Trying Out Life as a Full-Time Writer

by Gigi Pandian

I've had a pretty amazing year. Right at the top of the list: there's no evidence of cancer in my body. Second on the list: I signed two three-book deals. Exactly what I wished for. Only...

Should I have been careful what I wished for?

When I was going through cancer treatments in 2011 and 2012, I very much embraced the "seize the day" mantra, throwing myself into writing and publishing while savoring the small things in life. But once life got back to normal, it was easy to let minor annoyances get in the way. I even found myself anxious about the amount of writing I'd agreed to take on by certain deadlines. Two of the six books I sold were complete, two more in draft form, and two completely unwritten.

Where's the fun in being stressed out about writing? The whole point of wanting to have a writing career is that it's something I love to do. So I took a step back and looked at my life. With the funky schedule of my graphic designer day job, I get several hours of writing done three mornings a week: two weekday mornings plus Sunday mornings -- and yes, it was a big sacrifice to give up leisurely Sunday mornings with the New York Times! Making tough choices like that is a given, if you're serious about fitting writing into your life. So even though I sometimes grumble when the alarm goes off on Sunday morning, I don't really mind. However, what I did mind was that with my new book deadlines I was starting to feel rushed.

There's a big difference between writing a competent book that has a decent plot, decent characters, and decent writing, and writing a truly engaging book that's exciting for the author to write and for the reader to devour. We all strive for the latter. Without sufficient time, I felt like I might only succeed at the former. I love each of these books, so I didn't wish I could back out of writing any of them. I wanted to find a way to fit them into my life.

If you read the title of this blog post, you already know where this is heading. I've decided to take a three-month sabbatical from my day job. For 100 days, I'm going to be a full-time writer!

My sabbatical begins this coming Saturday and I don't go back to work until February. During my time as a full-time writer, I'm going to finish writing/revising one novel and write a draft of another.

This is a grand experiment for me. I'm not someone who fantasizes about being a full-time writer. I'm definitely lucky that I love my day job. But more than that, I love how it gives me structure. If I know I have to be at work at 12:30, damn straight I'm getting up and getting my writing done with no excuses. I'm hoping three months is a long enough time for me to do everything I want to do, but a short enough time that it provides that same procrastination-killing fire under me that I'm used to. Wish me luck!

p.s. I'll be doing NaNoWriMo to kick off my writing this November. Anyone else?

The Liberation from Shame

Rebecca Lyndon is a special friend to the PensFatales. She wrote an amazing piece on this interesting week in publishing, and I begged her to let me post it here. (On a personal note, I love her work, and I think it's seriously awesomely hot.) Please welcome her. - Rachael

It’s been an interesting week. Last Saturday, an email from Amazon popped up in my inbox, telling me that they were taking down one of my books for violating their content guidelines.

This book, a collection of erotic stories told from the point of view of a young woman who has decided to break away from her family’s history rushing into bad relationships by exploring her sexual fantasies before she settles down, is probably the most vanilla of my books. That’s not to say it isn’t hot. It is. At least, I like to think it is, but the floggers and the whips are kept to a minimum.

At first, I laughed at the takedown notice. Humor is my primary defense. I wrote some emails to a few close friends and joked about how I was able to violate content guidelines that were ridiculously vague.

“What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.”

Well, no. I guess it’s not what I would expect.

But after a little while, my humor began to fade, and something else took its place. It started out as a vague dissatisfaction that took root in my belly and slowly grew outward. After a few days, I realized that I was well and truly pissed, and that I had every right to be.

This book was special to me. It was a departure from my usual stuff. I’m an erotic romance writer, you see. Kinky stuff. People discovering their love of BDSM as they fall in love with each other. The book that Amazon took down was my first foray into pure erotica. Sex for the pure joy of it without the promise of a happily ever after.

Writing it was liberating. For just a little while, to break from the conventions of my chosen genre, to not have to worry about deep internal conflicts, or who was saving who, to focus on the needs, desires and sensations of one character--it was fun. Really fun.

Writing from Amber’s point of view taught me important lessons about writing all characters. When you write romance it’s easy to think of your heroine and hero as one unit, always moving together throughout the story, and not as complex separate beings who have no idea that their happily ever after endings are assured. Desires, not just sexual ones,--though I think those pack an emotional punch that is both powerful and universally relatable--and how we act on them are the ultimate show of character.

But it’s what I learned after Amazon took the story down that has left the most lasting impact.

I never received, nor have I seen any statement from Amazon that explains why they went on a banning spree, but it isn’t hard to come up with a solid guess. With the shocking news breaking last week that erotica exists and that different people have different kinks, the actual disturbing fact surfaced that erotica was coming up in searches for children’s books.

Let me be clear that I don’t think this is acceptable. Not even a little bit. But let me be equally clear that I believe to my core that the onus is on retailers to restrict access to adult material and not on the artist to restrict content.

So why don’t booksellers just refuse to sell all erotica, and skip the controversy altogether? They can. It’s their right. Just like it’s mine to write whatever I like, at least here in America. Check your local listings in other countries.

But here’s the thing. If that’s your gut reaction, and you’re in the business of selling books, then allow me to humbly suggest that you look into another profession. Because historically, being in the book business is subversive as shit. It’s for the tough and courageous. Those willing to stand up to the book burners, not jump on their bandwagon first chance they get. Those who refuse to be shamed into submission.

Which is another important thing I learned this week. I am not ashamed to say that I am a fan of erotica, no matter how many times I read that I should be. I am not ashamed that I read it, and I’m sure as hell not ashamed that I write it.

Why? Because, deep down, I believe that erotica is the liberation from shame. It’s pointing a spot light straight on those dark desires that the rest of the world says you must keep hidden. It allows you to realize that those terrible fancies that occasionally play at the back of your mind don’t make you a monster. Other people have them too. Regular people. People who have families, and houses and pay their taxes. They’ve all got a kink of their very own.

And that’s why I think people go after erotica. It’s not about the sex. It’s a fear of a group of people who reject the notion that shame, not innate human decency, is the glue that holds society together.

I understand this fear. I believed it for a long time. Maybe that’s why I have no animosity for those who still do. Fear of your own insides is a terrible thing.

But I did say that this has been an interesting week, not a bad one. In the end, cooler heads prevailed. A couple of days ago, I received an email from Amazon saying that upon further review my book did not violate their content guidelines, and I could republish it.

I can only hope that everyone else who was affected by the mass takedown received the same email. Because if not, then that would be the real shame.

Let go. Embrace. Write!

by Juliet Blackwell

Recently I’ve had several people ask me what they should read in order to learn to write. 

I’m going to say something close to blasphemy. 

The truth is, I don’t believe in reading books about writing.  Reading is not writing.   

Writing is writing.  In fact, most successful authors I know “learned” to write by writing their first book, or their first several tomes. 

So if you want to write, then write.  How?  Learn to let go, and embrace.

Let go of the results of that first book.  Just finish it: prove to yourself that you can write 80k words of narrative.  It doesn’t have to be poetry; it just has to be DONE.

Let go of “worthy”: no writing out there is “worthy” in everyone’s estimation, and yet it’s all worthy.  Let go of the concept --it's not useful.

Embrace the “vomit draft”:  I hate the graphic nature of that term, but it’s the only word that truly encapsulates the feel of that first, fast draft.  Some people call it the sh*t draft, but to me it’s more like pulling things up, painfully, and spewing them out on the page.  Again, I apologize for the imagery, but the process of writing –like most art-- isn’t pretty. Embrace the messiness, let go of the worthy, and get it on the page! 

Embrace dogged determination: just DO it (insert Nike swish here).  If it’s twenty minutes a day, make those minutes count.  If you’ve got all day, go for it. Don’t think about it, just do it.

Let go/ignore frenemies.  Stick your fingers in your ears and hum.  Practice the friendly, “No, sorry, I have to write.” (this gets easier with practice!) Before you’re officially published it’s hard to convince people (and yourself) that you’re actually doing something important, so be clear on this for yourself before sharing with others:  This is my work.  It is worthy. No one else can tell my story.

Let go the monkey mind.  The monkey mind jumps all over the place.  Force yourself to enter your own story and ignore the laundry, the phone, the internet, the sunny day outside your window.  Want to write?  You have to give up something.  Maybe many somethings. It’s a sacrifice.  But as those of us who write know, it’s well worth it.

Try NaNoWriMo – 2k words (8-10 pages) a day is nothing for a lot of us working authors, but if you’ve never written a book it can feel daunting (as it can if you have, for example, a full time job and children and a spouse and and and…)  NaNoWriMo can help you get past that hump: you have to write, whether it’s good or not, whether it’s worthy or not.  (At 2k a day, you have a 60k rough draft in one month.  That leaves you 11 months to tinker on it, correct plot problems, craft language, reach for the magic…and then you’ve written a clean, lovely manuscript in one year!)

Embrace other creative people:  Throw yourself into the creative world.  Find a writing group such as Sisters in Crime, or Romance Writers of America, or NaNoWriMo, or a local group.  Find a fellow author who will sit with you in a café and write for hours while ignoring the crowd, and each other. 

Embrace yourself as an artist: an artist doesn’t do what other people do.  Perhaps that means you have no idea who won American Idol, or the World Series, or the Oscars.  Perhaps that means you had to skip the beach trip or that last delicious hour of sleep.  Perhaps it means you don’t shower for days and you live with the voices in your head…it’s all good, you’re a quirky *artist*!!!

And finally…if any of the above is helpful, embrace it…if it doesn’t apply to you, let it go.  We all have different ways of getting our stories written, so feel free to call bullsh*t on me!

(This has nothing to do with anything...but check out my great house at California Home Design. Happy Halloween!!!)

Irene Adler

I’ve stopped watching Elementary. It’s not because I don’t like the show. I do. I enjoyed almost everything about it. I loved Jonny Lee Miller’s very human take on Sherlock. I liked how they focused on how he was driven by his addictive tendencies. I liked how they made Watson a smart and worthy character and not just some clueless barnacle clinging to Sherlock’s side. I even liked most of the mysteries.

But I’m not watching Elementary this season, and it’s because of what they did to Irene Adler.

When I was young, my mother used to read me Sherlock Holmes when I got sick. I would climb into her bed and drink apple juice and hear stories about missing blue carbuncles and shady-sounding Red Headed Leagues.

I liked Sherlock. Who wouldn’t? He was the hero. He was exciting and brilliant. He solved mysteries no one else could.

But the character I really fell in love with was Irene Adler.

Irene is only in one story, A Scandal in Bohemia, but she stayed with me, and seeing how she’s showed up in just about every modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes that I can think of, I’m guessing that she stuck with a lot of people. It’s not hard to guess why. Irene was the only one who ever really bested Sherlock.

That’s right the only person smarter than Sherlock Holmes was a woman.

Okay, I hear some of you out there saying that technically Mycroft was smarter, but that’s just comparing stat to stat. An intellectual exercise. Irene beat him in a fair fight down on the field. That makes her the winner as far as I’m concerned.

Irene Adler wasn’t just any woman; she was an awesome woman. She was an opera singer, an adventuress, and a lover to a king, but most of all she was a woman who lived life on her own terms. And those terms included being left the hell alone by a harassing monarch and marrying the man she fell in love with, despite having a life of her own before she met him. Crazy, I know.

Yeah, I love me some Irene Adler. And I get real pissed off when people do her wrong. Which is exactly what Elementary did--big time.

They took this smart, independent character and turned her into a criminal mastermind, one who was responsible for dozens of deaths. She uses her body as a weapon to get what she wants out of Sherlock. She’s evil. But the end, she’s done in by her overly sentimental heart.

Now, to be fair, Elementary isn’t the only one that’s done this to Irene. Those Robert Downey Jr. movies made her into a thief, and that show, Sherlock, made her into an evil dominatrix who only uses her sexuality to gather information for blackmail and helping terrorists.

And they all pissed me off. For a couple of reasons.

Let’s start with the idea that a female character’s only weapon against a male is sexual. The “real” Irene was never attracted to Sherlock. The only man she had feelings for was her fiancé. That’s why he was her fiancé.

She didn’t need to dazzle poor Sherlock with her lady parts to beat him. She had her brains. She saw past his disguise and made one of her own. A more effective one, and she fooled him good. And she didn’t do it for nefarious reasons. She did it to protect herself and the one she loved. She wasn’t some female version of a melodrama villain, flashing her tits instead of twirling a mustache.

Which brings me my next gripe. Is the idea of an intelligent, sexually experienced female character really so frightening that the only role she can play is a villain?

Really? Because please remember that A Scandal in Bohemia was published over 120 years ago, and at the end of the story Sherlock describes Irene as being on higher level than the king. That’s right, a story written in the Victorian era is more progressive than the stuff you can find on tv today. Think about that for a while.

But let be clear about something. These paper thin, stereotypical versions of Irene aren’t just infuriating; they are insulting. They are representative of a lack of imagination and depth that goes into creating female characters in general. And that’s really why I won’t be watching Elementary this season.

Lisa's Writing Tips

So, the Pens are back (plus Mysti and Ruby!)...we're all really excited to be here. Seriously, excited.

To writers, talking about writing is almost as good as doing it. I'm a perpetual student. I have a fairly extensive library of books on writing. Writing novels, writing short stories, writing screenplays. Three act structures, Hero's journey, scene and sequel. How to make good writing great.

Books by famous authors about their career paths and how they did it and continue to keep doing it. Books on mythology, archetypes, symbolism. Books on editing once the draft is done. Books on style. Books on marketing.

There is always more to learn. Which is true of any profession or passion. There is always more to learn.

I thought for my posts perhaps each month I would highlight a particular book. Of course, I may change my mind which is definitely the point of this newer, less-structured format. This month's book was supposed to be a highlight of Self-Editing forFiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

It's an excellent book chock full of tips on how to make your writing cleaner and more concise, and how to avoid common mistakes. I refer back to the information frequently. But when I sat down to write this post, I kept getting distracted by what's been going on in my own writing life lately and decided to share my personal tips this month instead.

So what I want to talk about is actually getting your butt in the chair and writing. One of the hazards of being a writer is that talking about writing is almost as good as doing it. I know you've seen that line before, right at the beginning of this post. But it's true.

It's really easy to talk about writing, about learning the craft, about structure, about heroes, heroines, villains, about plot points, black moments, returning for the elixir. The list goes on and on....

But at the end of the day (week, month, year) what matters most is whether or not you sat down at your computer or with a notebook and pencil and actually put words on the page. Because that's what writers do. They write.

So here are my tips (in no particular order):

1. I keep a spreadsheet. A practice I learned from the absolutely amazing Suzanne Brockmann at a workshop years ago. She mentioned lawerly billable hours and keeping track of her time. I started doing the same. I keep a year long spreadsheet, and I put in all my work whether it is 20 pages of editing or 652 new words written or even research.

2. I also delete nothing (or almost nothing) from a work in progress until the draft is complete and I've gone through two or three revision passes. Then I take all the leftovers, which I move to the bottom of the manuscript, and dump them into a leftover file doc. I do delete a few words or notes here and there but if the edit is longer than four or five words, it goes at the bottom of the document.

3. If I am having trouble diving into a scene, I will do some of these: Write in 15 minute increments. Write the scene in first person. Switch the scene point of view. Write or Die (www.writeordie.com  online for free). Start a word war with a friend. (Adrienne Bell and I are getting to be pros at this. I lost September so I have to buy lunch this month :) )

So those are my words to get you started. I'll leave you with this:

Just write. That's what we do.

Lisa

ps. Some Pens and friends have a holiday anthology coming October 20th! We are pretty excited about this collaboration. More later in the month....

Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas

Where love begins on Main Street and ends happily ever after....

Christmas, the most magical season, is almost upon the small mountain town of Snow Creek. For seven couples, holiday wishes mean more than just gifts or parties. Can Snow Creek pull off its annual holiday miracle of bringing love to town? 

Art Returns to San Francisco

Okay, I admit, capital-A art never left San Francisco. The deYoung is still there and the Legion of Honor welcomes guests. It's just that the last few decades have been hard on the lower-case art scene in San Francisco. Many struggling musicians, artists, and writers can't afford to live in the city.  And nobody likes to fight their way in during commute hours. I know ten writers in the East Bay for every writer who lives in my 7 square miles of paradise.

The view from my writer's garret

I fell in love with San Francisco in 1977, a young woman in search of something to live for after an unexpected tragedy, and have been in love ever since.  San Francisco, you were the first beautiful thing I found in that difficult time. More days than not, you take my breath away.

I almost had to leave this city when rents skyrocketed. Luckily, with the patient help of agent Michelle Bouchet, I fell in love with San Francisco in 1977, a young woman in search of something to live for after an unexpected tragedy, and have been in love ever since.  San Francisco, you were the first beautiful thing I found in that difficult time. More days than not, you take my breath away.

Our little redwood box of a house was built in 1945, and served as the destination of choice for many African-American families who earned a middle-class living in the shipyards during the war. It stayed at least 50% African American until the new millenium, when the pressure for housing hit made this neighborhood the most culturally diverse in San Francisco, welcoming Asian, Latino, and Caucasians alike. Without much effort aside from day-to-day respect and courtesy, we all get along. The neighborhood had a few tough years, so everyone here is interested in keeping it safe for the kids, safe for the elderly, safe for everyone.

Best of all, there's a surprising amount of artistic work going on here. My next-door neighbor just dropped a record (Mo' Cubic Inches, which he says is a car motor reference). My husband writes, pencils, inks, and publishes his own graphic novel, Tales of the Moonlight Cutter. Three Million William, down the street, has a lot of projects in development, all run from his barbershop kingdom. And I'm working on my first and second crime novels. Who knows what the kids in the rented house across the way are up to?

See all the Hopperesque warm light?

So far, my favorite thing about the neighborhood is the M-car, especially at night. The rails shake the ground with a deep vibration before an M-train drives by our house, and for a long moment after. The light inside each car is warm: every fifteen minutes from nightfall until I fall asleep, a little Hopper tableau drives by. It's magical.

Note: After composing this post, I learned there was a murder just a few blocks up the street. Just a guy getting off the M-car, shot by another guy from the same train. I think we'll rally, not retreat from each other. At least, I hope so!

The Pens are Back!

Gigi here. It's true! We're back!

The Pens Fatales began in 2009, a group of eight women beginning our writing careers. Each fortnight we would select a new topic to discuss, and for three years we had a great time blogging and getting to know many of our readers. By 2012, we were all busy with more writing projects than we ever imagined. We felt like we'd had a good run, so we decided to abandon daily blogging. Our last regularly scheduled post was on the topic of "friendship" in April 2012.

Juliet and I were on the Women of Suspense panel
at the Sonoma County Book Festival yesterday.

But... we missed the blog! So we got together and brought it back. Our favorite parts of the blog will still be here, but format is a bit different. Rather than different topics, we'll be blogging about all things writing-related. We've learned so much about writing and publishing since we came together in 2009 -- one of the most important things being that it's important to have a tribe of like-minded writers. This is our tribe.

Not everyone had time to fit blogging into their schedules, so while we're all still friends offline, here on the blog you'll notice a slightly new line-up. We'll miss our absent founding members, but we're thrilled to be back! There are 9 of us and we'll each post one blog post per month, approximately every three days. My day is the 22nd, so here I am to welcome everyone back.

On my end it's been an exciting year, and especially an exciting summer. I recently signed my second three-book deal within four months. Yes, it's pretty surreal.

It took a long time to get here, but thanks to the encouragement and wisdom of the Pens, I'm now writing both the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Series for Henery Press and a new forthcoming series for Midnight Ink.

Rather than turn this post into a novel itself, I'll share further details later. In the meantime, I can't resist sharing my gorgeous book covers from Henery Press. Artifact was re-issued in August of this year, and Pirate Vishnu (#2) comes out in February 2014.

 

All our links to find us elsewhere on social media are in the "Check Out the Authors" section at right. Thanks to everyone who suggested we continue this blog. You were right. We're glad to be back.

--Gigi Pandian

Gigi's Book News

It's been a while since the Pens have posted on a daily basis, but we still keep the site up for the archives as well as to post news of interest about what we've been up to. Most of us now have personal blogs, email newsletters, and are on Twitter, so you can keep most up to date there. Since I haven't done an update on the Pens site since we wrapped up daily posts, I've got a lot going on so I thought it was about time I did one here!

Artifact: A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery was released August 28, 2012. I held the book launch party at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, CA. (Photos here.) 

I found out this week that Artifact is being named a Best of 2012 book by Suspense Magazine! The full list of books will be in their December issue, coming out the first week of December.

 

In a couple of weeks, I'll be heading to southern California for the book launch party of the next Jaya Jones mystery. Fool's Gold: A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Novella is a prequel to Artifact  being published in Other People's Baggage, a collection of three interconnected mystery novellas (Henery Press, December 3, 2012). This was a really fun project to write a mystery connected to two others through a luggage mix-up that leads to mystery and mayhem. 

In Fool's Gold, when a world-famous chess set is stolen from a locked room during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, historian Jaya Jones and her magician best friend must outwit actresses and alchemists to solve the baffling crime. (More details here.)

If you're in the Los Angeles or Orange County areas, I hope you'll join me and my co-authors Diane Vallere and Kendel Lynn at one of the launch parties:

Thursday, November 29, 2012 

6-8 pm at Traverler's Bookcase in Los Angeles

Saturday, December 1,  2012

3-5 pm at Mystery Ink Bookstore in Huntington Beach

More event details: http://gigipandian.com/news-events/