'Tis the Season to Overshare

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Egg Nog

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Wrap. Where’s the fun in Christmas without color coordinating paper, string, bows, and gift tags?

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? White. I grew up with blue ones that would burn the Christmas tree. It’s a wonder the house didn’t ever get wiped out.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. The cats might get into it.

5. When do you put your decorations up? The day after Thanksgiving, of course!

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Sweet Potato Streuseled Casserole, cranberry jelly (still in the shape of the can, of course), and my mom’s Broccoli Casserole. I also loved having a pretty wine glass filled with Jello and Cool Whip, which was set out with the meal. A Colebank tradition.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: Coming out of my room after my parents had Christmas ready—candles lit, fire lit, tree on, Christmas music (Barry Manilow, usually) playing. Also, coloring in this ginormous Christmas coloring book (A Christmas Carol and Twas the Night Before Christmas).

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Fourth grade. My mom told me. I’ve never been the same since.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Since I’ve been married, yes. My husband always wants to open up more than one, but I keep the gluttony under control by leading him gently away from the tree.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? After growing up with two parents as teachers and approximately two to three hundred mismatched ornaments, I decorate the tree in gold and red. No homemade crap. I might bend when I have kids…but for now, I love having a an anal Martha Stewart tree.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? After 30 years in Phoenix with 85-degree Christmases, I’m ready for some snow!

12. Can you ice skate? My ankles flip flop every which way. In other words, no, I can’t. And I kind of like having unbroken ankles/legs/hips…

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? It was made of plastic etchings of tops/bottoms/feet, and you could mix and match to create, for example, a woman wearing a basketball jersey, a cocktail skirt, and ski boots.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Being with loved ones.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Thumbprint cookies. Chocolate fudge. My husband’s grandmother’s peanut butter fudge. Pumpkin pie.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Listening to Christmas music while wrapping presents. Going on a driving tour of Christmas lights. Making twenty batches of cookies with my mom.

17. What tops your tree? A lit star.

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? Both.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm – Dean Martin

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? Yum if they’re peppermint. Yuck if they’re anything else.

Book of the Month

Almost forgot! I read a great book last month. (Sadly, I used to read one to two books a day. Now, a book a month is fast for me.) Tess Gerritsen's Vanish was terrific. In case you haven't read her, let me tell you: her writing's crisp, her characters are 3-D, and her plot isn't Swiss cheese. Quite an accomplishment when you compare her to most writers these days!

My summary of the book is as follows: Pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli is about to go into delivery when a crazed female patient takes a room full of people hostage--Jane included. Chaos ensues. (Hey, I don't want to give too much away!)

Having Fun Revising Gil

I've been bad. I've been MIA from Bloggerland for a while. But I have a really good answer for that: I've been writing! I'm 10,000 words away from finishing my rewrite of the book I did before Black Tuesday, and I feel like I'm on Cloud Nine.

The rewrite, however, is not the end. There's still skimming and scanning to be done for inconsistencies, grammar mistakes, and spelling errors. I got the galleys for Black Tuesday a few weeks ago and was floored by the amount of spelling errors I saw (e.g., "what" instead of "white"). But I think it was the copy editor who screwed up. Yeah. Let's go with that. I'm perfect, after all. More android than human. :o)

Anyway, back to that manuscript. I'm loving my characters. I want to MEET these characters. They're fully fleshed-out in my head. Let's take Gil. First off, he looks like this guy pictured (yeah, he does have a striking resemblance to Julian McMahon. Weird, huh?). He's also anal about coasters, likes smoking a pack a day, and can come up with some really off-the-wall statistics when you're just trying to have a conversation with him. Gil's divorced, but he's bitterly divorced. In other words, he's a catch, but also a big ol' heap of trouble. (Did I mention his fourteen-year-old daughter?)

Don't worry, I'm not messing with him too much in these revisions. After all, he's pretty darn near perfect.

Why a Scene's Like a Seven-Layer Dip

Been busy with writing these last couple of weeks. Writing scenes, going back and writing in the characterization, and then going back in again to up the stakes.

For instance, in my latest WIP (work-in-progress), I had my heroine Maddy undercover in a Hell's Angels biker bar. She's there to meet up with a deadbeat dad, and instead of the deadbeat, we get his friend who's making sure Maddy is who she says she is and not some bounty hunter to snag the deadbeat and his two-year backlog of child support payments. So there's Conflict One. While she's there, her boss is snooping on her, so we get Conflict Two. But, the scene still didn't have enough at stake. I mean, heck, this is a HELL'S ANGELS bar. Shouldn't there be some HELL'S ANGELS trouble? So now I'm editing in some trouble... ;o)

The point? The point is to make sure you use the setting in your story. Don't just think about some quirky place to set a scene and then not use it to its fullest capability.

From my talkative mouth to your waxy ear...

The Moving Adventures of Susan C.

And when I say "moving," I don't mean in an awe-inspiring, sentimental way. Me and the hubby just finished our move to New England. And boy, was it an adventure! First we had to sell the house in the over-crowded real estate market of Phoenix, then we had to pack up house, then we had to fly with two cats 3,000 miles to the other side of the world (or at least it was to them), then we moved into a house that we were then kicked out of THE SAME DAY, then we had to pick up our stuff in Boston which is NOT enjoyable in a U-Haul and that crazily planned city...

But all's well...and everything for a reason. We are in a loverly winter rental by the ocean. Literally. Cross the street and you've got sand between your toes. (Look in our car and around the doorway of our house, and you'll see the gritty stuff lining the floormats and sinking between the slats of the pine wood floors, respectively.)

Life is good. Now it's back to the writing schedule. No TV is in this writing office, just the sound of crashing waves.

Heaven...

The picture to the right? The view of the marsh from our living room. Now do you believe me??

Excedrin: The Non-Stretching Writer's Friend

It's two in the morning and I'm waiting for the Excedrin PM to kick in. I have a headache thanks to sitting in front of a computer typing for too long and stretching very little. (Did you hear that, kids? Stretching--good. Not stretching--liver-taxing Excedrin.)

I've been busy with the move, but after a really great meeting with my RWA chapter (Romance Writers of America, a great org to join even if you don't write romance), I felt motivated to plot out my story points for tomorrow when I plan to write 50 pages.

Yep. You heard that right. Fifty. Because of the move, extreme exhaustion from said move, and trying to recover from said exhaustion from said move, I have about six days to meet a personal deadline. I used to have 21 days.

(Read prior post on procrastination if you wonder how I got here.)

So, RWA... A great org for the aspiring writer. Whenever I push my lazy butt out the front door and drive the 10 miles to the once-a-month meeting, I'm usually (9 out of 10 times) not disappointed with my decision. In fact, I usually come home motivated and ready to write, write, write. (Read the above about headache and its cause if you wonder if I was motivated to write, write, write after this night's meeting.)

I highly suggest joining a writing group if you've ever wanted to write. It's a fun way to discuss murder and mayhem and human nature with other sane people who love discussing murder and mayhem and human nature.

Structuring a Scene

As I get into the muckity muck of the middle (pages 100 to 300, for those not in the know), I've been re-reading Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham. There are some great gems in there about how to put together a scene that makes the character seem to be taking steps backward (e.g., the heroine's informant gets murdered, her car gets towed, her cat's puked on the carpet) while moving the story forward (e.g., the infomant's murdered, which then leads the heroine to find another source of information which, in turn, leads her deeper into the story and heading toward more obstacles).

As I said, I'm re-reading this book. There's so many tidbits of advice to remember when you're writing, you're bound to forget a tip or two year after year and manuscript after manuscript...

Pushing Past the Tired

I'm beyond exhausted at the moment. We've been packing for three days straight, with me doing about 90 percent since I have a schedule that can accomodate it better. That doesn't mean my writing hasn't suffered. Instead of the 2800 words I wanted to do today, I've only done 800.

But, then again, that's 800 more than the day started with.

When you're on a schedule, though, a 2000 deficit can snowball into a 4000, 8000, 12000 word deficit real quick.

Hopefully, the brain cells will be a little more awake tomorrow. The packing is almost completely finished, so there's that, at least. Anyway, I can use this in my book, right? Make one of my characters exhausted from packing. Yeah, I know, a real page-turner...

Making Time for Reading

I believe that to be a writer, you have to keep being a reader. It's so easy to forget that part of the equation, especially as you grow older, have more responsibilities, and can no longer get by on four hours of sleep because you stayed up to read who the killer is/if the hero got with the heroine/etc.

Over the past two years, I've been fairly good at getting through two books a month (a far cry from my 400-page-book-a-day habit from fourth grade through twelfth grade). In order to keep the books straight in my head, I read one fiction and one nonfiction book at a time. Right now, I'm reading Confessions of Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon by Cap Lesesne, M.D., and The Killing Club by Marcie Walsh and Michael Malone.

Lesesne's book is pretty good. He's a little full of himself, but aren't plastic surgeons usually narcissistic? He spends a little too much time on himself, but the anecdotes are worth wading through the muckety mire.

The Killing Club is a very well-paced book with some really good word visuals. I have no idea who the killer is, but I have about five guesses. My only qualm? The writers need to take a class on comma usage. There are so many, I'm stumbling over them!

When Writing Bites

Right now, I'm listening to Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth (works well with my "Bites" title, no?). A great record to listen to when you're trying to work through a mess.

If nothing else, it helps me work through the hostility I'm feeling toward my WIP as I face the mess of blending scenes/giving pertinent character details/placing red herrings.

I feel like I'm trying to navigate through quicksand, with only goggles, a snorkel, and a toy shovel helping me out.

Why Procrastination Isn't All That Bad

Let's talk about procrastinators. Because...Hello, I'm Susan, and I'm a procrastinator. I'm on schedule to write 2800 words by the end of today, and what am I doing? Housework. Magazine reading. Blog writing.

I've been procrastinating as early as second grade. I remember doing my piano homework (yes, there is such a thing) the 30 minutes I had between the end of school and the time I had to start walking to my piano teacher's house. I remember that rushed, panicked feeling. I still have it.

Does this make me want to change? Yes. Does this motivate me to change? Not so much. Why? I always do better rushed. I do. (But not in a speeding car sort of way. If I'm late, I'm late.) I remember pacing out a paper and turning it early--I got a B. Minus. For another paper, I waited until the night before to start the 15-pager--I got an A.

Did I learn my lesson? Yes. Being early doesn't pay better dividends.

Revisions & Contortionists

So I'm going a little nutty. My brain sort of resembles this amazing contortionist here. I have 4,500 words to get through and my brain is tied into knots, trying to figure out where to begin. See, I need to go back and add foreshadowing, new characters that need to get in there by the end of Act I, etc.

Maybe I should discuss acts and writing? Actually, I would like to recommend a book: Viki King's How to Write a Movie in 21 Days. I don't want to write a movie (but if one came my way, I wouldn't say no!), but it's a terrific book for a novelist who is struggling with pacing.

Anyway, back to my brain twisting into a pretzel. Revising a book, at least for me, is like those proofs in back in geometry class. You look at the problem, see the answer, and write down the answer. However, this is a proof, which means you have to write down the 20 steps in between. Right now, I'm writing those steps, and I'm missing steps 9, 14 and 17. I don't know what those steps are, but I'll know them when I finally write them, rewrite them, and revise them.

Back Online

So here I am. Blogging. Since college, I've had three websites and three blogs for various and sundry reasons. So at least you know you're in the capable hands on an online afficionado.

Okay, well maybe not an afficionado. But...maybe an "online capable"? Does that read right? (See what a writer goes through when it comes to word choice?? It's all about word choice, dahlink...)

It's 10:45 on a Sunday night and I still need to write 10 more pages in my new WIP ("work in progress" for those not in the know). I've been on a really good time table with this book. Actually, I've already written the book. Wrote it a year ago. But I had to let it sit and stew. Wrote Black Tuesday while it sat and stewed. Now, I'm about 125 pages into the rewrites (out of 400). Although "rewrite" is a misnomer. I don't want any of you to get the wrong idea that I'm fixing grammar mistakes and moving paragraphs around. Nope. I'm RE-WRITING. As in writing again. From scratch. I think I've reused about three pages from the original so far.

No worries though. The original story was good, but this one is so much better. More conflict, more pissiness, more lies. I love it!