Kiss off another month

Last day of April, and I'm totally bummed. Didn't accomplish half--not even a fourth--of what I wanted to do. This month my work ethic sucked. Sometimes I feel the press of time so intensely that it's almost a physical pain.

Favorite quote about wasting time? "How can you kill time without wounding infinity." I think Thomas Edison said that, but I could be wrong. My brain is not what it used to be. Maybe it never was as good as I like to think.

{big BIG sigh}

I'll check out that quote and get back to you.

Fed up with spam

I'm so disgusted with the volume of spam I receive. My author email addy gets filtered, but I still have to delete the crap--usually about 45-60 a day. My personal email account was getting filtered but the company shut down so now I have to manually filter it and delete. My personal email account isn't even posted anywhere, but I get 75-100 spam emails a day on it. Got to be good old Yahoo groups selling my email addy.

I wish they'd create an anti-spam task force authorized to use deadly force to go after this slime of the earth who sends these messages! Arm them with automatic weapons and have them round up this scum, give them a trial with a jury of the people who have had to deal with their garbage, and then throw them in prison for the rest of their lives!!!

Sound like I'm annoyed? You better believe it! I hope I get picked for the jury.

Raining down in Texas

I love, love, love Stevie Ray Vaughan. His Floodin' Down In Texas is playing on my PC at the moment. Great theme music for today's weather and the scene I'm writing.

Today's WIP goal: figure out what's bothering me about the plot then fix it and move on.

Unfortunately, I'm the kind of writer that when something starts bothering me about the WIP, I have to figure it out before I can move on. Sometimes, I suspect the problem might be with too much introspection or too much dialogue (I tend to get carried away with banter) but other times, I just have a gut feeling something is wrong. Can't put my finger on it so I keep piling up the words until I can't take the niggling "something's wrong" feeling any longer. Then I have to stop, figure out the problem, and make an adjustment. Kind of like sailing I think. You're following the map but suddenly you realize you've drifted off course. You have to drop anchor, check the map, check the compass, and figure out what went wrong and how to correct it. Then you make a course adjustment and sail on.

At least that's my analogy at the moment--and I'm not a sailor by any means, but this seems to ring true.

WIP goals

Quiet Sunday here in Texasland. Not much happening. Mulling several writing ideas. Hey, I love that setting a goal thing. It works. Love it so much I created a bar graph so I could see it each day. WIP end goal as a long gleaming gold bar; daily progress represented by short, but growing, green bar. That's about it from Dullsville.

Writing goal

How many of you set a word goal each day? I once did it back in the old days when I didn't work OTH. Working OTH enabled me to develop some really bad writing habits--like postponing writing until I had a big block of time.

Since I'm unhappy with progress on my WIP, I've decided to start setting a writing goal again and posting my goal here.

Today my goal is 2500 words.

News at 10.

List of Vanity/Subsidy publishers

Just in case you are in doubt about vanity and/or subsidy presses, check out the list Lee Goldberg is compiling on his blog A Writer's Life.

Thanks from all of us!

Weird Wednesday

I feel weird today. Why? Don't know. Just kind of funky and weird and restless. Maybe it's the weather. Very still and yellowish-gray outside. If you live in Texas, you know what that means in April--thunderstorm coming.

5 Weird Things to do when you feel weird:

1. Exercise (yeah, well, that's how I view exercise even though it's a goal of mine this year to make it a fun part of my daily life. Fun? Yeah, right.)

2. Read a chapter from the Bible--any Bible. Why? I don't know. Maybe it will be a mystical experience that will give you profound insight into something you're struggling with.

3. Re-read a book you adore. Why? That's easy. Comfort read.

4. Cook something strange like cactus. Yep. Got some at my local Wally World produce department during a recent shopping trip. It's been residing in the produce drawer of the fridge ever since because I can't figure out what to do with it--other than add it to the compost pile.

5. Meditate. This is my favorite because every time I try to meditate I fall asleep. And as an insomniac, I can use every wink I can get.

Later! I'm off to the compost pile, sucking in my wayward abdomen as I balance the cactus in one hand and the King James version in my other.

MYOB

Some writers must have little to do in life since they have so much time to mind other people's business. I could call these Business Minders by an acronym, but some readers may think the acronym stands for a bodily function. We certainly wouldn't want that kind of confusion, now would we, ladies and gentlemen of the publishing world?

I noticed these Business Minders have once again raised the question of Five Star Publishing's legitimacy as a credible royalty publisher. It seems that they're trying, again, to suggest that Five Star is a vanity press because editorial acquisitions are done by Tekno Books, a book packager who, by the way, is paid by Five Star Publishing, a division of Thomson-Gale, not paid by the author as is implied by many. It certainly comes as no surprise that one of the writers espousing this position of Five Star as vanity press was rejected by Tekno Books--which she freely admits in her public dissing of Five Star.

I guess these Business Minders know little about publishing if they don't know the definition of vanity and/or subsidy press. (There's a list, by the way, which Lee Goldberg has started on his blog A WRITER'S LIFE. Link at the right.) Their lack of knowledge is displayed by a belief that they will earn more from being E published rather than going through a respected publisher like Five Star/Teno Books. Guess they haven't read any of the posted financial reports by E published authors. (Now don't send insulting comments--I'll probably just delete them when my blood pressure reaches a certain point.)

I'm not casting aspersions on E Publishing, but writing is a business--my business--so I analyze facts and figures such as earn out. If you aren't independently wealthy and want to write for a living, you have to respect the business side as well as the creative.

As to legitimacy, I'm sure Ed Gorman, Tom Clancy, Roberta Gellis--and many other well-known authors associated with Tekno Books--would take issue with their disparagement.

Oh, well. Listen, if you're serious about being a writing professional, don't get upset when others use a public arena to put forth their opinion. (Just blog about it.) There will always be those who like to pass judgment and segregate writers into groups. They're usually the same ones who view being published by one of the major single title houses as "better" than being published by a minor single title house or, God forbid, a category publisher. Literary is better than commercial fiction. Mystery is better than romance. Original novels are better than tie-ins. I'm sure you've heard it all before because someone is always espousing their version of the publishing pecking order. And they're more than willing to tell you about it.

By this point, I feel like doing a Rodney King.

Look on the bright side. If disgruntled or misinformed writers wants to dump on Five Star/Tekno, then perhaps their very vocal refrain prevents other writers from submitting to said publisher.

That lessens the competition, doesn't it?

Get over yourselves

Do you get as fed up as I with the nearly endless back-biting among authors and those who, in some way, make authors and books their business ? It's always something. Reviewers--so-called professionals and all the amateurs who have the power thanks to Amazon et al--trashing authors. And not just the books, but the authors themselves. Blog readers taking issue with what someone posts.

Trashed authors blogging about the idiot reviewers or the rude readers or the insensitive booksellers or dumbass editors. All that time and energy channeled into blogs that are the prose equivalent of a lit stick of dynamite. Then, of course, outraged readers of said blog just have to reply--to state their position, to bare their feelings, to set the record straight.

On an on.... ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Sheesh. Where do these people find the time and energy to devote to this pursuit of crap?

Then there are the hype hags! Sheesh! I won't even get started although I do wonder how these people manage to work the title of a book into every fracking (thank you, BSG) conversation, email, and blog.

Get over yourselves!

Japanese Proverb

There's an old Japanese proverb--perhaps old is redundant since, I guess, all proverbs are old--but I'm digressing. This proverb is about how to succeed.

Fall down 7 times; stand up 8.

Ah, if only success were that easy! By that I mean, if we only had to fall 7 times. Too often that 7 is multiplied by a hundred or more. I've been falling regularly of late. The interesting thing though is that with each fall, it hurts less. I mean if you're already covered in bruises, one more isn't going to matter.