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| Coming June 30 to Amazon and Smashwords |
We all have bad habits,
yet you can only really change them if you admit to them. As the
author of 1.12 million words in the To Be Sinclair series, with
seven books up on Amazon and Smashwords, one coming out June 30th, and 2/3 done
with the finale to the series, I’d like to think I’ve isolated my bad habits
and am changing them as best I can. It’s not always easy to do, and
sometimes not necessary, but my purpose is to whittle them down so they do not
plague me and I can get more writing done. Some of them may seem
silly to you, but since they are a plague on my process, I need to work on
them!
1. My nails are too long. Sure, go ahead and laugh; most people think
women should have long, sexy nails, and most writers understand how hard it can
be to work personal hygiene routines into the day, much less an ‘extra’ one. Still, nail-clipping is one of my least
favorite things to do, so it usually only happens when one of them breaks.
I suppose most people do
not understand the obsessive nature of writers such that this issue appears
unimportant, but it occasionally contributes a great deal to my stress. Imagine, if you would, that you used to have
the power to open up a newspaper, run your eyes across one side for two
seconds, and any typo on the page jumps out at you. I used to be like that, and since my
superpower disappeared after a serious health crisis, I miss it sorely.
Typing with long nails
does not seem like it should bother a person.
Many women regularly get salon nail treatments, keep their nails long
and have learned how to type with them.
You would think even people like me, with a tendency to painfully trim
my nails down to the nail bed, would get used to longer nails simply by typing
every day while they grow out. Yet when
they get too long, the traitorous typos creep in.
So staring at the screen,
obsessively pounding out a scene while I’m actually visualizing it and have to
get That Perfect Phrase down the instant I think it means I do not catch the
typos until I re-read the scene. With a
sailor’s lifetime ration of curse-words springing from my lips, I spend gobs of
precious time correcting the errors and bitching at myself in High Rant,
swearing to clip them at the next opportunity, namely, when I finish correcting
the scene.
But by then, I’ve also
re-read the scene, noticed a word or phrase that was inadequate, and corrected it
with one of the time-wasting methods I describe below. By the time I get to the end, I’m ready to
write the next scene, having completely forgotten my desire to rid myself of
these treacherous, time-wasting spikes that love to get caught just long enough
between my laptop’s keys to vomit extra letters on the page. All told, it’s better than writing everything
longhand, but not by much.
2. My sentences are too long. I can’t help it; I got a 4.0 GPA in my
studies for a master’s degree in a subject that takes itself seriously,
education. I’m also a longtime reader of
science fiction and write with a high-falutin’ vocabulary, which is why so many
of the hicks I grew up with think I’m too ‘uppity’ for them or some such
nonsense. In academia, especially in
education, the ability to write long sentences with long words means you sound
like you know what you are saying. If
you doubt it, may I refer you to Robert A. Heinlein’s description of Zebediah
Carter’s doctoral dissertation in The
Number of the Beast.
I pride myself on knowing
and saying exactly what I mean, but that doesn’t mean I need to victimize the
reader with a deluge of precise words and phrases that consistently flow toward
a complex thought which takes most people real effort to follow continuously,
despite my overall goal to write with clarity and my sincere desire to
accurately sum it up such that it need never be revisited again. (See what I mean?) So when I edit, I constantly find myself
breaking up sentences into shorter sentences, and paragraphs into shorter
paragraphs.
3. I type too fast. I feel like I must, to keep up with the
images in the scene running through my mind.
I have often said I feel like my brain has a portal to a future parallel
dimension, and I spy upon my characters’ lives, scribing them as best I can. As a result, I find myself using the same
catch-phrases, over and over.
Did the
character pause or start an action, only to immediately abandon it? “He laughed a bit.” I am fascinated with reading facial expressions
and notice just how much we communicate with our eyes. “She looked alarmed at first.” I write science fiction romances in which the
characters do not remain chaste or clueless until the very end. They offer each other support and comfort, so
“He snuggled her close.”
Well, hell, I know I’m
going to rewrite the damn scene fiftyleven times anyway, so when getting the
initial actions and dialogue down the first time, I might as well just throw
those bland phrases down to remind myself to flesh out the scene later,
right? It’s not like I don’t know I
suffer cognitive dysfunctions now and can only edit for three significant
features at a time, such as commas, dialogue tags, and ‘that’ vs ‘which’, so
I’ll get to catch-phrases sometime or other, right?
All goes well until a
beta reader says, “You use the word ‘then’ a lot.” When my editor starts marking out character
names, I realize I must go back and fill in with ‘he’ and ‘she’. And when I’ve published a book and a
purchaser emails me to say she was rather tired of everyone doing things ‘a bit’,
but is glad I did not use the repetitive phrase ‘a little bit’ all the time
because that is her total pet peeve, I growl in frustration as I pull up every
final manuscript and replace every ‘a bit’ with some other phrase. Anything that makes me re-upload to the
digital platform also makes me re-download for another damn edit, and with
seven published books at this point, the process never seems to be
complete. Arrrrrgh!
4. I use the thesaurus too much. I blame point 3 for that, but I also blame my
education, particularly my self-education.
As an avid reader, I love the flavor of words, so much so that I have
spent hours perusing thesaurus.com for just the right word. Hell, I’ve even gotten so lost in chasing for
the right flavor, I ended up writing my first blog post just to exemplify how
freaky I get over understanding the essence of a word! (See Geeking Out on the Thesaurus
http://evacaye.blogspot.com/2012/09/geeking-out-on-thesaurus.html
or on one of the blogs such as Digital Book Today that have reprinted it.)
This is the hard part
about using the thesaurus: you look up a word and see a dozen offerings in the
FIRST entry, and they all have different ‘emotional settings’. So you wonder, “Do I even really know what
‘intrigue’ MEANS?” You click on the
dictionary button, find out that the meaning you originally wanted is
considered obsolete (‘to entangle’), and go back to the thesaurus,
taste-testing each entry with the wholeness of the scene you’re trying to write
to see if it fills the gap in your sentence adequately.
What’s even worse is when
you are trying to write in a particular culture and run across expressions you
cannot use, but you have a vague, niggling doubt if the one phrase you think
you understand is indeed what you mean, yet cannot find any precise definition
that meets the lexicon of your characters!
If your character must ‘batten upon’ a relative out of need, but she’s
High Royal, I certainly cannot call her a ‘freeloader’, ‘bum’, ‘sponge’,
‘lounge lizard’ or ‘mooch’, especially when she is a hard-working, determined
student, fiercely independent and really making something of herself, though
she has a sudden, temporary need of a residence. Since your readers might not know the archaic
phrase ‘batten upon’, you try to find a new word.
But, lo and behold! The thesaurus entries for ‘batten’ are:
fasten securely; bar; black out; blossom; flourish; flower; prosper; tether;
thrive. What the hell? You are POSITIVE that to ‘batten upon someone
out of need’ is the right phrase, yet if one of your readers has never heard it
before and tries to look it up, is s/he going to think you’re off your
rocker? Hours, people. I spent hours trying to find a better phrase
to show the delicacy of the situation, and Rosita ended up battening upon her
boyfriend anyway. I rationalized it to
myself by saying readers expand their vocabulary through context anyway (thank
you, Literacy Education course!), and they should appreciate
learning a genteel way of expressing such a common occurrence without
completely denigrating those who have temporary housing problems.
Still, the question
remains: must I use ‘desultorily’ when
‘casually’ will do? Must I defend myself
to my editor, arguing that ‘essayed’ instead of ‘asked’ is needed because saying
‘he asked tentatively/hesitantly and with a clear tone of doubt’ would affect
the flow of the dialogue? Face it, I’m a
word junkie, and this is one time-wasting habit I doubt I will ever break. I hope my readers appreciate that, at least.
5. I wrestle with other people’s demons. For example, I use a lot of adverbs that end
in –ly. When I read an article on why
that’s such a bad thing, I spent two weeks editing my entire body of published
works in desperate attempts to replace as many –ly adverbs as possible. There’s no way you can get them all, and as I
uploaded my manuscripts to Amazon and Smashwords, I felt I had improved upon
them. Yet how many readers will be so
very grateful that my character no longer sighed joyfully, but has now evolved
to having ‘emitted a joyful sigh’?
After reading three
different style manuals’ rules on spelling out numbers, I wrote up my own rules
and sent them to my editor, deciding unhyphenated ones or those beginning a
sentence should be spelled out, though numbers expressing ‘pure data’ in
context should be left as digits. After
reading all the arguments why one should no longer use two spaces at the end of
a period, I decided older readers who prefer double spaces as visual cues are a
more important demographic to me than anyone snarking about how wasteful or
margin-warping those extra spaces are, though if my books ever go to print I
will delete them just so the reader doesn’t have to pay for an extra 40 pages.
What matters to me is the
literature, not the ‘industry standards’, a phrase I have come to loathe. Yes, I still tweak my book covers, upload and
republish new versions of my manuscripts regularly, and read everyone’s
opinions on What You Must Do, as if their 10 Most Important Writing Tips
article establishes them as an expert in the field. When my beta readers tell me of a problem, I
fix it, but at this point I have little desire to read one more article about
what I should be doing. I’ve got a story
to write and edit a thousand times, so I look for those writing tips that
improve the reader’s internal experience, not a publisher’s or an editor’s or a
grammar nazi’s I-am-an-authority-you-must-change-this experience, because the readers
are the ones who matter. Still, to spend
so much time reading advice articles over hundreds of literary pet peeves saps
my time and energy. I simply wonder how
many people really care about those issues, and recognize it as one of my worst
time-wasting habits.
6. I forget to eat. When I’m in the zone and the scenes start
flowing before my eyes, I pound away until the visions stop. The usual way I discover I haven’t eaten in
16 hours is when the hubby hands me a plate of food. It’s rather disconcerting to realize my
other-mind has actually spoken to him about food, even discussed what he should
cook for dinner, while my focus-mind has been plotting, researching, and typing
all along.
Naturally, when you own a
laptop eating implies editing, so I go to my start-point for the session and
begin. Being so hungry and distracted by
editing means a lot of food spills, crumbs working their way under the keys,
splashes across the screen, and near-complete ignorance of how much food I
consume. Especially when the adorable
husband leaves a bag of pretzels or chips on the couch, and my other-mind finds
them.
When I am about to pass
out but realize I will never get to sleep through my ravenous hunger, I scrounge for
something healthy to gnaw on before going to bed. But otherwise, unless we actually go out for
a meal at a restaurant, I can rarely tell you what I’ve eaten of a day. Hubby will occasionally cook something so
awesome I must post about it on Facebook, but those days are rare.
This habit is so bad for
me on so many levels, but especially because my other-mind now equates ‘not-writing’
to ‘eating’ or ‘sleeping’. As a result,
when I have time on my hands, I also usually have snacks or am thinking about
how to acquire food. I am making inroads
on changing this habit, but it’s extremely difficult because everyone needs to
eat of a day; you cannot replace it with other habits, you cannot go cold-turkey,
and you cannot ignore the effects upon your body.
7. I write all night. It has a lot of advantages, like no phone calls
or visitors, but it makes it hell on relationships with regular people. The worst part of this habit is finishing a
very romantic or hot sex scene at 4 a.m., desperately desiring a good, ah,
bonding experience with the hubby I cannot wake up because he needs those last
two hours of sleep before work.
So I start a new scene, or go online to
distract myself, and curse myself for being a night owl. I sometimes manage to work a marathon session
all day and get to bed at a decent time, living like a ‘normal’ person for a
few days, but when I’m bustin’ ass to get a project done, I usually end up
doing another marathon session all night long, and I’m hooked again. I have no idea how I’m going to change this
habit!
8. I check my book stats too often. Indie authors, being responsible for our own
marketing, have an obsession to find the perfect place to display our books to
readers. After working up a promotion, I
tell myself I need a break, so I go online to chat with friends, catch up on
email or reading blogs, look up some topics I need for my next scenes, and find
myself checking for sales every fifteen minutes. That leads to sobs or shouts of joy or
wondering whether to promo there again because it has not given me The Big
Break That I Need to Go Mainstream. Yep. Big waste of time.
9. I ask my hubby’s opinion. We met at a science fiction convention in
1990, and our combined library of science fiction books is somewhere in the 700’s. Although I’ve been a writer for over 30
years, I have only been a serious one for four.
Despite knowing my hubby prefers gaming, anime, and ‘mind candy’ novels,
I insist he do his husbandly duty and beta-read my books. I do listen to what he says, and I do edit
with his opinions in mind, but I simply have to recognize that my heavy
literary symbolism and exposition of deep, emotional complexities are completely
lost on him.
What can I say? He prefers movies with big, bright
explosions, and I rarely write war scenes.
He likes superheroes and silly spoofs (we own the DVD of all episodes of
The Tick) and I write high milieu, high drama, high science with as much
realism as possible. He’s perfect for me
in a thousand ways, but he just doesn’t dig deep literary metaphors or fighting
wars with propaganda and political ploys.
He wants a blatant Good vs. Evil battle that rages on and on, with cool
tech gadgets the characters wield against each other.
And my sociological, psychological, medical,
political, philosophical, and even spiritual battles and thorough explanations
of science just don’t thrill him. He
likes my dedication to knightly virtues (the major themes of my books), but he
prefers straight-up, gritty bad guys instead of conflicts between cultural perceptions,
where all characters think of themselves as good and doing their best in bad
situations.
Still, I value his
opinion but need to break myself of the need for it. Sometimes I think he feeds me to keep me
writing just so I won’t ask him for another opinion, because he fears to break
my heart with his honesty. Since he
grills a mean ribeye and makes to-die-for pizza from scratch, this will
probably be my easiest habit to break.
What are your bad writing habits? I don't really want to discover I have another one, but if you have one and know how to conquer it, I would be grateful for anything that keeps me working instead of bleeding away my time and energy. I have dozens of entries in my Books to Write file, and I want to get them all written before I die. The only reason conquering them all might be a bad thing is if I receive a manuscript back from its first round with my editor with not one comment or change to be made; I might die of surprise, with all those books unwritten!
Author Bio:
A health crisis inspired
Eva Caye to become an obsessive writer, completing eight books in her
To
Be Sinclair series before she could afford an editor. She
published
Dignity in August 2012, with the projected release of her
8th book
Nobility in late June 2013. She laughingly
refers to
Evan's Ladies as Book 6.5, an 'add-on' book to the
series since it consists of four novellas. The other seven books are full
novels, though most have 'Easter egg' short stories as bonuses for the
reader.
The To Be
Sinclair series is set some 600 years in the future and covers the
lives and loves of the greatest ruling family in the galaxy. Her current
works-in-progress are a finale to the series, and two prequels set in the TBS
universe about 100 years in the future.
Eva lives with her
incredibly supportive husband and two lovely mutts in a tiny, century-old
farmhouse in Louisville, Kentucky.
You can now get NOBILITY at Amazon! At over 200,000 words, this New Adult book is twice the size of average novels! Discover why Prince Matthieu Sinclair has such troubles finding a lady who could handle all the duties as his Empress, while he also deals with Imperial Family responsibilities as well as taking on secret missions and dangerous diplomatic duties in the Service!
