Lynn Raye Harris

Sometimes it’s hard not to be negative in this business, especially when you can get hit with rejections and setbacks on an almost daily basis. Keep going, wisdom says; don’t give up. If you give up after 20 rejections, number 21 might have been the yes. You’ll never know if you give up.

But I’m not really speaking about specific negativity here. I was thinking about negativity in a general way, and how it can affect the creative life, because of a conversation today. My parents, God love them, are negative people. They are glass half empty people. The sky is falling people. Better the devil you know kind of people. I have, unfortunatly, internalized some of this stuff. I often stick with the devil I know because I’m afraid of taking the leap and getting a worse devil.

My hubby, otoh, is about to take a big leap. It’s scary, but I support him. My parents, when I told them, were beside themselves with the possible negative outcomes of this leap. It gave me a headache. It made my stomach hurt. And I started thinking about how negativity affects our lives.

You can cut negative people out of your life (unless they’re your parents and you love them) and I have in the past. Just stopped hanging out with someone who was a downer. Stopped meeting her for coffee or lunch, stopped accepting invitations from her. I stay in contact with her, but I feel much better for having taken myself out of her poisonous presence. She was a sweet person, but poisonous. For every positive thing that happened, the potential negativity outweighed it tenfold in her mind. You can only take so much of that before it seeps into your skin like a miasma.

How do we see past the negativity, take the leap, and keep going? It’s hard as hell. But I realized, listening to my parents talk, just how much I have that voice in my head that tries to stop me. But you know what? You gotta put that bitch in a cage and keep going. It’s the only way.

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself

Self-Pity by D.H. Lawrence. Maybe a good poem to tack up on the wall next to the computer, eh?

So how do you deal with negativity, especially the internalized variety? What do you tell the negative nellies when they start to get you down?

How was it? It was a whirlwind. Meeting people, going to parties and gatherings, having dinners with friends, workshops, banquets and awards ceremonies. Holy cow. This was my first conference, but it won’t be my last. I even managed to write, believe it or not. One night, when I’d finished dinner with friends but my roomies were still out, I sat down and started typing an idea on my Alphasmart. I still don’t know how many pages I wrote, but I think it’s pretty good stuff. We’ll see when I download it to my computer whether I’m deluded or not. Probably deluded, since lack of sleep was a serious issue.

I finally got to meet several online people! I met Allison Brennan, who was there with her mother. They are absolutely adorable together and so sweet and nice. Allison also gives a fabulous no plotters allowed workshop which was one of the better ones I went to.

I met Carla Cassidy and Kathy Carmichael finally, after knowing them for many many years. They are wonderful women and I’m honored to have known them for so long.

I met Nalini Singh in the coffee shop! After flying as far and as long as she did, she still recognized me and said hello. We sat together for a little while before she had to get ready for lunch with her agent (or editor, I can’t remember which).

I talked with the dynamic and lovely Jane Porter, a fellow Aloha Chapter member who shares my bittersweet love of Hawaii. She still travels there frequently, and I do envy her that.

I met so many other writers that I can’t name them all! I spotted Nora Roberts walking through the coffee shop one day, and attended a chat session with her that was fantastic. The best speech I heard was by Sherrilyn Kenyon, who is a doll and so inspiring. Lisa Kleypas gave a great speech as well and I picked up an armadillo keychain before I left Dallas in honor of what she said.

I also sat in the bar at least twice with the fabulous Heart of Dixie women, including the very talented Linda Howard, Linda Winstead Jones, and Beverly Barton (that “very talented” designation applies to all three). Kelley St. John and Rhonda Nelson, also immensely talented and sweet, were there the second time we gathered.

One of the most fun things I did was have a reunion with people I first met in Hawaii. Morag McKendrick Pippin, Carol Burnside, and Sally Sorenson are all so wonderful to sit and talk with for hours on end. I’m just sorry I didn’t have more time with them!

Oh, and I met Stephanie Tyler and Larissa Ione and got an ARC of Riding the Storm, their Sydney Croft release. In fact, I got tons of books and had to ship home a Fed Ex box of them. And how could I nearly forget that I met Loribelle Hunt!? She was in front of me in the coffee shop line (are you spotting a theme about writers and coffee?).

Whew, and now I have to wind up this post and get to work. Because, as Nora said, I have a job to do. I’ll post more conference tidbits later, and maybe even think up a contest or two. If you went to conference, what was the most important thing you learned? If you didn’t go, what did you do while the rest of us were suffering from lack of sleep and, in some cases, serious jet lag?

The problem with having a stay-at-home job is focus. It’s so easy to run downstairs for a bottle of water and end up tossing in a load of laundry, folding what just came out of the dryer, and thinking of at least two people you need to call for some reason. What was supposed to be a 2 minute trip to the kitchen becomes a 40 minute detour.

I’m not usually too bad at focus, when the story is humming. When it’s not, well, I can think of a lot of things I need to get done. Add to that the guilt of needing to organize the house and get everything put away, and focus becomes an issue.

On a bigger scale, I have trouble with focus in that I want to do so many things and spread myself thin. Concentrating on one thing means I will become more accomplished at it. A master of a particular thing rather than a jack-of-all-trades.

My goal is to become a master. Focus is the key. It will take effort, of course, just like getting those muscles back into shape. One day at a time.

How do you deal with focus? Are you a pro at it? If so, what’s your secret?

Everyone has muscles. Some people have fabulous, well-defined muscles. Others seem to be hiding theirs under layers of bulk. Me, I’m in the bulk stage. And I don’t just mean weight. Writing uses muscle, and muscle must be fed. It must be exercised regularly, or it gets soft. It needs to be shaped and honed and flexed to stay at its optimum efficiency.

I haven’t been exercising the muscles, physical or mental. I’ve spent the last few months worrying and planning and preparing for a new house and a different life (different from the military one I was used to). I haven’t been writing, running, or reading.

But the beauty of muscle is that it only needs to be worked regularly, even after an absence, to get strong and efficient again. It doesn’t matter how many layers of bulk have accumulated. Stimulate the muscles, feed them properly, and watch them reshape and grow beautiful once more.

Yeah, it’s work, but so what. The results are worth the effort. So today I’m giving notice to my flabby muscles: play time is over. We’re getting back in the game, baby.

According to the New York Times, pole-dancing parties are a big thing these days. Say goodbye to Tupperware, hello pole. The mind boggles.

This intimate Friday-night soiree, where spinach dip and crudités were served and Ms. Cottam sent guests home with homemade banana muffins for their families, was for no particular occasion. She did not charge for the lesson, but had poles — spring-loaded and adjustable from 8 to 10 feet — for sale ($450), as well as a variety of feathered or rhinestone platform shoes ($19.99 and up).

Though Ms. Cottam operates independently, more than 350 pole-dance instructors in 34 states and Canada have signed up since August 2006 with an international company, EPM EmpowerNet, to run their own businesses in the model of Tupperware or Avon sales. The company provides DVDs that teach the instructors dance moves, pole safety and party etiquette, and sells them the equipment; they keep the fees they charge each participant — $25 to $30 in this area — plus any margin on the poles.

Okay, so I’m speechless. You stick a spring-loaded pole in your living room and pretend to be a stripper. Wow. I guess it could spice up the ol’ relationship a bit. All I can think of are the inevitable mishaps that could spring, ahem, from spring-loaded poles wedged against ceiling and floor. Thoughts?

I don’t expect I’ll be posting much in the next month or so. Things are FAST coming to a boil here in the Aloha State. Soon, my reluctant behind will be ensconced in Northern Alabama, getting used to cooler temperatures and whining about the lack of an ocean view. I am not a happy camper. And I am a happy camper at the same time. Finally, we’ll be with family again, and that’s a good thing. And I’ll acclimate. Such is life.

Tomorrow, I’m teaching a workshop on dialogue at the Bamboo Ridge Writers Institute conference in Honolulu. Should be fun! My co-presenter is Michael Little, a fellow RWA member and all around funny and talented guy.

I know I’ve not written anything about the booksigning. It was fun, and boring at the same time. Chatting with friends was fun. Trying to entice the Honolulu lunch rush into a short story anthology was not so fun. I have pictures, which I’ll try to get uploaded soon.

Many things are getting ready to happen here. The movers are coming in a week. Mike’s last day of work, we found out, is next week and not the end of Oct as we thought. He’s been earning leave, which gets tacked onto the 90 days he already has, so now we’ll have a few extra days to do some last minute sightseeing. We may fly to another island, or we may just stay on Oahu and enjoy all the things we love about this island.

I’ve still got much to do around here, so my online time is limited. Watch for drive-by blogging. Aloha nui loa.

I just watched my first episode of The Unit. I really enjoyed the concept of the show! The tough guys, their tough wives, etc. I’ll definitely watch more.

But something bugged me. Okay, a couple of somethings. First, when the fiance of the dead man was being forced to move out of base housing. Um, she wouldn’t be allowed to LIVE there in the first place. She’s not a wife, she’s not authorized. She also wouldn’t be authorized to go into the stores on base either. How did she shop? I take it she was a stay-at-home mom to her fiance’s children. Did he go shopping for the family? I have known, way in the past, a mom whose kid had an ID card while she did not. She was able to shop for the child, using the ID card. But she was the legal guardian as well. As this show proceeded to demonstrate, this woman was NOT the legal guardian.

The dead man would have been authorized base housing because he had the two little girls. But his fiance couldn’t live there. She could stay for 30 days, as a guest, but then she’d have to go. Of course the base housing office doesn’t just come around and inspect on the spot (I had company for 5 weeks once). In fact, they never do. But if someone reported the situation, that man stood to lose his entitlement. He wouldn’t have done it. No, he’d have married the woman a lot sooner. They were supposedly together for 4 years. If it’d been only a few months, sure, I could see where they might not have gotten around to the marriage yet. But when your colonel and all your buddies know what’s going on, the chances they’d all keep mum about the housing issue (especially the colonel, whose job it is to enforce the rules) is pretty unlikely. If everyone was keeping mum about her being there, then why was the colonel so keen on getting her off base the instant her fiance died? If he’d been pretending not to know she was staying there illegally, he wouldn’t have begrudged her the 90 days which dependents are entitled to. Made no sense.

The other big thing is the money issue. Yes, all that entitlement stuff, the death benefits, etc, is pretty accurate. But they forgot SGLI (Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance). It’s mandatory. The guy whose wife was upset and trying to force him to sign an insurance policy was not realistic because he ALREADY has $450K of life insurance that the military forces him to pay around $20 for every month. So did the dead guy, btw, and his children would probably have been the beneficiaries, though he could actually have named anyone he wanted (like his fiance). I am the beneficiary of my husband’s policy, but he also has alternate beneficiaries in case something happened to both of us at the same time. The personnel flight doesn’t let you ignore this stuff. You are forced to deal with it on a fairly regular basis (yearly to every 3 years or so, depending on branch). Again, not reflective of military reality.

Why is this important? Well, it’s not really, I suppose. But it is to someone like me, who can’t buy the plotline because I know at the root the causes are wrong. I don’t know everything, and I certainly don’t know everything about the things I write. I am terrified of getting the research wrong, but I figure it’s inevitable at some point. I don’t mind some things, like when someone makes a mistake about geography (say they put Maunakea Street in Waikiki when it really belongs in Chinatown), but if it’s integral to the plot, it just bothers the heck out of me when the fundamentals are wrong.

So please, get your details right because someone, somewhere, is going to KNOW the truth. When it’s a whole lotta someones, in the case of the military and how it functions, your work loses credibility. I doubt the military will tune out The Unit en masse. But they’ll trust the show less the next time. I know I will.

Here’s Thumper, looking quite relaxed on my oriental carpet. The old boy has started getting a bit senile lately. And he seems to be having the exact same kidney problems that my other cat had before she died. Too weird, really.

Tomorrow is the booksigning in Honolulu! Several of my friends and fellow writers are getting together to sign copies of Strong Currents 2. It should be lots of fun, and it’s my first booksigning so I’m looking forward to it.

Otherwise, my life is starting to go sideways (yep, stole that from the movie). The packers come in three weeks. Family will be here in four. There are things to sort, throw away, separate, etc. Cars to ship. And my husband has a ton of military appointments to slog through. So I expect, with all that’s going on, that my blogging will get spotty very soon. Nor is it likely to be intelligent when it does occur.

Did I mention I’m a presenter at the Bamboo Ridge Writers’ Institute conference in two weeks? Yep, so I’ve got that going on as well. And RWA this weekend. And I’m coordinating and taking care of the arrangements for the chapter luncheon, which is Nov. 4 in Waikiki. Whew!

But most of all — MOST of all — I am so going to MISS my friends here in the islands. My writer pals who’ve meant so much. My drinking buddies who crack me up. My priest, who is a friend first and priest second. I’m also going to miss the ‘aina and the feeling of ohana. I think we’ve made the right decision for a variety of reasons, but it saddens me too. I’m going to love being with family again, but I’m going to miss the ohana I leave behind.

Now, for fun, if you could live ANYWHERE in the world, where would it be and why? I don’t mean permanently, unless you know that about yourself, but somewhere you’d like to be for a few years. I’ve lived in Asia very briefly, several states, and Europe. I think I’d choose Venice, Italy. Florence would be a close second. But neither one permanently. (Both cities for the gorgeous art and sculpture, and for the Italian lifestyle: great food, great wine, la dolce vita, great coffee, fabulous clothes and style.)

What I learned at Starbucks this week is that I can deliver the goods when absolutely forced. When all internet and possibility of internet is brutally cut off, I have no choice but to work. Oh, I stared at the screen plenty. I shifted my poor butt on the rock-hard cafe chair when it began to ache. I drank coffee. I listened to my iPod. And I wrote 6 pages in 3 hours!

What forced this crisis, you ask? I am one who doesn’t like to leave home, toting the computer, to go to a cafe and work. It’s a pain. I’m sure I won’t actually get much done. I wonder what all the other people with laptops are doing. Does that slightly spacy guy over there think he’s the next Faulkner? Are there really this many people who want to write novels, or are they surfing? Why here?

But, I had no choice except to endure the cafe experience. For some reason that is still not apparent, our power went out on Wednesday evening and stayed out for nearly 24 hours. That meant the cable went too, and it stayed out even longer.

So, Thursday morning, I was forced to get dressed (thank God the water was still hot) and head for Starbucks if I wanted coffee and food. I set up my laptop, complete with the new security cable I bought, and tried, oh yes I did, to connect to the T-Mobile HotSpot. I refuse to pay $10 for a day pass. But, lo, for T-Mobile voice customers such as moi, one can get UNLIMITED access for only $19.99 a month. Oh, sign me up!

Except that apparently the offer isn’t good in Hawaii. WTF? Or at least it wasn’t good for me, because no dice, I couldn’t sign up. Which totally forced me to close out all IE windows and stare at my WIP.

Oh the torture! The pain! The agony! And then the first trickle of an idea began, then another, and another, and before I knew it I was certain about what was going on in this scene, this chapter. Lots of staring, deleting, and typing, but I got six good pages out of it.

So now I believe I am going to be forced to consider the Starbucks experience more frequently. I need to see if I can do it again, or if it was merely an anomaly. On the other hand, I got far less done today because guess what–I had to catch up on all those emails I’d missed yesterday, take care of the business newsletter I edit, and do some RWA business. Now the weekend is here and I’ll get next to nothing done with a man around the house. Not to mention it’s 33 days until he retires and we’ve got movers coming in about three weeks and we still need to go through stuff. Yikes.

Where do you work best? Home? Starbucks? The local microbrewery (I once watched a woman making airline reservations at the next table over during Happy Hour. I hope she really wanted to go and wasn’t making a drunken decision, ha!)? What’s your routine like?

The good news is that my thesis has been accepted WITHOUT REVISIONS!! My mentor and both readers have signed off on it! I was SO worried about the philosopher guy, but he signed the approval page. He did, of course, enclose an article for me that he’d written on Locke’s theory of personal identity since I briefly mentioned Locke in my thesis. But he stated that my thesis was engaging and interesting and he enjoyed it. Whew!

All three readers recommended an A grade. Woo-hoo! Now, I simply have to get through the graduate studies office review (they check for formatting issues) and then submit the entire thing on fancy paper to the library by Dec 1. I will graduate in December. I am so happy!!! It took me entirely too long to do this, and I procrastinated the hell out of the thesis, but wow, I’m done.

Now if I could just finish this dang novel……