The Tortoise is the good girl who stays on the tried and true path, writing similar books and slowly building an audience.

The Hare is the rule breaker who shoots out of the starting gate with a big buzz and hits lists.

Which one wins with real success?

I’m not sure. All I know is that I feel more like a tortoise than a hare. I’m not really a rule breaker. I’m never late, I pay my taxes and for the most part, I follow the rules. I believe in rules.

But in fiction, I think rules are the kiss of death. They create the same boring books (read—same characters) over and over. I found one of those books recently: another burned out FBI profiler (why are they all named some version QUINN?) given almost God-like qualities and…who knows, I closed the book. I was done. Been there, read that a thousand times.

As I’m waiting to hear on some projects, I’m really thinking about this. The thing is, it’s not all in my control. There’s my agent, my editor, the publishing house—so many facets that dictate if the author moves at a tortoise’s pace or a hare’s pace.

Which will build a better career? I’m not sure. I think what it must come down to in the end is writing books that we, the authors, really love. But taking risks and breaking rules can help get us noticed. Taking risks and breaking rules are good for a writer’s soul—they free her to hear her characters, not the critics.

On the other hand, hares (rule breakers) can get into trouble because they are moving so fast they never see the edge of the cliff and race right over it. Look at James Frey. He most definitely broke rules and took risks with his “memoir” that landed him on Oprah. Most people would consider getting on Oprah as a sign of having arrived, having achieved success. Frey got there…

Then he went right over the edge of the cliff when his lies were exposed.

A tortoise would have seen the edge of the cliff and stopped before flying over into career-suicide.

Maybe I’ll stick to my tortoise ways! And hey, many authors on the slow and steady path have suddenly broken out into the big time like Vicki Lewis Thompson and her “Nerd” series. Or Janet Evanovich! It could happen….

So what do you all think? Share any thoughts—it’s Monday so most anything goes!

And sometimes it really sucks. I’m not a good traveler. I don’t like to fly, I detest airports and Karin does not do taxis. The cab remark may sound a bit elitist, but it just boils down to: I like my ride to be clean, on time, friendly and help me with my luggage. I’m willing to pay for it. Once I get checked in (another annoyance) and into my room, I’m usually a pretty happy girl. Then, on a trip such as this where my husband is home minding the store, I’m on my own. And since I am among friends it’s ok. But with this particular trip, a business trip, I want to go home. I wanted to go home before I left.
I knew last week a family member was going have a medical procedure that while standard could have gone very wrong.
I wanted to be there.
I couldn’t.
Duty called.
I made a commitment. I had to go.
I would have gladly shrugged off the money spent to be home with my family. But there were other factors involved. I made commitments to people here, the bookseller and to myself to further my career.

I thought about this late last night while I was missing my husband. Then I felt selfish when I thought of the men and women out there protecting our country. They miss births, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, and that every day contact with their families we take for granted. They must settle for email and the occasional phone call.
My pity party evaporated when their reality hit me.

Let’s put this into perspective. I’m going to be home Sunday night. Gone five days. And I’m hanging out with friends, meeting new friends, signing books and well, just having one extended girl’s weekend. It ain’t bad. Not bad at all.

So, I ask you: Do you like to travel? Do you travel for business, and at the end of the day, is it worth it?

And completely off topic. This Alec Baldwin incident has me really pissed off. While I do not condone any parent calling their kid a pig, I detest the fact that what should be a private issue is publicized. Is nothing scared? I mean I have said some things to my children in anger I shouldn’t have said. But c’mon. Is it anybody’s business? I knew Alec and Kim had a contentious divorce. I hear she’s a basket case to begin with, but leaking that voicemail was wrong. I wonder how her kid feels knowing the whole world heard her dad call her a pig? If I were Alec, I would not have gone public and apologized. I would have told the press to mind their own damn business and let me work it out with my kid. Is the press just getting too invasive? Do we really need to know this kind of stuff?

Are you doing what you want to do? In your spare time, are you working toward your dream? Or has it been compromised by shoulds?

We all have ‘shoulds’ tossed at us every day: you should exercise, eat right, go green, support [insert latest cause here], write your senators and congress critters and denounce [insert latest injustice here], walk the dog, spend more time with your children, or, having none, volunteer more for children who have no advocates, don’t forsake yourself and your goals, dream big, push hard, don’t take no for an answer, but don’t be self-centered, etc., etc., etc.

If we’re writing, we’re doing something intimate and personal and taking our time—the time we ‘should’ be using to do something ‘useful’ for the family or the world—and using it for ourselves for something that may never amount to anything more than a stack of pages that go nowhere. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we often look at that accomplishment as having been selfish because when we start out, we can’t prove that we’re going to make it.

You know, it’s ironic… most of the time, anyone who’s doing something artistic for the fun of it is allowed to have that as a hobby. Somehow, there’s some added pressure if someone attempts to be a writer—like if you’re not John Grisham with the first five pages, you have somehow failed. It’s more than ironic—it’s insane. It has to stop.

Then… if we manage to get past the ‘shoulds’ on how we’re using our time, there are the ‘shoulds’ about what we ought to be writing. The problem is, I think when we’re writing, we all have someone we either want to impress or we want to avoid being embarrassed in front of, and it’s at times merely frustrating, having that sort of editor on our shoulders. At other times, though, it can be downright debilitating. I went to a very good MFA writing program where the focus is on literary fiction (particularly southern literary fiction), and while I learned a lot, I felt pressured to write southern literary fiction. In fact, it was pretty much understood that I wasn’t supposed to be wasting my slot if all I wanted to do was focus on anything other than southern literary fiction. I kinda had southern literary fiction shoved down my throat until it was streaming from my ears. And I kinda rebelled.

(Okay, I rebelled a lot.)

I rebelled so much, that I switched over to screenwriting because that was the one place where the lone professor who was over that department thought that commercial was an okay, if maybe not even an admirable, goal. And I thought, wheeeeeeeeeeee, I am free, free at last. I can write whatever I want! Wooooooooo!

Until I landed an agent in L.A. Who loved my writing. Loved it. Really and truly was super supportive of me. Except that these characters that I kept creating who were outrageous? Could I tone them down some? And these mouthy things my heroine said? Could I soften her up a little? A little more? Yeah, and a little more than that? Because no one is going to like a mouthy, stubborn, determined, tenacious heroine, you know. Even when something would go all the way to the top of a studio, my agent cautioned on the side of revising to make the characters more ‘castable’ so that we could cast as wide a net as possible for potential actors.

And so I did what I thought was the ‘should’ back then—I’d revise and then each subsequent watering down of what I’d done did worse than the draft before it. I hit a point where I thought fuck it: no one cares anyway, I might as well be doing what I want to do.

It was as if I had needed some sort of permission from someone that it was okay to write what I wanted to write. I didn’t have to have the excuse of writing screenplays to write a commercial story—it was okay (gasp) to write a commercial story for fiction. I wasn’t going to break the space-time continuum where all fiction books got sucked into some sort of void and every reader pointed at me as the culprit if I submitted something commercial; it wasn’t like my writing something commercial was going to taint my soul, ruin my kids, destroy my life, or prevent me from winning some literary honor that I wasn’t going to win anyway, wouldn’t know what to do with if I had, and wouldn’t matter to anyone I knew and loved. So why the hell not? And what in the hell had I been waiting for?

Permission, I think. Permission from someone, somewhere, that it was okay to like what I liked even though it may not fit into some hoity-toity literary program somewhere. Permission to be authentically me. Permission to aim squarely at telling a rip-roaring story with no pretensions of trying to be the most elegant wordsmith on the planet. (Please. Seriously, I had one philosophy professor genuinely compliment me for being able to convey such complex ideas using clear, simple language. Small words. And I told him, “Well, it helps to not know what the big words mean.” I think he thought I was kidding.)

That day I had that realization, that I wasn’t going to break the universe, there was no, “you break it, you bought it” policy going on there, and that I could write what I wanted simply because I wanted to… was the most joyous and freeing writing day I ever had. That’s when I decided I would write the BOBBIE FAYE story and I knew, without a doubt, that not a single soul was going to like it, and that was okay. I was writing her story for me. For the joy of it. The fact that someone bought it, and is actually publishing it, and people have so far liked it? Beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve already had the joy, and continue having the joy, of writing her story. Everything else is lagniappe (that little ‘something extra’). The book comes out May 1st, and yeah, I’m nervous, and I’ll always be nervous (the same way you’re always nervous for your children, no matter how grown they get), but at the same time, this has been a great joy, one I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world, even if the book hadn’t sold.

So what are you doing for joy? What sort of aspiration or hobby do you pursue? And if you secretly want to do something, what is it?

Toni McGee Causey
http://tonimcgeecausey.com
BOBBIE FAYE’S VERY (very, very, very) BAD DAY — May 1st

Well, I’m here—in Houston, Tx. at the Romantic Times Convention. If any of you have read my books, you’re probably wondering… “What the heck is she doing at a RT Convention?” Good question! The answer is there are quite a few members from the International Thriller Writers group here, and I was asked if I wanted to do a panel and some other yada-yada stuff that goes on at a convention. So I’m here.

To tell ya the truth, I’m a bit nervous about going down to the registration table. The last time I went to a romance convention it was filled with so many girlie-girls I felt awkward. Ya know, like cactus stuck in the middle of a petunia garden. Here’s why . . .

98% of girlie-girls have beautifully manicured fingernails, all painted the perfect color. Mine stay short because I can’t stand the feel of my fingernails hitting the keys on a keyboard before my fingers do. And nary a one of them puppies has ever seen polish. To put it bluntly, I just don’t have time for that crap.

97% of girlie-girls have magnificent hairdos, not a strand of hair out of place. You’re lucky to see mine out of a ponytail, and when it is loose, my bangs never cooperate. They just do whatever the hell they want to do.

96% of girlie-girls are always well-dressed and perfectly color coordinated, even down to their lipstick, just like in the pages of a magazine. With me, you either get black slacks and whatever color blouse goes with black or jeans. And I literally own but three pairs of shoes: sneakers, black boots, and black heels for when it’s too hot for the boots. Oh, don’t even get me started on lipstick! Ugh! I probably wear it three times a year, and one of those times usually involves a wedding.

95% of girlie-girls always wear the right jewelry with the right outfit. I have no sense of style, especially when it comes to jewelry, so I stick to basics. I wear small, gold hoop earrings that I never take off and a watch…which I seldom wear.

94% of girlie-girls speak eloquently about home decorations and new, scrumptious recipes they tried last weekend. I’m into functionality. I really don’t care what color the walls and chairs are as long as I have ‘em and they work, I’m good to go. As for cooking, you’re likely to get what my daughters’ called, “A Deborah Ann Dinner,” which consists of baked chicken, green beans out of a can (nuked in the micro of course), and macaroni and cheese. Hey, at least it’s balanced!

99% of girlie-girls at conventions like this normally write about sizzling relationships. The only time anything sizzles in my books is when some whacko burns something—like a person. And when it comes to relationships or romance, the closest I ever got to either in my books is when I had a main character checking out her male neighbor’s cute butt. Well, you know what they say . . .write what you know. Yeah, I know, I know . . .I’m workin’ on it!

So there you have it—me, a cacti stuck in the middle of a petunia garden. Lawd, help ‘em!

I just started the last book in the Jenny T. Partridge Dance Mystery series, and found myself unable to progress, mostly because I had not settled on a new title.

I don’t know why I am this way, but I have to have a good, strong title before I start a book or it simply goes absolutely nowhere. Now that does not mean that I always STICK with the title, and it especially does not mean that my EDITORS stick with the title, but still, I have to have it.

I wanted to name the third book Barre Fight but my editor was concerned that it was too obscure a ballet reference and that it might offend the cozy crowd. I tried to come up with something else, but really was having no luck. (Just in case you have no idea who I am, or what the first two titles are, they are TUTU DEADLY and TAPPED OUT, and are humorous cozy mysteries.)

So I put a call out to a loop I am on, the wonderful Chicklit list, and one of the list members came up with Pointe and Shoot. I LIKE IT!

So I suggested it to my editor, and she liked it, too. Of course, it’s not firmed up yet. So, I thought I would throw it out to the creative MSWers and regular commenters.

Any great ideas for the title of the third book?

Also, I am having a psycho dance mom kickoff contest on Jenny’s blog. Come on over, and tell me your craziest pyscho parent story (can be dance, soccer, football, baseball, karate… you name it. Just tell us the facts, ma’am.) and the winner will receive a free signed copy of TUTU DEADLY.
http://jennytpartridge.wordpress.com/