And I mean “supporting” in the fiscal sense.

As someone who reads quickly and ravenously, and who sadly, does not have enough money to buy every book she wants to read, or even just the books she wants to own, (as a life-long book collector, this number is smaller, but not by much) I find this responsibility weighs heavily on me at times.

A large number of the books I consume, I acquire in ways that do not directly fiscally support the author. Before you start having visions of me sneaking into bookstores in the dead of night and carrying out sackfuls of books, you should know that the means by which I consume these books are legal and often, intended or even encouraged by the authors. I check books out from libraries. I participate in book swaps on sites such as Bookmooch.com, and purchase used copies of books that look interesting at yard sales and thrift shops. I listen to podcast novels via sites like Podiobooks.com.

Because I do all of the above, I take my responsibility as a purchaser very seriously when I walk into a bookstore to buy a brand new copy of a book. When trying to decide which of the dozens of books that I’d like to take home with me, actually will come home with me, I’ve developed a loose set of rules that help me make my decision.

• First, I rarely buy a book by an author that I haven’t read before. I will admit, this is probably the rule that gets broken the most.
• Second, I try to only buy books by authors that aren’t already huge bestsellers. I figure that if you’re a household name, my purchase of your book will not matter as much to you as it would to someone who’s just starting out. (I know that unfortunately, just because you’re widely known or a bestseller doesn’t guarantee success in your career. However, I know that the chances, however slim, are better for you than for most of the other authors who have their books on the shelves.)
• Third, I try to buy books by authors that I like and want to support as soon as possible after their initial release. The sales numbers within the first week after release are the most important numbers.

These rules are not for everyone. I’m not trying to say that they should be. However, I feel that it’s my duty to walk into a bookstore, and put my money  to the best use I possibly can, supporting authors that I like and want to see more of. These rules make some decisions easier for me, because it really just comes down to two questions: will my purchase make a difference to this author, and if so, is the author someone I want to support?

Why am I mentioning all this now? Well, a couple of days ago, I was led to a blog post written by the inimitable J.C. Hutchins, in which he explains his reasons for deciding not to continue to put out his fiction for free over the internet.

(A digression. I found J.C. Hutchins through the SF podcasting community back when he was podcasting the first novel of his 7th Son trilogy. I’ve been known to curse his name a time or two, such as when he ended book 2 with a massive cliffhanger, but wow, what a great storyteller! I almost don’t know whether to love him, or just be massively jealous.)

His post is impossible to summarize, but a central point is that the two books that he had published, which includes Book 1 of the 7th Son trilogy, underperformed to the point that his publisher has decided not to publish Books 2 and 3.

And that brings me back to my sense of personal responsibility. Because just a week ago, I’d listened to a couple of interviews that Hutchins gave to Mike and Mike at the Dragon Page Cover to Cover podcast in which he talked about the 7th Son novels and everything he was doing to promote the print version. The interviews were several months old (I’m perpetually behind in my podcast listening), but as I listened, I thought to myself, “Wow, has time passed that fast? I didn’t realize the book was out already. I really need to make sure I pick up my copy.” A couple of days later, I went to my local bookstore, and actually searched for the book, hoping to find it. They didn’t have it. I was a little bit concerned, and definitely disappointed, but decided I would purchase it on Amazon when I got home.

Reading Hutchins’ blog post was like a blow to my gut. I felt that as a reader, I let him down. I loved the novels when he so generously shared them for free–I’d had every intention of purchasing the novel when it was available. On a rational level, I know that the one copy I’d have purchased would not have made the difference in St. Martin’s press deciding not to publish the subsequent 7th Son books. But every drop in a bucket does make a difference.

Writers and readers depend on each other. Readers depend on writers for the raw materials that they turn into words and sentences and characters and story that keep us entertained. Writers depend on readers to support them, to allow them the time and the opportunity to create and to share their creations.

You could call it a reader’s responsibility, but it’s entirely selfish, really. I want to be able to keep reading J.C. Hutchins’ writing. In order to do so, what do I have to offer in return? Believe me, next time he has a book coming out, I’m marking that sucker’s release date on my calendar in flashing neon. First week’s numbers, and all.

But really, the speeches I truly love are the ones like this one, by Michael Giacchino for Best Score for the movie Up.

“When I was nine I asked my dad, “Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8mm camera that was in your drawer?” And he goes, “Sure, take it.” And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, “What you’re doing is a waste of time.” Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you’re doing is not a waste of time. So it was normal to me that it was OK to do that. But  I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system, so if you’re out there and you’re listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It’s not a waste of time. Do it. OK?”

I know that the awards we’re most interested in are the big ones, the actors and actresses, the director, the best picture. But I love that the Academy Awards provide an opportunity to honor all these other people who do amazing creative work everyday, who we don’t see on a regular basis in every magazine, whose names we probably don’t recognize, but without whom, the entire experience wouldn’t be the same… And I love when they, in turn, use their opportunity, their rare and single moment onstage, to encourage others to go out and be creative themselves.

(P.S. I got the Michael Giacchino transcript from this great article, also about the power of speeches, and far more eloquent than my little tribute.)

Florida was my home for not quite two years, but I loved the physical environment of it like I have never loved a land before or since. California’s blue skies, cool breezes, and 70 degree days still “feel” like home to me, and I loved the snow in Massachusetts, and the sudden arrival of spring after long months of winter. Virginia summers remind me of childhood, watching fireflies, and I moved to Maryland just as the cherry blossoms burst into bloom, but nowhere else I have lived has so constantly reminded me of the world that existed long before humans arrived, and will remain long after. Broward County was built up out of the Everglades, and from the canals and ponds that criss-crossed the county, to the plants that couldn’t be stopped by the spread of golf courses, it showed.

And the skies were lovely. Here, if it rains, it’s gray for days before and after. In Florida, the rain came up suddenly, heavily, and then ten minutes (or two miles, if you were driving) it was gone, replaced by blue skies heavy with clouds, gray, and edged with the gold of sunlight.

Today, it was as if a little bit of Florida had wandered north for a visit.

And I found myself wanting to share.

I’ve been thinking a lot since the holidays about trying to write more in 2010. I’ve now gotten into a cycle in which I win NaNoWriMo only on even numbered years–2004, 2006, 2008. (Not-)coincidentally, this seems to match up exactly with my big life cycles, which is to say that the years I have a lot of upheaval or excitement in my life, I don’t win NaNoWriMo. And since I got to college, NaNoWriMo is pretty much the one time a year I devote myself to writing.

But this year, I don’t want to just participate in NaNoWriMo. I want to write more. By that, I meant fiction. But I reorganized my bookshelf recently, and I have quite a large collection of books of writing by fiction authors that isn’t fiction: memoirs, letters, journals, autobiographies… so if I recognize that as a proper genre, at least for my bookshelf, why wouldn’t I recognize it as a proper genre for my own writing?

I just got an e-mail (well, a couple of days ago, but I just opened it) from my college alumnae association. It linked to a slideshow of the college campus in the winter, and while snow always looks prettier in pictures than it is in real life, I miss snow, and its brightness. For that matter, I miss winter in L.A. too, where it’s only mildly cool, and the palm trees are decorated with white lights wrapped around their trunks. I wonder if I have a touch of seasonal affective disorder… the gray mornings and winter chill are starting to get to me, and I’m counting down the days to the solstice, because even though there’s still a lot of winter to go, at least after the winter solstice, the days will start getting longer again. (It’s tomorrow, thank the deities.)

1. I currently have the remains of a temporary tattoo (of a lion head) on my neck. I succumbed to peer pressure yesterday. But it was strange enough having it there that I scrubbed most of it off in the shower this morning.

2. My last temporary tattoo, by contrast, was a Jolly Rogers flag on my upper arm, which lasted for two weeks. 

3. I’m wearing my favorite pair of jeans, which have a rip in the inner thigh. It’s sort of strange spot for a pair of jeans to rip. I wonder if it’s possible to patch it?

4. I always have cold toes and cold feet. Winter and Summer. Usually I don’t even notice it, until someone else remarks on it.

5. Speaking of toes and feet, I have long feet and long toes, and it turns out that I get my feet from my mother, and she got them from her father. We all have the same feet. 

6. I’m addicted to chapstick. Seriously, regular ole’ unflavored SPF 15 chapstick.

7. In cooking, my favorite fresh herb is cilantro, and I can’t stand parsley. I know it’s usually the other way around. I don’t mind parsley (as much) in things other people make, but every time I try to cook with it, I just think, “ugh, what is that?”

I’ve been reading Elizabeth Berg’s book, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True the last couple of days. It was one of the books that I picked up with the other writing books from the library. But this one was different than the others. I picked it up on impulse right as I was leaving the section on writing… Something about the title or the cover just grabbed me. I chose the other books I did because they were specifically about the craft of putting together a novel. Books on plot, on structure, on character. 

This book is something different. It has a chapter on recipes. As in, food. Okay, so that’s not exactly something you look for in a book on writing, but I think it gets across the essence of this book. It’s part memoir, part writing advice, part conversation with someone you really want to have as a friend. 

It reminds me a bit of Natalie Goldberg’s books on writing, or perhaps Anne Lamott’s. It’s not so much about how to write, as it is about how to open your mind and live as a writer, how to see the world through writer’s eyes and to translate it to the written word.

I think this book is worth its price alone for the chapter on writing exercises. Page after page of writing exercises, randomly arranged, writing exercises that open the imagination. Here’s just a few of them: 

•Use these three words in a sentence or brief paragraph: dream, heart, gold. 

•Light through her lace curtains, _________ as _____________.

•If your bed could talk, how would it describe you?

•Your favorite cup

Her “homework” for that chapter is to make up ten exercises of your own. In another chapter, one on “writing myths,” she challenges her own assertion about one of the myths she mentions, and asks you to try it yourself, to prove her either right or wrong. 

I love this book. I’m inspired simply reading it. I find myself itching to try the writing exercises, to try the homework in the other chapters, even to cook one of the recipes she shares. I want to keep this book close to me, and though I’ve never read anything by her before, I requested two of her novels from the library.

A couple of nights ago, I listened to the Writing Excuses podcast, which I’ve newly discovered, and absolutely love, and specifically, Season 2, Episode 8, which is on the three act structure. One of them (I haven’t been listening long enough to tell them all apart easily, and since I was listening before falling asleep, I’m a bit hazy on the details anyway) said that if he defined Act II as “try and fail, try and fail, try and fail,” he defined the crossing point from Act II as “try, fail, and learn” in that the characters have still failed what they were trying to do, but that they learned some critical piece of information that prepared them to go into the final battle and win.

I highly recommend you go listen to the podcast now, because there’s a lot of good information, it’s only 15 minutes long, and it’s free and easily accessible. 

The other source of information that I’ve found on Three Act structure is one of the writing books I checked out of the library last week, Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, by James Scott Bell. I’ve only read the first few chapters so far… he definitely has a knack for naming and defining elements of writing. 

His chapter on the three-act structure is a great example of that… he describes it as “A Disturbance and Two Doors.” The idea is that the disturbance happens in Act I. Up until the Disturbance, your protagonist (or what he calls the Lead) has just been living his or her life. Then the disturbance happens, and at that point, a door presents itself. If the protagonist doesn’t go through that door (basically, chooses to walk away from the conflict) then the rest of the story doesn’t happen. But if he or she does go through that door, then you’re in Act II. (And later, the second door takes you into Act III.) 

What I like about this view of it, is that walking through the door is something that the protagonist deliberately has to do… she has to make a choice.

One of the things I realized in writing my first draft of Dexter Moon is that far too often, Dexter and Marie seem to be just along for the ride… This bit of explanation cements that in my mind, and one of the things I’ll be focusing on in my revision is finding a way for Dexter to literally make that choice to walk through that doorway early on in the story.

I did, today.

I’m currently working in a toy store part time. Today, one of our customers was a woman, late thirties, with a young daughter, about three or so. She was checking out, and stayed, talking, for quite a while. I wasn’t actually helping her, I was doing something else while someone else helped her, but I was participating in the conversation, and as I looked at her, I thought… ‘you know, she looks a lot like Dexter Moon.’

It was a random thought, out of nowhere, but as soon as I thought it, I realized it was true… She had dark red hair, just past shoulder length, parted in the middle, and wore a simple black sweater with jeans and high-heeled (and I mean, stilletto spike heels) boots). It wasn’t so much what she was wearing (I can’t imagine Dex in those boots on her day off) but her whole attitude…professional-turned-mommy.

And then, just as I thought that, she leaned forward, and said, “you know, if I had known how much fun it is to have children, I would have had my daughter earlier.”

And that’s what blew my mind. Because fast-forward Dexter about 10 years, and I could perfectly imagine her there, in that woman’s spot, telling us all about how much she was looking forward to Christmas now that she had a child. There was nothing that woman said that couldn’t have equally well have come out of Dexter’s mouth. Again, in about ten years.

And it’s not something I’d ever thought about consciously… What Dexter would be like when she had kids, or where she would be ten years down the line. And I probably wouldn’t have realized the connection, in terms of her outlook, except that she had already reminded me slightly of Dexter physically. 

Crazy. And very cool.

I, like so many other women, grew up with the Anne of Green Gables series of books. Or rather, they grew up with me. I’ve read them all, most of them multiple times. As I grew up, different books spoke to me, as I empathized with different times in Anne’s life.

The only other book I’d ever read by Montgomery was Emily Climbs. Again, I’m not sure how that particular book made it into my own personal library, but I loved it–possibly more so than the Anne books–and read it over and over. 

It’s the middle book of three: Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest. You can tell, when you read it. Many of the characters and relationships are not explained fully, and there are countless references to events in Emily of New Moon. It ends on a questioning note… the stories are not tied up completely, though there is a sense of where they are going. 

But mostly, it’s the story of a young writer. In the very first chapter of Emily Climbs, Emily sits in her room, “writing herself out” in her diary. In Emily of New Moon, the story is about Emily adjusting to her mother’s side of the family, whom she must go live with after her father passes away. The first chapter starts with a description of the home she shared with her father. 

But in Emily Climbs, the central conflict of the story is in Emily learning to be a writer. The phrase, “Emily Climbs” is a reference to a poem that Emily (As well as Montgomery herself) finds inspiration in… it tells of climbing an “Alpine path” to fame. The quoted lines:

Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep
  How I may upward climb
The Alpine path, so hard, so steep,
  That leads to heights sublime;
How I may reach that far-off goal
  Of true and honoured fame,
And write upon its shining scroll
  A woman’s humble name.”

Emily is sent to Shrewsbury to attend High School with her friends… but in exchange must promise not to write “anything untrue” while she is there. She thinks it will be a very difficult thing, though her teacher and mentor thinks it will be very good for her writing. She is still able to write poetry, and character sketches, and essays, and almost everything that happens to her in the novel turns into fodder for her writing somehow. (Or it is not, which has its own significance.) She starts to gain some success as a writer, though it is not an easy path for her. 

I devoured Emily Climbs (which I greeted like the old friend it is) and Emily’s Quest, the third book in the series tonight. I have to admit that I don’t much like Emily’s Quest–it focuses far more on her romances, than on her experience as a writer. But there was a moment I did like, quite a bit. Montgomery clearly did quite a bit of planning for Emily’s Quest, because it follows through several throwaway references from Emily Climbs (at least, I’d thought they were throwaways). One of which was a letter from herself at 14 to herself at 24. In Emily Climbs, the contents of that letter are never revealed… she just mentions writing it in her diary. But in Emily’s Quest, when she turns 24, she reads it. It’s full of hope and dreams for her future self, a vision of herself married and a famous author, with everything she wanted at her feet. Emily at twenty-four, is none of those things, and had a rather bad year beside, and reads it, feeling very cynical about the letter, and her naive self who wrote it. And then something wonderful happens.

I’m 24 now, and at 14 I might have written exactly that sort of letter to myself. That moment in the story rang very true to me. 

Montgomery apparently saw much more of herself in Emily than in Anne, and in fact, apparently many of Emily’s experiences were taken from her own life. There’s sort of an interesting quality to the books, in that often the narrator addresses us as if we were reading the biography of, say, an author, and many of the stories are told as excerpts from Emily’s diaries.

A couple of links to finish us off… First, the text of Montgomery’s The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, which I haven’t had a chance yet to read fully, but want to at some point. Second, though Emily Climbs was first published in 1925, meaning it’s not in the public domain yet in the U.S., it is in the public domain in places like Australia, meaning you can find the text online at Project Gutenberg Australia. (Most of the Anne books, by the way, can be found at the U.S.-based Project Gutenberg, if you’ve never stopped by.) Of course, if you’re not in Australia, or if you’d rather read the books on paper, you can probably find them just as easily at your local library, like I did.

So, I’m currently about 30 pages into my first draft… the first few scenes were definitely the most difficult, because I had to figure out what I wanted to do with the opening, and then there were a couple of scenes right off the bat that weren’t quite right, and weren’t quite wrong, either. But for now, things are going fairly smoothly… I hope to get another 20 or so pages done this afternoon. 

And, I found someone to Beta Read my first draft for me, which is exciting.

Also, I wanted to throw this out there if anyone interested. This idea is one I’m stealing from Jinx, over at Brain Lag. In short, I’m offering to trade NaNovels with anyone who’s interested. The catch is that we won’t qualify our trades with any preambles. No, not even about the bad grammer, or the un-spellchecked typos. Definitely not about the dropped storylines, or the way one of your characters’ names changed three times in the course of the first hundred pages.

I traded with Jinx, and there’s something so freeing about knowing that your unedited raw work is just out there in the world, being seen by someone other than yourself. Plus, it’s fun to see what other people have written.

If you’re interested, just leave a comment, or e-mail me.