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a half-day off

Just as I sat down to write my Magical Words blog this morning, my husband told me that at noon he was taking me out of the house and out to Fota Wildlife Park, because it was a beautiful day and he could tell from my mood lately that I wasn’t getting out of the house enough and that I needed some sunshine. So instead of writing my blog I went and wrote a bit more on my book, and then went out to be Not A Writer for an afternoon.

Like David, I do photography for fun. (I’ve even got a photoblog, at kitsnaps.com.) Like Faith, I’m … well. Heh. I don’t consider myself a workaholic. I set out to accomplish certain things when I started getting published, and one of those certain things was shelf space. The result looks a lot like workaholicism, but it’s my grim determination to slow down (and it does take a certain amount of grim determination, because it’s hard to not jump on new shiny ideas and pursue them!) and become significantly less of a workaholic. (It sounds so easy! Hah!) (And hey, like Misty, I like to dance. What we’re not telling you is that I am in fact _all the writers_ at this blog!)

Um. I think I got terribly off topic. The point was just going to be, sometimes when I’m not being a writer, I do something like this instead:

(…I *meant* take pictures, but I suppose making that face isn’t entirely inaccurate either…)

Do I get points for the most inane post ever?

Tags: C E Murphy by cemurphy
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Monday, Monday….

This blog is supposed to have an emphasis on writing, the writing life, and fantasy writing. It’s supposed to let fans and writers in on who we are and how we write and how we live. It’s supposed to be about our real lives and our fantasy worlds and characters. It’s supposed to be fun. Intellectually, I know that. But…

I think I made a mistake in volunteering to blog on Mondays. I thought that writing this blog would kick-start my week, force me to use my brain, and make me think about writing first thing. So far, that ain’t working too great. And the reason for that is not the blog itself, but that I have new project…

People who know me well, and the amount of stress I put on myself are rolling their eyes. To friends, the obvious question is – So what else is new?

There was a time when I pulled 94 hour weeks by writing one book a year, working (for the benefits) fulltime, being on the national board for Mystery Writers of America (MWA), and being the Regional President of Southeast Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA), and working with a small writing group four hours a week. After three years, stress got to me. I had to cut back.

I stopped my MWA and SEMWA work, and that freed up 20 hours a week, gave me free time and less stress, yea!!! At which point, I accepted contracts to that required me to write two books a year for three years. And I still kept the job. Back to 90+ hour weeks, more stress, yada, yada.

Those contracts are up in six months. So, now I want to change directions again – to get rid of stress, right? Riiight…. I am trying to develop a writing program for South Carolina’s most financially challenged, economically underprivileged, deprived schools, a program that will utilize commercially published writers to go into the schools that need it most: the ones with the highest dropout rate and the lowest test scores. And that means writing the program, testing it out, and getting grants to fund it for three years. Sigh…

I’ve been traveling and talking to VIPS in the state and creating the lesson plans and talking to South Carolina writers who might want to help. Meanwhile, I have two books and two short stories and the fiction for a role playing game to turn by June 1. And I’m still working fulltime. Oh… And I have this blog and three other blogs… Not complaining, mind you. I did it to myself. But here’s where this blog is going: Most writers I know are workaholics. That is the life of being a writer—working all the time, even when we are resting. But mostly not resting. Mostly filling our time with deadlines and tight schedules.  On purpose.

Misty dances to relieve stress and because she loves it, and that means deadlines and more deadlines. Catie, like me, seems to accept contracts for more than one book a year. David has young children and travels a lot and is into music and photography. I bet you money we almost never lie in a hammock and sip a drink and watch the clouds go by. We forget to smell the roses – unless roses are written into a scene and we smell them in memory. We forget to rest and revive. We forget to do…well…do nothing. 

 

I’m challenging myself right now, to pick one hour this week when I will do something restful and fun that is just for me. I’ll try to remember to tell you about next Monday. When I blog again. And hey, I just rediscovered how important this blog is to my week. So — do you guys (my fellow bloggers and our readers, too) ever do the hammock thing? What do you do that is restful, involves no deadlines, and restores your soul? Do you *ever* take a whole day off to do *nothing*? Just curious.

Faith  

 

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
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Friday Fun!

Faith, David and I are appearing at ConCarolinas 2008 this May. As it happens, we’ve ended up with our very own minion assistant. While talking to the minion assistant today, we were kidding about what she’d be asked to do. I’m not a rock star who needs all the green M&Ms removed from the bowl, but I could come up with some crazy demands.
For example, I think I should have:

The 32 piece Vosges Gourmet Truffle Collection
The big red sheepskin from the Sheepskin Shoppe at the Carolina Renaissance Faire
Whole wheat pita bread, a jar of pitted, oil-cured black olives and a bottle of Rosemount Shiraz Cabernet
James Marsters on hand to feed me the aforementioned bread and olives (I can’t do it myself, of course - my fingers would get all oily!)

With the intention of being entirely silly and unreasonable, what would you ask for?

And just so no one gets the wrong idea, our beloved minion is delighted to be referred to as such - I’m really not being mean!  

Tags: Misty Massey by Misty Massey
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Other people’s books

Like many of my buddies, I learned to read early, and never looked back. The summer before fourth grade, my mother had to accompany me to the library to sign a permission card so I could check out books that had more words than pictures. In high school, I’d do my homework so I could reward myself with whatever book I happened to be reading at the time. I sometimes say it was no wonder I started writing myself, but that’s not quite accurate - I was happy being surrounded by other peoples’ books. I did write some stories along the way, beginning at nine with a Wild, Wild West fanfic (anyone old enough to remember that show? They didn’t call it fanfic back then.) I never really considered writing as a career until I was in my early twenties, when I read a book that rocked my world.

I was working for the Intimate Bookshop in Charlotte NC, and one day I was assigned to pull and strip the mass-market books that needed returning. Working my way through the shelf, I came across a book called The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers. I opened to read a page, just out of curiosity. Twenty minutes later, my manager found me sitting on the floor, completely engrossed.

That book spoke to all the feelings I’d had about the world since childhood. As I mentioned in comments to David’s wonderful post yesterday, I’ve always been convinced there’s something more to the ordinary world, another layer that I could reach out and touch if I just find the right way to do it. Tim Powers wrote about that unseen layer, brought together historical events and pointed out the possible supernatural forces that might have driven them. He’d found that magic, with his words. And suddenly I realized that I, too, could stop wishing, and start writing.

So today I’d love to hear from other people - writers, is there a book that turned on the light for you? Readers, is there a book that you’d rush into a burning house to rescue?

Tags: Misty Massey by Misty Massey
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So What’s Good About Being a Writer?

We’ve been focused a lot in recent days on the challenges inherent in a writing career.  Catie, with her usual eloquence and wit and style, has given us a sense of what it feels like to struggle with a book that’s more than half done; to confront that crucial scene that’s screaming to be written but isn’t quite ready to emerge.  I’ve been fighting with the opening pages of my own project, trying to overcome the inertia of the blank screen.  Misty has been enjoying the brilliant reviews her work has received, but she’s also dealing with the occasional bad review and the emotional cost even one bad critique can exact from a new writer.  And two days ago Faith wrote a wonderful post about the physical toll of fighting one’s way through a book.

The response to these posts has been great, and we’re glad to hear from people who tell us that they appreciate our honesty.  Professionals struggle with this stuff every day, and that can be a comforting thought for those who haven’t yet made that first sale, but who are already fighting the good fight.

But there’s got to be more, right?  We keep on posting all this stuff about how hard it is to write, but then we say, “But I love it.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”  Okay.  Why?  If the brochures all read, “Be a Writer!  Put Your Butt in the Chair!” we probably wouldn’t have too many writers out there.  So I guess the point of today’s post is (with apologies to Johnny Mercer) to accentuate the positive.

Or, put another way, what do I love about being a writer?

[Read more →]

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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I got nothin’.

Guys, I got nothin’ today. (Heh. I typed ‘tosay’ first, and that seems appropriate too.)

I’m tired. I’m stressed. I’m more or less over a head cold that turned me into 100% Zombie Brain over the weekend. It upset me, too, because I’d done 15K or so in 2 days and the 3rd morning I was absolutely empty, couldn’t hold a thought to save my life, much less write fiction, and I thought I’d done it to myself by writing too much. Being actually sick by that evening was a relief, because it meant I wasn’t broken.

But today I’m well, and I’m still avoiding work. That usually means the book’s broken, not me. Realistically, I know what the problem is: the scene as I’m writing it sets up a direct conflict between my two main characters, and that’d be *great*…except I need a whole bunch more scenes before they can actually meet up. I need one more thing to go hugely, significantly wrong so that one character doesn’t just *kill* the other when they show up. And the scene as I’m writing it doesn’t allow for that. It just doesn’t. So I’ve got to throw it away, or find some way to make it work, and realistically, it’ll be thrown away. Unless I can twist the end of it somehow, which…what the scene is doing is good stuff, it just can’t push to this direct confrontation this fast. It needs to be interrupted some…

…*lightbulb*…

Crap. I should’ve written this post six hours ago. It would’ve made me own up to the problem I’m facing and maybe made me come up with this possible solution. God, I hate this part.

And this, see, this really is the real life of a writer. A while ago I was going through something very like this on another book, and came back to crow over having fixed a big problem after, er, literally years of struggling, and someone said, “Wow, I just kind of thought that somebody who did this professionally would just /know/ how to fix problems. Not that you’d have to struggle and work through it and grind away until it finally worked, like I have to do.” This is also why blogs are helpful: whether it’s here or on my personal journal or talking to somebody IRL, actually laying the problem out in so many words and making myself really look at it often shakes something loose in my tiny, tiny brain.

All right. I have to go look at this material again, and see how much more justification for my interruption I need to write in. The beginning of the justification is in place. I might need as little as a couple more sentences to make it work. And if it works, I can finish this chapter. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m going to have to grit my teeth and throw the chapter out. That’d be the third one I’ve dumped this book, some 15K worth of useless words, which is 10% of the book’s projected length. Grr.

So much for having nothing, I guess.

Tags: C E Murphy by cemurphy
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BIC — the Magical Words

I am often asked by unpublished writers (referred to by some as wannabees, unpubs, prepubs, etc.) “What is the one thing that takes a writer from the stage of wanting to be published, to the stage of *being* published?  What is that magic one thing?”  And I think I’ve been seeing a trend here on magicalwords.net that leads me to an answer.  Besides and including, BIC, of course.  Butt in Chair is the most important part of crossing the “what makes a writer” void.  But in addition, there is this one other thing.

Catie has been lamenting it, here and on other blogs.  David and Misty and I have commiserated with her on it.  We’ve all been there.  We’ve all gone through it, and know full well that we will go through it again, on the next book.  That one single thing is tenacity.  That bulldog, got-my-teeth-in-it-and-won’t-let-go, stubborn, immoveable, obdurate determination to push on through to the end.  It is the same mind-set that long distance runners have, the one that forces to them push through the *wall* when they hit it, when every muscle, bone, breath and heartbeat is an agony.  Why do they push on?  Because they know they can.  They *know* it with every painful breath.  And they run.  And they reach the finish line.  It’s the same resolve that mountain climbers have to reach the summit, despite the snow, the howling winds, the frostbite, the pain, the shattered teeth.  They climb the mountain because it is there and because they can.

Please understand that I’m not saying such pig-headed tenacity is necessarily healthy or smart.  According to my hubby it’s stupidity.  Because of it, I went through 10 years of adrenal insufficiency, am trying to rebuild my decreased upper body strength, have reflux, an unhappy GI tract, and writer’s butt.  (Not that any wannabee wouldn’t happily share in all that to be published.  I’m just sayin’…)

That determination is what takes a writer from unpublished to published.  That determination and fortitude.  If you don’t find, develop, have, possess or create inside your own heart and spirit that tenacity to push on through the hard parts of a novel, you will never be a writer.  You will skitter on to the next project, then the one after that and never actually finish a novel.

So.  BIC.  It all comes back to BIC.  A stubborn, ferocious, vital BIC.

Faith.  Currently BIC. 

Tags: Faith Hunter by faithhunter
5 Comments »

Friday Fun: Joshua Palmatier!

Happy Friday, everyone! Please join me in welcoming Joshua Palmatier to the blog today! *wild applause*

Hey, everyone! I first want to thank everyone here at Magical Words for the guest blogging invite. Hopefully I’ll have something important to say. Or at least something of interest.

First, an introduction: My name is Joshua Palmatier and I’m a fantasy author, with three books currently out from DAW Books. All three are part of the Throne of Amenkor series. The first is called The Skewed Throne and introduces my main character, Varis, an orphan who’s barely surviving in the slums of Amenkor, but who gets trained by one of the city’s Seekers to become an assassin. She comes to despise her talents and then is given the ultimate mark: the Mistress, ruler of the city, who sits on the Skewed Throne. Her only obstacle is the Skewed Throne itself. It knows Varis is coming . . . and it’s insane.

Bwahahahahahahahaha!

I couldn’t resist the evil laugh. *grin* John Scalzi said I write about disturbed furniture . . . and he’s right. *sigh* But there are plenty of other things going on as well—an invading sea force! blue people! an inexplicable White Fire! and of course, death and destruction! Pretty much everyone who had to sum up my novels in one word used “gritty”. The cover for the third novel:

The Vacant Throne

gives you a pretty good vibe of what the series is all about. If you’d like to see more about the Throne of Amenkor series, including the two sequels The Cracked Throne and The Vacant Throne, check out my website at www.joshuapalmatier.com.

But enough about me and my books! I want to talk about something nearly every magical world needs, something completely non-controversial and guaranteed to create no waves: religion! Specifically, I’d like to talk about inventing a religion for you world. [Read more →]

Tags: C E Murphy, David B. Coe, Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, Special Guest Stars by Misty Massey
7 Comments »

You don’t like me?

I work with middle schoolers. Before that, I worked with preschoolers. Therefore, I have spent the last 20 years saying, “You don’t have to like everybody, and everybody doesn’t have to like you. You just have to be kind.” This has probably come out of my mouth at least three times a day in the two decades, so you’d think I’d have learned it myself.

About two weeks ago, Mad Kestrel received its first unpleasant review, and I let it break my heart. I knew good and well I shouldn’t, that a review is one person’s opinion and not a sweeping denunciation of my skills. I tried reading my good reviews. I attempted to focus on the book I’m finishing. I tried visiting other writers’ reviews (many of whom were savaged way worse than I!) I danced until I was breathless.

Nothing was working. Until I dropped in on Jim Hines’s Livejournal yesterday. He pointed out that a negative review indicates the book is at least being read by a wide swath of people. Other commenters also pointed out that low-starred reviews are often the ones that convince readers to buy.

It helped. A lot.  He gave me a reasonable viewpoint, a way to accept the review without torturing myself about it.

So what have you done to cure yourself of the “yucky review blues”? Or if you’re still waiting for the chance to suffer from them, what do you do to make any kind of blues go away?

And just a reminder… Joshua Palmatier, author of the Throne of Amenkor series, will be guest-blogging here tomorrow. Please come by and check out what wisdom he has to offer!

Tags: Misty Massey by Misty Massey
4 Comments »

A Writer’s Selection of Music for Writing

Looking back on my recent posts, I see that I’ve been Very Serious in every one of them, which really isn’t like me at all.  I guess this has been a Serious Time.  Lots of work, much of it not very much fun, sick kids, friends going through hard times.  Serious stuff.  But I want to do something fun this week, if for no other reason than because I need to, for my own well being.

So…..

I’ve posted before, elsewhere, about how important music is to my work.  When I’m writing a book, I have to have music on.  And not just any music.  I don’t do real well listening to rock or pop in any of its incarnations, mostly because I find that lyrics throw me off.  The last thing I need when I’m writing is someone else’s words kicking around in my head, repeating themselves in melodic, catchy little phrases. 

I also can’t listen to classical music.  Too static.  Our best friends here in town are both musicians and music professors.  They’re both into classical music and they’ve introduced Nancy and me to some wonderful performances.  I enjoy classical; Nancy and I went to hear the Nashville Symphony a couple of weeks ago and had a great time.  But when I’ve tried writing to classical, I’ve found it stultifying.  For me it’s like trying to do gymnastics in a tie and jacket.  It just doesn’t work.

So what does work?  Instrumental music with a strong improvisational element.  Specifically jazz and bluegrass.  I listen to a ton of both.  I find that listening to improvisation frees up my writing, helps me tap into a creative thread, almost as if I’m playing riffs right along with the musicians.  As I mentioned months ago in that previous post about music, when I used to play guitar more often than I do now I did a lot of instrumental soloing, and the feeling I get from writing on a good day is very much the same as I used to get from playing.  I have the sense that I’m in sync with a creative process that’s larger than just me.  And the music I listen to helps that along.

I know that some other writers are pretty picky about the music they listen to when writing, and that others feel they can’t have any music going at all.  I’d like to hear what you all listen to when you write, if anything.

But first, here are my top ten favorite discs to write to (in no particular order):

[Read more →]

Tags: David B. Coe by DavidBCoe
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