Patti O'Shea's Blog

Or maybe advice isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s two observations? Warnings? I’m not sure what to call it, I guess, so I’ll just share what I consider the two most true statements I was told by more experienced writers and let you label them yourselves.

The first piece of advice (or whatever) came from an author of 60+ books after I sold my first one. She said that my writing process will change and that I shouldn’t try to fight it. Forget sticking to the way you used to do things and go with the way that works now.

Since then, every single book has had a different process. Some were just a little different, some drastically different, but her advice was helpful. Instead of panicking when the way I always did something didn’t work anymore, I just looked for what did work. Does the process change for a lot of writers on each book or did I just get lucky? Because in this group of writers, I’m the one who’s kind of the oddball. They get to use the same process for a number of books before something changes.

The second piece of advice (or whatever) came from the same author. She told me that I’ll reach a point in my career where I could be selling a lot more books if I only had time to work on proposals and write the stories, but that I wouldn’t be in a financial position to quit the day job and have that time.

That’s come true too. I feel like I’m in a Catch-22 situation. If I didn’t have the day job, I wouldn’t be struggling so hard to find time to write/revise the two proposals I’m working on. However, there’s no way (especially with a new house) that I can afford to quit my job and write full time. Just the cost of health insurance alone is daunting, and after the surprise of breaking a bone in my foot last year and needing surgery, I don’t take the need for health benefits lightly. :-/ As I recall, though, this author had no good advice on how to handle this situation besides riding it out. Which I’ve tried to do.

Time is really tight right now because I seriously need to unpack more boxes at my house. Like the boxes with my fall/winter clothes. It’s freezing here and I’m still wearing the summer attire because I can’t get to the long-sleeved shirts.

I’d love to hear how other writers in my situation do it. Besides sacrificing more sleep that is because I’ve got to tell you, I can’t lose anymore sleep and still be a functional human being. In fact, there’s some question if I am right now.

The thing is that writing is a demanding mistress (what’s the male equivalent? Gigalo? No, that’s not quite the right connotation.), but I didn’t realize how demanding until a few years in to being published. That’s another story, though, and I have to get going. The day job beckons.

Boof Bonser is a pitcher for the Minnesota Twins. Before you go, “oh, no, she’s going to talk about baseball,” I promise that’s not the theme. I will be talking about baseball players, but my message is about perseverance, about hanging in there despite everything. This definitely applies to writing and writers.

I’ll also add a caveat here: I know nothing about this player beyond his pitching, so when I talk of him being my hero, it’s only because of what I’ve seen from him on the field. I don’t know about his life off the field at all.

So let me tell you about Boof Bonser. He’s 24 years old and this is his first season in the big leagues after pitching in the minor league since 2000. The Twins called him up earlier this year, he pitched a game, didn’t do real well and was sent down to the minors again. The team yo-yo’ed him back and forth like that about three or four times. And the last couple of times, he pitched well. It didn’t matter, they sent him back to the triple A team anyway. He was called back up again, and with the expanded roster and the injuries to other pitchers, he’s stuck around.

But a funny thing happened on this last call up from the minor leagues–Bonser’s attitude seemed to change. One of the announcers even commented on it, saying something about how Bonser’s decided he’s not going down to Rochester again.

Since I heard that, I’ve been watching his face as he pitches and I can see the determination there. He’s not just grateful to be there anymore, he’s determined that he’s staying in the big leagues.

I contrast Bonser’s career with Francisco Liriano.

The Minnesota Twins have been lauding Liriano all season. He’s 22 years old and was brought up at the end of last season. According to a guy I work with who remembers last year, Liriano had a shaky call up. The Twins didn’t send him down to the minors.

They put Liriano into the starting rotation in June or July, I can’t remember, and he did well. In fact, he sparked the team to play better. The Twins manager, coaches and front office continued to laud Liriano. He was the second coming of Johann Santana. (Johann Santana is the Twins best pitcher. He won a Cy Young Award a couple of seasons ago and the odds are he’ll win it again this year. He’s a wonderful pitcher.) Then the local media started lauding Liriano the same way. They talked about him and talked about him and talked about him. It didn’t matter if he was pitching that day or not, Liriano was always worth bringing up. And why wouldn’t they? The Twins loved their young phenom, so that must mean he’s worth all the hype.

And of course, once the local media joined in the hyping of Liriano, and now there were three groups–Team, Media and Fans–lauding this young pitcher, the national media starting mentioning him. Liriano was going to be a superstar.

Don’t get me wrong, Liriano is a fabulous pitcher and he deserved the coverage, but he was even eclipsing Johann Santana and every other player on the team in the media and with Twins fans.

But I noticed something interesting looking at the stats for the last 6 games Liriano pitched and the last 6 games Bonser pitched–the gap between them isn’t that big. (In his last three starts (not including last night), he was 2-0 with a 2.37 ERA.)

Yes, it’s true. Liriano’s stats are slightly better, but not hugely better. The phenom and the player the Twins seem to feel is borderline have been doing almost equally well lately. And Liriano went on the disabled list, came back, and is now out for the season. He’s still getting more coverage than Boof Bonser.

But Boof Bonser has become my hero because it would have been so easy for him to believe he was borderline when the Twins ignored him, when they kept sending him down to the minor leagues. He could have doubted himself, wondered if he had any talent, wondered if his dream of pitching in the big leagues was worth it. Maybe he did do that. Who knows what was going through his head? But in the end, his attitude changed. Again, I don’t know what his thought process was or if he just had enough of being jacked around and said, “I’ll show them,” but the bottom line is Bonser is demonstrating to the Minnesota Twins that he deserves to have a regular spot in the rotation. (Last night he pitched 7 strong innings and got the victory. The Twins won 8-2.)

Of course, it’s just the first season for Bonser, but the writer in me wants to see him have a long and successful career. I want to see him be inducted into the Hall of Fame one day, but then I always root for (and identify with) the underdog.

Bonser got off to a slow and uncertain start with his big league career, but he dug deep and he found his own inner strength. I don’t think he needs the Twins front office to talk about him like he’s the savior of the pitching staff because he believes in himself.

Now here I make my big turn into writing. How many of us are Francisco Liriano? How many of us are going to have huge publisher support behind our first books, behind our careers? How many of us are Boof Bonser, the one who has to persevere? The one who has to dig deep and overcome adversity? We’re Boof before we sell, we’re Boof after we sell. But you know what? I don’t mind being Boof, not anymore.

It’s really easy to go out there every fourth or fifth day when you’re like Francisco Liriano and everyone thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s not so easy to be Boof Bonser. But Boof has proven he’s got that extra determination, that deep inner well that will help him no matter how difficult things become.

When I was a kid, my dad had a placard that said: Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard.

Boof Bonser has talent and he’s willing to work hard to stay in the big leagues. He’s walked through fire and blossomed. Francisco Liriano has talent, he’s worked hard, but for the first time, he’s facing adversity with his injury. We’ll find out if he has the same determination, the same inner strength.

It’s the same thing that separates writers. It’s real easy when everything is going your way to put in the hours necessary to produce books. There are a lot of authors that have published a book or two and disappeared. Then there are other authors that have hung around for dozens of books, who have long careers. I plan to be in the latter group–no matter how hard it is. I’m stubborn that way. My new motto is Be Like Boof. His perserverence and attitude has made him one of my heroes.

I didn’t write yesterday. I’m admitting that like it’s some horrible secret and I should be whispering it or skulking around. And I do have work to do, plenty of it. What I did, though, was unpack some of the boxes in my computer room and put stuff away.

I cracked. I couldn’t take the stacks of boxes cluttering up my floor anymore. I just had to get rid of them. I wanted to finish everything, but I ran out of places to put things (I really need some storage!) and I ran out of energy. Tuesday was one of those days at work where I was running around from the time I arrived until lunch. I hate that, especially when it’s nothing really important and someone just wants their request now.

But now the middle of my floor is box free. I still have boxes shoved under the desk and at the sides, which isn’t going to be too convenient, but I can walk into the room without having to detour. Okay, boring, I know, but this was hugely exciting to me because I was darn tired of it.

I could talk about radio advertising. There’s a topic that should interest everyone, right? (I know, sarcasm.) But I was floored again yesterday on my commute home by how bad so many of the radio ads are now. They used to be so clever and entertaining! Oh, sure, I remember there were bad ones too–lots of them–but there were also a lot of good ones. Not now. They’re all bad now with the exception of the Bud Light spots with Real American Heroes. It breaks my heart to see the current batch. Actually, I’ve felt this way for probably 6 or 7 years now. Sigh. Every time I get all het up about this, I think about dusting off my portfolio, but of course, I won’t.

Since I’m on a roll, my MN Twins won yesterday! Yea! That should put us 1/2 game out of first place in our division. Can Detroit feel us breathing down their neck? I missed the start of the game because of all the box unpacking I did, so the team was already up 6-0 when I turned on the TV in the 4th inning. It was raining in Boston and I thought, wow, playing in the cold and the rain, but apparently it’s warmer out east than it is in MN. It’s darn cold here.

Okay, I’m done now. I managed to even squeeze in a reference to the weather so my job here is finished. Tomorrow, I’ll try to come up with an actual topic.

After days of having very little spam come in, I was bombarded this morning. Each email had a different return address and one of those ridiculous, mixed words title and every single one of them was for help with my erection problem. =8-O (No, I don’t open spam. I have a program that allows me to preview mail without opening it.) Someone posted somewhere that the spammers wouldn’t keep annoying us if people weren’t buying their product or falling for the scams. That’s pretty sad.

I started rewriting the scene with Sloan and this new version is working better. I didn’t get too far, but I’m hopeful I’ve got it now. I just need time to work on it. Sigh. Back to my I-need-a-clone theme.

And I have a time now for the book signing at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. I’ll be there with Jenny Crusie, Bob Mayer, Barbara Samuel and a bunch of other authors on September 30th. We’ll be in the Sears rotunda from 7:00 until 8:30 that night and there’s a question and answer session. Gah!

Gotta run. The day job calls. Sigh.

BN.com is out of RF again. I knew this was going to happen. Amazon has one new copy, though. Oh, the joy of being obessive. Sigh.

Ravyn’s Flight is available brand new at BN.com. I don’t know how long this is going to last so if you’re looking for a copy and waiting for it to show up at one of the two online bookstores, here’s your opportunity.

I’m chatting tonight at Writerspace at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. This is the monthly ParaNormal Romance chat and all the authors who were interviewed for Paraphernalia have been invited. I don’t know who else will show up, but I plan to be there. I hope some of you can make it too!

I worked on my new scene yesterday. I could have finished it, but I stopped after five pages because it was boring. All introspection, nothing really happening. In the first version of this story, there was more stuff before the mission started and I was hoping I could maybe use some of that, but nothing really worked with the new version. I was kind of hoping to wake up with the answer this morning, but no such luck. I’ll have to do some mulling.

After working all day, I finally logged back on the internet and had three email–2 spam and 1 digest from Yahoo Groups. What? Did the world stop yesterday? No one had posted on any of the boards I visit (all 2 of them) and there was 1 blog entry on my Bloglines. Where’d everyone go? And why didn’t you invite me?

So my pages suck and I decided the curtains I ordered Saturday aren’t going to work for my house after all. The ones for the windows on either side of the china cabinet are too plain and boring. I should have gone with the lacey ones even though I didn’t like the uneven edge at the bottom. Or at least I should have waited till I found ones I really liked. And the ones I picked out for the computer room are going to look weird because of the color. They’re purple. I’ll probably return them both, but at least I had free shipping.

I usually don’t dither, but this curtain thing is horrible and I’m trying to do my shopping online because I’m so pressed for time. That only makes things more difficult because I can’t really see the fabrics or how much pattern they have. I figured, though, that if I could get curtains up, my mom would stop trying to drag me to the mall. :-/

First of all, I have a new interview up! It’s with ParaNormal Romance and it’s part of their Paraphernalia ezine. These were some of the most thought-inducing questions I’ve ever had to answer–at least that I can remember. I’ll also be chatting tomorrow at Writerspace in connection with this article. Time is 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. I’ll do a formal announcement on the blog tomorrow.

Secondly, on to my day yesterday. I actually got a lot done on the proposal. There are two things left for me to do before I can return it to my agent: Fix the ending of the book. (This is going to be really, really hard, but she’s right, there’s a logic flaw there that’s huge.) and write a new scene from Sloan’s POV. I read through what I can keep and I think part of the reason it seems like so many scenes are from Tyler’s POV is that his personality and voice are so strong.

It’s not the Sloan isn’t strong–she is–but her personality is more laid back, so even when I’m in her POV, Tyler seems to take over. She’s kind of a chameleon too, changing what she presents to the world based on her audience and I think that’s contributing to this issue. I’m not quite sure what to do about it because this is who they are, but I’m thinking if I can write 6 or 7 strong pages from her, it might fix it. The problem is coming up with a scene that will do this. I’m still thinking about it.

Characters are interesting. Sloan totally holds her own with Tyler, in fact, she aggravates the hell out of him and enjoys doing it. She reminds me of Mika in a way, although Sloan is a lot more cynical and not nearly as outrageous. Tyler isn’t as damaged as Conor, but although he’s human (this story is NOT paranormal), he’s much more dangerous than Conor was.

My characters come in as fully formed people and one of the things I find so fascinating is how my hero and heroine always seem to fit together. It’s not something I do and it’s not like I get to pick who the characters are or what their personalities are like. I don’t even get to name them. Despite the fact that Sloan reminds me a little bit of Mika, Mika would never work as a heroine for Tyler, just like Sloan would never work as a heroine for Conor. Sloan couldn’t reach Conor, but Mika could and did. And if for some reason, Tyler was forced to work with Mika, he’d do his job and walk away afterward without a backward glance. He won’t be able to walk away from Sloan. I can already see how she’s impacted his life, he just doesn’t realize he’s down for the count yet. That’s okay, it makes it more fun for me because there are more torture possibilities.

Goal for the day is to get that new scene written with Sloan, something that showcases her.

I’ve been struggling to revise a proposal that I’d sent to my agent. She wanted some minor changes, but among them was that I do the story more from the heroine’s POV. It’s Tyler’s book, but I don’t have a problem with telling it mostly from Sloan’s POV. I did that with Through a Crimson Veil. That story was Conor’s, but because of the series, I had to give the majority of viewpoint scenes to Mika and I think it worked.

The proposal is a prologue and four chapters–they’re short ones. Mostly. Prologue was Sloan’s POV and the first chapter is split–first scene from Tyler and the second from Sloan. The fourth chapter is in Sloan’s POV too, so that left chapters 2 and 3. (Three is from the bad guy’s POV.) So I’ve been fighting with chapter 2, trying to take it out of Tyler’s head and tell it from Sloan’s perspective, but no matter where I started it, the change just didn’t work. I thought it was because I hadn’t written new stuff for so long in this story (and maybe that’s still part of it), but last night I had a light bulb moment. Chapter two flat out has to be in Tyler’s POV. It’s too boring otherwise because Sloan is doing a lot of little things. Plus, switching to her POV will give too much away too early in the scene. It’s stronger in Tyler’s head.

Since the third chapter is entirely from the bad guy’s POV, I’ve decided to dump that and replace it with a scene in Sloan’s head. That will swing the majority of the proposal chapters into her viewpoint. Right now, I’m thinking I won’t do any villain POV in this book after all. One of the things I want to do is have the hero come to like the villain and struggling with that because he knows this guy is bad. As I thought about it last night (before I fell asleep), I realized that if we only see the villain from Sloan and Tyler’s perspective, it’ll be easier to make him ambivalent to a degree. There does have to be a reason why Tyler could grow to like him and if I’m in the bad guy’s head, it might be harder to make this understandable to the reader because they’ll know this man is a bastard.

So now I have a plan of attack for the day. I’m keeping chapter 2 and rewriting chapter 3. There’s definitely room to add a new scene/chapter because the book takes a time hop in there. I did that to get to the action faster, but now I’ll just fill in the gap.

The other thing I found interesting is what my agent wanted me to spell out in the synopsis. This was all stuff I’d cut to shorten it up. Guess I cut a little too much. This should be easy to fix, though. I think.

In other news, my mom is trying to drive me nuts. She wants me to go to Penney’s because they have a curtain sale going on right now. Which is great, except I don’t have time. I have to finish this proposal. Have to. Because I really, really, really need to start my next book. Her response when I told her how busy I am? Well, let’s just take a drive out there. Sigh. That would take up several hours of writing time and she doesn’t seem to understand how important every minute is.

All authors are neurotic, it’s solely a matter of degree. Sometimes I wonder if it’s part of the creative mindset. Let’s face it, we all have fabulous imaginations and we’re able to dream up all kinds of scenarios which tend to make us worry about things normal people wouldn’t.

One of my issues is email. I absolutely hate it when people don’t reply, not even a one liner, because then I sit there and worry like mad that it was lost. Email does go astray, get stuck in spam filters, and things like that so it’s a legitimate concern. It would go a long way to alleviate my mind if I would just get a note that said, “Got your email, thanks.” See? Four words, ten seconds to type and I can relax.

I sent an email with my dedication for “Dark Awakening” last week, but received no indication that it arrived. And yesterday I sent a one-page article to someone in my local writing chapter for a handout they’re doing. I didn’t exactly stick to the topic–craft–and I have dual worries here: did the email make it? And is what I did choose to write about okay? Because I can’t really talk about craft. My best answer to craft questions is something like: I don’t know; I just sit down and write.

I absolutely hate having to email people to ask if they received my email. I’m not sure why I feel this way, but I do feel like I’m bothering them because if they got the email and decided it didn’t need a response, then I feel kind of stupid.

And right now, I have another email I’m worrying about. My editor sent me a note about a month ago, telling me she was working on my revision letter, but I never received anything. So is she still working on my revisions? Or did her email to me get lost? Maybe it’s floating in the black hole that lurks in cyberland and all this time she’s been thinking I’m working on the book when I’m not because I never received anything. Maybe I’m going to get a note from her asking where the revisions are. Maybe I’m going to work myself into a state before the weekend.

It’s not easy being neurotic. Ask any author. We all know.