A comment discussion at Eric Mayer’s blog post, Putting Ourselves Out of Business, involved the idea of considering one’s writing just a hobby. I have a feeling that most fiction writers, published or not, feel to some degree as if they’re hobbyists these days. After all, there isn’t much money to be made in this business, except by a very few. But they also have to take it seriously in order to get far, it has to be an intense, obsessive sort of hobby.

Late in 1993, after a lot of discouraging experiences attempting to sell my fiction, I decided to “quit fiction writing for good” and I wrote nothing but personal journals and technical manuals for a year. I began writing fiction again early in 1995, but with a difference. I did it, as I’d begun as a girl, to please myself, primarily to complete a story I thought had to be written or it would drive me nuts. That story had been percolating inside me since I was seventeen. I surprised myself then by doing some of the best fiction writing I had in my life to that point. My decision at that point to please only myself with what I wrote carried me through a kind of barrier into a different way of looking at writing fiction. (more…)

Partially in response to some complaints that his blog is sometimes too pessimistic, Dave Pollard looks at hope and its place in enviromental activism, in an article titled, Beyond Hope: The Radicalization of Derrick Jensen. He includes an excerpt from Derrick Jensen’s book, A Language Older Than Words, which includes the following: (more…)

I’m internalizing a lot right now, I guess. I haven’t been blogging, and it’s not a reflection on my ideas, or my fellow bloggers, or commenters, but just that I’m internalizing and letting my thoughts gestate right now. Working on the novel, tweaking, tying loose ends, all that fun stuff.

Funny how we go through times like this. Lots going on inside, not much coming out (in the blog).

I’m sure that as soon as I’m done with this little fallow blogging period you’ll be hearing a lot more from me. Meanwhile, when I am online (haven’t been much lately) I will try to get around and visit you all more and make sure I comment. Happy blogging!

Meanwhile the cat wants dinner, it feels like spring today instead of winter, and we have a new neighbor, called Phainopepla, who is really quite awe inspiring and graceful.

Or both?

Far be it from me to judge what exactly happened with Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. I haven’t read it, and I don’t intend to—wouldn’t intend to even if the publisher hadn’t turned around and pulled it off bookstore shelves. But when I read all the off-shoot accounts of the state of book packaging today, I find myself sympathizing at least a tiny bit, as Rachel Pine seems to, with the young author. Not enough to defend her, perhaps, or to excuse what happened, but honestly—what a confusing business this has become.

I recall an old episode of The Avengers on TV, in which a publisher created a computer to crank out formula novels, then passed them off as having been written by a human being. I thought for sure that was pure fantasy until I began reading about this plagiarism case. Kaavya Viswanathan’s name is on the book’s copyright page, but according to what I’ve read so is Alloy Entertainment’s. So who is to blame? How did this happen? (more…)

I’ve decided there are three kinds of writers when it comes to word count. Those who wind up with too few words, and those who wind up with too many. Then there are those fortunate souls who write just the right amount.

I’m in the second category. I’m a wordy writer, and it frustrates me to see how many extra words I write. If I’d been able to keep my words in check, the story surely wouldn’t have taken so long to come together. Or would it? Why this need to expand so much on what can be said with so many less words? (more…)

Eric Mayer’s post on Serious Business made me think about how we’re perceived or misperceived by others, when we blog or when we’re face to face. The tangent I take on this has to do with introverts and extroverts. I don’t presume to know which Eric is. His post made me think about this because I’m an introvert, and I picked up a book again just yesterday on this topic.

Introverts tend not to be as outwardly expressive, or to let others deep into our worlds as readily as extroverts. We’re not bubbly, cheery people for the most part. We tend to ponder. We enjoy time alone and many of us don’t like noise or interruptions. Introversion is a natural personality trait, and though introverts are probably in the minority, there’s nothing wrong with being so. We don’t dislike people, but people are sometimes difficult for us to be with. I think this has a lot to do with energy exchange and personal boundaries. It doesn’t mean anyone’s done anything wrong. It usually means we have different styles of interacting. Different people respect varying personal thresholds.

Is either an introvert or an extrovert better than the other? Of course not, and a world of all one or the other wouldn’t work for me. I see this as a yin/yang kind of thing. I hesitate even to group people into broad classifications like this. Each person is unique, a blend of many elements, but most of us lean one way or the other toward extroversion or introversion, some more so, and I think it’s the “more so” people where introversion is concerned who wind up with others trying to change them, and feeling misunderstood. (more…)

While changing feed readers today I had to decide how to categorize various blogs. I noticed how often a religious or spiritual blog could also be classified as a political one. I find that surprising on one hand and inevitable on the other. Surprising because when I belonged to a church for a few years in the late 70s we seldom spoke of politics in relation to religion. The blending of the two was discouraged at that time. Yet some merging of religion and politics seems inevitable today. It’s impossible to discuss one without someone mentioning the other. (more…)

Tomorrow is the vernal equinox, and that’s a little hard for me to believe right now. We’re used to getting May Gray and June Gloom here near the coast of Southern California, because of the coastal eddies. But this winter has hit us harder and later than usual. It doesn’t appear to want to leave yet. There was snow in the mountains just last week. Up the street, someone’s irises started to bloom a few days ago, but they shriveled over one cold night. Now they prepare to bloom again. Will they?

The cat still scrunches up against the wall heater each morning and evening, and she chases patches of sunlight coming in the windows during the day. A couple of days ago I watched her pat a bright spot on the carpet with a paw, then lie down on it, fur fluffed out. She’s an older cat, so perhaps she dramatizes the situation. Maybe I do, too. But this doesn’t feel like the day before spring to me. Not at all. We had a cold rain late in the day, with the clouds parting toward sunset. Maybe tomorrow will convince me. How’s the weather in your part of the world?

A recent Washington Post column queried Bloggers on the Reasons Behind Their Daily Words. Reading it got me to thinking yet again about why I blog.

I started my website back in 2000, when Shadows Fall was first published, for the same reason most writers do, to promote my work. Four years later I started this blog as a way to provide up-to-date content on my website and let visitors know what I was working on—basically as a way to keep the website from stagnating when too much time passed between novels. Little did I know at the time that the blog would engage so much of my attention.

The immediacy of this format holds a certain attraction. Type, click a button, and what you’ve written is published. But that has its drawbacks. As easy as email, which carries its own risks, a blog can suck you out into public view in a way that’s scary and in some ways deceiving. It’s easy to forget you’re putting yourself “out there” to the degree we do online. After all, I’m seated here alone at my home computer as I type this into a little window on my screen. It doesn’t feel public at all, at the time I write. (more…)

Last night my dad’s house burned down. It was there at seven-thirty in the evening. By eight-thirty it was gone. Destroyed in 39 minutes. No one saw this coming. No one’s sure what caused the fire, at this point. It appears to have started in a bathroom.

All five people who were in the house got out okay, with only their clothes—or in my dad’s case his pajamas—on their backs.

Life is strange, how it plods along, and then—poof!—a puff of smoke and a pile of charcoal is all that’s left of everything you own, as if it was a cruel illusion—which I suppose it is. Physical things create an illusion of permanence in an impermanent life. Love is all that lasts.

I’m still in shock, and I wasn’t even there. (more…)