I wish I said this first...

"A good story often reads so easily that civilians seem to think that
the darn things write themselves. Whenever I leave the house, I make
sure that one of my novels is hard at work. I expect five pages by the
time I get back."

- David Morrell


I mean, don't you.

I feel like I almost have a real blog. An bona fide spammer made a comment. I'm on my way now!!

Through Painted Deserts and Plains.

A few years ago, like almost 20, I spent my summers working in the kitchen at a well know youth ministy's Colorado Ranch. It was at the time, a perfect life. I worked in the summers and avoided the scorching Texas heat. My regular job was only budgeted for nine months a year, except I could pay a little extra for health insurance for the other three month. So, I had insurance, no expenses, use of a vehicle and a home nestled in the valley of the San Isabel National Forrest. Doesn't get much better.

I thought about this today when I started reading Through Painted Deserts : Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road by Donald Miller. I love it and hate it right now. I love it because Miller notices everyting, from the traffic in Houston at 2am to the different species of trees on Interstate 45 from Houston to Dallas and how they hide everything at night. I hate it because it is a testament to my stupid fears.

The camp photographer Deb and I, spent our off days traveling Colorado, back roads and old mining towns. She'd snap rolls and rolls of film, I'd scribble really bad poetry into old lab notebooks. I did that back then, write really bad poetry. I was a lousy poet, because I didn't like to read poetry. If you don't like reading it, you don't need to be writing it. But I wasn't smart enough to know that back then. I wrote about her photographs, mourning that the black and white prints we developed in the camp darkroom didn't capture the differences in the green of the trees and the green of the grasses. They couldn't give the sound, the whisper, of the July wind in the Aspens.

After our adventures, we'd take the prints and the notebooks of bad poems and sit in laundry room, waiting for the industrial washers to finish our week's worth of dirty shorts and wool socks and plot the next adventure. It didn't take to long to realize that we would soon run out of places within a couple hours of the camp, and we never could get two consecutive days off. So we started devising Plan B. A summer of cruising. A cross country trip in her Subaru. We'd start in California, where she lived the rest of the year, and end up in New Jersey, at my grandparents. We'd take pictures, write stories of the people and places in the pictures.

We never went. Wasn't money, we could've worked it out. For me, it was fear. Don't know what I was afraid of, maybe the unknown. But it kept me from what could have been the best summer. But those silly voices, saying it was a stupid plan, it was irresponsible *(if you cna't be irresponsible when you're 23 and single, when can you be?) It was scary. I don't know if Deb ever went. I hope she did.

And now I read this stupid book and wonder what could have been.

Adjectives that will never be used to describe my books

....And I think I'll be okay with that.

I got my new catalog from Quality Paperback Book club today. The sheer number of adjectives and adverbs used to promote books is mindboggling. I'm thinking of suggesting a rationing program. Conserve adjectives and adverbs, save some for future generations.

The gushing reviews are so "stunning, dazzling, and powerful" that I want to order each and every "astonishing" new novel by every "beloved" and "best-selling" author. I have found the ads to be "[S]trangely affecting." On one page, I can order a "feat of imaginative sympathy and technique..." because the author "delivers images of odd beauty and a mounting existential distress that hangs around long after." Mounting existential distress that hangs around long after? Sounds like the last time I tried to cook Thai food from scratch.

These authors work with a "Dickensian vocabulary and an Atwood-like ability to meld literature with science fiction." The novels themselves have "deceptive simplicity,...extraordinary emotional depth and resonance." They are "finely wrought and shimmering with intelligence."

But wait. I could also have books that are "painfully funny and brilliantly executed." "Utterly original." "A dazzling epic."

Do writers sit down and say, "I think today I'll write a novel that's 'buoyant and beautiful'?" Or "daring and unforgettable?" How about "witty, wise and heartbreaking?" "Brilliantly absurd?" "delightfully improbable?" Or, "Enchanting...beautifully crafted and as dazzingly imaginative as it is dizzyingly romantic."

I think the world would be a better place if someone, preferably someone rich and anonymous, bought every book reviewer a copy of Strunk's Elements of Style. There are adverbs and adjectives being ABUSED out there, people! It is up to those who love words to rescue them and redeem then to infrequent usage so that they may regain the power and the glory that is in excellent descriptive writing. Please, send a book reviewer a verb. You'll be glad you did.

Had the subtitle all wrong...

It's not "a bag lady's tale", it's the "Hand-bag Lady's tale". Kinda my tribute to Margaret Atwood on the way. I wonder what Ms. Atwood would do with my material. I'm thinking my main character needs lots of lunatics in her life, so she might be a waitress. At an Applebee's kind of place. Managed by an Iranian, like my old pal Moshi. And his rich cousins, Khalid and Omar. So the insanity is balanced. Or she can have a computer support job. On the phone, so we don't have too many customers to describe.Something that keeps the number of main people in the single digits. After my last book, I need a set number of people to keep up with. A girl CAN have too many imaginary friends, doncha know.

Speaking of friends, some of my real life friends want to be "in" the book. Hmmm, what if I do and they don't like it? Or if I fictionalize them so much they don't recognize themselves? I have nightmares of Truman Capote, who used all his friends conversations in his stories. The poor society ladies read all about their own lives in the New Yorker.

I know, I can have the main character, still unnamed, whining about listening to her walking buddies, J,A & C, who spend ENTIRELY too much time complaining about how hard it is to find size four jeans in this town. Or maybe size 2? Then I can jet them out to Aruba for the rest of the book. So they'll be there and still be my friends when it's over.

A Purse Driven Life - A Bag Lady's Tale

I think that's looking like the title of my NaNoWriMo novel. Of course that could change, but I'm liking the idea now. My first idea was something I've already worked on a bit, like a couple of pages of really bad writing. Really bad, the main character bored even me. If I don't want to spend time with a character, I doubt a reader would. So, I thought I would start over on the chemical plant thriller. But since NaNoWriMo should really be brand spanking new really bad fiction, I decided to try this new idea.

I know, a Christian Writer had an advice book by just about the same title.The Purse-driven Life: It Really Is All About Me by Anita Renfroe. I haven't read it, but I did read a few pages on Amazon. It looked fairly interesting and I'm sure Anita is a wise and witty woman. But it is nonfiction, and since A) I haven't seen it on the best seller list anywhere, and B) Titles aren't copyrighted, I think I'll snag the title. Because it so fits my idea. As much as I'd like to use her subtitle, I'll not steal that too. Gotta have some originality.

But, the story:

A woman dies and her daughter and niece find over fifty purses in her closet. Her life is then told in relation to some of the purses that the women remember the older woman owning. Not a spiritual growth book in any way, more like catharsis. But not really, because my book will be FICTION and certainly NOT based on any mothers I may have known in ANY way. So don't get any ideas, it's NOT a memoir. And if you accuse me of writing about actual events, I will put you in the book and my friend, it won't be pretty.

I still need to do some important research. I only own one purse. Off to the mall!

Everything I learned about writing a novel, I learned from running marathons.

Everything I learned about writing a novel, I learned from running marathons.

If you go out too fast, you’ll be exhausted at the end. Others around you may go out too fast. Ignore them.

Sometimes, you have to go at it alone. There may not be anyone on the roadside cheering you on.

You can only worry about the step you are taking right now. You can’t run mile 14 while you are running mile 2.

Neither can you write your acceptance speech for the Booker Award if you haven’t finished the first draft.

You can’t put forth effort without taking in nourishment. Food for the body, food for the soul and information for the mind. Read, reflect and research.

It gets tiring and even a bit boring in the middle. Get through it anyway.

There are people who are faster than you.

There are people who look better that you.

But no one else can run your race, and no one else can write your work.

It’s all about endurance. And that’s something you can build, it’s a skill.

There is no feeling in the world like finishing.

It's T minus One Month

It's almost October. Which means I need to finish the book I'm currently working on by October 15. Why? So I have two weeks off to plan, plot and, rest (I know, it doesn't start with pl- but this is a blog, not a Sunday Sermon) for National Novel Writing Month.

I'm most likely going to be a municipal liaison this year, so at least by the end of the month, I should be able to spell liaison correctly on the first try most of the time. But I figure, if I can coach over two hundred college students to run twenty six miles, I can cheer lead while highly motivatied, caffeinated people write really bad novels. Not only that, but I can write a really bad novel as well! It's much more fun to write really bad novels with friends.

So if you're game, check out NaNoWriMo and come on out and play with us!

PS I finally, after all this time, noticed that I've mispelled procrastinating in the header of my blog. UGH! That is why I need an editor of my very own.

A new school year

A new school year has started. Without children around, I have had to come up with new and creative ideas to keep from writing. Alas, it hasn't worked and so I have actually been working on getting the book done and the queries ready to go out to some carefully researched agents. It's a hard line to walk. You have to research agents and publishers, but where is the line between researching and stalking? I say that because a year ago, I had an agent request some of my novel. Unfortunately, the pages she received were, well, boring. So a year later, after massive cuts and revision, I have to wonder. She liked the idea, would she give me a second chance? Would you, if you were up and coming cool young agent?

I really want to win the CD

Ok, here's the deal. Shaun Groves has a blog. He has nearly three hundred readers, but never over. It's kind of like a wall he'd like to break through. So, he's asking fellow bloggers to post his site, and he'll give a copy of his new album to who ever sends the most new visitors. If you click though my site and I win the album, I'll have a drawing for the t-shirt. Deal?


It could happen!


It's actually a cool blog. Current topic is what is a just war. Oh, and he's a great singer as well.

Not the best day....

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."

– Anne Lamott


Yesterday was a bit on the dark side. My hair turned out too dark. I got a rejection from an agent. My other novel didn't get to the final round of the contest it's in. Wow, I must be prolific if nothing else, TWO novels rejected in one day. How's that?
But at this point, there's nothing else to do. Can't give up. Anne L. said so.

Waiting patiently

Tomorrow, the History channel is having Great Raid day. All the great rescues in preparation for the opening Friday of The Great Raid. I can hardly wait. I am trying to get my writing of this done tonight, so I can compare notes during the program. Unfortunately, I've spent more time doing timelines, rude essays and emails. Such is the life of a writer.

The Professional Writer’s Guide to Procrastination

My novel, all four hundred and seventy three pages, is sitting in a box on the writing table in my office. I’ve written, revised, and rewritten it for over two years now. It’s time for it to go out into the world and find a home. Maybe a nice place in New York where it can make friends with other historical novels from its own time period, rather than the Civil War books it normally hangs out with at critique group meetings. I considered leaving it in a jute basket on the porch of some kindly agent, note taped to the handle, “Please take care of my baby.” But after checking with the latest Writer’s Market Guide to Agents, Editors and Other People Whose Opinions of Writing Count More Than Your Mother’s, I’ve learned that I must submit to the guidelines and follow directions. I should have learned at some point in my public school career that life smiles on those who follow directions. The WMGAEOPWOWCMTYM mentions that while agents may not necessarily smile simply because you read the guidelines, they most definitely frown upon too much creativity in the submission process.


Most of those directions require a chunk of pages, and The Synopsis. Chunk of pages, now problem, I just fire up the printer and it spews them out on crisp white paper. Funny, it won’t crank out the synopsis. Seems I have to write it first.


My entire household can tell it’s synopsis time. The floors are clean, the refrigerator is white inside and out, and the monthly bills are sorted by due date. Bedsheets are ironed. My anti-virus software is current, along with every other piece of shareware on my computer. But the bills, while organized, required actual funds to be paid. My career as an amateur novelist was in serious peril. I needed to sell some work, perhaps the novel, or I would be flipping burgers.


I called a meeting of our own House Ways and Means committee. That would be my husband, me and the dog, who slept through the whole meeting. Latest reports declared were were house rich and cash poor. We needed a Nuclear Option. So we took a deep breath and dialed Libby the Realtor. We put our house on the market. I had no clue that I could put off dealing with both the deficit and the synopsis with one phone call. It’s good to be an American.


Our house is "unique" in Realtor-ese. That means, the exact perfect people have to buy it or we will have the sign in our yard for a long time. It's been six months. Amazingly, my propensity to procrastinate is so powerful, I've been able to postpone actually selling the house.


Selling our house is a procrastinator’s dream. Nothing of any consequence can occur, because if you go through all the trouble of taking a project out to work on it, everything must be stored away as soon as you are through. Someone may come to look at the house any minute. Floors must shine at all times. Guest towels hang in all the bathrooms. The inmates have been threatened with solitary confinement in the Laundry room with the dog and the guinea pigs if one drop of water is to touch said towels. Food and meals are tolerated. All crumbs are to be vacuumed as soon as they hit the carpet, if not before. My oldest son now turns on the Electrolux every time he eats.

The magic of the Nuclear Option is I now have an excuse. For anything.

To the collection agency: “As soon as the house sells, you’ll be paid in full.”

To the man selling satellite dishes: "I'm sorry, we're getting ready to move. Maybe at the new house."

To the friends who want me to help with some Bake Sale: "I'm sorry, but I couldn't possible mess the kitchen up. Libby the Realtor said she might bring someone by."

To the PTA president: "I couldn't possibly chair that committee. We'll be moving soon and I'm not sure we'll be able to stay in the district."

To the editor waiting for my latest article: "Oops. Sprayed the computer monitor with too much Windex."

And since I’m so busy keeping the house in “show-able condition,” I certainly don’t have time for a silly little synopsis.

There are other bonuses. We eat out much more often, especially since home buyers like to look during the dinner hour, and we've got to get out of the house anyway. The kids, bribed with rooms of their own, actually do make their beds in the morning. And with new home repair projects cropping up after each potential buyer rejects us, the to-do list is longer than a Clinton State of the Union address. I have enough projects to put off the synopsis until 2017.


If only the house doesn't sell until then.

It just goes to show, there's always another internet personality quiz

Just when you thought it was safe and I couldn't possibly find another quiz...

Here it is, the grandaddy of them all...



You are Schroeder!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yeah, but would you read 300 pages of it?

Here it is, the latest query blurb.




Little girls always have dreams. Even during wars.

Husband, home, and family, in the proper order. It's all Liz Corning ever wanted growing up in Houston, Texas with her parents and older brother.

Frankie McConnell spent her life chasing after a mantle of trophies and her father's approval. Her idea of a normal day ususally included a performance in her father's Air Show, "Aces of the Great War," and giving rides to children in her Curtis bi-plane.

Normal lives in America are interrupted with World War II. Americans everywhere respond to the call of duty. Liz, fresh out of Nursing school, joins the Navy Nurse Corps. Bored with taking care of sick sailors on the ward, she signs up to become a flight nurse.

Frankie, meanwhile, is recruited to join the Women's Air Ferry Squadron. But her participation in an air camera gunnery contest leads to her dismissal for insubordination. A Marine major realizes that Frankie knows her father's combat techniques and recruits her to become a flight instructor for the Corps.

When the two women become roommates during training in 1943, they begin a friendship that travels throughout the country and the South Pacific theater of World War II.

Boy howdy. I was starting to think there were no more fun personality tests in the world. Although I have been much too busy actually doing the work of writing to take them. But this one caught my eye.Thanks to Angie Hunt at A life in Pages for yet another way to put off writing. She's written a ton and a half of books, so I wasn't sure she would know how.

Your Blogging Type is Pensive and Philosophical

You blog like no one else is reading... You tend to use your blog to explore ideas - often in long winded prose. Easy going and flexible, you tend to befriend other bloggers easily. But if they disagree with once too much, you'll pull them from your blogroll!

What's Your Blogging Personality?

A Gift

I met a character today. She will be appearing in a forth coming book. Not sure which one, but I know she was a gift to to me yesterday in line at Half Price Books. She carried one of those little baskets filled to the brim with used VHS tapes. They were on the clearance table marked at a buck apiece. I did glance. Her red plastic basket had at least a dozen of the things. And she complained to the cashier that some of them were marked for a dollar and some were two or three dollars, which in her eyes, wasn't very fair.

"The one's marked a dollar have been in the store a long time," the cashier patiently explained.

VHS woman looked around, to see if she had any backup if she wanted to cause trouble. We all looked at the stacks of books in our respective arms. Don't want to get involved, we Texans turned into New Yorkers under her searching eyes.

She yanked down the back of her hot pink, '70's style running shorts, the ones with the bright white piping outlining the shape of the shorts. Her baby tee-shirt was the exact same hue, a vivid, loud pink. On her right calf was a poorly done tattoo of a heart with something inside.Her dark hair bobbed on her shoulders, not a gray anywhere. I couldn't really see her face, I wondered how old she was.

Then she asked for the manager's name and number, so she could talk to him about the pricing of VHS tapes. The cashier, gracious college student that she was, handed over a business card with the receipt. The woman then said the words that seared her into my brain as a character forever. "I collect tapes, you know. I have over seven hundred and one."

Cashier stares at her with her mouth gaping. Remembers that the customer is always right. "Wow, that sure is a lot. I couldn't keep up with that many."

"Well, I have that many. I write them all down in a book. I've watched every one of them too." She smiles smugly at another woman in line. "We collectors have to keep places like this honest, or they'll gouge us every time."

It was all I could do to keep from grabbing a notebook right then and there. But it got better. A man came up and asked if she was ready to go. His gray and white hair was in a pony tail hanging down his back, a dirty blue bandana wrapped around his forehead. He had on a black t-shirt (could it be? AC/DC?) and beat up old Levis. I think those were black Converse Chuck Taylor's on his feet, although I really expected black biker boots. I couldn't figure out if he was her father or her lover until they got outside. Then I hoped it was the latter.

The story formed in my mind. A motorcycle accident. It was the only explanation for her.

Out the window, I watched as he helped her into an old pick up. Yep, an accident.

Too Old for Harry Potter?

A recent discussion on a Christian Fantasy Reader/Writer group I participate in had a question posed. Can you be too old for Harry Potter. Thought I'd post my answer here as well.

I guess the question becomes, are you ever too old for a good story?

I'm a forty year old mom. I have friends who never read any fiction, no time, they have grown up things to do. Does that make them more mature and grown up? I also have some fellow moms that called me first thing in morning after finishing HP6, so we could have "adult conversation" about the end of the book. Our town had at least 9 HP events, mostly because I live in University town. The students were well represented at the late night bookstore parties.

I guess where I'm going with this is that it comes down to the nature of great children's writing. What should separate children's writing from writing aimed at adults is not skill or quality, but topic. There are topics that kids aren't interested in. But when writers write "down" for children, the books aren't beloved by anyone. Rowling succeeds because she wrote a book (series) that she would love to
read. Marketing aside, she wrote for herself. She wrote from her intelligence and assumed her readers had some degree of intelligence themselves. There's an excellent discussion of this in a book called "Walking on Water", a book on Christianity and the craft of writing by Madeleine L'Engle, the woman who wrote "A Wrinkle in Time."

I think we all can relate to being orphans waiting for our "real" family to take us to our real home. I can't count the number of fantasy daydreams I had about being secretly adopted and my real parents would come fetch me any day. Of course, my husband, who had a happier childhood, didn't have those daydreams. But the core of all this is the inner desire to be special, to set apart for great deeds, and to be loved by a sacrificial love. The heart of the gospel. Harry Potter had these yearnings and Rowling communicates them all. And then for him they came true. And that's what we all wish.

The problem of blogging

As much as I wanted to post an essay I wrote yesterday, I decided to send it somewhere that might pay actual cash money instead. Then again, it could get rejected, like everything else I send to this unnamed magazine. But by golly, I've decided, I'm going to get published by them. I will hound them unmercifully this summer. Every time they send my SASE back, I'll whip out something else. Eventually, they'll have to publish me, just to get me to leave them alone, right?

It's a theory that works for my kids. "Keep nagging Mom until she'll give in so we'll leave her alone." I know that's what they say to each other while I'm in the middle of some important thought. Sometimes, I'll agree to anything to get them to go find something to do for five minutes while I finish an email, or a sentance, or (more likely) a hand of Spyder Solitaire. The true devil of Microsoft is not Explorer or Windows or even Office, but Spider Solitaire. If I had the persistance writing that I can show with this stupid game, I'd be published twelve ways to Sunday.

This could go on, but I am determined to win at least one hand before I go grocery shopping!

Yes, you can take too many quizzes

Today's quiz du jour takes us back to Middle Earth. This isn't the first time I have gotten these results. Which obviously means, I'm learning to answer the questions with a specific result in mind.

You scored as Gandalf. You are Gandalf. You are both wise and strong. You will give your life for your friends. You're a very good leader and people look up to you and admire you. Gandalf 92% Aragorn 83% Gimli 67% Boromir 58% Merry 58% Sam 42% Legolas 42% Pippin 42% Frodo 42% Which LOTR fellowshiper are YOU? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Prongs (James Potter). You are Prongs- aka James Potter! The father of the world-renowned Harry Potter, you have many of his same qualities, such as a disregard for the rules and greatness at Quidditch, but you still must keep your ego in check. Prongs (James Potter) 81% Padfoot (Sirius Black) 75% Moony (Remus Lupin) 38% Wormtail (Peter Pettigrew) 0% Harry Potter Marauders Quiz created with QuizFarm.com

Can you take too many internet quizzes?

Obviously, I don't think so. But gee, Marion Zimmer Bradley. I could like that.

You're The Mists of Avalon!

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

You're obsessed with Camelot in all its forms, from Arthurian legend
to the Kennedy administration. Your favorite movie from childhood was "The Sword in
the Stone". But more than tales of wizardry and Cuban missiles, you've focused on
women. You know that they truly hold all the power. You always wished you could meet
Jackie Kennedy.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.