We get to kill people

Quick post.

There's something very cool about being a murder mystery writer. Murder mystery writers are the only people who can say "I would kill for... X" and can actually do it. (There have definitely been times I would have happily found a way to work in the death of a main character if I could just have a slice of Boston Cream Cheesecake.)

We're also the only people who can take out our frustrations by killing people and not, you know, get life without parole for it.

Also, if anyone's tried to access my site, I've changed the host and the domain and host are still trying to communicate with each other (or whatever the technical language is) so the site comes up cannot be displayed. Hopefully it will be back online soon, should be sometime over the weekend.

Once in a while I feel like I can write

There are all these quotes, if you look at all for writing quotes, about how everyone has trouble writing and how first drafts are terrible and its only after revision that most people's writing looks like it might actually be publishable. That's generally how I feel as I go about my first draft and I don't worry too much about it because I know that by the time I'm ready to revise I'll have a much better grasp on where the story is going and who these characters are that like to yank me in whatever direction they fancy.

But occasionally I write a line or a snippet of dialogue that I really like that makes me feel like someday I could actually be published. That happened last night. I was kind of blocked on something and writing just to write, just to try to jump start my brain. So most of what I wrote will probably be worked over quite a bit in revision but there are one or two lines that I sort of impressed myself with.

Once in a while I do that. There's one line, which I wrote for a western fanfic, that actually has stuck in my head ever since I wrote it, quite a long time ago. A character, college-educated, was talking about being locked in an iron box in a prison in the South during the Civil War and said "It was like they were paying us back in kind for the burning of Atlanta." I think it's pretty good; you don't have to agree. But writing a line you really like is a real self-esteem booster.

Notes and tongue rings

Also known as characters who decide that they're going to do their own thing and you'd better just be happy with it.

Laura Bradford at Good Girls Kill for Money made a rather timely post on the subject of characters that just pop out of the woodwork and wave and say "hey, here I am, whether you like it or not." I say timely because I had that exact thing happen to me this weekend with my young adult. This girl just decided to grace me with her presence. She decided she knows what's going on and that she's going to have a little fun with me and the rest of my cast, by way of a totally cryptic note that wrote all on her own.

And now one of my MCs, who had been behaving herself quite nicely up to now (well, as nicely as can be expected of a college freshman), decides she's going to have a tongue ring. I wonder what it looks like... I'm thinking a little silver ball but Krista doesn't seem quite that traditional... probably something neon colored to match her outfits.

You know you're a writer when

... you spend a disproportionate amount of time at work editing technical memos for passive voice.

*head hits desk ... hard*

Also:

... you interrupt your own internal thought processes to rephrase things that are never going to leave your head

... you read signs and think to yourself 'now I would have said it this way

... you get excited to have access to all the deals on Publishers Marketplace because you finally caved and bought a membership despite being four months from the query stage

I'm sure there are more if I think hard enough but I need my brainpower for writing so I don't want to hurt myself.

And this has nothing to do with writing whatsoever but WHY is House not on this week?? Stupid American Idol (I know, I know. Blasphemy. But the show just doesn't do it for me.)

So, I have a dilemma...

In my YA work my two POV characters have various magical abilities. Now, they know why they have them and what they can do. So do the other main characters (and the MCs don't want anyone else to know). And I know why they have them and what they can do. But whoever reads the story doesn't unless the summary of the story tells them that these characters are (fill in the blank because I don't feel like telling you. Ha!).

So, the question is do I (1) just gradually let people figure out what these characters are or (2) use some sort of exposition to tell readers what the characters are?

What would you prefer as a reader? And I know I'm being totally vague here so here's an example:

Watching Star Wars, would you rather see Obi-wan moving objects and messing with people's minds without the movie telling you until a good distance in that he's a Jedi or do you want to know up front?

Melissa Marr actually was the impetus for this question. She's got a couple entries on these lines.

Top 10 Publishers in the US of A

Michael S. Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, posted graphs showing the Top 10 Trade Publishers and Top 10 Christian Publishers in the US. See here if you're interested (come on, you know you are!)

Wow

Wow. Just, wow.

Scammers

I've spent some time sifting through Absolute Write's Bewares and Background Check forum. I'm still far from the query stage but it's good to keep informed.

I can't stress enough how important it is that anyone querying be sure to research the agents they're considering. There are a million and one resources out there. Remember the warning signs: no sales; relationships with editing companies; upfront fees including reading fees, critique fees, editing fees; unsolicited referrals to editing companies and unsolicited offers of reputation are the big ones but I'm sure there are others.

Check out
Miss Snark
Writer Beware Blogs
20 Worst Agents
Association of Authors Representatives (AAR)
Preditors and Editors (P&E)
Writer Beware

Domain

When I joined myspace yesterday, I couldn't make my page myspace.com/heatherjanes because someone else already had it, so I put my middle initial in instead and that's what I ended up with. But that got me thinking about the possibility that someone could take my name as a domain name. When I (note the optimism of not using 'If') finally get published, I plan to use just my first and last names, not my middle initial (blame Miss Snark for that), so I want my eventual author Web site to be just my first and last names.

Ooookay, the point of that diatribe is to say that I bought a domain name. HeatherJanes.com is now my domain, not that I have a real Web site for it. It currently redirects here, though I might redirect it to my bravehost site, which has a link to the blog anyway.

Does anyone know of good hosting programs? I don't know HTML beyond simplistic tags.

Also, does anyone have suggestions for what types of stuff I could put on my Web site when, eventually, I put a real one together (meaning, not a free bravehost site), and before I have, y'know, actual books to advertise on it?

Randomness

I finally joined MySpace, so you can go see my pretty page here. Essentially, I've found another way to waste time and distract myself from my writing ;) Willpower. I need willpower!

I picked up Laura Durham's (one of the Cozy Chicks) book Better Off Wed and a couple books by Joan Lowery Nixon. Now I have to find the time to read them. Along with Stephen King's On Writing and the other writing books my aunt gave me for Christmas that I haven't read yet. And the Clancy and Ludlum books I bought last summer and haven't read yet.

I've also added several more agent and author blogs to my links here. I haven't updated my site yet, mostly because I haven't gotten around to it.

What I really need to do is disconnect myself from the Net for awhile... I'm way too big a procrastinator.

First Lines

I was looking for some great first lines of novels, hoping to find some inspiration, and I came across this list of the American Book Review's 100 Best First Lines From Novels. And on it was this quote:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

There is just something about those few lines...

And the original dark and stormy night:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

Someday I hope to write something half as incredible as these...

"Golden Age of Young Adult Literature"

From MediaBistro to Kelly Parra, Laurie McLean, and Nathan Bransford, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports Teens buying books at fastest rate in decades. I can only hope that this holds true for a good, LONG while... while I finish my book, find an agent, find a publisher, go through revision, and get the book on shelves.

This being, of course, contingent on my (1) finishing my book, (2) finding an agent, and (3) finding a publisher...

Inevitable

It's inevitable; I get going on writing something and then start second-guessing and saying "well, I think I might be able to write this other story better than the one I'm working on now" or "I really think this other idea might sell better than the one I'm working on now."

And this time it's not even that what I'm writing isn't cooperating; it is. I wrote over 6,000 words in two days and, granted, I've since slowed down, but it's still coming. So it's not frustration. I think it's just self-doubt. And it's totally annoying.

But the only way I'm going to get past it is if I stick to what I'm doing and just git 'er done, right? So I'm going to be optimistic and say that I'm going to write this and the first agent I send it to is going to fall in love with it and it'll sell for six figures at auction.

Not that I actually believe all that (I really, really try not to delude myself) but if I'm going to think positive, I may as well go all the way, right?

Of names and Google

Ever since I started this blog, I've googled myself, I admit. I choose to ignore the fact that no one knows my name enough that they'd actually want to google me though eventually, like when I start querying, someone might actually look me up. I've read, I think on Miss Snark's blog, people talking about their concerns over what comes up when their name is googled. I'm not concerned; I figure agents are smart enough to realize that the Web is full of all sorts of wild and crazy things -- and, y'know, people.

I'm not concerned; I'm just amused.

If I google my name, in quotes, this blog is the 7th result and my user profile on blogger is the 8th. The amusing part is the 10th result, which is apparently a porn story. It would seem that some writer managed to give my exact first and last name to a character in a porn story they wrote. Heh. Like I said, amusing.

But that brings me to another, only slightly related topic. When I name characters I go to great lengths to avoid using names of people I know. Or, if I use the first names of people I know (I mean, come on, there are some names that it's just damn hard to avoid using), then I try to make them minor characters. Does anyone else ever wonder if they've given their characters names of real people?

I should google some of my characters, see what pops up.

Y'know, if I ever googled myself and came up with a book that had my name for a character, I might read it. So long as it wasn't porn. That would freak me out.

Fickle

I might be the most fickle author ever. I've changed the story I'm writing yet again. Started over, fresh, anew, again.

I've decided to view this as finding myself as a writer. I've been trying too hard, I think, to write what I hope will sell rather than writing what I will truly enjoy writing.

I think - maybe, hope? - I've got something going now that will go somewhere. So far, it is. It's working; the characters are creating themselves as much as I'm creating them. The plot just came to me - well, as much of it as I have at the moment.

I'm not forcing it, and I think that's key.

There's a blog post here at "Good Girls Kill for Money" that talks a little about forcing it and listening to your gut when something just isn't right, isn't working.

On a total other note, does anyone else tend to type "write" when they mean "right"? I do it constantly...

College-age detectives?

Can anyone think of any detective series with college-age students as the protagonists? Other than the old Nancy Drew on Campus series?