by Charlene Teglia | Jun 17, 2009 | Uncategorized
We’ve been teaching the kids the art of beachcombing. You have to keep your eyes open and pay close attention or you might miss the perfect shell partially buried in the sand. You have to know where to look; the intertidal zone, close to the water’s edge. You also have to watch for incoming sneaker waves, and wade through all the debris left by feeding seabirds and human beach parties.
But if you go early and often, if you keep your eyes open, watch carefully, if you have patience, you find treasures just waiting for you to discover them.
Once found, they must be handled carefully or they break. They must be cleaned, polished, and in some cases left out to dry, and kept out of reach of careless hands or stampeding pets.
Beachcombing is a lot like gathering ideas. You need to know where to look, how to gather them, how to handle them after you find them. Ideas are everywhere, just like seashells near the ocean. Keep your eyes open; you never know what’s right in front of you, half-covered with a layer of silt.
by Charlene Teglia | Jun 15, 2009 | Uncategorized
First off, in the interests of disclosure, I did not renew my RWA membership this year. I was a member, PAN qualified, yaddah yaddah. But year after year, there were the factions fighting each other and eruptions and I kept asking myself, “What do I really get out of this organization?” And when I couldn’t come up with a good reason to give the org another hundred bucks, I didn’t.
Previously, I’d renewed solely to advertise in Romance Sells. But I found that to have no measurable effect on sales, especially since by the time I had final cover, I usually couldn’t get an ad in early enough to influence bookstore purchases.
I’m not anti RWA, I don’t have any grudge, I simply found the organization increasingly irrelevant. My epublishers, Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were originally RWA recognized, making their authors eligible for PAN and to enter their books in the RITA. And then stripped of recognition for no good reason I could ever discern, and rules continually changed to keep epublished titles out of the RITA, the organization’s premier award. Which, unlike other industry awards, authors have to pay a fee to enter their work in. So I don’t see that the RITA has the same quality as say, the John W. Campbell award. But that’s a topic for another day.
I am not anti-NY: my publishers also include St. Martin’s Press and Pocket Books.
I’m not rabidly pro-epublishing; while I enjoy the benefits of epublishing, I’m also not blind to the downsides.
But what RWA as an organization cannot seem to get past is that if they truly want to fulfill the stated mission, “to advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy. RWA works to support the efforts of its members to earn a living, to make a full-time career out of writing romance—or a part-time one that generously supplements his/her main income”*, it’s time to stop excluding epublishing as a valid choice.
Epublishing is not the answer to everything, but consider the benefits, mainly creative freedom and monthly checks. Both of those are worth a lot to me, and I have continued to epublish while also writing for a traditional publisher.
But, says RWA, it’s not a valid choice because you don’t get a 1K advance. Well, I can release an ebook and make more than that in royalties in the first month, with usually less than a six month wait from turn in to first check. NY might pay an advance, but an author might well end up waiting longer to get it than an epublished author gets for going straight to royalties.
I think the main issue here is fear that advances will be done away with by NY and the way authors have earned a living will be in jeopardy. This fear is somewhat valid, in that NY has begun to experiment in the royalty-only as opposed to advance-paying model. (Not that you get that advance all that quickly; payments can stretch out over 2 years from time of offer to receipt of final payment.)
I understand, from a professional perspective, that not getting a definite amount of money in exchange for sale of rights is…sticky. You might well sell your rights for a handful of magic beans. This is where an author has to investigate an epublisher, know the market, and determine if their work is likely to do well there…and they’d be greatly helped in this if RWA actually provided education about the realities of epublishing. As, you know, part of fulfilling their stated mission.
In the end, there are no guarantees either way, with epublishing or traditional publishing. Your book might tank from Harlequin as easily as it might tank from Samhain. But authors have the right to choose what they think is the best option for them, and informed decisions are much better than ignorant ones based on hype, fear, or myths.
*You can earn a good living epublishing, or at least a nice supplement. I know; I have since 2005. You cannot, however, earn a good living writing one single title per year at a 1K advance unless you live in a box under a bridge.
by Charlene Teglia | Jun 15, 2009 | Uncategorized
It’s been a while, but today is a good day for Monday poetry.
From TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages:
” The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.”
by Charlene Teglia | Jun 12, 2009 | Uncategorized
So, we moved. It kind of went like this; found right place, said “we’ll take it”, threw everything we owned in boxes, and a week later here we are. Actually we got here Wed., so five days later, but last night was the first night in the house.
And to make blog fodder of this, ten great things about moving.
1. It makes you look at everything you own and ask, “Why do I still have this?”
2. If you have no good answer, you can donate it and therefore save yourself packing and unpacking
3. You use spatial organization and problem solving skills that are rarely called upon
4. You build muscles that are rarely called upon
5. You start off with all cupboards and drawers neatly organized. It won’t last, but it’s a nice feeling.
6. You start off knowing exactly where everything is.
7. This is because you just found all the stuff you haven’t seen since the last move.
8. You find all sorts of forgotten items. In my case, I found artwork I’d forgotten I’d done; paintings of the Point Wilson lighthouse and the Port Townsend marina outside the Otter Crossing Cafe, where I used to love to eat breakfast.
9. The sheer physicality of moving is a nice break from the mental effort of writing.
10. You really WANT to use your neat, new office when all the boxes are gone.
by Charlene Teglia | Jun 8, 2009 | Uncategorized
We’re back from five days exploring an absolutely gorgeous part of the world. We spent our time going back and forth between Astoria and the upper Oregon coast and Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula, over a gigantic bridge that spans the mouth of the Columbia as it opens out to the Pacific Ocean.
On the Oregon side, you have the quaint Victorian houses of Astoria rising up in the hillside, the Maritime Museum, the Columbia River Walk. On the Washington side, you see signs for “Dismal Nitch” and “Cape Disappointment”, which does not encourage the visitor to keep going. But it’s worth crossing that bridge and exploring, because Long Beach Peninsula has a lot of natural beauty to offer, and a lot of fun activities for all ages to enjoy, too.
There’s the North Head Lighthouse, which has a beautifully maintained path and is easily accessible by foot, and the grounds where you can rent the lighthouse keeper’s house for a bargain rate. You can take the trail to follow the lighthouse keeper’s route, but we didn’t due to time constraints. We only went as far as the grounds, lighthouse, and overlook. The lighthouse itself is open to tours, but wear closed-toe shoes and be age 7 or older! (Our six year old spent a good 15 minutes plotting ways around the age limit and had to give up.) The peninsula’s other lighthouse is on coast guard turf, but accessible by walking trail. It’s 3/4 mile each way.
The Cranberry Research Foundation is an interesting place, too, if you have an agriculture bent or just want to know how these unusual berries are grown and harvested.
On Long Beach, you can rent a horse and ride on the sand. We didn’t do this, but we did have the kids take pony rides so they could get a feel for being on horseback and see if they liked it. (They loved it. We had a hard time tearing them away.) With a little practice, a family ride on the beach is a future option.
You can visit the Kite Museum, fly a kite on the beach, go catch the latest movie, walk the boardwalk along the dunes, stay in a cozy cottage, eat and shop all within walking distance. Long Beach is great for pedestrians. Just down the road is an amazing chef at The Depot, where the food makes angels weep. Ask for the chef’s table, and you can sample while he works his foodie magic. (Ask far in advance; that table gets booked!)
You can also take a shovel and bucket and just play, breathing the sea air and listening to the surf and feeling the wind in your hair.
The Long Beach Peninsula. Don’t let the place names put you off, it’s not dismal or disappointing in the least.
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