But what I really don’t understand about fantasy football is that apparently you don’t even put together a dream team. No, you simply pick one player and gain points based on what your player does in each game.

Just one player?

Heck, if I can only score points using one player, then I can do this fantasy league thing with anything! Or anyone. So I propose a Fantasy Author’s League.

I don’t have all the details worked out yet, but I see a point system that goes something like this:

1 Point For The Following Events:

Author has a book published in the current year, between January 1st and December 31st.

Each endorsement by someone who isn’t the author’s student, relative, best friend, or other person whom the reader couldn’t care less about.

Every review from a dedicated media outlet (book review bloggers allowed, regular bloggers not allowed).

Each award nomination (made up awards do not apply).

Each book currently in print (POD does not apply)

2 Points For The Following Events:

Each writer’s conference or publishing conference in which the author is a speaker.

Each genre award that the author, or author’s book wins in the current year.

Hitting a genre best seller list (including CBA).

Each endorsement from an author who has 2 or more books currently in print.

3 Points For The Following Events:

Hitting the top ten New York Times Best Seller List.

Winning a national award, such as any award that JK Rowling’s books boast about.

Each endorsement from a New York Times Best Selling author.

5 Points For The Following Events:

Each endorsement from Anne Rice, Nora Roberts, John Grisham, JK Rowling, Stephen King or similar.

Being Anne Rice, Nora Roberts, John Grisham, JK Rowling, Stephen King or similar.

Deduct 5 Points For The Following Events:

Each book that is self-published.

Each post that slags off readers or fellow authors.

Releasing a book about sparkly vampires, mopey teens, or having a b*tchy protagonist who hooks up with every hunk, spends her entire salary on shoes, eats nothing but lettuce, and feels justified in ditching her druggie best friend because her boss is obnoxious.

Anybody have points to add?

This post brought to you by: my mother complaining that I haven’t posted anything new, and my new found (soon to be lost) ability to finish reading my favorite blogs with time to spare.

I have been a Clueless geek since I made a bargain with my not-boyfriend that I’d watch his horror flick if he watched Clueless with me. How was I to know that I was actually displaying culture and taste instead of insipid stupidity every time I watched Cher make a fool of herself in front of the hot gay guy?

You see, Sunday afternoon I watched the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma, based on the Jane Austen novel, and BOOM, it hit me. Clueless is a remake of Emma of the same awesome caliber as 10 Things I Hate About you being a remake of Taming of the Shrew.

OK, I’ll grant you that a simple movie can never be as good as a classic novel such as any of Jane Austen’s. And I know that A&E and the BBC have their own versions which are probably much better. However, Gwyneth was available on the free movies on On Demand, so there. Free trumps good any old day.

And I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never been a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, often choosing to skip movies entirely just because she headlined in them. But the woman held her own! Usually American actors and actresses show up as the gaudy, incapable things that they really are when held up against the acting of the British. Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing, anyone? The man nearly ruined the whole flick despite the awesome acting by the others. But Gwyneth Paltrow? I may have to rethink my opinion of her. She really performed well. Plus, I think she should always wear her hair up from now on. It looks good on her.

The thing is, I’ve always known that 10 Things I Hate About You. I mean, they kept the same names and attended Padua High. The cheesiness is part of what I loved! But in Clueless, yes, SOME of the names were the same, but Cher vs Emma? Not obvious (I’ll have to watch it again to see if Emma is her middle name or a silent first name or something). But still, as I watched Emma (obviously I haven’t read the book yet, though it is in my TBR pile), I kept noting the similarities and at times was able to predict what would happen next based on my knowledge of Clueless.

But while I loved the cheesy obviousness of 10 Things, Clueless shows me something different. How you can take a classic story, boil it down, and turn it into something different. While the best parts of Emma were modernized, I saw where the cast was narrowed down to make individual characters stronger. While Emma’s governess became Cher’s best friend, certain personality traits were greatly exaggerated or removed. Where Mr. Knightly was like a brother to Emma, he actually became a brother to Cher through several remarriages.

It all began sliding into place how these people had done it. Me? If I were to try to remake something, I would have immediately gotten stuck trying to find the modern equivalent. But that’s now how it was done. It was taking the basic parts of the original, and re-spinning it.

For example: Harriet got sick before the party and couldn’t go. So Mr. Elton felt free to press his affections on Emma on the drive home. Later, Emma gets stuck while crossing a stream and is rescued by Frank Churchill.

Ty gets hit on the head at the party. Later, Elton drives Cher home and tries to press his affections on her. He drops her off in the middle of nowhere, and is rescued by her “brother”.

In fact, there was even a mugging in both, but totally different circumstances and results.

But I see now how it’s done. It’s like making an outline of a story, and then writing a story based on THAT outline.  And if you get stuck, you can always go back for more details! I’ve always wanted to write my own 10 Things, and now I think I know how.

Also, I have a new review of Wild at Heart up at the site I review for.

I’m not sure what’s been going on for the past few days, but lately I’ve been meeting more and more publishing industry pros and aspiring novelists on Twitter. And along with that comes the influx of linkage.

Ok, so the single most important website for an aspiring novelist is Miss Snark. That’s a given. If you’ve never read this viciously wonderful agent, you need to. Go back to the very first post and read all the way up to her last (she’s hung up her stilettos for good) post. Take notes. Bookmark the Crapometer for when you’re getting ready to query. Read through it again. Take more notes. Follow all instructions and consider all advice. Just do it. Besides, it’s fun!

Now, Miss Snark I’ve known about for years, and have read almost every post on her site. However, #QueryFail is brand new. And it’s not a site; it’s a hashtag. In other words, it’s a stream of tweets from Twitter that are all on one subject, specially marked out using a hashtag. You don’t need to be a member of Twitter to read #QueryFail, but you do need an account if you want to respond to any of them.

What QueryFail is, is a day set aside by agent Colleen Lindsay for all Twitter savvy agents and editors to vent their query frustrations in the form of a 140 character tweet. Many of the tweets are actual lines from queries that the agent/editor rejected such as “Like my protagonist, I definitely could be described as overachiever, and I naturally have hair like Lady Godiva.”, “My book is about a friendship based upon mutual vomiting practices in high school.”, and my favorite- “This book is The Notebook meets The Lord of the Rings.”

You’ll need to scroll through several days of tweets about #queryfail if you choose to follow the above link to access it, but there’s a downloadable file of the actual QueryFail tweets from the actual day at that link.  The agents are planning to make this a regular thing, but no schedule has been set. And by the way? #QueryFail even got attention from The Guardian. No joke! There’s also a #novelfail, but I haven’t had much time to check into that.

And the third page that you may want to consider, is a 25 point list of why your fiction is being passed over, courtesy of Andromeda Spaceways. It’s funny, but not hilarious. Dirty, but not filthy. But all in all, a pretty good list.

Thing is, I received a review copy of Sushi for One by Camy Tang for review on my sushi stuff blog. That blog has received some decent traffic in the past week thanks to one or more Stumbles, but they’re mostly going to one post and then leaving. So because the author was gracious enough to not only send me a free copy for review, but signed it and everything- I wanted to give her more exposure than she would get on just my little niche blog. After all, this is fiction, and no one loves fiction more than another writer!

Lex Sakai is a devoted Christian who is seeking her soul mate with the help of a list from the book of Ephesians. The problem is, the guy who fits the list best isn’t Christian, and the Christians don’t fit the list!

That’s difficult enough, but when her Grandmother threatens to pull funding of her beloved junior girl’s volleyball team if Lex doesn’t have a “real” boyfriend in time for her cousin’s wedding in four months… Well, the pressure’s on! Mix in a new job that makes the immature boys drool, and Lex has a harder time fending off the Mr. Wrong’s than in finding Mr. Right!

To be honest, I wasn’t so sure of this novel at the start. For the first 1/4 of the book, the “hints” that Lex was recovering from rape were, um, constant.  This is thoroughly excusable to me since the beginning of a novel can be so difficult. You’re trying to get a handle on the character and story yourself, and still trying to get across to the reader what you want them to know. But like I said, it was a little off putting.

What I did like was how realistic most of the book was. Things that really could, and probably do happen. The friendships between Lex and her cousins were totally believable, and I’ve heard stories of psychotic grandmothers who would actually make threats like that to get what they want.

The pace wasn’t ramped up unnaturally. This might be a negative point to some, but honestly? When I choose a book that’s based in a culture that’s not my own- it’s because I want to immerse myself in the culture, and learn about it. It’s why I love fantasy- the cultures in them are so detailed! Now, I wouldn’t say that Sushi for One is as detailed as a good fantasy novel, but believe me, I’ve read some chick-lit that was supposed to be based in various cultures that turned out to be nothing unique aside from maybe an outfit here and there or a statue placed somewhere (or worse, a Coke drinking guru- OK, the Coke drinking guru was funny).

Sushi for One is set in/near/around San Jose (can’t remember the exact location, but I remember that Lex attends a church in Santa Clara), and unlike most chick-lit- I actually feel like I got to know something about the area! Not geography, mind, but about the area. Ya ken?

So what would I recommend this book for? If you want to learn steady pacing, if you want to learn how to write about a culture without being heavy handed or slip-shod, and if you want to learn how to write about difficult subjects like rape without making the reader geek out. She really handled that well, introducing the horror of it, and the nasty aftermath WITHOUT making you go “Ew, I don’t want to read about this anymore!”. She didn’t just magically recover in time to kiss the hero- it was a path that had to be worked through just as with everything else.

So, Sushi for One is the first of the series. Will I be reading Only Uni and Single Sashimi as well? Yup. Sushi for One was a strong first novel, and quite frankly, the cousin in Single Sashimi interested me a lot! Will I review them? I dunno. Cuz I’m putting my own money out there to order them. And sometimes I just like to read a book for fun!

For more normal reviews, read the Sushi for One review on TitleTrakk, or click the ad above for Amazon reviews.

Have you ever had the sensation of an ice cube being dropped into the pit of your stomach, and then having it swim around in there? Much like the “butterflies” in the stomach, but an actual sensation of cold. Does anyone know how that’s possible? Is it strictly a psychological thing, or is there an actual physiological… whatever?

Not that I plan to use the information in my WIP- I just think about these things and then have to have the answers! Anyone else have a similar experience?

Nevermind.

I’ve been getting a real kick out of researching my protagonist. One of the decisions that I made is that she no longer lives in the mid-west, and she didn’t go to college in Oklahoma (I had reasons for those decisions, but changing locations actually improved her character and back story). Instead, she’s been living in Nashville, had attended college there, and has just moved back to… well, it’s around Lititz, Pennsylvania (about 10 mins from me), but I haven’t decided whether it’s a fictional town, or to use what’s actually here.

I think what finally settled it to my husband that I’m serious about novel writing (since I’ve been talking about it for years, and have yet to produce a manuscript), was the day I asked him “Honey, when you turn right on Airport Road, you get to the airport and the movie theatre. Where does the road go when you turn left?”. To which he responded “I don’t know. Why?”. And I said, “Because that’s where my protagonist goes to church.”.

And then he asked what a protagonist is.

That was the beginning of the turn around in the way I thought of my WIP. I’ve had a number of other things that I know I have to research or make up, but I’ve already chosen her college, and her major and minor. I have to work on her former place of business, but I know what the business itself was.

What caught me up though, was when I was looking at her college’s website, trying to figure out what her major was. What would have prepared her for her future? What would have suited her personality? I finally decided on an English major (common major, appropriate to an avid reader, etc) and started looking at the courses available.

Holy cow. Now I want to go to college there! Some of those classes look great! One of the professors in particular seems exactly like the kind of prof Z would love. Looking at the staff pages, I can see her participating and classes, and how she’d respond to each prof differently. Of course, it’s all back story, but like Anti-Wife says, that’s how you get to know your character.

But then, I realized something.

I’ve never read the majority of books and/or authors that are required for this college’s major in English. Yikes! And I’ll never have the time to go through and read a few dozen heavy classics in time to throw in a half dozen lines referencing them. I could just look up quotes and try to find a thesis or two on a few of the authors, but I’ve got a better idea.

I’ll just ask you guys which books you’d most recommend. I’m focusing on historically focused books, or books written before 1901. Perhaps even websites that discuss various intelligentpeoplethings about the authors and the books (and themes, and hidden meanings, and…). For example: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen, historical romance something or other.

If you had to take a crash course to appear well read, well educated, and intelligent, what would you read? (I’m not starting yet- I’ve read enough to get me through the first draft, but I’d like to start planning for my rewrites).

Here are the courses that I’m looking at specifically:

ENG 3050—Satire (3)Readings in classical, neoclassical, and modern literature which emphasize reform and correction of individuals and societies, including works by Juvenal, Erasmus, Swift, Twain, Thurber.

ENG 3100—American Puritans and Romantics (3)A survey of the major authors and literary movements from the Colonial period up to the Civil War, including Edwards, Franklin, Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Whitman.

ENG 3200—American Realists and Moderns (3)A survey of American literature from the Civil War to the present, including works by Twain, Crane, London, Dreiser, Anderson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O’Neill, Cather, Lewis, Updike.

ENG 3510—Medieval Literature (3)A study of the Anglo–Saxon and Medieval period to 1400, focusing on Celtic prose and poetry, Chaucer, Langland, and continental influences.

ENG 3520—Renaissance Literature (3)A study of the period 1400–1660, focusing on drama and poetry, including Spencer, Marlowe, the Metaphysicals, and Milton.

ENG 3580—Enlightenment Literature (3)A study of the period, 1660–1798, including Dryden, Pope, Swift, Hogarth, and Johnson.

ENG 3610—Romantic Literature (3)A study of the Romantic period, 1798–1832, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats.

ENG 3620—Victorian Literature (3)A study of the prose and poetry of Victorian England, 1832–1901, including Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, Bronte, Arnold, Wilde.

ENG 3630—Modern British Literature (3)A detailed study of twentieth century British writers including Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence, Shaw, Auden, Thomas, and Hughes.

I’m hoping for just one or two selections from each course. Given my time constraints, I’m preferring shorter or more obscure titles. I doubt if I’ll have time enough for even those, but it’ll give me a start.

I got a lot of wonderful, useful, and varied responses from many of you. I read them all carefully, took note (mentally), and started to reconsider. Should I dump the WIP? Several of you who’d finished novels seemed certain that it was just a slump. Several had tips on how to spice it up (Darcie recommended murder- which I’m still tempted to do!), several were mostly encouragement, which I appreciated as much as all the advice.

In the end, I ended up with a combination of CJ’s figuring out what I really want to write about, and Anti-Wife’s visualizing back story.

Within a few days of making the original post, I tried visualizing the protag’s backstory. It didn’t quite work out like that, as I ended up visualizing the scenes. It triggered a realization for me, that when I have the most difficulty writing, is when I’m either too much into the story to be able to write it out, or so into the writing that I lose the story. Ok, that just means that I have to work harder on concentrating and blocking out all distractions. At least while I’m getting into the groove.

I decided that I’d take my work, up to that point, with me to a cafe. No distractions. Lots of coffee. It’s a good thing.

The night before I was going to head out to the cafe, I flipped on BBC America. And there was Gordon Ramsey. Bang! I knew what was wrong with my hero. He needed to be more like Gordon. Attractive, but not too attractive. Big heart, but a bigger mouth. Intelligent, to the point that he may come across as condescending, but not actually a jerk. He sees the world in a much more black and white way than most people- almost like an engineer. Except with an artist’s flair. I can work with this.

That thought got my brain buzzing, but I didn’t put any of it down. I was saving that until after I decided whether or not to continue with the WIP.

I took my notebook and headed out to the local Panera. Got my latte and a bagel. I’d wanted a booth, for privacy, but there were none to be had. Eventually I found a little two seater table with an angle view of the fireplace. Score! It was right up against a pillar, so I had about as much privacy as a booth anyway.

I sat down and started reading. Some of it wasn’t too bad, but there were entire “scenes” which had no point other than filling up word count. I’d say that about 4000 of the 10000 words were useable.

At one point, I think I scared a few people around me because I started cracking up (out loud) at various points. I don’t think I’d intended to be funny, but there were some good lines! I circled those, and marked entire useable sections with stars. The “just words” parts got a big X through them, and a few other spots got question marks.

By the time I’d finished reading through, I was getting a bit brain tired, but just to be sure, I ran a very quick, very sketchy outline out of what I’d figured out so far. Not too bad.

I wasn’t done though, and I knew it. So, I set aside another day to head out to a cafe and work on it some more. This time, I had a much better sketched out outline, and bits and pieces of the characters’ personalities and lives started jumping out at me. Now I could see a better story coming out, with more conflict. Still, not a fully fleshed story, but I could sense it. It’s there, somewhere.

I’m starting over from scratch. Not much of what I had is actually useable, and if I’m thinking about how much I’ll have to fix that opener, I won’t get any farther in what I’m writing today. But I’ve started on it. Maybe I’m only writing 2 or 3 paragraphs every other day, but it’s more than I can say about the past 6 months!

So yeah. My WIP is dead. But I may be turning into Frankenstein.

I didn’t have anything against them, I just failed to see the interest in a book about babysitters. I didn’t enjoy babysitting, and, lets just say that my work ethic was a little weak at the time. So books about a bunch of girls my age (perish the thought! I was reading Grace Livingston Hill and Emilie Loring between Jessica and Elizabeth’s escapades with Lila!) just didn’t appeal to me.

However, a few months ago, I’d had an idea for a middle grade novel. But as SVH were the only books even close to that age group that I’d read (aside from a rather good trilogy that I’d picked up at a yard sale), I figured I needed to do a little more reading in that area before even seriously considering putting my idea to paper. So, I asked mom to be on the lookout.

She turned up two books from the Babysitter’s Club. I actually read the “newer” book first*, and was appalled by the bad writing. No wonder only a handful of the girls in my 6th grade class had read them. I don’t know if it says something about my school, or if it was just coincidence, but the majority of the girls in my class read authors like Jane Austen and… darn. What was her name? I think she wrote “The Spring Always Comes” or some such title*. You get the idea.

The thing is, I’d finished A Nameless Witch and the recent issue of Writer’s Digest a few nights ago, and didn’t want to start on another novel until I finished reviewing the books I’ve already read. So I picked up the other Babysitter’s Club book and read it over the course of two nights.

Last night, I started reading at around page 80, and almost laughed out loud. In one page, the author dated that book irrevocably. Fashions may come and go, and talking about chunky sweaters may bring a sense of nostalgia to parents/adults, and kids may gloss over those descriptions. But when you have the line “What’s MTV?” combined with “UHF” and “cable box”… Oh my. I couldn’t help myself. I flipped straight to the front to see when the book was published. 1986.

And that spoke more about the 80′s than any number of hair and sweater descriptions.

Descriptions like these can be a blessing or a curse, and it depends on your genre more than your intentions. Writing a contemporary novel isn’t going to net you many new readers in the future if you talk about how cable is switching over to digital broadcast, and what a pain that your character has to buy a converter box. But a historical novel, no matter how recent, could only be enhanced by a character getting mad that his new car comes with a cd player instead of a tape deck, and now he has to buy all new cds because they haven’t made a cd recorder, and how stupid is that?

Sometimes I think I learn more from poorly written novels than I do from well written ones.

*Correction: The appallingly bad writing was not The Babysitters Club, it was The Fabulous Five. I assume it was a rip off of TBC.

*Update: I remember now! Janet Oke.

I haven’t hit a wall so much as a quick sand pit in my novel. To be honest, I haven’t worked on it at all in several months. Sure, I can use the usual excuse of “too busy”, but the truth is, it just doesn’t do anything for me. Not the writing, I do get a high off of working on fiction, but the book itself.

Like most of my ideas, I start with an image, scene, or character and try to build a story around that. The problem is, I’m not a plotter. There is no story. I’ve written approximately 10,000 words, and aside from one scene near the end, I have no idea where to take it from here.

On top of this, my character is turning out to be rather more dull than I expected her to be. The hero is less strong and more silent. And the worst? The antagonist is merely an annoying twerp who could easily be booted at the very beginning.

While working on this, I’ve had some good, solid ideas. However, none of them really match up to make a story, and they don’t fit the characters in this story at all.

I was determined to finish this one. Whether it was any good or not didn’t matter. Just so long as I finished it. Just to say that I had, and now had the first crap novel out of the way and could work on my masterpiece. I’m struggling with the idea, because as much as I do want to finish it, just to prove that I can, every day that it’s hanging above me (literally, as the notebook is on top of the headboard) I stress further over my lack of action, and it saps my productivity.

So, do I push myself to work on something that I have no passion for? Just to say that I finished? Or box it up, and let it stew while I work on something that I do care about. Old projects that never made it past the first page have been percolating for years, and are now starting to take form. Perhaps that’s all I really need? Time, and the ability to forget, however temporarily?

I need to clean out my life. I’ve left half finished projects of all kinds clutter the house and my mind for far too long. I’ve finally started taking steps to declutter my home, but I’ve not done much lately for my mind. Is this my first step?

My favorite part about getting this award? I have a serious thing for lions.

So, the rules are that you (in this case, I) post three writing tips that you’ve learned along the way, and then nominate 5 more bloggers to take up the meme.

1. Write when the mood/idea strikes. Of course you need to write even when the muse isn’t hanging around, but I mean the second you have that great idea, hop to it! Otherwise the thought just drifts off or begins to seem silly before you’ve given it enough bones to stand. Keep going as long as you can, whether it be minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Once you’ve exhausted your initial momentum you can go ahead and plot/outline/whatever.

2. Practice your vocabulary. Try reading novels written before 1930. They’re filled with interesting, complicated, and often, foreign words. They assumed you understood these things because everyone did. That’s what was called education. But I won’t get into that rant here (at least not now). By reading those novels, you begin to absorb the knowledge even if you don’t look up definitions. Alternatively, you could practice by going to FreeRice and feed hungry people as you develop your language skills. I made it to level 45 before heading off to other sites.

3. Don’t forget that you’re human. Spend time with friends and family. Go on vacation. Take a walk and go see a movie. If you forget how to live, you’ll never have anything to write that’s worth reading.

And now for the next round of victims…

Kathy- feel free to give me a good “Screw You!” for this, Grace- better get one of your monkeys on it, CJ- time to give us your Thoughts On Writing, Jersey- consider this a Dirty Little Meme, B.E.- make a Spectacle of yourself.