9K (my story ended up just over 10K. Remember Mr. Perkins!) But I had learned from my first short, so I focused on one crime, primarily one setting, and only two viewpoints (a female state senator and a homicide detective who were on the “off” swing of an on-again/off-again relationship.) I started with a dead body (a lobbyist) to get immediately into the story (on the fantastic advice of Ms. George who commented that my first draft didn’t really begin until the second scene . . . so I cut the first scene during revisions.) I had my cop and my senator working parallel investigations. It was fun. In hindsight, I would have cut one scene (where my cop goes to the victim’s employers and apartment to gather information about her) simply because though the information was important, I could have probably incorporated it in such a way so I never had to show my characters outside of the Capitol.

Next came a story that hasn’t come out yet that will (hopefully) be in the HWA anthology. It’s tentatively titled “Her Lucky Day” and is a supernatural “light” horror story. I put it aside for a couple weeks and will edit it one more time. One POV and two settings AND I came in under my allotted word count of 4,000! Woo hoo! (A little bit of trivia: I originally wrote the scene as the prologue for CARNAL SIN, but it didn’t fit the tone or the direction that the book ended up going, so I cut it . . . but I really liked it, so I reworked it and gave it a conclusion.)

The given criteria for my short story in the back of ORIGINAL SIN was that I had to use major characters from the book in the story. As I thought about it, I realized that I also couldn’t have anything majorly pivotal to the series happen in the story because it’s “bonus content.” So no blowing up buildings in my fictional town that I’ll be visiting again, or killing off a major character, or anything that changes the goals or motivations of my main characters. I considered a lot of different ideas, but ended up with the same problem: too big. Just thinking about the ideas, I could see the bigger story behind it. That was my problem with “Killing Justice”–there was a much bigger story I tried to tell that didn’t fit well in the short word count.

When I was driving back from my trainer on Thursday (amazing, I often think of murder and mayhem after working out . . . ) the idea just popped into my head: a ghost story. Well, not just popped because I’d been mulling this issue over and over for days. But the story goal, the set-up, the setting, the conflict, it was all there bam!

It was perfect for me on multiple levels. First, the series is about demons and witches, not ghosts-but I’d set up in the book that ghosts exist and could cause problems for my characters. So if I wrote about a ghost, I wasn’t messing with my major antagonists-they could safely remain in hiding. Second, I had a perfect setting for the story where something tragic happened during the course of the book. Third, I had a plausible story conflict that didn’t mess with my series characters primary conflicts-I could use them more as catalysts rather than being considerably changed by the event. And the one character who is truly affected had already discussed her conflict about the situation in the book, so it’s believable for the story as well as if I use the issue in the future. (Sorry for being so vague, but I don’t want to give anything away.) And finally, I had a “villain” (the ghost) and who had a strong motivation for his “crime.”

Believe me, I was totally excited about this. I started writing. I set up my sheriff going to the scene and why . . . and my heroine and hero going to the scene and why . . . over 1000 words before they even got to the main conflict.

Argh! Seven pages and . . . they all had to go. Sure, I tried to convince myself that they didn’t have to be deleted. I told myself that those 1,000 words were really the first act of the story and they did end in a mini-climax/hook. Yes, we delude ourselves when we don’t want to delete something. They weren’t bad pages-in fact, even the first draft was pretty tight and to the point. But I had to remind myself that this was a short story. I didn’t have to painstakingly set the scene. I didn’t have to SHOW why the sheriff went to the scene; I didn’t have to SHOW my heroine’s growing worry and sense of foreboding when she couldn’t reach her friend (the sheriff.) Yes, in a full-length book such scenes are necessary at times especially leading up to the final confrontation. But for a 5,000 word story? No.

I realized I could SHOW my heroine’s fear as they arrive at the scene and find all the streetlights broken, adding to her growing apprehension; be with her and the hero when they see two cars parked in the back, one being a stranger; listen as they hear a scream and gunshots as they’re about to break into the building. All that in less than two double-spaced pages. It sets the tone and the scene and the primary goal (save the sheriff) without the longer, meatier lead-in. Why the sheriff is there de facto comes out as the scene unfolds.

I also made the choice to keep the entire story in my heroine’s POV. Believe me, this was tough because I LOVE multiple POVs. But it kept the story tighter and more focused and, therefore, the word count down.

Easy? Hell no! As hard as writing a book. Sure, a 100,000 word novel-or in the case of ORIGINAL SIN 125K-takes far more time, concentration and revising, but no individual scene was harder than the short story.

Every short story I’ve written has taught me lessons about writing that I couldn’t have learned in class. I was thinking about this after reading about Pari’s absolutely incredible experience with her in-depth writer’s program. I was itching to do something like that as well, to learn more about how to write, the different types of writing I can do, how to really dig deep and challenge myself.

And maybe, some day, I will do something like that.

But in the end, the key lessons I took away from Pari’s post was that they wrote every day. They practiced. They challenged themselves by doing–not just thinking about writing, not just talking about writing, but writing.

The short story is hard for me, but the only way I can learn to do it well is to do it. I was as giddy typing THE END on the short as I was typing it on my last book.

I’m hoping that with the multiple anthologies of novellas and short stories coming out these past few years and in the future that there’ll be a resurgence of sorts in short fiction. What do you think?

Readers, do you like reading short stories? Novellas? Or prefer to stick only with full-length novels? What is a short story you’ve recently read that stands out, or one you read years ago that you still think about?

Writers, do you like reading and/or writing short stories? Putting the time factor aside, is it easier or harder than a book? Some of your favorites?

By Allison Brennan

Below is the speech I didn’t give to the New Jersey Romance Writers last night. Sure, I started the speech as it’s written. I gave parts of the speech verbatim (cough cough–sort of–cough cough) but I ended up going off on tangents and sharing stories that came to me as I started speaking. For example, my story about my morgue tour? I elaborated far beyond what I wrote. But what happened was that I ended up skipping chunks of the speech because the wise and wonderful Madeline Hunter kept making strange hand signals to me and I realized that she was telling me TIME’S UP! It took me awhile to get it :/ . . . but then the light bulb hit: that’s why Roxanne St. Claire told me to practice the speech and time it! So I wouldn’t go over my allotted time.

Though, if I didn’t go off on tangents (that related to the speech) I would have been under time. But honestly? I couldn’t have done it any other way. I was just being me. Which was the theme of my speech.

Warning: There are typos and probably some non-sequiturs and I didn’t actually read this speech in its entirity after I wrote it because I wanted to be conversational and I was nervous that if I edited it too much, it would be stiff and formal. Forgive me. It’s been a busy week.

But not half as busy as Alex driving cross-country with her cats.

 

Speech to the New Jersey Romance Writers

October 24, 2009

 

You’re Not Normal

 

I have a confession to make.

Okay, it’s not much of a confession—it’s not like I’ve kept it a big secret. I don’t plot. I don’t outline. I barely write a synopsis. In fact, I only write the bare minimum required for only two reasons: when it results in a check (some contracts pay part on proposal) or when I have to get something to the copy department so they can, you know, write the back cover copy. Copy that I inevitable have to change because (cough, cough) I only wrote the copy because I had to and never looked at it again and whoops, didn’t I tell you that I changed the heroine’s name to Beatrix and the hero has only one leg? And the story takes place in Denver, not D.C., and it’s not a mass murderer but an identity theft ring?

Plotting is like speaking.  I don’t plot, I don’t write speeches. Because writing the speech is like planning what I’m going to say days—or weeks—before I say it. What’s the fun in that? And it’s written—the written word doesn’t always translate well to the spoken word. If you doubt me, go buy my audiobooks. I listened to one chapter on SUDDEN DEATH and scared myself—and realized maybe the audio book deal wasn’t the best idea on the planet.

As Stephen King said, “I don’t think my books would’ve been as successful as they are if the readers didn’t think they were in the hands of a true crazy person. When I start a story, I don’t know where it’s going.”

I get that.

Last year, I was asked to give a speech to the Emerald City Writers Conference. I didn’t think twice about saying yes—this was in Washington, and I love Washington and have been trying to get my husband to agree that fog and gray skies are a good thing, but he thinks I’m insane because I like the rain more than the sun. Anyway, I agreed and didn’t think about writing a damn speech, because what’s the fun in that? But other people—people I adore and love and who mean well—thought I was insane.

“What do you mean you’re going to wing it? You can’t wing it,” said my friend Roxanne St. Claire. “You have to write the speech. Edit the speech. Rehearse the speech. Give the speech six hundred times to your dog until you know it by heart, but still print it out in twenty-four point font double spaced and put it in front of you in case you forget.”

I laughed. But she was serious.

Then Margie Lawson—you all know Margie Lawson, the woman who helped make the guy who invented highlighters a billionaire?—told me that not only did I have to write the speech, I needed a theme.

Theme? What theme? I don’t do themes.

Of course you do, she informed me.

No I don’t, I insisted.

She then told me that all my books had themes and I stared at her like she’d grown horns and she laughed at me (again) and wouldn’t tell me what the themes of my books were after I informed her I had no themes.

Bitch.

I didn’t need to write a speech—I’d simply jot down some bullet points and all would be good.

But between two little demons–Rocki on one shoulder and Margie on the other (where was my angel, dammit?) I began to panic. On the flight to Seattle, I wrote a damn speech on my laptop.

I hated it. I can’t even remember what I wrote, but I revised the so-called speech all weekend until Sunday morning when I had to give it and realized it sounded like crap, and it wasn’t in a conversational order, and I didn’t put down half the stuff I wanted to talk about and it was, ahem, kind of short I realized after beginning, so I winged it, but kept referring to his miserable excuse for a written speech and kept getting lost and forgetting my train of thought.

After that dismal failure, I said never again. I would never agree to speak to another group EVER.

Except . . . I’d already committed to speak here. And there are more people. And my mentor, the brilliant and talented and wise Mariah Stewart is in this chapter. And I hate failure.

So I wrote a speech. See? I figured, writing a speech wasn’t really plotting, because it’s not fiction. It’s like having a conversation with a couple hundred friends, right?

But I still needed a theme. Margie told me I needed a theme. What is a damn theme, anyway? I write to entertain people, not to educate them.

But before a theme, I needed an idea of what to talk about, right? Something smart and witty and motivational.

Right.

When all hope was lost and I thought bullet points might still be a good idea, I read a message from someone on one of the RWA loops that said something like:

“I’m so glad to find people who think like me, who also hear voices in their heads. I’m normal after all.”

Hmmm. Normal. Right.

I have news for you. For that woman and every person in this room.

You’re not normal.

And why in the world would you want to be normal anyway?

Suddenly, there was my theme! “You’re Not Normal!”

Do not tell me that this isn’t a theme, because it’s the backbone of my entire speech and Margie said I had to have a theme. So it’s my theme and I’m sticking to it.

This woman who unwittingly gave me the entire idea for this speech is not the first writer I’ve heard who said something equally stupid. Ok, maybe stupid is harsh. How about immature? Really, you think it’s normal to hear voices? I’m sure that if we were all in the psych word together we’d think it’s normal too.

But honestly, why would any of us want to be normal? Normal is boring. And who decides what normal is anyway? Some government agency? No thank you. I’m not normal. And neither are you.

As they sing in my church, “Rejoice and be glad!”

Alleluia. Rejoice and be glad that you are different! That you stand out! That you’re strange and beautiful and unique.

I realized how . . . . um, unique . . . I was when I went to dinner with my husband about a year ago.

It was a private dinner, with his boss and bosses wife and a couple other people. Nine of us I think. Lori, the boss’s wife, is a fan of mine and we’ve chatted on line a couple times. She asked about my research, and I’d recently toured the morgue. So I told her about the autopsy I viewed, and then about the bodies lined up in the crypt—and about why maintaining good pedicures is so important because when you’re lying, dead, in that cold room the only thing anyone can see is your feet—and all the feet there were ugly as sin. I know, that’s mean to say, but it’s true.

I also shared what a body looks like when it’s been underwater for twenty-four hours. It’s not pretty.

I think my husband kicked me under the table a couple times before I realized that maybe my trip to the morgue wasn’t appropriate dinner table conversation.

But she’d asked.

Maybe it was more like the question, “How are you?” No one really wants all the details, more a general, “I’m fine, took the kids to the park yesterday and we had fun.”

When they ask, “So, what did you do today honey?” They don’t really want to know how you sat in Starbucks for two hours discreetly watching men and women who met online having their first “date.” I swear, I stopped going to one of my favorite Starbucks because it became a meeting place for MySpace dates and I was so distracted watching the body language and trying to figure out their backstories.

Being unique—i.e. not normal—runs in families. One late afternoon, I’d picked my oldest daughter up from practice. We were driving along a country highway and spotted a large dark green garbage bag in the gulley next to the vineyards. The way it was lying, with the shadows of the vines and trees that formed a windbreak, I thought, That looks like a body.

Just then, my daughter says, “Mom, did you see that garbage bag? It looks like dead body.” Then she adds, “Do you want to go check?”

Writers will often say they hear voices in their heads. Okay, there is something just not right about that. I don’t hear voices, and I’m sticking to that story.

I read an anonymous quote that hit home: “Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they pretty much do the same thing.”

On the other hand, I’m a talker. When I’m in the shower or the car I verbally run through scenarios and plot points and sometimes I forget when someone’s in the car. My son has been known to say, “Mom, stop talking to yourself.” Just the other week, my oldest daughter asked, “Are you talking to yourself again?” And ironically . . . I wasn’t. Not really. I was sort of thinking out loud about stupid drivers. But the fact that she mentioned it like it was commonplace had me wondering how much I talk to myself and don’t notice . . .

Thank God for hands free phones. Other drivers will just think I’m talking to a friend!

And who are our characters anyway? We know them, right? Sometimes I talk out plot problems with my two older daughters. One of them will suggest a solution, and I’ll say, “But Moira wouldn’t do that.” Or, “Well, Robin is scared of the dark. She wouldn’t check it out.” My daughter tells me I talk like my characters are real people. Well, I know they’re not. I don’t expect them to walk down the street and say hello. Most of them wouldn’t anyway, they’re too busy J . . . but I do feel like I know them. I know how they’ll react in different situations. I know how they think. I get into their heads, walk in their shoes, and so when my daughter suggests something I have to consider not what I would do, but what they would do. And as I verbalize it, I use shorthand so yeah, it sounds like I think they’re real.

And sometimes I even run dialogue outloud. Now that’s fun!

Embrace what’s unique about you. Because you don’t want to be normal. Like a friend of mine, a bestselling author, tried to quit smoking, but quitting destroyed her creativity. Maybe it’s subliminal that she doesn’t think she can write without a cigarette, therefore she can’t write without a cigarette, but I totally get why she didn’t end up quitting. Your creativity is what makes you unique. Special. Not normal. It makes you shine. It doesn’t matter whether you’re published or not, whether you have twenty million books in print or ten thousand, whether you’re a mega-bestseller or a debut author or a struggling midlist author. Your creativity is different than every other writer on the planet. The way you look at the world—from big brush strokes of color and feelings and human interaction to the fine details of  individual motivation and personality traits.

Ok, who in this room HASN’T had someone tell them, “If I only had the time, I too could write a book.”

I swear, I want to shoot the next person who tells me that. I’ll bet it’ll happen by the end of the week. I hear it all the time, and I’m tired of being gracious and saying something like, “I’m sure you could,” or even something a little snide like, “Well, you have to make the time.” Because honestly? They can’t write a book. If they could they would have already tried. Because that’s what writers do—we write. We can’t not write. That makes us different in the eyes of the world, those who think they can, but really can’t. Those who don’t understand the fun of the “What if” game. Those who look at a man with a briefcase and see a man with a briefcase, instead of what we see. A terrorist with a bomb. An undercover cop with a wire waiting to pay a ransom. A lawyer with divorce papers in the briefcase on his way to get his client’s wife to sign, only to realize when he gets there that he was the other man who caused the break-up in the first place. An unemployed salesman on his way to a job interview, desperate because his sister is dying and he has agreed to provide for her three children, but he has no job . . .

So when people tell me they, too could write a book, if only they had the time, I just give a half-smile and nod and mentally think, what a dumbass.

I didn’t promise I wouldn’t swear in this speech. Apologies. Ok, I’m not really sorry. When I wrote this speech I wrote it stream of consciousness. It was a good compromise—no plotting, just write out a speech as if I was talking to a small group of people and let it just come out.

For writers, we are different from everyone else out there, but we’re also different from each other. When we see a man with a briefcase, we all come up with different scenarios for him. We play it through in our head. We tell different stories with different voices.

If we all had the same voice, books would be boring. If every story sounded the same, why not just figure out the formula and have a computer write it?

Your writing voice is truly unique, and you should celebrate it.

Henry Miller said writers have antennas who are tuned into the cosmos and draw out ideas. Natalie Goldberg said our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience and make stories from the decomposition of food. Claude Bristol said undoubtedly, we become what we envisage.

Does that make Henry a space alien or Natalie a pile of decomposing trash? What are you?

I sold my fifth complete manuscript. I had hundreds I’d begun and never finished, but I did type THE END five times before I sold. The first four books will never see the light of day, and that’s a good thing. But I needed to write them. I was discovering my voice.

Few of us write our first book and sell. Oh, yeah, sure, some of you out there have sold or will sell your first book. Well, blech. Most of us aren’t that good out of the gate. I sure as hell wasn’t. I needed to practice. I learned something with each of those stories, things I couldn’t really put into words, except one: voice. I was finding my voice. Strengthening it.

Some of us start writing what we think we should, only to discover that our natural voice is lighter or darker; we write a historical but realize we shine in the contemporary world. We write romantic suspense but discover we’re actually funnier on paper than we are in real life and end up with a romantic comedy.

Too often our voice is stifled by well-meaning people who want to mold us into what they think we should be. Parents, spouses, children may tell us what we want to hear, or be passive-aggressive, or downright ornery about  what we write. Crit groups can be jewels that help you find your weaknesses and fix them; sometimes they can be stumbling blocks.

But honestly? We—you and me—are our worst enemy in discovering voice. We tell ourselves we have to write this—and we have a long list of reasons to justify it. We tell ourselves we can’t do something, or shouldn’t, or should. We limit ourselves, we reign in our creativity because we don’t want to go over the top or too far.

But when you’re discovering your voice, that’s the time you should never stifle your exuberance. You should let the story run away with you and take you places you’d never go on your own. Does it matter if that particular book gets published? Or does it matter more that you discover what works and doesn’t work for YOU?

Editing is your friend. But that first draft—as Morpheus said to Neo, “Free your mind.” Let go. Let the story pour out naturally, and then you will find your voice. Then your talent will help you hone it, shape it into an enjoyable story.

Your voice is unique to you. Being unique is good—if you write like everyone else, what’s going to make your story stand out when an agent is rushing through the fifty-seven partials she had that month? What’s going to make an editor sit up and read more? Yes, you need talent. That’s a given. You need to know how to write. But lots of people know how to write. Not everyone has discovered their voice.

It’s not easy. Who said it would be? Honestly, anything worth having isn’t easily achieved. You need to work for it, want it, sacrifice for it. Look into your muse and figure out what you really should be writing. Free your mind. Let the story flow. Don’t worry about the damn rules that someone else made up—you can address the ones you want to in editing. Too many times we second guess ourselves as we write.

Stephen King once said, “No, it’s not a very good story. Its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.”

You have to listen to your voice, your own voice, because that’s the only way you’ll know for certain that what you write is YOU. When you die deep, write with the doors closed, listen to yourself, and write your passion, you will have discovered your voice.

But it’s not easy. There are times I sit there and doubt myself. Okay, every day I sit down at the computer I doubt myself. But when the muse hits, when I’m in the zone, I don’t think about whether the word is right, the sentence make sense, the scene is ultimately necessary. I simply write what I see and hear and feel in my head. I put myself in a characters shoes and become part of the story. I put aside the doubts temporarily. They never leave forever, but I can bury them enough to let the story tell itself.

Doubts are bad news—doubts make us do stupid things. For example, writing to the market. Yeah, I know, you always hear: don’t write to the market. Don’t do this, don’t do that, you have to do this, whatever. But the market thing kinda sticks with us because we’re thinking, well, maybe we’re doing something wrong, maybe we’re not writing what will sell, so we have one eye on the market and the other on our manuscript and honestly? You can’t write like that.

Case in point: me. I write pretty dark. Even my humor is on the dark side, and that’s my voice. It took me five books before I discovered my voice—practice is important, and I’m a slow learner. But I honestly believe that no one can tell you how to write or what to write, that the only way you can write what’s in your heart, write your passion, is through trial and error.

But that dang market—remember 2003? Chick lit. It was big. It was hot. It was selling. And here I was, writing romantic suspense and I thought, well, maybe I should write a chick lit mystery. My voice . . . mystery . . . with chick lit. Think: first person, humor, murder. I liked the story. My critique partners liked it. Then, I found an agent with my romantic suspense—my fifth book—and after we sold I asked if she’d read some of my other material. Sure, she says. I sent her what I had of Fish or Cut Bait about 200 pages—about a slightly overweight teacher who had a doctor husband and as they celebrated their five year anniversary on a cruise ship, Gemma, my heroine, doesn’t tell her husband that if he doesn’t rekindle their romance, she’s getting a divorce that she doesn’t want. She’s insecure and thinks he’s flirting with a blonde bimbo and then the blonde turns up dead, and Charlie is on the run as her killer—but he didn’t do it. Gemma is almost positive. That’s where my 200 pages ended . . . my agent emails me a couple weeks later and essentially says, while she really liked my heroine, I wasn’t funny and stick to suspense.

Voice is something that is unique. It’s not normal—it’s special. It’s all you. You can’t fake it, though some people think you can. When you discover your voice, the angels sing and you dance around the computer or pour yourself a glass of champagne. But discovering it isn’t easy. Would you want it to be? If it was easy, everyone would do it. If it were easy, you’d be bored. Achievement, the sense of accomplishment, comes because you’ve done something you couldn’t before, something you weren’t positive you could do. Discovering your voice, honing your voice, making it stronger, comes from practice and it’s all you.

If I can impart any advice, it would be this:

Write. And write some more. No one is so good that they can’t learn. I still take classes when I have time, I still edit and revise, and even now, though I know my voice, I’m comfortable with my voice, I know I can do better.

Write for yourself first. As Stephen King says, write with the doors closed and edit with the windows open. Or something like that J . . . essentially, don’t listen to everyone when you’re writing your rough draft. It needs to be you, all you, warts and all. Then you edit and revise and send it out to your trusted critique partners, you trusted editor or agent or ideal reader. Someone or several someone’s who will give you quality advice based on your voice and not theirs, your vision and not their dreams.

Don’t write to the market. Write with passion what fits your voice and your vision and then, and only then, when it’s done, when it’s you, then look to the market and see where it fits or how you can position it to fit. The market isn’t evil—it’s there! But it’s changing all the time. And honestly? Good books that transcend the market sell all the time. The passion that comes through when you discover and hone your voice will make your work shine, whether you’re writing what’s currently popular or not.

Anne Lamott said, “We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longer which is one reason why they write so little.”

Don’t be sheep lice. Go forth and write!

 

By Allison Brennan

When I was six, my mom’s best friend paid me five dollars if I could be quiet for five minutes. In eighth grade I was voted Most Talkative. The senior prediction in my high school yearbook? “Allison Turner will be silent for ten consecutive minutes.”

Public speaking has never been difficult for me. My thirteen year old daughter points out that in the five minutes it takes for the grocery clerk to ring up $300 worth of food, I can fill him or her in with not only the highlights of the week for me and all my kids, but the upcoming highlights–while also finding out what their plans are for the rest of the week. In school, I regularly participated in conversations. (I’m thrilled that my oldest daughter has inherited the opinionated gene from both her father and mother, and when she voices her opinion the murmurs in the classroom are, “Don’t go against Katie, she’s going to win the debate.”) And my five-year-old son will proudly proclaim to everyone he meets that he is, in fact, five; that his brother plays football and his sister plays soccer, and his oldest sister Katie is going to get her drivers license “really soon.”

I particularly love workshops because preparation is minimal. I talk about something I know, have a couple bullet points in case I freeze, take cues from the audience, and engage in lots of Q&A. I love panels, especially small panels with two or three people. Why? Because if they are people you know well and are comfortable with, you can play off each other. Toni and I have done a couple workshops together and they have been a blast and I think well received by the audience. We did one at RWA called “Smart Women, Short Skirts” with SMP guru Matthew Shear and our agent Kim Whalen. The topic? Strong female characters.

[As an aside, I proposed a similar workshop for ThrillerFest. It, too, was lots of fun and I thought well-received by the audience–I had a terrific panel of people, including my buddy James Rollins and debut author Sophie Littlefield who was hilarious–but to be honest? The title they chose lacked . . . something. The organizers wanted all the titles to be in the form of a question–Jeopardy anyone?–and called it: “Should Women Be on Top?” Ahem. I preferred my original title.]

Last year, I gave my first real speech at the Emerald City Writers Conference in Washington. I like speaking; I don’t like writing speeches. I figured I could wing it–have some bullet points and just go with the flow. Unfortunately, others chastised me not writing a speech or even a theme, so during the flight I began to panic. I wrote a damn speech . . . sort of. But it didn’t sound like me. (I know, that sounds weird. But it sounded like what I thought a speech should sound like–and it was way too formal.) So I kept tweaking it and messing with it and came up with something so-so- . . . but when I gave the speech, I realized it wasn’t working–it was all out of order. So I went off on a tangent and basically winged it, but I was so tied to that damn speech I kept trying to get back to it and grew flustered.

[ASIDE: This is one of the many reasons I don’t plot and I don’t write a detailed synopsis–only the bare minimum necessary when either 1) I need to get paid on proposal or 2) the copy department needs something to write back cover copy. But if I write a long, detailed synopsis, I keep thinking I have to get back to it or something’s wrong, even when I consciously try to forget about it, it’s there gnawing at the back of my brain.]

While the speech wasn’t the worst thing on the planet, I wasn’t too pleased. I decided never to give a speech again. Problem solved, right?

Not quite. I’d already agreed to speak at the New Jersey Romance Writers conference. And that’s now only two weeks away.

I’m speaking at the lunch. I think they expect me to be motivational, or smart, or witty, or all of the above. (Lord, help me. Seriously.) It’s a speech, not a conversation. I can’t do Q&A with the audience, however much I would like to. And I probably need a damn theme that runs through the entire speech, or some such nonsense like that.

I’m presenting two workshops at the conference, and those I’m not sweating. One is my Breaking Rules workshop which I always have fun presenting (almost as much fun as my “No Plotters Allowed” workshop.) The other is on romantic suspense with the fantastic Mariah Stewart (my mom just read her last book, ACTS OF MERCY, and said it was absolutely fantastic.)

So I’m good with those. I even have notes from previous workshops so if I get stuck I have something to refer to.

But the speech? 

An idea–could I possibly call it a theme?–came to me after reading a message from a new RWA member who’s recently joined one of the multitude of loops I’m on. She wrote something like, “I’m so excited to find other writers who also hear the voices of their characters and would rather write than eat! I’m so happy that I’m normal.”

This is nothing new. I’ve heard a variation on this statement for years. Writers popping in, relieved that they are “normal” when they thought they were weird or no one understood them. Thrilled to be in a group of people who understand and accept them.

My theme? “You’re not normal. And why would you want to be normal anyway?”

Okay, maybe that’s not a theme per se, but it’s a place for me to start.

I haven’t written the speech yet, though I will. Because I don’t want that icky feeling of failure that I had last year at the other conference. 

But I HAVE started “talking out” my speech, alone, in the car, driving to pick up whoever needs picking up. I’m sort of working it through in my head, very similar to how I think through complex plot points trying to figure out what the heck is going on in my book and how to solve problems my characters have created. So I’m getting comfortable with the idea. And if the speech is any good in written form, I’ll post it here in two weeks, the day after I present it.

I don’t think I’m normal. I don’t think most writers are normal. Thank God. Normal is boring. It’s bland. It has no color. We’re all kind of freaky, and we should be pleased we’re not like anyone else.

I was talking to an FBI Agent who said that the dinner conversations with his family generally relate to his work, and that his kids will often bring up current crimes to discuss. A medical scientist I recently met shared that her conversations often get macabre and she doesn’t think twice about it since she socializes with people in her field, but sometimes when she ventures out she’s noticed perplexed expressions when she talks about her business. When I viewed an autopsy last year, I finally understood what it meant to “compartmentalize” violence and look at death objectively in order to learn the truth.

Writers tend to think of about things a little differently than most people, and crime writers are often thinking about murder.

Case in point. One day, I was driving my daughter home from practice. It was late afternoon, but not dark enough for headlights. On the side of the road was a large dark green garbage bag filled with . . . something. The way it was positioned, partly obscured by the shadows of the vineyards, coupled with the size and shape and I immediately thought it looks like there’s a body inside.

As I thought it, my daughter said, “That looks like a body.” Then she added, “Do you want to pull over and check?”

Shortly thereafter, my husband and I went to a private home for dinner with a small group of people, including my husband’s boss and his wife. His wife is a fan, and she asked me about my latest book and research. Talking about research is one of my favorite things to do. But I realized that maybe telling her about the decomposing body I saw during my morgue trip–the one that was found underwater and gave me a great visual for PLAYING DEAD–wasn’t appropriate dinner table conversation.

So . . . wish me luck and help me out. Do you have any stories illustrating how you’re not normal? Any fun writer–or reader–anecdotes that I can use (with credit!) in my speech? Do you think you’re normal and I’m the one off the deep end? 

By Allison Brennan

It’s been a hectic week in the Brennan household as I prepare (ha! It’s 7:20 Saturday night and I’m not even packed–in fact, my suitcase is not down from the high shelf in the garage) for my trip to Washington DC where I get to tour FBI Headquarters and the FBI Training Academy at Quantico. (Eat your heart out Stephen. And Toni. And Alex–but I know Alex just wants to go because Quantico is also a Marine base, not for research. Or writing-type research, anyway.)

Thinking about the trip reminded me about what I love–and hate–about travel.

I try to live my life by the 11th commandment. You know the one . . . love your neighbor as yourself. Basically, be nice to people. Cut them some slack. Don’t blare your horn because someone is going too slow or ticks you off. (To me, the car horn is reserved for three things. 1- a gentle tap-tap when the car in front of you doesn’t notice the light has turned green. 2- a firm hoooonnnnnkkkkk to avoid a collison, such as when an idiot is backing up and doesn’t see you. And 3- a constant honk-honk-honk-honk until your teen-age daughter–who said she was ready but is not in the car–runs out of the house to avoid being embarrassed by the neighbors. Amazing, it really works to get their ass in gear!)

Everyone has to go through security. Yeah, it’s not always fun, but it’s not like we are giving up major liberties to secure a bit of safety here (though I can’t help but think up all the ways I could get around security at airports–I think it’s an occupational hazard.) I don’t dramatically sigh because the nervous little old lady in front of me is having a difficult time removing her shoes, for example. 

On the plane, we’re all cramped. It’s often hot. There’s sometimes a crying baby. (Get earbuds and an iPod–loud rock-n-roll pretty much drowns out anything.) Be patient getting off the plane–we’re all going to get off. If someone has a tight connection, let them go first–no skin off your nose if you don’t have a tight connection, right? 

I’m a nice traveler 🙂 . . . 

except . . . 

(Yes, you knew there was an exception.)

If you’re traveling during the day, why do you need to recline your seat? For your comfort? For your enjoyment of the flight? What about the person behind you? What if the person behind you is an author with a really tight deadline and they really, really, really need the five hour flight to write the next chapter of their book? Do you realize that there is no way in hell that said author can write if you recline your seat?

Believe me, I have tried. And had major shoulder and neck pain to accomplish a small number of words. 

The seat in front of you tilts back. That puts the tray closer to you. It’s already cramped trying to type on the tray anyway, but when it’s three-four inches closer? Try typing with your elbows pressed against the back of your seat, your screen tilted at a 80-degree angle toward you so you can’t even really see what you’re writing, so you hunch over a bit and your shoulders are now touching the bottom of your ears. Because sometimes, if you aren’t watching you can find yourself typing a whole page that looks something like this:

Bretvsuid dp,eyo,rd upi vsm gomf upitdr;g yu[]pomv s ejp;r [shr yjsy ;ppld ;olr yjod/

Just because your fingers shifted over one letter.

So consider the writer behind you when you travel. You’ll make all of us–well, at least me–a lot happier. And our editors, who really want the book in their inbox when you tell them it’ll be there.

Aside from the inconsiderate book haters who recline their seats, I generally like traveling. Especially alone. I can write for hours, thanks to my newish MacBook Pro with a 7+ hour battery life (it rocks. I LOVE my new laptop.) I have flash drives, a me.com account to archive daily (in case some low-life criminal steals my  laptop) and for this trip, I used my frequent flyer miles to upgrade free to First Class on the leg out east, and got a really cheap Economy Plus seat coming back west. Yeah! No more seat recliners! (In Economy Plus, it’s annoying, but not hugely cramped to write when the person in front of you wants to relax at your expense.)

I hope to have lots of stories for you when I return from Quantico!

Oh, by the way, it’s really not nice to confuse tired moms on deadline. I had to go from soccer game to football game to a birthday party to a volleyball tournament an hour away . . . and when I finally got home I log in to Murderati and . . .  saw Cornelia’s blog. I became extremely confused. Because I ALWAYS follow Alex. But I KNOW it’s my day, so I’m posting anyway. If there’s any complaints, go talk to Alex and Cornelia.

Great blog, BTW, C. My two cents? You have to write what you’re passionate writing, whether genre or something else. You have to love it, with all the pain that comes in penning the damn thing. But the one thing you shouldn’t do is not attempt it because you’re scared. If you don’t do it, it should be because you don’t have the passion for it, not because you don’t think you could do it. If that makes any sense.

So gang, I’m traveling all day. I’ll try to log-in at the airport to check in, but I’ll be on a plane from 11 am Pacific to 9:30 pm Eastern. Have fun while I’m gone!

 

By Allison Brennan

 

What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, “See, this is new!” has already existed in the ages that preceded us.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

 

I had one of those “Damn! That’s MY idea!” moments tonight.

Six years ago, I came up with the initial spark of my Seven Deadly Sins idea. I started the book in August of 2003, but shortly thereafter, THE PREY (which was then titled THE COPYCAT KILLER) finaled in an RWA chapter contest. I hadn’t finished the book, so thinking I had a great shot at getting an editor to read me, I put aside the book I was then calling THE COVEN and finished THE PREY.

While the editor ranked me second in the contest, she said that the chapters she’d read (50 pages) were great, but not something she’d acquire. Emboldened, and sensing that this book was IT, I terminated the relationship with my then-agent, cleaned up the manuscript, and queried 12 top agents. I sold THE PREY, and in hindsight I’m glad I didn’t focus on the Seven Deadly Sins series , because I didn’t have the skill to pull it off the way I wanted.

But the book haunted me.

I sold the series in 2008, and the first book–now called ORIGINAL SIN–will be on sale 1.26.10. I finished the revisions Friday night and sent them off to my editor. The book goes into production on Monday. I am alternately excited about this book and scared to death: it’s a pure supernatural thriller and unlike anything I’ve written. It’s exactly the way I wanted to write it . . . and I am forever indebted to my editor for helping pull the meat of the story from the mess of my first draft, showing me the potential, and giving me the palette back to paint the story my own way.

But because I’ve been thinking about this story a long time–and even had 150 pages written (none of which made it to the final draft)–I began to get frustrated when I saw themes and ideas I had show up in other books and media.

Now, I’m not the first person on the planet to come up with the idea to write a series based on the seven deadly sins. Lawrence Sanders had a whole series on the theme; Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman starred in the fabulous and terrifying movie SEVEN; and stories about lust, greed, pride and the rest have been created from the dawn of storytelling. 

I did think that my story was a different take on an old theme. The Seven Deadly Sins as demons on earth. I have always loved the supernatural, classic supernatural stories. New paranormal trends don’t interest me. I can’t wrap my head around the idea of a vampire who is good. TWILIGHT is a huge hit–yeah Stephanie Meyer–but really, where are the animal rights people when you need them? Seriously, if I ever wrote a vampire book, vampires would be portrayed as the evil bloodsuckers they are. Demons? They’re not heroes. They want your soul, as painfully as possible. So I was kind of out-of-step with what was selling. But honestly, my idea was not blazing any new paths–but rediscovering favorite roads

While the story was cooking in my head, a television show started called SUPERNATURAL. I love it.

But dammit, some of their ideas are MY ideas.

No, I don’t think Eric Kripke can read my mind, but for awhile I was worried. For example, long after I wrote my initial proposal, and three years after I wrote my first 150 pages, Season 3 began with the episode “The Magnificent Seven.” Yep, the Seven Deadly Sins as demons.

See. Me. Bang. Head. I almost abandoned my idea. Then I realized that it was one episode and they didn’t explore a fraction of the subject matter. It wasn’t a continuing theme.

But then last night, when we watched the recorded Season 5 premiere, we learn that the only way for an angel to enter your body (a “vessel”) is if you invite it.

See. Me. Bang. Head. Again.

There are no angels in my book–no easy solutions (though in SUPERNATURAL they are handling the demons and angels thing brilliantly, IMO.) If there’s around, it’s just to give signs, but not consciously written. It’s up to free will human beings to discern what the signs mean, and to stop the Seven from causing (more) problems on earth.

But I do have a “rule” in my world that to be a vessel (and yes, I used “vessel” as well!) you have to willingly agree. (The “vessels” are not for possession by angels–or demons–but essentially human sacrifices through which the demons are brought forth or contained.

I think I swore at the televisions. My book is DONE. 

I have over 40 books about witchcraft, the occult, exorcisms, prayer, spiritual warfare, angels, and major religions. So much of what is in SUPERNATURAL comes from history or mythology–which is also where I’m basing my world “rules.”  So it’s natural that we’re going to come up with similar ideas. 

I’ve heard unpublished authors say that they dumped an idea because another popular author wrote a similar idea in THEIR book. Well, hello people. There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s all been done before. Get over it. Write the book.

I guarantee it’ll be different from anyone.

I’d bet if I gave the same story idea to the 13 other Murderati members, that they’d all write a completely different book. And each one would be damn good and stand on its own.

I’ve heard unpublished authors give up on ideas because television or the movies recently had something similar. Hello! Capitalize on the interest. BTW, it’ll take a couple years before your book hits the shelves and by that time the subject matter could be hot. 

Recently, an unpublished writer asked on a writing loop if she should copyright her unpublished book before she submitted it to agents, because they might steal her idea and give it to one of their authors to write. Um, why would they do that? Agents are not looking to take ideas from unpublished authors. They have plenty of good submissions to sort through. They WANT to sell books, and they WANT more than one client. Amy Berkower doesn’t just represent Nora Roberts–she has other clients. And really, like I need someone else’s idea? Believe me, I have plenty of my own. Not all of them good, not all of them sellable, but plenty.

It’s not just this current series that had me knotted up. A movie called UNTOUCHABLE about a guy who kills people on-line that came out three months before my book FEAR NO EVIL that had a girl kidnapped and the bad guy was charging people to watch–and they could pay and vote on how she dies. My book was already in production before the movie was released. Episodes of both SUPERNATURAL and CRIMINAL MINDS had people hunting other people for sport. So did my book THE HUNT–which came out long before either show–it again highlighted that there are many common themes, even similar ideas. And what about that movie (the name escapes me) about the rape victim who turns around and kills the men who raped her? She hunt them down. Stories connect us because they come from our common foundation as human beings and that MOST of us have the same basic fears, the same basic desires, the same basic internal struggles as everyone else. So that many of us have stories that stem from the same core idea is not surprising; that we all write completely different stories is a testament to our individuality.

So have you ever had an idea and it seemed that you saw it everyplace after that? Have you noticed that there seem to be cycles of a bunch of similar movies/books/themes all coming out together? Am I the only one who has noticed that sometimes, blogs all cover the same general subject matter?