Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

… to my wife.

Yes, today is our 25th anniversary, so I am blogging early today.

I’ll tune in again tomorrow with some comments on how I organize my novels on my hard drive so I always know where everything is and can always retrieve it.

See y’all tomorrow!

Hi All:

Just a quick note to say that I’m desperately trying to get back into the groove on blogging. July was a tough month — I was gone for 12 days, and seemingly spent the rest of the month catching up from being gone. My email stack is MERCILESS, and I’ve been trying to knock that down before I get blogging in earnest.

I’m also playing catch-up on a couple of other fronts. Our homeowners’ assocation bought us a stack of wood to use to replace the old fence that runs along the back side of our lot. The fence is about 180 feet long, and I’ve discovered that 180 feet is a long way to go when you have to rip out old fencing, cut the new to fit, and then hammer it in! I don’t have to replace the posts — just the horizontal bars — but that’s enough. Luckily, my wife and kids are helping out a lot, but it’s burning the hours.

We’re also in the market to buy a pellet stove. It gets a little chilly here in the winter. We have a heat pump, but its efficiency goes down when the temperature goes below about 40 (Fahrenheit). We’ve got a fireplace, so we’re looking to buy a pellet stove insert that will fit in and will keep us warm. August is a good month to do that, but we’d like to get it done before September hits. And I HATE shopping. But we gotta get it done. If any of you have caveats or warnings about pellet stoves, email me privately. (No need to comment here on an off-topic subject.)

I also have to mow the lawn in the next few days. We’ve got about an acre and a half of grass-like substance that needs mowing. I haven’t mowed since before I left for the last writing conference, so it’s starting to get a little shaggy out there.

There! I actually wrote a blog today! Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll write a blog on WRITING. Post a comment here with some suggestions on what you’d like to talk about next. I’ve kind of lost momentum in the last few weeks, but we should be back up to full speed here in a few days.

I’m finally getting back to blogging after two weeks of vacation. The first week was on that Alaskan cruise I told you about. Then when I got back, there was the new Harry Potter book to read and a TON of email to read and answer.

First, about that cruise: It was GREAT! We really had a good time. I’ve never been on a cruise before, but as we were getting off the boat, John Olson and I were already thinking about where we’ll go for the next one.

I suggested the Amazon. John was astounded that anyone would consider cruising a warehouse full of books. But I meant the Amazon River, and Princess Cruises really does do a cruise up the river. In any event, we’re thinking about it.

John and I gave 10 hours of lectures, and each of us did 5 to 10 hours of small-group and individual critiquing. I learned some cool things from John’s lectures. He’s already heard all my lectures, but I hope he picked up SOMETHING new.

Some pluses on the cruise:
1) Food is “free”. Not really of course, because you pay for it up front when you get on the boat. But that does mean it’s competitively priced, because before you get on the boat, you could go with another cruise line.
2) The food is great. OK, I don’t recommend eating the sorry, soggy, excuse for a vegeburger. That should never have happened. But generally, the food was terrific, and the buffet is open 24 hours a day. Can’t beat that.
3) Great people. The crew was very friendly, and the folks who came with us for our writing seminar were an excellent crowd.
4) Alaska! Alaska is cool. I didn’t know there was a rain forest in Alaska. Juneau’s in the middle of it. It gets about 100 inches of rain and about that much snow most years. This year it got about twice that. The trip up the Tracy Arm Fiord was worth the price of the cruise.
5) Eagles, whales, seals, otters, salmon, and other varmints. We saw a LOT of all of the above. We saw too many bald eagles to count in the wild, and a few injured ones in captivity. In Juneau as we were driving back to the boat on the bus, the eagles were as thick as seagulls are in San Diego.
6) Glaciers. Glaciers in the wild are blue. Aqua, actually. Very cool. The ones we saw are in full retreat. Global warming and all that.
7) Desserts. Lots of ‘em. I had intended to eat one desert for each writer in a group I belong to. It has 170 writers. Unfortunately, about halfway through the cruise, it became clear that my goal was far too short-sighted. So I had . . . 2 deserts for each writer friend. They had to roll me off the boat. OK, I exaggerate a little, but I doubled my lifetime intake of cholesterol, I’m sure.

Some minuses:
1) Those wretched vegeburgers. Gack! Vegeburgers should never have potatoes as the main ingredient. This should go without saying.
2) Drinks are not free. The first day on the boat, we learned this when about 9000 crew members offered us a special deal on drinks–a refillable container that could be had for only $31 that would get us all the sodas we could swill for the rest of the cruise. We declined all 9000 times. Then we found out that it was a pretty good deal, because they way overcharge on drinks. A small bottled water cost me a couple bucks. That is not competitive. But hey–once you’re ON the boat, they’ve got a monopoly on drinks. Not a drinking fountain to be seen anywhere. The buffet had orange juice in the morning, and you could get coffee or tea or hot water free. But cold water? Uh-uh.
3) I’ll take one more kick at those vegeburgers, just because there’s not much else to complain about.
4) Well, there is ONE more thing. I had hoped to blog on the cruise. I did have time. But the internet access cost $.50 per minute IF you brought your wireless laptop (I did). If you used their internet cafe and their computers, it was $.75. And the connection was slow and not terribly reliable. At those prices and with that kind of speed, I had to settle for grabbing my 100+ emails per day and only answering those that were true emergencies. Not a chance to blog or do real email.
5) Phone calls on the ship cost about $10 per minute. My wife made one 5-minute call before we discovered this. The rest of the cruise, we only called home to the kids when we were in port and could use our cell phones.

I had a chance to read some. I took along Harry Potter books #5 and #6. I was kind of fuzzy on #5 and could hardly remember anything in #6. I read both books on the boat, in time to pick up #7 the day we got off the ship. Good timing, because my kids would have KILLED me if we’d been still gone on the day Book #7 came out.

I read HP #7 pretty much straight through and finished it last Sunday afternoon. I’m a slow reader and I wanted to savor it. I thought it was GREAT. Fabulous. A worthy end to an epic tale. Now I’m rereading the whole series so I can read all those little bits and pieces in the earlier books and know what they really mean.

Anyone else read HP #7? How’d you like it? DON’T post any spoilers here, but I’d love to hear your reactions in general on the story.

I have not been able to blog the last couple of days because of the last-minute rush to get ready for the Alaska cruise that I’m going on. My buddy John Olson and I are running a writing seminar at sea and will be gone for seven days. John is bringing his whole family. I’m bringing my wife, leaving the kids and cats and dog at home to hold the fort.

The branding tagline for Princess Cruises is “Escape Completely.” I’m not sure if that’s possible. I’ll have internet access. However, as part of that escape, I’ll not blog about writing. If possible, I’ll blog a bit about the cruise and post some pictures. My wife forgot the USB cable for the camera, but we hope to scrounge one so we can transfer pictures to my laptop.

I’ll be getting on the boat in a few hours. Feel free to continue the discussion of writing while I’m gone. I’ll be back the day the next Harry Potter book comes out. See ya then!

I had a long weekend away from the computer. We spent a lot of time shopping for a car and finally bought one today. We traded in our ancient Honda Civic (nearly 18 years old) and came home with a brand new Civic with that mysterious new-car smell that everybody wants, even though it’s really rather sickening.

It’s been about 8 years since the last time I bought a car, and a lot has changed since then. The internet has made research far easier. Possibly as a result, the salesmen at the car dealerships seem to be much less aggressive than they used to be. (Or else I just got lucky and didn’t run into any weasels-in-suits.)

I spent some time looking through the comments that accumulated over the weekend, as well as questions that were asked over the last ten days or so. It seemed that there were a few on point of view (POV), so I thought I’d start things off for the week with this question:

Christophe wrote:

I’ve been thinking of using first person POV, because I think that it would work really well for my protagonist. However, this would force me to write a prologue about him in someone else’s third person POV (since the reader should not know straight away he is the protagonist, that should only be clear in the first chapter). Furthermore, I have several story lines, the biggest one being that of the protagonist of course. However, the two other storylines don’t always have him in the scene. Do you think it’s acceptable to switch between first person protagonist POV in one chapter to someone else’s third person POV in the next?

Randy sez: It’s perfectly fine to work with first person in one chapter and third person in another. Or multiple POVs, all in first person. The only rule is that it has to work. Which means you give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience with each POV character.

For example, in Diana Gabaldon’s ground-breaking time-travel romance series, the second book, DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, was written partly in first person and partly in third person. (The first in the series, OUTLANDER, was all first-person. Her character in the second novel was told in first person, while other characters were written in third person.) It worked very well.

As another example, Sol Stein’s novel, THE BEST REVENGE, was written using several POV characters, all written in first-person. Sol was one of the great editors and also one of the great writing teachers of the twentieth century, and he’s one of the few who is also an outstanding writer. (Often, great editors can’t write fiction, and many excellent teachers are only so-so at writing.)

I’ll be working on my next issue of the e-zine tomorrow. Go ahead and post your questions on POV here and I’ll begin answering them tomorrow (or Wednesday if my brain turns into oatmeal after writing the e-zine tomorrow).

Wow, it’s been a long day today. Last week, a documentary maker called me to ask if I’d be a last minute addition to a documentary he’s doing. I said yes, so I spent all morning putting my thoughts together. This afternoon, the cameraman arrived and we shot for about three hours. More details on that when I hear from him on whether I did well enough that he’ll actually use some of my footage.

Then I spent a few hours reading the last few manuscripts on my stack that I’m judging for a contest. The deadline for judging is tomorrow, so I needed to wrap that up today. This is a contest for unpublished authors, so you expect to see some novices and some good writing. One of them was a real wow. I can’t understand why this author isn’t published yet, but he or she soon will be, I’m pretty sure. It’s always exciting to find a new author who is EXCELLENT.

Between all that, I’m feeling utterly thrashed today. It’s a good kind of thrashed. Tomorrow, we’ll look at some more of those one-sentence summaries that many of you submitted last week.

Thanks to all of you who gave me good advice on how to handle a hyperactive dog. There were a lot of good suggestions that I’ll be following in training her in the next few weeks. I went to PetSmart today and bought a bunch of gear to help with that. I got a decent leash and one of those clicker things and a whistle and a bunch more stuff.

Then I took Happy out today and ran her around until she was exhausted. LOL, she’s sleeping it off now and probably won’t make a peep all night. Let me tell you, that dog can RUN.

She has a thing about gloves and leashes, though. After we ran around a bit and played Fetch with one of her new toys, she came and attacked my hand. I was wearing leather gloves, and she went at them pretty hard. She got one in her teeth and would NOT let go. I finally let her have it and she ran off shaking it like a rat. Later on, she came back and sank her teeth in the leash (which I’d taken off her so she could run all around our yard). I’m wondering if maybe her former owner did mean things to her with gloves and leashes.

In any event, I think part of our long-term solution is going to be completing the fence around our yard. We’ve got more than 2 acres of land, and the two long sides of our lot are fenced with dog-proof chain-link fence, 4 feet high. The far end of the lot is bordered by a rail fence, which is NOT dog-proof, but it shouldn’t cost too much money to attach chain-link fencing to it. The near end of the lot is nearly spanned by our house, so it wouldn’t be too hard to complete the enclosure, giving Happy a big area to run around in without a leash. Then she can wear herself out without me needing to be there to supervise.

So thank you, all who contributed ideas. I’m a lot more hopeful today than yesterday, when I was about at the end of my … leash.

This dog is driving me nuts! Dog people, help!

My wife and kids are gone until Sunday night. I’ve got to take care of this new dog until they get home. And I’m losing my mind.

The dog is a stray who showed up on our doorstep three weeks ago. She’s an Irish setter, looks to be about a year old, and I can’t tell that she’s had much in the way of training. She doesn’t go for walks, she goes for RUNS. She’s a strong dog and very … dogged when she gets running. On a leash, she just pulls you along at high speed. Off the leash, she’s impossible to catch. She’s got way more energy than I do.

She also likes to jump up at me and paw me and bite at my hands. Not hard biting, just kind of nipping. If she was serious, she could do major damage, so I’m pretty sure she’s just playing, but even so, I don’t know how to handle it. I’m not a dog person, never had a dog, and I don’t like this kind of playing. How can I make her stop? Or can I? She also likes to grab the leash in her jaws and do a tug of war. And then she just won’t let go. How can I make her quit playing? Or can I?

How do I handle this beast? She’s a nice dog, I’m sure, but I don’t know what’s normal and I’ve never had to deal with this kind of thing before. Any advice would be appreciated. I’m willing to trade her for a good used tiger.

A surprising number of you have emailed me to ask what happened to the dog. If you’ve read my last Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, you’ll remember that on the day I left for a writing conference three weeks ago, a stray dog showed up on our back porch. And I’m not a dog person, so I told my wife NOT to feed it. So of course, she fed it.

Somehow, in the twists and turns of writing about the conference, I forgot to say what happened to the dog.

Here’s what happened to the dog. She’s lying on a blanket in our dining room, making herself very much at home, ignoring the bowl of dog food, and stealing cat food.

She’s also terrorizing the cats. We have a twenty-pound-plus cat named Zephyr who doesn’t do much running. Today, after a Powerful Emotional Experience with the dog, Zephyr took off running about as fast as any cat has ever run. Our #2 cat Rocky also had a run-in with the dog, which ended with Rocky racing off at top speed and the dog barking like a banshee.

We haven’t been able to find the owner of this dog, and my wife and daughters really want to keep her. Our neighbor wants her for a hunting dog. The humane society said that if nobody claims her in a month, we can keep her.

I think we’re going to keep her. She really is a beautiful dog, although she needs a little training. OK, she needs a LOT of training. She grins a lot, so we’ve named her Happy. She runs like the wind.

My wife and daughters promised that they’d take care of Happy if I let them keep her. I should have known how long that would last. They flew to Colorado today for a speech tournament. They’re going to be gone for four days. And they left me to take care of Happy.

So that’s what happened to the dog. I’m trying to figure out if I’m happy about this. I know the cats are horribly unhappy. But Happy is happy.