Two Things on a Satwosday

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First, via Emma Bull:

Oktapodi from Asım Varol on Vimeo.

I can’t wait to show that to my family when I get home.

Second, I just finished The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. If you know the book already, you know why it’s great. If you don’t, you should definitely read it. Let me talk about something briefly, though.

Three days a week, I ride the bus to downtown for my day job. Part of the trip involves a fairly high bridge. Now, I have a thing about heights, so I sometimes sit on the right side of the bus so I will be right at the edge of the bridge (no sidewalk) looking down, hoping that I will get used to it and get over it. (There’s a name for that sort of therapy, but it escapes me for the moment and my google fu is weak today.)

Most days, though… no. I’m too tired, too stressed, too whatever. I tell myself I don’t have enough resources for that, so I ride on the left side, I close my eyes, I look up. Anything but look down while thinking of this picture.

But yesterday, I took the window seat. And by chance, I happened to read one of the final chapters in the book, about the difference between real fear and worry (a minor part of the book, really). And what Mr. de Becker said made so much sense to me that I closed the book in my lap and sat looking out the window during the bridge part of the trip.

Yeah, there was a little tingle of worry, but I have never felt such calm at the edge of a high place in my whole life.

I’ve been talking a bit here and there around the web about self-imposed limits, but this is a biggie. I’ve always been a worrier, but now I’m wondering if I’ve let my stress levels push me into self-indulgence. Fears are there to be conquered, right?

Let me blow the dust off my white polyester suit

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I’ve been invited to the Random House party in Comic-Con. I’m still trying to get used to the idea–for a lot of the things that have happened with my writing, I’ve been able to imagine it first. I know what a book signing looks like. I know basically what I’m supposed to do when I see cover art.

But I have no context for this party–which is actually kinda cool. It would be interesting to go in without expectations for once and see what plays out.

Five things make a Friday post

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1) Child of Fire is now at 340K in sales rank at Amazon.com! What is that, one sale a month? Not too shab for a book that won’t come out for more than three months.

2) I’m already checking Amazon.com sales rank numbers! I’m doomed!

3) The Best Discount Gun Shop for Kids in Seattle–which is too bad, because that is a rocking park. Mango Eater and I had a blast there one day, just walking the paths.

4) A bookseller meets with a Random House sales rep to discuss orders from the fall catalog. Strangely, my book wasn’t mentioned. I know! Crazy! (seen via pubrants)

5) To wrap up the most narcissistic five things post ever, I’m now on Facebook. No, I won’t play Mafia Wars. No, I won’t take a quiz to find out how girly I am. I didn’t want to join, but my sis-in-law puts pics of my nephews there, and the only way to see them is to fork over my identifying information. Grrrrr, Facebook. Hate.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

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Now I have to buy myself a duck-handled umbrella!

This absolutely fantastic piece of kid lit history courtesy of bookslut.

Three for Thursday

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1) In about an hour, I’m going to have a yearly performance review for day job. Good thing I’m posting to the internet right now. (Update: not fired)

2) I wish I could find the spot in WordPress that would let me capitalize the first letter of my name. It’s so annoying seeing it that way. Of course I find it as soon as I post about it. Of course I do.

3) Last night, I asked my wife to sit down next to me and I said “I have to tell you something you’re not going to like.”

For most husbands, the next line would be something like “There’s this woman at work…” or “I spent the grocery money on a new Playstation” or whatever. My wife knows better. She knew it would be either about our son’s school or something I’d done to cause pain to my own self.

In this case it’s the latter. After being fine for 10 years, I’ve started having wrist pain again. When I told her, she immediately grabbed my arm and started working on me.

(Digression: One of the physical therapists in town has started telling people that my wife is one of the best massage practitioners in the state. The boy and I had the same reaction, separately: “Only the state?”)

She started to traction my wrist immediately, turning it this way and that, and the way it cracked as it released startled the hell out of me. Wrists shouldn’t do that. She also worked on my forearm for a while, and lemme just say that shit hurts. Yes, I’m a big wimp, but it still hurts like hell. She just about had me ready to confess to anything she wanted.

It’s better today, but I can still feel it. I see ice in my future.

“These are actual magazines”

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My self-directed training to learn to be insufferably condescending continues today, and the variety of texts to choose from is astounding. Thank you, internet!

For instance: A woman who has apparently never heard of slash fiction writes an article about m/m romance novels targeted at women readers. I knew I was sitting at the feet of a master when the lede began “The romance novel, a static and predictable genre…” but it was the quote in the subject header above that really taught me the most.

I must say that I share Ms. Harris’s bemusment over the appeal of this subgenre. As a hetero male with an internet connection, I had no idea a person could thrill to same-sex carnal urges of their opposite gender. How baffling!

“Bow before me, peons!” (a cautionary tale)

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I don’t talk very much about writing here, except to whine about how hard Man Bites World is kicking my ass, but I’m going to make an exception, considering.

There is certainly more than one way to succeed as a writer. You can start early or late in life. You can hit the best seller list with your first attempt, or struggle for years to find a groove. Whatever.

But for every way there is to succeed, there are a thousand more ways to fail. You can never start, never finish, never revise, never submit. You can act like a crazy person on your blog, or send query letters that give off such a creepy vibe that the paper might as well have a watermark that reads “Stalker.”

Or you can be convinced that your setbacks are someone else’s fault.

You can see this attitude at various places around the web, especially someplace like the comments at Writer, Rejected (no link, sorry–life’s too short). Other message boards and blogs do their best to squelch this stuff as soon as it pops up, but there’s just no killing it.

I decided a long time ago that I would never blame a rejection on anyone but myself. If my query was dinged, it was because I needed a stronger query. Never because the rejecter was having a bad day, or was a fool who couldn’t recognize my genius, or could recognize quality but only wanted something that would be a bestseller.

That attitude is poison. I wanted to be published, and I wanted readers. Blaming other people for my rejections was never going to get me on the bookshelf, because the only thing I could change was myself.

So I pretended that hard work was the only thing that mattered. I know it’s not really true–there’s also luck, and the changing markets, and talent–but hard work is the the only thing I can actually control. I was determined to improve, and the only way to do that was to find fault with myself.

So my book will be coming out in a little more than three months. If it flops, I will not be blaming readers. I will not be blaming cover art, or publicity, or the recession, or another writer who released a new book at the same time. As far as I’m concerned, the real cause will be that I didn’t write a book readers wanted to recommend to their friends.

If the book does not flop? If it’s a success? Still, I will be looking for flaws in my work. I’ll be working hard to get better, and any setbacks I face will have one remedy: the book I’m currently writing. This is a promise I make to myself. It’s not for anyone else, just me, because anyone, at any time, can find themselves stranded and struggling. And when that happens, an egotistical conviction that my problems are caused by other people will ruin me.

Hay-zeus Marimba

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If my WIP suddenly lunged through my computer screen and started strangling me, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Christ.

My head is too full of other things right now. Some of it is other people’s business, which I can’t talk about. Some is my business that I don’t really want to go into. It’s frustrating and infuriating, but this is the process.

I just wish I had more time. I’m struggling with a really difficult scene, and it keeps wanting to go in three directions at once. I’d be happy if I could find something true to the characters, and I’ve just realized I should have spent an hour or two yesterday on research.

More time. I need it.

Because we wish our expectations to be clear

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(Taken at the Barnes & Noble)
Please respond appropriately.

How I feel, sometimes

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