Mid-Year Resolutions
August already! I don’t know about you, but I feel like 2011 is whizzing by, and I’ve not done a damn thing on my To Do list.
But it’s not too late! There are still four months left, and though four months isn’t a lot of time, it’s still enough to end the year with some significant changes under your belt.
At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Here are my five mid-year resolutions:
I will relax more in my down time.
After writing this post, I took a big long look at my work/life habits and realized they probably weren’t all that healthy in the long run. I’m still trying to find that work/life balance, but allocating only a certain amount of hours per week to work (and taking weekends off) has helped a lot. The next step: not feeling so freaking guilty when I’m doing something fun.
I will take on new projects.
Last week, I got a call from an old friend who wanted to collaborate on a graphic novel project for a publisher I won’t mention in case I jinx it. I’ve always loved comics, and it’s been on the back of my mind to do one for years, but I’ve always put it off because the time wasn’t right. There’s also a genre I’ve been ogling for a while, but have been apprehensive about delving into. But the time for hesitation is over. I want to dive into both of these ponds by the end of the year. The worst that can happen is I sink like a stone, right?
I will think before I speak.
My mouth gets me into so much trouble. Maybe not bad trouble, like Lindsay Lohan’s booze bracelet, but let’s face it, when I get riled up, you have to watch where you step for all the verbal diarrhea. Just because I was born without a filter on my tongue doesn’t mean I can’t install one in my old age.
I will take better care of myself.
So it turns out half-pint and I have something in common:
We both have broken backs!
And neither of us knew it!
But unlike half-pint, I won’t have to have surgery for mine (yet). I just have to wear a ridiculously ugly back brace for six weeks and sit on a black coccyx wedge.
(Another obvious difference would be that one of us is loaded with gratuitous boobage…
…and the other…well…isn’t.)
I will go back to storytelling (and forget all that other junk).
You probably know the story by now, about how I met some not nice people and let them screw up my mojo. (If not, you can read about it here, here, and here.) What made the experience so damaging is that it’s so easy to get things twisted, and not as easy to unravel them later. My friend Bill, a lawyer and Star Wars aficionado, says this is because the key to a good jedi mind trick is establishing doubt, and I tend to believe him, because in hindsight, that was totally Jenah’s game all along, and boy did it work.
The fact is, I’ll probably never be good at marketing or networking or branding or any of that other stuff Jenah was so insistent upon. That’s not who I am. But when I put my mind (and my heart) to it, I can tell one helluva story. Maybe that’s enough, maybe not. But if I had to choose between writing a book people read but never purchased, or a book that people bought but never read, I’d choose the former.
So those are my five mid-year resolutions. Anyone else want to chime in with theirs?
When A Book Is Not What It Says It Is
Back before I knew anything about publishing –not that I know all that much now – I used to believe the author wrote the copy on the book jackets. It’s their book, after all, and who knows the story better than they do?
Then I found out otherwise. Some of them do, most of them don’t. The sound you hear is my illusions shattering, along with my patience.
You see, I think I’m on my fifth book of the summer where the summary doesn’t match the plot. I picked up the book on the basis of the blurb – wow, that sounds good!- and halfway through the book I’m still waiting for the promised story to begin. Where is it? Who kidnapped the story on the back cover and replaced it with this sorry substitute?
First scold is for the authors who do write their own. You have no excuse for delivering a book that is widely different and substantially less than what you offered for sale. One author who has widely claimed to write her own blurbs explained the difference as “this is a suggestion what might happen”. What? That’s ridiculous. Dear Said Author, if you wonder why your sales are tanking, this could be one of the reasons. Your fans are tired of being offered an exciting premise, only to end up with a lackluster story. Fool me once …
Second scold: the books with blurbs written by others than the authors. I always imagine its some overworked and underpaid soul in the publishing industry who cranks out these snippets meant to whet the appetite. I think the problem could be two things.
1. This person has to do a huge quota of these and is burned out on appetizers. He or he has time to read only the first chapter and take it from there. Thus, the book starts well but then goes off the map. To them, I say, you poor thing, you might want to look for another job before you get fired.
2. This person is so tired of reading the same book over and over that they feel the need to spice up the day by making the jacket copy a lot more exciting than the story. To them, I say, why aren’t you writing your own books? You have the imagination for it.
You are what you read
In 2005, I asked the author of my then-favorite book series one simple question: “What do you like to read?”
“Oh, I don’t have to read anymore,” she told me. “There’s no time. I don’t read when I’m writing, and I’m always writing.”
I let the words sink in slowly, not sure what to make of them. Shock came first, then disappointment. And finally, confusion. A writer who doesn’t read? It didn’t make any sense.
One of the first bits of good advice I was ever given was to read everything. Read outside your genre. Read nonfiction. Read transcripts of television shows. Read the newspaper. Read the back of the cereal box in the morning. Read your shampoo bottle in the shower. Read. Read, read, read, read, read.
Read.
And yet, there she was, a pint-sized bestseller, laughing off my question as if it were the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. A writer who reads? Ha! What an amateur!
To be honest, I kind of feel sorry for this author. My mother forced me to take piano lessons when I was a kid, and I hated it. I hated practicing. I hated going for the lesson. I hated the recitals. I hated everything about it. Even when she started paying me per minute to practice and play, it did little to entice me to care. It wasn’t long before even the money wasn’t enough anymore, and I hate to think that this author is in that same place, going through the motions, just to collect a paycheck. What an unsatisfying career that must be. What an unsatisfying life that must be.
And how foolish she was to think her readers wouldn’t notice.
Trust me on this: readers notice. Readers notice everything.
Readers know what TV shows you watch. They know what music you listen to. They know your hopes, your fears, and sometimes even the brand of soap you use. They know if you’re happy, or if you’re sad, or if you’re rushing to make that deadline looming over the horizon. They know if you read only romance, or if you branch out a bit. They know if you have pets, and if you’re a dog person or a cat person, or both. They know if you believe the story you’re telling, if you feel it in your gut, or if you’re struggling to make sense of the whole thing. They know, because you tell them…in your writing.
Characters and stories aren’t plucked from thin air. They come from within. They’re experiences and emotions, personified. And if the only story you have inside you to tell is that reading books is a chore, then your book is going to be one helluva chore to read. No eight-figure advance nor outrageous marketing budget can change that.
Just something to think about.
