Living the Dream

by Martha Reed

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of going to a book launch party for my friend Nancy Martin who came out with her fiftieth book. That’s right, 50. When I looked around the bookshop at the party I saw six other published authors in attendance, all of whom I admire and one of which was nominated for a national award last year for her book. Now, that’s some pretty heavy talent standing around eating cake and it shocked me when I realized that this was my peer group. Granted, I don’t have a book contract (yet) but I’m certainly working at it hard enough and that made me wonder what more I could be doing to ‘live the life’.

So this morning, over coffee, I sat down and tried to imagine what it would be like to actually get a book contract and how that would impact my life. Would I give up my day job? Could I afford to? I’ve been building my corporate career for over thirty years – would I want to keep my hand in it and work part time? Could I juggle two jobs? If I could afford to leave my day job, would I stay in Pittsburgh? If I could afford to live anywhere I wanted to, where would it be? Do I have the nerve to move there and start over?

The other question I considered was my identity as a writer. I know that is what I am. I’ve known it since I was eight years old. I’ve had three short stories published but I’m still working on the break through novel and it has been going on for fifteen years. Last week I met some friends of my mother and when I introduced myself as Irene’s daughter, they asked: Are you the donut one? No, that’s my sister Joan. Oh, you must be the real estate daughter? No, that’s Boo. I’m the writer daughter. Which opened a whole can of worms: What have you written? And I found it odd and funny to explain that yes, I am a writer but no, I don’t have any books available that you can actually read.

How about you? What are your plans for your writing life? How do you define yourself as ‘a writer’? Please post your answers. Inquiring minds want to know.

Time Management HELP!

By Annette Dashofy

I need some time management help. Or maybe lessons in juggling.

Or maybe psychiatric treatment. What leads a person to completely overload their life? It’s a sickness. And I have it.

Remember last year when I was losing my mind as conference coordinator? At that time, I dreamt of being done with the job so I could have free time. And what do I do with free time? I fill it with other stuff.

Part of it, I blame on my darling hubby. A few months ago, it looked that he might be unemployed by the end of 2009. So far, his job is intact. Knock wood. But at the time, there was much discussion that I should consider “getting a real job.” Never mind that I already work hard at writing, teach some yoga classes, and am primary caregiver for my mom (who, thankfully, is fairly self-sufficient most days). Never mind that I’m area rep for Pennwriters.

I don’t have time for a “real job.”

My solution?

I am now an Independent Sales Representative for Avon. As in Avon Lady.

I love it! For much of my life, I’ve been something of a Tom Boy. Now I get to play with jewelry and makeup and lotions and perfumes. Suddenly, I’m a Girly Girl.

This wasn’t exactly what my husband had in mind. Starting your own business does not result in reeling in copious amounts of cash. I think I’m doing pretty well because I’m not spending more than I’m making. Even with my new collection of cute Girly Girl earrings! But since his job doesn’t APPEAR to be in immediate jeopardy at the moment, he’s ceased the “real job” rumblings. For the moment.

So I’m now juggling THREE jobs. Plus the Pennwriters Area Rep gig.

What, then, incensed me to agree to take on the presidency of the Mary Roberts Rinehart Chapter of Sisters in Crime??? Okay. That one’s easy. No one else would take it.

I’m considering changing my name to Ado Annie. Remember her? From the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma? “I’m just a girl who cain’t say no…”

Which brings me back to the time management thing. I figure if I can find a way to balance my writing, my Avon business, my yoga students, my Pennwriters duties, AND my Sisters in Crime presidential duties, I should rank as a time management expert. I could write the book.

If I could find the time.

And now, for your musical enjoyment:

Where Do You Get Your Material?

By Martha Reed

People who read my fiction look at me differently once they’re done. I’ve noticed it on more than one occasion especially if it’s someone I work with during the day. You see, my 9-5 job is in financial services and it’s very focused on a specific product. My associates see the Me in the suit – that’s the Me they’ve come to know and then they read one of my horror stories or my mystery novel and then they ask: Hey, Marth? Where do you get this stuff from?

1)    I get it from reading. Honestly, I read everything I can get my hands on because you never know where an idea will lead you. I can remember the first time I tried to weave three unrelated items together to create an entirely new story and I was amazed when it held up and took on a life of its own. I’ve even taken this cool tool one step further and I can now identify something going on in the new that I will probably circle back to later to use in a future story. I already know that I will probably be using some version of the kidnapped child/sex slave kept in the backyard at some future time.

2)    I get it from listening. You never know what you will hear. It’s the only reason I like riding the bus – I overhear massive amounts of private conversation. For instance, one morning I was heading into town when an obviously upset middle-aged woman climbed aboard. You could tell she was just dying to find someone to talk to and luckily, she did. She plopped down and started complaining that her mother-in-law had called her because the basement was flooding and she (the mother-in-law) wanted her son to come home from the union hall to help her get stuff up out of the water. The daughter-in-law/woman on the bus then called down to the hall to get her husband Donny to go help his mother but the receptionist told her that Donny wasn’t there just then he was over at his girlfriend’s house.

Bam. You could have heard a pin drop and I wasn’t the only one who rode that bus every morning for a solid week waiting for the follow up. We never got it. I even read the paper every day looking for a domestic disturbance or homicide notice but the story went cold. I didn’t get discouraged, though – that’s where fiction can step in. Someday I may need a character like Donny’s First Wife and there she is, already neatly in hand.

3)    I keep my eyes open. Characters are out walking our streets. Since we’re coming up on Halloween, I’ll tell you a spooky one. There’s a character in my first novel, Addie Simpson, a heavy-set fifty year old woman who sports a goatee. Addie is a complete fabrication although I did give that character a lot of thought when I was starting out since Addie was a pivotal character. Years later, I was standing in the A&P on Nantucket with my niece who was admiring the lobster tank when I looked up and damn if Addie Simpson wasn’t standing there in the chip aisle grinning at me. The woman had it down to the dirty navy peacoat she was wearing. I stood there, conflicted – I couldn’t leave my niece alone but all I wanted to do was run up to the woman and touch her to see if she was real.

Which brings me to the question of the day: Where Do You Get Your Material? Please post your answers. Inquiring minds want to know.

The Joy of the Hunt

By Martha Reed

Everybody talks about the process of writing but I don’t hear many folks talking about the fun of it. I have to think that most writers to find fun in it or at least satisfaction because otherwise why would you do it? It certainly doesn’t pay much, any applause you get is fleeting and writing has to be the most obscure way to get close to fame that I can think of besides singing on a CD of Gregorian chants. So why do it?

I know why I do and I have done enough of it two recognize two significant stages in the process: 1) about halfway through after I’ve got the rough manuscript and I’ve started the actual writing bit, filling in the transitions, honing the characters and building a plot. This is the most workmanlike portion of the process but I know from experience that I’m really into it when I hit this stage – there’s no going back now and 2) about fifty pages out when I can see the finish line and I realize: holy crap! I’m actually going to finish this thing. The corollary here of course is the hopeful tag line: and it’s really good!

Luckily for me I hit item #2 last Saturday. I thought I was finished with my manuscript back in May but I went to the PennWriters conference, met a real old school homicide detective and realized halfway through his scotch at the bar that my police Lieutenant was way to wimpy to stand up to a real investigation so it was back to the drawing board. I don’t complain about the extra work because I am thankful for the insights because it made my character better, and that’s always a good thing. So I sat back down and started plowing and low and behold I finished Chapter Twenty and the end is in sight. (And I really like it).

The other odd thing I keep going back to is where the story ideas come from. I do read a lot and I know my tired old brain is processing because some nights I can’t turn it off. What gets me is those moments when I open a notebook from 2003 and I have to scribbled items: This one is about John. He needs to investigate. And Watch the Whistler. Now what freaks me out about these notes is that yes, John needed to investigate but how did I know that in 2003 five years before I started writing the dang thing and Watch the Whistler who for the first 200 pages of my new novel is a shadow character but of course he’s the one who pops out in Chapter 20 and focuses the entire novel.

Shaazooey. Sometimes this stuff freaks me out a little. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever found a note to yourself that now has a meaning it could never have had when you wrote it? Do tell. Curious minds want to know.


PS. How about this one? I set out to write 500 words and when I finished the sentence above I ran word count and it’s exactly 500 words without any editing. Okay, I’m going to stop now.

Well, at least I don't Twitter

by Paula Matter

Not that there's anything wrong with Twitter. I simply don't need another time sink. (Or should that be time suck?)

The older I get, the easier I'm distracted. For example: I typed that sentence, then Googled 'Fibromyalgia + Distraction.' Yep, I was right–I can blame it on my fibromyalgia. If I look hard enough, I can generally blame a lot on this condition.

Anyway, back to getting distracted. In order to get focused, say when I'm writing, I follow a daily routine to prepare my mind for the work ahead.


My usual routine:


Solitaire, Hearts, Free Cell. In that order and only one game allowed. (Anal with a capital A.)


One puzzle here http://www.jigzone.com/puzzle A little flexibility here if there are some really interesting puzzles.

Check e-mail.

Read favorite blogs. Too many to list. I have stopped reading all of the comments. Hell, Nathan Bransford's blog alone would take an hour or more to read. And I don't comment on very many of the ones I read.

Yahoo! Groups/listserves. I read them online and skim quickly.

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ Quick in and out. I'm down to three times a day.

By then I'm on my third cup of coffee and ready to begin work.

As soon as I check e-mail. Oh! Someone responded to my status on Facebook. A quick look. Reply. May as well check what others are doing. Oh, interesting link.

And on and on and on...

Since I know I'm not alone (please!) here's a fun quiz:

http://www.quizmoz.com/quizzes/Personality-Tests/c/Creativity-Quotient-Test.asp

I scored 64. How'd you do?

Singing for Your Supper

By Martha Reed

One of the secret treats of my summer is to go out for a preliminary walk first thing on Sunday morning while my coffee is brewing and the day is still fresh. The mist is rising off the Allegheny River and sometimes there are some pretty amazing colors – peach, pink, even baby blue – up in the sky.

Aspinwall hosts a flea market and farm to market produce stand in our local municipal parking lot on Sundays and it’s a very entertaining event. A lot of retired people show up to see what’s going on, it’s like a party; everyone knows each other and the vendors are standing around, gossiping. I’ve picked up some pretty nice vintage lace for curtains down there and the tomatoes and fresh picked corn can’t be beat.

Before I leave the flea market I have to wander past the bookseller. He’s a long-haired groovy dude who looks a lot like one of my uncles and he sells hardback books for a dollar. I’ve found a couple of first edition mysteries in his stacks and even with a TBR pile that is threatening to topple over every time someone opens my front door, I can’t say no to a book for a buck so I end up buying more and taking them home.

Last Sunday I got all intellectual and bought Selected Poems by Lord Byron. I seemed to have missed the Regency period in my study of English Literature (Capital E, Capital L) so I thought it wouldn’t hurt me to actually force myself to read this one. The funny thing is that once I slowed down enough to translate 19th century syntax, I actually enjoyed it.

The first thing was I knew he was a Lord, a British peer. I had already picked up that much. I also knew he was a bad boy because my grandfather nicknamed one of my childhood associates ‘Lord Byron’ (his real name was Will) and I was smart enough even at twelve years old to draw the obvious inference. What I didn’t know was that Lord Byron was writing and struggling to make a living at it. His poem Don Juan was pre-sold by subscription:

From CANTO 221

But for the present, gentle reader! and
Still gentler purchaser! The bard – that’s I –
Must, with permission, shake you by the hand,
And so your humble servant, and goodbye!
We meet again, if we should understand
Each other; and if not, I shall not try
Your patience further than by this short sample –
“Twere well if others follow’d my example.


I have to put just a bit in here about how really bad George Gordon was. Nowadays we are such “well regulated creatures” that we haven’t had a bad boy Rock’n’Roll star lately. I think Lord B qualified:

“On April 15, 1816, to escape scandal, Byron left England. For the rest of his life his wondered the Continent in self-imposed exile. In Geneva he began a friendship with Percy Shelly, who was there with his wife Mary Godwin (Frankenstein). There, too, he finished the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and had a brief affair with another ardent and aggressive admirer, Claire Clairmont, Mary’s half-sister. A daughter, Allegra, was born of this liaison.

Byron then moved on to Venice to perhaps his most debauched period as well as the beginning of his most creatively productive; in Italy he finished the fourth canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, wrote The Vision of Judgement (1822) and the sixteen cantos of Don Juan, considered to be his best and most mature works. In addition to his various semi-permanent mistresses, he kept in his rented palazzo an ever changing harem of Venetian women; by Byron’s own count there were more than two hundred.”

Introduction - Christopher Moore

I’ve tried to imagine the life going on in that Venetian palazzo. It must have been a constant uproar of wife, mistresses, children, servants, mistresses, vendors, priests, English visitors, and dogs. Now I don’t need dead silence to work but I do need relative calm. It’s any wonder he found the time to write!

This last bit is what made me decide the book was worth a dollar. I imagined L.B. locked in an upper room, above all the turmoil going on downstairs and out on the Venetian canals, the noise, the singing, barking, laughing, loving, living distractions, with him sitting at a desk knowing that he needs to pop out a couple more stanzas for those loyal subscribers back home who will then send him enough cash to keep the whole extravagant circus afloat. He settles in, takes a big sigh, braces his shoulders for the task ahead and:

From CANTO III

Hail, Muse! Et cetera –

- George Gordon, Lord Byron