QUEEN OF THIEVES by Alethea Kontis

Into everyone's life must come a Dirty Rotten Scoundrel...and not the sexy kind.

 

Male or female, this innately selfish, borderline (or fully) psychopathic person is placed into our sphere by the universe because we need to learn a lesson the hard way. With luck, you've moved on and this person is no longer in your life, but what you learned will stay with you forever.

My Dirty Rotten Scoundrel taught me how to steal.

He was a writer, this jerkface, and a year of my own productivity was sacrificed to editing page after page of his drivel-filled documents. So blinded was I by the grand delusion of true love that I thought every phrase the pillock uttered was pure genius...despite the fact that he ultimately seemed to be telling the same tale again and again. I cherished the way he snuck in lines from his favorite songs or references to his favorite authors, some long since dead and gone and some not. My blissfully ignorant heart was sure he left them all in for me, these secret coded messages of our love scattered like breadcrumbs between the lines.

In reality, he was just stealing all this stuff and making it his own. Because he could. And his publishers never said a word.

One of the biggest challenges I faced when starting out as a baby-writer (literally--I was eight) was coming up with ideas that were NEW, stories that had never been told before. I never had any formal creative writing education, so I was not aware that there was no such thing as a "new" story, just my unique interpretation of events. I spent the first twenty-something years of my life forcing myself to think so far outside the box that I was in a different galaxy.

What I should have been doing was learning how to steal. Because the line between "plagiarism" and "homage" is a fine one...and one you need to become familiar with if you want to make writing your profession.

Many baby-writers start out writing fan fiction. I think this is a really great exercise that gives the writer a chance to find his/her voice without having to spend excess amounts of energy also creating a new universe.  Eventually, the writer learns enough to know what elements to change to separate it from the original intellectual property...or it organically changes so much on its own that it no longer resembles the Game of Twilight Wars universe on which it was originally based.

Coming at this line from the opposite direction is a lot more difficult because it feels SO MUCH LIKE STEALING. It leaves you feeling immoral and unjust and with the desperate need to take a hot shower and report yourself to the authorities. But you must force yourself to become comfortable enough inside your hand-me-downs to make them your own.

In my first published book, I retold the alphabet.

(If you're gonna start somewhere, go big or go home, right?)

In my teen novels, I retell the classic Grimm and Andersen (and a few others') fairy tales. I don't regurgitate the exact same sequence of events--though as they're public domain, I suppose I could. I prefer, instead, to fill in the blanks I feel the original authors left. Who was Henry, the beloved manservant of The Frog Prince? Where did Snow White obtain those iron shoes? Was Cinderella truly despised by her stepfamily, or was she just a lazy slob who refused to clean her room?

This is not plagiarism. These are my stories...new stories told to a new audience in a new millennium...but they are not original. They are the stolen bits I have collected to create my found art objects. I love them for what they are made of, and I love them for what they have become.

And, really, I owe it all to some no-count bastard.

Thanks, slimeball.

Bio: New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, a goddess, a force of nature, and a mess. She’s known for screwing up the alphabet, scolding vampire hunters, turning garden gnomes into mad scientists, and making sense out of fairy tales.

Alethea is the co-author of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter Companion, and penned the AlphaOops series of picture books. Her short fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in a myriad of anthologies and magazines. She has done multiple collaborations with Eisner winning artist J.K. Lee, including The Wonderland Alphabet and Diary of a Mad Scientist Garden Gnome. Her debut YA fairy tale novel, Enchanted, won the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award in 2012 and was nominated for both the Andre Norton Award and the Audie Award in 2013. Hero, the sequel to Enchanted, released on October 1st. 

Born in Burlington, Vermont, Alethea now lives in Northern Virginia with her Fairy Godfamily. She makes the best baklava you’ve ever tasted and sleeps with a teddy bear named Charlie.

You can find Princess Alethea online at: www.aletheakontis.com.

Links:

How to pronounce "Alethea Kontis: -- http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronounce.cgi?aid=18395

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CREATING A WORLD IN 5 EASY STEPS by Nancy Northcott

Solid, consistent worldbuilding creates a culture that adds valuable texture to a story.  By the same token, careless or confusing worldbuilding can confuse readers and detract from the plot. 

So let’s look at the process of creating a setting. 

1.  Pick The Setting.  This doesn’t mean merely choosing a spacefaring society or a post-apocalyptic or medieval or urban or rural backdrop.  It includes choosing the cultural details that will enrich the characters’ quest.           

Joss Whedon’s series Firefly is set in a spacefaring society with varying levels of sophistication and urbanization.  Some planets are high-tech and urbanized while others resemble America’s Old West.  It’s not totally American-influenced, though, because people curse in Chinese.  According to a Firefly interview video on science.discovery.com, the show’s backstory posits that the United States and China were the only surviving superpowers.  The clash of cultures and choices of government is an ongoing source of conflict in the episodes. 

 

Laura Anne Gilman’s Retrievers and Paranormal Scene Investigations series take place in a modern, urban setting but incorporate magical creatures out of myths and legends, like angels, fauns, brownies, demons, and dragons.  Gilman also distinguishes modern magic, or electrical current manipulation, from the older magic of the world’s wild places.  The result is a setting that not only conveys layers and textures in a few words but sets the stage for conflict as humans try to control or eliminate the fae. 

2.  Keep It Simple. Whedon and Gilman pull in different cultural influences but not every possible one.  They picked and chose the ones that would most complement their stories. 

Jessica Andersen uses Mayan mythology to power her Nightkeepers’ magic.  This fits beautifully with her overall plot, the Nightkeepers’ efforts to avert the 2012 apocalypse the Maya foretold.    She doesn’t bring any a lot of other cultural influences.  Maybe that’s as well because the plots involve escalating stakes from one book to the next, travel to far-flung locations, and a lot of explosive action. 

Linnea Sinclair’s science fiction romances take place in a futuristic society with faster than light space travel.  This world includes alien races but is, in many ways, an extension of our society.  The clashes that occur and the obstacles her characters face often arise from the power structure and from issues within that society. 

3.  Remember the Stakes: The bigger, the better on this one.  Sustaining a fantasy or science fiction series always requires high stakes.  The bigger the stakes, the wider the potential consequences, the more scope the series has as it builds.

The Retrievers series revolve around escalating conflict between humans and fae incited by a secret organization who wants to control those with magical gifts, known as Talent.  As the conflict escalates, it takes its toll on the relationship of the heroine, Wren Valere, and her partner and lover, Sergei Didier. 

In Ann Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax series, which just concluded, the characters fight for the freedom of peoples and planets.  The struggle periodically forces Jax and her lover, March, apart and creates uncertainty in the relationship.

Although there are still paranormal romances where the risks and rewards are mostly personal, the subgenre increasingly involves high stakes.  Alexis Morgan’s Paladins are protecting the world.  The Nightkeepers are the world’s only hope of avoiding an apocalypse.

4.  Choose the Characters’ Gifts: If the story is science fiction, maybe the characters don’t have any unusual gifts.  They could be part of the military or a rebel alliance or the crew of a starship going where no one has gone before. 

Giving them some special ability, however, broadens the scope of the possible.  If the heroine is a Jedi who can move objects with the Force, she may not need to engage hand-to-hand.  If she’s one of the few who can navigate grimspace, as Jax does, her ship can escape pursuers who lack such a navigator.  If the science officer can render people unconscious by pinching their necks or obtaining information with a mind meld, that gives the author options to explore.

There’s one important caveat to this.  As Hugo and Nebula Award winner Orson Scott Card notes in How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, magic needs a price. If the hero can use his telepathy or telekinesis or magic indefinitely with no price paid for it, the magic system seems less believable.  The conflict also suffers because omnipotence is boring.

Any magic system needs both rules and limits.  Once those are set, the author should stick to them or have--and share--a very good reason why this instance is an exception.  The world can be whatever the author wants it to be, but it needs internal consistency.  If a character can translocate in book 1, but not in book 2, the reader needs to know why, and the reason needs to apply the next time a similar situation arises.

That brings me to the last step: 

5.  Use What You’ve Created.  Obvious, right? Maybe not.  If an author creates a world with, for example, influences of French culture, that world might have a judicial system based on the Napoleonic Code.   It might use red, blue, and white stripes on its flag, and French phrases may pepper the language.  That may be all that appears in the first book.

Down the road, though, the French cultural base opens the door to bring in other French customs.  Salic law, the prohibition of inheritance via the female line, comes from the French.  If a world is established as having strong French influence, and if earlier stories contain nothing to the contrary, the author can later tell us this doctrine is part of the world.

Conclusion   Worldbuilding is important in every genre to some degree or other.  In paranormal romance, fantasy, and science fiction it’s vital.  I hope these tips will help you create your story’s canvas.  

Thanks to the FF&P chapter for having me today and to Nancy Lee Badger for setting this up. 

Book blurb for Renegade: 

SHE ENFORCES THE RULES


As the mage council's sheriff for the southeastern United States, Valeria Banning doesn't just take her job seriously, she takes it personally. So when a notorious fugitive and supposed traitor risks his life to save hers, she has to wonder why. To find the answer, she’ll have to put everything on the line, starting with her heart.

HE BREAKS EVERY ONE OF THEM

As a mage, Griffin Dare is sworn to protect innocents from dark magic, which is how he finds himself fighting side by side with the beautiful Valeria Banning. But when the council finds out the two have been working together, the pair must run for their lives--from the law, the threat of a ghoul takeover, and a possible council mole.

NOW THEY ARE EACH OTHER’S ONLY HOPE

Author bio:

Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman.  Around fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy and YA romance.   A sucker for fast action and wrenching emotion, Nancy combines the romance and high stakes she loves in her new contemporary mage series.  Her debut novel, Renegade, is a November 6, 2012, release from Grand Central Forever Yours.

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Para/Normal Alpha by Robin Matheson

Para/Normal Alpha

Character Skill Sets in Action

By Robin Matheson

In scientific terms, the word alpha is used to denote the top-ranking wolf within the hierarchy of the pack. Generally a wolf/dog pack is led by a dominant alpha male because of its superior strength. [Daniel Wood. Wolves, 1994]

In human fictional terms…“People fear what they do not understand.” (Dr. Lee Rosen)

Within the Alphas television show universe, alphas, humans with highly evolved brain structures that give them superhuman physical and mental abilities, do not lead any pack. They are led by the all too human neurologist and psychologist Dr. Lee Rosen (David Strathairn) and are, in fact, viewed with extreme caution by the government.  

Part of the internal tension within these ‘alpha’ characters is derived from the very fact that they themselves do not always understand their skill set—that is their innate but uniquely enhanced ability, either.

Bill Harkin (Malik Yoba) is a ‘hyperadrenal’ alpha—able to switch on his “fight or flight” response allowing him to acquire exceptional strength for short periods of time. Sounds great being able to morph into a superman, right? Wrong. The adrenaline rushes have an unwelcome side-affect. Harkin has anger issues that cost him his job; he’s a former FBI agent, and his family.

A ‘transducer’, Gary Bell’s (Ryan Cartwright) brain is attuned to the electromagnetic field, allowing him to collect and process all types of electronic signals. Cool as this may sound, the constant barrage of information makes Gary overly sensitive to stimuli around him and he’s withdrawn into a world of rigid regime.

These examples suggest that choosing a skill set doesn’t necessarily mean choosing separate abilities to denote strengths and weaknesses within our characters. In the case of the alphas on Alphas, their super-powered skill contains both a positive and a negative side that adds dramatic depth to their character.

But what if your alpha character doesn’t possess a paranormal ability? Is it still possible to choose a trait that embraces that duality of strength and weakness? The simple answer is, yes. All alpha characters share the same core skill set and any one of those traits comes with a positive and a negative side.

Consider Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton) from Doctor Who.

Audiences first meet Harriet Jones in Aliens in London and World War Three [Season 1: Episodes 4 + 5, 2005]. A backbench MP with a forthright grasp of personal promotion (alpha trait alert!), her encounter with the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) immediately establishes her, dare I say dominant, alpha traits. Trapped inside 10 Downing Street, Harriet Jones doesn’t hesitate to assume Executive command as the only elected representative. She is the one who orders the Doctor to initiate the launch of the (non-nuclear) missile that destroys 10 Downing Street and the family Slitheen, calcium-based aliens bent on initiating a world war so that they can exploit the Earth’s resources. Fortunately, the Doctor, Rose and Harriet all survive and Harriet’s reputation as a Protector of Earth is firmly established.

Little wonder then that the Doctor predicts Harriet Jones’s rise to The executive position, that of Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Alphas are, by nature, goal oriented, often to the point of stubbornness (another excellent alpha trait). In the 2005 Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion, the Earth is once again under invasion, this time by the Sycorax. The newly regenerated Doctor (David Tennant) engages the Sycorax leader in a sword fight. He wins despite the leader’s duplicity and compels the Sycorax to leave Earth and never return. But this “deal” does not satisfy Harriet Jones. Determined to protect the Earth, because she believes there will come a time when the Doctor cannot do so, she orders the destruction of the retreating Sycorax ship.

Harriet Jones stands behind her decision, despite the Doctor’s anger at being challenged. Alphas don’t always play well together! With six words, “Don’t you think she looks tired?” he begins the rumor that will bring down her government.

But that stubborn protective streak that led to her downfall becomes her greatest strength in The Stolen Earth [Season 4: Episode 12, 2008]. In the opening scene the Doctor and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) discover that the Earth has disappeared and set off to investigate. The Earth, along with twenty-six other planets have been teleported within the Medusa Cascade by the Daleks, a cyborg race intent on universal domination and the greatest enemy of the Doctor. Their plan is to detonate a ‘reality bomb’ that can, potentially, destroy all matter in every universe.

The Doctor’s former companions, who have each met the Daleks before, scramble to hide from the Dalek invasion. In the midst of the chaos, each is contacted by now former Prime Minster, Harriet Jones via an undetectable sub-wave network. She instantly assumes Executive command, forbidding Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) from using the ‘Osterhagen Key’, a last resort nuclear option in favor of her own plan:

Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen): “Oh, excuse me, Harriet, but— Well, the thing is, if you are looking for the Doctor, didn’t he depose you?”

Harriet Jones: “He did. And I’ve wondered about that for a long time, whether I was wrong. But I stand by my actions to this day because I knew…I knew that one day the earth would be in danger and the Doctor would fail to appear. I told him so myself, and he didn’t listen.”

She proceeds to explain her plan to use a combined force to boost the sub-wave signal so it can reach the Doctor. This will, of course, render the network detectible by the Daleks.

Harriet Jones: “Yes, and they’ll trace it back to me, but my life doesn’t matter. Not if it saves the Earth.”

Despite being deposed from office, Harriet Jones refuses to leave her post as Protector of the Earth. Even in exile in a little cottage, she is ready with the technology and plan to defend against alien invasion, even at the cost of her own life. (I believe I mentioned that alpha characters are stubborn and goal oriented.)

Part of the fun of working with alpha characters is this ability to use their core skills—those traits alphas rely on to define who they are—both for and against the characters themselves. Harriet Jones’s three-episode character arc provides a perfect example of an established alpha skill set that becomes a vulnerability during the Crisis point of her story arc and yet becomes her most powerful tool toward achieving her goal at the Climax.

Award winning author Robin Matheson holds an honors specialist degree in Classical Civilization and English and a Master of Education. She's taught numerous courses at college, overseas and, more recently, online courses on writing. One of Robin's greatest passions is traveling. In addition to their home base, she and her family have also lived in South East Asia and South Africa.

Visit her at www.robiemadison.com.

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ALPHAS: LEADERS OF THE PACK

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GREAT(ER) EXPECTATIONS: Writing Cross-Genre Romance by Linnea Sinclair

If you’re reading this, chances are good that you’re an RWA member. And if you’re an RWA member, chances are good that you understand the connection between reader expectations in romance and the HEA (Happily Ever After) or the HFN (Happy For Now). The HEA/HFN are a trope as well as a result that romance readers expect (oh, okay, we demand) in our romance fiction. A story isn’t deemed to be in the romance genre unless it contains that HEA/HFN. And we, as writers, craft and shape and guide our characters and our plots toward HEA-ness in order to satisfy our readers (and before that, our agent and our editor). And we do so (or try to do so) in the allotted word count, be that fifteen thousand words for a novella or seventy-thousand words to one hundred ten thousand words for a novel. Given or take a few thousand.

Trouble arrives, however, when we write cross-genre stories. We now have two (or more) reader expectations to be met—and we have to do so in the same word count allotment.  To make matters more complicated, we might not be as conversant with the reader expectations and tropes of the non-romance genre… and hence we find ourselves floundering, juggling, drinking copious amounts of caffeine (or chowing down chocolate), and in general driving our critique partners and editors slightly crazy. Because we’re trying to fit twice the punch in half the size.

As someone who routinely melds two genres for a living, I’ve come up with three ways to make your life slightly easier (and less fattening ):

1. Know Thy Genres:  This means you need to be suitable well-read in all the genres in which you write. If you’re writing SFR and you go gangbusters on the hyperspace drive technical aspects and wimp out on the romance, you’ll lose readers (and reviewers). If you drown the book in romance and do paper thin world building, you’ll lose your speculative fiction readers. Those of us who love cross-genre come to those books wanting, yes, both our chocolate and our peanut butter (if you’re a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup candy fan). You have to know what readers expect…what must they absolutely have to be happy?

2. Determine What Expectations/Tropes Your Genres Have in Common:  Both space opera and romance trend (these days) for the take-charge, gutsy heroine. So in crafting your character for that kind of cross-genre book, you can meet both reader expectations but having a female protagonist that fits that kind of role. But in cozy mysteries, for example, the protagonist is often an amateur, perhaps even a bit bumbling. If you’re mixing cozy and space opera, you might want to forgo the take-charge technical wizard lead character and consider the ship’s cook as your protagonist…or perhaps a third-shift medical tech.

How about historical romance and fantasy alternate-Earth? Historical romance and fantasy both lend themselves to more lavish settings and descriptions. You can make readers from both sides of the bookstore happy if you address that expectation in your story. And if you know that’s an expectation you must address, it will cut down on your research time and your word count: You’re doing double-duty when you research and design the wizard’s castle with an eye to what both the historical and fantasy reader want to know (and experience). And,

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help: Seek out beta readers, critique partners, and other authors who write in all the genres you’re currently exploring. Take classes—online and in-person—from authors and experts in those genres. Don’t expect your romance critique partner to fully understand the tropes and reader expectations in police procedurals if that’s not a genre he usually reads.  Don’t expect the manager of the science fiction and fantasy bookshop you frequent to be conversant with the HEA. Use these sources but know what each source brings to the literary table.  

Writing cross-genre romance means you’re always going to be doing double-duty, serving two masters, demanding chocolate with your peanut butter. It’s a balancing act but it’s one that allows you—and your readers—to explore worlds and characters and plots and conflicts that are deeper, richer, and—when it’s done right—definitely more memorable. 

A good resource for tropes and viewer (reader) expectations:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreTropes

BIO:

Winner of the prestigious national book award, the RITA®, author Linnea Sinclair is a name synonymous for high-action, emotionally intense, character-driven novels. Starlog magazine calls Sinclair “one of the reigning queens of science fiction romance.”  The Down Home Zombie Blues, her 2007 Bantam release, will hit the movie theatres as The Down Home Alien Blues in late 2012.

Sinclair, a former news reporter and retired private detective, resides in Naples, Florida (winters) and Columbus, Ohio (summers). Readers can find her at her WEBSITE

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SLEUTH FACTS: PI Procedures

For Your Plots

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Intro to MyRWA-Part Three by Elizabeth Schechter

If you've been following along in this series, you are now signed up for MyRWA, subscribed to your chapter mailing lists (Again -- not Forums. They are mailing lists, regardless of what RWA calls them!), and you have possibly explored the other mailing lists that are available. There is more that you can do with MyRWA; in this final entry, we'll explore both the social networking aspect of MyRWA and the functionality that you'll find yourself using.

MyRWA is built on the Socious platform, which is a social networking system in a similar vein to Facebook or Google +.  You can use MyRWA for social networking inside the RWA membership, and if you want to do that, you need to set up your Profile page. To do that, sign into MyRWA, and go to the My Profile link on the right side of the screen (under Quick Links). You'll find yourself on a screen that looks like this: 

This is not the social networking part. This is YOUR private page. No one see this but you. If you need to update your contact information, you would click the button that reads "Update Full RWA Profile." To get to the social networking page, look at the right side of the screen and click on "My Page" That will bring you to this screen:

There's not a lot to this before you play with it, which you do by going to the Actions tab. You can add links to Facebook, to Twitter, to your personal website, as well as images of your covers.

This is my personal page, to give you an idea of what you can do:

Take a look at the left side of the page, under the user picture. See where it says Connections, Following and Followers? That is the social networking part of the page. Connection are just that -- people you choose to be connected to. They can be other chapter members, friends, people who share a publisher or agent -- anyone with which you share a connection. You can be connected to someone without following them. You can follow someone without being connected to them. And, if you don't want to deal with this at all, you can turn it off.

If you don't want to use the social networking function, go back to My Profile.

 Go to the tab that says "Preferences," then click "Users." You'll find this screen:

Using the drop down menus, change Connection Notifications to Disabled. Change Allow Users to follow you to No. Click Ok, and you will have turned off the social networking. If you wish to turn it back on, you can undo it easily.

The last bit of functionality is the ability to pay dues online. You can pay your national dues through the website (which is existing functionality), and you may already be able to pay your chapter dues. FF&P has this functionality, and other chapters will also eventually have this ability.

First, for National dues, let's go back to your MyRWA home page. Under Quick Links, you will find Pay Dues and Invoices.

If you have a membership renewal due, it will be listed on the next screen.

To pay your chapter dues, go to the FF&P website. From the MyRWA home page, click on My Chapters, then click on Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal. You'll get this screen, with Join or Renew your FF&P Membership as the first choice.

Click that button, then choose Register for Event and follow the directions.

The changeover to MyRWA has been fairly drama-filled, with confusion and frustration running rampant since the beginning. Hopefully, this series has brought you into MyRWA without a minimum of forehead meeting desk and language that would make your mother look at you sternly (unless, of course, your mother happened to be a New York truck driver, in which case, she might have taught you some stronger words than I know!)

If you have any other questions, please drop an email! You can reach me via my WEBSITE.

PS: RWA? They are not forums. They are mailing lists. NOT FORUMS. Kthnxbye

BUTTONOMICS by Pat Hauldren

Are you a healthy writer?

Most of us don’t put “healthy” and “writing” into the same sentence, much less in the same universe. If you’re like me (and Gawd help you, you are not), the better you get at writing, the better you get at sitting. And the better we get at sitting, the better we get at eating, and the better we get at eating, … well, you can imagine the rest.

I am not a particularly healthy writer. (OK, you might say, then why is this woman bothering me about it?) However, I am a writer who wants to become healthier. And, that might describe you, too. (And even if it doesn’t, why not read a bit further and see how easy it just might be?)

Writing is a sedentary career, for the most part, with hours in front of a computer screen. Some of us can dictate while we walk or exercise, typing it in later, some few and quite fortunate of us have a secretary or assistant (and I want to meet you if you do!), but the rest of us end up in front of our computer, pounding away at the keyboard… sitting….on our bottom.

So how can we make writing and our chosen calling a healthier profession? There in one way to begin:

Buttonomics

Well, what would you call it? We are all anatomically similar (most of us are human), and most of us probably don’t type standing, however, a few writers are quite well known for writing while standing.

“The sedentary life (das sitzfleisch—literally “sitting meat”) is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value,” said Nietzsche about Flaubert’s innocuous statement that “one cannot think and write except when seated.”

According to the author of Madame Bovary (1856), Flaubert previously informed Guy de Maupassant, “a civilized person needs much less locomotion than the doctors claim.”

We are all civilized persons here, and to write our best, we also do not need as much “locomotion” as our doctors would have us do. Yet, to be a healthy writer, we actually do.

This is where “buttonomics” comes in. You have two choices:

1.       Avoid bottonomics by standing while writing

2.       Practice buttonomics while writing

3.       Don’t write

Some of you more fashionista-types might know all about cellulite and liposuction and silicon injections and even butt-padding. Others of us go “ew.” Either way, you can help avoid all that by practicing buttonomics.

While sitting in your favorite writing chair, squeeze your buttocks together for several minutes at a time, either constantly squeeze or squeeze off-and-on. If you are especially sedentary (like me), you might like to start slow, say five squeezes, rest five minutes, then five times more, or rest 5 pages, whatever works for you. In a few weeks buttonomics will be habit and your bottom will be healthier while earning it’s dollar with your writing.

Or maybe you’d prefer to stand?

Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, and Fernando Pessoa all wrote standing, while Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, and Truman Capote took the Flaubertian creed to its ultimate extent by writing lying down. Capote went so far as to declare himself “a completely horizontal writer.”

It was the early twentieth century labor journalist and suffragette, Mary Heaton Vorse, who pithily described the art of writing as “the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

However, Earnest Hemingway declared, “writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up,” which he did by perching his typewriter on a chest-high shelf, while his desk became obscured by books.

Thomas Wolfe, at six-foot-six inches tall, wrote his novels using the top of the refrigerator as his desk. Of course, refrigerators were a bit smaller in his time than today, but at his height, it wasn’t a problem.

Roald Dahl, the author of such books as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, also six-foot-six, climbed into a sleeping bag before settling into an old wing-backed chair, his feet resting immobile on a battered traveling case full of logs to write. Dahl claimed that “all the best stuff comes at the desk.”

Another stander, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—the Supreme Court justice who coined the phrase “clear and present danger” to limit the First Amendment when its practice endangered the state—wrote his concise legal opinions while standing at a lectern because “nothing conduces to brevity like a caving in of the knees.”

And not to be outdone, the former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, when handed a list of approved torture techniques being used at Guantanamo Bay, infamously scribbled a query on it: “I stand for 8-10 hours. Why is standing [of prisoners] limited to four hours?”

Indeed, if they can do it, can we? Probably not, or at least, not often.

But there are ways to help counteract the settling of our body into an unhealthy blob of humanity while we are writing and sitting, and many of these methods we’ll discuss in my upcoming class: Me & Chi: Increase your creativity and health with Tai Chi and mediation for writers scheduled here in July.

Pat Hauldren writes speculative fiction in Grand Prairie, Texas, and has just returned from a conference with 4 out of 4 agent requests on her current urban fantasy. She’s training to become a tai chi instructor and has taken tai chi training around the world. She enjoys chanting and meditation as well. Pat also writes 5 gigs for Examiner.com and writes and edits freelance. Learn more about Pat Hauldren at www.pathauldren.com

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ME & CHI:

Increase Your Creativity and Health

with QiGong and Meditation

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Fantasy-Futuristic & Paranormal

Romance Writers

This 7 Day class starts July 16^th

For more information click HERE

 

Ernest Hemingway preferred to write standing up.

Intro to MyRWA Part One by Elizabeth Schechter

       I bet I can say one word that will have the majority of readers screaming in either terror or fury. Ready?

MyRWA.  

See, there you go. The new social networking/website system that is slowly being implemented by RWA National has probably engendered more debate than Coke vs. Pepsi, Star Wars vs. Star Trek, and Batman vs. Superman combined. People either hate it, are afraid of it, or just don't get it, and even the most tech-savvy among us are left scratching our heads and wondering just what RWA was thinking. 

According to Judy Scott, from RWA National, "RWA had been looking for a way to offer online forums, file libraries, blogs, classes and communities for quite some time.  Most of the systems we found did not integrate with our existing database which meant that the staff would be responsible for subscribing and unsubscribing members to all the benefits listed above.  When we came across Socious - we found a vehicle that would A) Integrate with our database, which meant that we didn't have to subscribe/unsubscribe anyone ever again and B)offer us the ability to provide customizable private communities (PAN, PRO, Boards, Task Groups, etc.) C) Offer a better user interface for our events - the old system was unwieldy and not at all user-friendly.)" 

So, what does it mean? It means that most RWA chapters will be moving over to MyRWA based websites and mailing lists in the very near future. FF&P will be making this transition shortly, and this blog is first in a series to help people make the switch in as painless a manner as possible. This entry will be to get you set up in the mailing lists for the chapters. 

We'll start with an explanation -- despite the fact that everything Nationals has sent out about MyRWA refers to the new lists as 'forums,' they are NOT forums. You do not need to go to the website to read or to answer emails. Everything will come into your inbox, and you can respond to those messages the way you would to any email. The email address for FF&P's general discussion mailing list through MyRWA is ffp@lists.rwa.org, and once you are subscribed to that list, you just need to send an email to that address to have it post to all the members. Easy, right?   

Great! Let's get everyone subscribed! 

To start out with, go to the RWAnational website. Go ahead, I'll wait. The URL is http://www.rwa.org/ . Once you're there, log in. If you are already signed up for MyRWA, it will bring you to the MyRWA splash page (this is my personal definition for splash page. Usually it refers to comic books, and pages with single images. In my brain? The splash page is where you land when you go to a website. In other words, SPLASH!) If you're not signed up for MyRWA, there will be a box on the home page where you can. Then you'll find yourself on this page: 

        You can find your chapters one of two ways. The simple way is to pick My Chapters off the menu on the right side of the screen. Or you can pick Connect off the drop down menu across the top, and pick Communities there. If you go that way, then on the next screen, click on the button on the left that says Chapters (we'll cover the rest of those buttons later).Then you'll see a list of all of your chapters that have MyRWA websites. Click on  the chapter you want to visit. If you are signed up for MyRWA, are a member of a chapter that has a presence on MyRWA, and you don't see that chapter on your list, email the webmaster -- you may not be listed in the membership rolls yet (we had to do this individually and by hand, so some people may have been missed.) 

Now, once you are on your chapter website (the one pictured here is Central Florida Romance Writers), you'll see a series of gray boxes on the right side. Pick one to subscribe to and click it. It'sthat easy! 



       Clicking that button will take you to another screen, where you can set your mail preferences. If you want your mail to come into your inbox as it happens, do nothing -- the default is immediate email. You can opt to change that to any of the following:

• Immediate Email with links -- you will be provided with a link to download any attachments associated with that message.
• Summary Digest -- will provide you with the SUBJECT LINE ONLY. You will have to go to the MyRWA website to read the messages. I don't recommend this one, unless you are comfortable with the new system.
• Full Digest with Attachments -- this is the one that is closest to Yahoo. You will get the digest of full messages, as well as any attachments that were sent.
• Full Digest with Links -- You will get the digest of full messages, with links provided to download any attachments.
• Vacation settings -- you can set all of your mail to Vacation by clicking the button under your name. That will put a hold on all of your email until you turn it off. You will not get any RWA emails at all while you are set to vacation.

Once you have your mail setting done for that list, go back to the chapter page and pick the next one. Repeat until you are subscribed to all the lists to which you wish to be subscribed.

That's it! You're now subscribed to your chapter mailing lists, and all the chapter emails that you have opted to see will be sent to your inbox, and you can respond to them as you would to any other email. You never have to go back to the MyRWA site again... unless you want to explore the new chapter File Library. 

       In the next blog entry, we'll take a look at those other buttons on the Community page. For now, explore the chapter site, and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask! 

Elizabeth Schechter is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Central Florida with her husband and son. Her first novel, Princes of Air, was published in 2011 by Circlet Press, and her second, a steampunk novel entitled House of the Sable Locks,  is forthcoming.

Elizabeth can be found online at http://easchechter.wordpress.com/