Lynn Raye Harris

I am a bad, bad webmistress. I realized that I haven’t updated my website in about 6 months (until now, of course, though it’s not quite finished). Sometimes I ask myself why I got the darn thing in the first place. Mostly, it was because I wanted to learn how to build a website. I like the one I did, but it’s not perfect. In fact, I’ve already pretty much decided that unless I learn Dreamweaver, I’m getting a web designer when I sell a book. Because let’s face it, there’s a big difference between a professional site and one you threw together yourself, unless you happen to know a lot about HTML and all that. Which I don’t, even though I change this blog a zillion times.

Do you have a website? Do you think it’s necessary for writers these days? Can you jump the gun too much or is it a good idea to learn about maintaining a site before you sell that first book? Pros? Cons? I’m interested!

I’ve been rereading two of my novels and trying to decide how to proceed. One clearly has very little happening. Oh, I thought it had plenty happening when I was writing it, but I can now see it ain’t so. Heroine runs away from glam life, takes a wrong turn, and ends up in a tiny town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Hero is a navy guy on leave. Hero has plenty of internal conflict to carry him along, and enough external as well. Heroine has, well, not much other than her desire to escape her old life for a while. Oh jeez. Cue a cabin romance, and the sparks fly.

But are they real sparks, or contrived ones by yours truly? I think the potential is there, I truly do, but I have to admit that I forced it. Not only that, I fell back on the first thing that came to mind when I wanted to introduce day-to-day conflict. Yes, the dreaded ex-girlfriend. OMG, what was I thinking?

On the other hand, I have a soft spot for this story. I conceived it in Germany. And I wrote the ending scene, which is very rare for me, after only about 30 pages. The final scene takes place in Hawaii. The spooky thing is that I had no earthly idea I’d ever live in Hawaii when I wrote it. I just saw the scene, clear as day, and wrote it. And I’ve never wavered from it either.

But how to fix a book like this? Clearly, it needs to be ripped apart and rewritten. I’m just not sure I have the vision for it yet.

The other book I’m looking at is my contest finalist, Seducing Evangeline. Yes, with an editor request in the wings, yours truly hit the brick wall of fear and procrastination. Some of it was brought on by the thesis, of course. But not all of it. I kind of feel like Jennifer Apodaca over at Murder She Writes, though I can’t really compare not revising and finishing a book to her dilemma. It feels the same to me, but of course I can admit that hers is bigger and more interesting. Turning down a chance to appear in an anthology with a NYT bestseller? But, her reasons are understandable, and it all works out for her in the end.

I could wish for such a choice myself, but it’s obvious I’m not ready for that kind of challenge just yet. It is my intention to be ready, though, and every day is a day I need to work toward my goals.

I read a quote recently in one of hubby’s resume books: “People who wait for all conditions to be perfect before acting, never act.”

Yikes.

(Yes, I changed the blog again. I was tired of looking at the dropped Gs hanging there in the header. No doubt, I’ll change it again and again. It’s the Virgo in me, and also, sadly, a hint of my character when it comes to my fiction. Never happy. Never.)

I’m sitting here at sort of loose ends, thinking about my stories in progress and hoping the thesis doesn’t come back with big changes. Finishing that thesis freed me in so many ways and yet, here I sit, staring at the screen, tinkering with a novel I finished two years ago but never finished revising, and thinking about other stories I want to write. And it hits me that I’ve been tinkering, in one way or another, for years now. I finished the first novel, I sent it into the world, I got the rejections and the requests for more work. And of course I froze, life events taking me off in different directions than I’d anticipated.

But now I can’t seem to ever let myself get to the stage of being satisfied with the work so that I’m forced to actually contemplate the submission process again. So long as I don’t submit, by golly, I can’t fail. Right?

Huh. Allison Brennan talked about that very thing over at Murder She Writes recently. (Yes, I’m late in reading it since it was posted last week, but good discussions are never stale.)

For thirtysome years, I wrote stories I never finished. I could argue that it was because I was young, immature, irresponsible, unmotivated, busy, yada yada, but those are all excuses. The truth is, fear kept me from getting to the end. If I finished a book, I would have to send it out, try to get published, and what if it was total dreck? (It was.)

Once I got over THAT fear–fear of rejection or fear that I couldn’t write myself out of a paper bag–other fears crept in. What if I entered a bunch of contests and never finaled? Well, I DID final . . . but I never came in first. What if I never sold? I did. What if I got published, but the books were a total failure? Well, my books did pretty good. What if my next book isn’t as good as the last? THE KILL hit #21 on the NYT expanded list . . . what if I never get that high again?

The difference between success and failure is not whether you hit lists or don’t hit lists; it’s not whether you sell or don’t sell. It’s whether you keep going . . . or
give up.

I have a billion and one ideas. And I’m positive none of them are ever good enough. I sometimes write ten pages, then go away to think about it, and never get back to the story. I have half a dozen files like this. And that’s not even counting the short stories I get part way through before losing focus.

Obviously, I do finish some of what I write. I have 4 complete novels and one novella under my belt. I have published two short stories and quite a few articles. I can get the task done.

But part of my problem is knowing which direction to go in. I have two literary novels in progress, several romance ideas (as well as a few in various stages of progress), a couple of erotica ideas, and no idea which I should be pursuing.

And don’t even get me started on the path to publishing I should take. Sometimes, I think I should explore the e-publishers, especially the RWA-approved ones, for a way to get started. But e-publishing still seems to have a whiff of non-respectability in some circles. I HAVE read some good e-books, books that you wonder why NY didn’t buy them and authors so fabulous you can’t believe they don’t have a print contract yet. And then I’ve read some sample chapters that fall anywhere between boring to utter dreck. It’s true that some (by no means all) e-pubs aren’t known for their quality.

And yet writers have been picked up from e-pubs when NY came searching. And working with an e-publisher gives you some experience and a track record of some kind. Someone, and I forget who, in the NY world actually expressed that this could be a plus to them.

I get frozen when I start to consider the possibilities. Try to target category and build up from there? Bust out the gate with a big single title and try to sell that? Write those literary novels and go that route? Or head for the e-pubs and go from there?

Naturally, none of this means I’d get picked up anywhere, so please don’t assume I’m saying it would be easy to do any of these things. It wouldn’t be, of course. Some paths appear easier than others, it’s true, but that doesn’t make it so.

Of course I have an idea of how I’d like it to work for me. It involves print, a multi-book deal, and a medium range advance. But I know this may not be the case, and that’s where I start to choke. Work on this idea or that idea? Target this market or that market?

Sheesh, it never ends, does it? Most importantly, and I do know this, is to write and finish books and then submit them. The best battle plan in the world won’t work if you don’t have the soldiers to back it up.

What about you? Do you have a plan? Are you where you want to be? Do you change the plan from time to time?

First news, and it’s good, is that my mentor has given me the green light to send my thesis into the formal review process. So, later today, I must go get the fancy paper required for the signature page, print everything out (including the sig page; later, once the thesis is accepted, the entire thing must be printed on the fancy paper), and get it into the mail to the university (express mail, of course). Yay! I am very happy about this, and hope the review process goes smoothly. My mentor could ask me to make changes once he gets the thesis in hard copy and reads it closely (I hope not since he’s seen several drafts already) or either of the committee members could ask for changes too. They worry me a bit, but I hope they will accept his recommendation and go with it. (Does a PhD from Harvard trump other PhD’s? One can only hope….)

Saturday was my RWA meeting. We had the most fascinating, personable, and interesting guest speaker! Dr. Robert Mann, a forensic anthropologist and author of Forensic Detective, works at the identification lab here in Hawaii. These are the guys (and gals) who identify the remains of missing servicemen and women. They also get called in on police cases. Dr. Mann worked on the Jeffery Dahmer case (yick!), for instance, and a wealth of others too (9/11 identifications). His book is fascinating, and even if it wasn’t, I’d have bought it for his personality alone.

What a great guy! He gave a 2 hour talk, with Q&A, then went to lunch with us and spent the entire afternoon talking about bones and writing. He credits his coauthor with making his work readable, and appreciates what goes into writing a good book. Not a bit of ego on this guy, even though the subtitle to his book is “How I Cracked the World’s Toughest Cases.” That was a publisher choice. In fact, he told us that the publisher insisted on three words in the title: “Forensic,” “Detective,” and “I.”

He was the lucky recipient of a book tour, and he brought slides to share and anecdotes to tell. He also offered to give us a tour, at some future date, of the identification lab. You can bet we’ll be taking him up on that one!

If you’re interested at all in CSI type stuff, or if you write romantic suspense, I’d encourage you to give Dr. Mann’s book a try. Very readable!

A great post over at Romancing the Blog today about the difference between good writing and original storytelling. In fact, it’s downright scary. Agent Kristin Nelson talks about the good writing she’s seeing, but laments that the plots are homogeneous.

I think writers assume that good writing is enough. Well, it’s not. You have to couple good writing with an original storyline–something that will stand out as fresh and original. A story never told in this way before (even if elements are similar to what is already out on the market).

She goes on to point out how scenes in three separate novels could be interchanged because they were so similar. She also notes that the writers don’t know each other and aren’t in a critique group together. So how does their writing contain similar elements?

Maybe it’s Jung’s collective unconscious. Or maybe it’s just that these plots are so familiar to us as readers that when we go to write our own, we’ve internalized what we feel are the must-have elements. And then we incorporate them because they are must-haves.

What gives a writer that extra little edge, that twist of thought that takes the story beyond the must-have and into the new and original?

I wish I knew! I think we all think we’ve got the original element, but then we just don’t know for sure until the rejects start coming in. Or until we read enough to recognize the same element in other stories. I read some contest entries a while back that stressed this sort of thing to me. The entries I read were paranormal. Without fail, they were familiar to me, even though I don’t read widely in the genre. The “obligatory” scenes were there. And they were so obvious to me.

But spotting them in your own writing is much harder. I guess you just have to read widely and be aware. And if you spot the familiar, fix it. Any other suggestions? Any thing you’ve done when you’ve found this in your own writing? I’d love to know!

Waimea Canyon, Kauai
Originally uploaded by lynnraye.

My brain is still drained. I can’t think of a thing to say, so here’s a picture. Mark Twain called Waimea Canyon the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. It was beautiful the day we saw it.

Man, I’m going to miss Hawaii. I won’t miss the cost of living or the outrageous real estate, but I will miss the scenery and the weather. Still, I know leaving is for the best. But I’m not going to be able to watch Dog the Bounty Hunter when I’m in Alabama. I’ll probably cry and feel homesick for the islands.

Are you sick of my thesis yet?

But, hey, it’s writing, so I have to talk about it. Today, in spite of distractions, I did a quick read through, added a little clarifying info to my conclusion (which took it to 64 pages), and sent it to my mentor. He’s so quick with turnaround, and I really appreciate that. One of my committee members doesn’t even have an email address (this would be the philosopher guy that worries me), so we’ll see what happens when this moves into committee. I don’t have time to dilly dally with changes; the final version has to be to the Graduate Studies office by Oct 10th. Sounds like a lot of time, really, but when you have to have three separate people, with busy teaching schedules, read your stuff and get it back to you for any changes which you will then have to send back to them again, the time can disappear into nothing.

Talked to my parents this morning. They were happy to hear I’d finished the thesis. What do you think they asked me? “So, you going to get a Ph.D.?” Someone else asked me that question this weekend too. Man, I haven’t even recovered from this yet!

It was always a goal of mine, but I don’t know that it means as much to me now as it used to. Really, it’d be great to settle down to writing my fiction and see where that takes me.

I just finished the first draft of my master’s thesis!!!

Words written yesterday and today: 1758
Total word count: 17743
Pages, not including prelims: 63

OMG, I can’t believe I did it! Three weeks, 12000 words. I am beat and ecstatic. And I hope it holds up. I won’t send it to my mentor until Monday (1 day before deadline), so I might end up messing with the conclusion a bit. The conclusion is shorter than I thought. I expected 10 pages early on. I reduced that to around 5 last week, and ended up with 4. I think I said everything that needs to be said though. Guess I’ll find out next week when my mentor gets a look at it.

Nimitz the cat
Originally uploaded by lynnraye.

Nimitz doing what he does 2nd best. First best would be driving me crazy.

Hard to believe that nearly a year ago we picked up a dirty, flea-infested scrap of fur that weighed less than 2 lbs and then he turned into this hilarious beast.

And I do mean hilarious. He cracks me up. Every day he does something that has me in stitches. Right now, he’s sleeping somewhere, thank heavens. Later, the house and my sanity will be in jeopardy….

Did you know there’s a book out called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before, in fact, but today I ran across the list online. Now, in going back to my UBS rant, and getting something for nothing, this book is much more than just a list of books. It has the why’s and the wherefore’s and is purported to be a handy reference book.

I don’t feel bad publishing the link to the entire list because I think it makes you want the book (and the link is readily available online to anyone searching for it). This list is bare bones. You get no reference material, so if you want to know more about the books, you must get a copy of the reference tome (which, I am sure, I will end up doing eventually).

So how many of the 1001 books have you read? A quick peruse, by no means thorough, indicates that my sorry, uneducated, uncultured self has read about 70 of them. Good grief.