Lynn Raye Harris

There comes a point, with every book, when you have to know when to quit. Not quit the book, but quit fixing the book. Quit trying to make it fit an ever-changing vision. When is that point?

Damn if I know. This is where I am today, sitting here after a painful day of trying to revise (the contest winner, no less) and wondering if I’ve totally gone off the mark. Do I have enough suspense? Does the dead body show up too late? Is the threat to the characters too simple? Not scary enough? Is this book category or single title? Is it too dark for category and not dark enough for S/T?

Truthfully, I do want to quit the book. I want to shove it in a drawer (or a computer file) and forget about it for the next several months. Can’t do it, though. It hasn’t seen the light of day, other than a couple of contests. I have a request for it, but I can’t seem to let it go, can’t seem to feel it’s right enough to send out.

I have other stories in progress, so I’m not just working on this one. But I can’t see this one anymore. I can’t discern the pluses and minuses. It’s all bad or it’s all good. I can’t see shades of gray.

So it’s the end of the day and I’m tired. I haven’t even thought about dinner (thank heavens for that new grocery store, right?). The hubby is on the couch, the cats are bugging me, and it’s raining. Hard. Calgon, take me away….

Do you ever reach the stage where you can’t see the book anymore? Where it’s just a big pile of rubbish you need to sort out? What do you do?

Not, however, in that order. Where would the drama be in that?

The not so good: got contest scores back this week that were polar opposites to say the least. One judge hated me, one loved me, and if I’d only had 5 more points difference, my entry would have went for a rejudge. Ah well.

The downright irritating: I redesigned my website. It’s lovely, I think. But you’re going to have to trust me on that because my webhost is arguing with my OS. The files are there, I can see them, but they are in a subdirectory instead of a main directory and I therefore have NO index file. No index file means no webpage, basically. I don’t want to move my webhosting. It’s a pain. And I don’t want to reload the old pages (they still exist on my Windows notebook, so all is not lost). I want my new pages to work! Waaaahhh!

The good: I got a call last night that my entry won the 2007 Gotcha Contest in the Single Title Romantic Suspense category! Yay!!! News like that makes the pain of struggling through revisions disappear for a while. It’s validation, for now. Tomorrow, the same book could get shot down again. But I’m going to enjoy this little high while it lasts.

Update: The new website is up here. There are a couple of issues I haven’t fixed yet, but I’m working on it. Finally, however, it can be viewed. No idea what it looks like in Internet Explorer, so if it looks funny, let me know.

A new Publix opened yesterday about half a mile from my house. Talk about happy! The closest grocery store was approx. 5 miles away before. Not far, but when you just want to dash out and grab something you forgot for the recipe you’re making, it’s a bit of a pain to drive across town.

So what’s the secret I have to confess? *sigh* I grow science experiments in my refrigerator. Not the pretty truth, but there it is. I tend to forget what’s in there, and when things get shoved to the back, they just disappear off my radar screen. I also buy things I intend to use, but somehow I forget I bought them and they go bad waiting for me to remember they’re there.

Awful, huh? I am a neat person, I keep a clean house, I wear clean laundry, I make the bed every day. But I can’t manage to throw out food before it sprouts green fuzz. Or, worse, liquifies (hello veggies in the drawer).

It’s time for a fridge party. The kind where I get the trash can and reach to the back of the fridge, wondering what manner of odd thing I’ll pull out. And then I can go to the new Publix and buy new things. And hopefully remember they are inside the gleaming stainless box.

Now, totally off topic, but over at the Writing Playground yesterday, they had three fabulous and successful writers talk about their new paranormal anthology. What cropped up in the comments, however, was a discussion about process and self-doubt. Fabulous advice from Roxanne St. Clair, Allison Brennan, and Karin Tabke! Go read this post and the comments that follow.

Do you have any ugly secrets you’d like to confess? Or have you gotten any fabulous writing advice you want to share? Am I alone in my fridge neglect, or have you made green fuzz too?

Well, I finally got off my posterior and whipped my office into shape. It still needs some things, like a new filing cabinet, and I need to go through some stuff, but it’s once again a welcoming space in which to sit at my desk and work. For months, I’ve been on the couch with my MacBook, while in my office languished a perfectly good iMac (with a much larger screen, duh).

We hung curtains, and swapped out an antique daybed for a couple of chairs. The daybed is gorgeous, but it’s going to require a special mattress and I just haven’t gotten around to locating one yet (3/4 size, in fact). My idea was to set it up with lots of pillows and make it a cozy place to sit and read (or nap). Maybe later. For now, it’s nice to have chairs with a good lamp and a couple of pillows. If hubby wants to play guitar while I write, he can. If I want to read while he surfs, I can. Not that we don’t have other rooms in the house, but it’s nice to be together.

Is a welcoming creative space necessary? Probably not. In On Writing, Stephen King tells of buying a huge oak desk that dominated his office. Ultimately, he realized the desk was merely an extension of ego and served no purpose. So he downsized and made his space into something where his family could come and be with him. And then, when he was nearly killed by a distracted driver, he once again found himself writing in a small space reminiscent of the laundry room he’d written in before he made a lot of money.

So no, probably all you need to write is a private space somewhere and an active imagination. I kid myself with my desire for order and pretty curtains, but hey, it works for me and makes me feel professional. I’ve written at Starbucks, where all you need is a small table and an iPod, and I’ve written in bed. But I really like sitting at my desk. Thankfully, I can do that again without the clutter and odd desk placement to distract me (yes, this is the third position my desk has been in, the logical one from the start, but one I stubbornly resisted — and it’s perfect).

(For a fun look at writer spaces, click here. Scroll down and click on the pics.)

What’s your creative space like? Do you like order, or does it matter?

It sneaks up on you at the least expected times. You’re working on revisions, or maybe writing something fresh, and then all of a sudden you get this crushing feeling. In other words, you get overwhelmed by the thought of all you have yet to do. As I revise, every little choice I make — whether to cut a scene or add a scene — has a ripple effect down the line. And that ripple effect is starting to scare me.

At moments like this, I take a step back and try to think my way through the problem. I also make sure I have a separate copy of the document as it is now before I start making those changes. What if I decide the changes aren’t working and I want the original back? I never do, but at least I’m comforted by the thought I can go back.

I was searching for images that suggested overwhelm when I came across an article that, while not about writing, is absolutely spot on if you think of it in terms of your writing business. Go read The Five Things in Your Home That Can Kill Your Home Business and see what you think.

The guy talks about Time Termites, which I love. There are Busy Bugs, Doubt Daubers, and Clutter Leeches, among others. Awesome terms and really puts into perspective what happens as you try to run a business from your home (which is pretty much where we all write).

I know these things all get me at one time or another. Time Termites are the worst, though the others have been known to rear their ugly heads as well. Like Busy Bugs: it’s much easier to pretend to be busy, than to really be busy doing the hard work the business requires.

Knowing is the first step in conquering, so I’m being honest with myself and trying to shove overwhelm (and all that comes with it) back into the closet where it belongs.

Are you being invaded by the Time Termites or Doubt Daubers? Are the Busy Bugs misdirecting you? Did Clutter Leeches attack your desk? Is overwhelm perching on your shoulder?

I said I was done with the Cassie Edwards portion of this issue, and I am. But over at Dear Author, Janet raises the question about what is and is not plagiarism. It’s an interesting question, and one I don’t mind thinking about (the comment thread is also good because the hairy specter of fan fiction gets raised, though it doesn’t derail the essential issue). Because just yesterday, as I’m working on revisions, I wrote this line: If only there were world enough and time.

And then, because I’m hyper-sensitive to the issue now, I added this: as the poem said. Which seems clunky, but dammit, world enough and time is a phrase from someone else’s work. Simply a phrase, but a pretty famous one (not so famous as to be immediately recognizable to all, however, which is where my dilemma stems). From the 17th century, no less, so definitely out of copyright. Some folks have intimated that using sources out of copyright isn’t plagiarism, but I think all the English majors (at the very least) who read my line will instantly know where it came from. Maybe they’d get that I know it’s a reference. Maybe they’d think I was cribbing.

Truthfully, the line probably won’t stay, because the qualifier is going to bug me to no end and I’ll decide it isn’t worth it in the end. Here are the first few lines from the original, btw:

HAD we but world enough, and time / This coyness, Lady, were no crime / We would sit down and think which way / To walk and pass our long love’s day. (Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.)

I Googled “world enough and time” and Marvell came up instantly. It’s four little words, but put together in such a way as to be recognizable. OTOH, in the comment thread to the post up above, people discuss pop culture phrases such as “Here’s Johnny!” and “the usual suspects.” What is fair use and what constitutes plagiarism?

Probably, my use of the phrase isn’t plagiarism and I can leave off the qualifier. It’s a phrase that’s moved into the lexicon, just like “we’re not in Kansas anymore” and “something’s rotten in Denmark” (that last being paraphrased, but recognizable nonetheless) and “sea change.” Probably, because those phrases are so recognizable, everyone knows you aren’t plagiarizing but are instead either paying homage or simply using words and phrases that people use in real life because they ARE so recognizable.

But still I second guess my choices. *sigh*

Have you had any second thoughts when you write something lately? If you write historicals, have you gone running to your research books to make sure you haven’t inadvertently lifted whole phrases? Have you deleted, reworded, or added qualifiers to protect yourself?

Okay, I’m done with the Cassie Edwards thing. See the previous post. There’s plenty of talking going on about it, and I am horrified she’s alleged to have stolen passages from a Pulitzer prize-winning book, but I’m not about to attack her personally. She messed up, she should apologize, but why she did it and why she thinks it’s defensible, I’m not about to try and figure out.

Instead, how about some links? My CP always gives fantastic links to timely writer stuff, but I’m just going to trot out some I’ve come across lately that I enjoy. How about layering? Here’s a blog post from Gena Showalter, detailing how she first writes a scene and then how she fleshes it out. I learn a lot from these kinds of examples, so I appreciated this a lot.

Julie Leto also has a fantastic article about layering on her website that I love to read.

Here’s a post about pace from debut author Jordan Dane. She also has a great one about writing a synopsis and one on the 9-act structure. Surf the site.

Something we talked about at my HOD meeting this weekend: Show Me the Money.

An important link for all the contest judges can be found here. I’m judging a couple of contests now, and I refer back to this from time to time. I don’t want to hurt a writer’s feelings, but I want to tell them if I think something should be worked on some more.

If you’re writing romantic suspense, check out The Lab. Awesome site.

Any links you’d like to share? Any you refer back to time and again?

I started following this story about Cassie Edwards’s copying a couple of days ago, and I’m still shocked, dismayed, and yeah, even sympathetic to what she may be going through. No, I absolutely do NOT condone plagiarism. But I can’t help but wonder what she’s feeling right now and feel kind of sorry for her. I doubt she copied reference works maliciously, but the fact remains that she copied them almost word for word. And now she’s got Nora Roberts pissed off.

I’ve had my own brush with plagiarism. In college, a fellow student copied my A paper and turned it in as his own. He only got caught because I got suspicious when the professor said the same things to this student, in front of the class, that he’d said to me two weeks before. When I brought the matter up to the prof, he compared the papers and found that, except for a couple of odd verb changes, they were identical.

So what happened to this guy? The dean begged the prof to let him write another paper and not to fail him. The prof, who became a dear friend of mine and remains so to this day, was pissed off but had to comply. A few months later, the student got arrested for stealing from his church. The two aren’t necessarily related, but if he’d failed the class, if he’d learned there were consequences for dishonesty, maybe he’d have thought twice about stealing church money.

What will happen to Cassie Edwards? No idea. Her publisher initially claimed that she’d done nothing wrong, but that was before Nora got publicly involved. The side by side examples of the reference works she used and her own work are damning. The words are the same, with a couple of changes here and there.

I read the examples and I feel like Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Lizzie tells Jane, when she keeps trying to make Darcy and Wickham into nice guys, that they can’t both be good if the facts are as Darcy has related. I keep trying to make CE into a blameless victim, and I know that’s not right. She typed the words she read in her research books as her own. She typed them. She either did a cut and paste, or she sat that book open on her desk or her lap and she typed. And that is clearly wrong.

Should writers of fiction be required to list bibliographies? I think a lot of historical writers wouldn’t mind because their research can be very extensive. But to cite chapter and verse in the manner of an academic paper? Uh, no. If I had to do that, I wouldn’t write. No reader wants endnotes in her fiction. It’s ridiculous.

Do you think, if you’ve read the examples, that she should have known it was plagiarism? Or is there room for people to be confused about what “put it into your own words” means? I’m clear on what constitutes plagiarism, but do you think it’s possible for someone not to be clear on it? To think that changing a couple of words makes it okay? Or am I being too much of a Jane Bennett?

Update: The more I think about this, the more I’m coming around to thinking that apparently Mr. Wickham did do some bad things with full knowledge they were bad. I keep picturing this writer with her research books open on her lap and transcribing what she’s reading into dialogue for her characters. How could she not know that’s wrong? How could she not want her characters to sound like HER characters? I know so many fine writers, and as I prepare to head off to a Heart of Dixie meeting tomorrow, I just can’t imagine any of our published authors sitting down at their desks and doing the same thing CE has done. Their work means too much to them, as listening to them talk about writing for the past year has made apparent to me. Same with the fine unpublished members we have, of course.

It’s a myth, right? Life is life. It happens, it’s messy, it does what it does. And yet I can’t help but be seduced by the myth of a perfect life. I think that if I had a housekeeper, a scheduler, a decorator, an organizer, a life coach, etc, that things would go really smoothly.

It’s a new year, and I’m already looking at the pile of junk mail on my kitchen island and wondering how it got so damn big. And there’s the little matter of a technical thing I need to attend to that’s worth, oh, a lot of money to the bottom line (by the end of January). There’s the laundry, the decorating, the appointments for things I’d rather not think about (dentist, for instance) that need to be made.

There’s damn HGTV seducing me with the idea of the perfectly decorated house, the awesome and fascinating party I should host, and the stupid commercials where spraying Febreze makes like ohsoperfect. When does it get perfect in Chez Harris? When does myth meet reality and make it all a snap? I’ve sprayed the Febreze, rearranged the furniture, and tried the new recipe. Life ain’t perfect.

Oh, it ain’t bad. I’m very thankful for what I have, thankful I can bitch and moan about Hollywood ideas of perfection, but I still wish they’d give me a break from the idea that my life could be perfect if only.

This, I think, is why I write fiction. My characters’ lives aren’t perfect, but I control their world. I am the demi-god who makes life or death decisions for them. Maybe that’s why my real world seems so chaotic. In the fictional world, I have control. Here, I can barely organize a closet, much less my response to a Febreze-scented nation. Jeez.

What about you? Feeling the pressure of a new year and new expectations? Or have you figured out how to make your own way in this perfection-obsessed world? If you’ve got the secret, I’d sure like to know…