Creativity

I've been neglecting the blog of late since I've been devoting a lot of my free time to some hobbies. Call it "refilling the tank," if you will. I'm a very creative person and always have been. And since my profession (writing) is also creative, it was a great career choice for me. But sometimes my writing saps my energy and drains the creative tank, as it were, and I get stuck. I need to change things up a bit in order to get the writing juices flowing again. Plus I have some neurotic tendencies (well, to say "some" would be a gross understatement) that tend to smooth themselves out when I'm working on making something from scratch----be it cooking a dish, baking a cake, sewing a dress, painting a picture, whatever. I really get into the "zone" when I make things by hand, and the whole world and my troubles just dissolve.

Some people take Prozac. I do crafts.

I was very into arts and crafts as a teenager, and my original college major was in the nationally ranked design and art college of the university where I would eventually pursue an English degree. I spent pretty much all of my free time in high school in one of two places: the art department and the theatre/music department. I took four years of studio art in high school as well as music/theatre/performing arts, and even got professional (paying!) art commissions and singing gigs as a teenager. I kept up with the music and theater throughout college and my adult life (doing both professionally, as well as writing professionally) but my studio arts interests kind of fell by the wayside after my freshman year of college. (I did eventually write art reviews and cover the Chicago art scene as a journalist, but that's not the same.)

I had originally planned to be a fine arts major in college, but my parents were terrified I'd end up starving to death, so I compromised and became an architecture major instead. I could draw, but I also was good at math and science and I thought buildings were cool, so I thought this was a reasonable compromise. Plus I'd actually stand a chance of getting a job when I graduated. I got admitted to the No. 1 architecture program in the country at the time (University of Cincinnati, which US News and World Report still ranks as No. 1) on a full scholarship. To say that the program was rigorous would be a gross understatement, too. Not only did I have to shell out literally thousands of dollars in drafting supplies my first quarter, I also pretty much had to give up eating and sleeping and spend my entire life "in studio." The program was hard to get into to begin with, but the first year was designed to weed out 60% of the incoming freshmen class. It was so very, very hard that I often I sat up nights at my drafting table and sobbed. Being one of very few women in a male-dominated major was also not easy to deal with. I also had bad experiences with professors and fellow students (and one other woman in particular, who harrassed me and destroyed my architecture models because she secretly liked the guy I was dating at the time).

After trying to stick it out for a while, I knew that architecture was not for me. I considered switching majors over to fine arts, but the fine arts studio was right next to the architecture department, and I wanted to get the hell out of that entire end of campus. So I followed my love of reading and writing across the quad to became an English major instead. To keep my parents happy I told them it was really since I planned to go to law school, but that was pretty much a lie. I just wanted to read and write and be left alone. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of history, I've always been a huge history buff, and one of my hobbies is historical reinactment. I'm especially fascinated with the history of writing, books, and publishing, especially old illuminated manuscripts. I had done some calligraphy and illumination as a kid but stopped doing it after the architecture-major fiasco. But lately I've been getting back into it, and I'm surprised how good I am at it after taking an almost 20-year hiatus. Spending an hour or two working on long-obsolete writing and publishing techniques has done wonders for my psyche, not to mention give me a newfound appreciation for just how easy it is for us to communicate in writing here in the 21st century. It wasn't always that way----reading and writing used to be a luxury enjoyed by very few, and books were luxury items that cost lots of money and also were a means to show off the great wealth of their owners.

I've been back into my artsy-crafty stuff for about a year now, and it's actually boosted my productivity as a writer tremendously. Whenever I get stuck on a writing project, I go paint something, or maybe do some sewing or leathercraft, which I also like. Eventually I want to put all three skills together and make a leather-bound medieval manuscript codex, but I think I'll have to wait until kiddo is a little older before I attempt something that ambitious. In the meantime, here's some samples of my work.

New Year's Discoveries

In celebration of a new year (and new beginning), I thought I'd share the following few lovely tidbits I've discovered recently. Hope they brighten your life as much as they have mine.

1) If you want to go shopping for some new stuff, but you can't because you're broke, go root around in your closets, cabinets and attics through the boxes and bags of crap you forgot you had in the first place. Chances are you'll find some great stuff.

2) Hotel shampoo makes great (and cheap) bubble bath.

3) The smell of lavender will make you happy.

4) Just because you disagree with someone's political/personal/religious/whatever beliefs, doesn't mean you can't be very good friends with that person.

5) When people make harsh judgments about other peoples' relationships, it usually means they have a history of bad ones.

6) What happened back in high school doesn't matter anymore. Except, of course, when you rekindle a beloved old friendship.

7) Sometimes crying can be a good thing.

8) Never underestimate the power of tea.

9) No one can judge you until they've walked two hundred miles in your shoes (and gone through labor, too).

10) Silence is indeed golden.

11) Most stuff that is labeled "As Seen On TV" sucks.

12) It's never too late to make things right.

13) Sometimes you just gotta spend a day in the house doing nothing but watching bad Japanime cartoons.

14) You're never too old to enjoy a good comic book.

15) If it sounds too good to be true, you should probably quit drinking and go to bed.

16) No matter how old you get, you'll never be as old as Dick Clark.

17) Nothing is quite as magical as the smell of gingersnaps baking during a snowstorm.

18) Snow angels are the best angels.

19) There's always someone worse off than you. Just look at Lindsay Lohan.

20) Remember that cute boy you had a huge crush on in junior high who wouldn't give you the time of day and called you mean names? Well, now he weighs 300 pounds and is unemployed and miserable. Karma, baby.

First-person, present tense.

Today on New Year's Day, I'm blogging about the challenge of writing in first-person, present tense at the Decadent Publishing blog. Check it out here:

Peace.

Banned In The SCA

Added for clarity: It's not my book itself that's been banned, it's just any advertising for it. (Just in case any lawyers are reading this). Draw your own conclusions as to what that really means.

Once upon a time, book publishers would splash "BANNED IN BOSTON" across book covers as a selling point. The same thing was done by Broadway show producers, when it was common to pre-screen new plays in Boston before opening them on the Great White Way---it was also common for the Watch And Ward Society, a powerful group made up of a few of the most powerful of those strait-laced Irish-Catholic Bostonians, to object to books', movies', and stage shows' "immoral" content, and to subsequently have the offending material banned (for more information about the history behind this, check out this book).

Yep, banned. As in, shut down the shows, burn the books, close the bookstores that sold the books. (Of course, all this accomplished was making the books/movies/plays that much more popular everywhere else.)

What sorts of things got Banned In Boston, you ask? Here's a few examples of such notorious smut that posed a dangerously subversive moral risk to the Boston community:

• The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
• Oil!, by Upton Sinclair (recently made into the film There Will Be Blood)
• Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis (made into an Oscar-winning film in the 1950s)
• Most of the works of William Faulkner (seriously)
• The Atlantic Monthly magazine and the entire Alfred Knopf publishing house were also frequent targets of the Watch and Ward Society. (Because everybody knows what kind of immoral smut they put out, right?)
• Also burlesque stage shows and even straight dramatic plays, like the works of Eugene O'Neill (!)

You might wonder what Banned In Boston has to do with me. Well, it seems that I've managed to get one of my own books banned. My novel TENDER IS THE KNIGHT, a sweet, Cinderella-story/comic romance novel set in the SCA, recently spurred the creation of a Draconian (or dare I say, Orwellian) across-the-board SCA corporate policy banning the advertising of any work of fiction from appearing in any official SCA publication----from Tournaments Illuminated all the way down to one-page local shire newsletters.

This policy was instituted in direct response to my publisher's requests to purchase display advertising in several SCA publications. Rather than accept the ad dollars for my apparently very controversial book, the SCA banned these types of ads from appearing altogether. Even better, SCA turned those ad dollars away at the same time that they're jacking up SCA membership dues due to "difficult financial circumstances." (Huh?)

The reason given for the policy? "Because advertising works of fiction is contrary to the SCA's educational mission."

Again, I say, Huh? (Oh, right, I forgot. Reading works of fiction is in no way educational. Can I get an amen?)

You might remember my post of a couple weeks ago about the hate mail my book TENDER IS THE KNIGHT has generated. Well, suffice to say, I think it's pretty obvious these two incidents are directly related.

In response to this, I've decided not to renew my SCA member dues until further notice (which will also entail me resigning my local herald's office). Sorry, but I can't send my hard-earned dollars to any organization that institutes authoritarian, across-the-board Orwellian book-suppression policies that smack of hysterical censorship. If you're an SCA member I suggest you do the same. Even better, write a letter to the SCA Board of Directors protesting this decision. They won't listen to me (I've already been told as much by Those In Power) but they might listen to you.

In the meantime, buy my book. It's Banned In The SCA, after all---so it has to be good.
Peace.

Why You Need an Epub Agent

I get asked all the time why I have an agent when so many of my books are published by epublishers. Because you can still land ebook deals without an agent (and because epublishers often pay very small advances, or none at all), many people think you shouldn't bother getting an agent.

Based upon my experience, I would disagree. Saritza Hernandez, a staffer at the L.Perkins Agency where I'm a client, specializes in the ebook market, and she recently wrote this blog post about why you might need an ePub agent. Thought I'd share.

Peace.

I'm Really A Playwright

In my other, non-novelist life, I'm really a playwright. I created this little ditty on Xtranormal after I saw some similar ones posted on the topics of "So You Wanna Write A Novel" and "So You Wanna Get A PhD in the Humanities". Since I'm not only a novelist/graduate of an expensive graduate degree program in the humanities, but also a playwright, I thought I'd be ideal to comment on the fabulous world of playwriting for the American theater.

Because if you can go $50,000 into debt to complete an advanced arts degree at an elite university and then fritter away 15 years of your life trying to get your plays produced, you too can enjoy the fabulous life of the American playwright, which features such perks as rampant classism, the proverbial casting couch, Midwest bias, rampant substance abuse, and early death by suicide (or perhaps if you're lucky, a grand old age spent living in flophouses and eating Alpo):




Peace.

More Funny Wannabe Writer Stories

I should note that every single one of the following anecdotes is true, personally witnessed by yours truly.

Wannabe Writer No. 1: This wannabe is a (former) friend of mine. Shortly after I got my first book deal (a print deal with Random House's now-defunct Cheek imprint), this friend of mine asked my advice on how to write a novel. I told her first and foremost to read as much as she could, to write diligently each and every day (actual PROSE, not blog posts or emails or grocery lists), and not to expect to get her first completed manuscript published.

She then got flustered and upset. "But---but----don't I have to write seventeen character studies and eight plot outlines before I even think about writing my book?"

"Yes, you could do that," I replied. "But it's usually much more productive just to write the actual book." (To which she replied, aghast, that she didn't have time to write a whole book, because the new season of Six Feet Under had just started.) Note: I'm not friends with this person anymore.

Wannabe Writer No. 2: This person is an older sibling of a good friend of mine. This person waxed on and on about how she had recently discovered that she was a BRILLIANT poet. So brilliant, in fact, that she expected to get published by Random House and featured on the Oprah Winfrey show very soon as part of Oprah's Book Club. This nothwithstanding that a) she had never had a single one of her poems published anywhere; b) there is no commerical market for poetry books; and c) Oprah Winfrey has never once selected a poetry anthology for her book club (and if she ever did, she'd be far more likely to pick something by a household name like Maya Angelou or Rita Dove). When I pointed all of this out to the wannabe writer, her overzealous reply was, "But she'll pick ME! And since I'm in Chicago, I'm planning to go right to her office and talk to her about it tomorrow." Uh huh. I'm sure that went over really well, too.

Wannabe Writer No. 3: This person is a distant relative of mine. After working in PR and corporate communications for many years (to wit, this person actually was a professional writer of sorts, though not traditionally published), he decided one day to quit his lucrative PR job so he could spend a year writing the Great American Novel. He'd never tried his hand at any sort of creative writing before, mind you---not even a random short story or freelance journalism assignment. And he didn't read much, either (he spent most of his time harshly criticising well-known published authors, in fact). After he spent a year or so writing a highly autobiographical novel that was more of a therapeutic exercise than an artistic one (which also ended up pissing off several members of his family), he was out of money and desperate. He couldn't even get an agent, let alone a book deal. He ended up suffering a nervous breakdown and moving out of state.

And, my personal favorite, Wannabe Writer No. 4: About a year ago I got a random IM message from somebody I had gone to high school with. (Not a friend, mind you---this person was one of the "cool kids" in school who wouldn't even give me the time of day.) In this long, rambling, typo-ridden IM, this person went on and on about how she'd married someone who was secretly a small-time drug dealer, and was now serving time in prison. She seemed to think that the story of how her incarcerated husband fenced pot and speed from their trailer-park house would make for interesting reading, that it surely would become a worldwide bestseller, and by the way, would I write it for her since "she just didn't have the time?" (Of course, she also expected me to ghostwrite her totally irrelevant life story for free, and to allow her to keep the millions of dollars the book would supposedly make for herself.) I gave her a terse "no" and blocked her Facebook profile.

And tomorrow, I'll talk a little about what it means to be a playwright. Bwahahahahahhhaaaa!

Peace