Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you all a happy and safe holiday with your family, friends, and pets! 

Happy NOvember!

Whew, where did October go? I handed out a lot of candy last night, so November must be upon us. Many writers are digging in to NaNoWriMo today, and I wish them the best of luck. Remember, you don't have to get all the words right. Just get them down.

I'm not participating in NaNo this year. But I'm giving myself another challenge: submit as many times as I can. Yes, queries and synopses and all that stuff that's not nearly as fun as actually writing. But it's as important. Maybe even more so. (Okay, not quite.)

Sometimes, writers don't want to send off their work because they're afraid to get a rejection. But everyone gets them, and I can tell you from experience that the more you submit, the easier it gets. Unfortunately, it's also easy to procrastinate writing those queries. Toilet need cleaning? I'm your gal! Spice cupboard need alphabetizing? I'm on it!

My tough love plan for myself this month is to collect as many "no"s as I can--hence the name NOvember--and maybe even a few "yes"es.

I admit, it's a little scary. But not as bad as those Halloween clown masks.

10 Reasons I Ban Books

In honor of Banned Books Week, I have a confession: I ban books. Sometimes I do it regretfully, sometimes I do it with great relish. Here are ten reasons why:

10.  Brain Ache – This occurs when a story is so convoluted, I need Stephen Hawking to get me through the first two chapters;

9.   Ridiculous Character Names – I’m sorry, but I can’t read 300 pages about the adventures of Duffy von Winklesnout;

8.   No Story – If a story arc is flatline, my interest is, too;

7.   Adverb Abuse – When the characters smile happily, glare menacingly, skip gleefully, ogle lustfully, I put the book down. Hastily. (Harry Potter being a worthy exception);

6.   Deus ex machina (“god out of the machine”) – No plot should need the equivalent of divine intervention to reach resolution, unless it’s in a book about…well, divine intervention;

5.   Weird Formatting – This includes lack of punctuation, phonetic spelling, anything that makes me overly conscious of the act of reading.;

4.  Overpopulation – I’m from a small family. I’ve never taught a freshman-level course or directed a Broadway production. Too many characters overwhelm me;

3.  Apathy – If I don’t care about the plot or characters by page 100 (max), I’m out;

2.  Envy – When a mediocre book makes it big (huge! colossal!), I know that reading it will make me yank on my hair and eat too many carbs. (This ban is often trumped by curiosity, but not always.); and

1. No Payoff - Frank Conroy said: "The author makes a tacit deal with the reader. You hand them a backpack. You ask them to place certain things in it - to remember, to keep in mind - as they make their way up the hill. If you hand them a yellow Volkswagen and they have to haul this to the top of the mountain - to the end of the story - and they find that this Volkswagen has nothing whatsoever to do with your story, you're going to have a very irritated reader on your hands." Hear, hear.

Happy Fall!

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