Do you? Well, do you?!

You know the expression “I’d give my right arm/left eye/whatever for…”  You do know, don’t you.  It’s used to indicate you’d really like something.  “I’d give my right hand to own a Ferrari.”  Not that I would, and I’ll tell you why.

In the first place, I don’t really want a Ferrari.  It was just an example.  I would offer no more than superfluous body parts for a Ferrari, such as nail clippings.  Things I’m going to get rid of anyway.

In the second place, whenever I unthinkingly go into the first part of the expression, “I would give my…” I always pause, for just a moment, to think of something I can actually get along without.  I’d never offer either of my hands or arms.  Legs are also too essential to go.  Toes, you’d think, are dispensable, but you have to pick carefully – big toe could be a nuisance, unbalancing you.  So little toes are also often on the altar to whatever deity is listening and is short of a toe.  A few moments ago I used the expression as I was thinking about something, and after careful consideration offered my right front tooth.  That’s because it’s a crown which is cracked and needs replacing anyway.

One could reason this shows I don’t really want these things I profess to desire so much.  However, in the back of my mind I always know what I’m going to achieve will be gained through hard work, luck and talent, not by offering body parts.  But if I sigh and say: “Boy, I’d give the very tip of my right ear to get in with that publisher,” and a genie poofs into existence from thin air, says: “Wish granted!” and disappears, I won’t be hopping around on one leg or unable to keep touch-typing because I have no left pinkie any more.  I’d shrug and go answer the call of the editor who just suddenly decided he wanted to dial this random number that popped into his head and offer a gazillion euro contract to the woman he was sure would answer the phone.  After all, I can hide that missing tip with my hair.

Do you do this, think of what you offer when using that expression, or not really?

Just wondering. (c:

I poetise, sometimes.

Friends

We drink our wine in garden green
and talk our words with laugter lined.
Held in heart a sadness lies -
it weighs my laughs and slows my smiles -
for what we have, and never will.
But here, today, I’m yours, you’re mine.
We clink our plastic cups and cup
the painful red that warms us.

Have you ever felt…

Have you ever felt it?  As you watch an interview with a celebrity, read a biography, have you felt that kick of recognition?

It makes me feel really odd when I do, because who am I to think myself the same as these famous people?  Who am I to see a connection?

And yet…

It happens.  I sit in my quiet room, touch the words, sink into my lonely, overpopulated mind.  And I know I am the same.  I hear Jason Mraz’s voice withdrawn while an overeager interviewer with big boobs asks breathless questions, and I think I know how sometimes the world can seem a place you observe from outside yourself.  I read of Jon Bon Jovi’s consuming focus on his art, and I know the obsession that possesses the body and soul, leaving the carrier filled and distraught with wonder and inexpressible understanding.  I read the spilling of Russell Brand’s tortured genius mind, and I know the manic amusement with the insane world around him.

I wager a guess: these people live in loneliness inside their selves.  Yes, they have good friends, lovers, spouses, they can and do cleave to others in relationships that feel as if a bond has been formed directly between their soul and another.

But there are moments when they have clarity, and they know they are completely alone.  Inside your skull there’s space for only one.

E-publishing… aaaaargh!

What a strange thing this e-publishing business is.  Since signing up as a reviewer for Long And Short Reviews I’ve developed this horrified fascination with the whole thing.  Here are the realities:

• E-publishing is a growing force.
• Even so, it still has only a tiny piece of the whole pie.  That link details sales figures, but what’s interesting is to see out of an overall figure of $304.9 million (I added that up myself so bear in mind I’m bad with numbers) e-publishing clings to $5.1 million.  Not exactly impressive compared to, say, adult paperbacks, which accounted for $134.7 million.  And that’s in a month.
• E-publishers are apparently not regulated all that well.
• There is a sea of crap out there in ebook format.  I have no link for that, just my aghast grimace as I pass reviewing loads of ebooks because I cannot find anything good to say about them.
• There are also scores of seriously good ebooks out there.  Again you’ll just have to trust my happy grin as evidence.
• New authors have little chance of getting accepted by traditional publishers.  Their rejection rates range from 94 – 99%.  (scroll to the bottom when you go to the link).
• E-publishers have higher acceptance rates. This is good and bad news.  It’s good news because it means if you submit a manuscript to them, you have a better chance of being accepted.  It’s bad news because it COULD and in many instances certainly seems to mean they publish stuff that is poor quality.
• E-publishers have lower layout costs, no risk of returns, there are myriad stress factors they do not share with publishers who produce paper books.  Because of this, they can afford to take a chance on a new writer who would otherwise never get a chance to offer his/her writing to readers.

In short, the whole thing is enough to drive any writer to drink.  *she pours herself a glass of wine*

Here’s what I think:

The job of a writer is changing, has already changed dramatically since the internet became a part of our lives.  This is how I see the approach you should take if you decide to try an electronic publisher:

• You need to get your work as publish-ready as possible before submitting.  There should be not one single typo, not one misplaced comma or quotation mark in your manuscript. Get it to the point where you will not cringe if it is published as is.
• You must research every potential market for your book before submitting.  Does their website look clean and professional?  Have you read some of their titles, and were you suitably impressed?  Would you be proud to have your novel listed among their available titles?  Very important, have other titles been reviewed?  Many reviewers only give positive reviews, in other words if a book is bad it will simply not be reviewed.  If you can’t find reviews for the publisher’s books, that is a danger sign.  If they have been reviewed, were they highly rated?
• Look at the covers.  Would you be happy if your book had one of those?
• If your book is accepted, your next job is marketing.  You have to network.  Join readers’ groups and participate, so that when you do plug something of your own, it’s not out of the blue.  You have to become what a good writer friend of mine once referred to as a publicity whore (Hello, Mike).  But be savvy, and find innovative ways to do so.  Also, be sincere.  I’m a member of a plethora of readers’ groups, and so are many other romance writers.  You won’t believe how easy it is to spot a post that is made out of duty, in order to maintain a presence, rather than because the participant has something they want to say.  And it rankles.
• Get your book reviewed.

“But hang on,” I hear you think.  Yes, muwahaha, I can hear your thoughts.  “If I have to do all that, what is the purpose of the publisher?  Shouldn’t they be doing all this stuff?”

The job of the e-publisher, in my view, is the following:

• Choose good books to add to your list.
• Create attractive, professional-looking covers for them.  List them with an excerpt and links to reviews.
• Make buying books easy for customers.
• Get reviews for your books.  I know, I said that’s the author’s job, but I think this is one publisher and author need to work together on.
• Publishers should, should, should edit the books they accept.  The reality, however, is that many e-publishers only accept books that have already been polished to the point where they could take the place of the mirror in the Hubble telescope so that they don’t have to edit it as well.  That’s just the way it is.  If you don’t like it, find a place that does give editorial support, but don’t think you’re going to find the same level of it as you would at a traditional publisher. However much this is not right, it’s the reality of e-publishing as it is right now.  I don’t know how we can change it.

From the author’s point of view, the publisher is, in the end, a tool to legitimise your book.  It lifts it out of the diarrhoea-ocean that is self-publishing.  It gives you a foot in the door with reviewers, and perhaps readers should learn to rely on reviews rather than the name (0r lack of name) of any one publisher when deciding whether to buy a book.

And this post is getting way too long, so I’ll have to save the rest of my thoughts on the issue for another rant.

Where does it come from?

The question is one that is asked of writers often, and has been blogged, articled and talked about endlessly.  To me it seems a little navel-gazing-like, but because I was asked the question in relation to Please, Lover Dear, I need to answer it here.  Where do story ideas come from for me?

I’ll answer with the only one whose development I can clearly remember.  Out cycling one day I idly wondered what my bicycle’s name was.  Because it’s a men’s bike, I knew it would have to be a guy’s name.  I instantly decided not to name him, because it would sound a little odd.  After all, you ride a bicycle…

The bike decided otherwise and whispered into my mind: My name is Ronan. Right.  So if I ever tell you I rode Ronan for several hours, you’ll know what I mean.

Giggling about this to myself like some sort of deranged maniac, my unruly grey matter turned itself to the possibility that Ronan enjoyed our trips as much as I did.  What if he was a spirit trapped in the metal and rubber, who lived through my joy?  I had a weird sense of a presence bubbled around me, face turned to the sea-scented wind whipping by us, swirling and laughing in temporary freedom.

So how did he get into the bike?

And it went from there.  However, the final product bears no relation whatsoever to the kernel that gave birth to it.  Stories come from chance encounters, from personal feelings, from things I wonder about.  No single thing can be traced as the root of the story, the above kernel of an idea is exceptional in the clarity with which I remember it.  The origins of the other seven books I wrote this year are utterly lost, I couldn’t tell you where they started if my life depended on it.  Reading something you wrote might spark creativity in me, but one thing alone never, never forms the foundation of the story.  Furthermore the seeds which grow into a novel without exception resemble the final product as much as a tree resembles a seed.

The purpose of Lover Dear is not for me to harvest ideas.  I have them coming out of my ears as it is, I’d be horrified if I was bombarded with more as I can only write so fast.  Anonymity guaranteed.  Lover Dear is genuinely intended to provide relief, a place to unburden yourself and perhaps in the process find the words you need to speak your thoughts to the one who inspired them: your lover.

In all honesty, I was quite shocked when I was asked if the purpose of the blog was to get story ideas.  The thought had not occurred to me.

Darkness

Perhaps, on this lonely road

–going nowhere, to nowhere I’ve been–

the darkness will swallow me,

unheard, unseen.

So where did that come from?  Let me tell you of a surreal experience I had some weeks ago.  I was on the highway between Dundalk and Newry.  It’s a fairly busy stretch of road, snaking through the Cooley mountains.  They’re not impressive mountains in the way the Alps are, not snow-capped.  They’re not rocky-sided like the steep cliffs of Table Mountain in Cape town, not like the Drakensberg gracing the border between Natal and the Free State.  No, these mountains are round-headed, like overgrown versions of the koppies in the highveld which gave me life and ignited poetry in my soul.  These koppies are grass-covered, and bring a great quietness to the souls of those bred on the African soil.

In die Hoëveld, waar dit oop is en die hemel wyd daarbo,
Waar kuddes waaigras huppel oor die veld,
Waar ’n mens nog vry kan asemhaal en aan ’n God kan glo,
Staan my huisie, wat ek moes verlaat vir geld.

–In the Highveld, where it’s open and the heavens wide above,

Where herds of tall grass skip across the veld,

where you can still breathe freely and believe in God,

stands my cottage, which I left behind for gold.–

That would be courtesy Toon van den Heever, whom I’m sure most of you won’t know. In fact, I wager many Afrikaans people would wonder at the name, he’s one of the long-ago poets.

Anyway, back to the Cooley mountains.  A part of this highway curves between these big brothers of the koppies that fold the highveld, giving texture to the surface of the soil.  Either side of you they loom, black and silent giants in the darkness.  Usually this part of the main artery between Dublin and Belfast is busy.  This night I drove along, engine purring, and I could see no lights ahead of me.  I checked the rear view mirror and could see nothing but night behind.  I was utterly alone, encased in this metal box moving at sixty miles per hour in the stillness, sweet music in my ears.  It was so surreal.

The moment stuck in my mind and surfaces again everytime I drive along there.  Tonight I was depressed–not an uncommon occurence–and I remembered the moment of stepping out of time, alone eternally for no more than a heartbeat.  And the words flowed into my brain, trying hard to capture the memory.

I thought then of those koppies graced, marred by blankets of silent electric lights, overrun by development that tortured their surfaces and left their eternal nature trapped below.

Perhaps I shouldn’t blog when I’ve capped a day of utter depression with two glasses of wine.

28 Days

I don’t usually watch much television.  A few nights ago, though, something caught my eye while I worked on my laptop and I set it aside for a while.  It was a Sandra Bullock film called 28 Days.  Though I’d seen it before I stayed up beyond my bedtime to watch it again.

In the film a recovering alcoholic asks a counsellor how he’ll know when he’s ready to enter a relationship once he’s out of rehab.  The counsellor answers, as I remember: “Get yourself a plant.  If you can keep it alive for a year, then get yourself a pet.  If after two years the pet and the plant are both still alive, you can start thinking about a relationship again.”

Not only does this lead to what I thought was a very touching and funny final scene in the film, it also got me thinking about what I would do if I was faced with that challenge.  I am notoriously bad at keeping plants alive, so much so that they already wilt if I walk into a nursery.  So how would I get past that one?

Simple.  I’d get a cactus.  I had one when I was a child, and it is the only plant I ever had which didn’t die on me within a week.  They don’t need pruning or any other form of loving care.  Probably here in Ireland they need to be kept warm, but I’m sure they’ll survive indoors.  You water it once a week and if you forget it probably could survive another week before it will give up the ghost.

Where a pet is concerned there is simply nothing to beat a cat for resilience and ease of care.  A cat will – mostly – let you know in no uncertain terms what it needs, and take care of the rest itself.  It’s not like a mouse or a fish which will quietly pine away while you’re happily unaware of its needs.

But the point of the whole exercise will be to learn to be aware of and fulfill the needs of another living being.  Wouldn’t my cactus and my cat defeat the object?  The more I thought of that, the more I became convinced that keeping a cactus and a cat is in fact the perfect way to learn not only how to live with someone else, it is also a good example of what we should aim to be like in a relationship.

Think about it.  The cactus is low maintenance and hardy.  It’s not the prettiest plant you’ve ever seen, but it is beautiful to you.  It’s also a fascinating living thing which has adapted to difficult circumstances and thrives in spite of them.  It’s not independent of you, either.  It needs you just enough to not get in the way, but still let you know you’re important in its existence.

The cat is warm and cuddly and nice to go to bed with.  It has a life of its own, but it does like to sometimes demand you set aside your worries and pay attention to it.  It loves to play, but doesn’t demand you do so every day.  It doesn’t beat about the bush but lets you know when it needs something from you.  And oh, you adore it.  Your life would be empty without your cat.

I can take the above two paragraphs and apply them to my husband – and no, that’s not an insult, it’s a big, big compliment.  I hope he can say the same about me.  Perhaps all of us should own a cactus and a cat before we get married, to learn not only how to take care of someone else but also how we ourselves should act in a relationship.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the divorce rate among cactus/cat owners is lower than in the general population.

Writing and the Female Cycle.

Every woman in the world knows how we’re related to the ocean.  Just like the masses of water reach for the moon in a repeated futile act, washing the shores with high tides, low tides, spring tides, so our bodies have an ebb and flow which influences mood, weight, sometimes also productivity.

Writers are like women.  In many cases, of course, they are women, but females of the species Homo Sapiens Authorium Dementius are doubly blessed.  Not only to we get to contend with PMS, we also have to deal with a creative ‘cycle’ that can be as fickle, almost as difficult as a woman’s emotional ups and downs.

There are those times when you’re more energised than the Duracell bunny and words pour forth in an unstoppable stream, and others when no amount of staring at the blank screen or hovering fingers over the keyboard can force a coherent sentence from the grey matter between your ears.  This wheel of fortune up and down has in my life taken on a definite pattern.  It plays out over months, a flurry of productivity seeing me writing obsessively every moment of the day I’m not engaged in other irritating neccessities such as eating.  When I’m in this up phase, I can write the first draft of a fifty-thousand word novel in under twenty days.  The story ideas pile up in my head, all waiting to be written.

This phase is followed by a period of time where I can either write nothing or I write very little, at an agonisingly slow pace.

The first year this happened I panicked.  I tried to force out a story lodged in my head, but it was no use.  Nothing would work.  Nothing would ‘come together’.  The drought was eventually broken.  When next I entered the down phase, I’d been there and done that, but I wasn’t happy about it.  Eventually I made my way out the other side and started writing again.

Now I’m used to the cycle, and I’ve learned to just go with it.  Instead of getting down when the roaring flood of words slowed to a trickle, I simply enjoyed the time off.

There are stirrings in my head that make me think the recharge is almost complete, that the next creative time is near.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ve learned to enjoy this weird aspect of my life.

Stories

I’m sitting in a train bound for Interlaken, Switzerland, and I’m fuming. My day started going wrong when I arrived at Basel Airport this morning and it hasn’t let up since. First I opened the box my bike was packed in to find the saddle had been left behind. I wasn’t too fussed, took a bus to Basel train station. There, I thought, I’d put the bike together until only the saddle remained missing. I’d be able then to load all my luggage on the bike and push it to the nearest bike shop.

Ha.

When I had taken the packed bike out again, I couldn’t find the allen key I needed to fit the handlebar (I found it in my pocket later). Now I was getting upset. I had to lug fifteen kilograms of stuff along with me in bags that were designed to be perfect on a bicycle – and are hell to carry. Furthermore I had to drag the boxed bicycle after me, to and fro at the station until I found an information desk, then a block on to a bicycle repair shop. By the time I got there I was hot, sweaty and footsore.

This wasn’t the end of my woes. Not only am I now facing doing the most difficult cycling route I’ve ever attempted with a saddle much less perfect than the one I have at home, I also had to pay a ludicrous amount for it [edit: the bicycle shop did refund me when I took the saddle back three days later]. To add insult to injury my ticket wasn’t deemed good enough by the ticket man, as this train goes via a longer route to Interlaken than the one I was sold a ticket on. Another pound of flesh was extracted from my bleeding and ever diminishing store.

And that got me thinking about stories. I can almost see your puzzled frown. Why would this comedy of errors make me think of stories?

It’s quite simple, really. When you write a tale, you have to have a central conflict which drives the narrative. If a story has no conflict, it cannot exist. Except possibly in an art house film.

I recently struggled with that in a story I was desperate to tell, but my main characters simply got along too well. I became bored writing it, and any reader unfortunate enough to have had to read it would have been, too. I’m really glad to say the novel was in its infancy when I realised my mistake. In fiction, characters can be altered, circumstances can be adjusted. The end result was something I’d happily indulge in as a reader.

Life and fiction are often alike. Without conflict, we can live no story. When I use the word conflict here, I don’t mean screaming and throwing plates or, if you’re the president of some country, throwing bombs. I mean something like resistance. It’s similar to exercise, I suppose. Any gym instructor would agree that unless you strain your muscles in your workout, you’ll never make them stronger.

I find that in cycling these days. Though occasionally it’s very nice to simply mess about and pedal a short distance at a leisurely pace, most of the time I feel dissatisfied if I can’t push myself a little. This became obvious when I recently had to take things easy for a while, nursing a tendon injury. It was so horrible to have to hold back, go slowly and carefully. There’s a grand satisfaction in asking my body for all it’s got, in going as far as I can and sometimes a little bit farther.

Adversity gives us a story to tell. A story to remember. If this morning everything went perfect, what pleasure would there be in telling someone else of it? “I arrived at Basel airport, put my bicycle together, cycled to the hotel I was due to stay in that Monday night and left the bicycle box there, cycled on to the train station, got a train and went to Meiringen.” No matter how much of an adventure that might have been for me, it would be the perfect story to put listeners to sleep.

It’s later now, I’m sitting in my small green tent typing away. My adventure hadn’t ended with the bike saddle. I missed my stop at Meiringen, even though the train paused there for a good ten minutes, and had to scramble off the train at the next station. I nearly went the wrong way when I cycled back to Meiringen, even farther from my destination instead of towards it – a disaster on a bicycle in a mountainous region. Fortunately I spotted a road sign and turned back before I‘d gone more than a hundred metres or so. It was downhill all the way, and I broke my previous highest speed within five minutes. The wind roared in my ears and my helmet was pushed against my head, the heady mountain air cleared my mind and blew my hassles away.

Not enough to make the evening news, but at least more memorable than a mere train journey without mishaps. Even if it is just that much more interesting for me to remember, and no-one else ever hears of my adventures.

Though I would never have deliberately aimed for such a trying day, I embrace situations in which I run the risk of things going wrong in spite of the most careful possible planning. The recollections will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Of my first long trip, I remember little of the distances I covered with nothing remarkable happening. I do remember those instances where I took a wrong turn, the misery of cycling on for what felt like forever, soaking wet and shivering cold. I remember the deep satisfaction of finally arriving at a warm, comfortable guesthouse, of taking a nice hot bath.

A punctured tyre is nothing exciting to tell of, unless you have a thorn stuck so deep in the rubber that you can’t get it out with your fingers. Add to that the lack of a knife or pliers to pry the thing out, and you have a whole new ballgame. Though I’d cycled through a puddle of squishy mud fragranced with cattle dung not many kilometres before, I had no choice but to wipe the tyre as best I could and tug the thorn out… with my teeth.

I’m still alive, so hopefully I didn’t pick up any dread disease.

Adversity, in moderation, is a good thing. I don’t think a life lived avoiding it successfully is one I’d like to live.

Here, character character. Come to mama.

I have a story lodged in my head.  It is there, but it’s not quite solid enough yet.  My main problem is that the characters remain elusive.  I have had to apply something quite alien to me: patience.

Last night I lay awake, thinking of the characters, asking them very nicely to come out now so I can write their story.  Then I had this sort of epiphany.  I swapped the roles of the guy and the girl, and it all went click.  Yet… not.

I hate this.  After six months of not being able to write fast enough to keep up with the flow of stories, I’m battling to get to the point where I can start letting it out.  I don’t like the feeling, but it’s not the first time I’ve had it.  Shortly after arriving in Ireland, I went through a period lasting a good few months when I couldn’t write anything.  At the time, I panicked and got very depressed, wondering if I’d ever be able to write again.  As it turned out, I most certainly did manage to write again.  A lot.

Hopefully this little wheelspin won’t last as long.  Either way, I’m calmer this time.  Writing is part of me, and it will come again.

It had better.