Shoes, Clues, and Clothes

Cleaning the Cache

2012-02-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I took a pile of B-list belongings to a localcharity and exchanged them for a tax receipt. Gone went the kind of wardrobeitems that were beyond repair. Gone went the small TV that has been in mycloset for three years. Gone went three pair of shoes that I loved wearing somuch that the heels broke off – and even then I had them replaced, though theshoemaker warned me they would never be the same (he was right). Gone went the silkdress from Chinatown that – I’m not ready to talk about that one yet.

Living in a relatively small apartment keeps me aware of theamount of stuff I have, and though by nature I am a collector of things, I haveto be choosy. The Trixie Beldens on the bookshelf will be with me forever. TheBatman action figures, probably not. I can’t say how much longer I’ll hold onto the dress I wore to the Sigma Chi dance in 1989 or the fake leopard fur coatI bought later that same year. Neither gets worn but both represent somethingintangible that I seem to find valuable.

My need to donate, to assess what I’ve surrounded myselfwith, is more than charitable. It’s like clearing the cache on my computer,dumping the bits and pieces of my webbrowsing history that slow up the computer’s performance or keeps old web pagesvisible instead of updating with newer versions. It’s a chance for me to let goof something that might be holding me back, to free up the energy that’sattached to it. It’s my theory that by letting go, we make space to let somethingelse in, something that might otherwise go unnoticed. Opportunity or goodfortune, or a pair of shoes with a Cinderella-like fit, on sale for 90% off.

I, for one, want to be ready.

Critical Mass

2012-01-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who has sworn off movies that get a D rating(I believe the movie that prompted this rule was Daredevil). I have no such rule, as can be noted by mychoice of movies to see in a theater (Burlesque? Ocean’s Thirteen? Sex and theCity 2???)

The thing about movies that get bad reviews is that theywere made by people who cared enough to make them. Somebody believed in themovie, otherwise, more people would be at home reading on a Friday night (hmmmm…). So what if they got a badreview? They DID something. They CREATED something. They STOOD FORsomething. Seeing the criticism pile upagainst them is good for one thing: reminding us that if we try to dosomething, there will be criticism. Period.

Think about how awful it is, to go ahead with a projectknowing that there will be criticism.

Now think about how empowering it is to go ahead with aproject knowing that there will be criticism.

That’s right, I said empowering. Why? Because while you cancontrol the quality of your project, the content of your project, the packagingfor your project, and the promotion of your project, you can’t control thecriticism of your project. So accept it and move on.

One of my favorite inspirational movies is UNZIPPED, the fashiondocumentary from 1995. The movie follows Isaac Mizrahi as he conceptualizes hiscollection and mounts his runway show. You see how much goes into thatcollection: living it, breathing it, searching for signs and inspirations that he's on the right track; then the frustration of recognizing when someone else channels the same muse as him, and the mounting stress of getting it all done. And then, when it’s done, watching him acknowledge that regardlessof what people said, it’s about taking the next step toward a new project.

The movie says so much about Mizrahi’s mettle and servesas a guide to the kind of creative mettle I want to have. His actions say "Follow my example. Know when to ask for help, but know what you want to stand for."

So, kudos to those who take a chance and go ahead with theirvisions. Kudos to the makers of poorly received movies (and the makers of well received movies, because we really shouldn't hold their five stars against them), for setting the example for the rest of us that it’s more important totry something than to be afraid to try for fear of what people will say. Because even if it's inevitable that there will be criticism, there's always the chance that there will be praise, too.

My Lesbian Biker Hat (or, the power of labels)

2012-01-25T19:08:00.000-08:00

As I prepared for an upcoming trip to NYC, hearing reports of 43 degree weather, I weighed the need for a hat. Considering I live in SoCal, the hats in my closet are more sun-prohibitive than cold-prohibitive, but a careful inventory left me with three distinct choices:

1-Vintage brown and white button–under-the-chin rabbit fur hat (three decades in storage have left a delightful Mohawk-like effect in the fur, running from the hairline down the back of the head).

2-Vintage turquoise felt hat that ties under the chin. A style I once referred to as “the light bulb”, in what can only be imagined as a childlike word where all light bulbs glow with the intensity of bluish-green.

3-A quilted patent leather Burberry cap that is equal parts fabulous and 2008.

I was quick to conclude that I lacked the hairstyle to carry off choices one and two (a lack of bangs created an unfortunate Wrinkle In Time forehead) but as I tried on the Burberry hat, I couldn’t ignore comments from the peanut gallery: “expect to be popular with the lesbian bikers.”

I didn’t care what the peanut gallery said. My quilted patent leather hat was Burberry, for Pete’s sake! If anybody had the nerve to insult it, I would whip it off and flash the Nova Check lining and all would be right with the world. Wouldn’t it?

As I questioned the power of the Burberry lining, of the careful stylistic reputation the British brand had protected, I wondered for a second if my hat was as fabulous as I thought it was, or if I thought it was fabulous because of the label in the lining. Was this a case of the emperor’s new clothes – where I thought it was fabulous because I’d been told by the good people who designed countless Burberry ad campaigns that it was fabulous? Was I one of these people who needed a label to validate what I already knew, or did I trust myself enough to trust my gut instincts?

In the end, I packed the hat and I wore it. not because it was so cold it was necessary (43 degrees, it turns out, is not that big of a deal), and not because I was trying to prove something to the peanut gallery, but because I like the hat and I wanted an excuse to wear it. Whether or not the Burberry logo played a part in my confidence in wearing it is something I might never know. But in my heart of hearts, I know it looked every bit as good as the eight dollar label-less pashmina I bought in Chinatown.

Flute Lessons

2012-01-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

I took flute lessons in grade school, and I imagine thatwhen I was starting out, I was like every other grade-school instrument-playingkid: a challenge to the patience of my instructor. My lessons took place once aweek, during the school year, and the practice I invested in learning my craftfrom week to week was, let’s just say, defined minimal.

But I remember one lesson particularly well. It was thefirst lesson of a new school year, and my instructor showed up, prepared towithstand whatever notes I cared to substitute for B-flat for the nexthalf-hour. She pulled out some sheet music, I positioned my flute, and I playedit. Well.

Meaning, I played it well.

The best part, at least in my memory, was the look on herface, a combination of surprise and disbelief. I got the distinct impressionthat she had not expected me to show such growth over the span of a mere threemonths (considering I’d never shown such growth over the span of the ninemonths that preceded those three). She asked what had happened, and I think myanswer was genius in its understatement: “I practiced,” I told her.

The reality that I failed to share with my teacher was thatone of my closest friends, a year younger than I was, studied the French horn.During that summer I was at her house and listened to her pull out her horn andplay. A tone-deaf Saturday night karaoke singer could tell that she was good.Very good. A heck of a lot better than I was.

I didn’t mind that she was better at playing French hornthan I was at playing the flute. What I minded was that in an instant, I knew Icould be better. So I strengthened my resolve, practiced daily over thatsummer, mastered the fundamentals I should have mastered long before that summer,and impressed my teacher with unexpected growth when our lessons started backup.

I learned something that summer. That I control how well Ido what I do. And that competition isn’t always being about being better thansomebody else, but sometimes it’s about recognizing our own potential when wesee the potential in others.

These days I have different goals, as do my closest friends.Watching them pursue their own goals, though slightly dissimilar to my own,motivates me to work harder to get to where I want to be.

And maybe, just maybe, when we all reach our final destination, we can form a band. Dibs on the tambourine--my flute playing is a little rusty.

Learning to be Flexible

2011-12-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

The movie Easy Come, Easy Go features the musical number “Yoga is as yoga does”. It’s one of my favorite silly songs from an Elvis movie and not just because he mentions pretzels. The setup is that Elvis stumbles into a yoga class in pursuit of a girl and very quickly discovers that he doesn’t fit in.
The chorus suggests that there’s not a lot of grey area in yoga:

“Yoga is as yoga does, there’s no in-between

You’re either with it all the way or you’ve blown the scene.”

But the concept of yoga, originally practiced by Hindus to achieve meditation and mental clarity, then westernized into poses that improve flexibility, strength, and balance, seems to go against the song’s proclamation.

I’m not here to expound upon the virtues of Yoga as physical regime. How you choose to increase your heart rate is not my business. But the idea that, with practice, we can become more flexible, we can become stronger, and we can be more balanced, seems particularly interesting.

Several months ago I determined a course of direction with my writing. I set a schedule and (so far) have stuck to it, not even letting the holidays derail me. But then, when I least expected it, opportunity came knocking on my door.

When opportunity knocks, you open the door, right? Everybody knows that.

But here’s the thing. Answering that door might put me off schedule, a schedule I determined was important to me. Answering that door might change the way I’ve decided to view 2012. Answering that door might lead me into a great dark unknown, versus the bright shiny land of control. Answering that door might—

The reality is that I don’t know what answering the door might do. It might do little more than put me a couple of months behind in the schedule I’ve set for myself. But in the meantime, that knock on the door triggered my creative juices and started me off on a new project, one I didn’t even know was in me three weeks ago. It caused me to look at things in a bigger perspective, versus living in a bubble, and it helped me realize that life is fluid and I need to be adapt if I want to get the most out of it.

So now, I’m going to take some deep breaths and stretch in a new direction. Worst case? I become a little more flexible, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Director's Cut

2011-12-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

Have you ever rented a movie that proclaims itself to be the “Director’s Cut”? And if it’s a movie you’ve seen before (more than once) have you noticed what was different? Have you ever wondered why it wasn’t released like this to begin with?

There was a time, when I was filled with innocence and ignorance, that I assumed the writer and the director had the most to do with the final result of a movie. I never thought about the impact the producer and the editor had – often times a bigger impact than that of either writer or director. And when I read about the old days of Hollywood studios, I generally find lots of stories about discord between the director and the producer. One’s interests lie in their vision and one’s lie in the bottom line.

Regardless of the arguments, neither of these opinions is right or wrong. If the people involved don't share the same goals at the onset of a project, there’s a pretty good chance different results might be sought. And therein lies the problem. It explains why some people write, direct, and produce their own movies, why some people would prefer to maintain control over every aspect of their project vs. being part of a team who brings it to fruition. Like I said, neither is right or wrong, just different. Depends on your vision.

Recently I sat in an audience where Peter Bogdanovich talked about his director’s cut of The Last Picture Show, and marveled at the fact that he saw changes to be made to what some consider to be a masterpiece. By creating a director’s cut, he demonstrated that we all have opinions, especially about our work, and if given the chance, we’ll find things to improve.

It seems, as important as it is to get feedback, to adapt and to revise, it’s equally important to know what we want from our final products and know how to protect that goal. Even though Columbia Pictures produced The Last Picture Show, Bogdanovich knew one thing. Vision is Paramount.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

2011-11-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

I had a math teacher in eighth grade who charged his students a ten cent fine for making a stupid mistake on a test. Things like adding four + three and getting twelve. Forgetting to carry the one. Solving an equation for X instead of Y. Ethical or not, a year’s worth of ten cent errors from the class bought us a pizza party in the spring. From this, I learned two important lessons:

1) Stupid mistakes will cost you
2) If you make enough stupid mistakes, you get pizza

For the purposes of this blog, I’ll focus on point #1.

I recently made a stupid mistake. On a scale of one to ten, I call it a humdinger (which isn’t actually on a scale of 1-10 so you can start to see how big it was). This mistake wasted my money and another person’s time. It created a spiral of self-doubt and a cycle of self-inflicted head slapping and kicking. There may have been a firm talking to from myself to me. It's kind of a blur.

I remind myself that this isn’t the first time I’ve done something stupid and it won’t be the last. Not surprisingly, that speech doesn’t help. I tell myself that people do stupid things all the time. Not knowing the details of other people’s stupid mistakes does little to assuage my feelings of self criticism and does even less to help me believe this isn't the last time I do it.

What gets me, more than the stupid mistake, is the energy expended in beating myself up afterwards. What caused this kind of error? Self-sabotage? Carelessness? Fear of failure? Chardonnay?

The fact of the matter is that we all DO do it but some of us recover faster than others. Maybe that’s the true test. It’s not whether you win or lose. It’s not how you play the game either. It’s what you do when you trip and fall and discover that you left your shoes tied together before you started the race that counts.

If I leave my shoes tied together before starting a race, I hope I’ll have the sense to stop, untie them, and get on with it instead of falling down and staying down. Because as we all know, stopping mid-race doesn’t get us anything, whereas finishing the can get us two things:

1) A huge sense of accomplishment
2) Pizza

If Age is a State of Mind, Why Do My Joints Crack When I Stand Up?

2011-11-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

I have been told that I don’t look my age. I’ve also been told that I don’t act my age. But lately, my body has made a point of reminding me that I AM my age.* If I were to stand up right now, something would snap, crackle, or pop. Maybe all three. And the problem is, there’s not a darn thing I can do about it.

There are moisturizers that promise the appearance of younger looking skin. Exercises that tone and tighten out-of-shape muscles, and undergarments to do the same thing for those who don’t like exercise. We can dye our hair, bleach our teeth, get Botox and microdermabrasion. We can wear clothing that is not age appropriate while listening to Justin Bieber. But at the end of the day, aren’t we who we are for a reason? And doesn’t it all make us the one person that only we can be?

I wonder if this is nature’s way of reminding us to stretch ourselves. I’m talking about extending ourselves far beyond what we think we can grasp, toward our potential. Not losing sight of what we once wanted, but twisting and turning, adjusting our posture a little, craning our necks to see around the obstacles that cropped up along the way, working out the kinks in our progress. So go ahead and reach for the stars. Aside from a little snap, crackle, and pop, what’s the worst that can happen?

*Early-ish forties, if you must know, although it is impolite to ask.

Mayhem is the New Marlboro Man

2011-10-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

There are definite emotions connected to the idea that you are no longer a part of the target spending demographic that most commercials are trying to reach. Annoyance, at stupid ads that other people might think are funny. Exasperation, that you have to sit through this stuff, waiting for your show to return. Anger, that advertising execs have no idea who you are.

And then, just when you start to question if your opini

on is still relevant, along comes Mayhem.

I don’t want to take anything away from the folks who create other insurance company ads. This seems to be where the real talent in advertising is. The Geico Gecko? Genius. Flo from Progressive? She’s a hoot. But you gotta admit, there’s something about Mayhem.

On a whim, I did a twitter search for Mayhem, surprised to find that as many men tweet about the commercials as women. That’s when the genius behind this ad campaign hit me. Mayhem is that rare character who appeals to both men and women. Thnk Indiana Jones, pre-earring. Tom Cruise, pre-Scientology. The Marlboro Man, pre-Cancer.

So the next time the state of advertising makes you annoyed, exasperated, or angry, sit back and wait for an All-State commercial.

It’s enough to make you want to take out an insurance policy.

You Can't Look Tough When You're Holding Cheetos

2011-10-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I was sitting at an intersection in West Hollywood, waiting for the light to change. A guy strode across the street in front of me. His look: heavily tattooed, black jeans, chain on the side, black boots of a combat nature. His head was shaved. He leaned forward, as if he was headed to a place of importance, or like he knew his destination point would be a better place once he arrived. All in all, everything about him but his left hand said, "I'm a seriously focused dude and you don't want to mess with me."

Problem was, his left hand was holding a bag of Cheetos. Talk about a contradictory image! I mean, what tough guy eats Cheetos?

I'm the first to acknowledge that there's a time(1) and a place(2) for snack food, but(3) I'm not walking around dressed like a tough guy. I'm not trying to define my identity through the combination of black angry message T's and combat boots(4).

The issue isn't with the wardrobe of Fake Tough Guy, it's with the Cheetos. Because Cheetos say something about the person eating them, something being one of the following:

1. I’m having a bad day and I need Cheetos

2. I’m not about to perpetrate a crime where orange-dusty fingerprints can incriminate me

3. My girlfriend/boyfriend had a craving for Cheetos and I volunteered to make it become a reality because I’m a nice guy

None of which validates a tough guy image. But interestingly enough, carrying a bag of Cheetos does validate good sense.

Something to think about.

(1) Pretty much any time

(2) Pretty much any place

(3) This is a big but. For reference, see footnotes 1&2

(4) Unless I’m at a Haunted Hayride, in which case I’m definitely trying to send a “don’t mess with me” vibe to ghosts and goblins

They're Talking Behind My Back!

2011-10-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

I generally write first person because it comes so naturally to me. Plus, my characters get to discover info when I do, which makes for a nice element of spontaneity. But lately, as I sit down to figure out what exactly is going on in my manuscript, I've noticed something weird going on. The other characters have been getting together when I wasn't looking!

It is frustrating to realize that entire scenes are being played out off the page, scenes that twill never make it into a manuscript because my main character wasn't there to witness the shenanigans. It's also a cause for mental gymnastics because I can't only concern myself with my main character's whereabouts, but I have to constantly wonder where everybody else is. Just wanting a character to show up isn't enough, because when I need them most, most likely, they're plotting behind my back.

But sometimes, when I least expect it, I get to eavesdrop on a conversation I wasn't supposed to hear. When I'm wrestling with whodunit, who really done it lets something slip. When I shut out everything else: my main character, her love life, her pets, her nosy neighbors, the red herrings, and the broken muffler, I hear a character or two trying to get away with something big.

My main character doesn't get to hear it. She's busy with the screwed-up love life and the muffler.

The cops don't get to hear it. They're busy chasing down a false lead.

The other suspects don't get to hear it, because they're all busy doing whatever it was they were doing to become suspects in the first place.

That's right. The only person who gets to catch the bad guys is me.

So I say, talk behind my back all you want. Sooner or later, I'll catch ya.

Chillin' With My Decision (and the half-melted butter)

2011-10-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, as I was repairing a broken shelf on my refrigerator, I found myself thinking, “if I had known that I’d still be in this apartment after four years, I would have bought the refrigerator I really wanted instead of this piece of crap.” Only, four years ago, when I moved to Hollywood, kicking off a new life in a new apartment with a new job, my decisions were based more on a cocktail of frugality and a possible cut-my-losses-if-this-is-a-mistake plan than the innate Capricornian belief that it’s best to invest in quality. My apartment didn’t come with a fridge, and I knew if I ended up moving, whatever fridge I spent money on would most likely not move with me. I bought the opening price point model from Sears, on sale, and that was that. But had I known…

Four years ago is significant for me because it represents the decision to make writing a priority. Moving to an unfamiliar state provided a metaphorical clean slate, a new path. Had I know then what I know now, what else would I have done differently?

You might think I have a laundry list of decisions I’d change, but I don’t. I spent that time querying agents, entering contests, volunteering for writer’s organizations, and studying the publishing industry. Oh, and I spent that time writing, too. It took those four years to determine that I could write more than one book, that I could write more than one series, and that I could write more than one genre. I learned that other people liked what I wrote, though sometimes they made suggestions. I learned which suggestions to listen to and which not.

If not for those four years, I don’t know that I’d know any of that. And four years of knowledge brings me to today, confident that I know where I’m going, motivated to get there. Armed with determination, drive, and a duct-taped fridge.

It Started With A Gallon of Yellow Paint

2011-10-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago I got the itch to paint my dining room yellow (1) I also wanted to spruce up the office, which is next to the dining room, but I didn’t want a yellow office. I wanted an aqua office. And as long as I’m talking about what I wanted, I wanted a round doorway like the kind you start to believe are very common if you watch a lot of movies from the sixties.

Yeah, right.

Adaptable me came up with an inspired solution. I stenciled a 7-foot diameter circle around my front door and painted the interior of the circle white. I painted the dining room yellow, defining the left side of the circle. I painted the office aqua, defining the right side of the circle. It’s all quite silly but it pleases me to no end.

As it happens, these three areas: the dining room, front door, and office frame out the Career and Life Plan area of my apartment.(2) As I painted, I realized that I’ve paid little attention to this area and half-wondered if I would notice a difference thanks to the decorating effort.(3)

I didn’t gain an unexpected promotion. I didn’t fall into a cush job or get rewarded with accolades at the job I held. What I gained was more valuable than any of those. I gained a clear picture of what I wanted.

Four years ago I decided I wanted to “be a writer”. I’d been writing before coming to that conclusion, but my decision meant I wanted to take it seriously. I changed up my whole life and pursued the path the way I knew how: query agents, edit, rewrite, polish, enter contests, take classes. During the past four years I watched the upheaval of the publishing industry while almost tripling my number of completed manuscripts. I felt like I was in a car stuck in the mud, tires spinning. My foot was depressed on the gas pedal, even though I was getting nowhere, because it was the only way I’d been taught to drive.

Fourth of July weekend was the weekend when, after I finished painting the aforementioned rooms, I seriously looked into Indie Publishing. The more I researched, the more excited I felt. I didn’t go to bed until well past two AM because I was wide awake, devouring knowledge about formatting, marketing, templates, and time tables. Not one to make a rash decision (4) I kept my thoughts mostly to myself until I was comfortable with my decision.

Guess what? I’m comfortable.

There’s much work to be done so I don’t have an official date, but I hope to release Designer Dirty Laundry, my award-winning, fashion-based mystery, in early 2012.

Who knew yellow and aqua were the colors of clarity?

(1) The probable result of Doris Day overexposure

(2) If this is at all interesting to you, I highly recommend Karen Rauch Carter’s Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life

(3) I am a skeptical believer.

(4) Textbook Capricorn

Time for Something New

2011-09-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've been blogging here, pretty much every Tuesday, for a couple of years now, and while I like the chance to expound upon whatever it was that struck my fancy over the previous week, it seems like it's time for a change. My initial motivation for blogging was to teach myself deadlines, get comfortable sharing my writing with the world, and try to connect with others in the blogosphere. I accomplished those things.

But now, I seem to be at a cross-roads. Four years ago I changed jobs with the express purpose of giving me more time to write. I kept that promise to myself and built up a nice cache of manuscripts and ideas for future work. And while I did that, I watched the publishing industry change, little by little at first, then by huge shifts. In the middle of all of that I was published. "Identity Crisis" is my story in FISH TALES, and I'm ridiculously proud of it. It represented the achievement of one of my goals, and if you know me at all, you know I'm a fiend for goal setting. But as it turns out, just achieving that goal isn't enough. Holding a book with my name on the back is awesome, but I have more to say than what I said in those 4,000 words.

I've been looking at indie publishing, and I like what I see. The community of authors who have followed this path are so approachable and positive that I want to be one of them. Plus, I get Control (with a capital C) - no little consideration for a Capricorn (also with a capital C). I'm not afraid of the hard work, and it's about time I put that effort into me. Right?

All of that being said, I'm taking September to clear my mind, then wrap it around the Indie Publishing To-Do list. Hope to see you back here October 1, better than ever!

Detective and Buyer: More Alike Than You'd Think

2011-08-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing occurred to me this past weekend while I was attending Homicide School. that is, the similarity in skill sets between a detective and a retail buyer. Sure, you have two very different jobs that have two very different intentions and outcomes (also very different wardrobes. Refer to a fashion buyer's outfit as "plain clothes"? Never!) but consider a couple of similarities:

1. An ability to see a look at a large assortment of data and edit it down into something meaningful. A detective will arrive at the scene of a crime and be faced with the results of what happened. It is her job to assess what she’s looking at and determine which parts of it relate to the crime. A buyer will arrive at a designer’s showroom and be faced with a collection of samples. It is her job to assess what she’s looking at and determine which parts of it relate to her store’s target customer base.

2.    A balance between creative and analytical thinking. A detective needs to intuitively recognize angles when determining gunshot trajectory and direction of blood spatter. She also needs to be able to create a variety of “what happened here” theories until one fits. A retail buyer needs to recognize saleability in a product, based on sales history. She also needs to be able to create a cohesive assortment and take risks on something different in order to stay ahead of the curve.

3.    Relying on a strong gut feeling. A detective needs to run high on intuition, a sense of “something isn’t right” here. A quick theory might be based on this intuition, but when several detectives have the same gut feeling, which often point an investigation in the right direction. A buyer needs to run high on intuition, too, looking at sometimes a hundred samples and zeroing in on the ten that stand out. A buyer for a large organization might have the opportunity to hear co-worker’s gut feelings, too, which make for a better assortment overall.

4.    Flourishes with a flexible work-load. Most detectives are happier in the field than at a desk, but don’t always know the direction their day will take them. Most retail buyers successfully juggle a balance of showroom appointments, travel, order writing, projections, recaps, and store interaction.

5.    Gets results. Sure, the end results of these two jobs are vastly different, but they are both result-oriented.

6.    Both enjoy a breakfast of donuts and coffee. Just sayin’.

One of the series that I write runs off the assumption that a former retail buyer, suspected of murder, can expose the real killer in order to prove her innocence. She doesn’t exactly go about it in a neat, normal way, but, like a detective, she gets results.

So what do you think? Would you rather have a retail buyer solve a crime, or a homicide detective determine the upcoming trends for spring 2012?

And Drinks With Little Umbrellas, Too

2011-08-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I attended my first ever Tiki Oasis. A whole weekend filled with brightly colored vintage fashions from the fifties and sixties? A chance to hear Jack Costanzo, aka Mr. Bongo, play live? Art by Shag, Derek Yaniger, SteamCrow, Ragnar, and more? All scored by a soundtrack of Exotica, Surf, and Latin vibes spun by the pool?

Heck Yeah.

Truth be told, I came late to the Tiki Party; the subculture of appreciation for all things Tiki was barely on my radar until a few years ago. I love the look, sound, feel, taste of it all, but I see it like a child might see it, with wide-eyed fascination and overall glee. I want to see everything, to take it all in, to be inspired, because it’s just so freakin’ FUN.

As I navigated the poolside crowds and flipped through racks of brightly colored Hawaiian prints, I waited for that inspiration, that Ah-Ha! Moment, when an idea would burst through the protective bubble that surrounded me, that kept me from being a true part of it all. Since I write, I expected a trigger to start my own creative juices in the midst of this sea of creativity. What would it be? Would I get an idea for a Tiki-themed mystery? Or perhaps a thriller? How about this for a title: Tiki Tac Toe-Tag?

Um, no.

I don’t know exactly when, but sometime during the event I lost track of the expectation that I’d be hit with a creative lightning bolt. I forgot that I was looking for inspiration and just enjoyed the whole thing. I talked to people who live this life day-in and day-out, swayed to the sounds of the Marimba band, watched the Ukulele Jam, shared a Pu’pu platter and drank a blue drink.

This two-day getaway took me so completely out of my day to day element that I never found myself thinking about the minutia of life but instead just went with the flow. On the drive home I realized how necessary it was to have a getaway like this one. No pressure or obligation. A moment of quiet, wedged between my normal daily schedule of work, writing, emails, appointments, cleaning, and laundry.

I’m already planning to attend Tiki Oasis next year, because while the emphasis is on Tiki for most of the people there, the Oasis is just as important. The 2012 theme: The Spy.

I’m already planning my outfit, so I guess that lightning bolt struck after all.

Anatomy of a Goal

2011-08-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

After years of aspiring to the traditional model of success for being published, I find myself wondering if maybe it isn’t time to re-look at my initial goals and determine if there isn’t perhaps another path for me to take with my writing. Even if you’re not following publishing industry news daily, you’ve probably heard of Borders closing down and you probably know someone with a Kindle or a Nook, so you are at minimum slightly aware that something has changed in the book buying/book reading world (if not, then you happened upon this blog and you deserve a reward, so click here and you’ll be taken to the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, one of my favorite “this has nothing to do with writing” websites).

So, it’s time to revisit my goals and try to figure out how to stay on that yellow brick road that winds around quite a bit but hopefully will take me to where I want to go. Here’s how my internal monologue plays out:

PROSPECTIVE GOAL: I want to be published.
INTERNAL RESPONSE: Really? Weren’t you recently published in FISH TALES?

OKAY, PROSPECTIVE GOAL #2: I want an agent.

INTERNAL RESPONSE: Really? Would the fact of signing with an agent be enough? What if said agent never sold any of your projects? Would the validation of having an industry pro believe in what I write enough?

FINE. PROSPECTIVE GOAL #3: I want people to find/buy/enjoy my books.

INTERNAL RESPONSE: That’s a crap shoot. All you can control is writing the best books that you can. There will be people who love it and people who don’t. That is important. In fact, you better start chanting that to the mirror every morning.

HOW ABOUT PROSPECTIVE GOAL #4 (and let's check the attitude, shall we?): I want to have actual books to sell and sign at fun events.
INTERNAL RESPONSE: How long are we going to do this? Besides, you're the one who's being difficult. Anyway, you’re getting off topic, but why not follow the Indy Publishing path? Take control of every aspect of the book. Invest some money into copies from CreateSpace or Lightning Source. Sell out, order more.

In short, viable, respectable options exist now, options that didn’t exist ten years ago. While I’m at risk of over-analyzing the options, I am seriously considering them – more seriously than I have in the past. One thing’s for sure. The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.

In The Driver's Seat

2011-08-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

I was recently involved in a car accident. I had been on my way home from work, traffic was heavy, and a car hit me from behind. Most of us have been in accidents at some time in our lives, so you know what happened next: exchange info, take car to garage, get rental, deal with insurance companies. That’s all pretty standard, and as far as things go, it was a textbook accident. Claims were filed, cars were repaired. Life goes on.

So why am I blogging about it now, instead of when it happened?

I’m not going to lie. I was more shaken up by it than I thought I’d be. One minute I was fine, the next minute I wasn’t. Through no fault of my own, things changed like THAT. And after dealing with the business end of things (which had the odd side effect of calming me down by focusing on writing down details like license plate numbers and personal contact info) it dawned on me that I was lucky. Not to be hit by a car, but that it was what it was and not something worse.

Thanks to the accident, I find myself thinking differently about a lot of things. I don’t assume that tomorrow will be like today, because maybe it won’t. And I recognize that I have a certain power in that today-tomorrow-the next day expectation, because I can expect it all to be the same (relinquishing power to change it) or forcibly make it different (by making different choices).
Thanks to the accident, I find myself looking backward in addition to looking forward. Literally, I am aware of the drivers in my rear view mirror, willing them to stop with a decent cushion of space between our bumpers, but also aware of the drivers in front of me, making sure that I leave that same cushion of space. Figuratively I am aware of what I’ve accomplished in the four years since I moved to California and said I wanted to pursue creative goals for me versus corporate goals for others. Like the literal impact of the accident, I’m looking behind me, to my accomplishments, but also looking ahead, to see how I can take even more ownership of my future.

Standing still is safe and painless. Moving forward can, on occasion, cause you a pain in the neck. But maybe it’s worth it, if only to serve as a reminder of how far you’ve come when you look at where you’ve been.

The Quota System (or, Pie Chart in the Face)

2011-08-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

Like many people who work in a form of sales, I have a quota to achieve. For a reluctant overachiever, quotas are a particularly frustrating gauge of success. There is no, “great job!” or “I knew you could do it!” Coaching from the sidelines is virtually nonexistent; the drive and determination has to come from within. It’s not all that different from swimming against a pace clock in a long distance race, an analogy that is remarkably familiar despite the fact that I haven’t swum in a race, long distance or otherwise, in a good twenty years.

Quotas, unlike personal goals, have to do with maintaining a productivity that affects the bottom line. Okay, I just made that up, but it sounds relatively good, right? No? Fine. Let’s see what our good friends at Merriam and Webster have to say: a proportional part or share; especially: the share or proportion assigned to each in a division or to each member of a body. I’ll admit, I like mine better, because it suggests not only the distribution of assignment to a group, but the point behind the assignment. The point being, if you’ve been assigned a quota, it’s because your role in the big picture is considered a part of the success of the big picture. If you achieve your quota, you helped the team. If not, you’re basically a broken cog in the machine.

Goal-setting has been discussed ad nauseam, mainly by me in this blog post, and this one, and this one, too. Heck just use the search this blog! field on the right of this post and see how many times it comes up. Goal-setting is like saying, “I am here, and I want to get to there,” then figuring out the stops along the way to there and setting mini-goals to reach the destination. (If the Mapquest people wanted to take on Goalquest, wouldn’t it be awesome to plug in your goal and have the computer spit out the directions on how to get there?)

But instead of belaboring the goal point, what about setting quotas? Sure, writers quantify their tasks regularly: daily word count, collecting twitter followers, blogging on a schedule. But how often have you connected it to your big picture? Not as a series of dots along the path to achieving your goal, but as a proportional part of your journey? Assuming for the moment that we will achieve our goals of novel-length publication (I’m a reluctant-overachiever-slash-serial-optimist) is it simply a matter of reassessing the proportional share assigned to the different aspects of our writer’s persona?

I used to query a lot: 5-10 queries a day, every day. A toxic combination of rejection, a volatile industry, and frustration (along with an abject hatred of synopsis-writing) has temporarily changed that. I still spend 30-40 hours a week on writing-related work in addition to my day job. Here’s a snapshot:

But what if it were more like this:

Wouldn’t my chances increase if I tinkered with my quota of time, or assigned a different proportion of work to each division of me that contributes to my own success? And maybe, if I care to be so bold, querying should take up more of my time than social networking?

And what if I hadn’t spent the past fifteen minutes (make that twenty-five) playing with pie charts? Imagine the possibilities!

What Dreams May Come

2011-07-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Today is a big day for me. Big Day! Today I join the ranks of thousands of people who had the same dream as I did, who let go of their fears and trepidations, who found their way past obstacles, who decided that the time was right to just go for it. Today my Tempur-pedic bed will be delivered.

Not what you thought? Well, here’s the thing. I’ve wanted this bed for oh, twenty years. A combination of factors, not the least of which is my genetic frugality, has kept me from making the purchase. But I’m not getting any younger, and for some reason, now seemed like the right time to indulge myself.

The problem with wanting something for so long is that I’m pretty sure this bed can’t live up to twenty-years’ worth of expectations. I mean, I’m sure it’s a good bed, a nice bed, but I’ve gotten to the point where I practically expect this bed to give me a massage every night and make itself in the morning. I wonder about the build-up, and the potential to be disappointed. Which (of course) makes me think about the other thing I’ve been wanting for a long time.

A publishing contract.

While the advances in Tempur-pedic beds have seemed to remain stable for the past twenty years, the publishing industry has changed so much that you need a color coded chart and a fist full of Sharpies to map it all out. The dream used to be simple: find an agent who will find a publisher. Keep writing in the meantime so said agent can sell next work. Lather, rinse, repeat. But nowadays, there are options that didn’t even exist. Agents are only a piece of the big picture. The Small Press path is a viable one – midsized publishers who accept direct submissions. The good ones publish quality products, produce strong covers, get the books into bookstore catalogs, and solicit reviews. They have in-house editors and a vested interest in seeing your book succeed. But one step further is independent (indy) publishing. A year ago, this was akin to Robert Frost’s Road Not Taken – the lesser traveled path. Today, more and more writers are realizing that self-publishing via the Indy route offers the most control: your book, your cover, your royalties. And to add another factor to the stew that is publishing today, agents who once built their careers on selling manuscripts to NY publishers are now changing their own business models and working with authors to self-publish, offering to manage parts of the indy process for a standard 15% of the author’s royalties.

In short, the possibility of becoming an income-earning writer is tangible. Instead of walking with eyes closed down a dark hallway toward one door, unsure of what is on the other side, I am like a contestant on Let’s Make A Deal, faced with doors numbered one, two, and three. It’s time to really consider the options and figure out which is the right one for me – because one of them surely is.

I'm not rushing into anything, but I have some decisions to make. Maybe I should sleep on it? Things might be clearer after a night on memory foam.

Exactly How Old Do You Think I Am?

2011-07-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

Lately my inbox has been filling with things about Medicare, AARP, and the occasional announcement regarding discounted scooters for seniors. None of which is information that I'm seeking. All of which makes me wonder what exactly I've done to draw out these kinds of targeted ads.

Like it or not, what we do online builds a profile of who we are. If you're an Amazon shopper, you've probably noticed that it takes little more than a bit of browsing their site to establish a customized "suggestions for you" ribbon on the screen. I can't argue with their predictions; I've discovered more than one author or product thanks to their analytic personal shopper.

So that leads me back to the barrage of post-retirement emails I've been getting. Aside from the reminder that my own retirement is decades away (right about the time when Social Security is predicted to run out, thank you very much), I get nothing from this spam. I'm not subscribed to a list, so there's no unsubscribe option. Basically, my online actions suggest to these sites that I am their target audience, and their auto-generator sends me an email in the hopes that I'll click through and make a purchase. But I'm not, so I won't, which makes their auto-efforts wasted. "They" are probably not concerned, because the "they" in question is an automated process. The email-campaign equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.

There is a lesson to be learned from this, though. Now, more than ever, writers are tasked with the marketing of their own books. Publishers don't hand out marketing budgets like cups of water to runners in a marathon. The author has become more than the writer of the story, she is also the sales force, tasked with finding her audience, drumming up interest in her book causing enough of a commotion to impact her sales. The bonanza of online social media is a huge opportunity, but only when used strategically. Telling everyone you know about your upcoming release is just human nature -- you're proud of your accomplishment and you should shout it from every mountaintop if given the chance -- but figure out who your specific audience is, too, and find a way to get the message to them. Otherwise your news might end up caught in a spam filter, sandwiched between an online offer on a retirement community and a senior discount for term life insurance. It could happen.

How To Enable Yourself in 5 (and a half) Easy Steps

2011-07-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention, more than once, that I am an Enabler. Meaning, I voluntarily put myself in a position to help other people get what they want. Unfortunately, I can’t argue my way against these accusations. A couple of examples:

“I want to quit my job”: Hearing this kept me up for 4 hours, calculating and recalculating the monthly expenses, until after a wee bit of sleep, I proclaimed that my income would pay the bills. Ultimately, this did not work out so well for me.

“I want a soldering iron/red fish/tacos”: And off I go, to the hardware/drug store/TacoBell, returning with the requested item. Note that the request didn’t say, “would you mind going to the store to get soldering iron/redfish/tacos?” which would have been a slight, but notable difference.

“I wish I had brought bagels today”: This got me to volunteer to pay if someone else would walk to the bagel store.

There’s a feel-good element attached to doing something for someone else, which makes it easy. But it occurred to me that nobody enables an enabler. So that means, if I’m an enabler, it’s up to me to do for myself. Taking the obvious fact that I am me out of the equation, how exactly do I go about pulling a Sybil and focus on my wants/wishes like they are those of another person? I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:

1a. Be clear about what I want: If the act of proclaiming “I want” or “I wish” has trained me to react, then I need to be comfortable using those words.

1b. Conversely, I need to recognize the phrase “I want” or “I wish” and make sure it isn’t going in front of things that aren’t important. “I want ice cream” should probably be cut, whereas “I want to attend Homicide School” is totally valid.

2. Once the want/wish is proclaimed, immediately break down what it takes to get it done. “I want to get published” is an overall goal. Telling people that I write is part of that goal, but telling the right people – as in, publishers and acquisition editors – is the more targeted plan.

3. Deliver the goods. If someone told me what they wanted and I did nothing to help make it happen, they’d stop telling me what they wanted. So, why wouldn’t this be the same for myself? If I ignore my own wants/wishes, I’ll stop expecting that I can deliver the desired outcome after expressing them to myself, thus ceasing to believe in the role I play in my own success.

4. Feel free to use guilt. Hey, it works for everybody else, right?

5. Recognize that “I want new shoes” is still totally valid.

Any other suggestions on how to enable myself? Tell me what you think and I’ll react. I’m good that way.

Nobody Talks Like That!

2011-06-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

For the past five days, I’ve been fascinated by the sound of my own voice. Well, four days, really, because yesterday, the sultry Lauren Bacall lilt was replaced by a non-stop emphysema-like cough, and that was less fascinating than annoying and painful. But still, all of a sudden, having a voice that was made for noir films and double entendres has been a novelty.

In writing, a lot is made of an author’s voice, that inimitable style of stringing together a bunch of words that entertains a reader and leaves them wanting more. Just like I can easily recognize the sound of Belinda Carlisle or Depeche Mode, I occasionally find an author whose manner of writing action, observation, or merely information is so unique and unexpectedly fun that I can’t put the book down.
Just like any artistic form of expression, voice is the connective thread in what we write. But what if we lost that voice? What if we woke up one day and had someone else’s voice? Would we even know it?

When you see a Picasso, you know it’s a Picasso. But what’s to stop someone from painting like Picasso, calling their works “Picasso-esque”, and building a career on being a close approximation of a master who is no longer producing works? Maybe that painter started out copying Picassos, and discovered his talent at painting in that style. Maybe that very painter is the best landscape painter this side of the Vegas but traded in his desire and natural skill to paint landscapes because people responded to his ability to paint like ol’ Pablo. But one day, this (now financially successful) painter will paint what he wants to paint, really unleash his natural voice on a canvas and show the world know what he’s capable of. “That doesn’t look like a Picasso!” people might say. And they’d be right, of course.

But imagine the strain, the constant pressure of trying to “sound” like someone else? An Elvis-impersonator who never gets to sing anything other than Elvis songs? A writer who overthinks every word choice in an attempt to sound like Dashiell Hammett? An actor who delivers all of their lines like Cary Grant might have done? Exhausting.

I think, if you’re going to put something of your own creation out into the world, you need to let it have that stamp of YOU. Spend time studying the masters, the successful, those who have paved the way with words and paint and musical notes; absorb it all. And then, be yourself. Because when you’re asked to do it again, it will be that much easier.

Six AM is a State of Mind

2011-06-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

While California is generally sunny and seventy-five degrees, there’s this thing that happens every June, this dingy white-ness that makes the sky look like dirty tile on a shower stall and makes everything else gray around the edges, like the whole city just went on a bender. It’s known as the June Gloom, and for me, it’s more than a visual dulling down of Los Angeles, it’s a state of mind.

It takes me a couple of weeks into the month to realize that my mood is down, my natural energy reserves tapped and seemingly non-renewable. My mental acuity is on the fritz and my motivation is, if not out the window, then cowering under the covers, not wanting to get out of bed. Being a creative person, this lack of ignition is alarming. Why don’t I have any ideas? Why don’t I want to write? What happened to my passion? Is it gone? Will it ever come back? Concerning questions, I thought.

Drastic measures needed, I decided to hit the gloom head-on, shock it out of my system, so to speak. Saturday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at six AM (and no morning person am I) and drove to the beach. It was cool and overcast, but I was prepared. Blanket to lie on, blanket to cover with. Pillow. Book. Free parking until nine o’clock, and nothing but the sound of waves crashing to distract me. By the time the afternoon rolled around, I was in a perky mood, reading a good book, already feeling better.

Sunday morning, I kept up the system-shocking regimen, walking two miles before work. Today, again with the six AM thing (who knew how much you could accomplish when you get up at that ungodly hour?) I went to the flower mart (free parking before eight!) and splurged on daisies and hydrangeas for the apartment.

What I’ve discovered is it’s not so much what I’m doing that’s shaking me out of my stagnant mental state, but the fact that I’m making myself do it. If you told me a month ago that I’d willingly get up at six to do just about anything I’d tell you that you had the wrong girl. And when California turns green in July and the bursting blue sky and bright sun combo make sleeping in impossible, I’ll probably forget my troubles and get happy. You find what works and you do it, even if it’s opposite every impulse you have.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my nap.

Sweet Fourteen

2011-06-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

This past Friday night I had the opportunity to time travel back to 1981 via a Rick Springfield/REO Speedwagon concert.(1) Ten years ago, if given the chance, I probably wouldn’t have attended the same concert.

I think, by the time we’ve all lived a little, that we lose track of that person we once were. We evolve, find new and different interests, bury a couple of our more embarrassing ones in the closet, and become Adults. Responsibilities knock some of our happy-go-luckiness to the curb, and the inevitable maturity process makes us more serious. But deep down, somewhere, we’re still there. I don’t think it’s possible to become a completely different person, despite how much we might try.

And when you get down to it, why do we try so hard? Sure, we all have to grow up sometime, but growing up involves emotional battle scars, tough decisions, laundry, bills, and the occasional prison stint.(2) Ignoring the elements that brought us to where we are today is like pretending we were born yesterday, with no past that we remember fondly. But stumbling down memory lane is one of the most fun things a person can do, and one of the easiest ways to recharge your batteries and find yourself.

As I sat in the cheap seats at the Greek Theater, I couldn’t help feeling a little like the fourteen-year old I was back when I first bought the Hi Infidelity album.(3) And even though there might be a you tube video of me belting out the lyrics to Take It On The Run, feeling like a fourteen year old again was pretty much worth the price of admission.(4)

--------------------------------------------
(1) Yes, I screamed till it hurt
(2) Just checking to see if you're still paying attention
(3) First album I ever bought
(4) This blog is written at the 8th grade reading level. Appropriate, I think!

Use The Force

2011-06-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

You created it. You love it. You want the world to love it too. But, what if they don’t? What if you are so wrong about what you made up, that when you tell other people to check it out, they think you’re off your rocker? What if people are so put off by what you created that they run, screaming, for the hills, and never ever, ever look twice at anything you create again?

Don’t pretend you haven’t thought this way. You have. I have. Any person who has ever made something from the vision inside of them wonders at some point how the world will respond. It’s why we seek out opinions, endorsements of our creation. Why we often ask, “what do you think?” when what we really want to know is , “do you love it?”, but we’re afraid to put that much power into the possible answer, afraid to hear, “actually, quite the opposite.”

If we’re lucky, opinions can help us. Everyone has an opinion, so in moderation, both good and bad responses to our accomplishments can help us refine our work. But at what point does the knee-jerk response, wanting to please everyone, take over and override our own vision? And how do we avoid the eventual thought that we’re too close to our work, that we need someone else to tell us if we’re on the right track?

You can never completely know the motivation behind someone else’s opinion. Consider shopping with a friend for a dress for your upcoming high school reunion. “Does this look good?” you might ask. Internal Friend Thought: I didn’t realize she’s been working out. Her figure looks way better than mine! External Friend Comment: “It’s not your color, and it too tight. I like the potato sack better.”

Somewhere inside you, you came up with an idea and ran with it. You used your own voice and your own concept. Word documents don’t write themselves, paintings don’t paint themselves. A song might start as a couple of notes you hum in the shower, but it’s finished because you take those notes and turn them into a musical story.

Feedback is important, but even stronger than feedback is the belief in that internal force that led us to create something in the first place. If we believe in what we do, we can do it again and again.

And if we don’t, we just might end up on the dark side.

9-1-1? I 've Got a Doris Day Emergency

2011-05-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

Last week this quote popped up on Twitter: “I’ve been around so long I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Any self-respecting Doris Day fan knows that it was Oscar Levant who said this, but the tweeter credited it to Groucho Marx. And then six different people retweeted it.

I couldn’t idly sit by while uninformed twitterers made this thing go viral. Something had to be done. I sent a polite reply to the original poster, correcting his mistake. And then I called the cops.

“Hello? My name is Diane Vallere, and I want to report a mis-attributed quote about Doris Day on Twitter.”

Okay, I didn’t say that. What I said was, “Hello? My name is Diane Vallere. I’m a mystery writer and I’m working on a book set in Dallas, and I was wondering if there was someone I could talk to about the details of police procedure?”

Ah, research.

I’ve wrestled with this particular phone call, or with finding the motivation to make this particular phone call, for awhile. The idea of calling the cops makes me nervous. I envision them standing over a body or a chalk outline, their phone ringing, and little ol’ me saying, “Hi! I’m working on a funny mystery with a Doris Day theme. Do you have a couple of minutes to talk about interrogation?” For some reason, I can't picture how the rest of that conversation goes, though, I don't picture it going well.

But something about that tweet motivated me. The idea that someone who didn’t know the facts but was presenting himself as someone who did bothered me more than I expected. Politely replying with the correct info didn’t make a difference, and that’s the moment when I knew what I had to do.

Calling the cops was not easy for me. But once the shoe was on the other foot, once I read something that I knew to be wrong, that someone else hadn’t bothered to check, I realized how important it was. I can’t stop thinking about the twitter comment, which ultimately is a good thing. Whenever I think about it, I’m reminded of the importance of research.

I’m still logging the phone calls to the Dallas Police Department, in search of the person who is willing to help me get the details right. And if they think less of me for making these calls? All I can say is, que sera, sera.

Fred Astaire, Jackie Chan, and Thumbtacks

2011-05-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

The other day I found myself emptying my car’s interior of the flotsam that has accumulated since the last cleaning spree. Once satisfied that it was up to “I’ll give you a ride” standards, I moved on to another project. It wasn’t until a day later that I noticed that the one thing I had left behind was a small office-supply store sized package of thumbtacks. Bought months ago for an art installation, they remained behind, on the passenger side floor. And it occurred to me that, if I were being chased by some bad guys, that package of thumbtacks might come in handy. I could toss them out the window, causing severe tire damage to my pursuers, giving me a chance to get away.

This naturally led me to thinking about Fred Astaire dancing with a hat rack and Jackie Chan using a carton of mail in a fight.

Naturally.

The way I see it, it’s about adaptability vs. preparedness. If Fred were really prepared to dance in that exercise studio, mightn’t he have arranged for a partner? And if Jackie had really been expecting a confrontation with some baddies, would he still have dressed in that yellow and black number? Whether you like watching Fred Astaire dance or Jackie Chan fight, you have to admit, the fun is in watching the props become a part of the action, watching the men adapt to the situation and depend on what is available to them.

Being prepared is an admirable thing, just ask a Boy Scout. But speaking as someone who has often found herself unprepared, I’ve learned to look at what I have available and adapt, a skill I pass on, in spades, to my characters. A normal person will not be prepared to find a dead body, or to fight off an attack from a killer. It’s how they adapt to their new reality that makes them or breaks them, that makes readers want to care about what they do next.

Adaptability is the new preparedness. Care to stick a pin in my argument? Let me give you a ride somewhere and you can use one of the thumbtacks on the passenger side floor. But I’d be cautious if I were you, because you don’t know what I left under the driver’s seat.

Come to think of it, neither do I. But I bet it’ll come in handy some day.

The Power of Perception

2011-05-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I bought a pair of pajamas in Chinatown. I checked the sizing chart on the back of the package to determine whether I was an S, M, or L. Let’s face it, ill-fitting PJs are just about one of the worst things you can do to yourself when you want to fall asleep, so getting the right size was definitely a concern. Still, I threw caution to the wind and made the $11 investment.

The first time I put on the pajamas, one thing became clear. The makers of my PJs expected me to be to be much taller. I’m not exactly diminutive, but the waistband comes up to my bustline! And, interestingly enough, the length of the pants is just fine. So, apparently, by their standards, I’m about eight inches short in the torso.

When I think about the fact that my pajamas were designed either for a seven-foot tall woman or a cross dresser in Florida who’s become accustomed to wearing his pants up to his chest, I realize that perception led the good makers of my sleepwear to the interesting proportions of their small, medium, and large, not a case-study of common proportions.

Perception is a funny thing. Every one of us has it, and most of us rely more on perception than truth when it comes to assessing a situation and responding. What seems a natural assumption to one of us in inexplicable to another. For a writer, perception can lead to tricky ground, unless we’re pretty darn certain that readers will jump on our train of thought and stay on the ride for an entire story. But if what we perceive is far removed from reality, we run the risk of turning off readers who don’t get what we’re giving. There is a line of trust between readers and writers – trust that we’ll create a world close enough to reality to allow the suspension of disbelief, but far enough removed to take a reader away from her own daily distractions.

Like the dirty dishes in the sink. Or the laundry pile in the closet. Or the pajamas hiked up to her ribcage.

Coffee Is Not Like Chem Lab

2011-04-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

Much to my dad, the scientist’s chagrin, I did not take to Chemistry like a fish to water. We mixed about as well as, well, one of those experiments where a poof of smoke explodes from the beaker. There’s very little that I remember from Chemistry (and also, to my dad’s chagrin, for reasons that I’ll leave to you to figure out, I took it more than once).

But there is one thing that stuck with me. The correct way to take the, um, top off of the container of a chemical (I am quite sure that there is a technical term for all of that, and I could look it up and use it and you, the reader, would never know that I didn’t know, but that would belie the fact that I really don’t know, thus underscoring the point of this blog post). When you take that stopper/cork off, you set down UPSIDE DOWN. You don’t want the part that goes back into the beaker or test tube to be compromised by coming into contact with any other non-airborne chemicals (I think that last bit sounds particularly good, don’t you? But it does stand to reason that those who practice the correct procedure for handling a test tube stopper are not concerned with airborne chemicals, right?)

Every morning when I take the lid off my coffee cup to add cream, I think about this. BUT here’s the problem. That coffee lid isn’t protecting my coffee, it’s going to come into contact with my mouth. If I set the lid upside down on a public surface, it would pick up all sorts of icky things that would probably make a nice showing under a microscope. So, while the limited knowledge I picked up in one + chemistry course(s) trained me to instinctively remove a lid from a vessel of liquid, and set the lid upside down, I have to consciously remind myself that coffee is not a chemical to be protected and preserved (but in fact a necessity to be consumed) and set the lid face up, so the part that comes in contact with me is untarnished by all non-airborne chemicals.

It always strikes me as odd how that stuck with me.* And it makes me wonder how many of us walk around with habits that we learned somewhere along the way, habits we take for granted, that don’t have anything to do with what it is we are doing. Mystery writing depends a lot on normal human response. But what happens when our own personal gauge of “normal” is out of whack from a mis-interpreted lesson decades earlier? Isn’t it possible that a person can think she’s doing the right thing and end up in hot water? Crossed signals and misunderstandings are part of the fun. And, I think, that’s chemistry, too.
~~~~~
*You know the other thing that strikes me as odd? If just one of those plus one chemistry professors had mentioned Forensic Science while talking about Bunsen burners and test tubes, I would have been hooked for life.

Tarnishing My Image

2011-04-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

I’m too nice, I think. At least, people think I’m nice. I volunteer for a lot of projects, jump in to help out others when I have the time, and apologize for stuff that isn’t my fault. All of this, I fear, is at odds with my desire to be taken seriously as a mystery writer. I mean, mystery writers are not nice people. They (we) think about crimes and dead people and motives. Sometimes blood and brain matter. Nice people don’t sit around thinking about stuff like that, right?

So I think the next step in my ongoing attempt to become the mystery writer I want to be is to tarnish my image a bit. I came up with a couple of ideas:

1. Be mean to kittens and puppies. The fundamental issue with this is that my landlord won’t allow me (or anyone) in my building to have a pet, despite the fact that I really, really want one. Which means that whenever I do see a cat or a dog, my voice rises a couple of notches like most people do around a baby, and I’m overcome with the desire to shower it with love. So, option #1, probably not gonna happen.

2. Beat up a Geek. See, I know about bullies, and their bad reputation. Does the name Scott Farkas ring any bells? And bullies don’t pick on other bullies. They pick on geeks. The inherent problem with this option is that, on more than one occasion, I have participated in seriously geeky behavior myself (two words: Comic Con. Okay, that’s one and a third. Still...)

3. Get arrested for something. Problem here is that I can’t decide on a crime that I think it would be okay to perpetrate. Maybe I could just ask a couple of cops to pretend arrest me? Because I really don’t want to do anything that will go on my permanent record.

4. Introduce a new sigline into conversation. These days, when I’m exiting a conversation, I tend to say, “see ya!” or some version thereof. But what if I replaced “see ya!” with “Watch your back!”? I’ll end every conversation like this. Examples:

You: Have a good day!
Me: Watch your back!
--or—
You: Be careful driving home.
Me: Watch your back!
--or—
You: Don’t forget an umbrella.
Me: Yeah, watch your back!

This one has promise. The only problem is at work, because I can’t see “Watch your back!” fitting in with my store’s customer service standards.

That’s it so far, but I’m open to suggestion. Just don’t expect me to say thank you.

Kaput!

2011-04-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I tackled something that has stood in the way of my writing success for a long time. Every time I sat down in my chair and faced the blank screen, it mocked me. Distracted me. It was a symbol of chaos.

It was the mess of cords that run from my computer to the outlet.

With a couple of spare hours in the afternoon, I rolled up my sleeves and got down on my hands and knees and systematically unplugged every cord, then fed it behind the desk, in a clean and orderly manner. Motivated by the lure of positive energies in my corner, I broke out the vacuum attachment and pulled every last speck of dust off of the corner, the carpet, the computer. I even consulted my Feng Shui manual and added a couple of enhancements: the logo of my dream publisher, an owl mobile, an inspirational quote, bookmarks from authors I respect, and the Cartier pen I received for hitting the 15 year benchmark at my day job. A magnifying glass and a flashlight, to represent the mystery genre.

I polished the glass of the desk top surface. I dusted every surface, organized the bookshelves next to the desk, tossed old paperwork. I stood back and admired my new workstation. It was inspiring. I knew it would make a difference. My energy level jumped, just by looking at it. I couldn’t wait to get in there, to write, to query, to network. But first, I had to leave my new sparkling writing area and run a few errands.

When I returned home a couple of hours later, I sat down and tried to print something. No dice. I checked the connections and the power source. And then, the mouse became unresponsive. And after a power off and power on, an error message that the fan had failed within the computer and it would automatically shut off. And then, it did.

Being one who enjoys the occasional odd and Mulder-esque hypotheses, I wondered: had I changed my energies so much that, in effect, my system became too hot to handle?

I’ve always been a driven individual, from an early age as a competitive swimmer, when I attended practices designed for me personally, at the ungodly hours of the morning when the sun, and almost anybody else I knew, wasn’t up yet. It was the price to pay to succeed. But when my hard drive literally crashes, is it a metaphor for my internal drive, a warning sign that drive is only part of the equation for success?

It’s something to think about. Which is good, because I’ll need something to think about while my computer is out getting serviced, and the Feng Shui manual can only provide so many distractions.

By the Fourth Week, It Gets Mental

2011-04-05T09:14:00.000-07:00

Sacrifice. It’s one of those good-for-the-mind-and-body things. Helps you become a better person. I’m not a big fan of sacrifice, but every year I sign up for 40 days and 40 nights of giving something up. Lent. Blech. This year, like last year, it’s crunchy snack food.

I’m not going to lie. I’m a fan of the crunch. Pretzels, popcorn, chips, crackers, you name it. I love the crunch. Gotta have that crunch.

The first couple of crunch-free weeks are mainly retraining myself, learning a new habit. No quick bites between meals. No 4:00 snack from the vending machine, between lunch and dinner. No bowl of popcorn after posting my blog. No pretzels while writing or editing. It’s amazing the effect this has had on my creative juices. Finding my motivation has been a LOT more challenging.

By the third week, I was in something of a routine. I no longer thought about the snacks. I missed them, I wanted them, but I stopped gazing longingly into the vending machine. I barely noticed the popcorn popper, sitting on its lonely shelf (with the back-up popcorn popper: contingency plan), collecting dust.

This is week four. I don’t feel like myself. I sleep in too long. I skipped four lunch breaks at work over the past two weeks, and that’s prime writing time for me. I’ve lost the will to blog. And did you know Lent is really 46 days long? Why must I rediscover that every single year when I find myself counting boxes on my calendar?

If I’m a subscriber to the reward system and my reward is gone, how am I supposed to get anything done?

There are 20 days left. I’ll make it, of that there’s no doubt. And while this has been a ridiculously low period of creativity for me, there’s a chance that I’ll bloom in full creative color come Easter. The 4-lb weight loss? I could take it or leave it. But a recharging of the creative batteries? Will be totally worth the sacrifice.

A Chance of Showers

2011-03-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

I don’t like to shower. I do it, every single day, but I don’t like it. It takes up time, but it does acknowledge my general appreciation for the world at large. There’s the shampooing and the conditioning and the washing. After the shower, there’s the getting ready, the I-can’t-leave-my-hair-in-a-towel-turban-all-day part (which would be so much easier!), the picking-out-an-outfit part, the do-I-or-don’t-I-need-Spanx-under-this-ensemble part.

When I have a day off, there’s something so freeing about getting up, pony-tailing my hair, and going directly to the computer to write. More than one joke has been made about writers who stay in their pajamas all day and I can’t say that the jokes are entirely off base. My computer doesn’t take offense when I don’t shower until the afternoon, (I don’t think) although it occasionally mocks me by not saving a document or blowing up a flash drive, so maybe it’s just passive-aggressive.

There’s a guilty pleasure in getting up and going directly to writing-work, something that says that the writing part is so important, or so much fun, that when I have the time, it is the number one thing I want to do. My mind, when I first wake up, is already “clean”, as in, not distracted by the internet, the news, the weather, the almost-car accident out front, or the fact that the grocery store is out of Neapolitan ice cream again. Starting my day by sitting down and typing says, “That shower can come later, before you head out into the world and get all angry by the crazy drivers, but right now, this is time for YOU.” Nobody really knows that this is my routine (okay, a few people know. The cable repair guy knew last week, and I’m sure my neighbor across the courtyard is suspicious) but all in all, it doesn’t matter to anybody.

Aside from making me all shiny and clean, a shower says, “I’m ready to face the world”. But sitting my butt in the chair, with my fingers on the keys, says, “I’m ready to tackle my personal goals.” There’s something empowering in that notion. By the afternoon, when I venture out, I feel better because of the work I’ve already done, when my mind was clear, before I got into a fight with the mailman. And, I guess, if I took to showering at the end of the day, too, it would be my way of saying, “Hey world, you threw some real crap at me today, and look! It all washes off!” But that would mean I’d be showering twice a day, and nobody has that kind of time.

Oh, What A Feeling!

2011-03-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

Something wild, weird, and wonderful happened last night.

A Google Alert arrived in my inbox, announcing that FISH TALES: The Guppy Anthology, is available on Mobi. That's the first point of sale for this collection of stories "of murder and mayhem by the rising stars of mystery" (front cover copy! Seriously!). But the feeling of seeing the cover image on Mobi, after clicking through the Google Alert, was an explosion of What Should I Do?

Actually, it went something like this: I should tell someone! But who? Family? The other authors? But it's late! They might all be asleep! But what if it's a mistake? If it is, it's a really good mistake, because there's my name...and there's the back cover copy...and there's the publisher's name...OMG! It's real!

So, if you're the sort that likes to read on your phone/mobile device, check it out here. Or, hang tight, because the hard copy and the Kindle version should be along shortly.

Being a part of this project has been fantastic, from writing the story to getting the offer of publication. It's been a learning experience, and a motivational experience. But most of all, it's a feel-good experience.

Like the first time you have the guts to dive into the deep end.

Show Me The Voice Contest Entry

2011-03-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Name: Diane Vallere
Title: 22 Days as a Space Girl
Genre: MG
*Comments on the first 250 words of my Mid-Grade novel welcome!

My cat is bright purple and he's pissed! If I could get him back into the bathtub I could probably turn him into a pale lilac, but if you know anything about cats and water you know that's not going to happen. And considering my arms have been silver since four-thirty yesterday afternoon and no amount of exfoliating has made a bit of difference, my purple cat is the least of my concerns.

"Lisa? Lisa?! Are you upstairs?"

"Yes, Mom, I'm in the bathroom!" I hollered.

"Dinner's almost ready. Donald!" she yelled at the closed door to my dad’s laboratory. I towel-dried Schrödinger and let him loose. He bolted under the bed. I flipped the bed skirt up and he hissed at me. I fully expected to find him in the same spot later that night. Probably for the best.

I was pretty sure the newly purpled Schrödinger wasn't going to make any surprise appearances before I did, so I braced myself and headed downstairs for what smelled like meatloaf. The phone rang and Mom’s voice answered it.

"Lisa! Phone!" she called, louder than necessary, considering I was so close. I turned the corner and reached for the phone and she gasped.

“What happened to you?” she demanded, inspecting my silver skin.

"Science project, Mom, don't worry. The teacher said the side effects are only temporary. This probably happened to Dad a thousand times.” I put the phone to my ear. "Um, Sylvi? I can’t really talk right now.”

Commitment vs. Investment

2011-03-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

I love clothes. Now, before you call me superficial or tell me that fashion isn’t an investment, I would like to say that everybody has something they love, and there is no point in judging someone else’s passions, because nothing good comes of it. I’ll say it again: I love clothes. I probably spend too much money on them, but that’s my thing.

But somewhere around when December 2010 rolled into January 2011 I decided that this would be the year that I took myself, and my writing, seriously, and that I would dial back my clothing spending and make the same investment in my writing. I’m not saying that I haven’t made a commitment to write, because I have. I am almost always working on something, first draft, hundredth draft, you name it, but commitment and investment are two different things, and the way I was headed, commitment only, I wasn’t moving too far forward on the path to publication.

The thing is, while I’ve been following the expectations of the industry, the darn industry has been shifting under my feet. It may be time to reassess my goals, and figure out a new way to get to the end point, ie, having a book in my hands with my name on it. There are certainly more avenues today than ever before, and they’re relatively unexplored by me.

As far as the money thing goes, I’ve been doing well. I’ve entered manuscripts in contests, signed up to attend a conference, joined local writing groups, and taken other measures to improve my craft. A quick tally of money spent shows that I’m doing what I said. Of course, there is this vintage Pucci dress hanging in the window of a store relatively close to my house. . . The good news? It goes with about half of the shoes I already own.

The Great Casual Pants Experiment, Part 1

2011-03-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, in a radical fit of “I have nothing to wear”, I swore off pants. I soon discovered there is a high maintenance standard implicit in a daily wardrobe of all skirts and dresses and that I wasn’t ready for the committment required. Simply put, there are days when I had to wear the pants in the family.

Enter, The Gap. I mean, really, if The Gap can’t provide me with a couple of affordably priced, basic trousers for days when I’m heading off to Staples for ink, or to the grocery store for popcorn (sworn off for lent with all other crunchy snack foods), then who could? I mean, my whole wardrobe doesn’t have to come from Neiman Marcus, although it generally does.

So…The Gap Experience. After figuring out which side was for women (thanks to the pink stuff) I zeroed in on the khakis. Found a couple of pair. Tried on, determined size, bought. Success!

After one wearing, though, I doubt said easy success. Turns out, for anyone who is not a regular Gap pant shopper, that their fabric gives a LOT. I can now take my pants off without unzipping them. And while this makes me feel like one of those Lap-Band success stories, I know it has less to do with me and more to do with expandable (not expendable, although. . .) cotton.

The Great Casual Pants Experiment part one (The Gap): Data, inconclusive. Further trials needed.

Oscar Fashion

2011-03-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

It should come as no surprise that for me, the Oscars have more to do with the dresses than the movies. And knowing that there is no end of options available to the people on the red carpet, that there are more stylists per capita in Los Angeles than any other city in America, it becomes more fun to look for what we don’t like than to think about what we do like, and why. Not why the experts liked/didn’t like a dress, but why we like/don’t like a dress. Because, whether we’re experts or not, we all are entitled to our own opinion.

For example, I liked Marisa Tomei’s navy blue satin Charles James dress. A lot of people didn’t. No biggie to me, but I started to think about why I liked her dress. Sure, I thought the color was divine (but, admittedly, I’m having a navy blue moment). I even tried to support my position with someone yesterday, tried to expound upon why I liked it, and I couldn’t, it was one of those I-can’t-explain-why-but-I-just-do situations. Maybe that’s why I’m still thinking about it today.

What it comes down to, ultimately, is that this is a dress that was made over sixty years ago. There’s a lot of attention being drawn to fashion from the fifties (witness the Mad Men phenomenon) and it’s never been unusual for a designer to look to the past to find inspiration. Times change, people adapt, nostalgia motivates us to reinvent what we fondly remember in a practical manner. It’s like programming a classic telephone ring on a cell phone.

Yes, I’m a fan of reinterpretation. What’s old can be made new. But this dress showed the way dresses really were, once. It demonstrated timelessness. It wasn’t deconstructed, or re-cut, or altered from its original design. And Ms. Tomei’s hair and makeup wasn’t overly-styled in a way that turned her look costumey. While the dress was very fifties, the actress was very 2011.

And, odd as it sounds, I found the whole look refreshingly modern.

A Self-Indulgent Waste of Time

2011-02-22T10:46:00.000-08:00

There are days when I wish I could blow off every obligation that I have and spend the day in bed. I could do it. I just know it. Give me a good book, and maybe bring me some popcorn somewhere during the day, and I’d be set. What a glorious, indulgent waste of time it would be!

Or would it?

I find that when I read, my writing improves. A part of my brain is occupied with someone else’s ideas, which allows a different part of my brain to tackle my own creative roadblocks. Not only do I see the other writer’s words, combinations that I might never have considered using myself, but I discover plot devices and characters. Twists and denouements that have worked for others. I can get totally lost in a mystery that was written before the age of cell phones, and I don’t even notice the lack of technology. I can appreciate the challenges to writers now, who are publishing manuscripts penned before cell phones became de rigueur. I’m especially fond of the scatterbrained main character who is constantly misplacing her phone, or letting the battery die, because as clichéd as it sounds, she is me.

But, I digress. Spending the day in bed with a good book, not such a bad thing, I think. Tune out distractions like the Internet, work, laundry, word count. Allow your brain the opportunity to frolic in someone else’s playground. Just don’t forget to turn off your cell phone, too. Or, maybe just misplace it for a couple of hours. You’ll thank me.

Ode to a Leather Jacket

2011-02-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

I have been roped into a performance of a certain hit song from Grease at my place of work, which, aside from the fact that I will be making a complete fool out of myself in front of my peers, is notable for one reason: I have an excuse to dust off my motorcycle jacket from 1987! In a nostalgic trick taught to me by my mom, the price tag and the receipt are still tucked in one of the smaller pockets. Best $159.99 I ever spent.

I’ve always been a sucker for a guy in a classic black leather motorcycle jacket. Think Brando in The Wild One. Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. Adrian Zmed in Grease 2. Every greaser in The Outsiders. But somewhere around the very wise age of twenty, I realized, instead of looking to meet a guy in a black leather motorcycle jacket, maybe, if I bought the jacket for myself, I’d have one less thing to look for in the guy. So I did.

The jacket became part of my uniform: white T-shirt, ripped jeans, and a mountain of pearls (the late eighties were a weird time in fashion). Somewhere around the early nineties, it retired to a closet, unworn but not forgotten. About seven years ago, when I got a fantastic job and wanted something to commemorate it, I bought a Celine motorcycle jacket (seriously, that fall 2004 Celine runway show was one of the top five best collections ever. Drool!) which I still wear to this day. It’s my own evolution – from the fantasy of the person I wanted to spend my life with, to becoming the person I want to spend my life with. That’s kind of deep, right? And people think fashion is frivolous.

Related links:

Celine Fall ’04 collection: here

The Outsiders Trailer: here

The Wild One Trailer: here

Getting to Know Mr. Rebel

2011-02-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I went to a benefit for Eddie Bertrand, icon of the surf-music genre. Ten years ago, I had never heard of Eddie Bertrand, which today seems like absolute madness, considering how much I like his song Mr. Rebel (which you can listen to here). The benefit was at Don the Beachcombers, and was filled with the usual crowd that attends surf-music gatherings, a sort of cross-section of Rockabillies in bowling shirts and aging surfers, sprinkled with the occasional Bettie Page-lookalike and a couple of rockers in black leather (I was tasteful in a vintage light blue dress, for anyone who cares). The event started at two and promised (on the flyer) to continue until ten. The audience was as filled with members of the different bands that made up the show list as well as with fans of the genre.

This wasn’t the first surf music thing I’ve been to, so I wasn’t all that surprised by the audience. In fact, faces are starting to look familiar, though names are still unknown. I also wasn’t surprised by the outpouring of love and support for Eddie, because the benefit was for him. But what I found to be the most touching part of the entire event was the couple who sat at the same table as BF and I. They weren’t there because it was a surf show, or because either one of them was a musician. They were there because they went to high school with Eddie, they knew him, and they wanted to help.

It got me to thinking, somewhere during Mr. Moto or Squad Car, that, as fans of a genre of anything, we “know” someone, but we don’t always know them. When I watched Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes I got a big kick out of seeing a hotel named “The Caledonian”, because I love Wilder’s Some Like It Hot and felt like I was in on a private joke. When I read Adena Halpern’s book The Ten Best Days of my Life I smiled when her character acknowledged her ‘pretzel brand of choice’ because it reminded me that the author is a Pennsylvanian, like me, and it seems we can’t not talk about pretzels). Tidbits like this make us feel like we "know" someone who we don't really know, which makes the process of discovering a new author, musician, or artist all the more rich.

To the fans, Eddie Bertrand will always be the founder of Eddie and the Showmen. But to the couple who went to high school with him, he was a former classmate. They were as fascinated by the fact that BF and I knew and liked Eddie’s music as we were by the fact that they knew him back when he formed the band. What had motivated us to be there was different than what drew them, but in the end, we both supported someone we “knew” (and bought the same T-shirt. too).

Photo Finish

2011-02-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

I know of two different photographers who specialize in portraiture. Photographer A’s specialty is capturing a person’s personality, capturing their essence. She specializes in head shots. Photographer B captures a person’s image and retools it, adding a more sculptured cheekbone here, airbrushing off wrinkles there, layering in special effects. In short, A specializes in bringing out the energy on the inside and B specializes in covering up the flaws that are there on the outside. There’s no question that both photographers are talented. But thinking about each of their approach to their art got me to thinking about vision in general. In short, when you look at something, do you see what is special that is already there, or do you see the flaws?

I think it’s human nature to focus on the flaws, and to wish they could be taken away. But when I compare the work of these two photographers, I can’t help seeing the vitality in Photographer A’s photos. Her subjects see free, alive. And the subjects in Photographer B’s works are lifeless but perfect, like a ceramic bowl, fragile and still.

So how do we go about seeing life from the perspective of Photographer A’s point of view? To look at something and see what is good about it, not what’s bad? Is it a developed habit? Can we apply it to all aspects of our lives: ourselves, our writing/painting/music/voice? Once we learn to see the intrinsic positives to what we do and who we are, won’t the opportunity areas align with that vision and become less of an issue, and easier to work with?

It’s worth thinking about, at least. Take some time to focus on what makes you unique, and build upon that. Don’t hide your own talents behind a wall of false perfection. Embrace who you are and be unique!

Cold Snap

2011-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I was in New York, on a buying trip for next fall. The predicted temperature, 22 by day, 12 by night, was, shall we say, slightly different from that of Los Angeles. As in, over fifty degrees colder. I filled a suitcase with clothes that no one would see because they would be underneath the clothes that everyone would see. I was prepared to be impervious to the cold.

I’m originally from the East Coast. I remember winters filled with snow, snorkel coats, and assorted layers, and was kind of excited to feel the invigorating chill in the air. It seems, that while cold winters are a part of my memory banks, I forgot that there are people to whom this cold weather is a fact of life. Businesses that depend, or even thrive, on the changing of the seasons. After all, where would the good people of Technica be if it never snowed?

These businesses, these people, function regardless of the temperature. It’s not an issue for them, it’s their reality. Because it wasn’t what I was used to, I thought about it. I stood in the taxi line and thought, “This is what 22 degrees feels like.” I remember how my big toes felt really, really cold, but the rest of my feet felt okay. I remember that knit gloves were warm enough to keep my fingers from going numb. I remember the air snapping against my cheeks, the chill that snaked down the back of my neck before I had my scarf on, and how I had to sacrifice peripheral vision and full hair for the more important head coverage. Totally worth it.

The thing about the weather was, I noticed it because it wasn’t normal to me. Just like I remember how London sounds. How Paris smells. How Texas feels. Going someplace outside of the norm, for me, was more invigorating than the cold. It was a breath of fresh air.

That being said, there’s no place like home.

Look Ma, No Pants!

2011-01-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

Recently, I fell in love with the Milly Spring 2011 collection. After seeing the first 5 exits down the runway, I knew this was the way I wanted to dress all the time. Had the merchandise been available for instant purchase, I would have taken a withdrawal from my savings and started shopping. Funny thing is, though, the collection is virtually all dresses and skirts. I think (maybe) there’s one pair of pants (and they're floral!. How cool is that!)

I’m not a huge fan of pants, because I can’t find a pair that looks good on me. I bought a pair two weeks ago, and had them professionally hemmed, and the first time I wore them, I discovered that there was an inch difference between each leg (I was in public at the time, so there was no option of changing my outfit). So for the rest of that day, I had the option of standing, hands on hips, feet apart (like Wonder Woman, which, oddly, isn’t that big of a deal) or in a John Travolta-like pose with one knee bent and the other leg straight (interestingly enough, I didn’t mind that too much either). Otherwise, when I stood still, I was certain that everyone was staring at my ankle-region, judging my mis-matched hems.

And the pants themselves? Let’s just say that my judgement was definitely off the day I thought they were a worthwhile investment! So now I’m the proud owner of a pair of not-very-flattering pants with mismatched hems. And yes, I can have the hems redone by the same alterations department, I can re-cut the pants into a more flattering silhouette, but that’s not the issue. The point is, I tried, unsuccessfully, to find a pair of flattering pants, because I have been somehow taught that I should own a certain number of pants, and I ended up annoyed with the entire process, while, at the same time, falling in love with a collection for spring that includes NO pants.

We all have these “things”, these “I’m supposed to have this” things that we buy, that we don’t use, that annoy us, just because somewhere along the line we were taught that we needed them. Why continue to be encumbered by “things” that don’t serve a personal purpose to ourselves?

So, I’m thinking that maybe I’ll give up pants. It’s not entirely unlike BF Skinner’s thoughts on simplifying, "It's an enormous simplification and a great saving of time and money." (Walden 2). Consider: I stop wearing pants, I don’t need to shop for pants, I don’t have to worry about pants, and I have more money/opportunity/excuses to buy the the clothes I love.

What "things" are you willing to give up?

PS-Harem Pants don’t count, nor does anything Pucci.
PPS-How wrong it is that Blogger spellcheck does not recognize Pucci.

I Got Nothin'

2011-01-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

Sooner or later, it comes down to this: staring at a blank page. I’ve heard of writers who can’t get in touch with their muses, people who can’t find time to write, and people who are stumped, not sure in what direction to take their work-in-progress. Not so for me. My muse gets tapped when I have the time to tap her, not the other way around. When I have time to write, I write. And when I’m stumped, not sure which direction to go, it’s usually because I took a wrong turn in the previous day’s work and got off track. A little backpedalling and I’m back on my way. The spilling out of words onto a page has never been an issue for me. Until today. This morning. This blog.

I’ve managed to avoid writing this post with tasks outside of the normal Tuesday agenda, to wit, cleaning the kitchen (a 1:00 thing), running two loads of laundry (5:30-ish), making coffee (yesterday’s would normally be good enough but I didn’t make any). Not only did I already shower (a 4:00 thing?), but I included a deep penetrating mask treatment on my hair (add 5 minutes for that). And before any of these uncharacteristic tasks happened, I spent a solid seventeen minutes staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, wondering what I’d write about today.

I’ve been writing weekly blogs for about two years now, like clockwork, if your clock runs somewhat flexibly, teaching me (ever so slightly in a non-confrontational way) about meeting deadlines. And there is much to be learned from the writing of various first drafts, too, things like natural story arc, when to do research, voice, humor, style. But the writing, in and of itself, can’t be the only teacher. That would be like attending a college with only one professor.

For the past couple of months I’ve had to not write, in order to focus on the other parts that comprise the goal of becoming a successful writer: getting feedback, sending queries, doing research, launching discussion groups, being edited, reading within my genre. When I first decided there would be no new writing until 2011, there was a fear that the ideas would stop coming. Not so. I have a notebook filled with the concept of my next project, ideas for the one after that, and a couple of completed things that will be ready for polish. In the meantime I’m trying to identify that which keeps my first draft from being close to 100% ready. No, I don’t ever expect a first draft to be perfect. But if I can learn to close the gap between 85% and 90% on the first go around, I’m on the right track.

How about you? What’s your challenge, and how are you trying to overcome it?

Moon Mission

2011-01-04T09:11:00.001-08:00

Last night I was watching a documentary on the moon mission that Santa Claus delivered to me (admittedly, I have a thing for space-related subjects which might have inspired my parents to buy my first pair of Moon Boots back in 1975). Watching the footage of the mission, of these men who were blasted off into outer space, who were going into unfamiliar territory, who were pioneers in their own right, was inspirational.

Most people can come close to reciting Neil Armstrong’s words upon setting foot on the moon’s surface, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind.” But aren’t even aware of Buzz Aldrin’s statement after following Armstrong to the moon’s surface: “That might have been a small step for Neil but it was a big step for me.”

In my mind, while Armstrong’s words are profound, Aldrin’s are honest. There is a humility in them, an awe over what he has just accomplished, and despite the grandeur of Aldrin being on the moon and the rest of the world watching or listening to the event, we know how he feels.

When you dabble in the word trade, it’s easy to obsess over every sentence, every plot point. It’s also easy to stop writing because of the fear of where you’re going. It’s easy to be intimidated by what others have accomplished that you have not, because you never know if you’re going to get there, too. But when you reach the milestones: writing a first sentence, finishing a first draft, getting feedback from a first reader, sending out first queries, receiving the first request for material, reading that first acceptance of your work from a publisher, the occasions are no less momentous because someone else has done them first.

Writers are pioneers of the page, discovering our story as we type or hand-write the words. We’ll make false starts and have have aborted missions, but if we allow ourselves to move into that unknown territory of plot, character, and voice, we’ll discover things, along the way. And no matter how many drafts we write, when we finish one, it is a big step. Celebrate it!

Neil Armstrong has admitted that he flubbed his line upon landing on the moon, proving that everyone wants a chance to go back and self-edit, but that’s a whole different subject!

Cashmere Fantasy

2010-12-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

When I’m not living the glamorous life of the aspiring novelist, I work at a luxury retailer where I sell fine apparel. And because this time of the year is filled with a new audience of customers walking through the store, checking our wares, looking for something special for someone else, it seems timely to talk about indulging on ourselves.

Say you walk into the store and pick up a $750 cashmere sweater. It’s a lovely sweater, but you’ve never spent more than one hundred dollars on a cashmere sweater in your life, and despite its loveliness, you don’t understand the price. Since I’ve been trained in quality clothing and the designer’s vision, I can tell you where the goats live, what part of the goat the fibers are from, why they are the purest base for cashmere and thus will wear better than other yarns, pill less, hold their color and shape more. I can explain what the designer was thinking about when he/she chose the shade in your hands. I can tell you what to wear it with, either from your own closet if you choose to tell me about your lifestyle and what you already own, or recommend other items that will complement it. I’ll tell you if the sweater is classic or trendy, if the color is good for you, if it was featured in any magazines recently, on either celebrities or in editorial pages.

It’s up to you to listen to what I say and decide if buying the sweater is right for you. And even if you’ve never spent more than seventy-five dollars on a cashmere sweater in your life, it is possible that if I’m particularly eloquent and witty the day we’re talking, if I’m wearing a sassy outfit that you like, that you might decide to invest ten times your normal cashmere-sweater buying budget and take one home.

That does not guarantee that you won’t begin to question your purchase the minute you walk out of my store, or that you won’t question the notion of spending more on a sweater than you spend on your car payment. You might even wonder if I really knew what I was talking about, although it seemed like I did, and I was witty and eloquent and wearing that sassy outfit. . .

You might try the sweater on at home, under your own lights, and your own clothes. You might hang the sweater on your bedroom door where it’s the last thing you see before falling asleep and the first thing you see upon waking up. You might start to imagine your new life in the sweater, exciting and full of the kinds of opportunities that you wish you had now but you don't. Ultimately you might decide that $750 is too much for you to spend on a cashmere sweater, and you return it.

That doesn’t make what I told you less true. It also doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the sweater. All it means is that you decided that there are other places you’d rather put your money than into a $750 sweater.

Sometimes indulgences are worth it, whether they are intended to make us feel good or improve our quality of life. It doesn’t have to be a $750 cashmere sweater. It could be a professional manuscript edit, a fancy bottle of Champagne, an electronic reading device, or a memory foam pillow. In a season where we focus on others, indulgences remind us that we cherish ourselves, too. And that is sometimes enough to keep us going.

Deadline!

2010-12-21T10:22:00.001-08:00

Too much to do before Christmas. Shop now, blog later.

Goodbye Scooter

2010-12-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

If you follow my status updates on Facebook, you know that my landlord demanded that I part with my college motor scooter. The demand had nothing to do with my college memories but more with the fact that it no longer ran, and thus took up space in the parking garage. Not space where anyone else could park, mind you, but for some reason, having an inoperable cute red motor scooter occupying otherwise unusable space in the parking garage was not tolerable, and so, goodbye scooter.

I bought the scooter in 1986, sophomore year at college. For three years I tooled around Williamsburg, jetting to classes, the caf, and anywhere else I could go without having to exceed 35 miles an hour. After I graduated, the scooter served to get me to swim team practice, to my job at the convenience store, and a couple of other spots around Reading. When I moved away from my parents house, the scooter stayed, occupying a corner of their garage (they would make very bad landlords, as they had no apparent problems with the arrangement).

Over the course of the next ten years or so, the scooter went for a joyride once or twice a year, then reclaimed its spot in my parents' garage. I moved on to Texas. The scooter did not. Occasionally my dad asked if I was ready/willing to sell it. I wasn’t.

Why not? It’s not like I was using it. It’s not like I even was looking at it. And I could have easily had the movers pack it up when they moved me to Texas. But I didn’t. Eventually my parents drove to south to visit me, with a van packed with all of the things from the attic, basement, and garage that they wanted to clear out. The scooter was in the mix. I happily parked it in my own garage, driving it around the block every once in awhile. There was something about the little William and Mary parking sticker on the back left side that pleased me. Made me remember who I was. Kept me tethered to the person I was in college. Enough of my life had changed since I relied on it to get me around town that I’d lost touch with who I had been in those days. The scooter had become my Rosebud.

Thanks to a series of conscious decisions, things changed again for me. Life did a 180. I moved to California, changed jobs, started fresh. This time the movers packed the scooter. It worked when I left. It never worked after arriving. I hired people to fix it and was scammed out of $50. And after my landlord decreed that I had seven days to remove it from the parking garage, I had little choice. Yes, I could have loaned it to a friend. I could have rented a truck to transport it to a real scooter-repair business. I could have put it in storage. Or, I could acknowledge that the scooter had served its purpose, reminding me of who I was once, during the days when I needed the reminder, and let it go.

So I did. I donated it to charity. The scooter can do something good for someone else now.

Goodbye, scooter.

If the Shoe Fits, Buy the Book

2010-12-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

*this kicks off my I'm-Not-Talking-About-Writing-In-December series*

As a result of my one-woman boycott against the escalating price of designer shoes, I have been seeking out new places to feed my footwear habit. And because I also maintain a fascination of the wonderful world that is eBay, it was only a matter of time until I plugged “Louboutin” into the online shopping search engine.
Odd as it may seem up front, to shop for designer shoes on eBay, consider the facts:

1. I know my size
2. I know the designers I like to wear
3. I know how much is a good price, how much is a ripoff, and when to click the buy it now button before the seller can change their mind

It seemed a beautiful plan. Last year’s shoes, deep discounts, a minimal shipping fee, what’s not to love? I tested the waters with Kate Spade. Found a couple pair that I liked. Clicked, paid, waited. The shoes arrived. They didn’t fit.

[an interjection: I wear a size 7 shoe. When I was a shoe buyer, I happily slid my foot into every single sample at shoe market and admired (or didn’t, as the case may be) how well they looked. Kate Spade was one of my vendors, and I never ever wore a size other than 7 in a pair of her shoes.]

Let me repeat, lest you lost track of my tale of woe after that interjection: They. Didn’t. Fit.

What does this mean, you might ask? Aside from the fact that it means that two pair of very cute yet slightly small-running Kate Spade shoes will shortly be relisted on eBay, it means that sometimes there are things we want that we need to check out in person.

It means that we can’t expect the entirety of our shopping experiences to go away because of the offerings of this vast ether-based market. It means we need, NEED! I say, for there to be places where we can go and inspect things that we want to purchase, the things we want to be able to buy when we want to buy them. To hold things in our hands, try them on, check them out, flip them over, take them for a test drive.

It means if we like shoes, we need shoe stores. If we like books, we need bookstores. Whatever it is you like, go find the appropriate store and support it today.

If It Was Easy, Everybody Would Do It

2010-11-30T11:32:00.001-08:00

I like to think that it’s the perseverance toward a goal that makes a difference, not any particular split second moment. And that’s a pretty good way for me to think, considering I’m not a detail-oriented person, and probably cause myself more of an uphill battle than most.

Take this past week (seriously take it and let me have a do-over, because I really, really need it). I knew, have known for awhile, that I had to get a manuscript postmarked by November 30th to be considered for a specific contest. And while it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I’m a procrastinator, the fact that I found myself dealing with my submission this morning is not completely due to lack of foresight.

Consider these points in my defense:
1. Last week was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving = company & social obligations
2. I work retail. Thanksgiving also = Black Friday which = physical exhaustion and heavy drinking
3. I helped negotiate a publishing contract last week, an unexpected (but welcome) priority shift
4. My flash drive, with the version of the project that I intended to send, went kaput two days ago

Now, I am nothing if not resourceful, so I Plan B’d the contest and chose a different manuscript to submit. But, a corruption in the file had wonked out the formatting, which now needed fixing, and because I’d used up a substantial portion of paper printing out the original choice, I ran out. Black ink, too. So I went to Staples.

Or I tried to, because my garage door opener wouldn’t work. After thirteen minutes of cursing, clicking, and some general physical activities that make head bangers look like amateurs in a children’s play, a neighbor showed up and delivered me to freedom.
In the end, I made the deadline.

If this journey was a sprint, the race would be over before I even got started. And when I think about the mistakes I’ve made along the way, I could very easily feel like I’ve self-sabotaged my journey and want to give up. But a very astute person pointed out to me yesterday that Life itself is a journey, and every part of it, the good and the bad, is part of the experience. It’s all part of the game: the ticking clock, the submissions and rejections, the contests, critiques, opportunities and closed doors. If you really, really want something, you’ll keep trying and keep improving. There’s no guarantee that you’ll ever see the finish line, but somehow just being in the game can be thrilling.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

I'm thankful for my faithful blog readers.

I'm thankful for the good news that I'll be sharing soon.

I'm thankful that I wore my Moon Boots this past weekend.

And I'm thankful that I get an unexpected extra day off this week, to indulge in pumpkin pie!!

I'll be back next week with more thoughts on something. I'm thankful that I have a week to figure out what that something will be.

The Waiting Place

2010-11-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

Unlike my usual Tuesday morning routine of getting up and writing a blog post, I spent this morning prepping an entry for an online contest. Yes, I am a self-proclaimed procrastinator, but no, I didn’t wait until the last minute to prepare my virtual entry. Yes, I changed my mind this morning about which of my projects I wanted to enter, and no, I wasn’t completely prepared with the one I ultimately chose. So after writing a new email draft and revamping my pitch, I sat, with the computer’s clock opened so I could watch the second hand move oh so slowly around in circles until noon EST arrived and I could click SEND.

And, knowing how popular this contest will be, I imagine writers all over doing the same thing. Watching the clock. And waiting.

You wouldn’t expect this to be such a big part of the creative process, but it is. Waiting for the muse to strike. Waiting for responses from critique partners, agents, editors. Waiting for Guffman – um, no, that’s a different subject. But still, the waiting. How I dislike the waiting.

More and more we’re told that if we want to succeed, we have to take ownership of every element relating to our success, and I’m not just talking about writing here. Just Doing It isn’t enough anymore. There are Do-ers everywhere, but drive is only one part of the equation. Drive can get you to push a square peg through a round hole, but it will take a lot of effort on your part. Knowledge can teach you how to make the square peg round. Patience tides you over if the sander isn’t readily available. The equation of success now contains several components, and unfortunately waiting is one of them.

In Oh! The Places You’ll Go! the very knowledgeable Dr. Seuss advises us to avoid the waiting place. That seems like good advice. And, as it turns out, the seven minutes that I waited with hand hovering over my email draft, were for naught – only the first 20 entries received made the contest and I wasn’t one of them. My morning of waiting was just that.

But! I did polish the first 250 words of this particular manuscript into something I think is stronger than it was. And I write a logline that captures the essence of my mystery. And I did end up with a blog subject. All for naught? I think not.

How do you deal with the waiting?

On The Road Again

2010-11-09T08:07:00.000-08:00

The store where I work is seven miles from where I live and it takes me close to an hour to get there. That’s Los Angeles, where traffic is as abundant as screenwriters, where everybody is going someplace important and nobody really wants to carpool despite all of the talk about being green. I’ve worked at this particular store for about three and a half years now and in the same way I’ve come to accept that I have to do the laundry and wash the dishes, I’ve accepted the commute and have joined the chain of cars making the slow crawl down Sunset Boulevard towards Beverly Hills.

But recently, that's has changed. I found a newer, faster way to get from point A to point B.

Like so many journeys, it happened by accident. Traffic was so backed up on Sunset that, in a moment of green arrow-left turn opportunity, I turned onto a residential street. That’s when I noticed something unusual. No parking between the hours of 8AM and 10AM. Which means, this small residential road is now a two-lane north-south connector between where I am and where I want to be. And hardly anybody takes it.

I started taking this road regularly and my drive went from fifty-two minutes on average, to forty. I saved over ten minutes! That’s ten more minutes in bed. Or time to make coffee. Or time to change clothes, to over-accessorize, to reply to a couple of emails, to update my Facebook status.

And like the gift that keeps on giving, I discovered that my new road gets me home faster, too. At six o’clock, West Hollywood is filled with a mix of people going home and people heading out. Valet stands clog the right lanes. Never-ending construction causes a backup by business taking on renovations. But my new residential road? No restaurants. No valet stands. And the people who live there park in their driveways.

Sometimes when you’re trying to get somewhere that a lot of other people are trying to get to, too, you get stuck in a clog of traffic. You get behind the woman who applies her makeup at traffic lights. You get behind texting teens and out-of-town business men distracted by their directions. You go this way, because that’s the way to get where you’re going. It always has been, anyway.

But maybe it’s time to try something new? Try a route that isn’t so clogged. Just because there are less people on a particular road doesn’t make it any less of a road, or any less effective in getting you to where you want to be.

Terror at Thirty-Thousand Feet

2010-11-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was flying home from New York. It’s a long flight. Not one to sleep well on planes, I was using the time to address a first draft that needed to be launched into the revision process. But after several hours of staring at a small computer screen, my vision blurred. I rubbed my under eye lid with my index finger, we hit a pocket of turbulence, and my finger unexpectedly jabbed my eyeball and all of a sudden I thought: I almost accidentally popped my eyeball out of the socket!

I looked around to see if my fellow flyers had noticed my almost-accidental eye-popping (they didn't). And then I thought, If I did accidentally pop my eyeball out of my socket, would I, in a rush of fear, adrenaline, and “act now, think later” pop it back into my head, then allow myself a silent freak-out over what just happened? OR, Would I freak out first because I had an eyeball dangling from my head, and what was I supposed to do about it because I was surrounded by sleeping flyers, thirty-thousand feet from the ground? Would the JetBlue flight attendant respond to my call button faster than when I wanted a ginger ale to go with my snack pack?

Odd thoughts are not completely unfamiliar to me, though I did wonder for a moment if the beef stick in my snack pack had maybe gone bad and affected my mental state. And while I’ve never sat around contemplating whether or not I really could pop my eyeball in and out of my head like some kind of ocular party trick, the oddity of the question bothered me less than the actual issue. In the event of this kind of emergency, would common sense propel me into action fast enough that I wouldn’t get caught up thinking about what I was doing and simply do what had to be done?

They say that people are capable of unbelievable actions in the face of crisis and I hope that’s true. Pretty much, mystery writing banks on that, on throwing characters into situations that none of the rest of us have encountered, and showcasing how they deal with the drama. And think about it. For all of the events that we can foresee, there are often actions surrounding us that we can’t. That’s why we like fiction. We like watching what happens to normal people when crazy events interrupt their lives, because on some level, we think of ourselves as the normal people and we want to vicariously feel that we could handle the crazy things, too.

My advice to the kids at home is to not go poking around your eye socket while flying through heavy turbulence. No point flirting with danger. But if danger comes flirting with you, swat it into submission, and lose yourself in a good book – that’s where the real drama should stay.

Knowing When Enough Is Enough

2010-10-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

If you don’t know the name Michael Costello, then you haven’t been watching Project Runway this season. He’s the dude who has been beat up all season by the other designers who question why he’s on the show (at least that’s what the show’s editing team wants us to think). He produces incredible draping, “effortless chic”, and is f-a-s-t, fast. While the show provides only a short window of time for each designer to turn out a masterpiece, he often turned out 3-4 versions each challenge until he made one he liked. And in more than one case, the version he stuck with won the challenge. And yet – last week he was cut from the competition, one step away from showing his collection in Bryant Park.

Why didn't he make the top three?

It wasn’t because he didn’t turn out a beautiful collection, because he did. For a nine piece show, he turned out 50 samples, and from what I saw, they were beautifully made. Now, I don’t have an in with the producers of the show. I don’t find myself hanging with Nina Garcia, Heidi Klum, and Michael Kors on a regular basis, and usually the extent of my show analysis takes place on twitter on Thursday nights. But I have a theory on this, on why Michael C didn’t make the top three. It has less to do with his raw talent and more to do with his ability to self-edit.

Switching gears, it’s not unusual to write an 80,000 word first draft and, after edits, have a 70,000 word polished manuscript. Sometimes it takes those extra words to find the story that you want to tell, and once the story is written it takes a critical eye to discover what to show and what to go. It’s not easy, and that first draft probably lives on, saved to a hard drive somewhere, but it’s a necessary part of the process that makes the manuscript better. Same goes for painting. Same goes for a floral arrangement. Same goes for songwriting. Same goes for accessorizing.

It’s great to have partners to help in this process, but the further away from your finished vision your work is, the harder it is for an outsider to help. Imagine reading a 300-page book and having to cut it down to 280. Now imagine starting with 2,000 pages but having to end on the same note. The only person who can chop up those 2,000 pages is the writer. First readers, agents, and editors are all a welcome part of the publishing process, helping to polish something that’s already 99% of the way there. The ability to get your creation to that 99% point is key to finding the best partners for your work. If you believe in what you’ve created, criticism and rejection don’t sting so much. Refining the vision is almost as important as the vision itself.

I think it’s totally worth hanging onto that clever sentence on page 47, the paragraph on page 127, the humorous sub-plot that in the end had to go. Keep it in a file. Know you wrote it. But trust yourself to know if it has to go.

Because when it’s time to review your first draft, just like in fashion, one day something is IN, the next day it’s OUT.

Conspiracy Theories

2010-10-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

I have been known to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, though not to the Jesse “the body” Ventura level. I even considered creating my own newsletter of propaganda (“What’s Gov Got to Do with It?”), where I planned to link the defense department to Hallmark cards. I was always more Mulder than Scully, which makes it all the more challenging when I’m making something up and have to figure out how it can be rooted in fact. Because, while the movies and TV aren’t so much concerned with facts, writing fiction requires a bit of accuracy to make it believable. I wish it weren’t so, but ‘tis.

One of my favorite conspiracy theories came my way via a mystery novel by Kyra Davis: Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte. One of her characters, (not the main ones, mind you) has a problem with the High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Yeah, that’s right, I said “conspiracy theory” and then I said “high fructose corn syrup”.

It can make you fatter. It can increase the likelihood you’ll be diabetic. It can cause liver damage. It makes our groceries cost more. It can probably steal your lunch money. Bad, bad stuff.

It all boils down to the Farm Bill and government mandates on ethanol and the amount of land earmarked for corn growers, and frankly I can’t say anything as well as this post says it, so if you really want to know the deets, click here. It’s scary stuff, I tell you.

But it’s scary stuff that I wouldn’t know about if Kyra Davis hadn’t made a made-up character in a mystery (not even one of the main characters!) care about it, which tips me off to the power that lies in the details. I didn’t just read that book yesterday. Yet, something she put in there has stuck with me and here I am, now obsessed with High Fructose Corn Syrup, using my little soapbox to make more people aware of the dangers. And, because I had to go to Kyra Davis’s website to fact check the title of her book, I learned of a new book in this series, which I’ll now hop on over to Amazon to purchase. So for her, it’s a win-win, and for me, it’s a lesson to make sure I pay attention to the small things in my writing as well as the major things, because everything counts, and somebody out there (aside from big brother) is paying attention.

Although, maybe big brother wasn’t so big before he started ingesting two liters of soda a day. Food for thought . . . unsweetened.

But What Will They Do Next?

2010-10-12T09:44:00.001-07:00

For the past several years my Octobers have been filled with scary movies. The concept is new to me, as I’ve avoided this particular film genre like the plague that’s hinted at in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu. Being a horror movie newbie, my suggestions rarely make the final, edited list of movies (Teen Wolf, Practical Magic, The Lost Boys, though I did sneak Gremlins on last year). Still, the fact remains that I don’t know much about scary movies, and maybe it’s time to see what all of the fuss is about.

I should mention that I am your average everyday fraidy cat. I sometimes leave the shower door open, you know, in case Norman Bates is in the house. I didn't last ten minutes at KnottsScary Farm. I know that garlic will keep the vampires away, and silver bullets will kill a werewolf and that zombies are just plain scary because they just keep coming at you. (Seriously, if you know how to beat the zombies, put it in the comments section, because I recently watched Night of the Living Dead and now I. Need. To. Know.)

And don’t even get me started on escaped mental patients.

Here’s my problem with the crazies on the loose: they’re unpredictable. And for someone who likes to plan, to be prepared, to understand how to combat evil, I don’t know how to get a handle on them. What’s their motivation? Where will they come from? What will they do next? Who knows. And therein lies the problem.

As a writer, I think a lot about motivation. When you make up characters, you have to understand what they’d do and why they do it. Even if this character profile never makes this onto the manuscript page, it helps to create a more believable cast. But escaped mental patients don’t live by our rules. What goes on in their heads, especially for the sake of scary movie entertainment, is the unexplained mystery.

I have learned to not mind being scared by horror movies. Yes, they scare me. Sure, I hit the ceiling when Santa’s hands came through the window in Tales From the Crypt. But I can use those emotions, when I place a character in a life-threatening situation, because fear is fear, and while I hope to never be staring down a murderer face to face, I’ve got to acknowledge that it would be a scary situation and the person in that situation would have to act despite her fear.

Besides, I’m pretty sure I can’t make her hide under the bed. Especially after that scene from Alone in the Dark.

Steve Cropper's Voice

2010-10-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

A few years back I developed a crush on Steve Cropper, legendary soul guitarist of Booker T and the MGs. It’s what I like to call a time machine crush – it’s not on the man today, but on the man as he was in 1967. The music that pumps through the store where I work is often less than energetic, but occasionally "Green Onions" comes on and I smile like I have an inside secret, like Steve Cropper is playing his solos just for me.

Last week a show called California Gold was on in the background in my apartment. I tried not to pay attention, but the sound of the host’s voice literally drove me crazy. CRAZY. I couldn’t do anything. Not write, return emails, update my facebook profile. . . it was painful. I commented to the person watching the show that I didn’t know how anybody could listen to that voice.

“That’s Tennessee for you,” he answered.

“Tennessee,” I repeated. “Isn’t that where Cropper lives?” (yes, I conducted a bit of stalker-ish research last year). And then it hit me. If I couldn’t stand the sound of this Tenessee accent, I probably wouldn't want to sit around listening to Steve Cropper wax poetic, either.

I took the logical next step. I looked up interviews with the man and listened to him speak. The dialect wasn’t as pronounced, but it was there. If he had a Tennessee accent now, he’s had it all along. I was not prepared to learn that. But here’s the thing. Steve Cropper is an artist. His art is his music. His voice is his distinctive style, often imitated, never duplicated.

Voice is important in any creative endeavor. Warhol’s voice was different than Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns, but all three were important to the pop art movement. My mom loves Sinatra’s voice but could never stand the man. Almost anybody could recognize a snippet of Dr. Seuss by his voice. And while people change with age, voice often stays remarkably true to itself, even when it evolves over time. People fall in love with voice, they connect with it.

If I ever got the chance to talk to Steve Cropper, I won’t tell him that I think he was dreamy in 1967. But I will tell him that I've always loved the sound of his voice.

It's the Don

2010-09-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes you think you know someone, and then they go and do something you’d never expect? Only, whatever it is that they do, it’s completely in keeping with their personality, so you accept the unexpected behavior and realize you just got to know them a little more? That’s how I felt the first time I watched Donald Hollinger get drunk.

A brief bio: Donald Hollinger is the boyfriend of Ann Marie on THAT GIRL, a TV show that ran from 1966-71. And while Ann Marie (played by Marlo Thomas in exploding mod glory) was a wacky, sometimes ditzy, determined and likeable actress, Don Hollinger (played by Ted Bessell) was the voice of reason, the I’ll-put-up-with-your-antics-because-I-love-you boyfriend who accepted Ann the way she was. Which is part of what made the Season 5, episode 21 “Stag Party” so fantastic.

A couple of facts: This is a made-up character, so what we’re really talking about here is the writing of the show, and the ability for the writers to do something new with a character in it’s 5th (and final) season. This was the only season that Ted Bessell got an Emmy nomination for the role of Donald Hollinger. And while in almost every other episode of the show’s 5-year run Donald played the straight man, “Stag Party” is the episode where he lets his (very 1971) hair down.

So by now you realize that what I’m really wondering about is at exactly what point does an audience own a character more than the writer? If you are a faithful follower of a character, in books, movies, TV shows, etc, does it frustrate you to see the character do something you would never expect him to do? Or does it make you feel like you’ve gained some insight into this person that you thought you already knew?

When a critique partner says, “this character would never do this,” what they’re really saying is “I would never do this,” and instead of changing the character’s actions, sometimes the thing for the writer to do is figure out is how to readdress the motivation of the character to do exactly what the writer wants them to do. If Donald Hollinger had gotten drunk and made out with a stripper, I wouldn’t have believed the scene. But instead, he got drunk and called Ann, and babbled about in a slightly incoherent manner. And instead of taking care of her (like he'd done in so many episodes before), she took care of him and we got to see a little more character in both of them.

I love completely realized characters. And I love learning something new about the characters I thought I already knew. But as for Donald Hollinger, boyfriend extraordinaire, five seasons wasn’t enough for me to get to know him. In fact, I think he was just getting warmed up.

Remembering Yesterday

2010-09-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Fashion is a funny business. No matter what how strong an event is, even before it’s over, you’re already worried about how you’re going to do it again. Good reviews and big sales numbers are celebrated for only a fraction of a second, almost always followed up with “What’s next?” In short, you’re only as good as your most recent success.

The business of fashion is about change, sure, and the “What’s Next” keeps it moving forward. Upcoming fashions for spring are already in the past for designers ironing out their visions for next fall. Their long-term vision embraces tomorrow as a fact of life, while looking to the distant past for inspiration. I have no issues with tomorrow. In fact, I think a belief in tomorrow’s potential is what gets most people to their goals.

But what about yesterday?

Maybe in our haste to get what we want, we spend too little time feeling good about what we have. Maybe pausing to remember that small success in our recent past is like stopping to smell the roses, reminding us that everything we want won’t happen overnight, but that we’re on the right track to get there some day. And when we’re in a slump, not motivated to thread a needle that keeps breaking, strategize for next month’s big shopping event, or re-edit the manuscript that can't quite get past the gatekeepers of the publishing industry, revisiting recent success might give us what we need to keep going. Maybe, just maybe, we’re too eager to trade last year’s neon for this year’s camel, too quick to give up on legwarmers when they try to make a comeback, too focused on the finish line to see how far we’ve come since we started playing the game.

Let’s face it. The potential for tomorrow is greater because of what happened yesterday. We mostly look forward because we have goals, we have aspirations, and their realization lies in the future. But maybe we need to dig out some forgotten piece of fashion that we kept, not because it’s back in style, but because it’s connected to the yesterdays that helped define us and get us to where we are today.

Maybe it’s time to dig out those legwarmers. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say.

I Heart Posh Spice

2010-09-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

Fashion week arrived this past Saturday in New York, and with it came a slew of fashion shows for the upcoming spring season, not the least of which was Victoria Beckham on Sunday afternoon.

That’s right, I said Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice.

Beckham first “became” a fashion designer a couple of years back, and when I heard we’d be carrying her clothes in the couture department at the store where I work, I was surprised. We didn’t stock other celeb-turned-designers in couture. In fact, collections by other celeb-turned-designers weren’t in our inventory at all. So why the special treatment? Did we really think Girl Power would translate into designer clothing sales?

As anyone who has watched SPICE WORLD (twice) knows, each of the five members had distinct personalities. I was a Ginger fan. There was something about that Union Jack dress that drew me in. Scary was a lot of fun, too, and I actually voted for her on DWTS (it bears noting that this was the only time I have ever voted for a reality show). On my Spice Girls PlayStation game (you read that right) Sporty was my fave, because a certain combination of buttons on the game controller would get her to do a back flip. And I’m not ashamed to admit (because why stop now?) that a few years ago I was the proud owner of a set of Spice Girls World Tour dolls (they’ve since been given to a friend’s granddaughter, a much more appropriate owner). It was hard to part with Ginger in that Union Jack dress.

But Posh – well, I felt like I never really knew her and it’s hard to connect with someone you don’t know.

But fast forward fourteen years (Seriously? Seriously.) A great article in the New York Times style section. A fourth collection of clothes. A loyal almost cult-like following. The collection sold out that first day. I remember, because I emailed a customer about it and by the time she responded asking to see pictures, there was nothing left to photograph.

The dresses were beautiful without being over the top. If you want to see for yourself you can click here. They are sublime and chic – free of bells and whistles but still sexy. There are lots of designers who make beautiful dresses that are sublime and chic, and Beckham could have asked one of them to design a collection for her to put her name if she wanted to – but she didn’t.

It’s not surprising that I see something inspirational in her metamorphosis from pop tart to fashion monger despite early criticism. I'm all about reinventing yourself. As a spice girl, I felt I hardly knew her. As a designer, I can’t wait to see what else she’s got up her sleeve. Or what kind of sleeve she shows on the runway.

Excuse Me, That's Mine. Go Get Your Own

2010-09-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

Last night on Antiques Roadshow, a man was getting a pair of blue bottles appraised. His story of how he’d acquired them wasn’t like the usual, “I found it at a flea market for a dollar” variety. In short, he'd gone to an auction with hopes of buying a shotgun. He overheard the auctioneer tell someone else that he was interested in a pair of blue bottles. So Shotgun sat in the audience and waited until right before the bidding closed on the blue bottles and bid, winning the pair for $200. He said he keeps them in the box in a closet, except for every once in awhile when he pulled them out of the closet and showed people his “expensive blue jars”. (see episode details here)

This troubles me.

I love Antiques Roadshow; I watch it with fair regularity. I love watching people defend the items that their friends think are ugly. And then, when they find out that their $1-2 purchase is worth thousands, well, it brings a tear to the eye. But Shotgun didn’t do that. He didn’t like the bottles. He doesn’t even enjoy his bottles. He bought the bottles because someone else, someone in the know, wanted them first.

I found myself wanting the bottles to be worthless. Or wanting an unfortunate accident to occur, where the appraiser gestures widely and “accidentally” knocked one of the bottles to the floor, causing it to break into a thousand worthless bits of blue glass (you just know he was thinking about it, too).

Why does this trouble me so much? Because it reminds me that there are people who are willing to take what other people want. People who don’t develop their own tastes and talents, but are motivated by a different agenda. It’s like the success lies not in achieving what you want, but in taking what someone else wants out from under them. And even more troubling is that this guy DID go to the auction with a specific want in mind – he wanted to buy a shotgun - and he scrapped his own agenda in order to get what someone else wanted.

It’s like if I went to a vintage clothing sale, hoping to acquire a Pucci, and at the last minute decided to spend my money on an early computer prototype instead because someone in line said she was interested in it. Yet, computers aren’t my bag. Pucci is. See my point?

The blue bottles turned out to be late 18th century Chinese blue glass, valued at $4-6,000. And when the appraiser told the man what the pair was worth, guess what he said? “Yeah, it’s a shotgun.” Only, it's not.

Go after what you really want. It’ll mean more when you get it.

Make It Work

2010-08-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

Any designer who’s faced a Project Runway challenge with a misfiring vision knows, often times Genius involves a Make It Work moment. Tim Gunn didn’t just coin a catch-phrase when he first said that, he put a new spin on Suck It Up, Deal With It, and the more verbose “If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again”. If you like Project Runway, you love those moments. If you don’t, chances are you’ve still hit that dead end somewhere along the way and had to either abandon what you’re trying to do or figure out a new way to get to where you’re going.

I don’t think it matters how well you plan your journey, or to what extent you manage the steps along the way to completing your goal. You can make lists. You can set timetables. You can have monthly goals, weekly goals, daily goals, hourly goals. The ability to plan isn’t the success factor, because somewhere along the way, you’re going to hit an obstruction. And at that moment, it’s less about what you anticipated and more about how well you roll with the unexpected punches.

Take, for example director Peter Bogdanovich (and who doesn’t love a man in a neckerchief?). For his first directorial opportunity, he was given a unique challenge: studio head Roger Corman told him he could make any film he wanted, provided he 1) used Boris Karloff, who owed the studio two days work, 2) used footage from Karloff’s recent movie The Terror, and 3) stayed under budget. The Terror, part of the Poe-esque horror movie genre, was a far cry from the New Wave director’s vision. But challenges are often inspiring, and Bogdanovich made it work. He wrote and directed Targets, a thriller, which launched his career. He could have a horror movie like so many others in the Karloff canon, but he pushed himself instead. If he’d played it safe, he might never have had the opportunity to make his second movie, The Last Picture Show. Just sayin’.

We all face Make It Work moments. They might be getting un-stumped from a manuscript that stalls about half-way, or throwing an impromptu dinner party when all you have on hand are celery sticks, beef jerky, and ramen noodles. They might be an opportunity to get to where you really want to be, but with all of the known roads closed for construction.

The thing is, if you really want to succeed, you make it work.

Restraining Order

2010-08-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me last night, while I was putting the very yummy excess pasta and pesto dinner into a Tupperware instead of finishing the plate, that Restraint, like Patience, is a virtue. Not eating all of the pretzels in the bag. Restraint. Not buying four pair of shoes at at a time, Restraint. Cutting pages from a manuscript because, while the writing is solid, the words do nothing to drive the story forward. Restraint.

I consider myself a student of Restraint, though, if grades were being given out I’d probably be hovering somewhere around B-. It’s an acquired skill, for me, to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. If there were no risk, I’d barely practice restraint at all.

That’s right, I said Risk. We all know that there is no risk without reward, but I think Restraint goes hand in hand with Risk, a tug of war that keeps us seeking the sweet spot in everything. Practice too much restraint, you won’t satisfy your need for expression. Take too many risks, you might lose focus on the end goal. But somewhere in the middle, much like the little bear’s bed in Goldilocks, things are just right.

It seems, especially now, that there are so many new avenues for self expression, that people, in search of something to say, have completely abandoned restraint. But seriously, is anybody’s life so interesting that we all need to know the details? Or is the thrill gone when we know too much about each other? In a mystery, if we put the whodunit in the first chapter, would readers bother to finish the story?

Webster tells us that restraint is “a control over the expression of one’s emotions or thoughts”. But how do you really know when it’s time for restraint? Can you tell when you’re toeing the line of too much and instinctively know it’s time to reign in the emotions? Is there some kind of internal bell that rings right before an emotional outburst, warning us that maybe we don’t want to say what’s threatening to fly from our mouths? Or does restraint also go hand in hand with regret and 2020 hindsight, the Monday Morning quarterback who tells us after the game is over everything we should have done differently?

It’s something to think about, to file under the heading “Ways to Maybe Improve Oneself”. But not now, because if no one's looking, there’s a very yummy Tupperware of leftovers in the kitchen with my name on it.

I Don't Believe You

2010-08-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened on the way to the here and now. Everybody became an expert in something. Seriously, when’s the last time you had a conversation when someone not only listened to what you had to say, but one-upped you with more information? And what happens when you actually DO know, with some certainty, something about the subject and recognize a bit of BS in your presence?

I like to think of it as the Wikipedia Syndrome. Information is presented in a somewhat convenient forum. It looks very official, and user friendly to boot. What’s not to love? Well . . . the fact that, along with valid information, a lot of not-completely-accurate stuff was not so much info as it was a bragging point among the people writing and posting it. I’ve heard more than once the advice that, if you confirm your facts on Wikipedia, you BETTER confirm them at least two other places before you know you’re on solid ground. Besides, there's at least one subject that even Wikipedia doesn't know about.

The flip side of this is something I rather like – the ability to know what you’re talking about as long as you are not having a face to face conversation and you have immediate access to the internet. Yes! The Expert-Badge-For-Everyone! (or EBFE!, which I thought would make a much better acronym when I first typed it out) can eliminate those awkward moments when one person makes a joke and the other doesn’t quite get it on a timely basis. As long as you're not in a f2f situation.

But seriously, how far will fake expert-dom go? Do we all have an overwhelming need to show off what we’ve picked up along the way, to the detriment of learning what others can share with us? Can we exchange information in a conversation, a two-way, with two people learning from each other, or has dialogue become like a game of Pong where all we’re doing is waiting for the digital ball to come at us so we can lob it back across the screen at the other player?

And the real question is, how comfortable are we at interrupting this new version of Pongversation with the phrase, “I don’t believe you”? Because that is the true way to remove the information one-upmanship from a conversation and force it back into the here and now of who really knows what.

It’s okay to not know everything. It’s actually more healthy to continue to learn new facts every single day than to pretend to be Mr. Know-It-All. Why, did you know that the pursuit of knowledge burns calories? You don’t believe me? It’s true. Look it up on Wikipedia.

The Jazz Made Me Cry

2010-08-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to lie. There are voices in my head and I listen to them. At times they make me crazy because they won’t give me a break. At times, when I think there isn’t room for another character, someone new elbows their way in and demands my attention. But the jazz made them all be quiet for one afternoon; the jazz gave me peace. Maybe that’s why the jazz made me cry.

Back up to Saturday afternoon. Mike Melvoin, noted jazz pianist, performed an intimate concert in the back room of Keyboard Concepts, a legendary piano store in Los Angeles. The Mike Melvoin trio was scheduled to kick off a series Sunday afternoon jazz performances in the store and I was lucky enough to be one of the thirty or so people in the folding chairs taking it all in.

With a piano, bull fiddle, and drum kit, the trio provided audio Xanax, eliminating everything in my mind. The music engulfed me. Within minutes of the first song starting, tears trickled down my face. And if pressed to describe what I felt at that moment, it would have been simple. The jazz felt personal.

Aside from the concern that the bronzer I’d so carefully dusted on was now streaked, leaving a tiger-like make-up job on my face, and a mounting curiosity over where another audience member had purchased the mint-condition white patent leather low-heeled boots that she tapped to the beat, I lost myself in the music. And after three songs the army of mystery-magnet fashionistas in my mind were replaced with an angry drill sergeant who jabbed a finger at me and told me to get it together. The performance was moving but I was sitting in the front row, after all.

For two hours, I was entranced. I closed my eyes and the rest of the world went away. Eighty-eight black and white keys peppered with the goosed up plucking of an upright bass and the rhythmic dusting of a drum kit and symbols. I could have listened to it all afternoon.

The voices didn’t go away for good, and I wouldn’t want them to. In a lot of ways, they’re what make me feel special. They pose questions that I answer, get into problems that I solve, and keep me inspired to write. But now I know, if the voices ever stop, I’ll still have all that jazz.

A Bonus! Click HERE to watch the 1969 Pierre Cardin Space Age Fashion show underscored by Mike Melvoin’s Lay Lady Lay, from The Plastic Cow Goes Moooooog.

I Might Fall Down, but I Get Up Again

2010-08-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

I had a situation at work yesterday. In short, the heel of my left shoe got caught in the bow on my right shoe in the middle of a stride. I face-planted into a wall, righted myself, and continued talking to a customer about fabric as though the whole event didn't take place. But it did take place, and I have the broken shoe to prove it. It was embarrassing and awkward and, most tragically, not the first time I've done something of the sort.

I'll go ahead and say it: I am a klutz. For your consideration:

1. BEVERLY HILLS: in an attempt to get more exercise, I started parking a mile from work and walking in. And while I'm normally against this kind of thing, to prove my mettle, I knotted myself into sneakers with my harem pants. While stepping off of a curb in the middle of the street, I went down on the asphalt.

2. HOLLYWOOD: walking to the Egyptian Theater, running slightly behind schedule. One block from the theater, in my Pucci dress and pink Louboutins, I went down on the sidewalk, pretty darn close to Eartha Kitt's star on the Walk of Fame.

3. SUNSET BOULEVARD: On an early trip to Hollywood, I actually slipped on a banana peel that someone had tossed on the sidewalk.

4. SOLVANG: walking along a no-traffic street in comfortable wedge sandals. Not a single thing in sight to obstruct my path. I simply fell down.

5. VENTURA: see SOLVANG.

What's the point? Aside from outing myself as a potentially embarrassing/attention-getting walking companion, it's simple: I fall down. I get up. I keep going.

If you think about it, you realize it's not that different from Life. We might not all fall down literally, but we get knocked down all the time. Rejection, heartache, loss, failure. Every one of these takes us down a peg, sometimes merely throwing us off kilter but often making us have to start all over again. It's adversity. And once you acknowledge how you act in the face of adversity, you know how to go about moving forward. One step at a time.

The Biscuits Got Tired of Waiting

2010-07-27T09:20:00.001-07:00

This morning when I went into the refrigerator for the milk for my coffee, I noticed a tube of pop-n-fresh biscuits balancing precariously on the edge of the shelf on the door. I picked up the tube and two blobs of uncooked dough fell out of the bottom. I turned said tube over and sure enough, it was open on one end. Odd, I thought. Why would someone open the tube and not make all five biscuits?

That's when I noticed a single biscuit blob sitting squarely on the edge of the second shelf. And two more next to the ketchup. And instantly, like a detective who realizes too late she's looking at a crime scene, I replaced the tube on the shelf where I found it and formed a hypothesis. The biscuit tube popped itself. But why now? Why at all?

Time for a character profile.

This tube of biscuits is probably about two months old. It was on sale and seemed like a good item to have on hand. It came into my ownership and found a home in the shelf on the door of the refrigerator where it sat next to the ketchup (or occasionally the relish when the condiments got repositioned) and held its post. Waiting for its moment in the oven.

I thought I was saving it. But if biscuits have feelings, maybe it felt like it was being ignored? Had been forgotten? Was unwanted? Craved attention? Or maybe, since the biscuit tube had sat on shelves in its infancy, moved from store to store, eventually being discounted, being left on a shelf in my fridge reminded it of darker days and tormented it until it couldn't take it anymore. It snapped! And then -- biscuit mayhem!

Now the biscuits have not only hijacked my attention, but they've created a new threat. If they are capable of doing something like this, then they're capable of doing more than I originally thought, yet I don't know the depths of their potential destruction. I don't know what I'll find when I open the refrigerator door again. Will they have multiplied, draping their uncooked dough over the contents, suffocating my leftovers and vegetables, wreaking havoc on the interior? Or-was it simply biscuit suicide? Did the biscuit tube pop itself to end what it felt was a miserable existence that was prolonged by my disinterest in it as a side dish?

Everything has a story, and everyone has a back story. Motivation makes us do whatever it is that we do. As important as it is for us to realize our own motivation, writers need to understand the motivation of our characters in order to believably create behavior. Picking the least expected character in a mystery to end up as the bad guy doesn't work unless the bad guy has real reason to be bad.

Maybe I'll name a character Biscuit. Rigid guy, a bit doughy in the middle. Seems reliable. Gets mixed up with a saucy crowd. Push him around too many times and he explodes. It could work, right?

Glitter Matters

2010-07-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Glitter. Aside from being a bad Maria Carey movie, it's innocuous. Right? Wrong. Those tiny particles of reflective paper that get stuck in your hair, that get into the carpet fibers and onto your clothes, that linger months after the holiday where they were used to enhance a festive setting, those little buggers are unique. Several years ago, aside from the craft stores where it's a basic item, you could even buy it at trendy stores in the mall. But because of slow sales the store marked it down. From a discount shelf at the back of the store, a young woman bought a jar to sprinkle on her friends at a 4th of July party on a beach.

How do I know all of this? Because of Forensic Science.

Here's a summary of events: Megan Barroso was at a beach party. Her friend sprinkled everyone with red glitter. On her way home, someone shot her, then carried her body to a ravine and left her to die. Evidence gatherers found red glitter in Megan's hair. There's a forensic scientist who specializes in glitter. He analyzed the sample in Megan's hair and discovered it was red on one side, silver on the other – not like most glitter. It was octagonal in shape. Because of its unique nature he could trace it to Hot Topic, where the red shade lived on the clearance shelves. Her friend verified that she had sprinkled people with the metallic pixie dust on the beach. So why does this matter?

It matters because tiny pieces of red glitter were found in the suspect's vehicle. And other than the red glitter, there was nothing to connect him with her murder.
But connect him, they did. They connected the glitter dousing from the beach to the glitter in Megan's hair, to the interior of the suspect's car, to the ravine where he left Megan's body. And in doing so, the suspect became respectively the defendant, the convicted killer, and the inmate.

Like a piece of glitter stuck to my cheek, this story has gotten stuck in my head. I didn't know Megan Barroso. I have no connection with her other than watching an episode of Forensic Files. But as a mystery writer, I am fascinated with investigations, evidence, clues, and reality. And what strikes me about Megan Barroso's case is the reality. But Glitter? As a clue to solve a murder? If it weren't so tragic, it would read like chick lit.

In life, as well as in fiction, the little things count.

I Did It My Way

2010-07-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

I have a pretty effective system when it comes to loading the dishwasher. Wine glasses tilted at an angle on the top row. Plates stacked, small to large, on the bottom, ending with the cutting board into that very narrow slot at the end. The blender goes into the corner by the flatware bin. The big black roasting pan fits at the back if it's tipped forward, otherwise it gets caught on the top shelf. It's effective.

So when someone else loads the dishwasher, inevitably putting plates and glasses willy-nilly about, I can't help myself. Why did the wine glasses go on the bottom shelf? Why is the big black roasting pan laying face down on the top shelf? Why is the blender in the back? And the slotted spoon is -- No! It's Chaos! It's Anarchy!

Or, it's someone helping me out by loading the dishwasher while I'm otherwise
occupied.

I have a hard time asking for help. Perhaps it's because I want to be independent. Or maybe it's because I think it's an inconvenience. Most likely it's due to that stubborn streak that my sister and I have come to recognize runs in our family. (Hi Mom! HI Dad! Waving at you!) But more often than not, if you want to accomplish something, you need to ask for help. And the funny thing is, most of the time people don't mind.

Creativity is a solitary path, but what happens when you're done with your project? You think your manuscript is ready for the world. But is it? Were you typing so fast on page 147 that you missed a word in the middle of a sentence? Did you accidentally leave a note to self on page 75, reminding you to go back and change your red herring to better suit the story? And does that plot twist on page 213 really work?

Asking for feedback, for help, is one of the hardest steps for me. I often believe the success of my writing lies in my own efforts. The harder I work, the more serious I am, the closer I'll get. But while writing is a solitary path, feedback is a collaborative effort, and is part of the polishing process. And even the silverware needs a fair bit of polishing after the rinse cycle.

Bottom line: you have to ask for help. You have to find people that you trust who can load the dishwasher for you when you're otherwise occupied, and know that it doesn't mean you didn't do it all yourself.

Waiting to be Perfect

2010-07-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I spent some time chatting with a friend who is a singer. We compared notes on the creative process. And an interesting concept came up – the idea of not trying to succeed because you're not quite ready yet. Your talent isn't refined. Your work isn't polished. Your ideas are too abstract. You're not yet perfect.

I'm all for trying to improve, but there comes a time when you have to jump off the bridge. You have to recognize that you worked hard to do what you're doing, you applied your natural talent and maybe you're not yet perfect but maybe you won't be perfect without input. Feedback. Reaction to what you did. Maybe your first efforts won't be your best and that's okay because you're trying something.

There are people who always wanted to be a writer/painter/poet/artist. And there are people who do these things in the solitude and privacy of their lives, keeping their hand close to their chest. Two different steps along the same path. You have to recognize what you want to do before you do it. But what comes next? Telling people that you created something? Showing them? Asking for criticism?

Or is it better to wait until you've polished your lump of coal so much that it's become a diamond?

Waiting to be perfect discounts the best part of creativity: the joy it provides to simply create something. There are times when I reread portions of a manuscript that I'm writing and I almost don't remember making up certain parts. It's like the shoemaker's elves took a brief hiatus and cranked out a couple of chapters for me in the middle of the night. But I did write those parts! I did make it up! And that gives me such joy that I want to keep going. I want to know what's coming out of my head next. I'm doing, rather than waiting. And with each time I try, each time I do, I get better.

Don't wait to be perfect. Just start. It feels good. And if you're really scared to try, really scared to jump off that bridge, find yourself a like community of people jumping off just like you. I hear those things are easier when done in a group.

The Laundry Keeps Me Young

2010-06-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Fifty is the new thirty. Age is just a number. You're as young as you feel. We've heard all the sayings and in each one's way, they're true. But for me, it isn't a state of mind that makes me feel young. It's needing quarters to do the laundry.

Several years ago I had a more grown-up life. I had a Big Important Job and Big Important Bills. I had a house, which put things like water heaters, lawn mowers, refrigerators, and dishwashers on my list of things to be replaced and/or maintained. There was a lot of furniture back then – a lot more than I have now. I don't really miss it. But I do miss having my own washer and dryer.

That being said, the minute I had to start collecting quarters so I could wash my clothes, I felt like a college student again. The idea of blocking off a chunk of time to sit at a Laundromat was so out of sync with my professional life. There I was, surrounded by other people with the same predicament as mine. Occasionally we'd talk, or I'd take a book and read, but we'd co-exist in our youthful, laundry-doing state of mind on a Sunday morning. When I found myself commenting to cashiers that I needed quarters for laundry, I discovered a phrase that somehow erased years from my life.

Back when I had the Big Important Life I took the washer and dryer for granted. It was just one of the many parts of being an adult; you do the wash on a timely basis. Just like you pay the electric bill by the due date on the green copy instead of waiting until the pink version arrives in the mail.

The spectre of responsibility often locks us into only seeing the world the way we are RIGHT NOW. But it's good, every now and then, to see it with younger eyes, a fresh perspective. Rummaging through handbags and pockets and under the sofa for that one additional quarter that will allow me to run additional more load perpetuates a mental state of youth. It lets me stay in touch with the-just-starting-out-person I was a long time ago.

But now if you'll excuse me, I have to go be an adult and clean out the refrigerator.

Jumping the Battery

2010-06-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

My five-year-old car has been pretty reliable since I bought it, but last month the battery died. AAA jumped it, but the next morning, it was dead again. I bought one of those portable battery jumpers for forty-five dollars (quite possibly the best money I've spent this year) and so began an almost daily ritual of trying to start the car, having a dead battery, and jumping it.

But still, it makes me wonder, why did the battery stop working all of a sudden? What made it go kaput? And why, when I jump it and drive, did it not recharge itself like I was told it would?

And when I stopped wondering literally about the dead battery, I started wondering figuratively about the battery inside all of us and how to jump-start that when it needs a little boost?

Here's the thing. There is a bit of narcissism involved in trying to sell something that you created, because YOU are the person who came up with the idea, YOU are the person who took that vision and made it into something, and YOU are the person who is telling the world at large that it is worth their attention. The fact that YOU, the sum total of all of the experiences that have occurred in your life, have produced this work, whether it be writing, painting, music, or any other creative endeavor, means your creative battery was charged. And if you did it once, you have to believe you can do it again. But what happens if that battery dies and you can't restart the creativity?

I think we should all take time to expose ourselves to the same things that defined us back when we were in the process of being defined. What music did you used to love in high school? What books did you devour as a child? What was your routine when you were fifteen? What elements combined to make you the person you are today? Read it, watch it, do it. Experiencing these once-familiar things with a fresh perspective will give you a jolt stronger than the stuff you buy in a soda can.

Take some time to jump your battery every now and then. You never know what you'll get out of it once it's gotten a fresh charge. Why just two weeks ago I got the idea for a new novel that, well, it's still a work in progress but I'll just say: Time Travel + Lime Green Boots. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

Oh yeah, I guess I can.

I Don't Want to Rock and Roll All Night, Thank You Very Much

2010-06-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

There are people who have clearly defined goals and a clearly defined identity, both of which go hand in hand, usually. They know what they want and/or what they don't want. They know who they are. Consider:

I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the drum all day.

Or

I wanna be loved by you just you and nobody else but you.

Or

You know, I wish that I had Jesse's Girl.

But do you know what you want to do all day? Do you know the one person who you want to love you? Do you want Jesse's girl as much as Rick Springfield does?

Occasionally, someone's enthusiasm over their goals/identity is so strong, so full of conviction, that a part of you says, "I want to be just like them." Like:

I'm a Pepper, she's a Pepper, he's a Pepper, we're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?

But what if that's not who you are? What if you spend all of your time and energy trying to be like somebody else because you respect what they do but you can’t quite get there because, in the end, you're not like them? You might be doing yourself a disservice. You even might be letting your biggest asset go untapped – the things that make you YOU – because you're busy emulating someone else.

You're not you because you do one thing. I'm not me because I write mysteries. A lot of people write mysteries. But consider my own formula:

I write mysteries
+
They're set in the world of fashion
+
I have an eighties/ John Hughes-ian perspective
+
Occasionally I say something funny
+
I have a weird obsession with Moon Boots
---------------------------------
= Diane Vallere (and nobody else)

You might think the Moon Boots thing isn't relevant, but after reading over several things that I've written, you'd be surprised how many times they pop up. And I dare you to find another mystery-writing fashion person with an eighties/ John Hughes-ian perspective who is occasionally funny and has a weird obsession with Moon Boots. Pretty sure you won't.

It's great to be entertained and inspired by the work of others. Even to be inspired by how well others do what they do. You might even find yourself thinking, "I could never do that." And maybe you couldn't. But there's something you CAN do, because you're different from anyone else.

So do it!

What's in a Name?

2010-06-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

Back in college I had an alter ego: Salem Blue. I had the catch phrase ("like the town with the witches"), the fake ID (I was from Louisville, KY, y'all!), and the back story about my odd name ("my parents dropped acid in the sixties"). But did going by a different name make me a different person? I don't think so. Sure, I'd usually be out in a social setting when I went by Salem Blue, (and my friend was usually introduced as Kelly Green) but it wasn't a Sybil situation; I was still me.

About a week ago I bought a jar of mayonnaise. The brand was Best Foods. But on the back of the label, in very small font, it said, "known as Hellman's east of the Rockies". I don't know their reasoning, but calling it something different didn't make it a different mayonnaise. Is it just that the Hellman's name has a different meaning west of the Rockies? Curious.

Neiman Marcus has a restaurant in many of their stores, called the Zodiac. When you eat at a Zodiac restaurant, you can count on certain items: popovers and strawberry butter, for starters (literally starters, you get them when you sit down). YUM! But on the west coast, there are no Zodiac restaurants in the Neiman Marcus stores. Why? Because when NM was opening their California stores in the seventies, the Zodiac Killer was making news of an unsavory type. The word "zodiac" had negative connotations. That's why all of the California Neiman Marcus stores have Mariposa Restaurants instead. The menu is not entirely the same as that of the Zodiac but don't worry – when you sit down to eat, you still get a popover.

Federated department stores owns both Macy's and Bloomingdales, and the two names mean two different stores in the customer's mind. Without conscious branding and assortments tailored to each store, customers won't see the purpose behind both stores. Just owning them both doesn't make them the same, and the buyers for each store need to reflect the identity of the retailer in their choices to make them be able to succeed independently of each other.

All of this makes me wonder about the motivation for name changing. A lot of authors will rebrand themselves in different genres by using pen names, which makes sense. If you write horror under one name, you might be better off using a different name for your romances. But if you write with the same voice across several genres, do you think that different name is necessary? And if you write chick lit, in a time when the phrase is less than coveted in the publishing industry, do you call it upmarket women's fiction instead?

Simply using a different name or title won't change your product. But changing the product might warrant a using a different name. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be best calling it a duck. But if it looks like turkey but is made out of tofu . . . maybe it's better to try something different from the menu?

Showing off your Smarts

2010-05-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

I like Nabokov. It sounds strange to put it that way, plain and simple, but I do. I like his long twisty sentences, his sometimes inappropriate subject matter, and his obsession with time and space, sometimes plunked down in the middle of a story for no reason other than he thinks it's time to discuss it. But being familiar with Nabokov, I've discovered, has recently become a gauge of intellect in some circles, and I'm here to tell you that really, there's nothing more intellectual about liking Nabokov as there is in liking Dr. Seuss.

For starters, liking Nabokov didn't start with the gentle introduction of a wise English professor in elbow patches and tweed. (It didn’t start with the Police song, either.) It started with an interview by a late eighties synth-pop band that nobody remembers, called Hipsway. They claimed that their hit (that only made it to #10 on the charts, so it doesn't even get replayed now on oldies stations) "The Honeythief" was based on a painting in a museum in Glasgow, Scotland and a Nabokov book. SO-I embarked on a reading bender of all things Nabokov, so that I could better connect with my silly little late eighties synth-pop band. See, right there, that is not so intellectual.

I used to have an entire shelf full of Nabokov's books, collected from used bookstores and flea markets (It's amazing how often copies of ADA will pop up). But because my small apartment has not expanded exponentially to the amount of books I buy, I've had to do some weeding, and it finally came time to cast a critical eye towards that shelf. My Trixie Beldens, Connie Blairs, and Three Investigators – all non-negotiable. But I took the Nabokovs that I'd didn’t think I'd read again and the ones that I didn't think I'd ever get to, and donated them to the library. Again, keeping the kids books but tossing the high-falutin' ones, not so intellectual of a choice.

I read it because I like it. Just like I like Gemma Halliday and Janet Evanovich and Tina Ferraro and Ally Carter Judy Blume and Lisa Lutz and Thomas Hoving and yes, Dr. Seuss. They're books to be read and enjoyed, not to be put up on a shelf for people to look at and judge you based on what they figure out about you from your literary choices.

That's what Art is for.

It Ain't All Confetti

2010-05-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

I saw Rip Taylor perform a one-man show on Saturday night. Yes, that Rip Taylor. Toupee, sequins, props, and more. I'd been expecting the toupee, sequins, and props. It was the and more that got me.

I didn't spend a lot of time reading about the show before we went because, seriously, it's Rip Taylor, the man who made himself famous with the $1.98 Beauty Show and playing Center square on the Hollywood Squares. Silly ostrich feather coats, confetti cannons, and "Happy Days Are Here Again". That sort of thing. When they announced, ahead of the show, that now would be a good time to use the restrooms because we were about to sit down for an hour and a half show, a shiver ran up my spine. And when we filtered into the very intimate theater I thought perhaps I should NOT have dressed like Jo Anne Worley and stood out so much because surely there was about to be audience participation whether we liked it or not.

The show started with exactly what I anticipated. The toupee flipped down, revealing a patch of tape across Rip's bald head. The jokes in the stack of rubberbanded cards were one-liners of the 70's game show variety. The props included lopsided bras, a six-pack of coke taped to a cane, and a backdrop of sequined jackets. I braced myself for the hour and a half time-warp in my future.

And then the lights dimmed and his narrative turned to stories of his childhood. And he spoke of some not-very-nice stuff that happened to him. I was uncomfortable for a moment, thinking "This story should not end in a cheap joke." And it didn't.

I was completely engaged for the rest of the show as Mr. Taylor talked about the road he'd travelled, including both the lucky breaks and the unfortunate circumstances. He threw in punch lines when I wasn't expecting them which made me laugh out loud. He brought tears to my eyes, too.

Throughout the whole show, in the back of my mind, I thought to myself, "THIS is what they mean by creating an emotional connection with your audience!" Sure, Rip Taylor gave us humor, but it was blended with depth and truth and reality with a side order of fluff. That's the goal, at least for me: Make your audience laugh, but make them care, too. And after they care, make them laugh again. They'll care even more. My writer's mind burst with rapid-fire synapse explosions of ways to improve my own emotional connections.

And by the end of the show, when Rip Taylor shot rounds of brightly colored paper into the audience and proclaimed, "It ain't all confetti," I felt like I'd gotten way more than the price of admission.

Even if he didn't single me out of the audience for an embarrassing sketch.

Arguments For and Against Buying a Black Leather Fringed Skirt

2010-05-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

FOR:
1. When will I ever see an item like this again?
2. The bottom row of fringe comes to mid-knee cap so it is totally age appropriate.
3. May I say again: FRINGES!
4. Wearing it will make me feel like a DWTS contestant about to do the Jive/Samba/ChaCha.
5. Black goes with everything.
6. It's like Candy Johnson meets Bon Jovi!

AGAINST:
1. It is not cheap.
2. It is one of two black leather skirts that I am considering and the other is more practical.
3. How often can I really wear it?
4. It's like Candy Johnson meets Bon Jovi . . .
5. The fact that I can't come up with a #5 tells me that I might not be viewing the decision with the highest degree of rationality.

You might wonder what this all has to do with writing, and I'll tell you. Writing is hard work. It's a job, not all fun and games. Writing takes dedication, singularity of focus, and belief in the effort and the goal. Writing is turning on the muse during the spare 45-minute lunch break because you know it's the only time of the day you have to hit your targeted word count. Writing is sending out materials that you believe in, for others to judge. Opening yourself up to rejection. Writing is perfecting your craft, taking classes, revisiting works that have been shelved because you realize you can make them better.

All of this work comes at a price. Your mind is always working and you need some down time. When you work hard at your full-time job, you sometimes get a bonus. You sometimes get a raise. You sometimes treat yourself, spend some of your hard-earned money, simply to reward your own efforts. When you work hard at writing you deserve something, too.

And sometimes you have to let your brain think about something else. Something that doesn't matter as much. Not how you're going to pay the visa bill or what you're going to make for dinner on Thursday night. Not the mounting library fees from the books you can seem to return to the library or the mounting pile of laundry that's overflowing from the hamper. Something frivolous.

So whether or not I get the black leather fringed skirt (or fringed black leather skirt, I can't decide which phrase I like more), for now, it will represent the place where my mind goes when I'm not thinking about advancing the plot, cause and effect and emotional connection. I still can't tell if frugality and practicality are going to gang up on the fashionista in me and keep me from getting the skirt but one thing's for sure. Worst case scenario I'll give it to one of my characters in a future manuscript.

Care to weigh in on my decision?

The You that You Show to the World

2010-05-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

One of the more challenging goals of being a writer these days is the idea that you have to figure out your brand identity and present it to the world. To a business, that's one thing. Consider insurance companies. You might be pulled towards Esurance because of the pink haired cartoon fighting girl, or Geico because of the gecko or the cavemen, or Progressive because of Flo with the tricked out name badge. Each one of these companies is presenting a brand image to sell basically the same product: car insurance at a good rate. I haven't done a comparative study between the three of them to know which one is the best, but I do carry car insurance so based on what they present to the world, I've made my decision.

But creating a brand image for a person is a little trickier, or at least a little more self-indulgent. I can look at famous people and appreciate the brand they sell: Drew Barrymore, for example, has done a bang-up job. If I go to a Drew Barrymore movie, I know what I'm going to get, and I get it. She's reliable that way. The same can be said for Adam Sandler, he draws a different audience. Oh wait, I forgot about that 50 First Dates. So I guess you can say that, at times, two brand images can come together and coexist, introducing each to a new audience. It's like Libby's pumpkin pie mix and Carnation evaporated milk. Or Jennifer Cruisie and Bob Mayer.

Off the bat I can think of people who nailed it: Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs. He's hawking cars now but you just know he's working the audience he built up from his Discovery show. Alison Pace is a fiction writer who has done a great job. Her book titles: City Dog, Pug Hill, and her recent deal THE PUG STAYS IN THE PICTURE, give you an idea of what you're going to find in her books. Madonna might have been the first person I ever realized had branded herself. And Donald Trump, eighties icon of greed, came back better than ever with a reinvigorated version of the old brand image. And guess what? We're still buying it.

Let's say you call yourself some kind of expert of Kaiju, you can wax poetic for hours about Gamera and Odo Island but you're not even aware of the genius that is Russ Tamblyn's performace in War of the Gargantuas. You don't own a single Godzilla T-shirt and there are no aurora models on display in your place of residence. Once you proclaim that Kaiju is part of your identity, how much of it must you not only incorporate internally, but what must you project outward for the world to see as an endorsement of your specialty? If someone followed you around for a week with a hidden camera, would they out you as a fraud?

No matter what you want out of life, you can benefit from figuring out your brand image. Shows like What Not to Wear focus on taking a poorly styled person and creating the exterior to match the person inside. They're working with the person's own internal brand image.

For kicks, take some time to think about your own brand image. How well are you doing at showing it off to the world?

HEMMING AND HAWING

2010-04-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

Just last week I took a pair of recently purchased harem pants in to work to have them hemmed by our alterations department. My goal was to find that sweet spot in length that would work with either a flat shoe or a heel. The fitter pinned the left leg (with me in the heel) and told me they were perfect and left me in the fitting room to admire them while she wrote up the price ticket. I took that shoe off and slipped a flat sandal on and the pants buckled on my instep and covered my heel – not the look I wanted.

[It might be a good time to define harem pants: think I Dream of Jeannie/ Arabian Nights, not MC Hammer/ Lisa Bonet in The Cosby Show. WHEW! Glad we cleared that up.]

I called the fitter back into the room and she declared again that the length was perfect. I tried to explain that this wasn't your basic wide leg pant, blah blah blah, and that for a harem pant you needed to see the balloon of the fabric. She suggested I get another opinion, which I did. They agreed with the fitter. Once again I launched into my exposition of the harem pant and the stylistic demands of such an item. If I simply wanted a pair of wide legged pants, I would have bought them.

The fitter suggested if I didn't trust myself, that I walk into the store and ask other coworkers. And that's when it hit me. I did trust myself. I trusted my vision. What I didn't trust was the opinion of the other people. I knew what I wanted, what I saw, and what I was trying to achieve.

Oddly enough, this reminds me of the process of writing. A writer finishes a story and after tweaking and polishing, thinks it's ready for the world. Once you start sending it out to beta readers, family members, or agents, you'll start getting feedback: "I loved the concept", "I didn't connect", "I read it in one sitting!", "It's not right for me". Some people will say, "I wished it had more X." Others will say, "I wished it had more Y." The more people you ask, the more opinions you'll get. And it's easy to get on a rollercoaster of edits, trying to please everyone.

But there needs to be a point where you inherently understand and respect your own vision. What one person can't stand is what another person loves. Know what you're trying to accomplish and trust your instincts. Because some day someone might show up with a magic lantern and offer you a couple of wishes, and the more secure you are in your own vision, the easier it will be to pursue what you want.

An Actual Vacation?

2010-04-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

It's been forever and a day since I took an actual, honest-to-God, week-away-from-the-current-obligations-of-life vacation that I don't remember what it feels like, and while people around me are starting to talk about their grand summer plans I can't help wondering what I'm missing. I'm not saying that I don't take time off from my day job (I do) but those days are earmarked either for writing-related business or the menial tasks I don't seem to prioritize on the other two days off each week (laundry, cleaning, post office, etc). But taking a week – five to seven entire days – to get away from it all? Seems a little self-indulgent. Where do people find the time for something like that?

A typical week for me involves working full time, writing on my lunch break, having one day off during the week where I try to be productive with an assortment of writing-related items and chores of life, and one day off during the weekend where I try to actually do something outdoors. Week-in, week-out, that's it. Exciting, huh?

Confession time: I'm not always as busy as I think I am. The internet, though full of information that helps work through a difficult chapter, also sometimes acts as a time-travel portal, flinging me from seven thirty in the morning to five o'clock in the evening, with barely the blink of an eye. (And if I didn't have the purchase confirmation of the occasional was-I-under-the-influence-of-too-much-popcorn/chex mix/[insert crunchy snack food here]? item from eBay to show for it I'd wonder what happened to my day). At five, with the reminder of the waning day clear through the front windows that I face while at the computer, I pound out fifteen-hundred words or so and call it a day around six-fifteen.

I've been saving up for a vacation to Paris because, well, it's Paris! And if I'm going to take a week off and go somewhere, that's where I want to go (it's a toss up between Paris and Graceland and depending on how the saving goes, there might be a last minute change of plans). And to think that I could be there, in another country, (Graceland probably feels like another country, too) for five whole days, without daily responsibility, seems intoxicatingly self-indulgent! I almost can't wait!

So what about you? When's the last time you got away from it all?

TOUGH LOVE

2010-04-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

When I was a competitive swimmer I had a coach who was very tight-fisted with his compliments. More to his style, he would tell me when I wasn't working hard enough to reach my goals. "Vallere, you'll never win the River Swim with practice times like that," still rings in my ear, or even the less popular, "If you're okay letting Competitor X(1) beat you, then keep practicing like that." The sad truth was that I didn't want to work out that hard Every. Single. Day. It was tough. And there were times when I wanted to phone it in.(2)

What my coach's words served to provide were a gauge of how hard I wanted something. He didn't tell me that I wasn't working hard enough. He dangled the goal in front of me and said that, to get there, I had to make an even bigger commitment than I was doing. The thing was, I practiced a lot. Mornings. Nights. Several hours each day. Year after year after year. Swimming was a part of my life.(3) I wasn't good from the start but eventually I found my strength and from that point on I had an even more clear vision of what races I would compete in, who my competition was, and what I could do to gain an edge vs. them (knowing that most of them were wondering the same thing about me).(4)

There was something else that my coach did that went hand in hand with his gruff style. When I did well, and I mean really well, he would relax his tough coach exterior and congratulate me. He'd shake my hand and tell me he was proud of what I'd accomplished. Again, he took no credit for pushing me to a place where I could do it, only congratulated me on what I'd done. The good and the bad, he let them be my efforts to accept. He taught me how much control we have over achieving our own goals and aspirations.

I rarely swim anymore but the mindset of practicing to achieve something is set in stone inside my head. And just like those days striving towards a goal in the pool, I'm working towards goals now. Many of us are. And yet we all have days when we don’t want to work that hard, days when we wonder "what's the point?" But the next time that hits you, think of what could be if you keep on going. Nobody's going to get to their goals overnight, but in time, with the right efforts, you can be that much closer.

What have you done today to achieve your goals?
------------------------------------------------
(1) He didn't really call her Competitor X, though that would have been cool - like an episode of Speed Racer!
(2) and there were probably times that I did – I will neither confirm nor deny that to this day because my parents read this
(3) As was the constant smell of chlorine
(4) Imagine my surprise that one of them wants to friend me on facebook!

WHERE ART GOES TO DIE

2010-04-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

According to Merriam & Webster, art is "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination esp. in the production of aesthetic objects". I find the operative words to be "conscious use of skill and creative imagination". Whatever the object, whatever your reaction to that object, someone took time, vision, and skill to create it. So, what happens to it next?

I'm not talking about the thousands of paintings in on museum and gallery walls and in the basements waiting for their turn on those walls. I'm not talking about the countless books lining shelves of the library and bookstores across the country. I'm talking about the efforts that didn't get that far.

The walls of my apartment are decorated with paintings that I did several years ago when I experienced a burst of creativity. It sprung from me in the form of painting, writing, decorating, sewing, renovating, you name it. Most of those paintings, say, 90% of them, still impress me when I look at them. I remember exactly what I felt when I painted them and I'm pleased with the results. Yet there are a few canvases that sit along baseboards or on shelves in the closet that never quite hit the right note. As I currently find myself running out of closet space and need to make a couple of hard decisions involving clothing, shoes, and miscellany, those paintings are at risk.
But what to do with them?

In a perfect world there would be a place for the public that is covered with discarded works of art, filled with unpublished manuscripts, and never-heard-before songs. In our world, that place is called Under the Bed. We took the time to create something but for whatever reasons it didn't quite pass muster, either our own or others, so now, it gets tucked away, hiding among the dust bunnies and the random mismatched socks that we can never find because we're not dusting under the bed.

It's easier for me to approach this in terms of painting, because I've always known that I painted purely for myself. I've never sought out professional opinions, researched shows, or spoken to anyone about displaying in a gallery. I'm happy to have my paintings decorating my living space as a reminder of who I was and who I am now, and in the case of those works that made it onto the walls, I couldn’t imagine giving them away or even selling them and not having them in my own possession.

On the flip side of that coin is my other major artistic endeavor: writing. It's a job that pays well in terms of satisfaction but not so much in terms of rent money. Writing a novel is the most fun thing I've ever done in my life. And when I have a finished project, I want to find a home for it. But what about those random projects that sit collecting virtual dust on my C drive? The one-off short stories that I don't know what to do with? The YA novella that I wrote back in high school? The Batman/Catwoman-inspired thriller that I set aside one night in the nineties and never quite finished? For me, they'll remain where they're at, because I still enjoy them in the way one enjoys rereading old journals.

Creating a work of art can be strictly for the artist. Tapping into emotions that trigger a certain combination of colors or words is cathartic. While writing this, I pulled one of those under-the-bed paintings out and set it next to the monitor. I can see where I wanted to go with it but I can also see that I didn't get there. It won't be a tragedy to give this to the same charity that gets my cast off clothes. Someone else could paint it white and start over, protecting my ghost of a painting under a new layer of acrylic. That's not the worst legacy for an artist, right?

COLOR MY WORLD

2010-03-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

Based on the recommendation of a fellow mystery-lover, I am currently reading Michael Connelly's THE BLACK ECHO. And by reading, I mean, I'm listening it as a book-on-DVD in the car, which is a relatively new experience (I usually reserve that time to test out new and unusual combinations of curse words). I'm enjoying the story. I'm totally engrossed. But what I discovered, that I don't know if I would have discovered in the same way if it were a hard-back Book book, are the occasional sentences that jump off the air-page and cry out for attention because of their fresh quality.

Sentences like: The sky was the color of bleached denim.

That is SUCH A GREAT DESCRIPTION! Ahem, sorry about that outburst. But, it is. And aside from being a great sentence, it's a gauntlet thrown down to raise the bar on clichéd descriptors. And I'm ready for the challenge. Game on.

So, you know, the world is full of colors, exploding all over the place, and somehow the same old same old gets used in writing. Not anymore. I've decided that, operating off of the classic Crayola 8-pack of crayons, I will choose a different color for each day and come up with twenty different ways to describe that color. And I'm kicking this project off today with WHITE.

Now, before you point out that there is no white crayon in the Crayola 8-pack (I know my older sister reads this and I *know* how she thinks) I thought I would start with a bit of serenity. If white is the presence of all colors, then there should be an abundance of ways to describe it, right? So here goes.

1. Eggshells
2. Styrofoam
3. Really cheap paper towels
4. The Hollywood sign
5. Sugar cubes
6. Mashed potatoes
7. The inside of a Klondike bar
8. Communion wafers
9. Marky Mark's underwear circa 1993
10. Yogurt (or: fruit on the bottom yogurt before it's blended)
11. Mortar
12. Hello Kitty (this one made me laugh for a solid seventeen seconds, which you'd think would have been the reaction to the Marky Mark one)
13. Shaving cream
14. Cool whip
15. Rice
16. Parchment
17. A cue ball
18. Aspirin
19. A bleached cow skull
20. Shower tiles that haven't been washed for a couple of weeks

Once I got going, I couldn't stop: Crisco. The creamy filling inside an Oreo. A straight man's boxers. But the true test isn't in the list making, it's plugging the phrase into a sentence like a mad-lib to see what works and what doesn't:

His shirt was the color of really cheap paper towels
(vs.)
His shirt was the color of a bleached cow skull.

Her toenails were the color of a cue ball
(vs.)
Her toenails were the color of parchment.

His teeth were the color of aspirin
(vs.)
His teeth were the color of mashed potatoes.

Her sheets were the color of shower tiles that haven't been washed for a couple of weeks
(vs.)
Her sheets were the color of the Hollywood sign (and offered as much hope).

This project made me think about my surroundings differently. I'm looking at the same things I've looked at every single day and seeing then fresh and new.

What about you? How many different ways can you say white?

ps-you thought you were getting Marky Mark, didn't you?

SIGNS FROM THE UNIVERSE

2010-03-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

When you spend a large portion of your unpaid time pursuing goals that support dreams that give you warm fuzzies when you think about achieving them, you develop an internal motivational framework to keep going. Aside from the positive reinforcement of critique groups and the writer's network, requests from agents for materials, and the occasional contest winning, there are days when a cog interrupts the function of the internal motivational framework and you need a temporary backup plan. Chocolate helps. So do pretzels. But I gave up snack foods for Lent, so I've needed to look elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong. My internal cheerleader is in tip top shape. She works out daily. But it's like she pulled a muscle with one of those fancy high kicks and has to take a couple of days off to recover. So obviously I had no other choice but to look to the universe for signs of positive reinforcement.

All of this helps to explain my squeal of delight on Saturday afternoon while I was reading the liner notes to a Booker T and the MG's CD from the nineties.
A little set-up: I've been polishing a comic manuscript titled: PEPPER STEAKS AND OTHER BAD IDEAS. Outside of the major and minor plot points of the story, the protagonist, Pepper St. James, has a thing for guitarist Steve Cropper – or should I say, she has a thing for late sixties Steve Cropper. It's a running joke. So when I read the liner notes to the CD (where not only is he the guitarist, but also the sound engineer) there are special thanks mentioned to The Pepper Sisters. The. Pepper. Sisters.

See, that's a sign.

And then there was last night on Dancing With the Stars. Sure, just the fact that Buzz Aldrin is a contestant for Season 10 should count as a sign that good things are going to happen for 42 DAYS AS A SPACE GIRL. But, outside of the major and minor plot points of the story, the protagonist, Lisa P. Grace, spends a LOT of time in Moon Boots. So, when Buzz was pressed to talk about what his experience on the show was like, and he said, "I traded my Moon Boots for Dancing Shoes," well, what else was I to think?

So there I was, feeling very good about two of my manuscripts thanks to Steve Cropper and Buzz Aldrin, and I said, "Where's the sign for JUST KIDDING? I mean, nobody's even danced to a Duran Duran song yet!" See, when I wrote JUST KIDDING, outside of the major and minor plot points of the story, I wanted the love interest to be referential to the hotties of D2, but nothing as literal as using one of their names. I named him Nick Taylor. So, when the spontaneous eruption that was Hungry Like the Wolf exploded from the DWTS band, well, you know what I thought. . .

And the latest project that I'm working on? Outside of any major and minor plot points of the story, it's a mystery with protagonist Madison Night, and features a Doris Day tie-in. I think of this as first in the Night and Day mystery series. So don't even get me started on the Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz trailer that ran during a commercial break last night!

ME, MYSELF, AND I: AN INTERVIEW

2010-03-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Q: ARE YOU LIVING THE LIFE YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU WOULD?

It's not exactly an interview question, but while I'm on the verge of querying my latest manuscript, which includes quite a bit of character soul-searching, it seems worth addressing, along with any other questions I imagine within the next 500 words or so. SO - here goes!

Q: ARE YOU LIVING THE LIFE YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU WOULD?

A1: Sort of. I always knew I'd be doing something creative. I just didn’t know what.

A2: Oh. Did you mean personal life stuff? B/c I'm 43, and I don't have any kids. I always thought I'd have a little girl who'd want to ransack my closet for weird fashions that I saved. Those Hammer pants aren't wearing themselves . . .

Q: DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS?

A1: I regret bowling in sweatpants in public in 1990. Other than that, I'm good. (link takes you to an old blog on myspace: Sweatpants Are Not the Answer).

A2: Why bother? "Two roads diverged in the woods (and after a while wandering around the woods looking for that gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel) I took the one less travelled. And that has made all the difference . . ."

Q: WHAT'S THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? (I've been waiting for this question since I graduated college and don't want to waste the opportunity).

A1: ART GEEKS AND PROM QUEENS by Alyson Noel (The answer was much different circa 1989 when I'd just discovered Nabokov).

A2: PEPPER STEAKS AND OTHER BAD IDEAS and 42 DAYS AS A SPACE GIRL, both by me. (Proofreading – and they are both FUNNY!)

Q: WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?

A1: A particularly fabulous ensemble that flatters my figure and makes strangers want to talk to me (but not the creepy kind – only the kind with an influential voice in the publishing industry and those with the wherewithal and inclination to buy books).

A2: My pajamas.

Q: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT NOW?

A1: I'm polishing the query for my latest manuscript PEPPER STEAKS AND OTHER BAD IDEAS. This week I conceived a new mystery series with a Doris Day tie in, but that's going to have to get in line behind LADY SINGS THE CLUES. Plus, I'm doing some promotional stuff for the Guppies, my *favorite* writing group!

A2: Emotional stability.

Q: WHAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU'VE DONE FOR YOURSELF IN THE LAST WEEK?

A1: Went to my first mystery writer's convention: Left Coast Crime.

A2: Got a mammogram.

Q: ARE YOU HAPPY WITH WHERE YOU'RE AT TODAY?

A1: Abso-freakin-lutely.

A2: Abso-freakin-lutely.

IT'S ALL JUST A LITTLE BIT OF FASHION REPEATING

2010-03-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

In the immortal words of one of my mentors, "Fashion comes around three times in your life, and then you die." It's kind of a weird way to think about your life. It also makes the rehashing of the eighties bittersweet because it means I'm one cycle closer to my meeting with the Grim Reaper. But, now that I've had a chance to witness the repackaging the eighties, I'm starting to believe that she's right.

Last night I watched the TAMI show on public access (Teenage Awards Music International). Hosted by Jan and Dean in 1964, it was a live show filled with performances by amazing musicians (more info: here). The music was fantastic, no doubt, but I was really fascinated by the styles worn by the dancers: skinny Capri pants, deep v-neck sweaters, rugby shirts, horizontal stripes. And the style of the kids in the audience: shift dresses, pea coats, plaid skirts, turtlenecks and jackets. It reminded me of high school, twenty years after the show had aired, when I had experimented with my own style with borrowed clothes from my moms (and dad's) closet which I combined with the things I found in second hand shops and at the mall.

At the time, I didn't understand that the eighties look started because the hipsters of the time were shopping in vintage stores for clothes from the forties (much like today's hipsters are wearing clothes from the sixties). They made the look became new again: shoulder pads, wide leg pants, menswear, plaid, granny boots. By the time their influences trickled down to me, it was combined with the mod look of the sixties repackaged, too, i.e. neon, colorblocking, graphic prints. That's what gave the eighties look a life of its own.

So, watching TAMI, it's easy to get lost in the music, but what's really fun is to study the look of the audience. These kids might not have known what was in store for them when they filed into seats in that studio but they looked like they were ready for anything (except for the girl in the curlers screaming at the James Brown performance. Pretty sure she wasn't quite ready yet). That's how I want to be. Ready for anything.

So, much like everything else, what was old is new again. The past few seasons have been "a nod to the eighties" and it's been a trip watching teenagers dress like they raided my 1984 closet. Interestingly enough, I don't want to go there again, though I did love it the first time. Now it's too Been There, Done That. Because even if the Grim Reaper is impervious to the cycles of fashion, I'm still not ready to check the designer label on his robe.

Besides, do you really think I could improve upon this?

WHY, I OUGHTTA. . .

2010-03-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

A bunch of fives. A knuckle sandwich. A POW! Right in the kisser. I'm not talking about an open-faced Moonstruck "Snap Out Of It!" slap. I'm talking a Marty-McFly-Back-To-The-Future-laying-out-Biff-in-the-parking-lot-outside-of-the-dance punch. Have you ever wanted to do that?

Let me rephrase the question.

Have you ever been so angry with the person standing directly in front of you that you wanted to punch out their lights with the weapon God gave you . . . namely, a tightly balled up fist?

Yeah, I have. Wanted to, that is. But I haven't. Bummer, right?

I don't know. I can remember being so steamed that I wanted to see if Tae Bo had trained me for a real fight. But when the metaphoric push came to shove, the physical didn't. The fight remained in my mind, unrealized, because normal people don't go around punching each other's lights out.

Normal people:
a) Resolve their differences with heated verbal arguments.
b) Bottle up their emotions and ignore the situation.
c) Let their eyes bug out while they wish the other person dead, then walk away.
d) Passive-aggressively shove a screwdriver into someone's tire.

Okay, so maybe normal people don't shove a screwdriver into someone's tire, but that kinda supports my point. What normal people do when they're seething mad doesn't always make for good reading. Option D was definitely the most interesting. But when you're trying to maintain an interesting story line page after page after page, something has to happen. Characters can't just bottle up their emotions and go on about their day. They have to do stuff, people react to stuff, people get angry, and sometimes people explode in fits of violence. Nasty words are exchanged. Biting comments (no actual biting, through, at least not yet). Insults. And while sarcasm is indeed my weapon of choice, sometimes it doesn’t match a situation. When a normal person is threatened, by fear, or by danger, or by confrontation, or is protecting another person who can't fight for themselves, a real Sock It To Me is more effective than critical words. And it's more fulfilling to read about someone willing to haul off and punch someone when the moment's right. Vicarious living and all that.

I don't mean to suggest that books would be better if fists of fury were unleashed every couple of pages, because they wouldn't be. If you hit a gratuitous passage while reading, you're going to know it, and no amount of lighting, or crazy background music, or insanely pretty actors can help you get through it and back to the main story, because this is a book. If your characters don't act like normal people in some ways, your readers won't connect with them. And when your readers are connected with your normal people characters, and then they do something out of the norm because they're motivated to do so, your readers will be satisfied.

Under the right circumstances, stirring the pot and pushing a mild-mannered character into a situation where they're threatened, enough to spontaneously let lose and slug someone, can ratchet up a story. Throwing that punch can be the most satisfying punctuation mark at the end of a scene. Not fighting for fighting's sake. Fighting for self-defense, or character's defense, or the storyline's defense. Letting a character give in to that bottled up anger can give them more dimension and make them more sympathetic. If the moment's right.

Who knew? Sometimes violence is the answer.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT, FOR A CHANGE

2010-02-23T08:39:00.000-08:00

There is a popular notion that, if you aren't getting the results you want from the efforts you make, you need to try something different. Let's face it, we all have goals, whether they are getting published, getting a better job, getting a date for Saturday night. If we do the same thing over and over and get the same results, we're spinning our wheels and instead of getting results, we're getting nowhere. Our efforts become an exercise in futility. We're like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up the hill, only to do it again tomorrow. Of course he was dealing with a punishment from the gods and no matter how he gets that boulder up there today, he's going to be doing it again. And again. And again.

So (assuming we're not being punished by the gods) why shouldn't we try a different tack towards achieving our goals every once in awhile? I toss down the gauntlet of Trying Something Different to everyone. It doesn’t have to be a grand difference. It could be taking a different route to work. It could be shopping at a different grocery store. It could be acknowledging to someone other than the voices in your head (you have those too, right?) what you're trying to achieve.
For me, it's going to be going to the beach.

That's right. Going to the beach.

In the words of the great animated Scat Cat, allow me to elucidate. I used to view a day off during the week as a great block of writing time. And I used to use it. Nothing to distract me, a free flow of ideas, time to sit at the computer and hammer it all out. . . priceless. Yet lately (and by lately I mean the last six months) those days have been frittered away with emails and eBay and the other curses of the online E. My writing time became limited to lunch breaks during the week. Those hour timeslots were productive, yes, but I'd lost that ever valuable chunk of time. So today, for something different, I'm getting out the house. I'm packing a sandwich and a couple of books and a notebook and pen (OMG-I'll actually write longhand!). My imagination and I will set up camp on the sand in front of the ocean, where the sun and the sound of the waves will feed me.

I can see it now. Me, madly scribbling in my notebook like Harriet the Spy and dictating notes into my voice recorder like Captain Kirk. When I get stuck I can lay back and stare at the blue sky and meditate on murder and mayhem until I work out the details. I'll return home this afternoon and transcribe what I wrote.

I could put a serious dent into my latest work-in-progress. And who's to say that something interesting won't happen, something that I can use in the story? I can still come home and have time to futz around on the internet. Worst case scenario, I'll have spent the day at the beach. And that right there is a pretty nice incentive, too.

So like I said, I challenge you to find a small difference in the way you approach your goals. Best case scenario? Maybe you'll succeed.

WHY DO YOU LIKE ME?

2010-02-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

Chances are, if you're reading this, then there's something about me or my writing that you like (or you think I'm your arch-nemesis, in which case YOU HAVE TO TELL ME! Because I always thought it would be fun to have an arch-nemesis but seriously, you can't have one that wants to remain anonymous). Maybe we went to school together once. Maybe we worked together at some point or became friends along the way. Maybe we share writerly commiseration on a Yahoo group. Or maybe you're family.

No matter what the reason, you're here, and I'm here, so, like I said, I'm guessing you like me. What I'm curious about is Why. Is it because I'm driven? Afraid of department-store Santas? Sometimes rely on packing tape to secure the hem of my designer clothes?

Don't get me wrong. Give me five minutes and I could rattle off a hundred likeable things about me, but that's not how it works, right? You don't like me because I told you to, you found something about me that you related to and that's what it's all about. That elusive connection.

A writer makes up people and makes up their lives, and aside from plot and description and dialogue and voice, has to figure out a way to make readers connect with the characters. The hard thing is, the connection between the writer and the characters is innate. The writer created these people. Trust me, if you're spending time writing 2,000 words a day about make-believe folks, you darn well better like them. But this means you have blinders on. Liking your characters is a natural for you, so imagine how it feels when someone else tells you they just didn't connect with them?

There's an exercise that's suggested to writers who are trying to expose their characters quirks and flaws: list 20 things that are unique about that character. Inevitably, you'll stall out before you hit ten, and you really have to start thinking about details that shaped her (or him) that might never hit the page of your manuscript, but that help you figure out the kind of person she (or he) is. Did she play the drums in high school, or the trombone, or sing in the chorus? Was she a cheerleader or did she try out five different times and never make the squad? Does she like Elvis? How much? So much that she'll sit in an uncomfortable theater seat all night for a King film festival? And when did she start really liking Elvis? Did her parents take her to one of his concerts when she was a kid, or did she date an impersonator during college?

These details expose the character's character. Make this same list about yourself. Think about those little known facts that make you who YOU are, that maybe nobody knows. They don't have to know the details. Those facts shaped who you are and made you the person that other people respond to. The rest of the world doesn't need to know those facts to see the person you are. That's how it is with writing. Only, the more pressing question is this: how do you get this interesting and endearing information across on the page without an information dump?

Here's the thing. I love my characters. I love Samantha Kidd. I love Mia Thomas and Lisa P. Grace and Pepper St. James. I don't know that much about Dena Martin and Brooks Foster but I can already tell I'm going to like them once we get down into their story. I spend enough time with these people that, in a weird way, they're like friends, only make-believe.

And because you like me, I want you to like my imaginary friends. It's only fair that we should all get along.

STALKERS 'R US

2010-02-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

The future is here, ladies and gents, and despite what we were told in the eighties, it doesn't include Moon Boots(1) or jet packs. It includes . . . stalking?

That's right. Anonymity is out the window these days now that facebook, twitter, and myspace are the norm. When you say what's on your mind, you're not just saying it to your friends and the eavesdropper sitting in the booth next to you, you're saying it to the whole world. Which means if someone wants to know what you're up to, it's not that hard to figure it out. "Twitterstalking" someone is practically a compliment in some circles, and judging your own popularity by the sheer number, not quality, of people following you has become de rigueur. To say that one thousand people are following you is considered a good thing these days, but if you met those thousand people face to face in an old-fashioned screening process, would they all pass muster?

I myself am no stranger to stalking. An avid Sonny and Cher fan, the Bono family has always been high on my radar. I've been to numerous Cher concerts. I designed a museum of Sonny and Cher memorabilia as my senior class project in architectural drawing.(2) I called Sonny Bono at his restaurant to wish him a happy birthday. And once I even went to a lesbian bar because Chastity Bono was making an appearance.(3)

My initial thoughts after arriving and jumping in front of Chastity to introduce myself and gush appropriately over her parents (I may or may not have mentioned the design of the museum as senior class project. It's still kind of a blur) I walked away thinking less that I'd met the daughter of my two favorite icons and more "OMG, Chastity Bono now thinks she has a stalker."

It used to be that stalking was, you know, a little more anonymous. The line between friendship and obsession was more defined and the Peeping Toms of the world had to work a little harder.(4) Today, you can be one-step removed from almost anybody. Not only that, but there are classes designed to improve the stalking – I mean online social networking – skills of the general public. And if you're not stalking – I mean following - enough people, there are suggestions. I'm all for connecting and reconnecting with friends, but what's the proper balance? Where's the line?

Times have changed yet one thing remains constant. All the world is still a stage, but the audience has gotten bigger, more invasive, more opinionated. The future is upon us and our proverbial curtains are wide open.

And I'm still waiting for my jet pack.

_______________________________

(1)Those Moon Boot people really should be giving me some kind of kick back by now
(2)Don't believe me? I still have the blueprints. I'll put 'em on facebook one of these days.
(3)Considering the unexpected changes to the Sonny/Cher/Chastity family unit, I'm showing my age.
(4)Doesn’t hard work and commitment count for anything anymore?

WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT A MID-LIFE CRISIS?

2010-02-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

Several years ago someone told me that I was having a mid-life crisis. Needless to say, I was not pleased by the comment. I was still in my thirties at the time, and aside from the crushing insult that my life-decisions were little more than a cliché, that would project my full-life span to be somewhere around sixty years old and I plan to live WAY longer than that. The palm reader in 1986 told me I'm living to be 91, and I'll be clinging to that prediction at least until I turn 90 (then I'll slowly go crazy wondering how my mortality will end, but I've got years, DECADES!, before that becomes an issue).

But seriously, a mid-life crisis? Let's break it down.

Mid-life implies that you are halfway through your life. The view backwards at your memories is as long as the possibilities ahead of you in your unchartered future. Your Life vision encompasses all of the experiences you've had. Can you remember every single thing you've been through? Sure, you remember the highlights, but lots of things will slip through the cracks of memory. So if you're mid-life – at the all important halfway mark -- then you can't possibly imagine every single thing that's going to happen to you. Mid-life is kinda like a half-full glass. You may have gone a long way, Baby, but you've still got a long way to go.

Now let's look at Crisis. I'll turn to the experts at Webster for this one: The turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever. Hmmm. That makes the whole mid-life thing become the disease or fever. Not sure I like that. Let's read on: a paroxysmal attack of pain, distress, or disordered function. What??? Next: The decisive moment (as in literary plot). That one's not bad. Lastly: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs whose outcome will make a decisive difference for better or worse.

But isn't that like every single day?

I don't know about you, but when I start my day, everything's crucial: what am I going to wear? What to pack for lunch? How to navigate around that sightseer van that just hit the breaks because the driver wants his paying audience to think they might see a celebrity hanging around Sunset Boulevard?

While those might not be the best examples of unstable or crucial times, they represent the day in day out nature of my life, and who's to say that the Mid-life Crisis part knocks on the front door and says, "today's the day you're going to have an unstable and/or crucial time on which your future depends"? Most of us have some kind of routine, and if we follow it, the unstable and/or crucial time will look like all the other times. Life doesn't change, we do. And think of the second part of that crisis definition: "whose outcome will make a decisive difference for better or worse." That's your kicker, right there.

So, what we're talking about is an unstable and/or crucial time halfway through our lives where the outcome of what happens will make life different either better or worse. You benefit from a pull forward and backwards, to the person you've been and the person you want to become, and if there is a riff in the time-space continuum, you are jolted into seeing the reality that where you are isn't where you want to be. And better yet, you're only mid-way through your life, so you've got as much time to change the direction of where you're going as you did getting there. What's so bad about that?
If the first part of your life is following the rules, guidelines, and suggestions of others (parents, teachers, coaches, bosses), then the latter half is about making it up as you go along. Suddenly, you're responsible, in charge of your own destiny. That's a very freeing concept.

I'm starting to think that somewhere along the way the Mid-Life Crisis got a bum rap. Don't you?

BUT I DON'T WANNA!

2010-01-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

I don't wanna clean the apartment.

I don't wanna write my blog today.

I don't wanna do the laundry.(1)

The I-Don't-Wanna Mantra invades my life often. It reminds me of a part in my favorite book of all time, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Jester, where Milo gets caught in the Doldrums. If you are so inclined, you can click here to watch the scene from the Chuck Jones' directed movie.(2)

Case in point: Shortly after waking up today, just like every day, the internal negotiations begin. If you know what you're going to wear, you can sleep for an extra five minutes. But if you get up now you'll have time to check your emails before work. But the bed is so cozy . . . . But there are waffles in it for you if you get up THIS SECOND. Coffee, too. Okay, buy coffee later and stay in bed for one more minute. Okay, no waffles, stay in bed for two more minutes. Okay, get up at exactly the moment when the second hand hits the twelve.

It's not that I didn't have places to go or things to do. It's simpler than that; I was comfortable. I didn't want to get out of bed. The problem with being comfortable is that it is often at odds with being productive. When I get up earlier than I need to, I gain extra time to write, and that is the most absolute fun thing that I do in the course of a day.

In a past life I was a competitive swimmer. I had early morning practice several days a week. I didn't want to get up then either, but I did. It was dark, cold, and lonely. There were days when I was the only person in the pool. I hated morning practice. HATED IT. But if I didn't do it, chances were that somewhere out there in a different dark, cold, lonely pool my competition was, and they'd have an edge. So I did it, because it was important to me.

Didn't mean the I-Don't-Wannas weren't there.(3) I think about this now, not the act of swimming in the morning, but the idea of using the time available to be better at what is important. I don't wanna get up early to write, but when I do, I increase my word count, or start the creative juices flowing so it's easier to pick up on where I was during my lunch break when I resume. I send out query letters or requested materials, I edit a rough patch, or I start/finish a synopsis for an upcoming project. Bottom line is, though I don't wanna, I do. And when I do, I am always pleased with the result, even if the result is minimal. Why? Because it's important to me.

But the I-Don't-Wanna's aren't going to stop.

I don't wanna save money for a rainy day.(4)

I don't wanna send out a query letter that might turn into a rejection.

I don't wanna address that giant tub of Batman action figures in the closet.(5)

But I know what I do want. So when the I-Don't-Wanna's whisper in my ear I mentally inject a dose of anti-toxin. I remind myself what's important to me.

How about you? What's your technique for combating the I-Don’t-Wannas?
_____________________________________
(1)Can't I just buy clean underwear instead?
(2)OOH! And if you like Chuck Jones and are up for frittering away time on the internet, watch this too!
(3)I DEFINITELY didn't want to dive into 68 degree water at six-thirty AM!
(4)Wait – it's supposed to rain today. Does that mean today is the day I get to spend the money I've saved?
(5)Right about now you might be thinking that I am a little odd. I assure you, I am completely normal. Other people have skeletons in their closets. I have shoes and six-inch superheroes.

CLOSET MAGICIAN

2010-01-19T10:05:00.000-08:00

There's a fashion mantra that's been repeated regularly since the concept of dressing for success was introduced, and that is to "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." For example, I want to be a writer, so I spend a disproportionate amount of time in my pajamas. But recently I had the chance to observe the professional wardrobe of a different career path, that of the magician. And considering I spend a good amount of time trying to get people to believe something that isn't true (I'm talking about writing fiction here!) it seemed only reasonable to examine the importance the wardrobe plays in the success of the professional trickster.

So here, after careful consideration, is my brief, non-scientific, completely subjective breakdown of DRESS FOR SUCCESS: Magician Edition:

1.BLACK SHIRTS: Not t-shirts, but the kind with a collar and buttons down the front. Go for the French cuffs if you like. Don't be afraid of sparkly cuff links, either. The magician is not a wallflower. He may have a few fancy tricks up his sleeve, but that doesn't mean the sleeve can't be fancy, too.

2.FISHNETS: While there aren’t as many women in the magic profession (I'm talking headliners, not assistants), the few that I've seen must get a discount on bulk fishnet purchases. I'm thinkin' it has something to do with diversion.

3.RUFFLES: This one goes both ways. For men, it's the shirt. Think Sonny Bono. Think Liberace. Think James Garner in Maverick. Dye 'em black and you're ready to go. And for the ladies, the ruffles belong on the skirts. Short skirts, too, right above those fishnets, ending at mid-thigh. Again, diversion.

4.COLOR AND PATTERN: Pink blazers. Royal blue tuxedos. Red crinolines. Plaid shoes. Checkered suits. The magician is not afraid to be noticed. In fact, noticing the magician is the first part of his/her act.

5. HATS: Where else do you think the rabbit's going to come from?

What is it about this combination of options that makes it part of the magician's dress code? When smoke and mirrors are tools of your trade, do they cease to be tools of the getting ready process? Or is there a level of freedom that comes with believing in what you are about to do so much that the outfit is merely meant to draw more people to your craft?

The magician's dinner jacket is not unlike a great book jacket in that it makes the audience stop and look for a second. That's the time the magician has to erase the audience's doubts and dazzle them with the show, the moment that most magicians live for. That's why I'm not a magician.

'Cause if it were me, I'd be in it for the wardrobe.