Donna icon courtesy of lily_merchant

First, a notice for those in the north Texas area: I will be having a booksigning with Rachel Caine (author of the Weather Wardens and Morganville Vampires series) on Saturday, July 19, 2 to about 4 p.m., at the Barnes & Noble in Lewisville, Texas (near Vista Ridge Mall). Come by and say hi! There will likely be much geeky conversation.

The film option contract is now signed, notarized and should be back in Hollywood (well, Beverly Hills), depending on the FedEx delivery schedule. There was a short conference call with the LA agency lawyer and my agent to clarify a couple of details, which was somewhat embarrassing as the way I tend to clarify things is to come up with bizarro hypothetical situations, and I'm not sure he knew quite what to make of that (I have no idea what he's really like, but on the phone he certainly sounded like Central Casting's idea of a Hollywood agency lawyer). Then I was able to get the contract notarized at my bank. They'd been snippy when I needed something like that previously, but that was at a different branch and this guy was really cool (of course he was, he was a fellow Longhorn). So yay for Chase Bank. I celebrated by going to Target and buying some new shorts. Yeah, I'm living large, but I'd recently realized I had one good pair of shorts (shorts I can wear outside the house) because all the others were in the mending basket. And then I noticed that all the shorts in the mending basket were "Mom jeans" shorts with high waists, pleats and cuffs. They're also all more than 15 years old, so I figured it wouldn't kill me to buy some new ones. Oddly, although the shorts I bought were all the same style from the same manufacturer, just in different colors, I had to get two different sizes because different colors fit different ways (they were even the same fabric, just in different colors).

Now, in honor of tonight's Donna-centric Doctor Who episode, here's a bit of silliness I wrote and posted to Television Without Pity last year. It's me being all practical about what I would do if I got invited to travel with the Doctor:

I would be absolutely certain never to violate Rule Number One (Don't Wander Off), even going as far as to have it tattooed on the back of my hand. I may be an independent woman who can take care of myself, but when I'm in a strange time/place, I'm not letting the guy who can get me out of there out of my sight.

I would insist that the Doctor give me a slide show and briefing on his major enemies, including the ones he thinks he's totally wiped out. That way, if external forces disrupt my slavish devotion to Rule Number One and I run into an old enemy while on my own, I won't mistakenly try to make friends with it, try to help it, or ask it if it's seen my friend the Doctor, you know, that Time Lord who travels around in a blue box.

Even if the Doctor does look like a cute thirtysomething guy, I will never let myself forget that he is an alien more than 900 years old who will outlive me by hundreds or even thousands of years (maybe I'll get that tattooed on the back of my other hand) and therefore probably not interested in me in that way. I'll enjoy my time with him more if I don't have any expectations of him in that area. And, hey, if he does make a move, it will be a pleasant surprise.

I will remember that kissing me doesn't necessarily mean he's making a move, as that's also a way of transferring genetic material or TARDIS energy.

When the Doctor gives me a truly universal cell phone, I will call my mother on a regular basis and not just when I'm in a life-or-death crisis so she won't worry about me or get suspicious because it's so rare for me to call her.

Now I hope to get some actual creative work done today. The part of my brain that can deal with contracts seems to sap all the energy from the part of my brain that can be creative.

I had the kind of day yesterday that required lots of deep, cleansing breaths and a generous application of chocolate (Keebler's Grasshoppers, which are basically Thin Mints you can get year-round without being attacked by a Girl Scout, and which are utterly divine straight out of the freezer). Not that it was a bad day, just frustrating in a way that almost made it seem like it was designed specifically to drive me Up. The. Wall. Like if I were a POW and they were designing a torture technique guaranteed to break me, this is what it would be, and that would be against the Geneva Convention, but because it's business, I can't call Amnesty International to protest on my behalf. It didn't help that the dream I had just before I woke up that morning was yet another in my ongoing series of nightmares about having to go back to a corporate job, only in this one, a bunch of friends from various past jobs were all working together at a new place, and they invited me to visit them at work, then it turned out to be an ambush to try to make me take a job there. I woke up while I was still protesting that I didn't need a job and they were trying to convince me that I would only have to come to the office a couple of days a week, so I'd still have time to write. The really odd thing is that I realized upon waking that some of the "friends" in the dream were actually TV characters, which could say something sad about the role television plays in my life, except that the main one I remember was Ianto from Torchwood, and his mannerisms around the office have always reminded me of the department administrative assistant in one of my old jobs, only much, much cuter, so if I'm including that personality in a dream as part of a "This is Your Life" parade of former co-workers, it makes sense for it to be the cute version.

Meanwhile, I may have to stop watching tapes of The Office from last fall because it really is depressing. Even when I remember to forward through the commercials, they often have the little weather brief tease for the late news as the last thing before the end of a commercial break, so to avoid missing part of the episode, I have to hear about low temperatures in the 40s and 50s and cold fronts on the way, which sounds so lovely right now when it's annoyingly hot.

I've seen this post by Libba Bray linked from some book-world blogs, and the metaphor of the process of writing a book being like falling in love is painfully accurate. Except, for me, I find that the first draft is often more like those annoying couples who are always breaking up and getting back together again. You know, the ones who are madly in love and ignore all their friends while they're so wrapped up in each other, and then they have a big fight and suddenly want to gripe about each other to all their friends as they talk about what a jerk the other person is and how it's never going to work, but then the next thing you know, one of them does something wonderful and they realize they did miss each other, and they're back together again and even more mushy than before, and they'll deny having said anything bad about the other person. And then they get mad and one of them will storm out, and they'll swear it's over. And then they get back together again and love each other dearly. Then there's the point where they're really not happy together, but they're more afraid of breaking up and having to find someone else than they are of staying together and being miserable, so they stay together but don't really enjoy themselves and grow to sort of even hate each other in a passive-aggressive way. But then out of the blue something will happen that makes them fall in love all over again.

Yeah, that's me through most of my first drafts. I swing madly back and forth between love and hate, with times when this is the most fun I've ever had and times when I feel like it would be less painful to be writing in my own blood. And there are times when I'm bored out of my skull and know it won't work, but I'm committed, so I have to finish it. But then there are enough moments of pure joy to make it worthwhile. Most of the time, it's not so much the book I hate or am mad at, but rather I'm mad at myself for not being able to do justice to the perfect book that lives in my head.

Fortunately, today is already turning out to be much better on a frustration level, and I may even get something worthwhile accomplished.

I know I said I was going to do a series on archetypes, but I'm going to interrupt that this week because I read something interesting I wanted to share, and the series will resume next time.

A couple of weeks ago, my agent mentioned on her blog that she was reading the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, which is a business book about how companies that had been performing well made a jump to great performance. One of the things she mentioned from the book was that "good is the enemy of great," and that got me started thinking, so I checked the book out of the library and read it. While it is a book about businesses, there are lessons to be learned for a writing career, as well. I think I've done just about every wrong thing through the course of my career, and I hope I'm on track to start moving in a better direction.

First, that idea that good is the enemy of great. What that means is that thinking you're doing okay can stop you from having the drive to do better. It also may make you afraid of taking the risk of changing what you're doing. If what you're doing is working, why change? But reaching greatness may require change and risk. I think that this can apply to writers at any stage of their careers. For mega-bestselling authors, having the clout to have publishers willing to print their grocery lists without editing and knowing that people will buy that can allow them to coast at that level of success so they never push themselves to achieve what could be lasting greatness. For solid midlist authors, moderate ongoing success could make it scary to try the entirely different thing that could be what breaks them out into bestsellerdom. For unpublished authors, a lot of contest wins could be what's keeping them from selling, if their focus is on writing to please contest judges instead of editors or agents (since contest judges and editors and agents are often looking for entirely different things). All of these people may feel like what they're doing is working and that their success means they're on the right track, but that could be what's keeping them from doing even better.

( More Good to Great Behind the Cut )

I woke up surprisingly early this morning (for me) and decided to go with it instead of rolling over and going back to sleep. Now the morning is unusually cool and refreshing, so I have windows open.

The contract wasn't nearly as scary as I feared. For one thing, there were four copies of the contract in the package, so the package was a lot more daunting than the contents turned out to be. I already knew about the more alarming terms. Some of the mildly alarming things I didn't know about weren't too terribly surprising. For instance, I can't sue the studio if they make the Worst Movie Ever out of my book and I think the movie is so bad it defames my book and me as a writer. If that clause weren't in option contracts, Hollywood would either be bankrupt or owned outright by Stephen King or Michael Crichton (yes, they've both had really good movies made from their books, but they've also had some utter stinkers).

Most of the surprises were pleasant ones. There's a lot of contract language specifying exactly how I would be credited in the movie itself and in advertising (in any ad where the screenwriter is credited, except for ads mentioning or promoting specific award nominations. So they can do ads promoting the screenwriter for an Oscar without mentioning me, and they can do ads congratulating the screenwriter for the Oscar nomination or promoting the movie because of its Oscar-nominated screenplay without mentioning me). I think that was the first time I've seen "based on the novel by Shanna Swendson" in print. I actually got a bit teary-eyed. And there's even a clause in the contract about how I and a guest will be invited to the east or west coast celebrity premiere, with first-class transportation provided by the studio. Great. Now I have to come up with a date for my own movie premiere. While I normally ignore the "and guest" on invitations and go solo as long as it's not an invitation to Noah's Ark, I probably won't know a soul there, so I'll need someone. I've heard Meg Cabot talk about her experiences at the premiere of The Princess Diaries, and she was pretty big already by that point. I'd probably blend into the scenery and be utterly ignored. Yes, I know this is all totally hypothetical and based on the remote possibility that a movie might get made, but given my inability to find dates (especially ones I'd actually want to go with), I might need to start working on that now. Or I'll make my parents draw straws over who gets to go with me.

I just have a few questions I want my agent to clarify before I sign, and then I'll have to find a notary. It looks like the postal center/shipping place next to the library has notary services, and then maybe I can celebrate after shipping off the contract by going to the library cafe and having one of their awesome frozen raspberry lemonades and a pastry.

I got my box of writing books from Amazon yesterday, and I'm looking forward to digging into them. I'm in the planning stages of a book, so that gives me a case study to use as I work my way through the books. One tidbit I've already gleaned from the quick skimming I've done: It's not so much about conveying the characters' emotions as it is about triggering the readers' emotions. That's common sense, but I'd never thought of it quite that way. In most cases, it's more or less the same thing. If your character is sad, you want the reader to feel bad for her. If the character is scared, the reader should be, too. But there are times when you want the reader to feel something different. In an action story, your intrepid hero may be totally calm in a crisis, but you want the reader to feel incredibly tense. And sometimes the moments that are laugh-out-loud funny to the reader are embarrassing and awkward for the character.

Yesterday I was all ready to rant about how it's just the middle of July and I'm already seeing all these ads about fall on TV. It's not fair to taunt me with the idea of fall in the middle of July. That's just cruel. And then I realized that I was watching my tapes of the latest season of The Office, and I guess I got distracted (crossword puzzle) and forgot to forward through the commercials, so I was watching commercials from last September. Which was fall. Which would explain the "new fall sweaters are here" and "take your fall vacation here" ads. It was the ads for The Bionic Woman and the "Friday Night Lights is now on Friday!" ads that finally clued me in.

Finally, I've been lucky (or maybe obscure) enough not to have to deal with a lot of spam blog comments. When I get them, they all seem to be for the same posts. For the longest time, it was a post from more than a year ago that kept getting them. Now they're showing up for a post from last week. Most of them are utterly nonsensical and don't even point to or promote anything, so I don't see what the point is, and there's nothing unique to that post that would give any particular search terms that would trigger a spambot. It remains a mystery.

I had a total slugfest this weekend -- as in being mostly motionless, not hitting people. I came to the shocking realization that if I was really tired and having trouble keeping my eyes open, then maybe I needed rest (imagine that!). Of course, that was when one of my neighbors started doing something with a power saw, so I never got an actual nap (and it was a bit suspicious how the saw would go quiet, but then the moment I closed my book and prepared to nap, it would start up again), but I did read something pleasantly mindless and let myself drift in and out as needed, which was nice. I seem to need a completely unprogrammed weekend every so often. Not that my weeks are that busy or strenuous, but a couple of days of doing nothing much while not thinking much about work can make a big difference in my energy levels.

And, boy, am I going to need my energy levels this week. I finally got the contract for the film option (yes, it takes that long), and it's more than 40 pages of Hollywood legalese that I have to read, since I'm not stupid enough to just sign something Hollywood sends me. I wish I had Katie on stand-by, since if there were a way Hollywood lawyers could magically veil portions of the contract and then drop the veil when they want that clause to kick in, I'm sure they'd do it. Not that I can scream or complain about anything at this point. Everything that can be negotiated has been (which is what's taken so long). It's a take it or leave it situation, but I need to know exactly what I'm taking. I know I'm signing away some big things -- like they have the right to make further movies based on these characters without necessarily following the subsequent books in the series (like with The Princess Diaries movies, where the sequel wasn't based on a book). I'm not at the point in my career where I have the clout to retain more control, but I might never reach the point in my career where I have the clout to retain control without the boost that a movie based on my books could give me. So, yeah, I'm going to have a fun day. Good thing I have plenty of chocolate in the house.

I got the book Good to Great that I mentioned last week, and I read it in practically one sitting on Friday. It was a business book that almost read like a novel. The "good is the enemy of great" concept was just the starting point, and from there they broke down what made companies that had achieved real greatness (in terms of performance) from companies that were merely consistently good. If I still had a day job in corporate America, I might have found the book depressing, since I've never worked for a company or organization that met any of the guidelines for being "great." They were all in the fairly self-destructive loops of companies that never achieved greatness or never sustained it. I've had a few bosses over time who met the characteristics of the great company leader, but they were middle managers stuck in organizations that definitely didn't allow them to do their thing (which is why they all ended up leaving in frustration). My guess is that this is one of those books executives give each other as a gift and put on the shelves in their offices without reading it because most of the problems I see in businesses in the news today could have been avoided by even thinking a little about the findings in this book (and it's really a research report, not just an idealistic "how things should be" book, so the findings are proof that it works). No publisher I've ever worked with fits the model of "great" company. In fact, they seem to a large extent to do the exact opposite. The problem is that it takes going against a lot of human nature to achieve greatness, which is why they only found 11 companies in the Fortune 500 that met the parameters of greatness (and some of those have recently been in the news as failures, so even that greatness hasn't been sustained indefinitely). I'd be curious to find out if any follow-up work has been done to see if someone has managed to turn a company around by following these principles.

However, I think I've extracted some wisdom from the ideas on what makes a company great that can apply to a writing career, and that will be my Wednesday writing post.

And now to go tackle that contract (whimper!).

I can't believe it's Friday already. Where did the week go? Looking at my to-do list, I see that I accomplished a lot, but it doesn't much feel like it.

The Harry Potter symposium is in town this weekend, and I've been toying with the idea of going just for the day on Saturday. But it is pretty expensive, and I'm not sure of the benefit. True, that's a key target audience of people who might be inclined to like my books, but since I never got around to submitting anything for participating in programming, any contacts I make would have to involve direct conversations, and I'm afraid I'm in a big introvert phase right now, which means that I would turn invisible in the crowd.

It's also occurred to me that I currently have a real marketing dilemma. Because the majority of the population has never heard of my books, most marketing activities I do primarily sell the first book in the series. That book is already considered a success. The issue right now is the ratio of sales of subsequent books to that first one, so the more the first book sells, unless all those people very quickly go on to buy the rest of the books, the worse things look for the later books in any snapshot of sales figures. Since the publisher doesn't seem to have any interest in capitalizing on the steady ongoing sales of that first book by doing something big to promote the whole series, hooking new people at this point actually works against me in a weird sort of way. What I need to figure out how to do is reach people who read the first book or the first couple of books and get them to buy the rest of the series, and that's a real challenge. Anyone who's interested enough to write to me, to read my blog or sign up for my e-mail list is also probably interested enough to have already bought the whole series. Anyone who bought the books via Amazon likely got a reminder of the release of the others. I don't know if the drop-off is because of people not knowing about the rest of the books or not wanting to read the rest. I have run into people at conventions who've asked me if a third book (or in a few cases, a second book) is available, so there may be some awareness issues. I suppose people who buy the first book when they hear me speak at a convention may not know about the rest because they aren't in the section of the bookstore where these people would be shopping. I will have to ponder this further.

But enough serious stuff. I've had something supremely silly running around in my head for a few weeks, and I think I should inflict it on everyone else. I've been watching the BBC Robin Hood series (though not the latest episode, since TimeWarner never got around to posting it to OnDemand here. Grrr.) and, for some odd reason, I've lately marathoned the first three seasons of the US version of The Office. And then I found that the two of them started merging in my head until I realized that in many respects, they're the same show. It's not a perfect one-to-one correlation, but there are definite patterns.

Spoiler warning for what's shown of Robin Hood on BBCAmerica and on seasons one through four of the US version of The Office. Also, extreme silliness warning. And apologies in advance if this totally ruins both shows for you.

Basically, the Sheriff and Guy on Robin Hood are Michael Scott and Dwight on The Office. We've got the extremely self-centered, egotistical, volatile, drama-queeny boss and his sycophantic, extremely ambitious sidekick who believes firmly in might making right and who thinks that his devotion to his boss will ultimately get him what he wants out of life -- namely power and money. I guess you could say that Guy is Assistant (to the) Sheriff. In both cases, the boss is perfectly willing to use his sidekick when it suits him, but he actually holds him in contempt and would willingly sacrifice him if necessary. And the sidekick bases a lot of his self worth on his "estate" (Dwight's beet farm, Guy's estate that used to be Robin's).

I wonder if one day Guy will try to usurp the Sheriff's position, so that Prince Jan -- er, John -- will have to step in and put a stop to it. And then Guy will be stuck doing the Sheriff's laundry.

That was the first parallel I noticed. Then I realized that as our "hero," in both cases we have a cheeky, charming man of the people who likes to pull pranks on the boss and his sidekick and who is the main focus of the sidekick's hatred and jealousy. He also has the loyalty of almost everyone around besides the boss and his sidekick, and the boss's boss's boss considers him a valuable asset (King Richard on Robin Hood, David Wallace the CFO on The Office).

The romantic relationships don't track perfectly, as Dwight hasn't really shown any interest in Pam, but both of our cheeky heroes have a romantic relationship with a woman who's been a longtime friend, and both relationships have gone through a sort of love triangle phase where the other guy was entirely unsuitable for her and potentially abusive. And both of the sidekicks have gone through some fairly creepy emotional tailspins over the women they're interested in.

Then we have the disloyal underling who switches sides. On The Office, Ryan the Temp seemed to mostly be on Jim's side (not that he declared any loyalty, but he was definitely against Dwight and Michael). Dwight tried to groom Ryan into his lackey, but Michael was the one utterly enamored of Ryan, which made Dwight feel insecure and threatened. And then Ryan switched sides and became an enemy when he got the job at corporate, actually betraying Jim. Meanwhile, Allan on Robin Hood started out as a member of Robin's gang, then betrayed Robin, switched sides, was originally being groomed by Guy to be his lackey, but then the Sheriff discovered him and was impressed enough to make Guy feel insecure and threatened.

I'm sure there are more parallels if I let myself think more about it, but I've already disturbed myself with this much.

We'll see if I can make myself leave the cave this weekend. I want to do some housework, as I had two separate nightmares last night where my messy house was an issue. Sci Fi Friday is back tonight, with Doctor Who and Stargate Atlantis. And then new Foyle's War on PBS Sunday.

I learned yesterday that while mid-day exercise gives me energy for the afternoon, a mid-day swim has the opposite effect. I don't know why swimming always makes me sleepy (and hungry), but I was barely able to stay awake all afternoon and evening. I wonder why that is. It could be the effect of being out in the sun. It could be the cool water of the pool lowering the body temperature, which slows everything down and makes me sleepy. Or it could be that after the feeling of floating freedom in the water, returning to dry land makes me feel weary and heavy -- the beached whale effect. Whatever it is, I shall have to save swimming for after I've done everything I need to do in a day rather than as a break between all the business work and the writing work. I did finally get some good writing work done at night when we had another surprise cloudburst. And then, wouldn't you know it, after spending the entire day fighting off sleep and not even being able to focus well enough to read much, when I went to bed, I had trouble falling asleep.

I've realized that I'm WAY behind on book reports. So, without further ado, here's some of what I've been reading lately:

Beastly by Alex Flinn -- this is a young adult novel that's a modern take on Beauty and the Beast. A spoiled rich kid plays a cruel prank on the wrong goth chick and finds himself transformed into a hideous beast. You know the drill. The modern twists on this story are what's really clever. For instance, woven throughout the novel are transcripts from a chat room support group for people who've been magically transformed (the frog has some trouble typing). One of the beast's attempts to get someone to love him in spite of his appearance involves meeting people online, since then they'll get to know him before they find out what he looks like -- and then he uses that magic mirror that allows him to see anyone to look at the real person behind the MySpace profile. Cop, 12-year-old, 45-year-old woman, cop, etc. One thing that's always bugged me about the Beauty and the Beast story is that the guy who's being punished for judging people by appearances breaks his curse by falling in love with the most beautiful girl around (yeah, he really learned his lesson). Here, the "beauty" is more along the lines of "not conventionally gorgeous, but quite lovely when you get to know her and when she makes a little effort," so he still has to learn to look beyond appearances. I really enjoyed this book. Aside from the clever spins on the old tale, it's quite a sweet romance.

Then continuing the fairy tale theme, I read Weird Sisters, Witches Abroad and Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, where he sends up a lot of old fairy tales, Shakespeare, and goodness knows what else in his trilogy about the three witches. Laugh out loud funny and still rather charming, of course, and it's a little alarming how much I find myself identifying with Magrat Garlick. I'm not sure why, since I wouldn't think I'm much like her, but I really related to her. However, I have this terrible feeling that I'm going to be Granny Weatherwax in my old age. Except for the being a witch part. I'm all about the headology, though. I also read Soul Music, and I think I may have developed a teeny literary crush on Death. He's so charming and gracious and well-meaning, and I think he'd be fun to hang out with. However, that could get disturbing as you'd never know for sure if he was showing up to hang out or if he was on business (as in the nightmare I had last night).

Then for a change of pace, I've been reading a few things that might be sort of classified as chick lit. The English American by Alison Larkin is about a young Englishwoman who's always known she was adopted but who thinks she's figured out why she's so different from the rest of her adopted family when she learns her birth parents are American. She gets new insights into herself when she goes to America to meet them. I was kind of so-so on this one. It was an entertaining page-turner and an interesting look at the impact of adoption, but I felt like the characters were more cartoons than real people. Supposedly a lot of it was about breaking down stereotypes about the cultures, but the characters were all pretty stereotypical, without a lot of nuance. Most Americans I know aren't all soppy about talking about their feelings to everyone, for instance. Maybe she only knew people on the coasts who are part of the culture of therapy. Midwesterners could teach the Brits a few lessons on emotional reserve.

Then I read Behaving Badly by Isabel Wolff, whose Making Minty Malone may have been the first real chick lit book I read, even before I got my hands on Bridget Jones's Diary and back when they hadn't yet decided to split that genre away from romance and publish it in trade paperback. This one's about an animal behaviorist who hasn't been too good at figuring out people, and now she feels like she needs to make up for something awful that she was involved with in her past. There's a bit of a mystery woven in, and the animal stuff is fun, especially since I started reading it while a PBS show about dogs was playing in the background (in my hotel room after ApolloCon). While I was reading in the book about her explaining to her clients that their dogs were just behaving like dogs, the PBS show was talking about how until relatively recently, dogs were bred for behavior to do specific jobs, and that hasn't been bred out of them now that they're just pets, and that explains their behavior. It was kind of a weird crossover.

And then there was Roommates Wanted by Lisa Jewell, which was the book I'd planned to buy at Target that they no longer had, but then my library got it and I was the first to check it out. This would be stretching the definition of "chick lit" as one of the main characters is a guy, but it's still similar in tone and theme. This guy's father bought him a big old house before vanishing from his life, and he's ended up taking in as lodgers people who are in transition or who don't have anywhere else to turn -- a bunch of lost souls. When he realizes in his late 30s that his life has become really stagnant and that his house is now worth a fortune that would allow him to pursue some dreams, he doesn't feel he can just kick out his lodgers and sell the house without knowing they'll be okay. He has to emerge from his own cave to get to know them so he can figure out how he can help them move on so that he can move on. In a way, this reminded me of Last Chance Saloon, my favorite Marian Keyes book. Both involve large casts of characters we follow as their lives converge and diverge.

Now today I really must buckle down and work. I think last night I came up with the missing link to fix the synopsis I'm working on. It sometimes feels like an exercise in futility to do so much work to fine-tune a synopsis when I know that almost everything will be fixed in the writing of the actual book, but when you're expecting someone to buy a book just on the synopsis, you have to at least pretend to have figured it all out ahead of time.

I finally have some updates done on my web site. I've updated a lot of the information in general, updated the events calendar, and I've got some location inspiration photos for Don't Hex with Texas. I'm still missing a roll of film, so there may be more photos if I find it if I ever get around to that massive house cleaning project I keep talking about. Mind you, unlike the real-life settings in New York, Katie's home town is fictional and was just sort of inspired by a particular town that's essentially the generic Texas small-town county seat. But these are the images that were in my head when I wrote the book.

I ordered a few books from Amazon yesterday that should help me find more things to analyze when I try to slow down my process and think instead of being impatient (since slowing down just for the sake of slowing down without doing something in that extra time would be rather pointless). I also ordered my own copy of The Now Habit so I can actually read it, since the library copy had been so marked up that it was nearly impossible for me to read it beyond just gleaning a couple of tips that have been pretty helpful.

In this push for "greatness," I realized I've been pretty negative so far by focusing on weaknesses I want to correct. But I think it's equally important to look at the things that are working so I can play to my strengths and improve on those strengths. And then I realized that I'm a lot more comfortable looking at weaknesses than at strengths, and I'm definitely more comfortable publicly discussing weaknesses than strengths. I guess there's a fear of looking like you're bragging or being obnoxious when you talk about what you do well. There's some of the lingering "mean girls" effect, especially for women, where the worst thing in the world is to be "conceited," and you get labeled "conceited" for not hating yourself. Just graciously accepting a compliment instead of arguing about it or protesting means that you really think that something about you is good, and then you're considered a conceited bitch. Plus, when you list your weaknesses, if someone disagrees, then that makes you feel better because they're saying you're not as bad as you think you are. But if you list your strengths and someone disagrees, then that takes you down a peg or two.

At the risk of sounding conceited or like I'm bragging, here are some of the strengths I've identified in my writing, based on feedback I get from readers, my agent and editors.

My biggest strength seems to be character development. I'm good at creating characters people like and care about. And I even manage to do this with characters who are basically nice people, which is supposed to be incredibly dull in fiction.

I'm generally considered to be pretty funny. I may not always write outright comedy, as in the Enchanted, Inc. series, but humor seems to work its way into everything I do just because that's the way I see the world. I still haven't decided, though, if this means I really should focus on writing comedy, or if it's okay to stretch as long as I don't consciously try to get overly dramatic and leave the humor out entirely.

My agent says I'm good at writing action scenes. That came as a surprise to me, since I thought that was a weakness, but maybe the fact that I think of it as a weakness means that I worked extra hard on developing those scenes and making sure a lot was going on.

I think I'm also pretty good at coming up with high concept ideas. I've had some misses, but most of my ideas are big and quirky, and they put a fun twist on familiar themes. This is especially true while I'm playing in the fantasy pool, which is why I've decided that's where I should focus my efforts, at least for the time being.

Fortunately, I don't think I'm high-profile enough that any of the book snarking sites will pick up on this and start trying to tear me down or otherwise show that I'm not as hot as I think I am.

Right before lunch seems to be a very good exercise time -- lunchtime and my post-lunch low phase when I read are good for recovery, and then I have energy for the rest of the day and sleep well at night. Except today I'll exercise at night because I have dance class. The OnDemand workout video I did yesterday may have killed me. I'm not really sore, but I definitely feel like I exercised, and it was proof that I'm really not very fit because I got really winded during the short cardio intervals. So more cardio for me. That might also help me survive the altitude in Denver during WorldCon.

I had one of those days when I felt like I didn't accomplish anything, even though I worked pretty steadily through the whole day. It was just lots of little tasks that didn't add up to anything major or visible that I could say was "done." I cut nearly 200 e-mails out of my in-box, still need to answer a lot, and started work on updating the web site, but that involved lots of little changes before I get to adding new pages.

My agent posted in her blog the other day about reading the book Good to Great and thinking about what that means for her agency. And that got me started thinking about what it means for me as a writer. Supposedly, the enemy of "great" is "good" because it's easy to be satisfied with good, and that keeps you from moving forward (I've put in a hold request on the book at the library). I guess I'm okay there because while I think I'm pretty good, in that I'm good enough to be published, I'm not really satisfied with that and know I'm not where I ultimately want to be -- and I'm not sure I'll ever get there because I'd like to be able to keep growing with each thing I write without ever reaching a stagnant plateau.

So then, being the analytical sort that I am, I started thinking about where my weak spots are, and I came to the conclusion that my biggest weakness is impatience. I get very excited about an idea and want to rush ahead, I write fast, and then I'm done with it and I just want to get it out there. That means some details may get handwaved over, and I'm so impatient that I think of it as "good enough." Some of that may come from my TV news background, where you certainly wanted your story to be as good as you could make it, but the priority was having it done by airtime. The most brilliantly composed story was useless if it wasn't done in time for the newscast. But books work the other way around. Time is certainly still important, but five minutes, five days or in some cases even five weeks (since deadlines are usually padded and publication schedules can change -- or if the book is being written on spec, the time doesn't matter much at all) don't make that much difference in the grand scheme of things. The priority is making it as good as possible. I think some of it also comes from the lingering insecurity from my long dry spell, when I was so desperate to sell something that I just started flinging things out there, and I may be going through some of that now since I don't currently have a contract.

One of my life lessons from The Book That Would Not Die (currently known as The Book In Search Of A Good Home) is that taking my time and doing that one more draft after doing some intense thinking about the story really could make a huge difference. That idea really caught my brain on fire, and I tore through that first draft. But I'm not sure that draft was publishable, even though I thought it was great at the time. The second draft wasn't even good enough, though I thought it was at the time. The third draft was good, but not what it needed to be. The final draft was a world of difference. I'm not sure I can truly cut out all those steps, but if I can learn to do more of the later draft thinking while in the process of writing the first draft, or perhaps even during the resting stage between the first and second drafts, I think that will help. At some point in the process, I need to force myself to slow down and analyze (which I should love doing), looking at the plot and character arcs on a high level, and then drilling into each scene to make it the best it can be in conveying all that information.

Then there are a few other things I want to work on fixing that come as part of that slow-down-and-analyze process. The New Project will be my guinea pig for this. I think it's a brilliant idea that could be a great book, as long as I don't settle for "good." If that takes me a bit longer, then that's fine in the grand scheme of things (besides, there's no point in having even a proposal ready before Labor Day. Giving myself two months to write a proposal should really force me to slow down and think).

I had a great weekend, but now am utterly exhausted from all the greatness, and I didn't even have any late nights. I must be getting old. I'm looking forward to a quiet day today and catching up on a lot of work stuff I let slide last week. For a hint of how I spent my Saturday, there's this:



That picture comes dangerously close to being a pin-up for Dalek fetishists, but since I'm already the Locus centerfold, I might as well go with it. I seem to be going through a phase where I strike a pose whenever a camera is aimed in my general direction. I guess we'll have to see what fun photos I can get out of WorldCon. (Hmm, possible marketing strategy: become a geek sex symbol?) I didn't realize how sweaty I was until I saw the picture, but that came right after watching the final four Doctor Who episodes of the season in a room with nearly 30 people. Joe Dalek got a minor repair job and face lift right after we took this photo, so he's no longer looking like he just got through a major battle.

And then on Sunday we went to see WALL-E, which is utterly adorable and wonderful. I think this is more of an adult movie than a kids' movie, in spite of it being animated. It either says something about this movie or about the state of Hollywood today that the most touching and moving love story I've seen in ages is about two robots who barely talk beyond saying each other's names. Then again, I'm the freak whose favorite Star Wars character is R2-D2, so it could just be me. Still, you've got to love a science fiction movie about robots that uses the Michael Crawford songs from the movie Hello, Dolly! to underscore the romantic scenes. I need to see this one again on the big screen to pick up all the little details. I'm not sure the movie grill environment was the best for this. It seemed like the waiter waited for the most pivotal moments of the movie to come by distributing checks and stuff. There's one crucial tight point where I don't actually know how they got out of it because that was when the waiter was standing right in front of me and I missed it entirely.

On the agenda for the week: updating my web site to include Don't Hex With Texas info (finally!), dealing with my overflowing e-mail in-box, and revising two synopses. Plus maybe getting back into work on The New Project. I want to have something on that to give my agent in late August. I also want to do more exercise beyond just the dance class. I sang in the "summer choir" at church yesterday (no rehearsal other than just before church), and the choir loft is up really high, so you have to climb stairs to get to it, and I was slightly winded when I got up there, so I'm way out of shape. I'm trying to figure out the best time to exercise. I've been doing it right before dinner, since it tires me out and I don't get much work done afterward, but that cuts into my best working time. Today I'll try before lunch and see if that wipes me out for the afternoon.