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A friend died today.

I'm a mess. So bear with me here. Forget about introvert and extrovert and do me a favor. You're mortal. Your life is precious and fragile and not stuck in a rut unless you will it to be. While you're alive, you can still DO something.

Start.

Whatever it is you want. Start it. Smile. Breathe deep. Step forward, even if only an inch.

Because only one thing is certain. This all ends. For your sake, for mine, for the sake of the friend who died today, don't go to your deathbed wondering what could have happened.

Oh. And take a second to go hug your loved ones.

My Kingdom for a Writer Retreat

Writing is a solitary activity.  It is fundamentally about holing up somewhere and shutting out the world and getting the work done.  This is a job for introverts.  

But promotion, appearances, interacting with the fellow writing community?  That takes extroversion. And I can do that: I can turn it on and get the job done.  But then I want to crawl back into a hole and just write.  

Now, as things currently go, I don't have much option for holing up.  There's no single space in the house that's just for me just to write.  We also run our business out of the house, and due to the nature of it there isn't an area that can be just MINE all the time.  

This past weekend at Comicpalooza, I was sitting with a bunch of writers, and one that I didn't recognize (and because, you know, that's how things go, no introductions were made between us) talked about finalizing his cabin in the woods: isolated, with a great view of a lake (but still only a few minutes away from the grocery store).  The perfect place to be completely disconnected from the world and just get writing done.

I said that sounded like bliss.

Turns out that guy I didn't recognize was Jim Butcher.

If Jim Butcher is only JUST getting his cabin on the lake to write in isolation, it's going to be a bit for me. So I'll keep working out of my bag, using my headphones to isolate myself.  (And reminding my family that Headphones Means Do Not Disturb.)

All that said: if any of you out there has a cabin on the lake or beachhouse or isolated studio or adobe hut in the desert you want to lend me for a week or so?  Let's talk.  I would love to have a place to retreat to, if just for a little bit.

DON'T BE A DEADLINE DOUCHEBAG

If people are asking you to do things (whether it is writing and business related or not) you should of course always consider the request and the person making the request. Some of you may be good at knee-jerk "No" responses, and you parrot out your answer before you've thought it through. The request might benefit you, so think it over. 

A few times in your life, a request might be easy because you adore and respect the person making the request and you genuinely want to help, or you 'owe' them one because they helped you previously.

But more often the requests will come not from that adored person and not in a timely manner.

As an author with deadlines, you can say no. Don't feel guilty! You might have to say no because, serioiusly, this is your career. You might truly be wishing you could help, or you might be rejoicing that you don't have to because you have the great excuse of a deadline. Either way, the important factor is that you maintain your professionalism. 

DON'Ts:
Don't ignore a request; that is rude. 
Don't accept and promise to help, then stop responding or never following through. That's also rude.
Don't promise to get to something later just to avoid actually saying "No" right now.

DOs:

Do be honest. 
Do be helpful if you can.


HOW TO SAY NO:
You can say no without details:
"I'm flattered, but my schedule is so tight right now, I'm just not in a position where I can take this on."

You can say no with details:
"Look, I know this is going to disappoint you, but I simply cannot promise to ______ because no matter how much I might want to help you with this, the deadlines I'm responsible for right now require my utmost attention. You deserve feedback that is fully focused and there's no way I can manage that right now."

Here's more ways to say no that I found HERE on The Greater Good blog.

1. Vague but effective: “Thank you for asking, but that isn’t going to work out for me.”

2. It’s not personal: “Thank you for asking, but I’m not doing any interviews while I’m writing my book.”

3. Ask me later: “I want to do that, but I’m not available until April. Will you ask me again then?”

4. Let me hook you up: “I can’t do it, but I’ll bet Shelly can. I’ll ask her for you.”

5. Keep trying: “None of those dates work for me, but I would love to see you. Send me some more dates.”

6. Try me last minute: “I can’t put anything else on my calendar this month, but I’d love to do that with you sometime. Will you call me right before you go again?”

7. Gratitude: “Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and support! I’m sorry I’m not able to help you at this time.”

8. Give Dad a chance: “You know, I feel like moms are always getting to do the holiday parties at school. Let’s ask Dad if he wants to help this year.”

9. 5-minute favor: “I can’t speak at your event, but I will help you promote it on my blog.”

I also asked my friends Renee Trudeau and Katrina Alcorn—two people who’ve honed their ability to say no well—for their favorite go-to ways to say no. Here are Renee’s favorite ways:

10. Just No: “Thanks, I’ll have to pass on that.” (Say it, then shut up.)

11. Gracious: “I really appreciate you asking me, but my time is already committed.”

12. I’m Sorry: “I wish I could, but it’s just not going to work right now.”

13. It’s Someone Else’s Decision: “I promised my coach (therapist, husband, etc.) I wouldn’t take on any more projects right now. I’m working on creating more balance in my life.”

14. My Family is the Reason: “Thanks so much for the invite, that’s the day of my son’s soccer game, and I never miss those.”

15. I Know Someone Else: “I just don’t have time right now. Let me recommend someone who may be able to help you.”

16. I’m Already Booked: “I appreciate you thinking of me, but I’m afraid I’m already booked that day.”

17. Setting Boundaries: “Let me tell you what I can do…” Then limit the commitment to what will be comfortable for you.

18. Not No, But Not Yes: “Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.”

(Renee’s list is from her book The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal.)

And here are the additional ways that Katrina most often says no:

19. Say nothing: “Not all requests require an answer. It feels rude to ignore a request, but sometimes it’s the best way for everyone to save face.”

20. Let it all hang out: “Recently my daughter got injured in gym class. It was a week of visits to the ER, the concussion clinic, specialists, etc. I decided to just tell people what was going on, which sort of shut down the requests for a bit.”

21. I’m “maxed out”: “We need a ‘safety word’ for saying no—an easy way to tell people that we can’t/won’t do the thing they are requesting, but that it’s not personal. One convenient thing about authoring a book called Maxed Out is that now I can say ‘I’m maxed out’ and people who are familiar with the book know I’m asking them to respect that I’m taking care of myself, and that I also respect their need to take care of themselves.”

Release Day: Jovienne by Linda Robertson

Big celebration day today as our Wednesday captain Linda Roberston releases the first book in her new urban fantasy series Immanence. Because Linda is such an amazing artist, she's written a musical score to accompany the book (sold separately via Linda's website).

JOVIENNE
A horrific car accident put Jovienne in a coma. When she awakened months later, she was told that her family had died. And Jovienne? She felt different...irreversibly changed.

Years passed, and she was raised by a stranger who trained her to use the quintanumin. She excelled at every lesson, and she longed for her mentor to become much more. When the time came for her final test, a death-match against a demon, she uncovered a terrible truth: the man she had trusted to teach her had a dreadful secret, and Jovienne had become a monster's monster.

The traumatized Jovienne becomes desperate for a way out of this new life, working on a way to rescind her immortality. But this only brings the demons ever closer, one of which claims to know a secret of its own about Jovienne-a secret she doesn't even know herself...

BUY IT NOW:  From Linda  |  IpG   |   Amazon   |  IndieBound

No fences for me.

I try to be friendly to anyone who approaches me at a convention.

I also try to be professional, so not too close for comfort.

once upon a time I gave out business cards with my phone number on them.

that stopped when someone I THOUGHT was a writer started calling my place at any old time of the morning to fanboy out.

That was when I set my boundaries.

They haven't really changed. Be a professional at conventions, folks. It's all the difference in t he world.

I'll be polite, I'll even be friendly, but beyond that? Hard to say what will happen.

So, no fences. fences imply that I want to keep a certain distance. In public, at conventions, I believe in an open door policy. I look forward to meeting new friends and fans alike.

The Writer as Friendly Curmudgeon - Building Fences Without Walling People Out

One of my favorite pictures of my mother, embodying all her effervescence and zest for life - letting her fringe fly.

It's apropos for me that week's topic - which has to do with attempting to be both a writer and a socially acceptable person - falls on Mother's Day. My mother is tremendously social person. She's good at it, and she loves it. Me... well, I've always struggled a bit with feeling like I'm not as good at it, and it took me a really long time to understand that about myself.

I just never felt all that social, though I could fake it to some extent. In fact, I often thought to myself that I was antisocial. In a brief bout of therapy during a dark angsty period in college, my therapist said to me, "Antisocial people don't get elected to be Social Chair of their sororities."

Which was an eye-opener for me, because it was a really good point.

Now I know how to label it, because there's so much more good language to talk about this aspect of human interaction. I'm an introvert! Or perhaps, more accurately, an ambivert. I have a lot of extrovert skills - which I've always attributed to my mother's tireless efforts to make me a better person - but I have a deeply introverted aspect to my personality. I need alone time to rejuvenate my energy.

Because my mom is an extrovert, she needs companionship to rejuvenate herself. Thus she's always worried that when I'm alone "too much" that it's not good for me.

But loving being alone is part of what makes me a good writer. In fact, I'd argue that so many writers are introverts because it's got to be super hard on those extroverted writers to make themselves sit in quiet rooms alone to get the work done. Introverts are all over that.

The downside, however, is that we can be perceived as unfriendly and shunning society of all kinds. Part of this comes from the necessity of building fences around the sacred space where creativity occurs. We absolutely need to be left alone. No quick questions or short conversations. No "but I only need ..." Anything that interrupts that quiet space will derail the work at best temporarily, at worst for a really long freaking time. And the worst part is, allowing minor infractions leads to larger and larger ones. A quick question today leads to a two-hour errand in the not-too-distant future. It can become a convoluted exercise in logic to try to explain why the short convo yesterday was okay, but a total disaster today.

And this is hard to explain. It sounds curmudgeonly and sometimes downright mean for us to say, "I'm turning off my phone, my internet, and shutting my door. If you need me, you'll have to need me later." We know our boundaries can make no rational sense, which means we end up snarling impossible demands like "Nobody talk to me EVER AGAIN."

I always think of the cliche of the Victorian era writer locking himself in the library and roaring that anyone who enters will be reduced to a pile of ash.

Okay, I've totally wanted to be that guy on occasion.

But most of us don't really want to be THAT antisocial. We love our friends and family and would like for them to continue to love us. It's really lovely when we unlock the library doors, emerge, (bathe), and find them smiling, possibly handing us food.

So the trick is to build fences around that writing space without building walls so impenetrable they can't be breached. I suspect the answer there, as it so often is, lies in communication.

I greatly appreciate all those years my mom spent drilling social skills into her reluctant daughter. They've come in very handy. A part of me is also amused that, for all those times she told me to get my nose out of my book, that I'm totally vindicated now.

SO, HA, MOTHER! ALL THAT TIME I SPENT WITH MY NOSE IN A BOOK MADE ME AN AWARD-WINNING WRITER TODAY!! SO THERE!

Also, I love you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day, from both the good Jeffe and the bad one. ;-)

My Test for Good Ideas - Does it Set Off Fireworks?

Plot Bunny!

The topic this week is how we decide what’s a good idea to pursue when we’re ready to write a new book or story.

First I’d have to define what ‘good’ means to me in this context because as others have said, I have ideas ALL the time. Plot bunnies abound everywhere. I have a dream, or read the news or someone tells me a funny anecdote from their own daily life or I’m perusing a magazine at the dentist’s office and WOW POP ZOWIE, there’s the kernel of a great idea. Typically I scribble down enough notes on it to remind myself later what I’d thought was so cool and stuff it into a bulging purple folder of similar ideas. If the thought prompt was for a nifty detail inside some other story I’ve already been playing around with telling, then I’ll give it a cryptic label. As an example, for literally years I collected details for a story about an interstellar fashion designer, which I eventually wrote (Star Survivor). I probably didn’t use 1/100^th of the stuff I’d collected but it all built up in my head over time to give me a picture of the world she lived in and what I might write about her.

I still have notes from junior high school actually, relevant to the series I was doing then, which had a vaguely Tom Corbett Space Cadet feel to it, but with romance. I’m not planning to pursue those plot bunnies any further though!

That does point up the problem I have, which is when I’m feeling motivated and energized to tell a new story, it’s rarely something drawn from all those files stored in the spare room. More often my Muse is attracted to a shiny new idea and off I go to write that story.

With that background established, what qualifies as a ‘good’ idea to me is one that makes me excited to sit and write, to tell the story. I have energy for the situation and the characters and I can’t wait to get those words on the paper (by typing into the laptop) and share the tale with my readers.

That’s it. My sole criteria. Does this idea have kinetic force for me and spark the irresistible urge to spin a story?

If yes, then hey, Houston, we’re go to launch the writing process.

Purchased from DepositPhoto

Idea Processing and Proving

Remember junior high when you learned (vaguely) how to write a research paper? You were told to pick a subject, begin your research and keep your index cards organized so you could write your paper and cite your sources, right? For the first time, you were given more than a single evening to accomplish your task. Maybe a whole two weeks.

If you were anything like me, you spent the first week and a half playing with a million ideas about what to write. It finally took either panic or a parent hollering at you to just pick something to get you to actually do the paper. Which meant that you were forced to put aside any question of what idea was 'best'. Or even 'good'.

Books are a little like that. You can spend all your time figuring out whether an idea is any good for you or not. And I say 'for you' because I doubt there are any bad ideas - only ideas that land with the wrong person to execute. When a bright, shiny new idea sideswipes me, I do have a process for figuring out whether I can get it from 'oh hey!' to a finished novel. It looks a little like this:

1. Are there characters associated with the idea? If yes, proceed to 2. If no, this idea is DOA. I can jot it down and file it in case characters pop up later, but until there are people to drive the idea, no deal.
2. Do the characters have arcs? This is determined by a deep dive into character work. First stop: Break Into Fiction and the character templates. Why? Because I am entirely character driven. I must know the whys behind my people before I can reliably plot a story from idea to finish. If arc = yes, I can proceed to 3.
3. Proof of concept - write the proposal. Three chapters and a synopsis. This forces me to get clear on the GMC in a concise way. Usually. If that goes well and the characters are playing poorly with one another as they should, I can proceed to 4.
4. Scene by scene plotting. You know that's working when you have help like I did above. It's even better when your 'help' offers up editorial comment in the shape of fang holes in your scene notes.

A lot of work, maybe, but it has benefits. The first is that 90% of ideas get sorted within the first two steps. Those that don't have material progress already made on them. In rare cases, I've had ideas fizzle in the proof of concept stage. Those ideas aren't usually bad, per se, it's usually a case of having missed something vital in the character arc/motivation stage. Those get shelved to perk a little longer. Then I go back to revisit every once in a while to see if I can parse out what I got wrong.

At least no one wants me to cite my sources anymore.