by J.T. Ellison

Last week, I discussed my realization that my writing system was irretrievably broken. This week I'll show you how I plan to fix it.

We writers are a superstitious lot. We set ourselves up with certain pads of paper, certain pens and pencils, certain books ready at hand. We have specific music playing, or sit at the same table in the coffee shop each day. We need, no, we crave the ritual. Without it, we can't produce.

So the first part of reinventing my process is to reinvent my ritual.

Twyla Tharp, in her spectacular book, THE CREATIVE HABIT, (which you'll see me discuss more in the coming weeks) talks about ritual in a way that makes it seem like magic. Without it, we can't hit the marks, get our daily word count, or otherwise finish the tasks we set out to complete. Her ritual is to drag herself out of bed every morning at 5:30, go downstairs, hail a cab and tell the driver to take her to her gym. What's interesting to me is she doesn't consider the gym, working out, etc., the ritual so much as telling the cabbie to take her. That's the magic, the step that leads you to the next level.

Okay. This is an actionable step toward redefining my process. What is my ritual? Yes, I like to write in my chair in the living room instead of my office. I like to work 12-4. I like to have all my notes in the same place so I can access them easily. But none of that is a ritual. So I dug deeper, and here's what I saw. My ritual is as follows: get out of bed, slink still half-asleep into my office, open my browser, check my email, check Murderati, check Facebook, check the news, then roll back to my bedroom, get dressed, go downstairs, brush the cat, get a drink and do it all over again. Then, and only then, do I start to write. 

This, my friends is an example of a very bad ritual. It's backwards. The very first thing I do is clutter my mind with thoughts unrelated to my current work. No wonder it takes me a couple of hours to settle down enough to get into the manuscript.

At 43 Folders, Merlin Mann talks about the writer being assailed
with a constant flow of information that must be dealt with. He
described it thusly – a doorbell hard-wired into your brain. Now that
makes sense to me. Think about the distraction you feel when you're deep in the groove and the phone
rings, when someone knocks on your door, when your email button chimes
forty times an hour, or even once an hour. It yanks you right out of
your work and you're in the now again, the immediate, the what am I
going to make for dinner? and does my husband have clean underwear?
world, which is the last place you need to be when you're creating.

There is more to the writing life than just writing, unfortunately. But we do need to do business, as well as create. There are conversations with agents, editors, marketing, PR. There are the commitments we make to others, committee work, blogging. The trick is not to over commit, and know that the writing comes first, before the business. If it's an emergency, your team is going to call you. Usually, there's nothing a two hour delay is going to change. The rest of what's going on is procrastination. And yes, we need a little of that. It helps keep us sane. But it's very, very easy for that five -minute internet excursion to turn into a real problem. We've all lost time on the internet. It happens. Your job is to control how much it happens.

I know I'm not the only one who struggles with the business side of
writing versus the creative side of writing. There are things that need
to be done, and since I'm not a multimillionaire, I need to do them
myself. One day, I hope to be able to have an assistant to deal with
many of the day-to-day issues that need addressing – newsletters, list
maintenance, travel arrangements, etc. In other words, I'd like to be
handled. That's why I use an independent publicist in addition to my
house's fantastic publicity team – I want to be free to spend as much
time writing my book instead of worrying if the local paper is running
a review. And I'll tell you, it's been the wisest investment I've made
outside of my laptop.

Balance. It's what we all strive for. Balance allows us to make room for everything we need to get a book done: ritual, meditation, creation and business.

I
started another great book this weekend, one that I actually bought and read in college,
called THE WRITER ON HER WORK. In the introduction, Janet Sternberg
writes a sentence that especially resonates for me:

"The
true writer either retreats and pays the price of isolation from the
human stream or opens the door and pays the price of exposure to too
many diverse currents."

This was written in 1980, long
before email and Facebook became as common as sneezing. It seems the
struggle between being creative and still living a life is one that's
been around longer than I could possible imagine. And now the diverse
currents are multiplied exponentially.

Managing the currents, managing your time, your ritual, your creative juices, that's what's so important.

As strange as it sounds, I do enjoy these moments when I realize change has become necessary. It's fun to think through what works, what doesn't, see how other people manage their time, find new resources and new products that help with this maintenance. I'm hoping that hubby will develop a nice content management system for me that pulls everything I do into a single spot that can be looked at once a day, maintained with little to no energy, and leaves me free to skip out on the things that don't matter. But until that day, I have to work as efficiently as I can with the tools I have.

Let's be honest. When you're starting your writing career, there's a feeling of MUST, MUST, MUST. You MUST say yes to everything and accept every invitation. You MUST be accessible to your fans, and you MUST be open for business at any time of day or night to accommodate the urgent needs of outsiders.

I'll let you in on a little secret, something that I've learned over the past year.

You MUST worry about yourself and no one else. You MUST keep your writing time sacred. You MUST ignore the distractions that look shiny and promising, and you MUST get over your self-importance. Yes, you're on Google. Yes, you have an Amazon ranking. Now get back to work.

Learning to say no was possibly the most valuable lesson I took away from my debut year. No is a very powerful word. Look, you're not WonderAuthor. You can't leap tall buildings in a single bound. So stop trying to pretend you can. Trust me, everyone close to me knows I racked myself a couple of times trying, and it wasn't pleasant.

So you don't think I'm a total hypocrite, I'm taking my own advice. I'm reinventing my process. I'm changing my ritual. I'm restructuring my
world. Redefining my writing life. Admitting that writing IS my life
was the first step. But it's even more than that. It's my passion, my
job, the only thing I've ever felt like I was good at. And because of
this, it needs to come first, and I mean that in a very literal sense.
My writing life is going well. So well that I need to change my great "process" to
adapt to the new and different world I live in.

On the advice of 43 Folders, and a wonderful series of ideas I read about here, here's my new plan.

Instead
of 12-4 daily, which often gets pushed back by other issues and things
on the To Do List, I'm going to get up, brush the cat, get some
breakfast, sit at my table with my Moleskin, and set a goal for the day. You yogis out there call it an intention, something that you do before each yoga session. It doesn't have to be super special, or far-reaching, or specific. It can be something as simple as, "I will be happy with the work I create today."

As soon as that's done, I'm going to start writing immediately, before my head gets cluttered by the
outside world. I'm going to work for at least one hour before I give
myself permission to stop. I can get a LOT done in an uninterrupted
hour. Then I'll let myself check out my email and do a bit of cruising.
I've reworked my Google Reader to only include blogs I really care
about, so I'll check in on the rest of the world. After fifteen
minutes (tracked by setting the timer on my iPhone,) I'm back at it for another hour. Then another 15 minute break.
Then one more hour. If I haven't hit my 1,000 words by then, I'm in
trouble, and no amount of scheduling will save me.

That will
leave me the afternoon, whenever I get to it, guilt free. I'll
turn the phones back on. I can read, research, run errands, do some
yoga, talk on the phone, work on my blog… Whatever. But with my work
done first, hopefully I'll start feeling a little more rounded, and a
little more present in the writer's life.

Doing this daily,
five days a week, allowing myself one full day off with no Internet at
all (that's Sundays from here on out) it will become a new habit. I did
the 12-4 routine for three years, produced one book that first year, then two books a year since. Not bad, but
I think I can do better. I'm curious to see if I feel more productive
this way.

I know I'm perfectly capable of handling a change. I just have to train the people around me to my new schedule.

I
will admit, Murderati takes up a chunk of time. We're nearing the three
year mark, and coming up with new, never-done-before blog topics weekly
is difficult. Two things need to happen for me here. One, please don't
hold it against me if I bring in a few guests bloggers over the next
couple of months while I'm restructuring. And two, I'd like to ask you,
the reader, for some help. I've hit the point where I don't feel like
my angst is getting the job done for you. I'd like to share the creative life with you through this series, talk about what's working and what isn't. But I'd also like to hear what you're interested in reading. I still don't feel like I have a lot of publishing experience, but I
can get creative. I think that's the whole plan, actually…

A little battery recharging, a few New Year's resolutions, and a reworking of the processes. Merry Christmas to me. And may all the blessings of the season be showered upon you. Happy Holidays!!!!!

Wine of the Week: In the spirit of the holidays (and thanks to Grimey's) let's have a little holiday cheer, AKA "Ellison Family Grog Nog." You need a short glass, some ice, one part Sailor Jerry Spiced Navy Rum, and two parts lowfat eggnog, (because we all need to watch our waists, right?) Pour, dash with cinammon, stir, drink. Repeat. But for goodness sake, stay away from the sleighs. This stuff is lethal.

by J.T. Ellison

Since we're crashing into a new year, I've decided to make some serious, major changes to my writing life.

I am always looking for better, more efficient ways to work. It stems from both my obsessive-compulsive need to be organized and my overwhelming love of office products. Getting gift cards to supply stores (Staples, The Daily Planner, etc.) run a close second to bookstores gift cards.

I love trying new systems, new notebooks, new anything. I've only been doing this for three years, and I'm still looking for my perfect method, my artistic channel, that glorious thing called "process." The method that in twenty years will be the HOW behind my books.

Right now, I'm finding that the process of finding a process means more than a small tweak to my system. I want real change. I don't know about you, but I have, on occasion, caught myself thinking
"Why am I here, instead of in my manuscript?" This goes for everything
non-manuscript related – email, blogs, news sites, social networks, to do lists, research. All
of the things that seem to eat up time that could otherwise be spent
productively, writing.

The problem is all of these things need to happen, to some extent. I can't skip email for three weeks without some feelings of guilt. I won't even begin to pretend that I don't like the occasional breaks to play on Facebook. I love to read the news sites during the day, to check in on my favorite blogs. But I truly believe there's a more productive way to incorporate the fun and the obligatory into my workday.

I've been looking for the best way to do this, and I've found this wonderful system called GTD, brainchild of David Allen. Getting Things Done. (Yes, all you Mac people already know about this. Us PC folks are usually a few steps behind. Quit your snickering.) My God, who wouldn't want to invest in this? I've always called my approach to work AiC – ass in chair, but GTD takes AiC and puts it on steroids.

GTD is going to help me revamp my writing life.

Note I didn't use the words "writing routine." I've always thought of what I do as a routine, a series of goals that I've set for myself, publicly and privately, that allow me to meet my deadlines with a modicum of hair intact. In the days before major book contracts, the days before deadlines, before Murderati even, I stuck to a pretty steady routine, driven partially from my desire to write and partially from the embarrassment I'd feel if I couldn't bring pages to my writing group twice a month. No pages at group meant I wasn't producing, the biggest sin I as a "writer" could commit.

And it worked, quite well. For a while. Nowadays, when I'm working on three books at once (one being written, one being edited and one being promoted) I find that sometimes, the work that needs to get done is taking a backseat to other priorities. Which is utterly insane, because as writers, our only priority should be to write.

One of my favorite authors, Jeff Abbott, has been writing a series of blogs about productivity. In them he not only gives excellent, sage advice, he's linking to other sites that give excellent, sage advice. My new favorite is 43 Folders. Great advice. Great, practical, knock this crap off and get back to work kind of advice. I love it.

Because somewhere along the way, my laptop, sacred beast that it is, internal automatic wireless being, has become my lifeline "out" of my house. This is a VERY BAD THING.

I ask myself what the problem is. Am I so caught up in the excitement of having a network of friends who GET what I do that I'm shirking my writing time to be with them? Well, maybe a little. There is something quite heady about being online with like-minded individuals. Are they helping my writing? Well, to the extent that I learn something new about the publishing industry weekly, then yes. Otherwise?

I didn't know a soul when I wrote my first book. No one. I was in an utter vacuum. And I was blissfully happy. Working at my own pace on my own story, no distraction, no worries. For several years here at Murderati I've been encouraging new writers to get out of said vacuum and connect. Connect, connect, connect. Network, network, network.

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

Now I understand the emails I was getting before my first book came out. Those encouraging notes that said enjoy this time, because once the book drops it all changes.

I'm rapidly realizing that I long to have the vacuum back. Don't get me wrong, I love you guys. I love my writing friends here in town. I enjoy emails from fans, requests for media interviews. Who wouldn't? I think it's part of the excitement of becoming a debut author. And in the course of only 13 months, I have three books on the shelves. I've written the fourth and started the fifth. Talk about your zero to sixty, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars. Any normal human being would be having this kind of time management issue, right?

The way I've been managing to get all that work done is writing every day, from
12-4, 1,000 words a day. THAT was my old routine. But it's not working
anymore. I'm having days where I look at the clock, it's 3 pm and I haven't opened the manuscript. Or days where I've been so busy handling myriad other chores – also known as life – that I haven't written a word of fiction. But I've gotten my blog done and I've cleared out my email and chatted with my parents and touched base with a friend or two, and probably knocked out a load of laundry or made a run to the grocery.

And those are good things, because they have to be done too. Writers can't live by manuscript alone, unfortunately, and I've always been adamant that I want to have a full, rich life, one that includes being a writer, not resting solely on that identity for survival. I want to have a life outside of my books – if I don't, my writing WILL suffer.

I've realized I'm not the only writer who has these issues, and that in and of itself is heartening. I've been feeling a bit like an outcast, looking at some of my literary heroes who don't have a blog to weekly caress their inner woes and the magnificent work product they are responsible for. It's humbling, and inspiring, and I WANT IT.

If anything, this week's journey through the internet searching out better processes proved to me that I am a part of something bigger, a social construct of intellectualism, entertainment and ultimately, creation. That what I'm doing, writing these books, matters, even if that's only to me. That as much as I want to think that writing is just a facet of who I am, I'm realizing that I must simply surrender to the reality that I am a writer, that writing is my life, and as such, I need to have a rich and healthy writing life in order to be happy and fulfilled.

Next week, I'll tell you how I plan to do this.

So, share. What's your process? And do you have any devilishly good sites on productivity and creativity you enjoy reading?

Wine of the Week: Shared over a delicious meal with my secret houseguests – Barossa Valley Estate E Minor Shiraz (Australia)

PS – Congratulations to Jacqui Carney, who won the critique of her NaNo pages!!

PPS – If you're an online shopper, please consider using GoodShop to buy those holiday gifts (BOOKS!) You'll be able to help out your favorite charities, who are all having a rough year too.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

by J.T. Ellison

With all the publishing news this week – Random reorganizing, the layoffs at S&S, Houghton and Thomas Nelson, Penguin and Harper instituting a pay freeze, Macmillian's uncertainty, and who knows what else looming in the coming days, it's hard to be cheerful. Friends and loved ones are suddenly out of work, faced with unbelievable economic challenges on the heels of a major recession. It seems this holiday season is going to be one of the hardest we've faced in many years.

This is always a difficult time of year for me anyway. I'm not sure when the candy cane fun of my youthful holidays became a drudging chore to me. Thanksgiving hits and my holiday-induced schizophrenia kicks in. Carols – good. Shopping – bad. Cards to friends and family – good. Decorating – bad (the cat loves to eat the tree and spends the month ill. We haven't figured out a way around that yet, so the decorations don't go up until the last minute.) Giving gifts – good. Budgeting for gifts – bad. I flip and flop my way through December, half the time giddy and foolish, the other half staring mournfully out the window, wishing it were January. 

For the past two years I've also been on production deadlines during December, so I need to stay focused and tapped into my creativity. Malls and addressing oodles of cards kind of yanks me out of the mindset I need.

I've blamed it on all sorts of things in the past – the fact that all the good holiday shows suddenly stop running anywhere near Christmas and are relegated to awkward times and zero advertising; the fact that my family is in a another state and I can't see them until right at the holiday; the fact that I live in a state with no appreciable snowfall. Yes, I still equate SNOW with CHRISTMAS. 

But the truth of the matter is I wish I was still a child, without the concerns that adults face.

One of the most important lessons that I took from my childhood was about lying. Lying is bad. Pinocchio lied and look what happened to him. I distinctly remember telling some sort of untruth and Daddy sitting me down with Pinocchio, making me watch it and explaining the metaphor to me. I got it. I've never been a very good liar. Don't get me wrong, I can spin a tale with the best of them. But looking someone in the eye and telling them an untruth – that's not my forte.

But on paper? On paper, I can fool anyone.

So today, to lift all of our spirits, I thought we should play a game. It's the brainchild of Arthur Phillips, the opening of his novel Prague, and I've stolen the idea directly from the utterly charming Tasha Alexander, who of course would be the first person to think to bring this to the blogosphere.

The game is called Sincerity. Here's how it works.

• Each player makes four statements, none of which can be verifiable facts.
• One must be true, the other three, lies.
• Everyone else tries to guess which statements are true.
• Finally, each player reveals what he said that was sincere.

Score as follows:

+One point for each of your lies that was accepted.

+One point for each correct identification of a true statement.

So tell your biggest whoppers, and be sure to include one truth. And take a guess at your fellow commenters' true and false statements. Toward the end of the day, come back to the blog and reveal your truths. I'll keep score, and the person who win will receive a signed copy of my new novel, JUDAS KISS, that won't be in stores until the end of December.

I'll go first.

1. I was once held and frisked by the Secret Service for hitting the Vice President of the United States.

2. My first pet, a Siamese cat named Jezebelle, lived to be 23 years old.

3. On my honeymoon, a maid stole my diamond earrings from the bedside table, and we had to bring in the Bahamian authorities to have her arrested.

4. I ate escargot for the first time in Paris when I was 18.

Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone who is suffering this holiday season. I hope there is joy in your life again soon.

Wine of the Week: Since we're being all dignified this week, how about a nice glass of port. Fonseca Vintage Porto

PS: NaNoWriMo is over, and though I didn't succeed in hitting 50,000 words this month, I have a promise to keep. If you made it, send me an email at jtellison at jtellison dot com, and I'll do a drawing next Friday to see whose opening pages get a free critique.

PPS: I've added a link in the Round Up to BUY MORE BOOKS, an effort by fabulous new author Karen Dionne to encourage the continuing message that buying books during the holidays is crucial to our longevity. Check it out here, and add your latest buys to the list!

Canon commercial telling a story in a series of snapshots

by JT Ellison

Happy Day after Thanksgiving! Are you stuffed? Tired of the relatives? Enjoying the football, or the movies? Well, good. I hope you had a nice day, regardless of how you celebrated. And obviously, since our non-American guests didn't have the pleasure of our most secular holiday, here's wishing you a fruitful year full of joy and happiness too.

I had a strange experience this past weekend. It's making me rethink how I do some things with my writing, namely how I build some of my characters. Specifically, how I create a victim.

I've talked before about creating characters.I have rules, very stringent rules. No character is allowed to exist without a purpose, a reason. Each character MUST drive the story forward, whether they are the waitress at a diner or the Chief of Police or my protagonist. Tertiary characters can be a lot of fun. They can also be heartbreaking.

Early on in my writing career, I read an interview with John Connolly where he described his view of the victims in his novels, based on how a reporter he knew dealt with a real prostitute who'd been killed in Dublin. She was treated as the most basic chattel, just an anonymous, nameless person. She'd been depersonalized by the reporter, treated as if she were nothing. John wanted to be sure none of his fictional victims were ever treated like that.

When I read that, I realized I felt the same way. I'm a crime novelist. Operative word is crime, which means a victim of some sort. I've written books with serial killers, and books where there is a single murder. Creating a believable villain is only one component to the crime novel. Creating a sympathetic victim is a completely different challenge.

Paramount to everything I do when writing a book is how I treat my victims. It's constantly in the back of my head. I do a lot of fictional killing, and the victims are most commonly women. It's a very tricky matter to work through this. It's difficult for me emotionally, because I am a woman, and I'm delving into some of my worst fears, and as such it's quite personal. I strive not to victimize my victims, though bad things are happening to them. I definitely try to breathe life into them, to make sure they're never treated as just another dead body.

To do this, I usually start with a name, and a face in my head. Then I troll through some of my local magazines to see if I can find a visual, a picture of someone who might fit the bill, so to speak. When I find a match, I cut out the picture and create a biographical sheet, a thorough victimology. The information builds throughout the creation of the story. Whether the victim is on one page or fifty, I want to be sure that they are respected and understood. That they will be missed.

Which brings me to my bizarre weekend. I've just finished creating a huge numbers of characters to fit into my new book, THE IMMORTALS. I needed a killer, and victims, and parents and family of victims. I have pages of pasted pictures and bios. Remember, I use local magazines for my pictures, because these books are about Nashville, and it fits that I would have people who LOOK like the Nashville I know.

Randy and I were out to dinner, and after we'd been seated I started looking around – the occupational hazard of dining out with a writer – at our fellow diners. Over Randy's shoulder, I saw a familiar face. I was having a hard time placing this woman, and then it hit me. In all the time I've been writing in Nashville and creating these very Nashvillian characters, I've never ran into one that I've included in my story. Well, sitting no more than five feet from me were the parents of one of my characters.

I felt the strangest feeling of dread. Though they didn't know it, I was using them as an inspiration. It's not their real son who is a part of my novel, but it is their fictional child. Cue creepy chills. They finished their dinner and stood to leave, and started a conversation with the people behind them. And what are the odds… they too were parents in my book.  Now I'm feeling a little freaked out. Weird coincidence, without a doubt. But something that was bound to happen – though I always assumed I'd be running into a victim instead of the victim's parents.

The next morning we were out to breakfast, and damn if it didn't happen again. This time it was the victim's sister, sitting at the table next to us. Chatting it up with her family, goofing off with her boyfriend. With no clue that in my own weird little way, I was attached to her.

I wasn't brushing up against the dead, which has always been my fear. I was stumbling into the walking wounded, the ones left behind.

I've always spent so much time worrying about my victim, and hadn't really comprehended until that moment what I was doing to their family. I have dealt with the family dynamic – heck, JUDAS KISS is all about that – but since I've never been that close to anyone who has been touched by tragedy, I've never seen inside that world. I've only imagined it. I couldn't help but think about what she'd look like if she were crying, if she'd just found her brother dead in his bedroom. Not smiling, a dead look in her bright, happy eyes. I thought back to the parents the previous evening, and how they'd deal with the news. By coming face to face with the people who will fictionally be there for the aftermath, I was given new insight into what exactly it must be like. And I admit, it was horrifying.

I think we need to be somewhat detached to be able to write about these weighty issues time and again. I wonder now if I've been too detached. I don't know. I just hope I can do my character's stories justice. 

So on this day after Thanksgiving, I'm thankful that God gave me the gift to manipulate words to tell a story. I'm also thankful that I've been given the gifts of tolerance and compassion, so I can make sure the victim's story is told. And now, I think I'll have a better grasp on how to help my victim's families deal with the aftermath of losing a loved one.

I'm thankful for all of you too, listening and helping as I work through some of these issues. Thank you.

So what are you thankful for today?

Wine of the Week: It's that time of year!!!  2008 Louis Tete Beaujolais Nouveau

by JT Ellison

I have always been a fan of books and legends surrounding King Arthur.

He doesn’t exist, not really. He’s a legend, probably based in truth, but with nor primary source material to prove that anything we know about him is true.

Favorite King Arthur books
How can we as a culture embrace a legend so fully that it become part of the vernacular?
Vampires and werewolves count?

I think we’ve probably covered just about every iteration of HOW we write. But if you’re like me, the weather plays into my productivity. Sunny, beautiful days. Eh. Rainy, stormy, gray days? Word count out the roof.

Why is this? Am I just a closet depressive? I wonder what my word counts would be if I moved to England, or Seattle?

There’s nothing I love more than a rainy day. There’s something so romantic about rain, such a "Heathcliff on the moors" quality to a gray sky. (Oh, great. Now I need to break out Wuthering Heights, again.)

by J.T. Ellison

I’ve done several book events in the past week wrapping up the tour for 14. Two book clubs, which is always fun, a panel for the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Nashville chapter, and a talk to my local Sisters in Crime chapter. Before my SinC talk, I attended a meeting of my local Southeastern Mystery Writer’s of America (SEMWA) chapter. Next weekend, my local chapter of RWA, the Music City Romance Writers, meets. Both in the book clubs and the organization meetings, I heard the same questions.

"Why do you belong to so many groups?" and "What do you want out of an organization?"

Let me preface my answer by throwing this into the mix – I am also an active member of MWA, serving on a committee for ITW, am lost in the annals of RWA and belong to one or five of their subgroups. I’ve also joined Novelist Inc, Author’s Guild and used to belong to the International Crime Fiction Writers.

So why do I belong to so many groups? Good question. I’ve been letting a few lapse here and there because I don’t feel like I’m getting anything from them. But it’s also the thing to do. When you get published in crime fiction, you immediately join ITW and MWA and RWA and every organization that will have you. It lends you a bit of legitimacy and puts you in immediate contact with real live authors. Okay, fair enough. But the second question, coming from within the groups themselves, is harder to answer.

What do I want from an organization??? I’ll take a stab at this. What I really want?

I want them all to meld together and get rid of the genre designations.

John Connolly had a painful and fascinating post last week reporting on his reception at a literary festival in Canada. He was bombarded with the kind of – well, forgive me – ignorance and stupidity that seems to be prevalent in the genre wars. You must read his post to get the full effect of the several "literary" authors whose arrogant attitudes were particularly astounding, but one of the conversations struck a chord with me. Here’s an excerpt:

"[He] posits that mystery fiction is inferior to literary fiction because
literary writers “hone” their work. They fret about it, reworking it
time and time again, whereas genre writers simply churn out novels.
With each book, literary writers are forced to reinvent the wheel,
discarding all that went before in favor of an entirely new construct.
They are original, while genre writers are essentially imitative."

John points out that he does several versions of a novel. I also do several versions. By the time my editor reads one of my books, we’re on manuscript.V6, or version 6. That’s six revisions that I’ve done, six drafts of the novel. Then it goes through her revision, I adjust according to her notes, we do another read through, then copy edits, then page proofs. What’s that, 9, 10 drafts before the book goes into production? Yeah. I’m not doing any honing at all. I’m just churning out two books a year and don’t give a crap about the actual literary merit. Just because I actually write everyday, does that make me less of a writer than someone who stares at their screen and can’t come up with the right word for three years? I don’t think so.

Then there was this wonderful essay (and a fascinating backblog discussion) by Kyle Minor over at Sarah Weinman’s blog. I wasn’t familiar with him until this, but I’m certainly adding him to my list. His essay started me thinking, yet again, about how crime is really the basis for many literary novels, and there are purely literary writers who write about crime. Michael Chabon, Dennis Lehane, Alice Sebold, Curtis Sittenfeld, Paul Auster, Donna Tartt. Are they being accused of being "genre?" No. So why are "we" relying so heavily on the term?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, the genre writers are partially at fault for this impression. You know why? Because we INSIST on segmenting ourselves. We are romance writers, thriller writers, suspense writers, romantic suspense writers, traditional mystery writers, mystery writers, cozy writers, comedic writers, police procedural writers, private investigator writers, psychological thriller writers, craft mystery writers, horror writers, science fiction writers, fantasy writers, vampire and werewolf and shapeshifter writers, GLBT writers, black and white and pink and blue and space alien writers. There are hundreds of sub-genre designations, and when we’re starting out, we spend so much time trying to identify "what" we are, to fit ourselves within that little box, to submit to agents who represent our "kind" of work and to interact only with other writers of that ilk that we lose site of the fact that we all have the same job. Why?

Look at the list of organizations, of subgroups and online groups, and you’ll see a ton of overlap. Heck, every conference I go to, regardless of the sponsor, is populated with my friends. We all write in different genres, and we’re all attending each other’s cons. And how many times a day do you see a message on a listserve that apologizes for cross-posting?

Take it one step further. All the people in my SEMWA group are members of Sisters in Crime. What would happen if we married the two together into one meeting? Is there any reason why we can’t invite the Music City Romance Writers to our meeting, or go as a group to theirs? Do we really need all these minor segments? Aren’t we all, first and foremost, writers? Does it really matter what we write?

It does to some of the literary writers. They seem to float about, bitching about our market share and treating our writing as nonsense. They look down their noses at our petty squabbles, our insistence on labeling ourselves. So long as we continue to do so, we’ll continue our Rodney Dangerfield existence in the literary world – getting no respect.

There are two organizations I’m part of where genre doesn’t matter – Author’s Guild and Novelists Inc. But the problem of genre designation is systemic. There’s no good answer outside of self-awareness that it doesn’t matter. I know I’m going to catch hell over this, but really – IT DOESN’T MATTER! If we would spend half the time working TOGETHER instead of labeling ourselves and segregating into our sub-genres, I honestly think we could start making a dent in the literary snobbishness.

For example, do we need a separate Sisters in Crime and MWA? It seems to me that there is a huge amount of overlap between the two groups. I know the whole concept behind Sisters in Crime is to make sure women writers get equal standing in the literary world. Guess what? We do and we don’t. There are some major female mystery writers, and there are some major male mystery writers. I don’t think anyone would argue with the point that we need to be paid equally, period.

The reading public seems to understand that. The bestseller list is populated with both sexes. The review space is still male-centric, but on the Forbes list of the top grossing authors this year, three were women – Danielle Steele, Janet Evanovich and J.K. Rowling, and Rowling was #1. I’d like to see that list be split 50/50, but there’s a definite presence, and a woman is the top-grossing author. So maybe, just maybe, SinC has served its purpose. Women aren’t exactly equal in the field, but we’re a hell of a lot better off than we were, and SinC is definitely a reason why. But if we were to meld SinC with MWA, and have the legitimacy of both organizations in one umbrella group, wouldn’t that be even better? Do we need to continue separating ourselves out by female and male? Is the opinion still there than women can’t write anything but romance and men can’t do anything but blood and guts? I don’t think so.

I adopted initials because I wanted to grab male readers in addition to
female. It seems to have worked – I have plenty of fan mail from men. At the same time, some of my
biggest fans are men who know I’m a woman. Granted, my picture is on
the book, so it’s not a mystery for long. But is it really true
that men don’t read women? I don’t think so. I think it’s more of a
function of men just not reading as much as women, hence a smaller pool
for them to choose from.

But what about the awards? Each sub-genre has its own awards, though MWA’s Edgar Award has the loosest definition – any book meeting the appropriate publishing criteria that has an element of crime is eligible for submission. And since I met Michael Chabon at the Edgars last year, they seem to have lived up to their word.

It is difficult to imagine a cozy being nominated for the Thriller awards, and a thriller being up for an Agatha. So maybe we do need to breakdowns, if only to allow more writers to be recognized for excellence in their respective field.

Don’t even get me started on the format issues. Hardcover gets WAY more respect than paperback originals. It is what it is.

So on Tuesday night, while I was tucking into my three-cheese quiche, I was on this rant. Do away with the genre designators and let us all coexist in one big happy stew of fiction. One of the writers at the table said, "But how would the bookstores know where to place our books?"

Okay, that’s a legitimate question. But when you look at how bookstores work, you have to wonder. In Barnes and Noble, I’m shelved in Literature and Fiction (which I particularly like.) Borders shelves me in Mystery. Books a Million puts me in Romance half the time, Suspense and Mystery the other half, and many of the independent stores have me lumped in with all the "genre" genres alphabetically. My library is all alphabetical too. Those crazy Dewey Decimal kids…Does it really matter what the genres are and where they’re shelved, or is this idea simply the biggest OCD nightmare ever conceived?

B&N came out with a dismal Christmas forecast. Borders can’t pay their bills. Rumblings about the collapse of the book industry seem to come every couple of months. Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to work in concert with all the organizations to promote BOOKS so we don’t lose everything?

So what say you? Am I just being naive? Is genre, and subgenre, and a plethora of organizations vitally important to our daily lives? Is there a way to have a bit tent and get everyone under it, or do we like to segregate? Is it too hard to believe that in 2008, we could be treated as equals to the literary writers – just men and women who write damn good books; writers first and foremost? Would the bookstores collapse if they didn’t have the genre designations? Could we create a group that didn’t define itself through genre alone, but as a whole, like the Screenwriters Guild? Should I just shut up and get back to work?????

And readers, do the designations make any difference to you? I understand that not every readers wants to do serial killers, and not every reader can do knitting. Is that the sole goal of the sub-genres, to keep out unwanted stories?

Wine of the Week: Apparently I need a large glass of this – 2003 Saint-Emilion Jean Pierre Moueix

by JT Ellison

I had a familiar dream this week – one that’s really a recurring nightmare. I’m at the beach, in Florida, and the waves are just overwhelmingly big – fifteen footers. I’m out on my board, struggling to keep it from getting away and allowing my leash drag me under. When they break, I dive in early, and it feels like I’m underwater for a very long time before I break the surface. They come in so quickly that I’m swept under over and over, and it’s kind of fun, until I see the big one in the distance. I’m suddenly out of the water, on the boardwalk, watching this massive wall of water coming toward me. I never know for sure if I’m far enough away, but ultimately the water comes within a few feet of me, then spills away.

I’ve had this dream so often that I can manipulate it while I’m in it, adjusting the length of time I think the big waves are fun, moving to various points up and down a two-mile stretch of beach. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m going to make the boardwalk in time, other nights the waves are smaller, more manageable.

I had the dream Monday night, and on Tuesday, I saw this story. Now, talk about freaky coincidences. I’m dreaming about tidal waves while one is hitting Maine. And it’s totally unexplained? That’s the big problem in my dream, there’s absolutely no reason for these waves to be so damn big! And it’s happened before – many times, really. So my dream is based in reality, which makes me a little nervous. Because my dreams? They have a tendency to come true.

My mom used to dream about tidal waves in her childhood beach destination, and one eventually came in to Sea Isle City, New Jersey in the form of a hurricane that wiped out a lot of the area. Kind of creepy that I’ve inherited her nightmare, huh?

About two months ago, right before I was due to turn in EDGE OF BLACK, I had an airplane crash dream. I’ve never, ever dreamt about plane crashes before. I started flying when I was an infant, had a frequent flier card when I was a teenager, and eventually ended up working for a sub-contractor to the FAA. I LOVE airplanes. I LOVE flying. So I was especially freaked out by the dream. We were over a city and banking right, then just started going down amid the skyscrapers. Happily, at the last minute we pulled up and skimmed the ground, and I woke up. I had a second one two weeks ago. This time it was a Lear jet, we were flying over a ski resort and went down at the top, skidding our way down the treacherous slopes in a ridiculous parody of Lear jet giant slalom.

It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to recognize these are anxiety dreams. I started having them when I was a little girl. For my fifth birthday, my parents took me to Blinky’s Fun Club, a television show in Denver starring Blinky the Clown. Being utterly scared by the knowledge that I was on television, I did what any intelligent child who has self-preservation in mind would do – I picked my nose. Blinky "Bastard Son of Satan’s Spawn" the Clown popped up (clowns have a tendency to do that, pop out of nowhere) and YELLED at me. Cue crying, screaming, begging, and a lifelong fear of clowns.

The jerk also cemented my original anxiety dream – I’m sitting in a darkened television studio and hear a slithering, scaly crawling. I turn and come face to face with a giant stuffed purple snake with massive green polka dots, who looks at me with it’s slitted eyes then undulates away through the studio. I still have that dream. And it freaks me out every time.

I’ve never had the typical naked at school type of dream. Mine have to have some random element of creativity to them, at least. I dream in color, and they’re so damn real. I’ve been known to wake up furious at Randy and snarl at him for a day because he’s cheated on me or left me.

But the worst are the serial killer dreams. And I have those a lot. Whether it’s knives and chasing, or just locking eyes with someone who I realize means me harm, I wake up breathless and panicked. I get up, lock the bedroom door and try to think about other things so I can go back to sleep. Because I can wake up from a dream, get up in the middle of the night, walk around, shake it off, go back to sleep and pick up where I left off. It’s not a nice talent.

It’s funny, the purple snake dream can be just as menacing as being chased by a serial killer.

There’s not much I can do to alter the way my subconscious works through my issues. I’m a dreamer, in every sense of the word. Hell, I dreamed the entire plot of ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, start to finish. Man, I wish I could do that more often. I’m not an edgy kind of person during the daylight hours. It’s when darkness falls that I get jumpy. I just don’t know what the night will bring.

So what about you? Do you have anxiety dreams? Are they straightforward, or kooky? And do you have recurring dreams? What’s your trademark nightmare?

Wine of the Week: 2006 Michaud "3" Chalone Red Blend

UPDATE: Wanna see what my waves look like? Click here and read this.