#WritersLife: Am I Becoming a Recluse?

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I am fiercely protective of my writing time. Maybe too much. The other day a friend asked me to lunch. At first, I was excited about it, but as I was getting ready, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d rather work on the WIP.

This happens all the time. A friend will say, “Let’s get together.”

“Sure. Just let me finish the first draft.”

After I’m done, they say, “Now can we get together?”

“But I’m getting ready to do the first read-through.”

“Now that you’re letting the book cool, can we grab lunch?”

“Oooh, ahh, I started the next book.”

Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. I say yes more than no, but begrudgingly. And I wondered why. Why would I rather be alone with my keyboard than out with friends? Am I becoming a recluse? Why is writing my favorite activity? And why, when life prevents me from writing, do I feel off?

This, of course, sent me down a rabbit hole. Some of what I learned about creativity and the brain I remembered from writing about this topic in 2017. This time, I wanted more. Why would I rather spend time with my characters than “real” people? It’s no secret that I prefer animals to humans, but I didn’t think that mindset extended to friends.

The other day, I did go to lunch. However, when she said, “We should make this a regular thing” I immediately thought, “that depends on your definition of ‘regular’.” Sounds terrible, I know, especially after I stopped writing for a solid hour without protest when a little black bear cub visited me last week. #CutenessOverload

Let’s see what the professionals at Brain World Magazine have to say…

“Writing is seen by many psychologists as a means for the brain to know itself. The brain is sometimes referred to as a meaning-making machine, and the process of writing allows us to examine the beliefs we have accumulated, to understand how we as individuals relate to the world, and to know our own minds better. In short, writing cultivates introspection that leads to better psychological health.”

Okay. I agree with that.

“All human cultures include speech, but not all have written language, and, even today, hundreds of thousands of people around the world never learn to write. Rather, writing is a complex linguistic technology that developed only in the last few thousand years.”

Fascinating, but doesn’t answer my questions.

“Writing requires a marvelous integration of multiple cognitive functions simultaneously: hand-eye coordination, language, memory, creativity, insight, logic, spatial intelligence, and abstract thought. And it is something you can only learn through consistent practice.”

Most writers know consistency is key. The brain is a muscle that will atrophy without regular exercise. And the more we write, the more we tickle the muse. Hence why too much social media can cause writer’s block and/or procrastination. 

“Writing may also serve as an indicator of brain longevity. One investigation, known as The Nun Study, conducted by the National Institute on Aging, showed a correlation between writing ability and the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Reported in Neurobiology of Aging, the study looked at the lives of 678 nuns, all of whom had lived similar lifestyles, to determine what factor might account for brain health in later life.

Detailed records existed for all of the nuns, all of whom had joined the order while still in young adulthood. Each of the subjects had written an autobiography when joining the order, and their average age at the time was 22.

Researchers were able to look at the old biographical essays and assess them for linguistic fluency and complexity of content. Only 10 percent of nuns who were able to write well in their youth ended up with Alzheimer’s, while 80 percent of those with less proficient writing abilities suffered from the disease in old age.”

Did you know nuns penned autobiographies when joining the order? Do all nuns do this? I’m all for it. It just surprised me, is all. Although, writing an autobiographical essay would force the nun to detail her life and the circumstances surrounding her decision to join the order, so it’s probably therapeutic.

“The practice of writing can enhance the brain’s intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information. Through writing, students can increase their comfort with and success in understanding complex material, unfamiliar concepts and subject-specific vocabulary.” In other words, writing builds the brain’s muscles, which can then be used for all sorts of cognitive activity.

As you can see, I wasn’t getting anywhere with my questions.

Next, I looked at my writing process. If you were a fly on the wall, you’d hear me belt out a few lyrics with headphones on, then I go quiet, chair-dancing, then silent, all while the fingers are pounding the keyboard. I have an absolute blast!

Could it be that simple? An increase in serotonin induces feelings of happiness. Runners chase the same euphoria. Am I addicted to having fun? I’d say “alone” but we’re not really alone, are we? We’re with our characters, who are as real to us as anyone.

Or maybe—and this is an educated guess, after all the brain studies I’ve read—when we don’t write, our creative brain misses the workout like the muscles of an athlete who isn’t training. What do you think?

If you miss more than a day or two, do you start to feel off? Or do you look forward to long stretches away from the keyboard? 

5 Timeless Tips for Career Novelists

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Back when I was trying to learn how to write fiction, I joined the Writer’s Digest book club. Each month I’d buy a book or two, devour them, try things out. I have several shelves filled with these books, all highlighted and sticky-noted. Every now and then I like to take one down for a revisit, remembering the lessons I learned.

I recently did that with a tome from 1992, The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Novel Writing. It’s a collection of advice from a number of published authors. On the flyleaf I had written five things from the book I especially wanted to remember. Let’s have a look and see if they still apply!

  • Be excited about your story

The advice here, from W. C. Stroby, is simple:

Write a story that excites you, challenges you, that keeps you awake at night every time you start to think about it. If you can’t get fired up over it, who will?

“Some books I’ve written come to me because I’ve seen something in the paper that out rages me,” Says Robert Campbell. “A lot of them come out of a philosophical position that is cooked in my mind for many years, until I found the story to tell it. Either way, it has to be something that, in a sense, demands my attention.”

I’ve tried to follow this advice ever since. Whenever I conceive of an idea that might have commercial value, I don’t start writing until I make an emotional connection with the material. I made a Venn diagram for myself which looks like this:

That’s the sweet spot. You can be jazzed as all get out about an idea, but unless you’re going for the obscure genius profile, you need to find a commercial connection. On the other hand, you may think up a high concept for the market, but you then need to work it until the jazz starts up in you, lest you end up writing something “by the numbers.”

Verdict: Still applies.

  • Open with dialogue

The great Dwight Swain contributed this chapter. He’s not, of course, advocating always opening with dialogue. But he does cite a pulp editor who told him, “Always open with dialogue, because when two people are talking, they have to be talking about something—something your readers can understand without a lot of explanation.”

Opening with dialogue is a great way to combat throat clearing and info dumping in the first pages. Dialogue automatically makes you write a scene.

The standard criticism you hear (“You can’t open with dialogue because we don’t know enough about who’s talking!”) is the bunk. Readers will wait a long time for info if they’re listening to taut, tension-filled dialogue.

Verdict: Still works.

  • One dialogue gem per act

That’s my own term, which I came up with via the same Swain chapter. He advised striving for the “provocative line.”

Hunt for at least occasional new, fresh, original ways for your characters to say whatever it is they have to say. In their proper places, slang, colorful analogies, personification, and the like can prove very effective….Just don’t carry it so far that your readers label it as straining for effect.

Thus I made it a goal to put a colorful line of dialogue (a “gem”) in each act of the book.

Verdict: Why wouldn’t you?

  • Withhold information

Swain’s disciple, Jack Bickham, wrote a chapter on scene and sequel. “For dramatic reasons,” he said, “you can withhold information from your readers for a while” making them eager to read on.

An example is when you write in multiple 3d Person. You finish a scene with a disaster for POV 1. How will he get out of this? Instead of showing that next, you cut over to POV 2. Get that POV trapped, and go back to POV 1 or hop over to POV 3! Make ’em wait and turn those pages! This is how I like to do my stand alones, such as Your Son is Alive and Can’t Stop Me.

But what if you write in First Person, as I do in my Mike Romeo series? Here I learned a neat trick from Bickham, what I call the “time jump.” Bickham says he got it from the famous mystery writer Phyllis Whitney, who always wrote in First.

What you do is get to the end of a scene where something major (a setback or shock) happens, or is about to happen. The reader expects the next scene to be about the character’s reaction. But no! You jump ahead in time to another scene, which is about something else entirely. As the reader keeps reading to find out what the heck happened in the last scene, you keep them waiting until a moment when your narrator recounts to another character what the reaction was. They will turn those pages to find out!

With Romeo, since he’s a philosopher who can also beat people up, I’ll sometimes bring him to the brink, when he’s about to be set upon by one or more thugs. Instead of going immediately into the fight, Mike will recall a philosophical point or historical moment that somehow has relevance to what is about to happen. He loves gardening, too, so he may talk about plant life before commencing to blows.

Yes, it’s manipulation, but when you do it well, readers love it.

Just don’t overdo it.

Verdict: Requires skill, but when you pull it off, it’s aces.

  • Editors want an author, not just a book

Russell Galen’s chapter is called “How to Chart Your Path to the Bestseller List.” He writes:

Editors are buying you, not just your manuscript. They want to be convinced you’re dedicated to becoming successful; that you have more than one book in you; that your current work is better than your past work, and that your future work will be even better; that you’re looking for a publishing relationship, a long-term home for your work, and not just a deal…Don’t boast that you can write a novel in eleven days—as one writer did to me recently—when editors are looking for evidence that you take pains to make each book as good as it can possibly be.

This was obviously written in the trad-only days, but the advice is just as sound for indies. Readers are looking for new favorite authors, not just books, and if you give them less than stellar work, they won’t stick around waiting for you to measure up. If you want a career out of this, as opposed to a hobby throwing wet spaghetti at the wall, put your work through a grinder.

As Dorothy Bryant puts it later in the book, “Anyone can do a rough draft….The difference between ‘anyone’ and a serious writer is rewriting, rewriting, and grinning over gritted teeth.”

Verdict: If you want to sell widely, pay heed.

Discuss!

That Love/Hate Relationship

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I have a love/hate relationship with copy editors. They don’t know that.

We need them. Lordy how I need them, because no matter how many times the Bride and I read a manuscript, we miss something, and this current work in progress is no different. I thought I’d turned in clean pages, and once again a detail-oriented individual found errors that I’d missed.

One thing I hated as a high school student was to see all those red marks on an assignment. I’d worked so hard to provide what my English teachers required, remembering all the rules of grammar, and the vocabulary necessary to tell a good story.

But when they were returned, passed back down over disinterested shoulders to my seat against the wall, those corrections and questions sent a flush of anger through my body and it was all I could do not to rush up to her desk and point out everything she’d highlighted that was wrong…

…in my opinion.

Today I still feel that same flush at the notes on the right hand side of the screen, but choke it down because they’re usually right.

Usually, I said.

A few years ago a side note in the page proofs raised my ire. The editor questioned the spelling of a pistol carried by one of my characters. The note read, There is no hyphen in a Taurus Ultra-Lite.

In my mind, I called up this individual. “But you’re wrong! There is a hyphen.”

“No there isn’t. I looked it up online.”

“Well, you looked it up wrong, because the pistol I have here in my hand has a Taurus Ultra-Lite stamped into the frame.”

“You have a pistol!!!???”

It really didn’t go down exactly that way, but I do own a Taurus Ultra-Lite (a terrible revolver in my opinion and I wish I hadn’t bought it), and those words and that hyphen really are stamped into the frame, justifying my use of that weapon.

Another copy editor once pointed out to me that my use of “booger-bear” was wrong in a Red River manuscript. Now, I grew up in fear of booger-bears in the night, and often pictured them as a child-chomping monster resembling the Creature From the Black Lagoon, but with longer teeth and claws and red eyes that glowed in the darkness.

Brrrr.

When I read that side note, I laughed out loud.

“According to the Urban Dictionary, a booger-bear is a woman of loose morals.”

A river of comments rushed through my brain, but I resisted. However, I wanted to write back, “Never use the Urban Dictionary to confirm anything I include about rural America.”

These days I include a note to the copy editor which reads:

“Please do not edit the spelling or use of words in my dialogue, nor should you edit for proper grammar inside quotation marks. This dialogue is regional, and therefore written the way us Texans use those words and phrases.”

Booger-bear.

I also do not care about the current grammatical rules that insist on creating these odd-looking names such as Cross’s, Williams’s, or any other possessive. I’m old, and the AP Press Style book says the correct way to write the possessive case of Reavis is Reavis’, not Reavis’s. Reavis’ work will always read as such.

Please do not attempt to correct guns or calibers. If you don’t know that a .410 shotgun is a caliber, then stay out of this discussion.

That really isn’t one of my notes, but I’d like it to be, along with the following:

No, there is not town in Texas called Nashville. I know it’s in Tennessee, and I’ve been there in a fruitless search for real country music. I made it up because I write fiction. If I intend to use a real name, all I have to do is grab one out of the air, because I can’t seem to make up a town name that hasn’t already been used. I wanted to use Hogansville as an example, but when I checked, there really is a Hogansville, TX.

But I don’t hammer them, because these fine editors are simply doing their job to keep me honest, and to ensure that when my book hits the shelves it will contain as few mistakes as possible. Copy editors are essential and they give that final polish to a book.

Don’t be too hard on them.

On another note: Sourcebooks and Goodreads are giving away 25 copies of Hard Country, my first novel in the contemporary Tucker Snow series that will release August 1, 2023. The contest runs from July 8-27th. Follow the link below to enter, and good luck!

Oh, and feel free to pre-order your copy from your favorite online dealer.

https://srcbks.com/44dWkQ0

Octopuses and Accuracy

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Octopuses and Accuracy
Terry Odell

First, for those of you who are interested in my recaps of my recent trip to Norway, the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Svalbard and more, I’ve been posting them on my personal blog, Terry’s Place. I’ve also been working on my gallery. Lastly, I did an interview about expedition cruising with the travel agency that arranged our trip. You can watch the replay here. The cruise part starts about 5 minutes in.

Next, the new computer setup went relatively smoothly. Wiping the old computer was more troublesome, but as of now, I consider myself back in business.

Okay, enough personal stuff. Today’s TKZ topic: Accuracy. I’m not talking about the stretches of truth we often make for the sake of the story. Readers suspend disbelief to an extent when they read fiction, but we don’t want to make glaring errors. Their willingness to suspend goes only so far.

I belong to a local book club, and most of the time the books they choose aren’t my standard reading fare, but I’m willing to read and attend meetings when I can. Yes, there is wine involved.

A recent book choice was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I usually get my book club books from the library, and this one arrived too late to read in time for the meeting, so I missed the discussion. I’m not doing a book review here. It’s a popular book, and I found it engaging enough. It was written in present tense, which I don’t care for. It was on the predictable side, but the main protagonist—the human one, Tova—was interesting, and easy to care about. I was happy to keep reading to see how the author brought everything together. The non-human POV character was a Giant Pacific Octopus, Marcellus, captive in a small town aquarium. The two of them, as expected, became “friends.”

As the title indicates, Marcellus was a very intelligent octopus. A bit more intelligent than science studies would indicate, but I was willing to suspend some disbelief for the sake of the story. The author took behaviors that have been observed in some octopuses and kicked them up a notch. Or three.

What I couldn’t get past, and the reason for this post today, was that Marcellus was described as having one eye. Octopuses have two eyes. And yes, I looked it up to make sure I hadn’t missed out on a piece of octopus anatomy. Now, this species is very large, and it’s possible that Tova would see only one at a time. Or maybe he’d been injured prior to his rescue. I guess the author thought a rescue octopus would be better than having the animal captured for the sake of a unique display exhibit, but that’s not the issue. Nowhere in the book was there an explanation of the single eye. So every time there was a reference to his “eye” I was yanked—forcibly—out of the story.

Stretching the behaviors I could buy, but why mess with reality? All it would have taken would have been a credible reason for only one eye. It was obvious the author had done her homework based on the behaviors she described, but it’s not like she would have missed how many eyes the creatures have. They have nine brains and three hearts, which she got right, but they have two eyes. Did he always have his head turned so only one was visible? Why make it seem that he has only one?

At the end of the book, we see a new statue outside the aquarium, and the author points out the two eyes on the statue. But nothing I saw—and nothing in any of the reviews I skimmed through—seemed to care that Marcellus wasn’t described anatomically correctly. I asked my book club members, and none of them remembered anything about the eye/eyes jumping out at them, so maybe it’s just me. One said she noticed it, but shrugged it off and kept reading. It bothered me enough to pose the question to you.

When facts are presented, and you know they’re wrong—perhaps the old safety on the Glock mistake, or smelling cordite—what’s your take? I’m not talking about a one-off mention. The mention of Marcellus staring at her with his one eye is repeated numerous times in the book.

Or, has someone here read the book and can tell me there was a mention of it, slipped in somewhere and I missed it? Maybe at the bottom of page 127 when I sneezed?

Have you ever been dinged for something a reader said was wrong when you had it right?

Have you been pulled out of a story due to inaccuracies? How glaring do they have to be before you put down the book?

*Note: The word octopus comes from the Greek, not the Latin, so the plural is octopuses, not octopi. For my science nerd friends, you can learn more about the Giant Pacific Octopus here.

Cover image of Deadly Relations by Terry OdellAvailable Now
Deadly Relations.
Nothing Ever Happens in Mapleton … Until it Does
Gordon Hepler, Mapleton, Colorado’s Police Chief, is called away from a quiet Sunday with his wife to an emergency situation at the home he’s planning to sell. A man has chained himself to the front porch, threatening to set off an explosive.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

Happy Independence Day 2023!

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Betsy Ross with General George Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross. Painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris – public domain

By Debbie Burke

@burke_twitter

In the U.S., we celebrate July 4, 1776 when 13 upstart colonies declared their independence from Great Britain and proclaimed they were the United States of America.

The crafters of the Declaration of Independence were well aware of the momentous nature of the document.  They wrote several drafts before they were satisfied that it said exactly what they meant. The draft shown this photo was hand-written by Thomas Jefferson.

Writers should take comfort that even the brilliant Jefferson had to line out and rewrite parts.

 The final draft was engrossed (formally hand-written) on parchment by Timothy Matlack, a beer bottler known for his fine penmanship. Side note: August 2 was the date when all 56 delegates had actually signed the document.

In 1776, centuries before the internet, how did news of independence reach its citizens?

The distance from northern New Hampshire to southern Georgia stretched more than 1100 miles. Transportation by horseback took days and weeks. Hard to imagine in today’s world where data is instantly available around the globe faster than an eye blink.

Back then, broadsides were commonly used to disseminate important information. They were large, one-sided posters that were read aloud to large gatherings of townspeople and groups of soldiers. Broadsides were also prominently displayed in public places.

At the direction of the Continental Congress, a Philadelphia printer named John Dunlap printed an estimated 200 broadsides of the Declaration of Independence. They were reproductions of the actual document without original signatures.

Declaration of Independence – National Archives

John Hancock’s name was featured in large-font type, perhaps to approximate his actual oversized signature. Legend claims he wrote prominently so John Bull (the British equivalent of Uncle Sam) could read it without spectacles.

The Dunlap Broadsides were delivered throughout the colonies to spread the word about independence. While the British fleet was anchored in New York Harbor, Admiral Richard Howe of the Royal Navy received a copy, which he delivered it to King George and Parliament.

Of the approximate 200 broadsides printed in 1776 by John Dunlap, only 26 survive, not surprising since many were pasted to buildings where weather destroyed them. Three were located in London. The New York Public Library has one. The National Archives has one which is displayed to the public at limited times.

Two hundred copies were not nearly enough to spread the word and other printers followed Dunlap’s July issue with their own replications. One printed in Massachusetts by Ezekiel Russell was offered by Sotheby’s for $1-1.5 million. It contained additional text as follows:

Ordered, That the Declaration of Independence be printed; and a Copy sent to the Ministers of each Parish, of every Denomination, within this State; and that they severally be required to read the same to their respective Congregations, as soon as divine Service is ended, in the Afternoon, on the first Lord’s Day after they shall have received it: — And after such Publication thereof, to deliver the said Declaration to the Clerks of their several Towns, or Districts; who are hereby required to record the same in their respective Town, or District Books, there to remain as a perpetual Memorial thereof.

In 2000, TV producer Norman Lear paid $8.14 million for a Dunlap broadside which he later took on a tour of all 50 states to give the public an opportunity to see the historic birth certificate of the country.

On this July Fourth, we celebrate some of the most important words ever written. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are the Charters of Freedom that changed history.

Happy Independence Day! 

What My Horse Taught Me About Character Arcs

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“No one can teach riding so well as a horse.” –C.S. Lewis

* * *

Two years ago this month, I wrote my first guest post for the Kill Zone Blog, and I will be forever grateful to Debbie Burke for offering me that opportunity. Later that year, I became a regular contributor, and I have loved the experience so much, I thought I’d celebrate this anniversary by re-posting that first article.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I liked writing it.

* * *

It was a day for speed. A wind-at-your-back, smile-on-your-face day when a youthful gallop overruled frumpy caution, so we barreled down the dirt trail into the park and around a blind turn. As the bushes on our right gave way and the road ahead came into view, a terrifying specter suddenly loomed up in the middle of the trail, no more than fifty yards in front of us.

Dixie, my high-strung, prone-to-panic filly, slammed on the brakes. I had no idea a horse could stop like that. Two stiff-legged hops – thump, thump — to a dead halt.

I went straight over her head. Turns out an English forward seat saddle is particularly ill-suited for sudden deer sightings.

As I was flying through the air, anticipating an unpleasant reacquaintance with Mother Earth, Dixie began some kind of crazy cha-cha in reverse, trying to flee the tiny deer creature. I was still holding on to the reins, however, so she couldn’t turn and run. Instead, she made a determined dart backward, dragging me along in her wake.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just let go of the reins and save myself from a mouthful of dirt and a painful awareness of my sudden change in circumstances. I’ll be honest with you. I would have let my horse drag me into the next county before I allowed her to return riderless to the barn. I have my pride, you know.

Body-surfing down a dirt trail at the whim of a frightened animal is an excellent way to focus one’s mind.  I’m older now, but sometimes I still get that urge to gallop furiously into the next adventure, no matter what form it takes. But when I recall that day in the park, the awful taste of grit in my mouth, the look of terror in Dixie’s eyes, and the acrid scent of fear in the air, I pull back the reins on my emotions and proceed at a deliberate trot.

* * *

Whether dramatic or not, we each have a set of experiences that have transformed the way we view the world. Likewise, we all know the characters we write about must change from the beginning of the story to the end. Whether the arc is positive or negative, the change must be meaningful.

* * *

So TKZers: Tell us about a character in one of your novels that went through a metamorphosis. Was it a dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime experience? Or a slow coming to grips with reality over the course of the story? How did you accomplish the change in a way that would grab your readers?

* * *

 

Cece Goldman reluctantly faces her fear of horses and learns to ride in Dead Man’s Watch. She learns a few other things about herself along the way.

The Most—and Least—Enjoyable Parts of Writing

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I love this place.

Remember when sepia-tone Dorothy opens the door of her transported house, and sees a strange world of vivid colors, striking flora, and giggling Munchkins? We are not in Kansas anymore!*

What adventures await? What discoveries? And dangers! Good witches and bad witches, trees that throw their fruit, lions, tigers and bears. Oh my!

Well, that’s how I feel at the beginning of a project. I’m in a land of infinite possibilities and not wedded to any of them. I get to explore. I take a stroll down a yellow-brick road and come to a fork. “Some people do go both ways,” a friendly scarecrow tells me. Off I go one way, taking notes. I decide to go back and take another way. Takes me a millisecond to get to another setting entirely. More notes and ideas for plot, characters, twists, turns and settings.

I call this my “white hot document.” I’m recording what ifs and what nows as fast as they come to me. I don’t settle on one direction just yet.

The next day I come back for more. I annotate the notes, highlighting what still excites me, and go off again. I add more characters, scene ideas, plot possibilities. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After a week or so the story I really want to tell—or, more accurately, the story that wants me to tell it—begins to take shape.

This is the most enjoyable part of writing for me. The world is my oyster and there are pearls all around.

Now the work begins. I start to lay out my scene cards (in Scrivener), concentrating on my signpost scenes. Especially my Mirror Moment, which becomes the beam of light that helps me navigate the story from opening Disturbance, through the Doorway of No Return, to the final Transformation. I’m still having fun.

Then comes the writing, which sometimes flows (lots of fun), sometimes slogs (ack). But either way, I make sure the word quota gets done. There’s always satisfaction in that.

Finally, I get to the end. I work on this part the most, the last fifty pages. I know I’ve hit the mark when emotions kick in. Elation, deep satisfaction, sometimes laughter, sometimes tears.

Yes, I’ll admit it. I have on more than one occasion experienced the waterworks when I hit just the right note of resonance. Like when I typed the last line of Try Fear. It was the end of my Ty Buchanan legal thriller trilogy. I’ve had a consistent stream of emails asking me to continue this series, but I am loath to mess with what I consider my most perfect ending.

I set the first draft aside for a few weeks.

Then comes the first read-through, in hard copy. I don’t particularly enjoy this part, but know it’s make things better. I make my revisions, then give it to my first reader, the sainted Mrs. B.

This is the hard part! Waiting for her notes, then going through the book with her page by page. It’s like surgery. Nobody chooses surgery as a fun activity, but you take it when you know it will make you healthier. Ditto your book.

And then you’re in recovery which is, for me, the final polish. The last tinkering, usually with dialogue and scene endings.

Proof reader next. Then, finally, out the book goes to the world. This is really enjoyable as an indie, because I don’t have to wait a year for the book to hit the shelves. Thus, launch day is champagne day. I pop a bottle for my wife and me, and usually cook up a rib-eye on the barbie, to be enjoyed with a nice cabernet.

I awaken the next day, and open the door to a new world of vivid colors…

What’s your favorite part of the writing process? The least favorite? How do you treat yourself when your book is finally published?

*Bonus Note: How did The Wizard of Oz pull off the effect of Dorothy opening the door in B&W to reveal a Technicolor world? It was ingenious for the day. The entire scene was shot in color! The interior of the house was painted in sepia tones, and “Dorothy” was really Judy Garland’s stand-in, in a sepia dress, black wig, and dark makeup on the arms. Notice that she pulls the door open, revealing the colorful world, and backs out of the shot. That’s when Judy Garland moves into the scene, carrying a fake Toto. Watch:

Reviewed Words of Wisdom

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I made my first sales as a flash fiction writer in 2009-11. A number of my stories appeared at Every Day Fiction, and that magazine provided my first experience in having my fiction reviewed. Readers could give a story a star rating, as well as comment on it, and sometimes those comments ended up being micro-reviews. Since then, like other published authors, my books have varying numbers of online reviews at the various online book stores and at Goodreads. Each author ends up having to decide how to deal with reviews of their books—ignore, read only the good ones, read all of them, and what, if anything, to take away from those reviews.

Today’s Words of Wisdom provides three insightful takes on reviews. Joe Moore lays out the three types of reviews, Laura Benedict reasons for motivations for reading your reviews, and Clare Langley-Hawthorne shares a useful way to categorize your reviews. Each excerpt is date-linked to the original post, and all are worth reading in their entirety.

No book has ever been declared great by everyone who read it. There will always be those who dislike a book for more reasons that we can count. As a matter of fact, it never ceases to amaze me the vast span of reactions to books including my own and those of my friends. Pick any bestseller and you’ll find someone who loves it and someone else who doesn’t. And often both are willing to say so, in the strongest of terms. There are more than enough good, bad and ugly reviews to go around.

So I thought that instead of talking about online reviews, I’d share some of mine with you. I’ve listed 5 of my thrillers (all co-written with Lynn Sholes) and a sample of the good, the bad and the ugly online reviews we’ve received over the years.

Disclaimer: I have no idea who wrote and posted these nor have I ever paid for a review. These samples were gathered from Amazon and Goodreads.

THE PHOENIX APOSTLES

The Good: “I’ll read anything these two authors write. I have to be careful not to put a spoiler in this review, but there is one scene that knocked me off the sofa. I don’t often squeal during a movie scene when the bad guy comes out from around the dark corner, but there was a scene in this book that made me jump and I almost flung the book across the room. I won’t tell which one it was because I don’t want to ruin it for any other reader.”

The Bad: “I just couldn’t figure out if this book was for “young adult” reading or “teen reading” or adults or Christian reading or even anti-religion.”

The Ugly: “The writing is deplorable, the style so bland I had to read a page twice to make sure it was indeed that bad!”

THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY

The Good: “What I want to know is when is this going to come out as a movie? It has to be one of the most exciting thrillers I have ever read. I was hooked from the first page on when Cotten Stone (the main character) stumbles onto the dig site of the Crusader’s tomb.”

The Bad: “This started with interesting characters and action, but the quality of writing was fair and the story went downhill. Would not recommend even as a beach book.”

The Ugly: “The book was simply boring and poorly written. The characters had no depth. The plot took forever to go anywhere.”

THE LAST SECRET

The Good: “This was one of those books you cannot put down. Basically I was on the edge of my seat so to speak whilst reading it. Exciting, mysterious. Well written, keeps you guessing. Loved it… Would recommend as great reading!”

The Bad: “It takes more than an exotic location and some perceived struggle between good and evil to make a good story.”

The Ugly: “Religious hype … I was totally disappointed.”

Joe Moore—September 5, 2012

Whenever I’m tempted to read reviews of my work, I keep in mind what my very first writing teacher told me: “You don’t get to look over your reader’s shoulder and explain your work. It is what it is.” That’s it. It’s out on paper or online (or shared with your workshop or writing group or significant other) and it must stand on its own. Sometimes it’s going to wobble, and sometimes someone is going to point out where you screwed up. That’s the way of sending work out into the world. The sending out has to be its own reward because there are no guarantees once it’s done.

If you’re not one of the stalwart writers who can confidently take anything a reviewer throws at you, pause a moment before you sit down to read your reviews at Goodreads or Amazon or anywhere else and ask yourself a few questions:

—Am I looking for approbation? If so, then go ask your mom or spouse or bff what they think of your work, because while you might find some solace in reviews, you’re going to find a lot of other things that are nothing like approbation.

—Am I being tempted to look at reviews by my overbearing inner critic? This is your own resistance trying to keep you from your work. Your inner critic will skim over all the nice things it reads and zero in on the negative comments. These are the ones that will stay with you when you sit down to write.

—Am I willing to give equal weight to both the negative and positive reviews? This is related to the inner critic question. If you believe all the bad stuff, then you might as well believe all the good stuff, too. And vice versa.

—Is there critical information that will help me become a better writer? This is a tricky one. Sure, there may be some clues in there, but if your goal truly is to become a better writer, then find a good editor and pay them to tell you what needs to change. Good editors rarely spend their time giving away their advice for free in reviews.

—If I read my reviews, am I likely to be motivated to put my backside in the chair and write my thousand words today when I’m done? For me, this answer is always a resounding no. Your experience may be different. If someone writes to me and tells me how much they like my work, I sail away to my keyboard on Cloud Nine, but I’ve never felt that way after reading a review. And reading negative reviews can knock me off my schedule for days. Sometimes weeks.

My relationship with reviews has evolved significantly over the past decade. At the beginning I approached even Amazon reviews with reverence and fear. My attitude was funny given that I reviewed for a newspaper for ten years. I knew how subjective reviews were. Much depends on the reviewer’s workload, tastes, and expectations. But I couldn’t get past the kid waving the potholder for several years. I wanted everyone to love my work! And if they didn’t, I spent a lot of time worrying that there was something wrong with it.

I can’t pinpoint when I changed. Somewhere along the line I stopped having expectations of the people who—often very kindly—bothered to take the time to write down what they liked, or didn’t like, about my work. I turned my concentration to my characters, making them more human, even occasionally sympathetic. That was what I could control. Now, months can go by and I don’t even know about new reviews that have gone up.

Laura Benedict—August 10, 2016

An article in the New York Times last week got me thinking (again) about reviews (hey, I bet most authors have a small part of their brain devoted to the ever-present background angst about past or future reviews/criticism of their work). The article (which you can find clicking on this link) is an interview with the author Curtis Sittenfield on the thorny issue of how professional authors handle criticism.

Now we’ve all heard of the unfortunate instances where authors have directly responded to negative reviews or criticism – usually through an ill-advised rant on twitter or a hot-headed response on Goodreads or Amazon. If you’ve forgotten or unsure of what some authors have stooped to doing, I recommend reading some of The Guardian’s book blog posts on the matter (see: how not to handle reviews; how not to respond to a bad review for example).

Curtis Sittenfield provides a useful quadrant tool that many authors could use. Basically she divides up reviews into four quadrants: smart and positive (definitely read!); smart and negative (still read); dumb and positive (read for the ego’s sake); and dumb and negative (do not read!). Many authors get into the greatest hot-water when they allow themselves to get embroiled in a debate over what they consider to be ‘dumb and negative’ reviews. Now, maybe it’s too hard to resist the temptation to read these kind of reviews but it’s up to every professional author worth their salt to resist the temptation to respond to them. You just can’t take it all so personally (being a professional writer means recognizing this is a business after all). As Curtis Sittenfield notes: ” I literally don’t think I’ve ever read a letter from a writer complaining about his or her negative review that made the writer look good. You’re better off just biting your tongue.”

Too true!

But, as Curtis goes on to point out, there are many instances in which harsh criticism can identify a real weakness in a book or an author’s approach to their material that, while humiliating, can all be part of the process of learning to be a better writer. Even in these instances though, the best response from a writer is no response at all. For Curtis, her nightmare reviewer is one who has an agenda that precludes them from responding sincerely to the book – and I think this is (again) where many authors come unstuck. There’s a lot of mean people on the internet who have their own agenda when it comes to reviewing a book or adding comments on a thread regarding someone’s work. Sometimes they are angry and bitter, sometimes they may be jealous, sometimes they want to indulge in a personal attack just for the hell of it (some are just plain trolls after all). But there can be nothing gained from responding to a scathing comment or a harsh review regardless of the reviewer’s real (or imagined) motive. Anyone who’s been on Facebook or other social media recently can attest to the fact that you are never going to change someone’s mind through an ill-advised post, comment or flamewar!

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—August 29, 2016

***

There you have it: the good, the bad and the ugly of reviews; reading reviews; handling reviews.

  1. How do you categorize reviews?
  2. Do you ever read your reviews? If so, do you read all of them? Do you have someone else screen your reviews and only share certain ones with you?
  3. Do you learn anything from reading your reviews?

Reader Friday – Secret Reading Places and Unique Reading Habits

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Many surveys of reading habits have been done here at TKZ on Reader Fridays. I couldn’t find any on unusual reading habits, so I thought that might be a good topic for today.

Many people read on busses, subways, trains, and ferries. Children climb into tree houses or just a branch on a tree. People read on boats and in the park. But, in what unusual or unique places have you read or observed others reading? Or what unique locations have you given your characters to read in?

Do you practice, or have you observed, unusual activities while reading? Or have you given a character the unique ability to read while doing something other than sitting quietly. Please tell us.

While you search your memory’s database, here are a few I’ve seen or practiced:

Growing up, in my early years, Reader’s Digest and other magazines resided on the top of the toilet tank. I thought that was normal. It wasn’t until years later that I realized it may have had something to do with my mother growing up in a home without indoor plumbing and with an outhouse “out back.” If you were going to use the pages from “Monkey Wards” for toilet paper, you may as well read them first.

During those early years, I also checked out books from our small-town library, climbed up into the branches of a tree in front of our house, and read while people walked by on the sidewalk below. Somehow, it was more fun to go unnoticed.

In my college years I visited relatives in the Virginia mountains. Many of them had gardens, and more than a few guarded their gardens. Apparently, groundhogs could mow down a row of lettuce very quickly. Sunny days were spent on the back porch, in a rocking chair, overlooking the garden, and holding a gun while reading a book.

Early in my training, I spent many nights in the hospital. I found that the ward clerks who really took their reading seriously requested the graveyard shift where there was less paperwork and more time to read. And, the paperwork definitely had lower priority than the reading.

Now it’s your turn.

  • What bizarre unusual “unique” reading habits have you seen in others or given to your characters?
  • What “special” reading habits do you practice?
  • Do you have a secret place to hide from the world so you can read uninterrupted?