Day in the Life of an Idiot

 The deep freeze has returned to Minnesota. When I got up this morning to take Mason to a robotics club build at Washington, it was - 11 F/ - 23.89 C (I am forever fascinated that Alexa always wants to tell me two decimal points out when she calculates Celsius for me. Do you folks who use Celsius really go that deep?)

Yesterday, it was also cold. Even so, I ventured out of the house to have lunch with my friend Rosanne. We met up at a place over in Minneapolis called Butter Bakery Café.  I found it very easily, despite not having GPS. I mention this because on Wednesday night when I gave a ride home to one of Mason's debate colleagues, we used her iPhone's GPS app to direct me to her house.  It was pretty darn slick and made me think that, if cell phone packages weren't so expensive, it would be almost worth it to have a built in direction-sense. I don't get lost very often, but when I do, I tend to get REALLY lost. I once was nearly a half hour late to work because I forgot how to get out to Mounds View Library.

Butter Bakery Café has a nice parking lot behind their building, too, so that made me very happy. I arrived few minutes before Roseanne so I had a chance to check out their menu.  I have to say, the food was very much in the only OK category. As I told Rosanne, I love breakfast out and I was excited to see they had all day breakfast.  But, their "sunny side up" involved a lot more gooey gross bits than I usually like from my eggs, alas. I got the potatoes and wheat toast as sides, and the potatoes were serviceable, but nothing to write home about.  So, that was a bit of a disappointment, but I wasn't there for the food. I was there for the company and Rosanne is always good company.

She and her partner are retiring. For Rosanne this means graduating writing coach clients, which sounds like it's been a long disentanglement, which makes sense to me. We talked a lot about how it's kind of a shame that writing doesn't work like a regular job, because it would have been nice for her to have an apprentice to pass these clients on to.  

I also agreed to write a blog post for her about my experience with NaNoWriMo, because it's always been Rosanne's contention that it's better to form lifelong habits for writing, and that the competitive nature of NaNoWriMo can actually make you feel like quitting.  I fit that mold.  Not everyone does. I know a lot of people who really LOVE NaNoWriMo for lots of different reasons, but when I tried it I discovered very quickly that the goal set for me 2,000 words a day did NOT work.  When I'm writing original fiction I can't work that fast.  A huge part of my process is revision, which actually takes away words at the end of the day more often than not.  So I kept putting in smaller and smaller word counts and NaNoWriMo "helpfully" produced a graph for me showing my declining "commitment" and so I quit.  This is made ironic by the fact that without anyone's prompting, I've successfully had the discipline to write and finish several published novels. To be fair, though, I set my life up to provide some of the support that I think people really love about NaNoWriMo, which is the community it generates. There are classes and group meet-ups where you can hang out with other writers.  I forged my own writers group that met regularly, and I'm certain that without them I would have given up on my writing, too.

So, it could be a good blog. I just have to figure out how to be more articulate and witty. :-)

The only bummer is by agreeing to meet with Rosanne on Friday, I ended up missing my usual Friday gathering with other women writer friends.  I comforted myself by the fact that a number of us Wyrdsmiths (my writers' group) braved the slippery mess  of Thursday evening's snow in order to give naomikritzer feedback she needed on a short story for an anthology she was invited to contribute to. We meet at Nina's and the coffee shop was startlingly DEAD.

This upcoming week I'm going to meet-up with a friend of mine from high school who got in contact with me because she was looking for contract advice about a non-fiction project she was working on.  (This is partly why I ended up getting back in touch with Rosanne after all this time; I figured Rosanne knew about non-fiction contracts.)  

So, even though it's cold as heck, I'm still getting out and about and meeting up with people. But for now?  Now, I think it's time for a nap under some comforters.

Ja matta!

So with all my extra jittery energy yesterday morning, I did, in fact, spend the wee hours between 2 am and 6 am working up a one-week proposal for writing SF/F for teens. It's called MORE THAN THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE: Writing SF/F and, despite the fact that I was composing it completely on raw nerves, apparently it was exactly what the coordinator of the Loft's teen classes was looking for and she's going to put me on the schedule. I told her when she emailed me with the news, that I'd also really love to propose a couple of other classes, including on one writing fanfic.

So now I've been thinking about what I might like to do with a class on fanfic. My first question to you, the fanfic writer, is this: when you were 15, would you have been more interested in ALL THE FEELS: FanFic 101 or NO MORE KUDOS: Making the Switch from FanFic to Original Fiction? I think that either would fly, so don't try to think in terms of which is more "legit" to teach.

I've been asking people for advice on FB and Twitter, but it occurs to me that LJ is probably the best platform in so many ways. A lot of fic writers live here, after all.

At any rate it's probably only going to be a one-week class, so that's only five days of teaching (I might try two weeks, but...). Anyway, I have a couple of *for sure* topics to cover: how to take critique from strangers/find beta readers, the power of the psuedonym, and some of the basics of writing. Here's the thing, my biggest problem is that I came into fanfic both as a reader and writer AFTER I wrote and sold my first professional novel. That makes my perspective wonky. I knew how to write (at least the basics) and had already struggled with the craft of writing in a way that stressed/fostered the skills especially needed for original fiction. I'd love to know if you've seen any trends/problems that are very specific to having learned to write in someone else's world with characters pre-formed. I can imagine some, have read a few, but I suspect that some of my perspective is... well, too outsider-y, you know? That I come with the wrong set of expectations when I read fic. Because, as my friend naomikritzer said in the comment thread on FB, fanfic is a large part play (and the big draw for me, honestly,) and so it should be judged by different standards perhaps.

Thoughts? Counterpoints? Arguments? Ideas?

In other news, I've been failing NaNoWriMo, somewhat. I've been writing a lot, but I've clearly been playing the game wrong. Yesterday, my word count only went up by 16 words. The problem? I'd done a massive amount of revision and there's no way to record that in the competitive writing that is NaNo. But, I've decided to be a rebel. I'm going to actually just try to have something sellable at the end of the month, and worry less about writing 2,000 words a day on it.

Ha!

Also, I'm going to have to take some time to update you all on my continuing saga of the fish obsession. Loki's tank? It's totally posion! I tried putting a 12 cent feeder fish in it and it was dead within four hours!! Creepy! I'm going to have to stip that tank to the bone and try to restart. The other tank, the thirty gallon one I tried to give a vague sort of Japanese garden look to is doing well. I have two white mountain minnows in there conditioning it and they seem happy as... well, not clams, but some other appropriately happy fish-type thing. My plan with that tank is to have, as Mason calls it, a "bait ball" of minnows. The tank could hold as many as seventeen, so I'm going to slowly built toward that.

Okay, that's all the news for now. Must run. Have a lot of outside work I need to get done!

My fifth day of NaNoWriMo hasn't been terribly awesome. I did actually write a tiny bit on my project, but I spent most of the day fretting and chasing after things involving our furnace broiler.

Last night we had a little scare. The pressure rose up to 35, almost 40. That's outside of the safe zone by quite a bit. Normally, the pressure hovers between 10 and 20. I did the only thing I knew to do: bleed the radiators. That seemed to work. Only later, it happened again. This went on all night, and I ended up calling Xcel Energy at 11:00 pm. We have a HomeSmart plan with them that covers our furnace. So, they called in the people they work with, KB Furances, and I talked to a very helpful guy on the phone to tried to talk me through the possible problems. BEFORE ALL YOU SUPER-HANDY PEOPLE START OFFERING ADVICE, YOU'RE WRONG! Seriously, you, the Internet and several furance guys all told me the same thing: you need to drain your overflow tank. Yeah, well, no.... Turns out our overflow tank hasn't worked properly in years, nay, probably decades, (I found this out, of course, long after spending several hours and scrapping several knuckles attaching a garden hose while standing on a ladder.) At any rate, after spending the day fussing and worrying and dealing with furnace guys and reading everything about radiators on the Internet, I finally reconfigured the McGyver that had been working for the last several millineum (er, at least since Mongomery Ward sold boilers), and, as Scotty so often says, "She's holdin' steady, captain!"

So my day was kind of shot.

I did, however, commit a bit of fan art, which I'll share at a later date. I'd post it now, but I'd like to be able to link to the completed story that it belongs to--but my friend empty_mirrorsand I are still writing that.

Saturday was a busy, yet fun day. We had a family wedding, which, quite frankly, I'd been dreading. It was for Shawn's neice who is technically a step-neice, and I only mention that because it sort of MATTERS to them in a you're-not-one-of-us way, or at least, we always got the impression that it did. We did want to go, however, because we had the opportunity to hang out with the groom one time when the family gathered for its semi-annual fleischkuekle deep fry, and discovered he was an amazingly nice young man from Argentina named Matyas with a soft-spoken (sometimes deadpan) sense of humor, and we thought, well, we should go for him if nothing else.

Turns out the wedding was kind of awesome. At one point I was pretty sure I was in hell, but that was only because I got cornered by a particular relative with whom I ALWAYS exchange words (and not the pleasant ones.) The ceremony itself was officiated by the very same Unitarian minister who took care not only of our nephew Adam's funeral, but our daughter Ella's as well. She's an amazingly good minister and made the wedding feel spontaneous, genuine and full of laughter.

At the reception we were stuck at the table wedged into the far back corner, which we promptly labeled the Misfits Table. Luckily, when we were joined by another couple, I decided to channel my inner (okay, always outer and always on) best extroverted hostess. I asked all sorts of interesting questions and managed to hand out one of my writing business cards.... because... well, because I ALWAYS DO THAT. (My "stage mom" father should be proud.)

But being that "on" always wears me out, so I slept like a rock, even with the time change.

Sunday, I had an event where I was meant to be the star of a koffeeklatch discussion with MinnSpec (the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers group.) I felt sort of babbly and over-shary, but whatever. No one ran from the room screaming and I was able to give away the last of my contributor copies of PRECINCT 13 as freebies. So I call it a win. I also met up with one of my NaNoWriMo local writing buddies, and we chatted a long time afterwards about writing in general and NaNo in specific.

I got home a bit later than expected and discovered Mason's playdate already in progress. Mason's across-the-street buddies invited him and his friend out to play swords and capture the flag and whatever "spud" is. That was lovely, actually, because it meant us grow-ups (which included naomikritzer got to talk without child-filters on, and I always love hanging out with Naomi, regardless.

A good weekend until the whole furnace debacle, actually. As I said on Facebook, I love owning an old home, but I don't always love old plumbing (and other old fixtures.) Also, occassional I miss having a landlord on speed dial to whom I could simply say, "Fix this!" Even if they ignored the problem, it wouldn't be _mine_, you know?

Okay, back to the writing grindstone. I still have Loft proposals to write as well as NaNo projects. *sigh*

Since I'm still an unemployed writer, I've decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo.  I've decided to do this under my real name "lydamorehouse," so if you're also doing it and looking for a writing buddy, feel free to connect to me. 

I've been told the best way to survive National Novel Writing Month (which, btw, starts in a matter of weeks, beginning in November,) is to do a lot of pre-plotting and outlining before the big event.  The idea is that will keep you focused when you're trying to push words out.  But, I have a much bigger problem:  I'm not sure which project I want to focus on.

At Gaylaxicon, thanks in large part to Kyell's enthusiasm for it, I actually got an offer to publish my gay superhero story, which I read as a work in progress at WorldCON.  Being the sort of person I am (*cough*writingwhore*cough*), the idea that there's a built in market for this novel/novella really appeals to me.  Plus, the story is a great deal of fun.  It would not be the sort of thing that I would find difficult to sit down and plow through for an entire month.

However, the editor who offered kept apologizing for the fact that almost no money would be available, and he encouraged me to try to sell that story elsewhere, should I finish it.  At this point in my career, any offer works for me.  However, it does put this project on a more even ground with something like writing the next Garnet Lacey and/or Precinct 13 story as an e-book.

I could potentially make some $$ if I self-published a sequel/continuation of one of my existing series as an e-book.  Presumably there are fans out there who would want to buy an e-book release.  My biggest worry/concern about doing a Tate Hallway e-book is that I'm not quite sure what my rights are in regards to those books.  All of the Tate books are still in print, which means they belong to Penguin USA.  Technically, my contracts stipulate that the publisher has right of first refusal on all sequels/next works of paranormal romance, but I have no idea if that extends to a project like this.  I suppose I should ask my agent.  She would know.

The other drawback is one I probably shouldn't admit to in public, but part of me still resists this business model: self-e-publishing.  It still feels really labor intensive to me, and I remain unconvinced all that work upfront is worth the supposed eventual paycheck.  One of the things I like about having a big, New York publisher is (the advance, but also) that I don't have to mess around with all the formatting details.  Plus, I'd suddenly be responsible for the single most critical part of a book's success--the cover art.  That, quite frankly, freaks me out.  And, I'd need to be super-rigorous about typos.  Anyone reading here or my frist-drafty fanfic KNOWS I have a problem with spelling and I have NEVER ACTUALLY mastered the use of the comma in the English language. 

On top of those super-appealing options is a third one--all those other stories I said to myself, "damn, if I ever get time I'd like to work on those."  The problem, of course, is that I've had time, and nothing has quite grabbed me, alas. But, this feels like the perfect time to take on something that's been a dream project.  So, I don't know. 

I need to decide soon.  With NaNoWriMo approaching, I'm going to need to focus on those outlines.  (Another plus in the Hallaway projects column is that all the potential novels is that they come with book proposals/outlines already written.)