Name my protagonist!

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I’m looking for a little help from my readers. And as usual, it will take the form of a contest.

My book, Beware the Hawk, features an unnamed protagonist, because I really love not naming first-person narrators. Which works well sometimes but not always.  It worked well for the original novella, but what if the character were to appear in other stories? She won’t be able to get through another storyline unnamed. I’ve been calling her Pink in private, but that’s not a real name. You know, like Jane, or Bob, or Ponyboy.

That, dear readers, is where you come in.

I want you to name my protagonist.

I already have some suggestions on my Facebook page, and I got one via text message this morning, but I need so much more than three suggestions.

Here’s how it will work.

Beware The Hawk novella

Faceless and nameless. For now.

I will be taking name suggestions (I’m looking for both first name and last name) via email, comment section, tweet and the aforementioned Facebook page. Also,  if you happen to see me in person, you can slip me a note with a name written on it. The virtual suggestion box will be open until I appear on Enders Island in Mystic, Conn. to read from the book on Thursday, July 19.

I will then pick a handful of the best names and post them, along with the names of those who suggested them. There will follow a week of  voting both on Facebook and here. I will however, announce the winner in private to the finalists, because I want the general readership to be surprised. (Although anyone capable of basic math and reading of poll results will probably be able to figure it out.)

The winner will have named Pink. Any other stories she appears in, she will bear the name you gave her. And you will get a free, signed copy of the very first new work she appears in.

The fine print (You should definitely read this.)

Ahem… The winner will not be entitled to royalties or other earnings. Just naming rights. And I do get some creative wiggle room, such as spelling or adding a middle name if necessary, because I am the author. Also, I can’t promise that just because I write a new Beware the Hawk book/story/screeenplay/graphic novel that anyone will want to publish it or that they will publish it in what you or I would consider to be a timely fashion. (Read: pronto.)

UPDATE: One name per entrant please! Pink’s only one woman!

So, what are you waiting for?

Send me some names!

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You can still have bad days when you work for yourself.

Bad day work from homeBack when I used to work for a company, I always wanted to work for myself. I wanted to get away from other people’s stress, to not be told what to do, and to do more creative work than I had been doing. I wanted to work from a home office, make my own hours, fix my own lunch in my own kitchen, write with my cat on my lap and take regular yoga breaks right behind my desk whenever I feel like it. (That last one would have been very distracting in a working newsroom.)

These days I do all of the above. I’m an adjunct professor, freelance writer, author and artisan. I manage all these projects from my home office, which is, in fact, equipped with both a cat and a yoga mat. It’s exactly what I wanted when I was employed by a larger company. But here’s the thing I didn’t expect:

I still have bad days.

I know. This sounds incredibly naïve.

But here’s the thing. Back in the day, I blamed my bad days on my job, on my work, on my deadlines, on the office itself, on the time it took to commute to work, on the paycheck, on my schedule… you name it. Me having a bad day wasn’t my fault. It was the fault of something around me.

Now when I have a bad day, I’m forced to admit that the problem isn’t my office, or my work or my commute. The problem is me.

Last week, for example, was a terrible work week. I sat and stared at the computer screen and was unable to summon a single thought. I tried to write my book. I tried to create a lesson plan. I tried to post here. I did force some work, but it wasn’t that great, and all I wanted to really do was click over to Facebook and just watch the status updates scroll on by. At the end of each day, when I’d come downstairs, I’d feel guilty about the crappy work I’d produced and the hours I’d wasted.

Back in the day, I would have blamed those bad days on my job. But now I see that my job was unjustly blamed for some of the problems that I create on my own.

This is not to say that jobs don’t create stress. Of course they do. Conflicts with other people, difficult assignments,  tough deadlines, long hours, those weird industrial lights that are part of so many offices and stores… working in an office or a shop or a school carries all kinds of stress with it. For the most part, my life is a lot less stressful now. **

But all the previously-stated  stresses were never my biggest problem. My biggest stressor always was an internal voice that told me I wasn’t working hard enough or well enough. That’s still my biggest stress, whether I’m in the classroom or writing at home. It just took me getting my dream job to understand that I’ve been my worst taskmaster.

Or, to be a nerd about it, working from home is like visiting Lothlórien. One carries one’s own bad days in with them.

But I digress.

So what to do about it?

Well, to be honest, there are always days when I could work harder. I could shut off the Internet, close my door, and work like the devil himself was behind me, screaming obscenities.

(I mean that the devil would be screaming obscenities, not me. Sorry if that was confusing. Although screaming obscenities would totally be cathartic and it would give the neighbors something to talk about. Everybody wins.)

Or maybe I should use those days to complete different kinds of tasks. If I can’t write, I can find a home for one of my short stories, or an essay, or an article.

I can use the time to book an appearance.

In extreme cases, I can do what I did last Thursday, when I despaired of ever writing another word: I bleached the life out of the bathroom.

working from home bad days

I only advise this in extreme cases.

Generally, though? I think I’m going to have to start being easy on myself in the guilt department. I think it’s fine to expect a lot of myself and to apply pressure in the beginning of the day. It’s fine to make myself work hard during the hours I’ve set aside for work. It’s even fine to give myself hell for being on Facebook during working hours because hey, unless I’m building my platform, I have no business writing a status update.  I think any boss would agree with that.

But guilting myself when a workday didn’t go as planned serves no purpose whatsoever. And that’s what I have to give up.  And for some reason**, I know that will be the hardest thing for me to do.

Workers from home, do you have the same problems? How do you deal with it?

*Example: In my previous life, I might have to take a break from typing something because someone who was deeply unhappy with something I wrote was waiting for me at the front desk. Today, I had to take a break from typing because the neighbor’s mastiff, in a fit of friendliness, stuck his head through our fence.

**Growing up Irish Catholic, maybe?

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So, how does everyone else feel about prequels?

Yesterday, prompted by my trip to the movies to see Prometheus, I vented my spleen about how I hate prequels. Now I want to know how you all feel.

Do you like them? Do you hate them? Do you not care, so long as you get to see more Duncan Idaho/Legolas/facehuggers/Lestat/Severus Snape?

I’m curious.*

[polldaddy poll=6324900]

*And not because I’m thinking of writing a Beware the Hawk prequel. Because I’m not.

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Prequels – when there’s nowhere to go but back.

When I’m queen of the sci-fi universe, prequels will be the first works of fiction up against the wall.

Rarely, in my experience, are prequels any good, except to deliver one more morsel of a franchise to a ravening fandom. I can’t remember a single prequel that’s advanced a plot, or developed a character more or better than the original work has.

Prequels (and some sequels) just feel like official forms of fan-fic, and  maybe that’s what I hate most about them. Prequels are a sort of control freakishness on the part of a the creator. Rather than allow a story to take root and develop in the minds of the audience, prequels –  more than sequels – are  an attempt to control the story and profit by it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t love certain franchises – I do. But I’ve decided to be selective about what I consume. I don’t read all the sequels and I try to avoid prequels. Let me give you some examples:

I’m crazy about Dune, by Frank Herbert. I’ve read the original book, and the glossary, appendices and all related Wikipedia entries, multiple times. But I will not read the sequels by Herbert. I choose not to believe that the prequels, written by Herbert’s son and Kevin Anderson, exist. The original was too awesome. I refuse to have my image of it ruined by universe over-development.

For the same reason, I have not been able to read The Silmarillion. I love Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit unconditionally. Sure, I get mad at them from time to time, and no, they’re not perfect books, but I love them anyhow, warts, dwarf-misogyny and all. I don’t need anything beyond those four books. I don’t want anything beyond those four books. I don’t need a Middle-Earth creation story. And I really can’t get beyond the fact that J.R.R. didn’t really put together The Silmarillion. His son did.

To me, the words “boxed set” suggest that a series creator has acknowledged the end of a franchise.

One last example: The Alien “trilogy.” When I was in middle school, Alien 3 came out. My dad, who loves him some Alien, went bonkers, and then Ridley Scott released the boxed Alien Trilogy set. We bought that for my father for Christmas and there was an Alien movie marathon at our house over the holidays, a marathon complete with gore, the void that is space and Sigourney Weaver sweating and delivering her lines in a whisper like an extra in Das Boot.

That was it for me; I mentally closed the door on the Alien franchise. The word “trilogy” had been applied. There was a boxed set. I later, vaguely heard something about an Alien 4 had come out. But I was able to pretend that it didn’t exist, á la the Dune prequels. Alien vs Predator seemed like a franchise all its own, and one I’m not terribly interested in, so I just ignored it.

Then, last week, my dad asked if we’d take him to see Prometheus for Father’s Day.

**Warning: I tried to keep the Prometheus spoilers to a minimum, but there may still be a few. Read at your own risk, kids.**

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Putting away the iPhone and stepping away from the laptop.

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In my book,  I wrote a main character who is addicted to her iPhone. The character’s cell phone addiction was meant to be a commentary on all the people I saw hunched over their iPhone displays, gabbing about apps and texting their ways through life, rather than living it. I wrote the book before I actually had an iPhone, * but this may or may not have been hypocritical on my part anyhow, since at the time I rewrote Beware the Hawk, I possessed what my husband referred to as a Crackberry.

Smartphones have been making me dumber for years.

But I hardly used the browser. I didn’t play Blackberry games. I only communicated with one person (my editor, actually) over the messenger. Then my Blackberry died, and I got an iPhone.

All of a sudden, I understood. There were no tiny keys to wrestle with! The camera was not as good as the Blackberry camera, but I could have more fun with the photos! The touchscreen was so big that tweeting and Facebooking from my phone were a pleasure! I could play Words with Friends! I suddenly had GPS! Now I could see what all the Angry Birds fuss was about!

I know. That’s a lot of exclamation points, but I think that’s what the i in iPhone is. Turn it upside down and flip it around and what you get it is “Phone!” And that’s the iPhone. It’s not a phone. It’s a Phone! And it’s addictive.

Now I’m trying to break myself of the cycle of obsessively checking my phone, which is as rude as it is worthless. I’m pretty sure that having a smartphone is making me dumber. Here are some examples:

  • Having email on my phone has actually made me worse at correspondence. (“Oh, I’ll just email that person back when I’m at my laptop.”)
  • Having the calendar on it has made me worse at scheduling. (“Oh no, an event I’m supposed to be at is happening a state away in five minutes!”)
  • I can’t remember phone numbers anymore because they’re all programmed into my phone. (“Sure, Officer, let me just grab my phone and look up my husband’s phone number for you.”)

So, I’m stepping away from the phone and, to some extent the Internet, this summer. I’m not “quitting Facebook” or giving up my phone or anything dramatic, but I am going to set some limits.

Right now, my iPhone is hidden under a pillow in another room so I won’t hear it buzzing. I have disabled all Push notifications for my social networks. I will not pick it up until I have written a required number of words. I am checking email only a few times a day. I’ve put all my appointments onto an actual desk calendar that I can see. Who knows? Later I may make myself write my husband’s phone number on a piece of paper 50 times the way my fourth grade teacher made me do with multiplication tables when I was being punished for something.

*In all honesty, I wrote the first drafts before iPhones were invented. The original phones were just regular 2001 phones. I was all kinds of excited to add iPhones last year and write the scenes as an indictment of iPhone users. I think this is called Karma.

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Being a Pinteresting author.

It’s taken me a while to embrace Pinterest, but I’m finally using it, and using it as an author, which is something I didn’t think I’d be able to do.

But it appears to be working.

I have three boards up right now. The one I’m proudest of is a Beware the Hawk board. Posted on that board, in no particular order, are photos of some of the locations that inspired Beware the Hawk, captioned with scenes from the book. It makes for sort of grown-up picture book experience, actually. This is closest I will get, I’ve realized, to having my own Pottermore.

I’ve had a Pinterest account for a while. I do this with most new social networks. I sign up, get confused by them and then, about six months later, figure out how to use them. It happened with Twitter. It happened with Google +.* Then it happened with Pinterest.

The crux of my Pinterest problem was this: How does one use the site as an author? Writers work with words and Pinterest is a visual medium. Most of the people I know on Pinterest are pinning craft ideas, or fashion or food or those mini-inspirational posters that get posted as memes on Facebook.

I tried a couple of different things. I had one board devoted to a novel I’m working on – the board contained images that inspire me, but it gave away too much of the plot, and you can’t make pinboards private, so I deleted it. I had one devoted to local news, but that didn’t work well because I didn’t update it daily.

Then I read an interview with the incredible Jane Friedman, and she mentioned Pinterest in passing – essentially she said that authors need to have fun with new tools in order to see if those tools work for them – and I started thinking that maybe using photos of the places I was visiting when I wrote Beware the Hawk might make a good board.

But I can’t pin some things, like characters, because they’re made up. If anyone has drawn or wants to draw my characters (they can be doodled on the backs of napkins; I don’t care) I would love to pin illustrations of my characters to a board. **

I have two other writing-related boards. One is titled Authors I’d like to have a drink with.  It’s just that. Photos of authors, with a paragraph about the drink we would share. The other, I hope is more tantalizing. It’s called What about the sequel? No one’s making any promises here, kids, but say I was thinking of putting together a sequel, these images might be vaguely inspirational to me. They will be vague, but I’m hoping this might be a sort of game. Can you guess what I’m working on?

So that’s it, really. This is how I’m trying to use Pinterest as an author. I’ll let you know how it works. Or I’ll see you on the boards.

*If I’m honest, I’m still figuring out G+.

**I’m not offering payment here or claiming ownership of anyone’s art. All I’m offering is the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that I’m promoting and praising your artwork on a Pinterest board.

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When Joan Didion noticed my dress.

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I wore it last night because it reminded me of a feeling I get when I read her early work.

It’s olive green, and loose, and I wore it with sandals and a poncho and a bag with tassels on. I chose it because I’m a synesthete and I think of the world in terms of color and taste. The whole ensemble made me feel a little like one of her essays from the late ’60s, or like the sound of a Joni Mitchell album.

And when she signed my copy of Play it as it Lays, she looked up and complimented me on the dress. “I’m partial to that color,” she said.

When I was a young writer, hungry for wisdom and mentorship, that comment would have been anti-climactic for me, coming from the mouth of one of my heroes.

I first read the work of Joan Didion as a young journalist. An editor, choosing my name from the hat in our newsroom’s Secret Santa, gave me a copy of The White Album. It was exactly what I needed at a time when I was becoming jaded about my job. Didion’s essays lifted me out of the drudgery of school board meetings and graduation speeches. Her work taught me how to see the people and the pathos in my news stories. Her prose taught me how to describe them. Every essay I read was a challenge to be a better reporter.*

There are certain people who take sharp notice of the world, and who transmit their mindsets with a startling clarity.  Didion is one of these. It was a shock to discover her work. When I was a self-centered 23 year-old, she made me able to see a larger world through older eyes. I think I grew some compassion when I read her essays.

If I had met Didion at that age, I would have wanted to wring writerly wisdom from her during our five-second interaction. I would have wanted her to impart some pearl, some insight, anything that would help me to be more like her.

I’m proud that I’m over that stage.

Today I’m happy to know that she liked my dress, because it means that those eyes, which have noticed so much and which taught me how to see the world as a writer, had seen and acknowledged me, too.

 

*I loved that book, but I never finished it. I’d been reading it slowly, savoring it essay by essay. I’d read and re-read an essay, then put the book away and spend a few days trying to emulate Didion in the stories I wrote for my daily. One day, the book slipped away from me. I’ve been looking for it for a decade, and I refuse to buy another copy, because I’m convinced it’s around here somewhere and my editor gave it to me and that means something. That was six or seven moves ago.

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My sorta-secret side job.

I like to claim that I have no secrets.

About a month ago, I was talking to my mother on the phone about how open I am about certain things. In fact we were probably talking about this blog.

“Mom,” I said, proudly. “I have no secrets.”

Maybe it’s my background in journalism that makes me not want to have secrets. I’ve seen secretive people suffer for hiding parts of their lives. As a sort of defense, I’ve tried to be open about just about everything. But of course, that’s impossible, even for a big-mouth with Internet access. Everyone keeps some secrets. I knew I must have some.

I just couldn’t think what they could be.

Until this past weekend, when I had to travel for business, and I found myself reluctant to explain to those who asked where I was going and what I was doing for all of Saturday and Sunday. I never really thought of this sideline as a secret, because plenty of people  – especially people I’ve known for a long time – know that I do this.

I started doing this thing as a teenager. In fact, when I was younger, I was very proud of this job and talked about it often. I advertised it, actually, because it brings with it a certain kind of attention. But as I’ve gotten older and taken more responsible jobs in different fields,  I’ve stopped doing this. I’ve also stopped telling people about it because I’m worried that this job will affect the way they will view me in other areas of my life. More unfortunately, this job also causes people to want or expect certain things from me, and the things that those people want and expect can be draining.

But shame and fear are never a good thing. So last week, when someone asked me if I was going to be around on Saturday, and I began a complicated throat-clearing campaign in an attempt to stall until someone else changed the subject, I knew I was going to have to start being open about my sorta-secret side job once again.

Where better to do this than on the world wide web, where everyone can see? So what is this thing that I do that causes me so much angst?

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Grimm facts about Snow White.

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What is the deal with all the Snow White adaptations in 2012?  This year has seen the release of two big screen versions of the fairy tale – Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror, Mirror – and one television show, Once Upon A Time.

This year has also seen the release of possibly the worst Snow White adaptations of all time, Grimm’s Snow White, a direct-to-DVD affair that substitutes elves for dwarves, adds dragons, a magical falling star from outer space, and a bunch of CG dogs that look a lot like the beast from The Brotherhood of the Wolves.

Everybody’s a critic.

This, of course, is the Snow White version that my husband and I decided to Netflix last night.

I found it ironic that the filmmakers decided to differentiate their Snow White from the other two by titling it Grimm’s Snow White, because I don’t remember elves, dragons, comets or secret societies of back-flipping ninja elves in the version set down by the Brothers Grimm.

This upside down thing is supposed to be a “dark elf.” It’s not. It’s in the middle of a flip, it’s wearing black and you can’t see it clearly. That makes it a ninja.

Just to be sure that I didn’t miss anything the first time I read it, I downloaded the Grimms’ 1819 version of Household Tales onto my Kindle last night and re-read it.

Now, as a feminist, Snow White is hardly my favorite fairy tale. The story contains so many elements that I hate, I hardly know where to begin.

This woman doesn’t need to be the fairest. She needs to operate a charity or go back to school or something.

Let’s start with the queen, a woman so consumed by her own looks that she’s willing to kill her own stepdaughter in order to avoid being overshadowed in the beauty department.

This is a woman who has an awful lot of talents that are being misdirected. She has a magical mirror, she’s able to whip up poison like nobody’s business and she’s a master of disguise. She’s like the Real Housewives version of MacGuyver. But does she direct these talents toward useful things? No. The only thing she uses her mirror for is to find out how hot she is (Pro tip: normal mirrors work just fine for that) and to Google directions to the dwarves’ cottage so that she can pose as a sort of medieval Avon lady.

The evil queen has recently been recast into a cougar mold, and is often represented as being after the prince, which irritates me because once again, we have a clever woman whose ambitions are based on competition for a man.

Allow me to move on to Snow White, a young woman with absolutely no intelligence, who is – three times –  brought low by shopping. The dwarves keep telling her not to open the door to strangers, because her stepmother is trying to kill her. But every time a saleswoman comes to the door, Snow White parades right out to buy whatever is being peddled, and it’s always made of poison.
The only thing keeping this kid from certain death is the fact that her looks charm various people into taking care of her. The huntsman lets her run away into the forest. The dwarves allow her to invade the man-cave and although she doesn’t take their advice (three times) they save her twice.

What look is the prince going for? Mr. Darcy imitation? Team Edward? You decide.

The prince, who likely has a necrophilia problem, takes her coffin from the dwarves and carries it around with him until a servant accidentally Heimlichs the apple out of her mouth. He decides to marry her as soon as she comes out of her coma and she accepts instantly. Maybe out of love. Maybe out of hormones. Maybe out of realizing that if she marries this guy, she can get out of the forest and back into royal life.

But the most disturbing thing about Snow White is the entertainment she arranges for her wedding. She invites her stepmother, heats up some iron shoes until they are red hot and forces her stepmother to put them on and dance for the guests until she falls down dead.

Up until this point, she’s been pure and innocent, but now she’s enjoying a display of torture at her wedding reception. Most people would probably go for a deejay or jugglers or something, but not our girl Snow White, who’s turning out to be no better than her stepmother, which makes me think that these two women have quite a bit in common. They’re beautiful, ambitious and cruel…. they could almost be related.

That’s because they are.  If you read the 1812 version of the Grimm’s fairy tale, you realize that they are about as closely related as you can get.

In the earliest version of the Grimms’ story, the antagonist of Snow White was the princess’s own mother. The same queen who wished for a child with white skin, red lips and ebony hair grew to hate her own daughter when Snow White surpassed her in beauty at seven years of age.The Grimms changed this for the 1819 version. Maybe because mothers were reading this story to their daughters.

Actually, the resemblance is striking in at least one adaptation:

Snow White’s age is another point of interest for me. The tale doesn’t tell us how old Snow White is, exactly, but if the action starts when she’s seven, and the story refers to her as “Little Snow White” and all the other characters call her “child,” I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she’s probably 12 or 13 when she ends up with the prince. Maybe 15 or 16, since she’s in that coma for a long time (although the story says she doesn’t change, so we can’t be sure.)

But if you think about lifespans a long time ago, 12 was a pretty normal age for a girl to be eligible for marriage. Maybe her mother was a teenager when she wished for a beautiful daughter. And maybe Snow White does the same after the story ends and then becomes jealous of her own daughter.

It’s the circle of life, kids.

More Grimm tidbits:

* The huntsman falls in love with a pretty seven year-old. That’s why he doesn’t kill her.

* In the 1812 story, the prince’s servants get so upset about lugging a corpse around all day that one of them opens the casket and hits Snow White, dislodging the apple.

* The queen thinks that she’s eaten the child’s heart and liver.

* There are a bunch of Snow White-like stories. They are classified as type 709 by the Aarne–Thompson tale type index.

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June: 2012 goals

I should have posted this days ago, but we were traveling and then I had to go away for a job this weekend. I probably could have blogged this from my phone, but I was lazy.

Speaking of which, lazy was the name of the game in May. I don’t think I got anything accomplished goal-wise. We were gone for two weeks on a road trip to Texas, and – as I always am when I travel – I was optimistic that I’d be writing during the whole trip. That’s because I like to ignore a very basic fact about myself: I can’t write when I’m traveling.

First of all, I get car sick, so typing a novel from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle is out. Secondly, I’m usually too busy taking in the trip to dream up any fiction. Usually the writing really gets into high gear when I come home. I have big hopes for this week.

Let’s look at my lack of progress, goal by goal.

Finish the second draft of my novel by April (September.) Revision went swimmingly in April. Then May happened. I had a lot of final-grading to do and then there was vacation. So not much progress there. None, actually.

Get it sent to agents before summer. Let’s try to get it sent in before fall, shall we?

Send out at least three short stories. I sent out one last month and was rejected. I sent out none this month, so I wasn’t rejected at all and that’s sort of a plus, right?

Read one two novels a month in 2012. I don’t think rereading my favorite bits of Dune counts. I did begin reading Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, but due to the aforementioned carsickness, didn’t make much progress.

Make at least $20 off a piece of fiction. Done in March.

Other goals: I also set to work on two of my big conflicts this year: My feelings about my faith and my issues with anxiety. Although traveling the U.S. tends to make one feel a little more spiritual, I don’t think I worked out any real faith-related issues. I did some work this past weekend that requires both faith and an ability to be spiritual – more on that in another blog post – but I wouldn’t say I reached any personal resolutions. As for anxiety, I did a lot of relaxing in May. Does that count?

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