I always wanted to be beautiful, to be special. I’m the youngest of four children, a girl, two boys, then OOOPS, I mean, me

Growing up was really cool in a lot of ways with much older brothers and sisters. The drawback was that I was the ugly duckling. My family would be horrified to read this, but it was my perception.

My sister was beautiful and kind.
My oldest brother was a black belt in Karate and quick witted.
My next oldest brother smooth, charming and surprisingly smart.

Me? Plain, a little chubby, big shoulders from swimming, annoying, and a major smart mouth.

I was always envious of my sister in an admiring way. I wanted to be as beautiful and sweet as she was and still is. She has eyes that change color from blue to green and back. There’s a gentle kindness about my sister that draws people. And her laugh is beguiling. I knew I could never be as beautiful as my sister.

It made me plainer, uglier in some ways.

Until I married my husband. This is where the story takes a surprisingly fairy tale turn. My husband made me feel beautiful and a funny thing started to happen. Other people noticed.

My family noticed. And not always in a gracious way. You see, I was breaking the order. We all had a place. I was the smart mouth not the beauty. I was the plain baby sister and they started reminding me of my place, so to speak.

At first I was baffled until I started seeing that I was literally threatening the social order in my family. My husband was having none of it, and he wouldn’t allow me to let others, including my family, define me. I define myself. I choose who I want to be, how I want to dress, how I want to present myself to the world. I don’t let others decide, and I don’t compare myself.

I’m no longer jealous of my sister. She is still beautiful, and in a strictly aesthetic sense, more beautiful than I will ever be. But it no longer matters to me because I have a strong sense of myself now. I’ve grown confidence in myself, people respond to me as a confident woman.

And so it goes with writing.

If I try to be JD Robb, Janet Evanovich or JK Rowlings, I’m going to fail and end up being the ugly duckling again. I’m not going to measure up to these authors because I am not them. I’m just going to waste endless amounts of emotional energy feeling depressed and bitter.

Or, I can develop my own voice as a writer. I can work hard to be the best writer I can. And as I grow, gain confidence and come into my own “beauty” I will carve my own success. To do that I have a few suggestions:

1) As Jake (J. Carson Black) said last week, Don’t compare yourself to others. You’ll come up short.

2) Set concrete goals. When you have a plan, it’s harder for the little voices to suck us into the vortex of jealousy and envy.

3) Know the facts. For instance, suspense usually has bigger sales than mystery. So I’d have to be stupid or a masochist to compare my numbers to suspense writers.

4) Know your strengths. Mixing romance and mystery is something I can do pretty well. And romance is a bigger market than mystery. Those facts were part of the decision making process my editor and I used to move me into the BRAVA line where I can write sexy romantic mysteries and reach a larger number of readers.

5) Have Patience. Publishing is the slowest business on earth. That may not be an accurate statement, but my experience is that things either move at lightning speed or slow motion.

6) The most important point, and one my agent reminds me of often: Have fun and don’t lose your joy in writing. I can’t stress this enough. It’s so easy to let the business beat the joy out of us. But it’s our job to guard our joy and remember that we do this because we love it.

What about you all? Ever get bit by jealousy? Ever feel envious? Do you have ways to beat the green-eyed monster?

One writer’s treasure, another writer’s trash. Which is it for you?
Hmm for me it’s always been a treasure hunt. I think even though in the many contests I’ve entered and bombed in, at least one judge said something that either made me a stronger writer or made the story she judged stronger. That isn’t to say all of my experiences have been positive. Au contraire. I have file drawers full of contest score sheets, and most of the comments are not very nice or encouraging.
I never finaled in any contest, although, I came close a few times. One of the last contests I entered was the Daphne (unpublished) I missed finaling by one point. The pages I sent were strong, but one judge hated my hero. Too bad, coz her score tipped the other judge’s perfect scores, perfect scores all from published judges. The lousy score came from an unpublished writer. A little aside here regarding unpublished judges. I think they take it way too seriously, follow the rules to the inth and plain ol’ try too damn hard to be hard.
Why do I think this? Coz, as an unpublished judge I did the same thing. I took myself way too seriously. I felt compelled to ding. I once gave an entry a 1 on a 1-5 scale for not having the proper sized paper. Hers was a little longer. Little did I know the writer was from South Africa and that is standard for them. (How do I know that? Um, she sent me a not so thankful thank you note to tell me so. I was later to find out, even though the rules were plainly stated-including paper size, that this was one of those little rule things you ignored.) Anyhoo, my uptightness could have cost her a final spot.
Now as a published judge, I look at the story and don’t sweat the small stuff.
I love a good, edgy, envelope pushing read. Not one of those entries that is so technically correct it’s boring. No siree, give me something with some meat, push all of my buttons, take a chance, be shameless, and I will give you high marks.
Okay now where was I?
Oh, yes, I semi-finaled with two entries in one contest. I was soooo excited.
After I didn’t final I asked myself, “Karin, exactly why are you going to all of this expense and work?”
My answer was simple, I wanted feedback. While many people enter contests with the hope of finaling and getting read by an agent or editor, I didn’t. I just wanted feedback, and boy did I get it. I’ll share a few stellar comments in a minute.
Luckily for me I have a very thick skin, otherwise, I would have gone crying to my mommy and never typed another word again.
So, without further adieu here are some verbatim comments:
One judge stopped judging in the middle of the first of three score sheets. Her comment: “This entry has given me a migraine. I cannot read any further.” And she didn’t. So much for that money being well spent. My husband was livid, he wanted me to call and cry to the contest coordinator. I had better things to do with my time.
Another heart warming, encouraging comment was: “Is English your first language? I suggest you take English classes to better be able to target your American audience.” Yep, loved that one. The judge failed to realize that English was not the first language of my hero!
Another: “You need to stop watching cop shows on television, and interview a real life cop if you’re going to attempt to write with authority.” Okay, Miz Judge, I’ll just interview the one I sleep with every night.
Another comment: “I don’t know where you get this information but real life cops do not use latex gloves in crime scenes because they may have an allergic reaction.” Ah. “Honey, what type of gloves do you use when you enter a crime scene?” “Latex!”
Another comment: “Real cops do not use the term perp or vic.” Hmm, okay. “Honey, what do you call that guy who you think did a bad thing?” “Perp.” “And the person who the bad guy does stuff to, what do you call them?” By now I have a very irritated off duty cop staring at me. “Did you bump your head or something?” he asks. I bat my eyelashes coyly and say, “Why no, I was just curious.” He shakes his head, and says, “Vic.” I smile sweetly. “Thank you, honey.”
Okay, so judges are subjective humans and make mistakes or just don’t get it, but I still think contests are great. So many do give great advice
I’ll share a real quick story. As I said, as an unpublished judge I was brutal. I truly felt it was what the entrant wanted, because it was what I wanted. So, this one entry I judged was horrible, horrible, horrible. I wanted to write: “This entry gave me a migraine, I cannot read any further.” I didn’t but I bled all over that entry, and I wanted to tell this writer not to quit her day job. Because I doubted she would ever publish. Two years later I see the title in First Sales in the RWR. I go to the author’s site and guess what? Same story, only this time it was readable (she posted the first chapter on her site) and obviously publishable. It was then I stopped taking my judging so seriously.
That said, I won’t enter any of my published work in contests. As I see it, the judges already know who they are reading, and for some they lose their objectivity. I dunno, it may just be me but what if one of the judges I pulled was the author from South Africa and she’s vindictive?
So what do y’all think about contests, are they treasure or trash, and why do you enter them?

Okay, I’ll admit it. I love the hero’s journey. No, I don’t use it to plot my books. No, I don’t make sure that I have every step of the journey in my revisions.

What I love is when I finish a book and can see the hero’s journey seamlessly laid out, the layering of journey upon journey, intersecting at key points in the story. If I can’t see the journey after I’m done, I know I have some work to do. Why? Because the hero’s journey is part of our storytelling heritage, the nexus that unites all of us from a time when stories were handed down by word, to when they were written down for all.

I’ve espoused numerous times my belief that STORY IS CHARACTER. This week I’m doing my Vogler workshop for the East Texas RWA Chapter and in my summary post I said:

It is their choices, their backstory, their fears, their weaknesses and strengths, that propel the story forward, that drives the pacing.

Or, as Robert Gregory Browne said so much more succinctly:

Story is all about character reaction and action. The fuller the characters, the more believable and satisfying their action/reactions.

Since story is character, it’s all about what the characters DO and DON’T DO that make the story. Action and reaction.

One of my favorite steps of the hero’s journey is CROSSING THE THRESHOLD. This is the point of no return, where the hero is fully committed to the journey, where he completely leaves his ordinary world behind and embarks on the Road of Trials. Crossing the Threshold blends the first act with the second, and if done well will seem both seamless and poignant. It is a time of action.

** When Luke Skywalker sees his dead aunt and uncle and leaves Tatooine . . .
** When Neo swallows the red pill . . .
** When Dorothy takes the first step down the yellow brick road . . .

Everything leading up to that crescendo point has set the character to make a choice. A or B. Yes or No. Right or . . . the point is that the character willingly or unwillingly makes a decision that forever alters the course of his journey. They are fully committed to the adventure, warts and all.

Their actions have consequences that they must deal with. Even not doing something is an action, right? Standing on the sidelines has consequences, too.

One of the fatal flaws of unpublished writers is forgeting that every character in their book is on a journey. You don’t need page after page of narrative explaining this to the reader. By showing key elements of secondary characters that the reader–as part of the human race–can see and extrapolate other characteristics, we have created a well-rounded character using few words.

Take Pirates of the Caribbean. I’m working on adding the movie to my hero’s journey workshop because I think it expertly shows multiple journey’s and how they intersect and clash. (And, it gives me another excuse to watch the DVD again . . . but I digress.)

Yes, you have Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner and Jack Sparrow . . . each on their own journey that sometimes work together, and sometimes oppose each other. But then you have Barbarosa . . . the villain, the “shadow” who is seeking to reclaim his life. Remember his last words? “I . . . feel.”

You have the Commandore (okay, I know I spelled that wrong but I don’t write historicals) who at times is an enemy, and an ally, but is also on his own journey to protect the fleet and the fort and those under his colors. He takes his command seriously, has a strong sense of duty and honor, and while we know Elizabeth couldn’t possibly love him (I mean, over Orlando Bloom? I think not,) we see a strong noble streak at the end when he willingly lets her go to be with her true love.

But there’s nothing better than the point in the movie where you’ve fully commited YOURSELF to enjoying it. Ironically, it almost always comes at the same time the hero crosses the threshold. At the beginning, we watch, hoping to be entertained, but still a little reticient–we’ve been burned in the past by movies that have failed to deliver on their promises.

So we watch the beginning, a little distant from the action. We see the characters. Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner as children. The pirate’s medallion she takes from his neck. Okay, getting interesting . . . and Jack Sparrow arriving at the fort. Okay, getting better. It’s fun, it’s different, but you’re not fully commited . . . until when? When Elizabeth invokes the rule of parlay? When Will breaks Jack out of jail? When the Commandore goes after them? Aw . . . we have three crossings, three journeys all making irrevokable decisions.

What’s going to happen next?

And that is when you’re as committed to the journey as the hero and you can lose yourself in the movie . . . or a good book.