After much work, angst and adventure, I arrived in Texas early Thursday morning.  Unpacking the truck took all day Thursday, as it was 104-degrees out.  Not fun.

Since then we have all been unpacking, sorting and arranging.  Finally, today, I found the box with my computer cables, so I'm back online.

Much to do.  Many adjustments to make.  But, it's good to be with my folks, and #1-son and #2-son.  Today we all went down to visit with two of my three brothers and their families, so that's nice, too.

I miss #3-son and #4-son, though.  :-( 

#3-son is off to college and having a grand time, so I can handle that. 

But I haven't been away from #4-son for more than the two-weeks he went on vacation last year, so this is going to be a challenge.  I haven't had a chance to do more than text with him a couple times, but now that I'm finally back online, I should be able to talk to him more, which will be nice.

Now that my computer is together and I've said 'hi' to everybody online, I'd best get this place cleaned back up and head to bed.  The lack of sleep and stress from the last couple weeks is catching up with me, and I'm exhausted, but all-in-all, I'm doing really well.

    A while back, I finished reading a book by a big-name author and was completely disgusted by the hero and heroine.  About three-quarters of the way into the book, the hero makes a TSTL* (Too Stupid To Live) decision that I couldn't believe, and then to make the situation even worse, this TSTL decision was promptly followed by the heroine upping the TSTL quotient, to the point that I almost threw the book against the wall.  The only saving grace was that I bought the book off the bargain rack and didn't pay full price for it.

    As I thought about the book, I realized that the author needed to get the hero and heroine (H&H) into a bad situation.  Okay.  I understand that.  They needed to be there for the rest of the plot to work.  I'm good with Hs&Hs being put in bad situations.

    What wasn't okay with me was that in order to get into this nasty situation, the H&H had to make several TSLT decisions in a row.  Morons!

    So I thought some more:  There are plenty of good books out there where the H&H end up in nasty situations without making TSTL decisions.  So why did this author do it this way?

    About a day later, the answer came to me.  In this book, the villains were so stupid that they were beyond TSTL-stupid!

    Ah! I thought, that's what the problem is.

    The plot needed the H&H to get captured, but the villains were so incompetent that they couldn't capture the H&H on their own, which meant the H&H needed to be even more stupid than the villains.  **sigh**

    Why?!?

    So, here's the lesson: (Read more)

From the email bag:

Editing is the hard part, and I keep trying to avoid it. It's easier to get on with the next book, but I'll never move up the ladder to published if I do that. Writing, getting that first draft out of your head, is just so much fun. The rest, editing, is painful, but challenging.

And yes, I understand completely about the "editing" part of the writing process.  It's not fun.  :-( 

When the words of the story just pour out of you in that rush of creating the first draft, that's grand fun.  When the writing is going great, there isn't a high like it in the world.  Then the book is done, it's time to edit, and the let-down is awful.

The good news is that once you do learn to fix something in the editing process-- like an error that managed to spread itself across your entire manuscript, which I've done more times than I care to admit --you've practiced the fix so much that it has become unconscious and **drum roll** you never have to fix it again.  (Or at least if it does sneak in, the fix is on a much smaller scale.)

So each book that you write requires less editing, because with each book you've edited you learned all those lessons so they are automatic in the writing process.

Look at it like you're learning a new skill, maybe playing the piano.  It doesn't come automatically, you have to practice.  And "editing" your manuscript is the practice part. (Read more)

Deciding your story's genre is one of the first decisions you have to make when writing a novel or short story.  Experienced writers often know the genre before the story is begun, but it's not unusual for the inexperienced writer to be faced with the decision after the first draft is completed.

Why is a story's genre so important?  Can't I just write any story I want?

For a short story, its genre decides which magazines/e-zines you can send your story to, or which anthologies you can submit to.  Therefore, if you have a magazine in mind, you need to write a story that adheres to their genre guidelines if you want to be accepted.

For a novel, the genre most obviously decides where in the bookstore the book will be shelved.  But genre also decides many other things for a novel, including:

• the audience for your book;
• often, major plot line requirements;
• what un-written rules will have to be adhered to;
• sometimes, the length of the book;
• which agents you'll submit to, as they often specialize in their favorite genres;
• and which publishing houses and imprints you'll submit to.

Okay, I can see that it's important, but what is "genre"?

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines "genre" as "a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content."  So, for a story, the "genre" of the story is the "category" of the story "characterized by a particular style, form, or content." (Read more)