Category Archives: Antics

The Evil M Word: Marketing (or How NOT to Piss People Off)

Antics

Today I received, through the author contact form on this site, a press release for a forth-coming, much anticipated YA novel.  The Angel Punk team snagged an ARC of the aforementioned title at ComicCon so I have, in fact, already read it.  And I loved it.  It’s a great read, beautifully executed, and well worth your time and money.

By now (thanks to my masterful use of suspense), you’re begging to know what it is.  But I’m not going to tell you. Why, you ask?  Because it pissed me off to get a marketing blurb over my author site from someone I’ve never heard of.  This guy (not the author, who is a genuinely nice person) is scanning blogs that mention YA, paranormal, angel, or whatever and finds me as a spam target.  ARRGH!

Holly & Shiraz Cupala gave a killer talk on DIY book marketing at the KidLitCon in Seattle last weekend.  The workshop included a list of 72 ways authors can market their books.  (I know you wish you had one.  Holly and Shiraz should sell them.  The list is that good!).  The take home message: give your targets something of value.

Let me repeat: VALUE

That means a book mark, a way to use the book in curriculum, a comic book teaser, a few free chapters, a behind-the-scenes look…  Something that will add to my experience of your book if I read it.

But the bait and switch where I get all excited because I think that someone cares enough about my site to use the author contact form and then spams me.  Puke.  Don’t do it!

Are you an order person or a chaos person?

Antics, Writing

I read somewhere (or more likely, heard on NPR) the idea that all people can be divided into order people and chaos people.  And while I tend to throw gross generalizations under the bus, I have to say there are very few people who inhabit the middle ground between order and chaos.  That’s not to say there isn’t a gradient.  Of course, there is.  But we tend to approach the world in one of these two ways.

In case it isn’t abundantly obvious, I am so totally an order person that sometimes I disappoint  myself.  I am a creative type too, but when I describe my creative process, you’ll never hear me saying things like, “I was swept away by inspiration” or “the muse took me behind the chicken coop and ravished me.”  Nope.  To do my best work, I like a clean desk and a clear goal.

(Which in case you were wondering is to write at least 1000 words a day or revise for a 2 hours a day).

But I am envious of chaos people.  Especially on days like today when the goal seems to invite drudgery.

At KidLitCon this last weekend, Richard Jesse Watson spoke about how he used his blog as a way to “play” creatively. He posts poetry, abstract paintings that he does for warm-up, and pictures of play activity.  If you look at his published works next to his blog, you’ll see how different they are.

I woke up this morning dragging and totally bummed out that KidLitCon is over.  I miss my friends, old and new, who are all so jazzed about children’s literature and art.  I miss fondling the piles of ARCs.  I miss the tweets buzzing around the room like so many hummingbirds.

I realize that I don’t doodle or collage or journal or free write.  My form of creative play is noodling around in the stories that are the very bone, marrow, and substance of the people around me.  I guess that’s how an order person plays with other people’s chaos!

I write like Cory Doctorow & James Joyce… A fun distraction for you writers! @iwritelike

Antics, Writing

Fun party game for you writers out there.  Cut and paste a section of your manuscript into the analyzer at I Write Like and out pops the name of a writer doppelganger.  I popped in the Angel Punk prologue (well, one of the many I have written) and got ol’ Cory.  The first page of the first chapter yielded James Joyce.  Does that mean my writing is incomprehensibly dense?  Try it.  It’s a hoot!  Post your result in the comments section so we can all feel good about ourselves.

It’s my birthday and I want…

Antics

It’s my birthday.  I’m 41.  And I want…

… to keep taking risks (like jumping off rocks at Pen Lake this summer).
… to maintain my health so that flying leaps are always a possibility.
… to write words that turn into stories that turn into books that find readers.
… to be present for my family (even when sometimes I have to shut them out to write those words).
… to remember that time is a construct–there’s plenty of it for what’s important.
… to give compassion to others and myself.
… to embrace incongruities.
… to make the world a better place in my small way.

And I really want a nice led headlamp.  A girl has needs!  Eat a piece of cake for me today.  We deserve it!

 

Writing Incongruities (or Mucking Out Stalls in Full Make-Up & Heels)

Antics, Writing, , ,

Recently, I spent the morning dolled up for the Angel Punk team photo shoot.  (Thank you, Levy Moroshan, for the gorgeous new picture on my home page.)  Wait until you see the mid-air jumping shots!  Hilarious to shoot even if I was a tad terrified about breaking an ankle in my heels.

Then I proceed to go home and muck out Sir William’s stall.  The photo to the left is his high fashion shot.  A neighbor was hanging around while I worked, and every time she got a glimpse of me, she laughed at the incongruity of my heavy make-up and less-than-glamourous activity.  (I did change my shoes!)

But the process of writing is like that: sometimes exciting and sometimes pedestrian; sometimes a red carpet walk and sometimes a work-out at the gym.  And the writing itself should be like that.  Forget the predictable.  Go with the incongruous.  It builds better story!



Writing retreats are serious business even in bikinis

Antics, Travel, Writing, ,

I spent Saturday and Sunday at Cannon Beach in a rented house with the Viva Scrivas on retreat.  Lest you think it was all cocktails and bon bons and Scrabble, let me tell you a little story…

Saturday was the kind of day that happens once or twice a year on the north Oregon coast.  75 degrees.  Clear sky.  No wind.  A day for bikinis.  Seriously!

And we worked, wrote our fingers to the bone.  When I paid our bill at the rental office, the woman said, “I saw you all working away yesterday.  How did you do it?  The day was too nice for work.”

How did we do it?  One word at a time…  Some of us are on deadline (yikes).  Others making good use of the time away from demanding jobs and small children.  Another getting back to writing after a long absence.

Our group tries to get away 2-3 times a year for writing binges followed by those aforementioned cocktails and bonbons.  It’s a great way to be together and make major accelerations in our writing progress.  I wrote nearly 5,000 words to give me nearly 45,000 words written in my newest novel.  I’m into the last 1/3 and let me tell you… IT FEELS GREAT!

I have horse on the brain

Antics, My Reads, ,

Last week, I took care of my neighbor’s horses while she was out of town.  I woke wondering if they were ready for breakfast.  I wrote in my office with one eye on the weather darting over the coast range.  I watched for sun breaks and the chance to ride.  For a week, I smelled like hay and stalls and horse sweat.  I pulled the rhythm of my days into that of snuffling breath and eager hooves.

My reading choice: King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry.

Whenever the horseboys raced their horses beyond the city gates, Sham outran them all.  He outran the colts his own age and the seasoned running horses as well.  He seemed not to know that he was an earthy creature with four legs, like other horses.  He acted as if he were an airy thing, traveling on the wings of the wind.

Then I thought of this lovely poem by Allen Braden, which appears in his book A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood.

Detail of the Four Chambers to the Horse’s Heart (excerpt)

Listen. The last time I saw my father
alive, he spoke of horses, the brute geometry
of a broken team in motion. He tallied
the bushels of oats, gallons of water
down to the drop each task would cost.
How Belgians loved hardwood hames the most.
Give them the timber sled at logging camp
any day, the workable meadows in need
of leveling, tilling, harrowing, new seeding.
We could’ve been in our dark loafing shed,
cooling off between loads of chopping hay,
the way he carried on that last good day.
With the proper encouragement, he said,
they would work themselves to death.

I must confess that this horse-less week is much more crazy and much less full.

Get Low & The Importance of Telling Our Stories

Antics, Writing, ,

Recently I watched Get Low starring Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek,Bill Murray, and the adorable Lucas Black.

IMBD says: A movie spun out of equal parts folk tale, fable and real-life legend about the mysterious, 1930s Tennessee hermit who famously threw his own rollicking funeral party… while he was still alive.

So this guy, Felix Bush, experiences this terrible tragedy and feels responsible.  In order to punish himself, he sequesters himself away from all human contact.  Until, at the end of his life, he realizes that he must tell his story to purge his soul.  And, as the preacher says, find “peace from the burdens of his head and heart.”

I believe that we all have important stories to tell and that in the telling, we become stronger, better people.  If there is one thing I want young readers and writers to know, it is that their stories are valuable beyond measure and well worth telling.

I second the mission of StoryCorps: To provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.