Tactical mistake

I made a huge mistake last week. Time was going well. I knew what was supposed to happen and it was happening on plan.

Why, why, why did I go back to the beginning?

Actually I do know the answer. I finally figured out how Nat's gift works, and it's pretty cool. It's way more fun and interesting than it was in the beginning and it even has a touch of plausibility. I've been stuck all along on how it would be possible to see the future and not have the future be pre-determined. If you know what's going to happen, doesn't that imply that what's going to happen is fixed? I don't like determinism, I don't believe in it, but a logical proof of precognition would seem to require it. But I finally managed to wrap my brain around a way that Natalya could have foresight without violating the uncertainty principle, and even managed to bring in a nice use of the observer affect. Yay, physics.

So I went back to the beginning to fix the early references to her gift.

Gah. So much easier said than done. One little tiny change and yep, I've spent the past five days revising Chapter 1 for the ... I don't know how many-ith time.

I really wanted to have this book written and ready for beta readers by the first week of February. Instead I might have the first chapter finalized. I keep telling myself that as long as I persist, I will get there in the end. In the long run, persistence is what matters. And it'll be a better book because of all this. But I am seriously missing writing fan fiction where if something didn't work, a new episode would change everything anyway.

So many stories, so little time

I hit a point where I had to stop and think for a while in my writing today. I'm at an important scene, where the characters are emotional but also revealing for the first time the heart of the conflict between them, and I don't want it to wind up hokey. It's one of those times when the scene is so clear in my head that it's not creating, more transcribing, except I'm not getting it right. And it has to be right.

So I take a break. I decide to nap for an hour. Sometimes naps are just pretend sleep, where I'm closing my eyes in order to better imagine my world and sometimes they become real sleep, but either way, it's a Sunday afternoon and I need a chance to think a little.

Think a little about Natalya, that is.

Somehow I wound up, half imagining, half dreaming, Grace and Rachel. What are they doing in Seattle? How do they know each other? Did they even meet when Rachel was in Tassamara? Grace wasn't at the diner that night. And wait, shouldn't Rachel be in San Francisco with her mother?

But no, they're walking along a waterfront in Seattle. It's not Pike's Place market, but it's someplace I know. There's maybe a fish hatchery? A canal? I know it's familiar. The grass slopes down to a sidewalk and there's concrete and people and they're talking. Poor Rachel. She wanted a fresh start, but her D.C. neat perfection is an awkward fit in Seattle. Her clothes are wrong, her style is wrong. And she's at a school with boys, which is completely scary and strange. No one's mean to her, but it's like she's invisible. She might as well not exist. She can't ask her mom for help because she begged to go to public school. She can't tell her mom how unhappy she really is.

Oh, I just realized. Dillon sent Grace.

Huh. I wonder how?

I wonder why?

And mostly, I really, really wonder how Rachel and Grace wound up being the story in my head when I'm supposed to be thinking about Natalya and Colin?!

(Grace, incidentally, decides that they need to pick the girl whose style Rachel most likes and hire her. Not as a friend, because that would be awkward and creepy, but as a style consultant. Shopping ensues. I think Grace likes shopping. I have never shopped at anything other than a thrift store in Seattle in my life, so it just might be that Rachel's style consultant/future friend is a thrift store kind of shopper. That would sure be a change for Rachel.)

But what the heck are they doing in Seattle?

An hour past the end of my scheduled nap time, so it's time to get back to Nat and Colin. Or maybe start thinking about dinner. But it occurs to me that writing a story set in Seattle makes visiting Seattle a tax deduction, as long as I do some research.

Why Grace, though? Why not Akira? Well, no, she'd be useless. She's not good at making friends herself and she doesn't care about clothes much. And Sylvie...yep, equally useless. My subconscious got it right.

The Super Secret, Super Fun Project

Dear Carol and Judy,

After the two of you commented on my one-year-anniversary post, I decided that I wanted to make you something for Christmas.

If you lived near me, I would have baked you Christmas cookies. I make really good cookies.  I've got a long list of holiday favorites -- thumbprint cookies, molasses cookies, nut roll, cupcake cookies -- but my specialty is sugar cookies, the kind where you roll out the dough and sprinkle the top with colored sugar. I've made them almost every year since I was twelve or so. Even in the days before I knew how to cook, when my sauces separated and my rice stuck together like flannel pjs in midwinter, my sugar cookies were lovely. But I don't think they'd make it to New Zealand intact and I don't have the faintest idea where you live, Judy, but I'm pretty sure it's not down the street.

So no cookies. Instead, I  wrote you a story. (Or finished it anyway.) I thought I'd just post it here and that would be fun, but it got sort of long for that. Then I thought I'd make it a downloadable file, but that turns out to be complicated. You can't actually post a file to be downloaded at a blogger site, so I would have needed to get a real website. I was debating what to do--new website? email? dropbox?--when I remembered this summer, at my geekgirl presentation, describing Amazon as the biggest bake sale in the world.

Amazon. Bake sale. Sugar cookies. Christmas stories.

Voilá.

A Christmas present for the two of you. Free on Amazon for the next three days (December 26th through 28th), two days in reserve so in case you miss it, we can schedule a free day for when you can get it.

I hope it makes you smile.

Arsenic research

I think it's pretty unlikely that I'll write a historical anytime soon. It seems like the kind of thing that would make someone like me become completely obsessed. I can picture myself spending a month researching the proper types of silverware for a throwaway line in a single scene. That said, I stumbled across a reference to Scheele's Green today and thought, wow, I wonder how I could use that?

Scheele's Green was a pigment used in wallpaper in the 1700 and early 1800s, and it contained arsenic. In a damp climate, a mold could grow on the wallpaper and release toxic arsenic gas into the air. It's a really creepy idea. One modern study says that the gas wouldn't have been strong enough to actually kill people, but still, what a fun plot twist for a Regency murder mystery.

A Gift of Time update

I finally figured out how to solve a nagging problem with A Gift of Time today. Yay! Only, boo-hiss, it would mean, yet again, going back to the beginning and rewriting. So far with this book, I've written the first 5000 words about ten times. Over and over again, I write the first 5000 words. The thought of going back one more time -- ugh. It just doesn't inspire me.

On the other hand, it's a fix for a thing that's been bothering me about the beginning for weeks. And at least I don't keep solving the same problem. First was a character problem, next came a point of view problem, this is a plot problem. It's like different layers every time.

I think, for the moment, I'm not going to make the fix. I'm going to keep it in reserve for when I actually have a completed first draft. After all, it's NaNoWriMo and if I'm going to make 50,000 words by the end of the month (not yet impossible, although definitely not looking terribly likely), I need to stop revising and get on with it. Excellent plan. So good I'm going to start right this very minute!

Happy Halloween!

I could make lots of excuses for why I disappeared for the month of October -- I actually have a few good reasons, including a couple of fun projects that took up some brain space and writing energy. I'm working on a presentation about self-publishing for my dad's computer club, which ought to be fun if I can pull all my thoughts together. I'm also editing and formatting my son's paternal grandfather's memoirs, which I thought would be a little project, but requires some serious thinking in order to respect his voice and story while still making sensible edits.

And I started some Doctor Who fanfiction, which has been fun but gives me an excuse for lots of research. Bacon cost 38 cents per pound in 1938, which sounds faked, because of the 38-38 repetition, but was actually from a site about prices in 1938. I spent quite a while wavering over whether a made-up price -- 39 cents? 37 cents? 42 cents? -- would sound more realistic than the real price. Plus, of course, the research into Doctor Who itself, which means watching episodes -- where was River in prison? When was River in prison? (Stormcage, 51st century). Who arrested her? Back to the television!

And, of course, I'm still struggling with rewriting A Gift of Time. I've done the first chapter so many times now, so many different ways. My new plan is to NaNoWriMo it -- just write, write, write, get the idea down, and move on. I did this analysis of my current writing process with a friend today:

Line: Half the town filled Maggie's place.
Thought: That's terrible. Well, rewrite it. Get the idea across in a better way.
Line: Maggie's place was packed.
Thought: Is that passive? Is it dull? Sentences with "was" are boring. I should change that.
Line: Half the town packed into Maggie's place.
Thought: Okay, that's just stupid. You're talking about people, not the town. A town can't fit into a restaurant.
Line: People packed Maggie's place.
Thought: Ugh, that alliteration is like bad poetry. And could 'people' possibly be a duller word choice?

And twenty minutes later, I have accomplished nothing. And all I wanted to do was to say that the darn restaurant was crowded!

Mostly, though, my disappearance has been due to none of that. Actually, I've been living in Azeroth. If you've ever played WoW, the Pandaria expansion is really fun. It combines so many good qualities of play and story, humor and tension and excitement and gratification. The makers have put serious work into finding out what makes a game fun and satisfying and trying to build in aspects of the game that will make it enjoyable for everyone. The only problem, of course, is that in order to get to Panda-land, you've got to work your characters through all of the other levels. Huge, huge time sink. I suppose when we're starving because I haven't found a job (<--hyperbole, highly unlikely to happen) I will regret the hours spent immersed in someone else's imaginary worlds, but honestly, I've really enjoyed this past month there.

That said, I'm going to try to cut way back in November in order to spend more time in my own imaginary worlds. And I'll be giving the 50,000 words in a month thing a try. I probably won't do the official NaNoWriMo, because I want to work on Time, of course, and since I've been working on it for, ulp, three or four months already, it doesn't fit within their rules. But in principle, I'll be trying the crazy writing schedule for a month. Anyone else doing the same?

PS The number on the Halloween candy is because it's for a scavenger hunt for Project Team Beta. Welcome, Project Team Beta folks! Good luck with the hunt! And Happy Halloween!

PPS A Gift of Ghosts and A Gift of Thought are both free on Amazon on October 31, from midnight to midnight Pacific Standard Time. If you're reading this, you've probably read them already, but if you have friends who might like a free ghost story or two on Halloween, please spread the word!

Yesterday's words

Yesterday was the first day I managed 1000 words in weeks. It's too bad the words weren't on A Gift of Time! But they're sort of fun, so here they are:

****

“It’s so bizarre,” Akira said thoughtfully, staring up at the motionless ceiling fan. 

“Is the baby moving?” Zane asked, sliding a hand along the slight curve of her belly. He hadn’t been able to feel a kick yet, but that didn’t stop him from trying. 

“No, not that.” Akira tilted her head sideways, letting it come to rest against his shoulder. She sighed, feeling content with her position although mildly exasperated by her body’s demands. 

“Bizarre,” Zane repeated. “Would that be the miracle of life growing inside you?” 

“A natural process that women have been managing for thousands of years.” Her voice was dry. Of course, it was a little strange that she’d met her baby’s previous incarnation—she imagined that not too many women throughout history could claim the same. But no, that wasn’t what she’d been thinking about.

“What then?” Zane stroked up, long fingers reaching the underside of her breast and lightly tracing a pattern along her skin. 

“How much I want red meat.” Not just red meat. Steak. Gorgeous steak. Red in the middle, seared dark on the outside. Mmm, with salt. Luscious salt, bursting with flavor on her tongue. Or maybe a hamburger, juicy and rich, dripping with . . . ick. Fat and blood. That’s what hamburgers dripped with. But even knowing that didn’t change the way her mouth watered at the thought.

Zane chuckled. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” Akira protested.

“Sure it does. The baby needs some protein.” 

“I ate a pound of edamame last night. A whole pound. That’s about five times the amount of protein the average person needs.”

Zane’s hand stilled. “I read something . . .” He pulled away, Akira’s head dropping to the pillow as he got out of the bed and crossed to the dresser on the other side of the room. 

“Hey!” She complained. She’d been comfortable. And his clever hands had been starting to stir up something a little more interesting than hunger for steak. 

He looked back over his shoulder and grinned at her. “Coming right back,” he promised. He grabbed his smartphone and started tapping.  “Soy,” he reported, “contains phytic acid.”

Akira raised her eyebrows. “And?” She’d never even heard of phytic acid. Why had Zane? 

“It blocks the absorption of minerals.” He joined her on the bed, lying down and putting a proprietary arm across her. 

“Minerals such as . . .”

“Calcium, magnesium, and iron,” he said cheerfully. “Also zinc and mercury, if they matter.” 

“Let me see that.” Akira held out a hand for his phone and he passed it to her, a small smile playing around his lips. 

She read the information on the website he’d found, scowling. “Damn it. All right, maybe I’m craving meat because I need iron. Fine, I’ll eat broccoli.” She couldn’t suppress a shudder at the thought. Broccoli. She loved broccoli. But not for the past few months. Just the thought of it brought a nasty taste into her mouth. 

Zane leaned down. “Good job, Henry,” he whispered to her abdomen. “You and me, bud? We’re gonna be friends.” 

Akira groaned. What was a semi-vegetarian doing getting involved with a confirmed meat-and-potatoes man? Worse, having his baby? 

Zane grinned. “How about I pick up a couple filets? Fire up the grill? We can have steak and baked potatoes for dinner tonight.”

“Steak and salad,” she answered grumpily. 

“Baked potatoes. With butter. Maybe some sour cream.” 

Akira closed her eyes. Why did that sound so good? What was Henry doing to her? Having her body taken over by a creature with his own tastes and desires was not what she had expected from pregnancy. Was it like this for every new mother? 

“Knock, knock!” The cheery voice from the other side of the bedroom door stopped Akira’s response to Zane before she could make it. It was almost with relief that she called out, “What is it, Rose?” 

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but . . .” Rose paused and Akira’s eyes narrowed. Was that nerves she heard in the ghost girl’s tone? Rose wasn’t the nervous type. “I need your help.” 

***

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be okay. She acts real mean, but she wasn’t like that when I knew her.” 

“When you knew her? When she was alive, you mean?” Akira didn’t bother to look toward the ghost seated in the passenger seat next to her. Florida drivers were insane. She needed to keep her eyes on the road. 

“Uh-huh,” Rose responded eagerly. “She was a few years younger than me in school, so I didn’t know her well, but she was nice enough.”

“Nice enough. Huh.” Akira thought back to the mean old woman ghost she’d met briefly on her first day in Tassamara. Meredith, her realtor, had been showing Akira houses supposedly available to rent. Akira hadn’t even been willing to go into the little lakefront cottage. The angry ghost grumbling on the porch had made it clear that she wasn’t welcome. “Is that what they call damning with faint praise?” 

“No, really,” Rose answered. “I’ve visited her a few times recently. As long as you’re not planning on moving into her house, she’ll be perfectly friendly.” 

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” This time Akira dared a glance at her passenger. To Akira, the ghost looked almost like a typical teenage girl—only her full skirt and blonde curls showing that she was out of her own time—but Akira knew she was more than that. And more than simply a ghost, too. 

“Yes.” A little frown between her eyes revealed Rose’s worry. “She’s determined to get rid of the new tenant.” 

Akira turned her gaze back to the road. Determined. She didn’t like determined ghosts. She didn’t like angry ghosts, either. She sighed. “I was supposed to be writing wedding invitations today.” 

“Zane said he’d take care of them,” Rose said.

Akira didn’t roll her eyes, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, as she tried to imagine Zane’s version of formal invitations. It wouldn’t be careful calligraphy, that was for sure. If she had to guess, he was picking up the phone and calling most of the people on their list. And then he’d tell her it was all taken care of. 

She dropped a hand to her belly.

And it's up. . .

A Gift of Thought on Amazon

I suspect I'm going to be writing and rewriting that blurb. I had to firmly remind myself last night not to let perfection be the enemy of the good enough. It's not perfect, but then nothing ever is.

Wishing for a marketing department

Book's done, proofed, ready to go -- all I need to do now is write a blurb that works. It is unbelievably hard. I think I'm going to be tweaking this blurb for the next three months. Should it start with Dillon? The book does. Or Sylvie, the way my current blurb has? Including both of them in the blurb without  spoilers has so far been completely beyond me. As I yearn for a marketing department, I have to remind myself that back when I did work with a marketing department, I almost always preferred to write the sales copy myself. And in this case, I'm definitely best qualified to do the job. I'm tempted to send out emails to all the people who've already read it, though, and say, 'Um, what's the book about?' just to see what they say.

...And I think I just published it. Wow, Amazon has made it easy. No more Mobipocket creator, meta data, building a table of contents -- you upload the Word doc, they turn it into a book for you. Not that I've seen the book yet. It's still publishing. But by tomorrow morning, I bet it'll be up there.

We used to hit a big gong to celebrate sending a book to the printer. Everyone in the company stood up in their cubicles and cheered the triumphant team that had just achieved a little miracle. Somehow hitting Save just doesn't have the same oomph. I think I'll go set off some fireworks. 

Excerpt of A Gift of Thought

In the spirit of "flip the book open and see what it sounds like," here's a short excerpt from Chapter Six of A Gift of Thought, which will be released June 12th.

Stop reading here if you hate all spoilers! (Also if you object to curse words that start with the letter "B")

**********************

She forced all of her weight against him, but her feet were already slipping on the smooth asphalt. “You shouldn’t get near strange women in parking lots,” she said. “You never know what they might do.” The words came out more breathless than she liked, and she tried to steal a glance at the ground. If she let him go, could she get the bag and retrieve whatever he’d been holding? 

No, she decided regretfully. He was too close, she wouldn’t have enough time. Choke hold? No, the bastard was too big. And too tough. 

She felt the snap more than heard it, but his scream of rage could have been heard halfway down the street if there’d been anyone around. Damn. She dropped his arm and then quickly kicked her bag and whatever was beneath it under the car as she danced backwards and dropped into a combat stance. 

Had the break even registered with him? He turned to face her, his arm dangling limply at his side. Pale skin, hair in a buzz cut so short it was almost shaved, probably 280 pounds of muscle. She noted the details automatically, hoping she’d need them for a police report later. 

This guy was big, fast, and too hopped up on steroids or something else to care about the pain of his broken arm. Her best bet was to get help. And quickly. 

Ty would kill her for being so over-confident. 

“Now I’m gonna kill ya, bitch.” 

Okay, Ty would have to get in line. 

**************************

Last line revised courtesy of a wonderful beta reader, Mike Kent. Thanks, Mike!

Blogging about blogging

I open the door to the outside and Zelda dashes through like I'm rewarding her for being incredibly clever while Gizmo looks at me like, "Really? Must we?" I love having two dogs around -- it is decidedly twice as much fun as one.

But that wasn't what I was going to write about. Obviously, having quit graduate school (or descended into total insanity, depending on how you'd like to define my behavior), I'm trying to figure out what I do next with my life. Or rather, how I earn the money that it will take to pay the mortgage and feed the kid and the dog and keep the car filled with gas...I should stop this list before it freaks me out. But you get the idea -- I need to come up with a plan. I think I wrote about my OCD need for plans before: ah, no, it was about structure. Here, read this past post: Structure. So you see, I need some structure, I need some goals, I need to know what the f*** I'm doing. (Look, I'm so repressed that I can't even swear on my own blog that no one else reads! Gah! Sometimes my crazy drives  me...ha, crazy.)

Returning to the point . . . most writer's blogs strike me as wrong. Not that I'm going to go out and tell them so, but writers seem to mostly write about writing. Admittedly, when that's what you're doing, of course it's what interests you. And yet, readers -- who are the people who should be most inclined to visit a writer's blog -- don't care about writing. In fact, as a reader, I want nothing less than a writerly blog written by my favorite authors. I want to believe that Miles Vorkosigan is real. I don't want to know how Lois McMaster Bujold thought about acts while she wrote those novels and how she deliberately used short sentences to build tension. I want to believe in the world she created -- a blog about writing from her would be like Oz pulling back the curtain and saying eagerly, "yeah, it's all tricks, you want to try, too?"

Yet, of course, when you're writing, that's what you're thinking about. I've written a bunch of posts about the business of self-publishing because that's what I'm thinking about, but I don't want to write a blog about self-publishing because that would require me to keep writing about it past the point when it interests me. In fact, having a successful blog in general probably requires consistency -- writing about the same topics regularly -- and wow, does that sound tedious or what? I really would rather just blog whatever weird thing is in my head at whatever time it's in there. (They're remaking the Star Trek with Khan and no movie has ever given me worse nightmares -- I'm horrified by the very idea. I won't be seeing that one. Not that I see any movies, but that one I won't be wanting to see and not because of all the reasons that leaving the house seems like a bad idea...And yeah, that thought's because of those weird little ear worms that eat your brain.)

Anyway, I think my conclusion is that I'm not likely to ever have a successful blog. Okay, cross blogging off as one possible future career. Time to go back to writing and not thinking about our eventual starvation . . .

80% done

I'm at the place where I start to think that everything I'm writing is completely and utterly idiotic, the stupidest plot that anyone's ever come up with and miserably stilted to boot. Fortunately, I've now written enough long stories (admittedly, most of them fanfic) that I recognize the phase. Usually I hit it at closer to 30K words and this time I'm nearer 60K, so I guess that's a sign that I'm improving. With something, anyway. I'm trying hard to remind myself that my beta readers really liked Chapter 6 (the most recent chapter they've seen) so I'm doing something right even though everything I've written today is utter crap.

Assuming that I can keep writing through this stage -- a reasonably safe assumption, I usually do -- by the end of the week, Thought will be the longest story I've written this century. Not as long as the first version of the novel I once-upon-a-time almost finished, but pretty long. I'm not leaving myself as much time for editing, though, which ought to make me nervous -- ah, except that this time I've got beta readers working on it now and with Ghosts I waited until I finished. All right, so I won't get nervous about that. Yet, anyway.

Thought

A Gift of Thought is going to be the weirdest book ever. I kind of love it. Even right now, when it's in its first draft stage and scenes wander and I get repetitive, it's...different. It's not young adult, but Dillon and Rachel are sure important. It's not really a romance. It's only partly a thriller. I have no idea what it is, really. But it is ever so fun.

I'm biased, of course. But still, I'm loving all my characters madly and that's really fun. And Sylvie--she just rocks. I'm so excited for her to get an HEA.

William Carlos Williams

Loved this: http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/17609287179

In his Autobiography, William Carlos Williams recounts what led him to pursue medicine as a career:

No one was ever going to be in a position to tell me what to write, and you can say that again. No one, and I meant no one (for money) was ever (never) going to tell me how or what I was going to write. That was number one…
I wasn’t going to make any money by writing. Therefore I had to have a means to support myself…for I didn’t intend to die for art nor to be bedbug food for it…

I feel the same way about it, although I don't aspire to write great works. But I spent my time as a freelance writer and being dependent on an audience is so much less fun than writing what you love and hoping someone else will find something in it to love as well.

Found here: http://amygarvey.tumblr.com/post/17655192147/austin-kleon-william-carlos-williams-on-the-freedom-of

Writer's block

I finally realized this morning that I'm stuck at exactly the same point in Thought where I got stuck in Ghosts. Writing about a teenage ghost means that you're writing about a dead child. There's no way around that.

I also realized, though--and this realization is more fun--that Sylvie is an entire rebellion in one character against a stereotype of emotional empaths. She's an empath (although I never describe it that way) but she just treats it as a sense and moves on. The whole "overwhelmed by other people's emotions" stereotype--yeah, not so much. Because, honestly, who is overwhelmed by sight? So there's a lot of colors in the world, it doesn't make you curl up into a fetal ball. Same with smell, same with touch. We learn to process. We learn to filter.

Sylvie had to learn to process another sense, she did, and she's fine. And I need to keep writing her story, despite the dead child!

Really a tweet

I hate when I have that feeling of wanting to finish a book I was reading, and then realize that it's the book that I'm writing that I want to finish reading, and I can't finish reading it until I finish writing it.

*sigh*

I should write faster.

Borrowed

This is sort of silly, but somehow, the borrowed numbers on Amazon are thrilling. Currently, 31 people have borrowed Ghosts. I want to rush up to all of them (except me) and shake them and say, do you realize you can only borrow ONE book a month? ONE! One book!! The people who buy it, eh, let's be real: it's priced at $3.50 and for most people that's a coffee, it's no big deal. But the borrowers have selected this book--my book!--to be their only book for the month. Okay, so yeah, it's free, that means they've actually literally invested less than the people who have purchased it. But at the same time, it feels as if their investment--the ONE book! for the WHOLE month!--is actually really exciting.

But I bet there's some macroeconomics rule that make my enthusiasm pointless.

Macroeconomics takes all the fun out of life.

Anatomy of a year (2011)

January: A scene that doesn't fit any fanfiction story grabs me and doesn't let go. I write down a line of dialog: “Chemists think it’s all about chemistry. Hormones and pheromones. Some peptides, a little oxytocin, and that’s the whole story. But what do they know? Really, it’s all about physics.”

Dad is diagnosed with cancer.

February: Dad has a massive heart attack, followed by quintuple bypass. Unfortunately, that means delaying the cancer treatment until he recovers. Everyone is anxious.

I write two chapters of Ghosts. I realize that books with ghosts in them are books about death. I think maybe this is not a good idea.

March: I decide to quit my job and return to school full-time.

I'm stuck on Ghosts at Chapter 4, because I realize that ghostly fifteen-year olds are really dead teenagers.

April: My birthday, and the one year anniversary of my mom's Alzheimer's diagnosis. And quite a year it's been, I think. I thank God that year is over, the next one has to be better. (Jinx!)

I'm not writing anything.

May: I officially quit my job and make plans for August through fall, including finally doing the house repairs that have been waiting forever.

I'm writing a little, maybe finally breaking through the writer's block, but I decide to toss two of the five chapters that are done. I'm back at Chapter 3. I post chapters to fictionpress and bookcountry.

June: Dad's having cancer treatments in Jacksonville and Mom gets sick. He brings her home and takes her to urgent care, then heads back to Jacksonville. Tests ensue.

July: A diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer that has metastasized to the liver. 4-6 months.

I meant to start really writing as soon as my job ended in early July, and I try, but I spend a lot of time staring into space. I read the first chapter of Ghosts aloud to Mom while sitting by her bed, and decide that it's not bad.

August: Yeah, that should have been 4-6 weeks. Mom dies August 6th.

I try to write every day. I succeed some of the time.

September: My (ex) father-in-law dies September 6th. Needless to say I'm not really working on my house repairs. Mostly I'm sleeping a lot, crying a lot, and trying to stay on top of schoolwork.

But I'm writing almost every day.

October: I'm in Seattle for Malcolm's memorial service when I get the call I've dreaded for years. A beloved college friend's cancer is back, and this time it's terminal. They're moving to palliative care.

I'm back to writing when I can. I write Zane's goodbye with tears running down my face.

November: Thanksgiving would have been my mother's 68th birthday. My sister's best friend dies unexpectedly, massive heart attack, the day before. She was 53.

I'm trying to let the book sit before starting revisions, but the self-imposed pressure of NaNoWriMo is making me insane and tweaking Ghosts makes me feel better. I tweak. I tweak some more.

December: Revisions! I add a few scenes, make some big changes to the ending, let a few more people critique it, then self-publish.

There are many ghosts in my book. Reviews describe it as wry, fun, breezy and charming, proving...something. That escapist writing isn't just for readers, maybe?

I said at the end of 2010 that 2011 had to be a better year. I'm scared to say that again. So my resolution for 2012 is simple: I want to be kind as often as possible. That's it.

Raising the Bar

So I set realistic goals for A Gift of Ghosts. What did I say, something like 50 sales in 6 months and 20 reviews? It was a nice realistic goal, based on realistic information, and having it made me feel very safe. This is where I am, this is where I'm going, this is where I hope to be in six months. Structure is comforting for anxious perfectionist types and goals create structure. Okay, artificial structure, but that's not the point. If you know what you're aiming for, you can relax while you're getting there.

Ironically, I am better at getting lost than anyone I know. Possibly because I get lost all the time -- I have no sense of direction -- but also because I don't get anxious about lost when it's physically lost. Once, when I had my son and my nephew in the car, I was returning to my sister's house from the grocery store and I wound up in the wrong state. It was mildly shocking to me, no big deal to my son, and extremely distressing to my nephew. I think R. said something blase, like, "She always gets lost but she always gets found again." That's the thing about physically lost -- you always find your way home again eventually. You might wind up in Kansas along the way (road trips from Illinois to Nebraska include Kansas when I'm driving), but so what? I guess maybe when I'm physically lost I still know what the goal is: I just don't know how to achieve it.

So back to book goals. My realistic goal has been, um, shattered, and that's a good thing. I'm happy about it. Except when I feel really stressed out and anxious which is actually all the time for the past 48 hours. I've lost my structure. I don't know what the goal is anymore. What am I hoping for? What do I want? Should I want a bestseller? I definitely never expected a bestseller -- it's a quirky little fun book, pure entertainment, and doesn't really fit into any genre. If I'd tried to go with a mainstream publisher (I didn't), I'm reasonably sure I would have been asked for changes and I didn't want that. I like Ghosts just the way it is. But what should I want? Should I want 100 sales? 1000? 10,000? Should I want to break into the Kindle Top 100? What's the bar?

No surprise, the anxiety's killing my writing. My editing is going great -- I've revised every chapter of A Gift of Thought (four of them) and they're all much improved. But if I don't write any more of it that really does no one any good.

So I'm looking at the bar and I'm thinking about why my anxiety level has skyrocketed and what it means to me, and I realize I need to lower that bar. I'm not insane -- I'd love to make lots of money from my writing and be really successful, but that's not why I started writing and that's not why I want to continue writing. A Gift of Ghosts is out in the universe now and I need to let it go and let it find its own way and let the process work. Because I didn't publish it to reach it a goal. I published it because I thought it was fun, and I wanted other people to have fun with me.

And that's why I'm writing: for fun, and so that other people will have fun with me. 

And that's the bar. Now I just need to live it.

Amazon's Instant Gratification

Today is my free day on Amazon. If you're reading this blog and you haven't already downloaded A Gift of Ghosts from Amazon could you please go do that? Pretty please? I'll wait right here, I promise.

Okay, so yes, it's not quite 7 AM east coast time. And I'm not sure what time Amazon's promotion starts, although I could probably find that out pretty quickly, but I'm going to guess that it starts at midnight Pacific time, since that's where Amazon is located. (I'll go check after I finish writing this just to make sure.)

I'm super anxious about today's free day. I wish I could say that anxious wasn't the right word; I mean I really long for the day when I am so healthy that anxiety isn't my default switch. I believe in the possibility of that day, I really do, and it's why I spend so much time working on mindfulness and relaxation exercises and trying to learn to live in the moment. But anxious is still the right word for today.

I love my book, I love Akira and Zane, and I want some geeky teenage girl who likes science to find Akira and decide to be a physicist. The only way that geeky girl finds it is if it sells enough that it's visible, and so today's free day matters. Not a lot. Not as much as a free day when there are more reviews posted. Not nearly as much as a free day next year when I have three books written and a fourth on the way (although if I don't get back to writing every day, that goal starts to look a little ambitious).

So, I tell myself, I need to set a goal. I know that if you're reading this and you're not an anxious person, you think I'm crazy. I actually could tell a funny story about that, but it would be a serious digression and take a while, so I'll save it. Suffice to say that goals and anxiety work together like bagels and cream cheese, red wine and marinara sauce, ice cream and hot fudge, and yes, I am hungry, why do you ask? Anyway, I decide to set a goal. That way, when I know that my goal has been achieved, I can relax and let go of my anxiety.

But what's a good goal? Dean Wesley Smith said first book, first-time author, 30 sales in six months. Realistically, I always expected to do better than that. Not because I know more about the market than he does (I don't, nowhere close) but because I was pretty sure my first 10 sales would be friends and family. I thought probably 10 sales in the first week and five reviews. I hoped for 20 sales and 10 reviews in the first month. Then they'd slow down, of course, and maybe then I should expect 5 sales a month and 2 reviews? At the end of six months, I would have sold 45 copies, and had 20 reviews. And yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable to me for six months, first book, first author. Then the second book would come out, and I'd be on my way to my long-term goal. I think I want to write more about that long-term goal, but I'll save that for later, too.

But that goal -- 45 copies in six months -- doesn't include free days. So the question is then, what to expect on a free day when no one really knows the book? I decide that 20 downloads is the reasonable goal, and 50 is the happy goal. More than 20 is the number that will make me say, okay, that was good, right choice to make a free day this early, and 50 is the goal that will make me say, yay, yay, yay, let's dance with the dog around the living room and eat another Christmas cookie to celebrate. It's never been about the sales, not for this book, just the readers.

Of course, I need to know how many copies I've already sold in order to know whether I've reached my goal at the end of the day. If I've already sold 14 (which I had), I'd need to reach 34 for the good goal, 64 for the happy goal. So I decide to look at the Report page of Kindle Direct Publishing and find out how many copies are already sold so that at the end of the day, I'll know whether I've succeeded.

Yeah, can you believe it took me this many words to get to the point? Amazon has these reports. You can look at the report and find out exactly how many copies of the book have sold. There's another report that tells you royalties, but it goes week by week and I'm not at the end of my first week until the end of today, so it's currently useless to me. And yes, I am starting to drag this out. But I'm scared to write it.

86.

86 units sold.

It's now 7:35 AM on my free day, and I am 22 units ahead of my goal. Should I change the goal (I will, I have to, I can't help myself) or should I go dance around the living room and eat a Christmas cookie? (And yes, that's going to come first!)

If you downloaded my book, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me this happy morning! If I could email you a Christmas cookie, I would. :)