‘Ave a spot o’ tea, guvna! I’m now for sale at Amazon UK.

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That blog theme I switched to a while ago? Didn’t support italics. That’s a primary typographical function. You have to purposely take it out to get rid of it. As a long-time supporter of italics’ rights, I cannot use a theme designed by someone with such an obvious prejudice against them.

So a warm welcome back to the old, familiar, and slanty. I just did a quick-and-dirty reload. I’ll clean up after myself in the morning.

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Moonsanity (a username I recognize from way back—you know, way back when I used to frequent more than 3 places on the internet) reviewed Beyond the Darkening. Her review is pretty much a checklist of everything I wanted to accomplish with that story, which gave me a much-needed infusion of hey, maybe I know what I’m doing a little.

I totally didn’t hold BTBM up to the screen and say, “Look at this! I can whip you into shape, too, you flabby little maggot!” That would just be weird…

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No, that’s still not done yet, but I’ve at least determined the source of the problem. Once I get rid of the heroine, everything should go much more smoothly.

Which isn’t to say there won’t be a heroine, but rather, due to irreconcilable differences, the part of Rowan will henceforth be played by a character with an actual personality.

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I’ve mentioned here and there my “Katamari phase.” For those who don’t know, Katamari refers to a series of games by Namco wherein you basically roll around a sticky little ball, picking up certain types of items you need to fulfill an objective.

Beautiful Katamari. Property of Namco

Developing a story is like that for me. I’ll have a nugget of an idea that’s not enough to work with by itself, and I’ll give it a push and leave it alone to roll around and gather mass. Eventually, a big ball of stuff pops out wrapped in a pretty bow and sporting a tag that says, “Everything your story needs,” and then all I have to do is organize it.

I let myself be pressured and rushed and didn’t let that process happen when I wrote the first draft of BTBM a year ago. I had the first scene and the last scene all along, but everything in between was just crammed in there to bridge the gap. While it would get you from Point A to Point B, you’d feel during the entire journey like it was going to collapse beneath you and send you plunging to your death.

It needs a complete gut-reno, not just some cosmetic updates, and as anyone who watches HGTV can tell you, that always takes longer than planned. When it’s done, though, it should be structurally sound and hopefully worth all the delays.

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Occasionally, someone will say to me, “Hang in there! You’re sure to be picked up by a real publisher soon!” I accept that in the supportive spirit it’s intended, but that stopped being an aspiration of mine a couple years ago. Yes, there are control-freak reasons and business-sensibility reasons, but honestly, I can be bought. There’s an offer sweet enough to overcome those principles if somebody wanted to make it.

My sticking point isn’t the usual “I’m independent, I don’t need anybody” screed, but rather more an acknowledgment that I would not succeed in a system where I have to meet deadlines (doesn’t matter how far in the future they are, their very existence makes me choke) and ask permission from a publisher to write the next story I want to write.

(It pains me deeply when a writer I like says, “My editor shot down my proposal for a new series. Back to the drawing board.” I always want to say “please write it anyway” because if I like their writing and the new idea is something too far out of the box for a publisher to jump on it, I figure it has to be 31 flavors of awesome.)

What I’m doing now, even if it seems like small potatoes to some observers, is really better suited to my methods. I have plans for bigger and better potatoes in the future, but they’ll grow from here in a little pot on my windowsill, not one of them big potato farms in New York with their straight rows and rigid harvesting schedules.

And then, FRENCH FRIES FOR EVERYBODY!

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I exhausted my own tolerance for weak metaphors about four weak metaphors ago, so I’ll call it a night.

The site got a bit of a facelift last night. There was a lot of tinkering to remove things I didn’t want, add things I did want, relocate things to where I think they should go, and fix things that didn’t transfer well from the previous layout.

(Someday when I’m feeling insanely ambitious, I’ll move the sidebar to the right. Oh, how I hate left sidebars. *glare*)

Some things I haven’t yet had occasion to look at may still be a little wonky. If you discover a problem while wandering around, feel free to slap me with a comment or email to get my attention, and I’ll pull on my coding gloves and break the whole site fix it posthaste.

Random.org barfed out comment #2, who is:

 Image by Cool Text: Logo and Button Generator – Create Your Own

Confirmation email sent. If there’s no response within 5 days, an alternate winner will be selected.

ETA: The prize has been claimed and delivered. Thanks to everyone who entered, and especial thanks to everyone who’s contributed to me having a reason to do these giveaways.

Now, I’m going to unplug from the internet for a few days, unclench my teeth, take care of my backlog of freelance stuff, and attack BTBM.

<–what I do to manuscripts that backsass me

There are a lot more than two, actually, but I—surprise!—misplaced the list I had going. These are the two I remembered best.

1. Writers agonize too much over whether they should devote the first page of a story to setting the stage or jump straight into the action. That’s an issue of pace and depends mostly on the writer’s style and the demands of the story. What readers want on a first page is character. It’s loving or hating or curiosity about a character that makes readers turn the page to find out what happens next. Whether that character is navel-gazing or in the midst of stabbing somebody at the time of introduction, he or she bears the burden of being interesting and original enough to make the reader keep reading.

2. Write what you want to write, the way you want to write it. “Your” readers want your voice, your imagination, your passion for what you write, not something watered down and filtered through the neverending supply of people eager to suggest ways you can “improve” until you lose your voice, your imagination, your passion for what you write, and all the readers who liked you because of those things. Every writer should always strive to improve, but all change is not improvement. It can be a process of evolution as a writer (gradual, emphasizing strengths, minimizing weaknesses), or it can be an extreme makeover (trying to mimic the blockbuster author of the moment, jumping on every trend). The choice of path here isn’t dissimilar from how one chooses a circle of friends: Do you stand by the people who already like what you do, or do you blow them off to chase the approval of people who think you suck? Me, I’ve always been a people-who-think-I-suck-can-go-screw-themselves kind of gal with a tendency to focus on sustaining the goodwill of friendlier folks.

Why take writing lessons from readers?

(Rant about authors hanging on every word of other authors, agents, and editors and going about their business as if readers don’t matter or don’t exist redacted because, seriously, I could write a book on the subject if I had the time and the inclination to devote it to something that elevates my blood pressure until my ears pop. But in essence, there are ulterior motives behind much of the “writing advice” dispensed by many “other publishing people,” so it has to be taken with enough grains of salt to induce toxic natremia.)

Readers, on the other hand, just want good stuff to read, which intersects nicely with a writer’s goal to write stuff that is good to read.

Yeah, there’s sorting to be done in the vast inventory of reader sentiment. Not all of it is universally applicable. If I see “I’d like more historical fiction set in Colonial India…” on a reader forum, I don’t have to continue reading because that is not and never will be my area, but that’s a discussion a writer of historical fiction with an interest in Colonial India should be following because that’s her audience, her customers, her end-users, gathered together in one convenient location, discussing candidly what they want in the sort of product she’d like to sell to them. That’s a goldmine of market research.

It is not “letting readers dictate the sacred creative process” (although why it’s fine for crit partners, agents, editors, and random people on Twitter or blogs or boards who may or may not have ever written anything in their lives to leave fingerprints all over the precious creation but horrifying to think of readers doing the same is *rant rant stabbity rant*). It’s finding out, straight from the customer’s mouth, which of their needs are not being met. If a writer can find ways to meet those needs within the context of the story she wants to write, she will join the small supply for which there is a great demand. That is how good writing becomes good business.

So readers, please keep discussing the books that kept you riveted and those you’d like that aren’t being written (and doing it out in the open rather than retreating to a members-only area to avoid obnoxious authors whose only interest is bombarding you with buy-my-book spam). Some people do listen, and your voice does make a difference.

And writers… seek readers out for reasons other than self-promotion. They’re smart. They love books. They can give you a lot of insight if you just pay attention.

I have no idea how many copies of Beyond the Darkening I’ve sold through Barnes & Noble, but it was enough to get it to a sales rank of 167 today. (This is, by the way, a “Ha, look! My chicken nugget is shaped like Elvis!” thing rather than a “Neener neener, I’m so special” thing.) To commemorate this additional momentous occasion, I’m giving away a $30 giftcard from Barnes & Noble.

Same rules as last time:

How to enter: Leave ONE comment on this post—a word, a paragraph, a smiley, doesn’t matter. USE A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS in the email field. (Cross my heart, I am not mining them to spam you later. I’m not adding you to a newsletter mailing list. I’m not selling email addresses to spammy marketing sleazebags. It’s not visible to anybody viewing the comments. I just need to be able to contact the winner.)

How to get disqualified: When I say ONE comment, I mean ONE comment. IP addresses are logged and will be compared. If yours shows up more than once in the comments on this post, all of your entries will be discarded.

How to win: At the end of the contest period, I will use random.org to select the winning comment. I will announce the winner on this here blog and send a confirmation email to the winner using the email address provided. (I’m not sending $30 to a dud email address, hence the checking.) If that email address bounces or the winner does not respond within 5 days to confirm that it is a valid email address, I will use the same method to select an alternate winner.

Contest period: Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. EST on July 18, 2010.

The prize: A $30 giftcard from Barnes & Noble, sent via email, redeemable in stores or online. If you can’t shop at Barnes & Noble, it’s not going to be of much use to you. Here’s the official terms, limitations, and restrictions page. But if you can’t use it and for some reason want to win a really expensive but useless email, who am I to judge?

May the most fortuitously placed, randomly selected commenter win.