Irrelevant Cheetah

Things to do before leaving to go back to school:

1. Purchase airline tickets. Struggle to prevent airlines from robbing you blind.
2. Complete home repairs/improvements. Struggle to prevent Home Depot and Lowe’s from robbing you blind.
3. Set up technological gadgets in order to allow you to access your home network, home iMac, and satellite TV from anywhere in the world.
4. Defeat the giant mer-people and save the 9^th dimension.
5. Pester wife.
6. Pack.
7. Engage in blogging-related activities.

As you can see, #7 is a bit low on the list. It’s not you, it’s me. I promise I’ll update soon.

I recently won a book giveaway on Paperback Writer. It was for a chick-lit book, Death Angel by Linda Howard. Now, chick-lit I normally avoid like some overused cliché, but for some reason I entered this contest. I figured since I was stuck in my writing, a change in my reading might help. I just finished the book a few days ago and thought I’d write my first review. Lucky you – you get to read it!

I won’t summarize the book here; you can follow the link to read the synopsis on the B&N website. Rather, I’ll give my impressions.

For whatever reason, I read this book from a writer’s perspective, rather than a reader’s perspective. It’s not a bad thing, by any means, and I assume that it’s because it’s not the genre I normally read. The result: I was pleasantly surprised, and I think it was good for me to read this.

The impression I came away with was that the book was simple. Again, that’s not a bad thing. There are two main characters, and two or three very minor supporting characters, and that’s it. For some reason, most of the novels I’ve read have had many characters, with interwoven story lines and sub-plots and character arcs and so forth. Probably because of that, that’s the way I attempted to write my first novel, and I think I over-reached my grasp for a first book. By reading Death Angel, I learned that you don’t need to hear about minor storylines and the other stuff. This book follows, for the most part, the main character as she progresses through the plot. First she does A, then she does B, then C happens and she reacts by doing D, and so on. And the thing is that it works. It kept me turning pages to see what would happen next, and that’s my definition of a successful storytelling. Deep and meaningful? No. Entertaining? Yes.

Bottom line: if you’re not normally into this genre then you may not like it. It was an engaging read, however, and I have no problem recommending it.

Next on my list: Catch-22.

I’m tired of the Olympics. Really, honestly, completely tired of them.

You see, I’m not much into sports. I’ll watch a tennis match every now and then, and things don’t get much better than a rousing game of croquet (as long as there’s significant amounts of alcohol involved,) but for the most part I’m not into the sports. Which, I know, makes me different from about 99.98% of guys, but I’m nothing if not unique.

This explains why I really don’t care about the Olympics. There’s not much there I’m interested in watching. True, women’s beach volleyball is always worth a look, but I lost interest in watching tennis about four years into the Williams sisters’ reign, and the fact that NBC is televising roughly 84,513 hours of the Games means that Olympic coverage is eating significantly into my morning dose of MSNBC (which I have to watch at 7 AM because for some reason CNN just has to show Showbiz Tonight every morning even though my interest in Brangelina is even smaller than my interest in who won the gold in Archery.)

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to belittle any of the athletes’ accomplishments. I certainly couldn’t do anything like what they do. But I don’t really see why Michael Phelps’ ability to break every single swimming record known to man is more important (or fascinating) than my ability to move my windpipe two inches to the left while gargling It’s a Small World in Cantonese. I mean, I even looked into YouTubing that, but I’m pretty sure the demographics aren’t there. But I can turn on NBC at any given time and watch the silver medalist in Underwater-really-fast-basket-weaving pick her toenails.

However, I know I’m in the minority here, so I must grit my teeth and bear it, with a little help from BBC America, SciFi Channel, and Mythbusters.

That, and blog about it.

Come, take a look inside my private Hell. I warn you, you may have to avert your eyes.

Crap. There went this blog’s PG rating. Hope I didn’t scare anyone too badly.

There are a few author’s blogs (i.e., published authors who keep regularly-updated blogs) I read regularly. Lynn Viehl at Paperback Writer is one of them; J.A. Konrath at A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing is another.

Well, J.A. has a new message board he’s implemented as a part of his upcoming new website. I’ve joined, and it looks like it’ll be a good place to hang out, interact with other writers, and perhaps get some advice while you’re there, as J.A. has been seen there pretty regularly since its inception.

He asked his readers to help spread the word, so that’s what I’m doing. Feel free to look me up when you get there.

Yup, I’m still here. Been doing non-blog-related stuff, ya know?

I’m still writing, believe it or not – or trying to, at least. However, lately it seems like I’ve been beating my head against a wall. I’ve made no real progress on the new novel, and three short stories are just sitting there, stagnant. I am frustrated beyond belief.

I have figured out what the problem is. Conflict is my problem. I have no problems with characters and settings – I have some real good ‘uns – but that’s where it stops. I have these great characters and nothing to do with them. If I were to invent the character of Superman right now, in my story he’d end up sitting around, drinking tea, discussing Sartre with Batman.

Good stories come from conflict, and desire, and the resolution of both. This I know. But just injecting conflict doesn’t seem to be working for me. It ends up seeming contrived, somehow, and doesn’t seem to further the storyline any. I’ve tried the ‘what if?’ trick (“What if somebody was being haunted by his dead wife, except she was using Post-it notes?”) Then it sits there, thumbing its nose at me. “Yeah, so he’s got a sticky ghost. So what?” And that’s where I get stuck.

I guess figuring that much out is better than nothing. So I’m still beating my head against the wall, but at least I know what color the wall is.