Not Quite What I Had in Mind...

I try not to make New Year's resolutions, because I always end up feeling like a total failure when I don't live up to them. I can still remember when I was a kid, every New Year's Eve, my dad would break all his cigarettes in half and announce that he was going to quit... and after two weeks of hell, he'd be back to smoking like a chimney.

I prefer to make goals for the year. So one of this year's goals was to whittle down my virtual pile of To-Be-Read books on my Kindle. I joined Goodreads last year, and noticed that the M/M Romance Group had a challenge/game posted called Whips and Kisses, which is sort of like Snakes and Ladders (or Chutes and Ladders for those of you who didn't grow up immersed in Brit culture). You roll a die, you move your marker, and whatever space you land on is the title of a list. You go to the list and pick out a book and read it. I thought this would be a great idea, because it's a lot easier to pick from, say ten or twelve books, than it is to pick from several hundred.

Well, being the organizational demon that I am, I had to go through and look at all the lists and decide if I even had enough books to attempt it.

This turned out to be a huge mistake. I kept clicking on intriguing covers and titles, reading reviews, and before I knew it, I'd added a couple of dozen books to my To-Be-Read pile.

Hmm. Not off to a great start, here...

Creative Procrastination

So it's been two weeks that I've had people in my office. Playing video games. Munching candy. Talking to (at) me while I'm trying to work. Arguing over whose turn it is to play Xbox... and whose turn it isn't to do dishes.

Okay, actually? It's more like three weeks, if you count the week before xmas, when Husband Beast decided to "work from home" (read: perch in my office) three out of the five work days I thought I would have to write.

So I'm sort of really needing some quiet time to get down to business.

Today I finally got them all out the door. And it was quiet. And there was no After-Vacation Cleanup like there was yesterday. And I could write. Except that when I sat down to write, I discovered that I had a pressing need to:

1. Change the beds.
2. Do the associated laundry.
3. Go to the grocery store to buy stuff that I don't need until Thursday.
4. Wind all the yarn for the Offensively Long Rainbow Stocking Cap I am planning to knit.
5. Go to the yarn shop and buy a set of knitting needles that I am realistically not going to need for three weeks.
6. Chat with the yarn shop owner about how I really should be writing.
7. Get a batch of bagels started even though I don't actually need them yet.
8. Dither over lunch (I hate lunch—can't I just drink chai lattes all day and have dinner?)
9. Consider cleaning and organizing every closet in the house.

If I can actually justify writing today, it's going to be a miracle.

Favorite M/M Romances

I've been reading M/M romances for about a year and a half now, and have probably read about three hundred of them so far. Over that time, I've found some absolute gems and some real klunkers. But my absolute favorites, some of which I've already read twice, are the following (in no particular order):

Something Like Summer by Jay Bell
Wolf's Own Series by Carole Cummings(Ghost, Weregild, Koan, and Icendiary)
Prisoner by Megan Derr
Blacker than Black by Rhi Etzweiler
Scrap Metal by Harper Fox
The Administration Series by Manna Francis (Mind Fuck, Quid Pro Quo, Games and Players, Control, Quis Custodiet, First Against the Wall, For Certain Values of Family)
Song of the Fallen by Rachel Haimowitz (Counterpoint, Crescendo)
The Island by Lisa Henry
Raised by Wolves by W.A. Hoffman (Brethren, Matelots, Treasure, and Wolves)
Storms and Stars by Neena Jaydon
Hellgate Series by Mel Keegan (The Rabelais Alliance, Deep Sky, Cry Liberty, Probe, Flashpoint)
NARC Series by Mel Keegan (Death's Head, Equinox, Scorpio, Stopover, Aphelion)
Bear, Otter, and the Kid and Who We Are by T.J. Klune
Chase in Shadow and Dex in Blue by Amy Lane
A Solid Core of Alpha by Amy Lane
Mourning Heaven by Amy Lane
Strange Fortune by Josh Lanyon
Shades of Gray by Brooke McKinley
The Red King by Rosemary O'Malley
The Emperor's Wolf by J.C. Owens
Taken by J.C. Owens
Cut and Run Series by Abigail Roux and Madeline Urban, and by Abigail Roux alone (Cut and Run, Sticks and Stones, Fish and Chips, Divide and Conquer, Armed and Dangerous, and Stars and Stripes)
Zero at the Bone by Jane Seville
Afflicted by Brandon Shire
Kindred Hearts by Rowan Speedwell
Finding Zach by Rowan Speedwell
Hot Head by Damon Suede
Dark Edge of Honor by Aleksandr Voinov
Counterpunch by Aleksandr Voinov

Yeah. I read way too much.

First Draft Writing

I love first draft writing because it's completely free and creative and I have no idea what's going to happen next. Well, okay, I usually have a vague idea of where I want the story to end up, but most of the time, my stories begin with character in conflict, and the world and the story get built around the conflict resolution.

I hate first draft writing because I feel like I'm dangling over the edge of a really steep drop-off, and I've no idea where I'm going next, other than straight down.

I love the fire and the pure creative energy of first-draft writing.

I hate the uncertainty of first draft writing.

I love that I can go anywhere I want, because nothing is written in stone.

I hate that I'm perfectly capable of writing myself into a corner.

I love it when The Swamprat (my muse) surprises me.

I hate that I'm sitting there at the keyboard feeling like I'm lost in the jungle without a sense of direction, a map, or a clue.

Although that's pretty much how things are in the rest of my life, so maybe that's okay. It seems to work for me.

Mostly.

What Are You Most Afraid Of?

It's one of the first questions I ask when I'm building a character. What has this character's history given him in terms of fears and unresolved issues? And how are those going to shape his personality and his reactions to the events of the story? Because I like to make my main characters dig deep and work hard, that often means bringing them face to face with their mortal dreads. Whatever those might be.

Maybe that's part of why I like writing about men. In our society, it's perfectly okay for a woman to be afraid. But a man? Not so much. Or—maybe it's okay for him to be afraid, but he probably shouldn't admit it in company. Which means instead of giving in to his fears, he's got to either man up and face them, or he's got to find a way to avoid them.

Which is okay if he's afraid of alligators or hippopotami, or heights, which he can generally avoid if he needs to, with either a bit of slick talk or a well-timed case of the trots.

But what if he's afraid of something that's a lot harder to avoid? Or something he might have to confront in order to get what he wants? Like... commitment... or disapproval... or failure... or a pit filled with rabid ferrets?

That's when it gets fun.

Fears give me so much interesting stuff to play with (the visual here is the critter in the attic with the dull scissors and the purple construction paper, cutting out really horrific shapes to chuck into the story...). Whether he's trying to confront his fears or avoid them, fear can be used to manipulate him into a reaction that will serve the story, drive the plot, or build character.

Which probably has a lot to do with why I never get invited when the hot guys in my head decide to throw a party... even when I promise to make Death By Chocolate Brownies...

Social Media

So when I decided to start taking this writing thing seriously, I started looking at what other authors were doing, and discovered that a lot of them had something called "blogs" (which sounds like a rather unpleasant bowel complaint, or maybe something that comes out of your nose when you sneeze really big, but okay, whatever).  I realized, from reading these "blogs", that I was going to have to participate in something called Social Media, because apparently that is The Way These Things Are Done. 

Social Media?  WTF?  Is that, like, communal art supplies or something?  Because that could be a big problem... I was always a bit of a failure at the Plays Well With Others skillset.

I was, understandably, Pale With Fright.

Further investigation revealed that participating in Social Media meant establishing something called an Online Presence.  So instead of sharing my crayons, I was going to have to "tweet" and "post" and "blog" (which actually sounds like something I would want to do in the privacy of my own bathroom, but apparently the definition of "privacy" has changed somewhat since I learned what it meant).

I'm still not sure what's wrong with writing up a pack of lies that the publisher can paste on the back of the book flap.  Something along the line of Jaye McKenna is an antisocial recluse who hasn't actually been seen in public for years and is rather attached to a ratty old bath towel, or Jaye McKenna lives in a tumbledown shack on the edge of a peat bog with a Rottweiler named Josephine and a pack of rabid budgies...

Apparently that's not good enough anymore.  Apparently, nowadays, The World wants to be informed of what I eat for lunch (not eggs... they're kind of gross), what I'm wearing today (polka-dotted underwear and a plaid bathrobe, if you must know), and whether or not my bowel movements are regular (check out my bathroom, dudes, plenty of tweeting, blogging, and posting going on there!). 

Personally, I think The World needs to get a life. 

So I decided that rather than try to learn a bunch of Mysterious Technical Witchcraft, the rules of which will change just when I get the hang of it (sort of like the way just when I figure out MS Word, they change it and I lose weeks and weeks of productivity while I whine and moan and beg Husband Beast to figure out how to make the new thing look like the old thing so that I can use it again), I am going to just do one new thing—the blogging. 

And since it doesn't involve sharing my crayons, I have high hopes that I will do it well.  Or at least somewhat regularly.  (Because regular bowel movements are important, you know...)

And if you want to see me tweet, you're going to have to get in line outside my bathroom window with the rest of The World.

Favorite Resources

I'm pretty sure most writers who've been writing for a while have some old favorites on their bookshelves, books they turn to time and again, either for comfort or for information.  I've had a lot of favorites over the years, but the following are the ones that I reach for the most often:

Character Names

The Writer's Digest Character-Naming Source Book by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names by Malcolm Bowers (Volume IV of the Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds series)

Writing Reference

The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

Plot by Anson Dibell

Revision by Kit Reed

Man, Oh Man by Josh Lanyon

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

Mythic Structure

The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Useful Information

Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries by David W. Page, M.D.

Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to Poisons by Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner

Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminals Think by Sean Mactire

Writing Fight Scenes by Rayne Hall

Comfort and Support

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

For Writers Only by Sophy Burnham

Walking on Alligators by Susan Shaughnessy

Note: yeah, I know, I should do that magic clicky-linky thing for y'all, and in a perfect world, I would be all like, Oh, yeah, magic clicky-linky things, no problem!  But as it is, I can't even always figure out how to get to the blog from the dashboard thingy, so instead, we have me being all nervous and shivery, like If I try to make the magic clicky-linky things, I'll probably break the blog and that would be a Bad Thing because I might never be able to fix it.  And then I will spend the entire day moaning and wailing and wringing my hands... Which would be another Bad Thing, because there is always so much to do.

Besides, right now?  Right now, my two favorite guys that I'm writing about (whichever two guys I'm writing about at the moment, they are my two favorites—I'm nothing if not loyal) are perched in the too-slender top branches of a very tall tree.  They have no paddle, no flashlight, and no clean underwear.  And they are surrounded by alligators, and a big storm is blowing in and there is a man-eating chihuahua circling the tree in a hang-glider...

Yeah.  It's like that.