I need titles!

A title for my suspense Christmas story, and my historical.

For the Christmas book I want something sexy but holidayish. I have no idea what the story is about at this point (except it will feature one of my ‘hot cops’), but I think I just may do something like the Grinch with a twist or perhaps something along the lines of The Ref. Did anyone see that? With Dennis Leary? OMG, what a fab movie. I could do an undercover Santa story, and it run loosely along the Miracle on 34th Street theme, or maybe the old Bing Crosby classic White Christmas. How about It’s a Wonderful Life gone wrong? Or A Christmas Carol? I could make my cop a hard bitter man with no compunction for compassion? As I’m sitting here typing the ideas are beginning to form but no titles. My fave is BAD SANTA, but I can’t use that. It’s been done, too many times.

My second more urgent quandary is a title for my first historical to be released in July next year. My working title has been ONE WICKED KNIGHT. And while my knight, Regan, is naughty, he is also a driven mercenary hell bent on claiming lands of his own. His female counterpart is as determined to keep him off her estate but out of her bed as well. The story is about passionate love for one’s country, one’s honor and one’s true love. There is blood, lust, love and revenge. So, when my editor told me in New York a month or so ago that WICKED was not a worthy title for the story, I had to agree. I want something passionately edgy. Something that brings all of the blood, passion and pageantry of the era (1066 England) together.

So, any takers out there today?
For the person who comes up with a title I’ll give you a $20 gift certificate to BN.com and my undying gratitude!

THE WAR OF ART is a little inspirational book by Steven Pressfield. As people who know me know, whenever I read something, it’s all I think about for a time, so since I read this book yesterday (it’s short!) I’ve been thinking about it. And I realized that even though it’s short, it’s hefty and worth reading again.

I bought it because I’m giving a workshop at RWA National in Dallas called NO PLOTTERS ALLOWED. I gave the workshop in Reno in 2005 with Patti Berg and we had so much fun! Unfortunately, Patti won’t be in Dallas so I’m on my own this time.

The workship is subtitled: “How to conquer writers block for those who can’t, won’t or don’t plot.” But in truth, whether you plot or not is irrelevent as to whether you experience writers block. There are three types of blockage:

1) Story

2) Craft

3) Personal

Story blockage is when you hit a brick wall in the story and you don’t know what comes next. Craft blockage is when you know what you WANT to do, but you can’t seem to get it on paper the way you want. Both of these are easily overcome, the first by a variety of exercises including brainstorming, playing “what if”, revising, among others. The second by learning the skills necessary to improve the craft (and bring out your natural talent) so you can do what you know you can do. These two problems are primarily what I address in my workshop.

But the hardest block to break through is the personal. It can be everything from family problems, an unsupportive spouse, extensive commitments, a day job, etc. But all of these can be summed up with one word FEAR. And in THE WAR OF ART is a must read for EVERYONE who has at any time met resistence in their writing because of an external or internal force. (Hmm, Natalie? You need this book.)

In his forward, Robert McKee says that resistance is essential procrastination, which is true except that resistance is so much more. As Pressfield says, resistance is EVIL. It wants you to fail. It wants you to doubt. It feeds on your fear. And we let it.

Now, Pressfield goes through all the faces of resistance. Resistance is infalliable. Resistance is invisible. Internal, insidious and universal. Resistance feeds on fear and uses everything it can to keep you from achieving your goals. My favorite is Resistance and Rationalization: “Rationalization is resistance’s spin doctor.”

I have often said that once you face your fear, you can achieve your goals. The analogy that resistance is responsible for hiding our fears from ourselves using rationalization really hit home.

The second part of the book is about combating resistance and the result is that you turn pro. Once you recognize that resistance is at work in your life, one you recognize your fear, once you stop rationalizing, you are a professional. (I’m going to write a blog soon about Pressfield’s view of what it means to be professional because I think it’s fantastic. And it applies to everyone, not just writers.)

Anyway, back to fear. Even I can change my mind. I never believed in Fear of Success. I thought that was a bunch of crap. I thought all fear boiled down to Fear of Failure because that was MY fear. Why it took me so long to finish a book. Why I procrastinated. Why I needed outside validation that I had talent.

But even this dog can learn something, and Pressfield changed my mind on this with his argument that the Mother of all Fears is “so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed.”

I read that and was going to skip the chapter because really, I didn’t believe it. But as all his chapters are short, I read on. And this line convinced me he was onto something: “We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us.”

I really thought about that. And now I believe that this is a valid fear. I still think my personal fear is failure. For example, right now I fear that my next book won’t be as good as the last. A good friend of mine, a mentor, told me that this fear is common among writers. That we not only need to write a book “as good” as the last, but better. And that is a fear that sometimes seems insurmountable. And that fear can lead to writers block–either craft (we don’t know how to say what we want to say because we want to do it BETTER) or story (the ideas just aren’t coming.) But ultimately, it’s personal. It’s between us and resistance, and when we’re blocked, resistance is winning.

In writing my currently untitled book, resistance was winning. I hemmed and hawed and worried that the story wasn’t as strong as my last, that the book was too sexy/not sexy enough/too scary/not scary enough. I dragged my feet. I procrastinated by doing “research.” And then Tuesday I said, enough. The book needs to be written. I’m the only one who can write it. And I wrote 23 pages Tuesday night, and 11 more yesterday, and in one minute I’m shutting off the Internet and putting in my time today. Because I’m a professional, I recognized my fear, and I’m not listening anymore.

So what do YOU do when faced with resistance? How do you conquer your fear so you can write today?

I apologize for the brevity of this post, but you’ll soon see why it’s a bit short…

Whenever things start going haywire around me, my first reaction is to look at the calendar to see if it’s a full moon. Nine times out of ten it is. Like now.

It started last week, right before I left for RT. My dad had to undergo emergency surgery, and during that surgery they discovered a cancerous mass in his bladder. Although the doctors’ claim to have removed the entire mass, they want him to undergo eight weeks of chemo. He’s 92. How the hell does a ninety-two year old man survive eight weeks of chemo?

The very next day my middle daughter’s fiancé fell off a four-wheeler and shattered his right ankle. Now he has nine pins in it, two plates, and he’ll be out of work for ten weeks. Then, two days ago, my youngest daughter calls to inform me that she’s in intense pain and thinks she might have contracted food poisoning. Three doctors and nine hours later, we find out it isn’t food poisoning but a cyst (one of many we’re told) on her left ovary that ruptured. Needless to say, I’ve been running from patient to patient, hospitals to doctors’ offices, all the while trying to juggle work, writing, and the rest of life.

Normally, the weirdness that typically accompanies a full moon only lasts about three days—the day before its apex, then two days afterward. This one, however, doesn’t seem to want to shake loose. Crazy crap is still happening. Today I had to let go of an employee, who I’d warned repeatedly, but they still chose to blatantly act like a dumb-ass, and lost one of my best friends. No, not to death but over something profoundly stupid. And the really strange thing is the more I tried to explain and bring clarity to an overblown situation, the worse it became.

I won’t say things can’t get any worse because they always can. But I’ll tell ya, if I never see another full moon again, it’ll be too damn soon.

Do you find things in your life tipping sideways during a full moon?

It’s two a.m. Okay, 1:39, but you know, it’s close. And guess what? I am up. You know why? I bet you don’t know. Just guess. Come on, guess.

Okay, fine, I’ll tell you. Apparently, a major water line burst right in front of our house. We are now WITHOUT water, which, of course, would not have woken me up. After all, I do not have an inner “water alert” system that warns when the water is off. That’s something that you discover when you are trying to make coffee, or, say, flush the toilet, or even brush your teeth. No, what woke me up was the NOISE. It has to be pretty major to get our city out in the middle of the night, and the man directing the backhoe to dig up the road IN FRONT of my house assured me it was, indeed, a major leak. (Please do not take this as a slur on my city, as I understand their reluctance to work in the middle of the night. I share their reluctance. And yet, here I am.) It was not really a leak. It was more like a huge explosion of water, that buckled the road. So, there is a backhoe, a huge truck, a bunch of other trucks, and about fourteen guys in front of my house, digging, with assorted huge lights and equipment.

And me, being the not-so-great-sleeper, have found myself wide awake.

Talk about Grumpyville. I can guarantee you, tomorrow will be even MORE Grumpyville. It will be so grumpy, that people will run shrieking in terror, covering their eyes. Sorta like what happens to Shrek. You know, I always liked that movie.

Shrek. The first. I know the second one was good, and the third one is coming out soon, but the first one always really spoke to me.

I mean, here was this REALLY, REALLY short guy (not Shrek), trying to create a perfect world, all the while, pretending he was NOT SHORT. So he set about trying to create a perfect world…. When HE was far from perfect himself. Just like most of us. He just chose to ignore it.

I can’t.

I know I’m far from perfect. I know that in my real life, I can’t create a perfect world. But I want to do it, and it’s driving me crazy. I am not perfect. I am the short guy from Shrek. I would much rather be Princess Fiona, but life is no fairy tale, and so I’m stuck with the short guy. (Yeah, I can’t remember his name. It’s nearly 2 a.m. What do you want?)

We try to create the perfect world in every book we write, and sometimes we hit and sometimes we miss. Jen and I have regular discussions were we talk about hitting and missing. Every author does it. SOME authors hit with almost every book. They are rare. Some miss with most books, which is common.

Some hit with every other book. Or every third book. But the bottom line is that every book you write is a crapshoot. You may think you have written the next BIG THING, the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, and your editor may think you have written something that NEEDS to be the next big thing. The bigger book. Or your editor may LOVE the book, and the reviewers think you need to go back to the drawing board. Or the reading public may THINK this is HOME RUN, and the writing world (read, other authors) may think you need to go RIGHT BACK to writing class and get your MFA before they beat you with reams of paper and keyboards. In other words, START OVER. Wow, have I used enough cliches? Don’t answer that.

In short, once you reach this level, the level I call the “New York” level, it’s a crap shoot. You can’t please everyone.

Once upon a time, a very successful author told me that “all you can do is write the very best book you can write.” (I’m probably paraphrasing that.) And it’s true. That very successful author was Allison, and she’s right.

You can’t control what happens after that. It’s up to marketing, and sales, and most importantly, word of mouth. You can sure try, and I have seen some very aggressive authors REALLY try, and maybe they made a dent in their sales, and a few more people know their name today, than did yesterday, but they also pissed a lot of people off. People who may not buy their books now, because they were so aggressive.

I even tried to be that aggressive, at the very beginning, even though it went against my nature, and I truly think I will always cringe at the memory.

The bottom line is, I wrote and am writing the best books I can write. I know they are good. I don’t think I am the “next big thing.” (Well, maybe a little big, but let’s not talk about my weight! How rude!)

The promotion stuff? I’m not so good at it. But if you read one of my books, found yourself in one of my worlds, and you enjoyed yourself, even for a while, then I succeeded.

And now, I think I can compare myself to Shrek, because some of you will like reading my books, and some of you will look inside my books and see what I meant. See the world I created. See deeper than face value.

And others of you (like Jen) will just say, “Good God, someone shoot her with a tranquilizer gun.”

I would welcome one of those now, as the backhoe goes beeeeeep beeeeep beeeeep beeeeppppp… Do we really need water? It’s now 2:05 a.m. Gonna be a LOOOOONG night.

Welcome to Super-Grumpyville.