I hope everyone had a good Christmas! I realized I’ve been talking about Deep Dish for sometime without really saying much about it. Since I’m trying to sell it professionally, I can’t reveal too much about it, but I thought y’all might like a sneak peek. Below is Page 1 of Deep Dish. Click on the image to enlarge.
Sorry, readers. This is a pre-programmed post because I’m not in a location where I can get decent internet access for the holidays. So no status update. I’m sure I’m having a great time and I hope I’m writing a lot, but who knows?
Status updates will resume next week.
It’s getting close to Christmas, so I figured I’d post a different treat that actually relates to my writing.
So… when I started the Holiday Series, mostly on a whim, I picked redheaded women because I’d just gotten out of back-to-back relationships with redheads named Jennifer. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with more distinct names for my characters, but at this point, they are what they are. In any case–a pair of exhibitionistic redheads just was too fun of a concept to pass up.
So when I started this site, I decided that galleries of the characters could be fun. It took a while to pick some redheads that seemed to come close to my mental images. I eventually decided on Ariel for Jen and Amber for Jennifer. I’m pretty happy with the selections as well as their photos.
So imagine my surprise when one day, just killing time browsing the web, I discovered that perhaps Amber is far more exhibitionistic than I expected. Perhaps even more than my character Jennifer. The picture’s below for your enjoyment.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
I personally don’t know anyone who hasn’t been crazy-busy this past week. It’s the holiday crunch on top of not starting holiday vacations for most people, and the few I know who are on vacation have schedules equally crammed. Nonetheless, it became clear that I needed some short sanity breaks. My solution? I took a couple of hour and a half lunch breaks.
Wow, that made a difference in my writing.
I managed another 338 words on Unmasked, bringing it to 3,796. I also started a science fiction story that’s been tugging at me and knocked out 399 words. Then I added 95 words to a new story that was mostly getting an idea down on paper enough to return to it later.
In other words, over 800 words in only two lunch hours. That’s huge for me. Far more than a typical week, and far more than I normally produce in two lunch hours.
I’m not sure if and how I’d juggle my day job schedule, but I’m definitely hoping I can. We’ll see how it goes.
I submitted Deep Dish to my first publisher. As expected, it was harder to hit ‘send’ than I expected. I intellectually knew that it wasn’t a big deal to do so, and I knew intellectually that if I got rejected, it wasn’t a big deal. That didn’t stop the nerves.
And the thing is, of course, that I’ve been rejected plenty of times in my life in a wide variety of venues before now. When I first started applying for jobs out of school, I mailed 101 resume’s and had 19 interviews before I got an offer. I probably went on dates with close to a hundred women before I met my wife. And that’s not counting the women who I tried to reach through online dating sites that never bothered to even acknowledge my email.
That hasn’t prevented it from being nervous and sweat inducing each time I step into a new arena.
For the pattern in each case was the same. I’m on edge about the first time. I get rejected and it stings more than I anticipated. But I pick myself up and try again. I get a second rejection which stings again. After a few more rejections, the sting gets less and less, as if I’m building up an immunity or a tolerance. And then at some point, it becomes almost a game and I find I don’t care.
This was literally true in the year before I met my wife. I was online dating and I reached the point where I said, before going on a first date, “either I’ll have a good time or I’ll have a story to tell.” The fear of rejection was long gone.
So I know I’ll eventually stop being nervous and submitting to publishers will feel like old hate. But damn, going through this again and again is getting old. My brain knows better but the gut continues to churn…
Have I mentioned that I hate December? (I have). This past week has been particularly ‘Decemberish’–an absolute ton of work to do in the day job, plus a ton of additional to do at home, plus a sick wife, plus…. yadda yadda yadda.
So, I only had one non-working lunch this weekend and brought work home 3 separate nights to do after my son went to bed. Those are my two prime writing times–gone. I did manage to finish the Deep Dish script and first draft of the cover letter. I also managed to skim Unmasked to remind myself what I was doing.
And that’s it. Nada.
And the hard part is that I know that the lack of time and energy are excuses as much as anything. I found plenty of ways to fill up my remaining spare time with other things. Basically, when I did get a few minutes, I websurfed, edited for a friend, read a trashy novel, and found plenty of ways to avoid actually submitting Deep Dish to a publisher.
In other words, I dithered. A lot.
I’m not happy about it, and it doesn’t help that I’m very aware that I was doing it. I’ve committed to a friend that I’ll mail Deep Dish out within a week, despite the work load and other obligations that will suck my time. Hopefully that will help get it done and move on to the next story, whatever it is.
And that’s part of the block. None of my queue stories are tugging at me hard enough to overcome the weight of chores and other burdens that are sucking up my time. So I have to guard against more dithering on them in the near term as well. We’ll see how it goes…
So back when I mused about Tumblr, I wondered if some of the amateurs who posted to Tumblr realized how quickly and how far their pictures could propagate. Well, the question became a little less theoretical when I was browsing Tumblr recently. I found nude pics of a friend of ours.
Now it’s not a close friend, so I’m not faced with having to deal with her in person anytime soon. Nor do I feel a need to say anything to her myself. After all, what would I say? I’m sure that her husband had to have taken the picture, and I’m not sure why he or she let them get to the web, but… there they are. We’re not close enough for me to even hint at an insight into their sex life.
Amusingly, I’m not the only one with an experience like this right now. Pillow Talker, one of my twitterati friends, found a nude picture that a coworker had stored on the company server. She doesn’t know if it’s his wife or just a random picture he’s keeping but it still created an interesting pause for her.
Furthermore, I once stumbled across a picture on a swinger’s blog that looked an awful lot like one of the members of my customer’s team. None of the pictures had her face in them, but the body type and hair style were a dead match.
So, in all of these cases, the etiquette’s clear. We don’t admit what we found. But, honestly, wouldn’t it be more interesting to be able to walk up and as, “Hi, was that your nude picture I saw?”
As an erotica author, I can imagine all sorts fun stories that start with a variation of ,”Why, yes, it was.” It’d be a fun romp of a tale most likely, but a cautionary morality play could also work.
But in real life… I can also imagine a time in my life when I would have been tactless or hopelessly optimistic about my chances and done so, with disastrous results. It’s really not too hard to remember those clueless days. So one of the benefits of being older and wiser is that I won’t ask the question.
But that certainly doesn’t mean I won’t think it the next time we see our friend in the flesh. 
This past week, I didn’t get much writing done. I finished the Deep Dish script and am 2/3 through the final review. Then it’s another revision of the cover letter and it’s time to submit it. I’m a little nervous about that and I’m confident I’ll dither a bit before getting it out the door. However, I’m also confident that I will get it out the door in a reasonable time.
I can already tell what my excuse for dithering will be too–lack of time. We’ve entered the “extra chores” season of the year. It’s that time when workplaces try to cram five weeks of work into the three weeks immediately after Thanksgiving. It’s when the household chores explode to include shopping and decorating and finding stuff in the basement storage like the Christmas tree and dealing with the inevitable “it doesn’t quite work the way it’s supposed to.” It’s also when the social obligations explode–suddenly there’s two activities every weekend and the scramble for babysitters takes on the triage qualities of an ER. “Okay–Melissa can babysit one night next weekend. Do you want to go to your work party or the Parker’s party?” This is of course complicated because our son is old enough this year to ‘get it.’ So we get to add trips to Santa and shopping for him to buy stuff for us.
So, given the choice between working on a submission cover letter with no deadline and working on the Christmas letter for our cards which my wife wants done yesterday, which will win out? I think the answer to that’s obvious. And unfortunately, that won’t be the only such choice. There will be dozens of little chores that need to be done for the holidays that will encourage procrastination on writing and other non-deadline projects.
That said, my goal is to keep moving. I might be busy, but if I can stay in the habit of writing, then I’ll have accomplished a great deal. I’ll certainly give it my best shot.
I love the spirit of NaNoWriMo–the National Novel Writing Month challenge. For those unfamiliar with it, the idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. It values volume and speed over picking your words carefully. It also provides a support structure of others who are attempting the same feat.
I love those goals. But I have to say no to NaNoWriMo. At least for me.
The volume and speed goal basically accomplishes a Crappy First Draft of decent length. I’ve already found that helpful, and would certainly do better if I was more consciously going for Crappy First Drafts than I often do. I can certainly see the value in pushing other newish writers in this direction as well. It’s way way too easy to overthink and therefore never finish a work. If you’re under the gun to continue to produce, there’s not a lot of chance to overthink.
I also think the support for writing is great. It’s a lot easier to engage in a marathon of what is essentially a solo experience if there are others running the same race. It’s also easier to be mutually supportive and laud each other for finding the time to write.
But therein lies why it’s not for me. The major advantage of NaNoWriMo is forcing writers to identify what non-writing activities they could cut out to make room for the writing. The hours for writing have to come from somewhere and I suspect most people are surprised to discover they’re really there if they cut out some non-essential activities.
I don’t exactly have a lot to cut out. Admittedly, this last week I did far more websurfing than normal, largely because my headcold took a lot out of me and I couldn’t think clearly enough to want to write. Similarly, when I’m really tired, I don’t want to write, and I’ve already shorted sleep a bit too much.
That said, I didn’t exactly let up in November. All told, I wrote about 11,500 words. I managed about 5000 words on the Deep Dish Script, plus 858 words on a political thriller, plus another ~5700 words in blog posts. Not bad for a busy month with some serious commitments in my non-writing life.
So, having watched once again from the sidelines, would I do it in the future? I don’t think so. I’m confident that I could do 50,000 words in 30 days, but I’d almost certainly spend the next month writing substantially less as I caught up on all my non-writing chores and activities.
Meanwhile, congrats to those who did tackle NaNoWriMo. It’s a heckuva challenge and taking the first step is a pretty big one in and of itself.
I’m close, so close, to having the script for Deep Dish complete. I finished six more pages this past week, which means I only have four more plus the final pass to do. I’ve hopped around some–I’ve got pages 1-54, 57-58, and 60-63 done. I’m probably done in a week. Then it’s time to finish the cover letter and start shopping it to publishers.
I find the last mile in any writing project to be a heady, challenging time. I’m of course referring to long projects, as short ones are over before the Mile 22 exhaustion can be felt. Once the end is in sight, there’s this strong delirious desire to dash for the finish line, quality be damned, and I have to fight it. At the same time, I have to avoid the fear that ‘it’s not good enough’ because that leads to endless iteration and editing. If I really am worried about it being good enough, my first readers can tell me that.
I also have to remind myself to actually finish. Part of my brain is already racing ahead to the next project with shivers of anticipation. This past week, I actually wrote 858 words on a political thriller. I have no idea what I’ll do with it–if I’ll continue it or let it sit in the inactive drawer. It was just there when I was pissed off and wishing a certain politician was dead (and in my story–he is!).
And of course the other problem is that the writing starts wanting to crowd out other things in life with more immediate deadlines. I suspect many of us have had the phenomenon of reading a novel and being so close to the end that we stay up much later at night than we should. Or hanging out to the last minute of a captivating TV show even though we really should have left for an engagement ten minutes ago. That’s what happens when I’m in the final stretch of writing a story.
In this case, there are some major major work deadlines in a week as well. It’s going to be an interesting fight for that last mile.
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