Okay, that title’s probably a more provocative title that necessary. What can I say, though…it sounds dirty and since my brain is kinda cluttered today, it’s appropriate enough for the post.

What makes a good story good? Who do you write for? Where do you get your ideas?

These are all questions I get asked a lot, as an author. Simple questions, really. And they can be answered with nice, quotable sound-bytes, humor, or positive and encouraging expression. But they deserve to be answered with something more, at least when a writer asks herself these questions. They also need to be asked and answered repeatedly. Not doing so is an easy way for a writer to get sidetracked by outside influences…like rerun marathons of “Xena: Warrior Princess” or reading shoujo manga until your eyes bleed. But making the time and effort, freeing up the brain cells to really think about the answers, can mean an evolutionary growth spurt as a writer.
Around three-quarters of the way through a story, it’s not unknown for me to hit a bad patch. Much like “transition” is in childbirth–those last three centimeters between contractions and pushing, it’s the darkest dark right before the dawn. I lose track of the momentum I had in the first quarter of the book and the still-emerging discovery that got me through the halfway point, and end up sitting in front of my WIP, scratching my head, and going, “WTF was I thinking?”

Immediately the doubts and bad habits start coming out. I should change the heroine into the current incarnation of an archetype that’s popular (plucky wacko, kickass babe with a destiny, fashion-obsessed socialite, etc.). I should put the plot in a Yoga class so it can bend and twist around some element that some editor in some publishing house thinks is the Next Big Thing or a Perennial Hit (bride-baby-cowboy-etc.). Or I have to stop and put in yards and yards of exposition and backstory. Rambling tangents are the order of the day–anything to avoid the main story. It’s then that I know I’ve somehow lost the focus of the story, whether it’s from time passing, other elements of Life Intruding (TM), or something completely off-the-wall (like the fact that I recently discovered that having a B-vitamin deficiency makes me forget things that I shouldn’t forget).

I know from talking to other writers that I’m not alone in this. Quite a few of us seem to hit that crisis in confidence somewhere between the time we start noodling on a story and right around the time when we’re too invested in it to just put it aside. It’s then that asking hard questions comes in handy. Questions about the basics of the craft–not just “WTF was I thinking when I plotted a pitstop on a planet of sentient panda bears?” but the questions that ask, “Why am I doing this again, when I could be making a lot more, a lot easier doing something simple, like particle physics?”

The answer to this kind of question often triggers something about the themes in my stories–not just the one I’m working on, but the underscoring themes through all of the stuff I write. It reminds me of why I write and what I’m trying to express through story. Having that reminder of why we do what we do sets me back on track, and often prompts me to a deeper understanding of a specific story. The questions are still hard to ask, though, when I can’t accept a pat answer from myself. But I do it because I love what I do. If I remember that, I can get over any hump, any day.

Over at the SEx blog, I started something I feel compelled to continue. Unlike everyone else, who’s ready to share all the great holiday memories, and how much they love the holidays, I’m providing a haven for Grinches everywhere. There are all sorts of reasons to suffer through the holidays, and if you’ve ever felt like giving someone an eggnog enema when they tell you to have a great holiday, I’m your gal.

Seasonal greetings themselves have become a battleground. I have heard Ann Coulter being quoted as saying she enjoys wishing people a Merry Christmas because it’s like saying a little “Fuck you” to people who don’t celebrate Christmas. Now I have several reasons to loathe Ann Coulter besides this one, but since it’s seasonally appropriate, it’s a great reason to not be able to stand her for the months of October, November, and December. Coulter’s reasoning makes me think of a dorm-mate I had in college, whose deep West Virginia accent (although since we were attending West Virginia University at the time, I was the one with the accent) made her holiday greeting of choice sound like “Merry Kiss-my-ass,” which I loved and promptly stole from her. So Jessie, wherever you are, bottoms up for that one. But apparently, not wishing someone a Merry Kiss-my-ass means that you’re a terrorist. Bill O’Reilly even claims there’s a War on Christmas (TM).

When was the last time Bill O’Reilly went to a mall? Hell yeah, there’s a War on Christmas (TM). It’s on all the days leading up to Christmas, too, starting from Black Friday. The battlefields are in malls and shopping centers, and being waged by guerrilla troops, who cruise slowly up and down the rows of parked cars, stalking shoppers laden with bags and going the appropriate direction away from the center of commerce.

These automotive vultures drift in and out of the normal shopping traffic, turn signals flickering madly and incessantly as they creep by, hoping for the Big Score–the first parking space after the handicapped spaces. As elusive as the dream of the perfect orgasm, they nevertheless pursue it, edging their way in front of the people who are just trying to get through the damn parking lot to the spaces way out in BuFu just so we can engage in a simple exercise of basic provisioning (I needed a new bra, and JCPenney has those nice old ladies who will measure you). Yet even in BuFuland, the slots are scarce and the vultures are circling. I spotted a slot and headed for it, only to be stalled by a woman who chose to shake her pop-up stroller out in the middle of the lane. Ordinarily, I don’t feel much irritation at these folk–I tied my children to my torso when malling when they were light enough and small enough to stay put–now I make them walk–so I have sympathy with someone who needs to wrangle kids in the Toylands of Consumption. But you can bet I went into combat mode when the woman finally got kit and caboodle situated only to stop in her tracks and wave ahead the person coming from the opposite direction, who swung conveniently and tidily into the spot I’d been eyeing, and lurking, and waiting patiently to access many long moments ago.

It was then I decided that The Girls would have to be happy with sports bras and swinging free like Tarzan for another few weeks. I gunned the gas and with a cheery wave, mouthed a hearty and very clear, “Fuck you” to the couple getting out of the car.

It’s just my little coded way of saying, “Merry Christmas.”

Well…it’s December 1st. I’m no longer chained to my NaNo WIP, and no longer on the hook for 50,000 words in 30 days.

Bet you’re wondering how I did? Ahh…I didn’t think so. But I’ll tell ya anyway. Last night, around midnight, I clocked in at 30,077 words. Considerably less than I hoped for, but hella more than I expected. Having a week of null-computer time cut me deeply–not having my familiar setup made me just a little compulsively nutty. Adding a 14-hr round trip roadtrip over Thanksgiving probably didn’t help, either. I took my laptop, thinking (somewhat foolishly) that family time with the kids in tow meant I could sneak away and get some work done. I should have known that Mr. Xandra is consummately better at sneaking away from family than I am. Of course, he did most of the driving, so I could hardly begrudge him a nap. I may be mean, but I’m not totally heartless.

But every year I participate in NaNoWriMo (and this will make my fourth year now), I learn something new about my writing process. NaNos, BIAWs (Book In A Week, with no word count goal, simply a week where every waking moment you can spare is spent writing new materials), goal-setting challenges (a big shout-out to my local RWA chapter, which runs a goals list that’s incredibly supportive and has come in very handy for me–our list mistress, Jennette Powell, deserves a huge cheer because she has a gift for knowing when to push and the right thing to say to encourage us to keep forging ahead), they all teach me just a little more about my writing process and its constant evolution. Last year’s NaNo taught me that I could make serious progress in world building if I just let my imagination go and not worry about whether or not it fit into the story. As a result, I have a story with a rich world and even if much of the material never makes it into the finished product, it’s still there, and making the world more real to me, and hopefully more real to the readers as well. This year, I learned something that I suspected prior to November’s efforts–if I don’t have a beginning, I’m not going anywhere. I spent about 20,000 words in set-up. It was useful–most of it, anyway, as it has given me possible glimpses into the lives of the characters prior to the inciting incident. But it took me about 23,000 words to come up with a convincing beginning to the story. I got so sick of trying to push my characters together that once I got an inciting incident (and it by no means is a great one, but that’s what this POS…er, Discovery draft–is), I jumped ahead and had to work on something else. The ending. From the ending, I finally figured out what the story should be. So now I can get the characters into a story that will fit them, and fit the ending I’ve written for them.

But not, I think, today. It’s funny, but the WIP I’d been working on up until then (my pet WIP), I’d just started getting into the next level with it when NaNo came up and I had to put it aside (the rules of NaNo say that you have to start on something new and try to write through to the end of the story, the idea being that you have a 50,000 word story framework that you can edit and revise at a later date). Periodically during the month, I’ve had the strongest urges to get this WIP going again, but had to control them in favor of building up word count for the NaNo. Free of that, I can now return to my blond hunk of a telepath who can read the minds of women everywhere–their most secret desires, their most passionate longings…

Okay, so what am I still doing here?

I’m a big sucker for goalsetting. Sometimes I’m an addict–I set so many goals and micromanage them that I don’t actually get anything done. However, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is different. There’s such energy–such knowledge that about 70,000 other people are doing the same damn thing as you–that you just can’t help getting caught up in the crazy.

Being a writer is a lonely business, by and large.  If you are lucky enough to write full-time, your life consists of long stretches of solitary effort, populated by nothing more than the voices in your head and a persistent low-grade carpal tunnel ache.  And not that I don’t think it’s the best damn job in the world, but there are times when the presence of friends means more than words can express.

This week was one of those times.

I had surgery (never something you want to do by your lonesome) on Tuesday.  I’ll spare the gory details, but suffice it to say that Percocet is my best friend, and trying to do anything without your abdominal muscles is damn near impossible.  Add to that two small and very physically affectionate rugrats who drag their poor mother through a very active lifestyle and things get ugly.  About as ugly as all the bruising on my abdomen.

But if you’re damn lucky like me, you have a posse of angels who swoop in to your rescue.  Mr. Xandra hauled my poor, wounded carcass home and tucked me into bed to recuperate, and no sooner did he get me situated than my homegirls came to the rescue.  My son had rides to school and afternoon adventures that kept him active and occupied (and less prone to worrying about Mommy or forgetting that he couldn’t head-butt me with affection as is the norm around here).  My daughter found herself with new toys to keep her occupied.  The Girls brought me dinners and pie (pie!  pie rules!) and not a day went by without at least two calls to check and see if I needed anything from the store, or needed some company to help move around.

My mother-in-law (a voracious reader herself, and the woman who kept my kids in clean laundry, bless her) witnessed this, and asked me if I knew how much of a gift I had in these women.  I answered her truthfully - from the start of my friendships with them, there has been a genuine bond between us that has been unexpected, but not in the least unwelcome.  We are five very different women, and we’re constantly amazed at how our diverse backgrounds led us to form such a wonderful circle.  And we’re very much aware at how we really found something special.

You know who you are, ladies. But I wonder if you know how special you are to me. Even though words are my stock in trade, I have a hard time finding the right ones that can express how powerfully blessed I feel because of your friendship. If you were a bra, you’d be sold in an exclusive boutique for more money than a car, and you’d be the kind of bra a girl would wear on the outside, because she needs to share with the world how great that bra is. Jane Russell would be green with envy at the girl who wore that kinda bra.

Yeah, I know–that was demented. But heartfelt. I love you guys.

Something beautiful happens to a book when it gets a cover. Cover art is often the last thing on a book’s production cycle, and if not the very last, then at least it becomes the point of critical mass, where a book goes from the potential of a manuscript to the reality of a book.

Covers attract readers, and entice them to pick up (click on) the book to learn more. No savvy reader judges a book solely by its cover, as the old adage goes, but the cover sure does play a part, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

When I was a teenager, enamored of the teenage romances (back in the dinosaur age the first time the YA market was hot), I used to stare endlessly at the covers of the books I was reading. I read so fast that my mother encouraged me to slow down and enjoy the story (probably so she wouldn’t have to keep buying me new ones so fast!). I’d slow myself down by taking frequent “cover staring” breaks. I’ll never forget the book whose cover didn’t match the inside. It was about a girl who was stranded in a haunted house with her boyfriend and his mother, and her quest to solve the mystery of the ghost girl’s murder. In the book, the heroine had dark hair and the ghost was blonde, but on the cover, the model in the diaphanous robes surrounded by mist (supposed to be the ghost) had dark hair, while the girl dressed in the modern clothes was a blonde.

I don’t remember the title or author of that book, but I do remember the error on the cover, and how angry it made me. Of course, back then, everything made me angry, but having a cover that didn’t fit the story was somehow upsetting enough to stick in my mind long after the lava of teen angst has cooled in my veins (didja like that imagery?).

One thing that has really, truly impressed me about Liquid Silver (and was a deciding factor in my choice to submit to them in the first place) was the classy professionalism of their covers. That’s why I’m pleased to announce the cover of the anthology featuring my second story with them is ready to roll.  This beautiful cover brought to you by April Martinez, who is an art goddess.

Today I wrote a thousand words.

That I have to trash. Somehow, they turned into the Flashback From Hell, that my heroine can’t even have because she’s lost her memory. They were supposed to be a dream, but people don’t dream in coherency, and it aggravates me to read books where people dream so coherently you can’t tell it’s not an actual scene.

But today’s momentousness (the spawn starting school again, the second’s naptime coinciding with first’s school time, and over an hour’s worth of quiet, focused writing time) produced a flashback.

A friggin’ flashback!

Maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. I mean, it hasn’t even been a week that I’ve had these little hour-long chunks of time in the middle of the day to write. Maybe I have to get back into it, and stop feeling all giddy and weird about having an hour to think grownup thoughts.

Or maybe I should take my own advice. I have these periods where I think, “ZOMG, everything I write is crap!” Usually, I’m wrong–only 95% of it turns out to be crap, but the rest can be salvaged to serve as kickass inspiration for revisions. NaNoWriMo in November’s biggest message is to “turn off your internal editor” and I thought, after numerous BIAWs and several NaNos that I’d finally figured out how to do that. But writing is a process, and it’s easy to slip back into editing habits I thought I’d busted.

Autumn has always carried with it much more of a “New Year” feel to me than the calendar date.  Dating back to schoolwork and the refreshing cool air blowing in with shorter days and a break from the heat, fall has always signaled the start of new beginnings for me.  My religious tradition happens to feel the same way–first week of August is our New Year, and is a time for new beginnings, expunging the old, and approaching the new with fresh eyes and fresh enthusiasm.

It’s now taken on something of a bittersweet turn.  Next week, Firstborn starts his preschool five days a week.  For some reason, the two- and three- day a week sessions didn’t really count in my mind.  But now, he’ll have school every day of the week, and it won’t stop until he’s graduated.  Most of me can’t wait–he’s a bright kid and really loves his school and misses his friends.  I don’t have the energy to occupy him, and don’t want him growing up a vidiot sacked out in front of the TV.  He’s more than ready for school to start.

But that small part of me is aching unexpectedly, and it didn’t start until today (honestly, you’d think I’d be less late and more willing to take advantage of our time together).  But it just occurred to me that there’ll be no more “free day” weekdays, no more lunches with Daddy (unless they’re really early, or on one of those “no school” days).  No more “hey let’s hit the Children’s Museum today” days.  And suddenly, I’m not quite so eager to send him off.  So what if he’s bored out of his skull and climbing the walls.  At least then we could theoretically just jump in the dragon wagon and go somewhere fun.

This is the same small part that feels guilty the rare times when I have to get a babysitter for a doctor’s appointment, or is secretly glad when they’re both upstairs playing quietly (but not so silent that I start to get suspicious) and giving me a few minutes to steal away to read email or write out a few sentences.  Now it’s saying I should have been full-time engaged, playing with them constantly, the big playmate instead of the mom.  Those stupid refrigerator magnets with Erma Bombeck-isms saying you should play more and clean less and all that yadda are haunting me now (even though I’ve got the whole “clean less” part down pretty good already).

I know in theory I’ll get over this, and if I don’t, too bad, because time and tide wait for no one, but still…it’s a bittersweet kinda thing.  Heavens help me next year, when actual kindergarten starts and I have to watch him ride away on a bus.  Gotta stop now, before I get too emo and have to call the waahmbulance.

But I’m having a hell of a time with this latest WIP. I seem to be obsessed with writing the boring parts, and as Elmore Leonard says, don’t write the boring parts. I feel as if my entire writing life consists of the boring parts right now.

Figuring out where a story is going wrong is one of the hardest parts of a writer’s life. You’re too close to the story to really have a good idea where it’s going pear-shaped, but you’re also the one who knows it best, and oftentimes the only one who knows how far to back out of it and which new direction to push.

I think it comes back to my beginnings. I have to have a good beginning, or if not a completely good beginning, a decent starting point. If I don’t have that, I’m just farting around with characters. Right now, that’s exactly what I’m doing.  My heroine hasn’t yet found a point where she’s willing to give the hero a chance (or consider him to be more than something to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe), and my hero hasn’t yet given me the real reason he isn’t trying to get as far away from her as possible, as fast as possible.  I know it will come, somehow.  The Girls In The Basement will send up the material I need to figure it out.  It’s just a question of when and in what form it will be.

So here’s to hoping that this blog post will be the expunging of a particularly full-bodied whine and its associated cheese, thus clearing the way for some quality writing time in the near future.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I return from a vacation, I need another damn vacation to recover from the first one! Maybe it’s because, being an active person who’s married to another active person and who bore two active sprouts who don’t know the meaning of “downtime,” we don’t seem to be able to understand the concept of a truly relaxing vacation. Case in point, this year and every year, when most sane individuals would be taking a relaxing holiday on some beach somewhere, or maybe a hot-tub equipped cabin, a cruise ship, or a luxury hotel, we go to War.

No, not real war. I’m more than aware that Real War is No Fun, and my heart goes out to all those who are separated from their loved ones due to armed conflict. The war we attend is a medieval recreation event known as the Pennsic War. This year was Pennsic XXXV. That’s right. Somebody has been doing this shindig for thirty-five years.

Now, any summer event with that many Roman Numerals after it ain’t no little get-together. We traveled to Western Pennsylvania with not one, not two, but twelve thousand like-minded individuals, set up camp (some of us in medieval period tents and pavilions that could pass for circus tents), put on steel armor and many-layered (read hot) period garb in the middle of August, and beat the living shit out of each other with rattan weapons in melee combat.

And we call it fun.

Hell, who wouldn’t? Pretending to be a medieval lord or lady, swanking around in long skirts (or short kilts if you’re a gent), strapping on a belt with a knife and not having anyone think twice about it, and (theoretically) adhering to the tenets of chivalry (although when that gorgeous metallic-gold trim goes on sale, all bets are off) is a manner of Playing Pretend that takes us all back to dress-up and age six. And having your SO tuck a strip of something you made into his belt and promise to fight for your honor, whether it’s a cross-stitch doodad or a piece of your hair band, and whether or not he actually defeats his opponent–there’s something just that shivery about it, even if it is pretend and you’ve been together for years already.

This year, we added to the fun by taking a short vacation from the Middle Ages to attend GenCon, which is the biggest gaming convention (I am that kind of n3rd, and damn proud of it. I play Dungeons and Dragons, and all your g33ky brothers’ friends only wish they could meet a chick like me) .

Now, I met Mr. Xandra through RPG gaming, so it always holds fond memories for me. All-night dice marathons fueled by Doritos and Cokes, Mighty Moose pizza (the only place that would deliver after three AM), and the zombified shuffle through the next day’s classes with a mind still in Superhero mode (or Elementalist Mage mode, or Cyberpunk Hacker mode) wondering what next week’s adventures would bring and if we could outsmart the GM’s evil plots to kill us off with NPCs. GenCon is where you can, if you schedule it right, just bury yourself in a four-day orgy of gaming until you’re hoarse and the corners of your dice have all worn down so far they might as well be marbles. But more than that, the energy from GenCon comes from what gaming is at its heart. It’s storytelling.

Not only storytelling, but collaborative, cooperative storytelling. A group of people, each working for a common goal of a really ripping tale of adventure, action, excitement, even tragedy. Fantastic worlds populated by characters who really are Just That Good.

So a vacation playing pretend and telling stories.  Maybe it isn’t relaxing, or isn’t exotic, or isn’t at all stress-free, but perhaps it’s the perfect vacation for a writer who loves to tell stories.