Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Progress isn't always what we expect." — Peg Brantley


When I considered boxing up my last manuscript it felt as if I'd be taking a huge step back. Turns out,   after the deed was done, I was way ahead.

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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." — Anaïs Nin



Even a suspense novelist/thriller writer can identify with this one.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I hate writing, I love having written." —Dorothy Parker

Some days there's nothing more true. Other days? It's magical. Those are the days I live for. Still, it's a wonderful feeling when I'm finished.

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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Virtue has a veil, vice a mask." —Victor Hugo


Current news underscores this quote. The question is, who's wearing the mask?

I'm deep into research on the topic of human trafficking. For me, safe and secure in my insulated world, it's easy to spot the masks. Unfortunately for many, not so much. I'm excited about this new project and continue to trust I'll get it right.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life." —W. Somerset Maugham


How many books will you be giving as presents this month? (Including the ones you give to yourself.)



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about...but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages." —Anne Lamott



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's." —Stephen King



I love this quote. Unfortunately it's often easier said than done.



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A Difficult Decision

As a fiction writer, most of my decisions are easy and fun. I get to create everything about a story and have it go in whatever direction I want.

As an independently published writer, I also get to choose my editors, cover designer,  interior design, publication date, price, and avenues of promotion.

All fun stuff. Well, mostly.

I've been struggling with this current manuscript for a very long time. And right now it's no longer exciting me even though I love the characters. I'm not swept away by the story that's emerging in the fourth rewrite. Yes, fourth.

Writing friends I respect, including my editor, have been advising me for months to put it away and move on. The words "failure" and "unprofessional" and (let's be honest) "pride" kept me trying to find a way to make it work. Plus, I'd already paid for a cover.

Yesterday I heard the advice one more time and it somehow felt different. It went something like, "Yeah, just shelve it for now. It'll still be there later, plus you'll have the cover."

Winston Churchill said, "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

So today I'm packing up my research notes and getting organized for the next story I want to write. In the meantime I'll trust it really is an issue with this manuscript and that I haven't lost my writing mojo.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author. If you see yourself prancing around between subject and reader, get lost." —John McPhee



Rather than personal experiences, I believe this quote is talking about ego. "Look what I know!" "Look how beautifully I string words together!" No matter how wonderful you are, when you take the reader out of the story they're enjoying, you've messed up as a writer.

I know about this because I have a tendency to employ purple prose. While I think it's dramatic and literary, readers just want a good story. Thank goodness I have friends and editors who don't let me get away with it.





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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." —Mark Twain


Damn good advice.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier." —C.S. Lewis




I have a full drawer of cuts from my current manuscript. Characters with interesting stories that just didn't fit this one. Maybe, like C.S. Lewis, I'll find a place for them in the future.



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UPCOMING APPEARANCES

Hey, everyone. By listing places where I'll be signing books in the next few weeks I'm hoping a) maybe you'll see an event and time that works for you and b) I can feel more organized!


Saturday, October 31: Author Tea from 1-4 at a private home in Aurora. (If you'd like to go, let me know how to get the details to you.)

Friday, November 6: Colorado Country Christmas from 3-6 at Denver Mart.

Saturday, November 7: Colorado Country Christmas from 12-2 at Denver Mart.

Sunday, November 8: Colorado Country Christmas from 12-1:30 at Denver Mart.

Saturday, December 12: Colorado Authors' Christmas Book Fair from 9-3 at Boulder County Fairgrounds.




One of my favorite things is connecting with my readers, so I really hope to see you at one of these events.




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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." —Douglas Adams



It feels as if I've been working on this book for five years. Can I just say I'm happy that no contract was involved?
Sheesh.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that."
—Octavia Butler



Good stories become great stories when people you care about are involved. For me, it's more about the characters than the plot (which, btw, better stand up).



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." —Elmore Leonard


I recently read a book that has received a lot of attention. While I love words and enjoy squeezing every one of them for full impact, I found myself skimming paragraphs. Finally, a little more than half-way through, I skipped to the end.

Have you ever done that?



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence." —Octavia E. Butler



I'd been writing about three months and was convinced I was going to be the newest literary discovery. That old cliché? Ignorance is bliss? It's a cliché for a reason.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

 "The best thing about writing fiction is that moment were the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising and it's magic and wonderful and strange.





You don't live there always when you write. Mostly it's a long hard walk. Sometimes it's a trudge through fog and you're scared you've lost your way and can't remember why you set out in the first place.

But sometimes you fly and that pays for everything." —Neil Gaiman



I want to thank all my lighthouses out there who have guided me through the fog.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings." —Stephen King




Earlier this month I killed 10,000 darlings. Last month, 35,000. I'm officially a ms murderer.

(These erasers remind me of scary clowns. Just sayin'.)





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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Remember to load your brain before you shoot your mouth off." —Unknown

Sounds like some western wisdom to me, and although it's appropriate for writers (and everyone else) I thought the amping political climate could use an injection of humor. Wry, but humor.

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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Don't get it right, just get it written." —James Thurber



I'm working on this. Really.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"No two persons ever read the same book." —Edmund Wilson



As a writer who puts each new book out there with a mixture of pride and trepidation, I love this.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten." —Neil Gaiman

My favorite way to learn "mere facts" is through the inspiring shadow truths of fiction.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Acting is essentially doing a great deal of preparation and then hoping that an accident happens." —Laurence Olivier


The same can be said about writing fiction.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writer and Those Who Love Them

"... everythng in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." —Sylvia Plath


After 9/11 I wrote a poem about the plane that went down in the field. For me it was cathartic. Sometimes big things require a poem.

Can you imagine what Sylvia Plath would have done with a blog?



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say." — C. S. Lewis



Don't you wish it happend this way all the time?






I recently heard about an author who often wrote blindfolded. According to him, his hands were rarely in the wrong position on the keyboard so gobbledy-gook was not an issue.




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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"A word after a word after a word is power."
— Margaret Atwood

So what are you waiting for?



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Human Trafficking

In doing research for my next book, I came across this wonderful organization.

While NOMI focuses on women in India and Cambodia, it's important for those of us in the US to truly understand that trafficking for sex and labor is in our own backyard. Young girls are being enslaved in this country. And where, do you imagine, will many (if not most) of the girls be marketed? What country's citizens have the financial ability to create and pay for the demand?



I tried unsuccessfully to post a video, but you can click HERE to watch.

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Wednesday Wisdom for Writer and Those Who Love Them

I recently finished reading KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler. Although my list of her quotes doesn't tie this one to KINDRED, I have to think it was.


"I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people."

She was an amazing author, and KINDRED was an amazing book.




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OT: Slavery to Mass Incarceration

This is off topic, but something that's important to me. I hope you take a few minutes (less than six) to look at this video from the Equal Justice Initiative.



How did you look at the news today? How will you look at it tomorrow? How quickly are we evolving and how firmly are we holding on to the dysfunctional and evil ideas of our past?

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

I'm reading KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler right now and am enthralled. You'll likely read a few quotes from Ms. Butler in the near future.

"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence." —Octavia E. Butler


My plan for the week is to back up and get a running start on the manuscript I'm currently writing. I'm hoping to find something fresh and exciting. In other words, I'm counting on persistence paying off in a measurable way.

Keeping the faith is part of the process, right?

(A free copy of THE SACRIFICE to the first commenter who gets the significance of the photo.)



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page." —Stephen King



This is pretty much the guts of it.


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First Taste Newsletter Features THE SACRIFICE

I'm pleased to share the link to read the first chapter of THE SACRIFICE along with two other books. Check them out at First Taste Newsletter!


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"As a writer, you ask yourself to dream while you're awake." —Aimee Bender



Not so hard to do once you've had enough
practice.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Readers need to see themselves between the lines of the story." —Karen Kingsbury



While plot is important, especially to someone who writes suspense, characters resonate long after the story concludes. At least they do for me.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all." —Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis


And who knows, one day your child may grow up to write books.

Yes, this is a photo of me. A very, very long time ago.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it." —Octavia Butler


Cool, huh?



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it." —Mark Twain

It's all better with friends.

Over The Top Writing (Not a good thing)

Hello.

My name is Peg
and sometimes I tend to write over the top.

Before I give you an example, let me just say that I'm working through my very own recovery program (and that's not to make light of anyone who has actually gone through a 12-step program for addiction).

The thing is, when I write over the top I get euphoric.  High. Yep. It's my favorite place to be. I think that particular scene sparkles with everything a writer should strive for. I don't see the fluff. The pretense. The pure crap. I see literary style.

Thank goodness I've been anchored (yes, anchored) to some take-no-prisoners editors who've called me on it every time.

Here's my latest:

FLAMES SCREAMED out the windows, reaching up and licking the air like crack whores hungry for the next fix that could keep them going a little longer. The charged orange creatures chased the oxygen that pushed and twisted them into demented dancers. The ironic contrast between the energized heat from the fire and the snow nestled peacefully on nearby pines underscored the silence broken by the wail of sirens. 

Undulating smoke changed color depending on what was being consumed, then veiled silently down the mountain valley. The shades of gray faded into a harmless and barely discernible mist, its secrets lost.

The was the old opening for FLAME GAME. While I still love it, it's history. It fed me, not the story.  

As readers, have you ever read anything that sounded over the top? What did you think? Did you keep reading?

As writers, can any of you identify?

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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork." —Peter De Vries

I regularly have to remove piles of paper. Some of it is manuscript, others are things I print out to read later (and rarely do), and still others need to be filed because I'll need them for taxes or something equally daunting.

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RED TIDE's New Cover

I've wanted to get a dog onto the cover of RED TIDE for a long time.

This is a great silhouette of Gretchen, the Human Remains Detection dog who has a nice role in the story.

If you haven't already read it, RED TIDE will be free for Kindle May 17th through May 19th.

***Edit*** Feel free to spread the word.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." —Mark Twain


One of my favorite tools is THE SYNONYM FINDER. Searching for the right word often leads to a wonderful surprise. Does that ever happen to you?


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me." —Ray Bradbury

BAMM!


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you are writing, and aren't writing particularly well." —Agatha Christie


Good advice from Dame Agatha. The problem is consistently  following it.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Expectation is the mother of all frustration." —Antonio Banderas


I'm in the throes of an intense—and extensive— rewrite. Man, can I relate to that quote!


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober." —Dorothy L. Sayers




How many of us run into another room full of excitement to share a certain passage? Words that make us laugh out loud, or our jaws drop, cause a gasp, tears to fall... words that show what it means to be human?



Are you reading one now? Do you want to share?



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions." —James Michener




As  much as I'm looking forward to receiving my professional edit for FLAME GAME and working to create a better story, I'm also looking forward to beginning my next one. The research is getting me excited about the possibilities.


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writer and Those Who Love Them

"Good stories are not written. They are rewritten." —Phyllis Whitney


My mom loved Phyllis Whitney, and so by extension did I. Mom's 82nd birthday would have been tomorrow, April 2nd.

Happy Birthday, Mom.



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft." —H.G. Wells


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FLAME GAME Cover Reveal

I'm excited about this cover and hope it resonates with readers.

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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Writing is a struggle against silence." — Carlos Fuentes


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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." —Kurt Vonnegut



There are so many more important things.





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Left Coast Crime

I'm getting ready to leave for Left Coast Crime Wednesday morning.

A few years ago, March of 2011, at my first LCC, I didn't have a book out. I didn't have any chops. That's where I got to know and feel the support from other writers, an editor, and a librarian. We came together and formed a blog called Crime Fiction Collective.

That conference changed my life.

And why did I go in the first place? LJ Sellers emailed me to see if I might be interested in being her roommate. Hello? Are you kidding me? I hadn't regsitered but that one email spurred me to action.

I now have three books available and those books have been well received. As of this afternoon my fourth book has been sent to my editor. It's possible I might have arrived here another way, but the fact remains I'm here because of LCC and one woman.

Through Left Coast Crime I've been encouraged to step out in faith. I've found other writers who give me a sounding board because we're in it together, and I've found readers who I've loved being able to connect with. All of you have become my friends. It's worth going to the conference every year just to see you again.

If you're in Portland, look me up. I'd love to meet you.


It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to." —Sylvia Plath


Donald Maass reminds us that if it's not written on the page, it doesn't exist. That's important to remember when we're trying to recreate what's in our heads so that others can see what we see.

Sylvia Plath, I think, is talking about emotions. The piece between an event and a reaction. With both fiction and poetry, there are a lot of ways to get those onto the page, and right or wrong, perfectly done or not, the thing with emotions is that they're going to resonate with someone.



It's all better with friends.