Screwing Up Time Mailing List

In an effort to let my readers know the latest news about the Screwing Up Time series, I've added a Screwing Up Time mailing list. (Yep, it's there on the right side of the page, just under my bio.) If you sign up, you will NOT be spammed or receive lots of emails. I plan on using the list only when a new book is being released or I'm doing a giveaway--like the one I did last week. So, if you want to be "in the know," sign up. Thanks!

(The logo is Mail Chimp--the service I'm using to run the mailing list.)

FREE BOOK

Today and tomorrow, Screwing Up Babylon is free at Amazon! Click here to get the free e-book.

  

Also today, Screwing Up Babylon is being featured at Kindle Books and Tips. If you haven’t heard of KBT, check out their website for great free and inexpensive e-books. Click here.

Obsolescence

Before my regularly scheduled blog post, please note that on Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22, Screwing Up Babylon will be free on Amazon! If you’ve been waiting to read the book or know someone who might like it, now’s the time to get it.

Monday, we had a printer malfunction. My husband’s computer and his printer stopped communicating. After some trial and error, I discovered that it was a driver problem. I tried reloading the drivers, etc., but that didn’t work. So, I called tech support.

After the introductions and explanations,the tech dude said: So what seems to be the problem?

Me (confused because I already explained everything): Uh, I need to reinstall the drivers.

TD: I can help you with that. Let’s reinstall them now.

Me: (wondering if he was paying any attention during the meet-and-greet when I explained the problem): Um, as I said earlier, that didn’t work.

TD: Oh. Let’s uninstall the old driver.

Me (realizing that he’s reading off a screen checklist): It won’t uninstall, remember? It gives me an error message.

TD: Oh, that is too bad. (Long pause.) You know, your printer is obsolete. We don’t provide service for obsolete printers.

Me: So...there’s nothing I can do?

TD: You could hire someone who knows about computers to fix it. Or you could reformat the computer.

Me (sputtering): You’re serious?

At one point, he offered to sell me a new, non-obsolete printer. Needless to say, I loaded the drivers to an even more obsolete printer (a 14 year old Canon--yay for printers that keep on printing) onto my husband’s computer and said, “Now you’re going to use this printer, okay?”

Problem solved.

Everyone Needs Encouraging

Writing is not a middle-of-the-road kind of thing. Not many writers have so-so days. The writing day was either a wonderful/euphoric/I-rocked-word-count kind of day. Or it was exhausting/depressing/soul-grinding kind of day.

I’m not saying other jobs aren’t that way. (In fact, being a mom to a pack of small children is kind of like that—my oldest was five when my fourth child was born, so I guess I was well prepared for exhaustion.) In any case, I think one of the hardest things about writing is the emotional toll. In a new book I’m working on, I do something I’ve never done before—writing from the antagonist’s point of view as well as the protagonist’s. And, I’m writing the antagonist’s POV in first person. In a very real sense, I become this horrible woman. Her wretchedness clings to me. I even feel her guilt (okay, I feel the guilt she should be feeling, but isn’t) knowing how many lives her selfishness will destroy. When I finish her scenes, I need a bath to wash off the filth.

It’s enough to make you really discouraged. But, because I have amazing writing buddies, when I whine about the novel, they say things like “Wow. If you feel that bad, you must really be rocking the story. I can’t wait to read it.” And just like that my I-just-descended-into-the-depths-of-depravity depression becomes a good thing. And my day turns from soul-grinding to euphoric. Everyone needs encouragers.

Screwing Up Alexandria Status Update

Things are moving forward for Screwing Up Alexandria! I just heard back from beta reader number two. She said that she “thoroughly enjoyed” the novel. In fact, she was in just a hurry to find out what happened that she had a hard time focusing on beta reading it.

And beta reader number three has given me part of the novel back (she’s just started the book), so I can begin considering her comments.

I hope to start working on beta number two’s corrections today. Woot!

The Cure for Literature-Induced Moody Blues

When I had four small children, I swore off the Russians. I think I was reading Dostoevsky at the time, and I found myself getting more and more depressed. Now, the fact that I was getting almost no sleep at night probably accounted for some of it, but the fact remains that as the story devolved my mood devolved with it.

Instead of crying because a child (who we swore would not be allowed to drink out of anything but a sippy cup until she reached the age of thirty-two) spilled her milk for the hundredth time, I was crying because some vodka swilling Russian was most likely going to commit suicide.

So I swore off the Russians, even though a lot of depressing books are amazing opportunities to plumb the depths of the human condition. Finally, a year or so ago, I taught One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Solzhenitsyn. It went well; I didn’t see the world in shades of muddy gray. So I began making a To-Be-Read list of the Russians. Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, and Crime and Punishment were at the top of the list. I was to start this summer.

In the meantime, I picked up another novel called The Swan Thieves (written by an American, not a Russian). And while the writing is utterly lyrical, the novel is about an artist’s descent into madness. Right now (I’m about a quarter of the way through the novel), the main character Robert is not only covering the rafters of his attic in lurid obsessional painting, he’s also ruining the life of his wife and daughter. And I’m getting cranky—how dare the artist throw away his gift and his family like so much trash?

The bad news is that my husband is also an artist, and, though it’s unlikely that he will begin painting ropey veined hands on the ceiling, I find myself scowling at him.

Of course, all this moodiness is highly unfair to my family. So, I’ve come up with a plan—a literary antibiotic to the bacterial disease of depressing novels. I can read the Russians or any other dismal novel as long as I end my reading period with a couple of PG Wodehouse quotes.

Here’s the treatment plan.

I read twenty minutes of a gloomy novel (usually done while cooking dinner, though this does account for the occasional odd mix of spices), then I read some quotes from a PG Wodehouse novel, for example, The Code of the Woosters.

(Bertie): “There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"

(Jeeves) "The mood will pass, sir.”

Or

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

Yes, that will surely cure my literature-induced moody blues. Interestingly, I’m fairly certain that Wodehouse may have had the same reaction to the Russians that I have. If not, how could he have written the following…

“Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.”

PG Wodehouse

Writing, Beware the Thirds

While waiting for my betas to finish Screwing Up Alexandria, I’m editing another book. It was going really well, and then I hit a brick wall. After eight chapters, the book stopped dead. The story was there, but something was very wrong. I pushed ahead to the next chapter. It sucked too.

I got a terrible sinking feeling. I told myself that maybe I was too tired or too spent or maybe my blood sugar was too low. So I came back to it the next day. Both chapters were still bad. Very bad. And I wasn’t sure why. I could taste panic like a metallic flavor on my tongue.

So I put the book aside for a couple of days. On the second day, I realized what was wrong. The voice died. It was completely missing in chapters eight and nine. But I didn’t know why. Did the bad chapters need to be thrown out and completely rewritten? Or had the plot taken a wrong turn in the earlier chapters?

I thought about the plot structure and then I knew what was wrong.

Two weeks before, I’d talked a writing friend down from the same ledge. She was panicking over her novel, trying to decide whether to toss the whole thing. I asked her, “Where are you in the novel? Are you between the first and second third of the novel or the second and final third of the novel?” She said, “Between the second and final third.” I said, “No worries. Your novel is likely just fine. You’re just stuck between thirds.”

That’s where I was stuck too. My two chapters were the transition between the first third of the novel and the second third.

Years ago, I read a book about novels that discussed novels as three act plays. I scoffed. Surely, something as complex as a novel, especially those crafted by seat-of-the-pants novelists, couldn’t be deconstructed into three acts. Then, I got more experience writing. And I saw it in my own work. I saw it in other peoples’ work. I saw it in the novels that I read.

The transitions between thirds of the novels are difficult. Usually, the many of the elements of the story (plot/characters/setting/pace/etc.) take a turn at the thirds. Those turns are complex, interconnected, and very difficult to manage. Just getting them on the page is a huge effort. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that in the first editing pass I found a mess. Of course, the voice died—you can’t do everything at once. I should have been thankful that I got the elements transitioned without having to rip things apart and start over.

Once I realized what the problem was, I rolled up my sleeves and dug into the text, adding in the texture and rhythms that make up the voice in the novel. And then I moved on to the next chapters and found the voice was there waiting for me.

Now I’m pondering making a placard and putting it on the wall of my office. It will read “Beware the Thirds.” I need to remember this because in the next month or so, I’ll be hitting the transition between the second and final thirds. And I’m likely to find that the voice died, the characters are stilted actors, and panic is making my eyelids twitch.