by Charlene Teglia | Nov 23, 2009 | Uncategorized
Lovely word, isn’t it? Namaste. And it has a lovely meaning; recognizing the spark of the divine in ourselves and each other. This simple meditation is a quick and easy way to begin writing; let your mind surrender to the divine in your heart.
Most of writing happens in the heart, in my experience. There’s the logical thinking mind which is very good for planning and organizing the work, but the work itself, if it has any heart, comes from the heart. It comes from the wordless place of symbols and images. You can also think of these two places as conscious and subconscious or left brain, right brain. This is one reason I always recommend Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer; it’s the best book I’ve ever found on getting both sides to work together to produce writing. Writing needs logical planning and organization, but it’s good to remember that it also needs the mysterious surprises that come when we open our hearts.
Namaste!
by Charlene Teglia | Nov 21, 2009 | Uncategorized
I have this book coming out Dec. 8, so I thought maybe today was a good day for a snippet.
“Is it getting dark?” Sybil finally asked when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. It should be if they were still on the same side of the planet; she’d stopped at the estate sale on her way home from work, and while events had moved at a breakneck pace since, it still had to be late evening. The thought that so little real time had elapsed was a little disorienting.
“Yes.”
“Are we spending the night here?”
“No.”
“Should we be walking, then?”
“Not necessary.”
Well, okay. Sybil tipped her head back to watch as the
first pale stars appeared. It comforted her that some things remained constant. The sun still set in the west, stars still shone, the world continued to spin on its axis. It made her feel hopeful.
Ghost flames danced across her vision, then winked out. She frowned. “Tell me about the book.”
“It’s the work of chaos demons.”
“How could it write itself onto me? Into me?”
“The book was merely a container for the spells to
inhabit. The spells are the magic.”
Sybil turned to look at Kenric, careful to keep her eyes on his and not on anything more distracting. “How can magic just be made of words?”
“Words are power. I know you’re untrained, but surely you know that much.”
“Well, yeah. But they’re not alive.”
“Aren’t they?” His expression seemed serious. Sybil felt her throat constrict.
“No,” she said firmly.
“As you say.”
She scuffed the toe of her shoe against the ground. “Okay, fine, words are alive and these particular words came from chaos demons. Why did the book get written in the first place?”
Kenric’s face hardened. “Witches made a bargain. Long ago. The word of unmaking would have been spoken and chaos would have been let loose.”
“Would have been.” She pounced on that point. “Let’s come back to that, but first, what is the word of unmaking?”
“The lost word.” He gave her the sort of look a teacher might direct at a problem student. “Creation came into being with a word. The lost word unmakes.”
“Genesis and its opposite. Huh. Okay.” This conversation was making her head throb. The idea that a single word could undo everything, and that it was currently inside her, was enough to bring on a killer migraine. “So way back in history, some witches made a deal to get the lost word and turn everything into chaos. Their plans went wrong, and ever since
it’s just been hiding out in a book until I found it and bled on it?”
“It hid in many places and forms over the centuries, but yes.”
“Peachy.” Her sour tone said volumes. No wonder nobody
would train her. She could destroy the world by going shopping.
by Charlene Teglia | Nov 20, 2009 | Uncategorized
Oh noes! Holiday break is coming. How do you NaNo on?
1. Stock up on videos in case of bad weather.
2. Pray for good weather.
3. Stock up on distractions like Playdoh and coloring books for small peopl, or make inexpensive additions to renew interest in old toys; some new legos, new Barbie outfit, etc.
4. Plan some projects, like a nature walk around the neighborhood to see what kinds of trees, birds, etc. are in the neighborhood. They can take pictures, write, or draw about what they see. Green Hour has lots of suggestions getting to know the outdoors.
5. Pray for snow. Send kids out to make snowmen. Make snow cream.
6. Let your mad scientists explore the possibilities of kitchen science.
7. Bribe them to do household chores. Keeps them busy and buys you more time to write.
8. Pay older kids next door to babysit. They’re home on break, too.
9. Get up earlier and stay up later to write.
10. Bump up word count ahead of and after the break to compensate.
And every once in a while, just ditch work and go play. Eat some turkey, hug the people you love, and be grateful for them.
by Charlene Teglia | Nov 19, 2009 | Uncategorized
With the announcement of Harlequin Horizons, there’s been a whole lot of comment and an official response from RWA. What I’ve mainly noticed in the commentary is that many are confusing vanity publishing with self-publishing, although the good people at Writer Beware do a good job of explaining the difference.
Vanity publishing is not a winning proposition for writers. You pay to have your book "published", but it isn’t really. It’s not available to libraries or bookstores because it doesn’t have distribution. Good luck trying to convince your local library or bookstore to stock it, because they already don’t have enough shelf space for traditionally published books. So your book in print is functionally not for sale or available to readers, you footed the costs yourself, and your profit is…in the red. But wait, it’s worse. Because you didn’t self-publish so you don’t hold the copyright and you don’t get to decide what percentage of the profits, if you manage to make any, you keep. Horizons offers authors 50% of net royalties. Net is bad because it means any expense on the planet can be deducted before the author gets paid.
Self-publishing, on the other hand, is a lot of work but in the end you own the copyright, and if you put in some effort, you actually can make some money with it. At the very least have your own printed copies for your own purposes that you got at cost. Patricia Simpson offers a detailed look at her experiment with self-publishing and POD and gives a rundown of the pros and cons. Author JA Konrath also gives numbers on his experiment with putting titles out for sale on Kindle.
In the past, I used Lulu to make a POD version of one of my books for sale, when the original epublisher didn’t have print rights and no interest in using them. That cost me an ISBN fee and some time. When I resold the book to Ellora’s Cave, they printed a version which has distribution. Guess which sold better? Not the POD. But it didn’t cost me much and it made the book available to readers who wanted it in that format. It was a very low-risk move and it didn’t tie up my rights when a "real" publisher wanted the book.
So, self-publishing; it will cost you some time, but if you’re good with a computer and have or can barter for the right skills, it might not cost you much money. You retain your rights. You set the prices. And every once in a while, a self-published book takes off and becomes a big success.
What other alterantive does an author have if they get rejected by a traditional publisher? Go indie. Sell your book to an indie epublisher like Samhain or Ellora’s Cave or Loose Id. Or in print, Dorchester, Sourcebooks, Juno, all of which represent a broad range of genres. Those publishers will pay YOU. You don’t pay them.They’ll even do all the formatting, editing, cover art, and ISBN registration for you, and they have distribution channels so your book can actually find a market.
We all get rejected. No matter how many books you have to your credit, published authors still get rejected. No matter how many ideas I come up with, one is always potentially a lemon. And when rejection happens, the author has a range of options to choose from. Is the book a lemon? Put it away, chalk it up to a learning experience. Is it just a different flavor? Then explore the options before consigning it to the sock drawer, but you can do that without writing a big check. You can even do it in a way that makes you money.
by Charlene Teglia | Nov 18, 2009 | Uncategorized
Lots of big publishing news lately. Sometimes it’s hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other when it seems like navigating the world of publishing is walking on quicksand. And I think the answer to that is to remember that writing is separate from publishing. Writing rights things, as Julia Cameron wrote in The Artist’s Way.
I’m not in charge of publishing, but I’m in charge of this book, these contracted projects. I’m in charge of sitting down to write, even when it’s hard and it sucks and the words won’t come, or they come as tangled as if I had aphasia. I’m a writer, so I write. I write when it’s easy, when it’s hard, when it’s fun, when it’s not fun, when I wonder why I’m struggling to create a consistent world with a coherent story instead of watching SpongeBob Squarepants.
Writers write. One word after another, one foot in front of the other. You can walk across your whole fictional world that way, and nobody can turn it to quicksand.
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