Researching a novel can be really expensive, so here’s my game plan. Set first novel in someplace fictional that would be driving distance if it existed (done). If that sells, I will set my next novel in someplace I would actually want to visit, like, say, San Francisco. If that sells, move on to Europe, the Mediterranean or anyplace that can be explored without the use of a Jeep. Also it needs great food, theatre/and or music, and shopping. 

 

I noticed that this blog’s all-time # of visitors was the day I posted ‘Writing Is Like Dominoes.’ So I believe I should include the word ‘dominoes’ in the title of every post. e.g.,’Queries Are Like Dominoes,’ ‘Directing Is Like Dominoes,’ or even ‘Dominoes Are Like Dominoes,’ but I won’t in case there is a penalty for scam blogging.

Saw an excellent movie, Chef, whose moral was ‘Don’t worry about money. Do what you love to do.’ That’s exactly how I feel about writing, which is a very fortunate thing. Spoiler alert: He ended up making lots of money, too.*

*And don’t tell me it’s only a movie. I KNOW THAT. Give me a few moments to savor the fantasy.

I recently discovered that I write better listening to jazz. As I’m writing YA, shouldn’t I be listing Cloud Nothings or Strands of Oaks?*

*Aren’t you proud of me for knowing who they are? I don’t really. I looked them up and got through about eight bars. I couldn’t even write a shopping list to those songs.

My very first writers conference is just two months away. I am overcome with emotion, that emotion being OMG, my first one-on-one with a live, for real agent. How am I going to make sure that the completed manuscript that I now regard with horror as I’ve discovered it’s still incomplete, will actually be completed by then?* How do I convince her that it has the potential to outsell Twilight even though it’s totally devoid of vampires? Haha, just kidding, except about the ‘devoid of vampires’ part.

*Could you follow that sentence? I can’t, and I wrote it.

     So I stay up for hours trying to fix a few paragraphs that work only slightly better than my last Epson printer. Then it comes to me! I have the solution! I rewrite them and realize that I now have to change two other sections, because I can’t have the same character lounging in chairs on opposite sides of the same room at the same time, and most people don’t have breakfast twice,  and I fix that, but now I have to move the fireplace because, technically, my character would be sitting in it.

 

Here is one of my most significant discoveries; there are not enough synonyms for ‘walk,’ ‘went,’ and ‘look.’ And don’t tell me to try the thesaurus. I already did that, you silly.

I also could use a whenectomy. Even more challenging.

Because the main character keeps dying, and I like her.

I have two goals when I write 

1. Make people laugh out loud

2. Make them want to find out what happens next

and… Wait! Wait, three goals, three

3. Get stuff published

and…Wait! Wait, four goals, four

4. Make enough money to live in luxury, as in ‘Pay off my credit cards.’

You know that awful feeling…or maybe you don’t, but anyone in ‘The Biz’ does…when you go to hear a friend sing and he is one of 39 performers, including two depressed Spoken Word folk and a Bob Dylan wannabe? And you get stuck stuck at a front table, and there’s no intermission and no escape and your friend is #37 anyway, so it hardly matters.

WELL, THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN LAST NIGHT! We went to LaTiDo at the Black Fox in DC, where Jonathan Tuzman, our newest, extremely talented pianist plays every Monday. We were at the front table, and there was no intermission, but everybody was GREAT, so you should go, even if you are a starving artist. The cover is just $10, and there’s no minimum, and come on, it’s Monday night. That’s your dark night. You have no excuse.