A writer’s dilemma

When I’m in my car, I listen to the radio, either the public radio classical music station or the public radio news station, except on Sundays when I tune into the local university station for folk, blue grass, women’s voices and world music.

Every once in a while, I’ll hear lyrics to a song or parts of an interview that compel me to make a quick note for future investigation. Trouble is, to ensure I’m not totally distracted from driving, I use a self-made shorthand. Generally, I don’t have a problem deciphering my notes.

However, since my writing comes from all the busybody people who are living in my head, I also often jot down phrases, descriptions, notations, reminders, and quick summaries that would otherwise be lost by the time I get to a word processor.

These are the notes that, when I find them wedged between the seat and the console or in the glove box, or on the floor in the back seat, that I have to wonder:

Did I hear these words on the radio or did I hear them in my head?

Happened today. I grabbed a piece of paper to record a phone number. On that paper were eleven words I absolutely don’t recall writing, yet alone pulling out of my head. They are good words, deep, almost poetic, but totally useless unless I can trace their origin. I think they’re mine because they fit a plot that’s been churning for a few months but I hesitate to use them for fear they might be labeled as plagiarized.

I know I’ll never be organized enough to transcribe the notes in a timely fashion. They’ll always be waiting for me to find them and follow up as originally planned. That’s the way I am.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to use a quick grading system for these notes. I’ll use a question mark to denote something I’ve heard and an exclamation point to indicate the words are mine.

I think this will work. Now, those eleven words … I guess I’ll just have to dig deeper to find out if they come from my imagination or from the radio.

I’m not an expert but …

I’m not an expert but …

I’m not a poker expert.

I play poker – not as much as I did in the past but I play poker.

I am not a poker expert but I know how to play, I do play, and I study the game. I visit the local poker rooms here in Las Vegas, I read poker blogs, I’m acquainted with a number of professional poker players, I’ve worked for poker magazines, I’ve written for several poker magazines, and I keep up to date on what’s going on in poker news.

I write about poker in my weekly column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

I’m not a poker expert. I am a student of the game, an avid fan and a somewhat fierce competitor.

I’ve never won much money playing poker and I probably never will. I’ve never won a major poker tournament title and I am close to lousy at figuring out pot odds, implied odds, knowing how many times a pair of aces before the flop will win.

Someone posed this question to me a few years ago:

If you’ve never made a lot of money or won a major tournament, how can you write about poker?

I usually answer that with an air of smugness.

If you’re an obstetrician who happens to be a man, do you need to have a baby in order to deliver one?

The point is obvious. Serious students who do the research and study related topics can write about something they’ve never physically experienced.

Here’s an example. Let’s say your main character has just been shot. You’ve never been shot so how can you write about it? You describe the character, how she normally reacts to pain (Celia had withstood the pain of childbirth, knew what it felt like to break a bone, but she’d the pain of the bullet in her leg was nothing like either of these.)

You can go on to describe the wound; after all, you’ve seen enough gunshot wounds on television and in the movies. (She glanced at her new white blouse, watched the crimson stain of blood seep into it, looking like a bad imitation of a Rorschach test.)

You can equate the situation directly to something from the past. (Once, when she was fasting for some medical tests, as she waited for the technician, the room began to spin. She felt lightheaded, woozy, shaky, and everything around her appeared to grow dark. She’d fainted then, and she knew she was going to that again, here in the garage, as she bled from her wound.)

None of this is great literature; it’s just a group of quickly written scenarios to show that a creative writer doesn’t need to have experienced what she writes.

By the way: Nope, I'm not a poker expert but based on my studies and research, my tutorial software, and a lot of friends who play professionally, I can more than hold my own in a game.

Three cheers for: James Patterson

Ha! Take that, Publisher!

Selling 220 million books worldwide, James Patterson should be hero to all creative writers. Those 220 million copies cover a wide swath of genres.

Sure, most people think of the Alex Cross series when Patterson’s name comes up, but the man has proven that as a serious writer, he doesn’t (and we don’t) have to limit ourselves to one particular theme.

James Patterson has written children's bestsellers, young-adult books, character-driven detective novels, novels featuring strong female characters, emotion-packed family novels, fantasies … and probably a few genres I’ve missed along the way, including those in the nonfiction category. (Along the way he’s picked up some credible co-authors who always get credit for their contributions.)

Patterson isn’t the lone wolf in this matter. Plenty of other print-published writers have crossed genres successfully and continue to explore their creativity. I’ll give them due in this space as time permits.

Meanwhile …

Agents and publishers like to deal with people who fit neatly into their matrix of what they’ve (They being the agents and publishers) done all their lives. Don’t let them do it. Write the stories that capture your imagination, the plots that just won’t stop unraveling, the characters that will charm the pants off whatever age group they belong to … just write. And if you can’t find an agent or publisher who appreciates your talent and skill (it’s likely you won’t), go forth and publish eBooks!

Related articles

• A few reasons to be grateful for James Patterson (telegraph.co.uk)

Bloggers - Clean up your act, please

Image via WikipediaI have a very selective list of blogs I follow. I keep them listed here for quick access and check them out each time I post. When I visit one of these interesting sites, I check the links to sites these folks read. Intermittently, depending where I am on any task, I'll click on one, two, three, more sometimes.

I know that blogging is mostly about content itself but I have to wonder if the people who list their favorite blogs actually read anything from their lists. At least once a click, I come to a blog that hasn't seen a post in months or, worse yet, no longer exists.

I make it a habit to clean up my blog list immediately when I notice something's awry. In fact, I just deleted a listing that posted a notice about a major upgrade -- months ago!

While I'm griping, I might as well take a shot at the Zemanta list I use to find related posts that readers might want to see because obviously they're kind of guilty of the same cyber sin. I clicked on one of Zemanta's suggestions to see if it fit here -- and guess what.

Page not Found

Okay, that's all the time I have to whine. It's back to send copy to my editor for proofing and then back to the next manuscript.

Spelling errors, typos and other odds and ends

If you're on a quest for the world's worst speller, look no further. I can identify him. (But I won't). That this person can't write an entire sentence without spelling errors is an understatement. I have to say his instant massages messages and emails to me are quite creative, and they do make me smile.

I know there's no hope for people like my friend. To him and his peers, English classes in school were just another hour's worth of agony that had to be suffered.

Now, for writers, spelling errors should never happen. To help eliminate them we have dictionaries, spell check, and for the lucky (make that "smart,") proofreaders and editors.

A manuscript should be clear of mispellings misspellings and typos from the get go. That doesn't always happen. The odd mistake often creeps into your work and misses the eagle eye of a reader -- and very often gets skipped over by the spell check.

Here are a few of the misspellings from Desert of Deceit that my spell check missed, some caused by typing too fast, others, well, who knows. They are kind of finny funny, though:

1. Perhaps she’d been a marked woman from the day she was barn, or at the very least from the day a stepfather came into her life at the age of twelve. 
2. Now, inside with the coffin brewing, he removed his jacket before he spread the pictures of Marta Borgen on the table in front of the sofa. 
3. That included the man with for or five or six layers of clothing who was turning the corner from South Casino Center Boulevard and heading in his direction.

And here are a few my proofreader found:

1. Not as bad as you might think. What are you, the local weathermen?
2. Skipping his intended destination, Atkins ran the red light at North Hollywood Boulevard and continued on the Lake Mead route, through the mountain, winding around the narrow two-lanes at unsafe speeds until he came to the stop sing.
3.  Kelly could feel the man’s gripe making indentations in his arm. 

I'm sure I corrected all the errors I found and the ones pointed out to me before I formatted the manuscript for kindle ... Didn't I?

What's your novel about?

One of the toughest tasks for a writer comes after the last period on the last page.

It's summarizing all that hard work, all those words, all those characters and plot developments into a comprehensive summary for submission to an agent or a publisher or to use as detail information on their ebook sales page.

I found this very interesting and helpful blog post from another author's site. Mike Wells has done a good job of identifying the points to include by using The Wizard of Oz as his example.

If you have a kindle, you can download this and the entire related archive for free.

Why I'm not blogging every day

I took the advice and now I'm not so sure I should have.

I read the books and articles about blogging and learned that everyone placed as one of the top ten "must-do" rules for bloggers is writing every day. Some gurus say it in bold face, upper case, extra-large type with one or more exclamation points.

BLOG EVERY DAY!!!

Maybe that works for people who are using their blogs as a source of revenue, or groups that are writing about current events; or folks who are using their blog as a journal; it doesn't necessarily work for the rest of us.

I don't run out of topics for this blog; I don't run out of time to write.

I just think that unless a blogger has a very large number of followers that read posts daily, the better approach is to write good, solid, focused content that's available for more than a day.

Good, solid, focused content can get buried quickly. I just think it's a better idea to let a good post attract attention before speeding off to something new.

I know. I'm flying in the face of the blogger's box but I'm going to take a stand by choosing to wait a day or two or three between postings. Meanwhile, I'll be reading other blogs, working on my next novel, writing my regular poker column, checking in with my facebook friends, visiting friends and relatives, reading email, and enjoying the summer.