We've moved (temporarily)

The Florida Writers Conference is a great place to hone your skills as a writer and learn about the business side of the equation as well. The conference blog not only features information about the conference itself, but also on writing, the tools of the trade, and the business side of the fence. It's a great conference. You should come.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm the Marketing director. For the moment, though, I'm spending most of my time and energy on that blog, so please come on over and join the fun.

Re-setting

I'm tired.

The last fews months have been long on trips to take and retrieve children, support calls at work for things that had to be resolved right now (often because the user waited too long to start the process), and the need to produce more, better-quality data, quicker, while doing other things, too.

In other words, everyday life. Don't get me wrong. There's been nothing major going wrong, it's just been kind of a grind.

It strikes me that the first novel has to be the hardest. Maybe the second or third, or any novel you write while having mommy or daddy duty and a full-time job. And yet, if you look at early novels by people, and the lengths they've gone to get them done, you have to acknowledge the accomplishment.

But what happens when you need a reset, when your focus has drifted, and you need to get back to the basics? Given the rest of life, how singular does your focus have to be? Can you write and market a book while marketing a writers conference and considering whether you need to find another job? Can you do it while acting as care-giving to a loved one and working fulltime? Can you do it while major changes occur in your life?

The answer, of course, is yes. You can do all that if you choose to do it. By focusing on what's important and arranging everything else around the big rocks. (As in, put the big rocks in the jar first and the little rocks will fit around them.) By grinding through the times when energy is low and demands are high until the equation changes. By having faith in the future and your ability.

Critique Groups: A Primer

My friends really dig my writing. I'm sure Stephen King's friends dig his writing, too. Stephen has several million non-friends who dig his writing, so he's got a large dispassionate audience to give him valid input. I'm not so lucky, and you probably aren't either.

A critique group isn't going to make you as rich as Stephen King, but it will provide you the input that your friends won't. And if you find a good group, they'll read the parts that might make your mom blush and give you valid input.

Unfortunately, there's no website that lists and ranks all the critique groups out there, weeding out the chaff and giving you the best of the best. And if there were, the very best groups might have waiting lists. The best you can do is find one near you and try it out. Based on my experience, these questions will help you with the weeding process (your mileage may vary):

-- Do you have to pay to join? I was in a fantastic group for about three years, and though I didn't have to pay to join the group, I did have to be a member of the Florida Writers Association. If you do have to pay to join, make sure you get your money's worth.

-- How often can you submit? If you're working through a novel or book, it's hard to get any traction if you don't get to submit regularly. If you can only submit once a month, many critiquers might have to relearn your voice and characters every time, which means their feedback might be skewed. On the other hand, if you can submit every week, you'll also have to read others' manuscripts every week, which leaves little time for writing.

-- What are the rules? The leader and members should be able to summarize the rules without much problem. If there are no rules, or if understanding of the rules isn't consistent, it could mean problems. Our group allowed you to submit up to 20 pages, double-spaced, each time (twice a month). Submissions were limited to fiction, memoirs, and essays. Poetry, screenplays, and most non-fiction weren't welcome. We didn't have the expertise. Also, after some problems, we decided everything had to be typed.

-- Are the rules enforced? If the rules say 20 pages, double-spaced, are people regularly allowed to submit 35 pages? If a member's getting ready to submit a manuscript to Donald Maase, I'd probably critique that much. Otherwise, I'd probably so less than 20, if for no other reason to show my displeasure at their disdain for the rules and my time.

-- How do the critiques work? In my group, we passed out the samples and read them over two weeks, then critiqued the next time. Each person spoke for each sample. After a time, we started to limit the length of time people got for critiques, because we were getting out half an hour late each week. We also limited the membership to eight people per group (but had as many as three groups going at a time).

The answers to these questions will vary, as will each writers' desired answers. I liked having a smaller group with bigger writing samples. You were expected to submit work that was proofread and you were also expected to spend some time and effort on preparing your critique. We met Monday nights, so a couple hours or more each Sunday always went into the critique.

Your needs may be different, but if you're going to put the time in, you should find a group that give you what you need.

Next time: What should you expect in a critique?

What's on your MP3 player?

(I'll get back to Twhirl. I promise.)

When the children are home, our house is the place to be. And when the doorbell rings, Max the Wonderdog feels it's his duty to announce the doorbell as only he can, just in case we didn't hear it. And then there's the inevitable yelling match between my two lovely children about computer time or who has to empty the dishwasher or whatever indignities they're heaping on each other.

Sometimes the only way to write is to seal myself off from everyone in the world. And because I don't have an invitation to the Vice President's secret location or a lifetime membership to Yaddo, I have to make due. Fortunately, I own an MP3 player and a reasonable set of earbuds.

Stephen King often writes to the hardest of rock music. Others are inclined differently. Some must even stoop to country music or contemporary rap (abbreviated as c-rap). For me, whose musical tastes are wonderful and eclectic, here's a sampling what's on my MP3 player:

U2 (Almost anything)

Dropkick Murphys (Kiss Me, I'm ****faced is my favorite. Yes, I have deep-seated issues.)

Electric Light Orchestra (Almost anything, but I like Do Ya)

Kansas (Almost anything)

Talking Heads (Almost anything)

NFL Films music

Patsy Cline

AC/DC

Chicago (earlier material)

Brian Setzer Orchestra

Sinatra (The Way You Look Tonight)

Genesis (I tend to like Phil better than Peter, but respect you if you disagree)

INXS

The Cars (I like the later stuff, but the earlier stuff is great, too)

John Denver (Looking for Space has amazing lyrics)

Paul McCartney/Wings and the Beatles

I'm fairly certain that my MP3 player is the only place where you can hear Patsy Cline followed by AC/DC, then Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode followed by the ? and the Mysterians and the Hives.

Does music work for you? If so, what kind of music?

And would you like an Australian sheep dog who likes to announce the doorbell and gets scared at thunderstorms?

What stops you from writing?

I'm sitting at the laptop, awash in its pale glow, trying to figure out what to write. The Mets are playing the Giants on ESPN and I should be watching, but I also need to get ahead a little on the blog.

It's late May now, which means school is starting to wind down. Little League is over, and most of my child-transportation duties will involve taking daughter number one to synchronized swimming practice and hanging out at Panera until practice ends.

With all this extra time, writing should rocket forward, right? I'd like to think so, but I'm not holding my breath. In addition to this blog, I also blog for the Florida Writers Conference (awesome conference, you should go), I have a blog I'm posting pieces of short stories to, and I'm experimenting with some other online approaches to story-telling.

On the other hand, this week, I found time to: watch the season finale of Fringe, watch the two-hour season-finale event of LOST, went to a Rays baseball game, attended two Little League games, went to a season-ending party, walked for a collective total of about five hours, and attended a synchro fundraiser. Some of those activities come with parenthood. Some are just part of a balanced life.

But, the only thing stopping me from writing is me. And if I'm not passionate enough about what I write to put other things aside, it's an sign I need to work on the concept a little more.

Is $15 too much for an e-book?

On the heals of yesterday's series of questions about what you'd pay for books published in non-standard formats, comes this article from the May 17 edition of the New York Times. The article presents David Baldacci's argument that substantially lower prices for e-books aren't sustainable in the economics of current publishing.

The article says that publishers are caught between the demands of "authors who want to be paid high advances and consumers who believe they should pay less for a digital edition." But in many cases, publishers struggle to make back the large advances and wind up losing money, even on otherwise successful books. No one wants to miss the next Harry Potter.

But if consumers aren't willing to pay more of the e-books, is the e-book phenomenon going to die on the vine? Not likely. Someone will push the e-books into existence, and force changes to an economic system filled with skewed incentives.

Would you pay?

Would you pay for access to a website that has well-written stories and novels? If you spend $150 a year on books, would you pay $120 a year to be able to read or download stories from a single author or multiple authors?

Would you pay 99 cents to download 50 pages of a book by a compelling author? Then, if you liked what you read, would you pay another 99 cents for the next 50 pages?

Would you visit a blog that has episodic stories posted every month? Would you make a point of clicking through the ads for the sponsors of that site? Would you buy those products to help support the writer?

Would you tell your friends about such a site or a blog? Would you reference it on Facebook or in your e-mails to people?

Would you be less likely to read the site if the character drinks a Coke and the Coke is linked to the Coca-Cola website?

Do you absolutely need a physical book in your hands, so you can physically turn pages? Or if books moved to an electronic media, would you go along?

These questions are all hypothetical, but the answers will drive the future of how people publish and read books. The answers will also structure how literature is structured. If people pay to download sections of books, each section is more likely to end with a hook, sometime to entice the readers to come download the next section.

If the book is good enough, and the reason is compelling enough, you'll probably go outside the boundaries of what you think you'd like. And once you've done that, you might do it again. Which brings us to the final question: Is a great story any less great if it's told in an electronic format?