Writing 101: Falling Out of Love with Writing

Before you self-publish, writing is a passion and a burning desire. Once you start self-publishing, it can start to become a chore. Falling out of love with writing is common to all authors, and it happens to everyone from time to time. There is definitely such a thing as getting too much of a good thing. 

Breakin' Up is Hard to Do 

Remember when writing was a hobby? Once you start self-publishing, it becomes part of your to-do list. Now, you've got books to promote. You've got links to Tweet. You've got sales figures to check and pages to edit and networking to do and forums to check...and oh yeah, you need to get some writing done in the middle of all of that. 

Self-published authors have a lot on their plate, and that makes it easy to fall out of love with writing. Many indie writers spend the least amount of time on the actual writing part. The research, the editing, the promotion -- this all takes up a huge amount of time. Creating book covers and trailers is also time-consuming. It's enough to drive anyone to the verge of a breakup. 

Think back to the first question again. You've got to remember when writing was your passion and your hobby, and come to terms with the fact that your role as a writer has now expanded. All the extra stuff is going to improve your skills and expose you to more readers. While you're doing all this remembering, don't forget about the time when no one read your work at all. You gain exposure as a self-published author, and that means you've got to put time in on a bunch of other tasks. 

Whenever you need to, schedule a little time to romance your writing again. Take time out from Tweeting or blogging or thinking about plots or whatever you're doing, and take a reading break. Go back to a book or short story you wrote a long time ago, something you haven't looked at it a while, and start reading. You'll see how you've improved since then, and you'll remember all those old feelings. Read long enough, and you may fall back in love with your first love (writing) all over again. If even that doesn't shake you out of your funk, give yourself a day off. Ignore social media, ignore the to-do list, ignore your email if you dare, and just take a break. Go do something else, get refreshed, and return to the page feeling a lot more loose and relaxed. You and your love of writing are bound to hit the occasional rough patch, but the two of you can always work it out.

Judgment: Sneak Peek

Happy Halloween! It's a day for scares, and that means it's perfect for unveiling my newest excerpt from Judgment (Deck of Lies, #4). The fourth and final installment in the Deck of Lies comes out next month. If you buy Death (Deck of Lies, #3) from Amazon, Smashwords or B&N, you'll get an excerpt from the first chapter. If you haven't already read the first three books in the Deck of Lies, you probably shouldn't read this sneak peek!

Chapter 4

The day’s mail arrived about forty minutes after my tutoring session ended. It was 3 PM, so it was Morales who came to the cell with a stack of envelopes and magazines in his hands. “Mail call,” he announced. “Please stand back from the bars in the center of your cell.”

I knew this, of course, and I rolled my eyes as he made the requisite announcement. Minutes ticked by in silence as he sorted through the pile. The magazines he shoved between the bars, where they landed on the concrete floor with lazy slapping sounds. The envelopes he saved until last, looking into each one before he either dropped it into the mailbag on his shoulder or slid it between the bars into my cell. They were all slit open, and earlier in the day someone had already looked at every single piece of mail sent my way. Everything I sent out was examined, too.

The guards used to give me every single piece of mail, even the ugliest stuff. My upcoming trial, and Laurel’s murder, had been national news for weeks. The story wasn’t being covered as vigorously as it had been in the very beginning, but I was still getting plenty of what the guards used to mockingly call “fan mail.”

It started arriving for me two days after I was locked in jail in July. The first “fan mail” was written in bold red marker on a crisp white page. It simply said “you will burn in hell.” Other letters were more intricate, and more threatening. I’d even received artwork, graphic caricatures of myself sitting in an electric chair or hanging from a rope around my neck.

They terrified me and haunted me, those pictures, until I finally broke down and told River about it. He assured me it couldn’t possibly happen. “They do lethal injection in California,” he’d said.

So the picture of me in the chair, with my hair sticking up all over my head and my eyes bulging out of my skull, shouldn’t frighten me at all.

Morales was the first guard to start sorting the mail for me, throwing away the hate letters and horrible drawings and leaving only the stuff I might want to see. By the time August was coming to its end, none of the guards still subjected me to the horrors the came to me in the mail each and every day.

The world hated me…because it loved Laurel.

I’d read all the articles that I could get my hands on, and managed to pull some information out of River and Asher. The press were treating Laurel like she was some sort of angel, and I was this totally messed up girl with a messed up past. Laurel was the queen of the Debate Team, she was on the volleyball team, she ran marathons for charity, she was active in teen activities at one of the big LA churches. She was beautiful, and she was tall, and she was apparently incapable of taking a bad picture at any point in her brief life. The media had printed the entire Riordan family album in the last few weeks. Pictures of baby Laurel, toddler Laurel and school girl Laurel were splashed on the front pages of People and the like. Teary quotes from volunteer organizers and teachers were printed and re-printed.

Every picture they’d ever printed of me showed wild hair, reddish eyes and a twisted facial expression that made me look like Satan’s daughter. The worst one of them all was one of the pictures taken at my hearing – I was wearing county jail orange and staring into the crowd with an angry, intense look on my face.

“Just one letter today,” Morales chirped. He’d thrown most of my stack back into the mailbag. “Anything outgoing?”

“Not today.”

“Be back to check on you later.”

I nodded, and waited for him to get to the end of the hall before I rushed forward to gather up my remaining mail. The one letter I still had was from River, and as usual it contained very few words. It was another pencil sketch, this one an elaborate design of curving lines that reminded me of flowers, with a short note on the back: see you soon.

Writing 101: Keeping Up the Energy

I am literally exhausted every day by 1 pm. This is because I spend my mornings cleaning and working out, and it's a pretty intense routine. When the afternoon rolls around, I finally sit down to work...and I stay right where I fall. I don't stop working until 9 or 10 pm at night. The life of an indie author can be packed pretty full of stuff to do, and that's why keeping up the energy is so very important. 

The American Obsession

Energy has become a commodity in the United States. Watch television Stateside for an hour, and you'll see that it's true. Shows are packed with ads for energy drinks, of all things, and they've become so prolific you can even get them in a diet version. Indie authors, who often maintain full-time jobs while doing all of the marketing, research, writing and editing for their books on their own, are probably the prime target for these ads. If self-published authors aren't tired and overworked, then no one is. 

But keeping up your energy level by pumping yourself full of sugar and caffeine, the main ingredients in energy drinks, is no way to write. Unnatural energy and heavily caffeinated drinks that make you wired are also going to totally wreck your focus, make you forgetful and may manifest itself as frantic, unorganized writing. By the same token, being overly tired can make you lazy when you're writing. You might skip over the details and rush too quickly toward plot points, creating text that feels harried and stilted. 

It's not natural to move between highs and lows all day long, and there are much better ways of keeping up the energy so you can stay focused, write well and still take care of all those other things on your to-do list. 

Healthy Energy

Trying to be creative after working all day, dealing with the family, maybe tending to chores and engaging in exercise is really a form of self-torture that many indie authors happily embrace. But this lifestyle will start to feel unsustainable pretty darn quickly. Everyone needs down time, rest time, time off and time to sit and stare at the wall if that's really what they want. Scheduling every available minute is wearing on the body and on the mind. Self-published authors have got to make room for themselves. Make sure you've got some free time and some "you" time. Take the time for that manicure. Take the time to go shopping for that new pair of boots. Take the time to wander around the bookstore (if there's still one open in your town). 

And in-between all of that time-taking, you're going to have to make time for everything else. Do it in a healthy way by learning how to keep up your energy in a positive way.

• Showering. That's right, nothing's off-limits at this blog. I'm even going to give you shower tips. Instead of waking yourself up in the morning with coffee, change your showering habits. After you're all finished and nice and relaxed under that hot water, turn on the cold. Give yourself an icy blast to wake up and face the day with much wider eyes.
• Coffee-drinking. Speaking of coffee, if you're going to drink it try to wait. I don't drink one of my iced coffee drinks until the early afternoon. When you wake up in the morning, you should already have some good energy going because you just stopped sleeping. If you pick yourself up with the caffeine early, you're going to feel totally used up by the three o'clock. 
• Eating habits. You want to know why you're tired? Because you aren't eating enough carbs. It became the fashion to eschew carbohydrates in favor of losing weight, and suddenly the energy drink industry boomed. These two things are not unrelated. Carbohydrates are essential to providing the body with energy, and most people need to eat a diet that's 50 percent carbs every day. If you want to do it in a weight-aware fashion, eat wheat breads and low-cal crackers, thin bagels and potatoes that have been grilled or baked instead of fried. I eat a carb-rich lunch every day right around 1 pm to give myself a boost of natural energy and perk myself up after my grueling morning routine. When do you start to feel tired and unfocused? Go eat a slice of wheat toast with sugar-free jelly and see how that suits you instead of reaching for an energy drink. 
• Sleeping. This is often where I fail, but never underestimate the importance of sleep. The human body needs to sleep daily in order to regenerate and recharge, and if you don't get at least three uninterrupted hours you may as well never get in bed at all. I try to give myself 6 hours of sleep and even that doesn't feel like enough. Don't work so much that you aren't sleeping enough. I started waking myself up an hour later in the mornings, because I found that I was so tired when I woke up earlier it took me an hour longer just to really get going anyway. Are you wasting time in the mornings because you're just too exhausted? Pay attention to how long it takes you to complete your morning routine. Sleep in the next day, clock yourself again, and see how sleep makes a difference. 

Keeping up the energy is important if you want to keep yourself sane while you work at being a self-published author. You shouldn't drag around all day feeling tired. When writing begins to become a chore, you might need to think about changing some habits and shifting your schedule if at all possible. If you can't function without using caffeine and other weird tricks to keep yourself energized, you're doing way too much. It's always okay to slow down a little, relax a little more and work a little less. Your writing will be better because of it.

Writing 101: Committing Murder

At some point, every author has to face the possibility of committing murder by killing off one of their characters. When it's done well, you can bring an audience to tears. When it's handled incorrectly, you can receive death threats on Twitter. Committing murder is serious business, even if you're only doing it on the page.

Death by Fiction

You don't have to write mysteries to contemplate murder when you're writing a book. Ask J. K. Rowling. She writes fantastical children's books, but she's definitely guilty of fictioncide. Where there is life, there is also death. Instead of ignoring this universal truth, some authors embrace it and use it as a plot device. In some stories, death has to happen to get a certain point across or make something important happen. 

But it's not something you can introduce without advance preparation, and even then you have to walk a pretty careful line. Death is very emotional, even when it's the death of a fictional character.

1,000 Ways to Kill

Before you kill, think. There are lots of different considerations you're going to have to make before you delete someone from the pages of your book for ever.

• Do I know this character? Don't kill for killing's sake. Kill a character that's already been introduced in the book or else it's just empty. If the character doesn't matter, fine, but in most cases you're going to want to create an emotional reaction. You can't do that unless I already know this character, and have preexisting feelings for them. 
• How did they die? The death scene is often pivotal in any book. Make sure you do it justice. If the reader is going to witness the death through the eyes of one or more characters, don't make it too gruesome. It's okay for parts of a book to be difficult to read because of heightened emotions, but don't make it impossible to read. You don't want readers closing your book and never picking it up again because the death scene is too brutal. If the characters are experiencing the death second-hand, because they're learning about it from another source, you may have to work harder to establish the emotion of the scene. Here's something to remember: if you don't cry when you're writing it, I'm not likely to cry when I'm reading it.
• Why does it matter? There should be some consequences from the death. If a character dies, every other character can't carry on with business as usual like it doesn't matter. There has to be some ripple effect, something has to happen as a result, or else the death really has no place being in the book. 

It's never an easy decision to kill a character, but sometimes it is necessary for the story. Make sure you do it right. If it's too traumatic to readers, they may hate you and your book. Soften the effects of the death, and make it clear that something good has come out of this death, in order to balance out the trauma of the event. If the character being killed is an evil and hated one, try to introduce some humanity and sadness into the death. You don't want readers celebrating death in a bloodthirsty fashion. Even when villains die, it should feel a little bit sad.

Books on Film: Psycho

Halloween is almost here...but not yet. There's still time for one more horror-themed book on film, and for the last novel in the series I've picked the best of the best: Psycho. As far as villains go, the one in this story is the one I've always found to be the most terrifying.

The Book

That's right: Psycho was actually a book before it became possibly the most well-known slasher film of all time. It was written in 1959 by Robert Bloch, and it revolves around a man named Norman Bates. 

He runs a small motel just outside of Fairvale, and lives with his dominating mother. The state, unnamed, has moved the highway and the motel has been struggling ever since. They are arguing angrily about the general state of things when the young, lovely Mary Crane arrives at the motel to rent a room. 

She should've stuck to the highway. She's avoiding it because she's a fugitive. After deciding on a whim to take $40,000 from the real estate company where she works, Mary had to make a run for it. The money is for her boyfriend, who has a ton of debt, and it's going to help them get married. But the plan is looking less and less practical by the time she arrives, tired and hungry, at the motel. When Norman invites her to dinner, she accepts. 

This enrages Mrs. Bates, who seems to hate everyone, and Mary overhears the old woman screaming "I'll kill the bitch!" Still, Mary doesn't back down from her dinner date and she gently tries to draw Norman Bates out over the meal. She asks him about himself, and suggests that he might be happier if his mother was off somewhere receiving the proper kind of care she so clearly needs. Norman insists there's nothing really wrong with his mother, and observes that "we all go a little crazy sometimes."

By the time she goes to her room for the night, Mary has decided to return the money because she fears she may end up just like Norman. She steps into the shower to clean up before bed. It's the last thing she ever does. Minutes later, a figure that looks like an old woman savagely attacks her with a butcher knife. Mary winds up beheaded on the floor of the shower.

It's Norman's fate to discover her there. He toys with the idea of turning his mother in, or otherwise letting her pay for her crime, but ultimately finds he can't do it. He gets rid of the body, and everything at the motel goes back to business as usual.

But pretty young women and $40,000 don't disappear without somebody noticing. Mary has a sister named Lila, and she's not about to give her up so easily. She meets up with Mary's boyfriend Sam to track her down. A private detective named Arbogast, hired to trace the missing money, joins them because there's always power in numbers. Arbogast becomes suspicious when he questions Norman Bates, who says that Mary stayed the night at the motel and left, when Norman won't allow his mother to be questioned. 

Arbogast goes to the house, next to the motel, to question the old woman himself. The old woman ends up killing him, too, this time with a razor.

It's at this point that the twist ending is slowly, painstakingly revealed to end with a chilling scene at the police station. If by some miracle you don't know the plot of the story, I'll not to completely ruin it for you.

Two sequels were written, but neither had a great deal of success. The book did gain some notoriety when Alfred Hitchcock adapted it in 1960, but this is one book that has been outshined by its film version. When you put an amazing horror story in the hands of the greatest horror director, this is to be expected.

Film

Hitchcock made a lot of strange decisions when he turned Psycho into a movie in 1960. He didn't allow advance screenings for critics, and decreed that no one would be admitted to theaters once the film began. He also decided to make it in black and white, though color was available and more popular at the time. 

It didn't matter. Psycho is still one of the best scary movies ever made, and if you haven't seen it then I implore you to do whatever you need to do to start watching it as soon as you're done with this post. Hitchcock's version has since been adapted and several sequels have followed, but the original is the best. How good is this movie? Janet Leigh, who was in the film for only the first forty minutes and appeared in a handful of scenes, won an Academy Award for her turn as Marion Crane (changed from Mary for the film). She became widely associated with the film and became one of the first "scream queens" on the big screen. She's also well-known for being Jamie Lee Curtis's mother.

Anthony Perkins chillingly plays Norman Bates, so well that he was typecast for the remainder of his career. The reviews were mixed, the box office numbers phenomenal. Psycho changed the face of horror movies, and the AFI lists it as number one for the best horror flick ever made.

They're probably right. The film is a very faithful adaptation of the book. It even lifts dialogue straight from the page to bring it to the screen. The shower scene where Janet Leigh dies is now the stuff of film legend. It spans more than 3 minutes and puts the viewer right in the killer's point of view, a technique Hitch was famous for using. The scene contains over 50 film cuts and maddening extreme close-ups that are designed to heighten the terror.

Hitch himself said that his film "came entirely" from the book. That's only mostly true. Read the book, watch the movie, and you will find some small differences.

What Got Adapted?

The book takes readers even deeper into the mind of Norman Bates, who doesn't look much at all like Anthony Perkins. On the page, he's a paunchy middle-aged man who wears glasses, a big difference from the slim, younger, passably attractive Perkins. It makes the character much scarier on film, I think, but it's much more clear in the novel that Norman is terrifyingly introverted and lonely. 

More of Mary Crane's thoughts are also revealed in the book, as are the secondary characters who enter the story a little later. Norman also drinks excessively in the book and maintains a collection of pornography, character traits that are erased on the big screen.

The murder scenes are actually more detailed in the film than the book, a surprising reversal. The author doesn't exactly skip over the murders, but he doesn't exactly depict them in clear, gory detail, either. There is more violence in the book. On film, Marion Crane's head is never severed. No way would the studio have let Hitch shoot a scene like that. So he cut the scene to pieces instead with quick edits, and rumor has it that he used chocolate sauce to create the blood. The sauce had the perfect consistency, and since the film was being shot in black and white anyway it didn't really matter if it was red or brown.

Fiction Fashion Icon: Scarlett

Gone With the Wind was published 70 years after the Civil War ended, and introduced countless new generations to this bloody conflict in the United states. It was written in 1936 and became the biggest film ever made just three short years later. And even though it was written about a woman who lived way, way back in the 1860s, it helped to shape 1940s fashion and created one of the most famous fiction style icons of all time: Scarlett O'Hara. 

Belle in a Bell Skirt

Long-time readers of the blog know that Gone With the Wind is my favorite book and my favorite film, and if you've read and seen it then you probably know why. Many, many people cite the novel and the film as their favorites, and many women admire the central heroine (or anti-heroine, depending on your view): Scarlett O'Hara. 

Fashion plays a big part in the book. It's about living through a war, which is no easy time. In the south during the 1860s, it was particularly rough. There are many passages describing Scarlett's attire. She goes from wearing sprigged muslin and gowns with carefully-sewn pearls adorning them to being without a proper bonnet or even a petticoat under her dress. She lives without stockings and hoops and all those many mysterious items that were so essential in those days when skirts had to be several feet wide and brush the floor or you just weren't decent. 

But the fashion of the book didn't come alive until it hit the silver screen in full, glorious Technicolor. Vivien Leigh, playing Scarlett, was bedecked with yards of fabric, acres of jewelry and a wire hoop cage that was (blessedly) much lighter than the real deal would have been back in the day. And though she was already an aged heroine by contemporary 1940s film-goers, Scarlett's fashion leapt from the screen and into the closets of women all over America. 

After it was brought to the big screen in 1939, Gone With the Wind immediately became the most popular film of the day and of all time. It is still the highest-grossing movie ever made, if you factor in ticket price differences between then and now. Clothiers of all types took notice. 

The most popular pattern of the early 1940s mirrored the green and white dress Scarlett wears to the barbeque at Twelve Oaks. Many women also flocked to the dress shop to get a pattern for a white, ruffled gown with the long skirt, an item that mirrored the red-belted dress Scarlett wears in the opening scene of the flick. And the slim, cut silk wedding gowns of the 30s quickly fell out of favor as brides rushed to wear dresses made with puffy sleeves and organza fabric, more like the gown Scarlett wore when she married Charles Hamilton. Organza is still a popular wedding fabric today, though puffy sleeves are a bit less common.

Hats were everywhere in the summer of 1940. Big-brimmed styles were all the rage because of Scarlett's big hats, and some designers even created bonnet-like headpieces resembling some of the more casual headwear shown in the film. Women also rushed out to buy themselves hair netting and fabric bags, and began fashioning their locks with snoods like those worn by Scarlett.

Scarlett's fashion helped inspire women everywhere, and her story continues to delight book readers and movie watchers to this day. Her strong, fearless character has drawn the admiration of many, and that's why so many have tried to copy her style. So the next time you feel like ripping down the curtains to make a new dress, go with it. That's what Scarlett would want.

Writing 101: If You Can't Take the Criticism...

 As a self-published author, you have to go out and actively seek reviews if you want to get them. It takes a lot of work, maybe a little bit of deal-making, some letter-polishing and plenty of time. And if you can't take the criticism, you might as well not waste it...not yours, or mine. 

You Asked For It 

Before you actually ask someone to review your work, make sure you're prepared to hear it. Some authors absolutely want to get reviews for their books...provided those reviews are filled with praise. Others react quite poorly upon getting any sort of less positive feedback, and don't at all want to absorb criticism in any way. 

There are a whole lot of reasons why you simply can't have this attitude. Even if you didn't ask the reviewer for a review specifically, even if it's just a random Amazon reviewer whom you can't track, you have to be prepared to absorb their comments in a healthy and productive way. The very second that you put your work out there for others to read, you're opening the door to criticism whether you go out and seek it or not. So whatever they say, you owe it to yourself to pay attention...no matter how painful it might be. 

Time to Get Tough

If you haven't already had the sensitivity beaten out of you by the time you've decided to self-publish, I'm sorry. You're about to have some pretty ego-pounding experiences. Many indie authors have already been rejected, at least to their way of thinking, by the traditional publishing world. Agents and publishing houses are cold, impersonal, and their repeated rejections can hurt. More in-depth reviews are often even more painful, but at least those who have weathered rejection in the past have become a little more desensitized. 

Either way, you've got to get tough and you've got to be objective. Anyone who ever reviews your work is a great help to you, no matter how cruel or hurtful their comments may seem. It's always extremely valuable to know what even one reader thinks, and every review is a window right into their thoughts. Any tiny piece of information they give you can be used to make your work better...even when it feels like they're ripping out your heart. 

As a self-published author, you're exposing a part of yourself to the world and you're opening up a door right into your soul. That's the way it is. If you aren't tough enough to take all the slings and arrows that are coming, then please close the door. Don't let the criticism wear you down or diminish your love of writing. If you find that reviews are affecting you in a negative way, stop reading them. They can be a great help, but for some authors who are sensitive to it they can turn into a gigantic hindrance. You can still be a writer...just maybe a little bit more reclusive. And if you know you can't take it or you might be too sensitive to really process the criticism you receive, then stop asking for them. Any reviewer can get nasty if you manage to push the right button, and you never know when that might happen.

Whether you're reading the reviews or not, you have to be tough on yourself. Either be disciplined enough to ignore them, or be strong enough to really absorb them. For a self-published author, there really is no in-between.

Writing 101: The Politics of Being an Author

In case you've somehow been avoiding TV, social media and most public Internet sites over the past 10 months, it's an election year. Tensions are especially high during election season, when the news media is amped up on Red Bull and rhetoric, but some politician is always out there campaigning at all times. It's easy to get swept up in politics during any year, but you can't ever forget about the politics of being an author...particularly if you're a self-published author.

Politically Speaking

When you're a self-published author, you are your own PR agent. You're in charge of all your marketing and all your promotion, and it's a really hard job that takes up a whole lot of time. So don't screw yourself by actually being yourself in the middle of all that.

That's right. When your parents and your friends and your teachers were telling you to "just be yourself," they didn't count on you becoming a self-published author and your own best friend and biggest supporter. You can be yourself when you're at home, but you can't be yourself when you're in your author persona -- at least, not really. 

Politics are polarizing, and that's a real problem for you as an author. When you're presenting yourself to the world as a writer, the social media accounts you use to tout your books are no longer your own. That means you can't start screeching about politics in the middle of a bunch of tweets about your books. The minute you make your political or religious affiliation known, you're running the risk of turning off a large portion of your audience. 

I know it's true, because I'll hit my "block" button in less than 1 second if I see someone expressing a political opinion that's opposite my own...and I will not reveal on which side my bread is buttered, no matter how nicely you ask. Why? Because when you are a self-published author, like I am, you are neutral on any and all hot-button issues and political matters. Otherwise, you're going to be screwing yourself out of readers. Isn't it hard enough to get them already?

As a matter of fact, it's not even a good idea for you to have any sort of opinion except in a very specific set of circumstances.

Politically Correct

If you write about politics, then obviously you're going to end up tweeting about it, blogging about it, and what-have-you. If you write about politics, you're already targeting a specific group and that group is interested in politics. You're going to be using political opinions and rhetoric in your promotions, and it's totally appropriate to do so. But if you write about anything else, just stay neutral. Offensive subject matter creeps into books a lot, but your author persona should never be offensive or off-putting to anyone if you can help it.