Silk & Shadows

*And by “goose,” I mean “writer.”

Currently working on: Finding the worst white elephant gift
Mood: Hunting

Too much butter and sugar is slowing me down. I only have a few days left to find a white elephant gift for my tribe’s annual Christmas Eve bestest party in the whole wide world. As a stereotypical introvert, I’m not usually into parties, but this party is one of my favorites and I want to do it right. Or wrong, as is the right way to do a white elephant.

A good white elephant is, of course, a bad white elephant. For those who aren’t familiar with the tale, the term white elephant came from a story that Siamese kings gave these giant, hungry, pooping, occasionally rampaging animals as “gifts” to people who really “deserved” them. Horrible art, eye-searingly ugly clothing and excessively large items of any sort are perfect white elephant gifts. But I’m having some trouble this year.

At my day job white elephant exchange, one woman got a can of Spotted Dick. There was much adolescent snickering. (Yeah, my day job isn’t too worried about sexual harassment cases, apparently.) Since I do marketing work in my day job, I was horrified to read the instructions on the can and snapped a picture to share with my Twitter friends.

(What? You don’t follow me on Twitter?! Find me there and say hey, so I can follow you back.)

Now you can snicker at Spotted Dick too. I mean, seriously, who uses “spurting” in ad copy?

I thought about getting a can for my giveaway, but it seemed like a cop-out. I need something worse…

So while I was researching/surfing the web for white elephant ideas, I found porcupines instead. So for your Christmas cookie-eating pleasure, here’s Teddy:

I’ve decided to get a talking porcupine in a Santa hat for my white elephant gift. Perfect, don’t you think?

But if you have another suggestion, please feel free to share and save my friends from either of these terrible gifts.

Currently working on: Last bits of Christmas prep
Mood: Festive

Last week, my XY who had been gone, out of the country, for two months finally returned home. And there is joy in Whoville!

He was touring Europe — Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy and Poland — as Rainstick Cowbell. Just a boy and a guitar, wandering narrow alleys to dive bars, literally singing for his supper. He hates the dry sound of club recordings, but here’s a glimpse of the life of a touring musician:

He got home just in time for the holiday madness. We went and cut our Christmas tree on Friday. And it was actually a sunny day in the Pacific Northwest!

I have almost completed our transition for regular tree lights to the new LED lights, which are super-trippy when I shone them on the walls. (Uhm, yes, there might have been spiced cider spiked with Hot Monkey Pepper Vodka involved.)

Since we don’t have much room in our house, we get the classic table-top Charlie Brown skinny tree. (Yes, the tree is slightly crooked; again, I blame the vodka cider.)

Having my sweetie home, my holiday madness under control, and a pretty tree decorating my picture window is reason enough for joy. What’s yours? Besides vodka cider

Currently working on: Revisions
Mood: Persnickety

I’ve been in a funny place recently. Not just a place-place as I mentioned in last Monday’s travelogue, but in my writing. I’ve been all over the map — literally and metaphorically — and it is time I settled down to ONE thing.

This is a good time of year (in this part of the world anyway) to settle to a project. The weather is closing in. School has started and focused energy is all around. Even my garden reflects the need to pick. It’s harvest time!

But how do I pick my next project?

1. Flip a coin.

I’m not being flip when I say this. I find that flipping a coin helps me refine my preferences. If I flip and the answer comes up that I want, sweet. If the coin says I should choose some other thing… well, suddenly I realize that thing isn’t the thing I wanted. So I switch. After all, I don’t have to abide by the decisions of a coin.

2. Try a few things on for size.

Like new school clothes, the right story need to fit me this year; not have too many holes; and reflect the writer I’m trying to become. And if it is purple and sparkly, that’d be cool too.

3. Ask my sounding board.

Sometimes I can’t decide. But when I talk out my options with someone else, often I start talking myself into a choice, even if my listener never gets a chance to speak. (That happens around me occasionally.) Even if I can’t hear an answer coming into focus, the other person will no doubt have an opinion (other people always do). I guess this technique is very similar to the first technique except most people don’t appreciate being flipped.

If you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s BLINK, I highly recommend it. He talks a lot about the power of instinct in decision making. Then you can read THINK by Michael R. LeGault, who prefers a more rationed approach. They provide some interesting points/counterpoints. Do you have favorite ways of making choices?

Note: Speaking of picking, we’ll be pulling a giveaway winner from our newsletter subscribers soon.
If you haven’t signed up yet, use the link at left.

Currently working on: Revisions of Book 4
Mood: Dooooomed

I am bad at math. I am like one of those Neolithic people who allegedly could only count to three: you, me, somebody else, and “many.”

Which is why I need deadlines. Preferably dropdeadlines. Especially dropdeadsoondeadlines.

The joy of short deadlines

Deadlines that are too far away just don’t get my blood pumping. I fritter away the early days of a long deadline because, from a distance, it’s hard to see how sharp its teeth are. I do better with small numbers. One month fits on a calendar page. Two weeks is the length of a great vacation. Three days — a long weekend — makes intuitive sense to me.

Short deadlines are inspiring. They are also impressive. Telling my loved ones that I only have one month/two weeks/three days to finish a project gets me out of pretty much every chore. There’s very little around the house that can’t wait a month, with the possible exception of grocery shopping to restock perishable snacks.

The horror of short deadlines

Of course, only having a month/week/day to reach an important goal can be terrifying. Hyperventilating about looming deadlines is almost as much fun as not vacuuming. (Probably because they are both about sucking.)

I have one week left to finish revisions on Book 4 of the Marked Souls. I had much longer, but this is what I have left. Even though I’ve been working on it for awhile, now is when the adrenalin rush of facing the deadline kicks in.

Managing the deadline

1. Know your ideal productivity chunks.

When I hot draft, I work best in daily increments: X words per day for a finished draft by X time. I find scheduling revisions is harder. A blank page is a constant, but dirty pages (pages that have, ya know, writing on them) require different amounts of work to get cleaned up. Some are only dusty but some need a haz-mat team. So for me, X chapters revised per week works better than a daily goal.

2. Remove distractions.

Damn you, constantly flowing Twitter stream. (Follow me and say hi; I’ll follow back.) On dropdeadline, sometimes going dark is the only option. (Uh, so if you follow me on Twitter, I’ll follow you on March 1.) I also make sure I have a fresh bucket of cookie dough to fuel the mayhem so I don’t waste time with deciding what to have for a midnight snack.

3. Ride the killer wave.

It’s kind of sick, but I sorta like the frantic exhaustion of dropdeadline time. Many of my worst writing habits — impossible perfectionism, overthinking, indecisiveness — will get cut as insupportable self-indulgence in this last week. What’s on the page becomes more important than what’s in my head. The story takes precedence over the writer. I allow myself to have caffeine!

The best part of the dropdeadsoondeadline is that it is right here. Which means just on the other side is the light at the end of the tunnel, the gold ring, the winner’s circle, The End.

But I can tell ya now, my post next Monday will be late.

How do you deal with looming deadlines in your work? Are you the diamond who shines under heat and pressure? Or are you the ticking time bomb that makes everybody run away?

Currently working on: Butter cookies
Mood: Pressed (because now I have a cookie press to make butter cookies — hey, why didn’t I use the cookie press as my blog post last week on favorite kitchen implements?)

Well, 2011 is 1/12 over. How’re you doing? I haven’t been so good about cleaning my closets — and evil XY actually put some of his stuff in one of my closets, which means I have negative goal success on that front. On the plus side, I’ve been fairly consistent with my workouts, which is why I indulged this weekend with butter cookies. Indulged in moderation (does that even make sense?) of course since butter cookies have a way of going from plus side to plus size.

Checking in on the progress of my projects is something I often forget to do until the next time New Year’s resolutions roll around. I like setting goals and I like reaching goals, but doing the work between… Yeah, that’s the tricky part.

So I want to rant for a moment on goal setting philosophy.

See, self-help gurus tell us we should set SMART goals, where SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Which is indeed smart, as well as lovely, balanced, popular, and perfect — all the things I DESPISE in a romance heroine. Because it’s completely NOT THE TRUTH. Oh sure, maybe there is some girl/goal out there who meets all those criteria, but more likely she/it is hiding some deep, dark, delusional secret. In the case of the romance heroine, I’ll like her better when I discover she has a secret she never wanted to deal with but is forced to confront during the course of the story. In the case of the goal, the secret is… Often in real life, we don’t get to pick our goals.

Seems to me, many a goal in real life is an I-SMACK goal. As in “I get smacked” by an Imposed, Sudden, Monopolistic, Aggressive, Chaotic, and Killer goal.

I’m being a little unfairly grumbly because the aforementioned self-help gurus do offer some advice that can still be applied to I-SMACK goals.

Break it down: What are the baby steps that compose this overwhelming I-SMACK goal?

Back it out: What’s my drop-deadline and when do those baby steps need to be overcome to get there?

Buckle down: How much caffeine do I require to make this happen? (Well, actually the gurus don’t say quite this, but I think it’s what they meant.)

Worse, my secret — which is not very deep or dark or delusional — is that I don’t care that much about cluttered closets and I’m never going to be able to benchpress my body weight. SMART goals forget to include the element of desire. And as any attentive romance reader knows, without the desire, this story ain’t happening.

I-SMACK goals at least have the element of onrushing doom to stimulate the desire to live. But it IS desire.

In looking at some of my goals again, I’m wondering, Do I really want this? WHY do I really want this? If I can’t answer — or if I answer, I don’t — maybe I need to change my goals.

Because as young Skywalker discovered, if the answer is “Do not,” the universe falls to evil. So… I’ll DO. And reward myself with a butter cookie.

Out of curiosity, how do you reward yourself for a goal met or a job well done?

Currently working on: Revising Book 4
Mood: Grumbly

This week’s topic here at Silk And Shadows is writing proposals. It’s a skill committed writers (and by committed, I mean headed for the asylum) need to learn and… And… And I just can’t talk about it because I’m currently working on revising Book 4 and I can’t think of ANYTHING except how to make the words that are on the page RIGHT NOW more closely align with the story that’s IN MY HEAD.

Grumble.

So I’m hijacking the topic to whine about me. Anybody else who wants to whine about me can do so here too.  I attended the Emerald City Romance Book Fair this weekend –

– where I spent most of the time grumbling under my breath to myself about Book 4 and rearranging scenes in my head and wondering if it would be completely unacceptable to murder the hero in Chapter 4 just to make most of my problems go away.

(If I murdered the heroine in Chapter 5, the rest of the problems would go away. My villain could run amok and that would definitely more closely align with my grumbly mood.)

Which does sort of speak to the actual topic this week, in that a writer needs to be able to do many things at once: Write the current story; think of the next story; worry about the last story; eat cookie dough…

Recent studies have said that multi-tasking doesn’t work.  The studies purport to show that doing more than one thing at a time takes longer, ultimately reduces productivity, and raises stress.  I think those studies were probably done by men, who everybody knows CAN’T multi-task. So probably they are just jealous. But fine, instead of calling it multi-tasking, we’ll call it juggling.

Juggling all the pieces of writing is like juggling the following:

• A Japanese glass float and an over-ripe heirloom tomato
• A lighted charcoal grill (with a locking lid; we wouldn’t want this to be impossible)
• An X-wing fighter with R2-D2 in the backseat (Hey, Sharon, started the Star Trek references last week)

You could easily juggle the float and tomato at the same time. (Assuming you know how to juggle.) They are similar sizes and weights, and similarly delicate. All you need to pull this off is a drop cloth.

Add the grill — even with the locking lid – and it gets a little trickier. For one thing, lighted grills get hot and the legs sticking out are awkward. And they are inevitably rusty. But if people can juggle chainsaws, certainly a grill is not out of the realm of possibility.

By the time you add the X-wing, really, the only thing that will save you is magic. I imagine R2 will be screaming. I certainly would be.

So maybe those anti-multi-tasking studies are right; why should I think of the NEXT book when I may not survive THIS book? Of course, there is this secondary character who would make a very sexy hero….

What are you juggling these days? A bowling ball? A set of Ginsu knives? Any hints for surviving?

Currently working on: Stand-off with Book 4 characters — Who will blink first? Me or them?
Mood: Clenched jawed

Autumn is a bit delayed here in the Pacific Northwest. Last week here at Silk And Shadows, I showed some pictures of my summer vacation (at left: the garden harvest we took with us for one-pot dinners) and normally, on our drive home from the high desert, when we pass into the rain cloud over Mt. Hood, we see the first signs of fall in the turning leaves.  This year, it’s still all green. Kind of like the tomatoes in our garden which are a month behind. Hurry up, tomatoes, we don’t have much time!

 This is the time of year when I like to finish up projects. It feels appropriate to batten down the hatches before winter. Here’s what’s on my list for fall projects:

1. Finish Book 4, come hell or high water
The high water will definitely be here. This is, after all, the Pacific Northwest. We do rain. As for the hell… I am not a peaceful writer. There is much kicking and screaming at my computer. I’m not proud of it, it does not serve me well, and I don’t recommend it as a technique to other writers, but it’s mine. I am currently in the kicking portion of this evening’s entertainment; the screaming will commence shortly.

2. Put the garden to bed
In a lovely dovetailing of deadlines, I will be done with Book 4 about the time the garden is done. I usually wait too long to strip the beds — hoping to wait for just one more red tomato — and end up having to do it in the rain, with my gloves drenched and full of mud. But whatever. Mulching for winter lacks the anticipation of spring planting, when you know you’ll get to watch the little plants grow all season, but there’s a certain satisfaction in covering the earth and wishing it good night.

3. Unearth my closet
The wild amokness of the garden can be productive, for pole beans at least. The same can be said sometimes for a wild imagination. The bedlam in my closet is not helpful in any way. Living in an old farmhouse has its pleasures, but the forehead-smashing, under-eaves closets are not among them. I wear whatever’s hanging closest to the door just to avoid going into the closet, for fear I won’t ever come out. Crawling into the way back… There be monsters. This fall, I want to at least be able to SEE the back wall.

4. Play with paint
I have an art project I’ve been itching to try, a multilayered abstract jewelry thing. I have the materials and just haven’t had the time. (I think I can sneak that in for Christmas presents, but don’t tell anybody ‘cuz it’s a surprise.)

5. Write something new
My ideas file is now 13 pages long. Truly, not every one of those ideas deserves a book, but some of them deserve at least a look beyond the cursory scribbling I gave them when they first popped up. The quiet of winter will be a perfect time to winnow through them — like next season’s seed packets to see what might sprout.

What’s on your list of autumn projects? Do you find that some tasks are better suited for some seasons than others?

Currently working on: Staying on top of the raspberry and snow pea harvest
Mood: Wondering how many dishes include both raspberries AND snow peas…

So we’re halfway through the year.  (Well, halfway plus a little bit, but I’m always behind.)  This is usually when I pull out my New Year’s Resolutions, laugh hysterically, and reassess.  What are my NEW New Half Year’s Resolutions?

When I look at what I have to get done before the end of the year, the hysteria becomes more pronounced and other living beings in my household find heavy objects to find under.  But the trick is always first things first.  So in honor of this week’s blog topic of “My next project,” I bring you my first task: Announcing the winner of last week’s Ava Gray SKIN GAME giveaway.  Random.org picked:

Spav, who is distracted by Twitter. Aren’t we all?  Congrats, Spav, and thanks to all who commented.

Now, onto the next task…

I’ll be attending RomCon, a new convention for romance readers and writers, in a couple weeks (which, like the end of the year, is coming faster than I anticipate, I know).  I’m very much looking forward to stalking some of my favorite authors, hanging with friends, chatting with readers, and signing books.  If you live in Denver or have friends, family or Facebook acquaintances who live in Denver or anywhere in the Rockies for that matter, come join us!  The giant book fair is open to the public. Details:

RomCon
Crowne Plaza Denver Airport
15500 East 40th Avenue, Denver, CO
Saturday, July 10, Noon Book Fair
Meet Jo Beverley, Christine Feehan, Julia Quinn, Lori Foster, Meljean Brook, Nalini Singh, Carly Phillips, Susan Mallery, Melissa Mayhue, Catherine Anderson, Jodi Thomas and dozens of other fabulous authors [Note from Jessa: You'll see I am not a listed author at this point in my life, but at least I am fabulous] our multi-author booksigning sponsored by Borders. Bring up to 3 books from your own library for your favorite author to sign!

But before I go, I have to finish writing a short story from the world of the Marked Souls.  It’s the possession story of Corvus Valerius.  I’m going to give away limited edition prints of the story at RomCon before I post it to my website.  If you want a copy (when I finally finish it) email your snail mail addy to jessa at jessaslade dot com with the subject line: Corvus.

Writing his story has been harder than I thought it would be.  Okay, all writing is harder for me than I think it will be.  But Corvus’s tale is especially hard because… Well, as soon as I started writing him, he became my hero. 

There’s a saying among writers: Every villain is the hero of his own story.  That’s been true of Corvus through the first two books of the Marked Souls and it’s even more true when we see how he gave in to temptation — and his demon.  What do you think, does evil always believe itself in the right, or sometimes does evil just say, hell yeah I’m evil?

I’m also running a contest/asking a favor/assigning you an enviable task at my personal blog.  I need to find a royalty free picture of Corvus for the cover of the short story.  If somebody finds a shot I can use, she’ll get a signed copy of SEDUCED BY SHADOWS or FORGED OF SHADOWS.  You can read the details here. 

See you (hopefully) in Denver!

I once wrote a first draft in six weeks. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to duplicate the effort. In fact the manuscript I wrote immediately after that one took me six months to finish. But the notion of writing a book in six weeks has continued to intrigue me—writing fast is a great skill to have—and I’ve tried a variety of methods to speed up my writing. So far, to no avail.

But there is something that keeps me steaming along at a good clip—preparation.

I’m a plotter, which means I prefer to have a map of where I’m headed before I start writing. As you might imagine, one of the items I prepare beforehand is the plot map. But I also do several other things to prepare:

1. Interview the characters. My character sheet describing height, weight, and family background only tells me so much. Asking pointed questions about why the character did XYZ in his past gives me a lot more to go on.

2. Explore the world. Some time ago, I discovered a wonderful set of world-building questions developed by Patricia Wrede, and from that I created a smaller set that works for my purposes. Answering the questions helps me add depth to my world.

3. Plan the number of pages needed each week to meet the deadline—factoring in holidays, sick days, emergencies, etc.

4. Research. I research the elements of the story that I need to know up front. A career choice for a main character, the types of weapons that character might use, the locale for specific scenes, etc.

5. Think. I spend a lot of prep time on this one. Is the conflict big enough? Is this the right place to start the book? Would that character really act that way? And a thousand more questions, some of which the answer is NO. I never cover off all the questions, and that’s really not my intent—it’s to roughly shape the story so I don’t get stuck on a big problem halfway through.

If I’ve done my homework, the writing goes along at a brisk pace—until I hit the first stumbling block. And there’s always a stumbling block. But the more advance work I do, the easier it is to recover and get back into the writing.

I’m still looking for ways to speed things up, though. If anyone has found the magic elixir to writing fast, please let me know.

Currently working on: Book 3 edits
Mood: Persnickety (Am I even spelling that right? I thought I was in editing mode?!)

When I’m writing, I’m a speed angel.  Which, sadly, is the opposite of a speed demon.  Yes, I write demons, but I write them slooooow.

Over the years, I have gotten somewhat faster.  Well, actually, lots faster.  It took me about, oh, five years to finish my first manuscript.  In my defense, the story was really long and traversed several major landmasses and various time periods. (No, it wasn’t a time travel; it was just very, very confused.)  Plus, I spent a lot of time describing the hero’s lovely eyes.

Here are a few tricks I learned that helped me write faster during the seven manuscripts that followed:

• No one cares how polished your first draft is, so feel free to write crap.  You do have to polish later, but that’s later.
• If you keep writing past it, crap is often less crappy after it ferments awhile.
• Know what you are writing; you’ll get there quicker.  Disclaimer: Pantsers (writers who say they like to be surprised by their writing as it happens) say they get bored if they know where they are going.  I say, I challenge you pantsers to a duel.  But I don’t have to worry about you ever showing up at the duel site because if I tell you where it is beforehand, you’ll go somewhere else.

The single most important trick I learned to writing faster was — and I realize this sounds stupidly obvious — holding myself accountable.  Deadlines — whether externally or internally imposed — are like the salt in a recipe: Too much can make your blood pressure spike, but a pinch/dash/sprinkle gives the flavors a zing they’d otherwise be missing.

Knowing when I have to get something done, I can track my progress.  I track in an Excel spreadsheet of daily word counts.  “Over/Under” is the number of words I’ve written above or below my daily goal.  As you can see by the red, I spend a lot of days behind because — as I mentioned — I’m a speed angel.  But I aspire to speed demon-hood.

Sure, I’m not there yet.  But I’ve shaved five years per books down to about five months.  A definite improvement.  Although you might have noticed the last comment in my spreadsheet: Sometimes I still don’t know where I’m going.

In Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare, which character did you relate to?  And do you think the tortoise would’ve been faster if he’d been wearing shorts instead of a shell?