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This post, from Jim C. Hines, originally appeared on his blog on 1/4/10.

This is the third year I’ve posted about the income I make as a fantasy author.  (See the Money Posts from Year 1 and Year 2.)  Money tends to be a taboo topic, but given all of the myths and illusions about writing, I think it’s important to get some actual data out there.  Because knowing is half the battle!

The background: I’ve been writing and submitting my work since 1995.  Goblin Quest was my first book with a major publisher, and came out in the end of 2006.  2009 saw the publication of my 4th and 5th novels with DAW.  So while I have five books in print, I’m still an early-career author.

I am not a full-time writer, for reasons which will soon become apparent.  I also write only fiction, unlike a number of authors I know who write both fiction and non-fiction (in part because the latter usually pays better).

Thanks to a last-minute D&A (delivery and acceptance) check from DAW, my writing income for 2009 came to $28,940.

Breaking that total down, I earned:

Read the rest of the post on Jim C. Hines’ blog.

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. "Resolve" seems a stony thing, grim and inflexible. In a mountain river, I’d rather be water than boulder.

Rather than make a resolution, I prefer to set an intention.

An intention seems to better fit the truth I’ve felt attracted to lately: that free will is merely an illusion. As Jay Michaelson says in a Huffington Post essay that brings nonduality into pop culture: "Free will" exists as a psychological reality, but not as an ontological one. Like the individual self, it’s a mirage: "You" exist, sure, but you exist just like a wave on the ocean: here one minute, gone the next, and never apart from the ocean itself. In that light, taking a firm-jawed, self-important stand on a "resolution" just seems silly.

So I have intentions. One intention for the year is to return to regular journaling, using ink on paper. My most creative and prolific writing years were when I was freely journaling, filling up book after book with both mundane record-keeping and giddy flights of inspiration. Then, I would develop the eureka moments on a keyboard, transforming them into fiction. As I’ve moved further into the cyber-world, my use of dead trees has declined, but so has my creative juice. For me, there’s magic in the hand-pen-paper circuit.

Not only that, but blogging is unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, it’s too public, which for me means it’s not spontaneous enough. I craft my blog too carefully for it to fill the uninhibited role of a journal. Second, it feels transient, not actually real. When I’m gone from this sphere, I want my children to have a physical record of my life, rendered in my own handwriting, caressable by their fingers, easy to pull off a shelf… not merely a list of hyperlinks or a shiny thingy full of binary code inaccessible without an electric machine. Maybe I’m not confident there’ll be an infrastructure left by then.

Another intention for 2010 is to re-read some favorite fiction through a new lens. I’m interested in how literary fiction can incorporate principles of nonduality without losing its identity and without becoming didactic or cliched. I want to explore the expression of Unity, from ancient Advaita to the mysteries of quantum physics, in modern realistic storytelling. This is done in several ways: by looking with new interpretive eyes at work I already love, by reading new stuff, and by writing my own.

This intention does not bite off too much: I’ll begin by looking again at some of Paul Auster’s early work, which has been of vital importance to my creative development, and see if it offers up new insights through my nonduality glasses. Then, if I feel so inclined, I’ll move on to Nabokov, Brautigan, Marquez, others. And I’ll keep an eye out for writing I haven’t already read that seems likely to feed this hunger.

Maybe I’ll even write about what I discover. Maybe it will appear here on this blog. Or not. Maybe it will only appear as scribbled notes in my journal. Or not. It will be what it will be. After all, it’s not a resolution, only an intention.

The Road More Traveled
If you’ve looked into the current self-publishing boom at all you’ve undoubtedly heard the advice that you must work on your platform to have any hope of being successful as a self-published writer. If you’re at all like me you probably seized on this mushy advice while also struggling to make sense of it. And struggling. And struggling…

At some point the thought may have occurred to you that while the advice is undoubtedly solid, it’s your ignorance of key terms* that makes it hard for you to seize this golden opportunity. What, exactly, is a platform, and how is it most effectively worked on?

Taking the bull by the horns, while also somehow following conventional wisdom, you equate your platform with your website or blog or personal appearances, and equate work on with writing and saying things for free so as to induce other human beings to care about you. (Over time, as you dedicate yourself to this apparently-but-not-really more robust definition of a platform, this exchange of labor and skill for attention may also convince you that you can profit by giving other things away, including the books or stories you naively intended to sell before you became so much wiser about self-publishing.)

At some much later point, when you’re lying by the side of the self-publishing road with an I.V. in your neck and blisters on your hands from crawling those last long miles, you may marvel that personal determination seems to have so little to do with success in publishing or self-publishing. While it’s certainly true that you can’t win if you don’t enter, it’s more likely the case that even if you enter constantly and do everything you’re supposed to do — including working on your platform, whatever that means — you still won’t win.

At which point, if you’re a good and decent sort, you will simply blame yourself for having failed. You will man-up or woman-up as appropriate and acknowledge that you never really figured out what your platform was, or how you could work on it. Being a decent sort, however, you won’t hesitate to encourage others to crack the code by working on their own platform, which will endear you to the next crop of earnest, hardworking fools determined to make a name for themselves with their writing.  

Platform Defined
Having said all that, I think the word platform does mean something real, and that there are many ways for you to work on it that will help you sell books. The fact that it doesn’t mean what you think it means, or that it has, literally, nothing at all to do with good writing, or, in some cases, the ability to write at all, must immediately be dismissed as a curiosity, but that’s a small price to pay for success.

In all its incarnations, platform is an interesting word. Because no definition of the word meets the usage referred to in this post, I am proposing the following addition:

plat*form [plat-fawrm]

-noun

xx. Publishing. celebrity: Gary worked hard on his platform by giving nude readings of his book, “Dreams Deciphered”.

Now, whether a lightbulb just went on for you or not, it should be a little clearer why the word platform seems to make sense in some mushy, ill-defined way. If you think of celebrities as having high visibility, and you think of something on a platform as being more visible, then celebrity = platform and working on your platform means raising your own visibility.

(If you ever spend any time in politics — and I encourage you not to — you will learn that candidates for public office spend a good deal of time on what their advisers, aides and managers literally call visibility. Speech at the Ladies’ Auxilliary? Visibility. Kissing babies during a parade? Visibility. Lunch with the mayor? Visibility. Angry speech about hot-button issue that guarantees press coverage even though data conclusively shows that nobody actually votes the issue? Visibility. What’s also interesting here is that politicians traditionally embrace a platform of political views, which are ostensibly the equivalent of policy positions. In practice, however, political platforms are usually designed to placate or seduce supporters — meaning even here the idea of a platform relates more to marketing and celebrity than it does to the work product of politics.)

The Platform Advantage
To see how the platform = celebrity dynamic plays out in publishing (and self-publishing), let’s look at an exhaustive series of examples. For each of the following, imagine that the person in question has just written a book that they are hoping to bring it to market.

• Barack Obama — huge celebrity; huge platform
• You — no celebrity; teeny-weeny platform

I could go on, of course, but I think you get the idea. When you’re being encouraged to work on your platform you’re actually being encouraged to raise your visibility and celebrity. The more well-known you are, the more books you will sell. (And you thought there was no hard science behind all this platform talk.)

So what can you do to raise your celebrity?

Well, the good news is that there are a lot of options. In fact, you’re really only limited by your imagination and morality. Because pathological liars, narcissists and sociopaths have an unfair advantage here, I’m not going to go into specifics about things you might actually do to raise your celebrity lest anyone get any really bad ideas. I will, however, list a few names of people who currently have an absolutely dynamite platform and let you draw your own conclusions.

• Bernie Madoff
• Osama bin Laden
• Wall St.
• Balloon Boy’s Dad
• The Owner of the Indianapolis Colts

Again, I could go on almost infinitely, but I assume you get the point. Celebrity, like sex, sells. So whatever it takes to raise your celebrity is inherently a good thing for your publishing career. It won’t make you a better writer, of course, and it won’t increase the likelihood that you have something to say, but it will almost certainly sell more books than being you or caring about your craft. [Tip: if you’re short on time, work ethic and content to give away, there are myriad ways you can jump-start your platform by giving away your dignity as a human being.]

The Road Less Traveled
On the other hand, if you are still determined to put craft first I can offer you a faint silver lining. To the extent that celebrity trumps all else in publishing, you can’t compete. Sarah Palin will always get a book deal, even if she has trouble forming coherent thoughts without the literary support of a ghostwriter.

However. If what you care about is writing, and in particular storytelling, you have a shot at competing on the merits today that you wouldn’t have had a few years ago. The reason for this is that the marketing machinery previously used to raise the visibility/celebrity of other writers has broken down. You as a romance writer or literary author are no longer up against a stacked deck guarded by industry gatekeepers protecting franchise writers. Today, all but the most famous (meaning most bankable, not most talented) of your competitors are in the same boat. Even long-time mid-list old hands are having to figure out what their platform is, and how to work on it, and that puts them on an even footing with you.

Assuming that there ever was a paying audience for the kind of stuff you write, you now have access to that audience directly, and can — at least in part — rely on the quality of what you write, rather than the q-score for who you are, to determine your success. You may succeed and you may not, but believing in and improving your craft vastly increases the likelihood that you will attract attention for your skill set as opposed to your celebrity — which could also lead to offers from publishers, or work-for-hire opportunities.

The choice is yours, of course. I’m going to go the craft route, but only because I wouldn’t want to belong to any group of celebrities that would have me as a member.

* In your later years, after life has beaten you down, you will realize that advice which is devoid of recognizable terminology is no advice at all, and you will either chuckle or shake your head at this realization depending on your disposition. If you still have a fair share of your marbles, and if what you foolishly wanted all along was to be a good writer, you may also realize that mushy advice is the hallmark of the guru, the salesperson and the con artist, and that what you really could have used was the utility and reliability of craft. Again, depending on your disposition, you may or may not punish yourself further by noting that bridge builders spend very little time attending motivational seminars, but lots of time on math.

This is a cross-posting from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk site.

This post, from Bonnie Kozek, originally appeared on her Case Files blog on 4/20/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

The writer suffers. London, overdose. Woolf, drowning. Mattheissen, leap. Hemingway, gunshot. Plath, gas. Berryman, leap. Inge, carbon monoxide. Sexton, carbon monoxide. Brautigan, gunshot. Levi, leap. Kosinski, overdose. Gray, drowning. Wallace, hanging. Mishima, ritual suicide culminating in assisted beheading. This accounting, even in the extreme, barely skims the surface.

The American psyche has long been acculturated to the idea of the “suffering writer” – the “mad artist” – the connection between creativity and insanity. Moreover, American writers, as referenced in the above abridged list of suicides, have substantially contributed to the incontrovertible nature of this broadly accepted “tradition.” Indeed, beginning with research first conducted in the 1970s, the scientific community has attempted to explain the phenomenon of the “suffering writer.” In her book, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, reports that writers are as much as 20 times as likely as other people to suffer depressive illnesses. Why? There appears to be two principal reasons: First, illness brought on by individual biology and/or traumatic experience, and secondly, a predisposition by way of birthright. Couple this with the inherent downsides of the profession — isolation, loneliness, rejection, financial insecurity – and the glamorization of the suffering writer – so prevalent that it has engendered a kind of “suffering competition” – (Upon learning of Plath’s suicide, Sexton is reported to have said covetously, “She took something that was mine! That death was mine!”)— and there you have it: A foregone conclusion.

However incontrovertible, an examination of the links between writer and depression – and the questions that logically arise from such inquiry – continues to be written about and debated by scientists, psychologists and writers alike. One subject of contemplation is the age-old question of whether psychological suffering is an essential component of artistic creativity. There are those who, based upon the mountain of empirical evidence and technical research, conclude that it is. Others disagree – citing literary giants – Shakespeare, e.g. – who had no significant psychopathology. Both positions are reasonable and, effectively, indisputable. Ergo, there’s no clear victor in this particular piece of the dispute. Yet, how can both be right? During a recent interview I was asked why I chose to be a writer. I answered that I have an irrepressible attraction to the words, to the letters – that I sense something beneath the surface – a kind of code. That I’m forever trying to break the code – to decipher the mystery – to find in the words something that is true – to craft a story that someone will want to read. And then I added, “But then again, I’m not so sure if I chose writing or if it chose me.” And, there it is — the articulation of uncertainty about the “choosing” or the “being chosen” — that offers one possible answer to the question.

Writers are born of two distinct and disparate sources. Some come to the world with innate talent – a talent which is either recognized early on, or discovered and nurtured in time. Their gifts are immense. Their minds are healthy, or rather, comparatively healthy. Others come to the world with burden. They write to survive. Of this latter category, the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author J. Anthony Lukas once said, “All writers are, to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves. In my own case, I was filling a hole in my life which opened at the age of eight, when my mother killed herself . . . ” (Lukas, diagnosed with depression ten years earlier, hanged himself in 1997.) This category of writer starts with a less intellectual methodology. The personal risks are titanic. Talent, not wholly inborn, is learned and earned through the sweat of the flesh and the letting of blood. Some writers of this sort are able to effectively compartmentalize their suffering – fight their personal demons on the battlefield of human relations – between themselves and others – rather than on the written page. In this case, the resultant work may be indistinguishable from that of the writer unburdened by disease. Others are capable of redirecting and baring their pain in less conspicuous ways – through plot, character, and subject matter. And then there is the writer whose entire body of work is drawn solely from the wellspring of personal despair – a seemingly bottomless and unforgiving pit. This writer’s illness devastates – subjugates every aspect of her life. Her world becomes small, her purpose compulsive and single-minded. Such crushing depression may eventually suck all the oxygen out of her being, extinguish what flicker of hope has managed to survive the storm of her insidious affliction. Ultimately, this writer is consumed by the illness that fueled her creativity. There seems no way out. But might there be?

What if a writer under the influence of depressive illness became “un-depressed”? What if some combination of treatment – drugs, electric shock, psychoanalysis – was successful? Would the writer’s creativity – would the writer’s work – become negatively impacted? Would the writer stop writing about “depressing” subjects like defiant human emotion? Would, for example, an Artaud, Baudelaire, or Poe start writing “happily-ever-after” prose if “cured” by Zoloft? Of course, we won’t have the technical answers to these questions until future researchers – basing their findings not on the work and lives of dead authors but on the work and lives of writers currently living with depression – both in and out of treatment – provide them. Yet, un-technically – via experience, observation, and intuition – answers can be deduced. A Samuel Beckett, even partially restored, would not produce a “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The “change” for the writer, I submit, would come not in content, but rather in fecundity and endurance. For, when the annihilating destruction of depression – the “storm of murk” as William Styron so aptly described it – is muscled into symmetry with the writer’s purpose and faculty – when creative juices are feeding not just a single monster – there is an opening up of the universe – a vision that allows the writer to “rewrite” the inevitable – to comprehend what had previously been incomprehensible: That when it comes to writing and living, there is a choice. And finally, this writer, given the option, may choose not one or the other, but both: To write . . . and . . . to live.

When reflecting upon the vast, poignant, and enduring anthology of work produced by writers who have suffered from depression – as those mentioned in this article – and assuming that literature is necessary – that it matters – that it enriches all humanity – it is not hard to imagine that the “freeing of will” would bestow gifts far beyond those given to a single beleaguered soul.

Bonnie Kozek’s highly-acclaimed noir thriller, Threshold, is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Powell’s Books and other online sites. Her follow-up book, Just Before the Dawn, will be published in 2010. Learn more about her work at: http://www.bonniekozek.com or contact her at: bk@bonniekozek.com .

This article from Mark William Jackson appears on http://markwilliamjackson.com/2010/01/11/the-threat-to-poetry/

Here’s another of my three-minutes-or-less editorial screenplays of a movie I’ve seen which strained my credulity, patience or sanity on some level. I find it’s fun to rewrite those movies to more closely approximate my experience of them. This was my take on Amelie.

EXT. PARIS – GREEN
Impish, charming, disarmingly cute AUDREY TATOU disarms her ANGRY NEIGHBORS with a charmingly cute smile.

ANGRY NEIGHBORS
We have seen ‘Emma’ and ‘Chocolat’, and we know what you’re up to! You are trying to impishly charm us into changing our selfish, staid and priggish ways with your disarming cuteness.

AUDREY TATOU
(Impish)
Am I not cute? Do I not remind you of Bjork?

ANGRY NEIGHBORS
Must…resist overwhelming power…of cuteness…anger weakening…

AUDREY TATOU
(Disarming)
Have you noticed the way that the clouds all look like hearts and teddy bears when I’m around? Or that everything is green?

NOT-SO-ANGRY NEIGHBORS
We surrender to your impish charm. All of our lives have been enriched by your
disarming cuteness, the greenness and the teddy bear clouds.

Only slightly less impish and charming NINO steps forward.

NINO
I am hypoglycemic.

AUDREY TATOU (Charming)
Ah, the man of my dreams!
They exit together, Audrey skipping.

NINO
Could you please try to be less impishly girlish? It makes me feel a little pervy.

THE END

This post, from bookseller Rich Rennicks, originally appeared on his The Word Hoarder blog on 10/20/09.

[The intent of this post is to step back and consider the industry-wide implications of $8.99 bestsellers. I’m making multiple assumptions where I do not have all the info, so I invite corrections, counter arguments and real numbers before anyone jumps off any cliffs.]

The shoe is on the other foot this morning, with indie booksellers contemplating deserting publishers for cheaper $8.99 books at the mass merchants. Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Target.com are waging a price war over the top dozen-or-so projected bestsellers of the holiday season.  To do so they are all willing to make a loss of $5-$6 on each book – which is staggering, because last time I checked market share wasn’t legal tender. Naturally, indie bookstore buyers have concluded that if you can purchase books you know your customers will want, at a lower price than directly from the publisher, and force a competitor to take a loss on each copy, why the hell wouldn’t you?

This is my attempt to make a case not to desert the publishers. [Full disclosure: I work for a small publisher and part-time for an indie bookseller, hence the need to look at the situation from both sides.]

The reason to support publishers by buying directly is because of all the services they deliver which indie bookstores value: selection, curation, marketing, creating demand? (You know, many of the same things we tell customers they’re supporting when they shop indie…) The irony of this situation is not lost on anyone.

The question is, who loses if indie bookstores cancel and reorder at 8.99 from the gamblers who are prepared to take a loss of almost $5-$6 on each copy? Publishers theoretically ship the same number of books, just through different channels. Those publishers are making the same profit whether they ship through Wal-Mart or directly, as giving one channel a larger discount than another would be illegal, right? [Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that the ABA took publishers to court over this exact issue several years ago.]

Read the rest of the post on Rich Rennicks’ The Word Hoarder blog.

This post, from Kat M., originally appeared on her Adele Journal site on 12/13/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

I used to hang out with a lot of musicians — really good ones of various flavors.  One of them was in one of those PBS-sponsored youth classical contests (can’t remember if he won, though.)  A couple of them were in the Hollywood movie-scoring scene already.  Some did work in games soundtracks.  A couple semi-famous singer/songwriters.  And some were electronic musicians who wrote dance songs.

The electronic musicians had a problem.  Like any artist, they wanted to make something enduring, but they knew that their work was destined to be, at most, a seasonal hit in the clubs.  Whatever they wrote would be replaced with the next tune that satisfied people’s dance music cravings.

Electronic music is inherently consumable and disposable.

Electronic dance music is functional — it’s designed to make people want to dance for a long time and strengthen people’s ties to certain lifestyles. These things don’t happen by accident; a good dance music writer knows why people listen to it and leverages his knowledge. To non-expert listeners (people not in the scene), all the songs in a style — like house, hip-hop, trance, d&b, 2step, etc — sound basically the same, since they have to operate within the guidelines of this function.

You’d think that this would make dance music producers take their art less seriously, knowing that their audience is going to consume and discard their work.  But no, the best of the electronic musicians still thought of themselves as “real musicians,” regardless of their genre’s critics or their work’s fate.

These composers proved to be as dedicated to their craft as the Hollywood orchestral soundtrack writers.

But it makes sense.  If they’re serious about making good music, they have to think of themselves as 1st class musicians, not just “dance producers.”

If they think of themselves as 2nd class musicians — “I just write electronic stuff” — they damn themselves to settling for a lower grade before they sequence a single beat.  They won’t think it’s possible to write a great piece within the genre, and their music will never be great, just satisfactory.

Even worse, they will limit themselves to tools within the style only, taking the conventions, cliches, and standards as their starting point.  This creates me-too music and basically precludes creativity — the same kind of creativity that Massive Attack had when creating their signature sound and broke out of existing genre rules.

Are you a writer, or a “popular fiction writer?”

So, what does this mean for you, a writer?  Let’s pretend you’re a romance writer.  How do you think of yourself and your stories? Are you a writer, or a “romance writer?”  Have you lowered standards for your own stories just because you write fiction that people tend to read & recycle?  In your heart of hearts, do you feel like a 2nd class citizen just because of your genre?

Do you believe that it’s possible to write a masterpiece in your chosen genre?

If you truly want to write something that endures… that’s not automatically destined for the read & recycle fate… that won’t get replaced in the reader’s memory by the next satisfactory thing… then start thinking of yourself as a 1st class writer, not a “romance writer.”  Think of your stories as stories, not “romance stories.”  Believe that even though you write in a popular genre, you can achieve masterpiece level with your stories.

Only then will you stop being limited by your own thinking, and only then will you be able to write at maximum capacity.

Kat M. is both a successful publisher and dedicated critique partner for mature-audience fiction.  As a result of her dual life, her blog, Adele Journal, has a dual focus: helping authors write better adult genre fiction, and helping them market themselves more effectively. Visit www.adelejournal.com for the latest articles and tutorials.

The end of another year has arrived. Seems like time goes by too fast. I hear people say all the time, where has this year gone? I think the same thing. Sometimes I wonder if I made the most of the last year, but I have no intention of reflecting back long to see if I did. My intention at the beginning of 2009 was to try. I ‘ll never know if I succeeded, but my New Year’s resolution this year is to try very hard to concentrate on my writing in 2010 and see where that resolution leads me. With that in mind, I’m going to start blogging once a week on Tuesday instead of twice. The book I’m working on is about two thirds done. While working on the story I get caught up in the characters and lose all track of time. Perhaps, that’s why I can say I don’t know where the last year went. I consider myself very lucky. I’m doing something that makes me content and keeps me busy. What more can I ask for any year in the future?

Did Santa bring me my book Computer for Dummies? No, but I found an answer to my problem on my own. Well, I had some expert advice from my brother who knows computers. Happily, I find I can buy a small device that will play my new printshop photo software. That means I won’t have to send the software back and keep struggling with my old software. It means I don’t have to unhook everything attached to my computer and take it to the shop in the middle of winter. My problem is solved. Would I have spent so much on the software if I had known that it downloads from a DVD which I don’t have the means of playing? No, because I wouldn’t have wanted the expense of the player. Perhaps, there is a reason for everything that happens. No matter the cost, I am looking forward to trying my hand at new and improved pictures to use as book covers. However with that problem solved, knowing that the coming year is only a few days away has me reflecting on more important things. I was recently absorbed with links and search words while trying to get the word online about my books. However, I know my most important links and search words have nothing to do with the computer.

I retired a year ago from my CNA job which I really liked. I go back to the nursing home once a month to visit. The handful of women residents that I visit are always glad to see me. A couple weeks ago, I stopped to talk to one of the CNAs. While I was in the break room I noticed a envelope on the bulletin board with my name on it. Always in a hurry in the winter to get the errands done and get home before the wind blows the roads or my driveway shut, I laid the envelope in the car seat until later. When I finally looked to see what I had, I found a Christmas card from one of the residents I hadn’t visited in the last year. His family had enclosed a Linda Eder music CD as thanks for my taking good care of him. My first thought was didn’t they know I’ve been retired for a year? The resident certainly must have missed me or maybe not. I called the administrator to find out if I should bring the CD back in. How could I deserve a gift for a year I hadn’t worked?

It turns out there wasn’t a mistake. When the man’s family asked which of the staff did he want to have a CD, my name went on the list. I made it a point to go see that resident and thank him. The pleased smile he gave me when I told him I appreciated his thoughtfulness and that I really loved Linda Eder’s music told me a mistake hadn’t been made. Though he has made me a fan of Linda Eder’s singing, the gift he gave me had far less to do with that CD and more to do with how he appreciated my company and help in 2008. So often while nursing home staff are caught up in the hard work they do, they don’t take the time to contemplate the little things they do for the residents that might not have been a part of their training. Things that mean so much to them and make them remember the staff like a pat on the hand, staying long enough to listen and really hear, and giving a hug when needed. The staff might not get a CD, but they certainly will make the residents day.

The search words family and friends are very important words to me. They are the blessings I count this time of year, because I have them in my life. The last day of the year is the birthday of one of my nephews. He a second grader, full of enthusiasm for life, smart beyond belief and a joy to be around. I look forward to watching him grow and seeing each new year through his eyes.

That next book I talked about. It’s the second in my Nurse Hal Among The Amish series. For those of you who read the first one watch for the release sometime in the next year. The tentative title is Nurse Hal’s Rainbow. Now I wish you a safe and fun New Year’s Eve and good luck and health in 2010 from http:/www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com

This post, from Megan Rebekah, originally appeared on her Megan Rebekah Blogs…and Writes blog on 10/26/09.

I had a wonderful weekend! How about all of you? I got to spend two days with my best friend, her husband and their 3-week old baby.

As any parent knows, a household with a newborn is somewhat chaotic. We noted several times how great it is that we know each other so well, and are so comfortable and and open, that there was no awkwardness or need for apologies. I could blend in easily with her new life because we’ve been friends for almost ten years. Not just friends, but best friends. 

Like everything else in life, I made the mental connection back into writing. There are different types of characters in our books, and they each play an important role.

Background characters.
In real life, I would equate these to people I see at work but don’t really know. I might see them come in and out of the lobby, I may even know their name, but that’s often it. We’ll exchange friendly smiles as we pass in the hall, but that’s the extent of our relationship.

In our books, these characters need to be just as fleeting. They flit in and out of the novel so quick, or play such a minor role, that we don’t need to know much about them. We don’t need to know the full name, age, occupation and dream date for the doorman at the heroine’s apartment building (unless he’s her love interest, but then he wouldn’t be a background character).

Intermediary characters
The real life comparison would be co-workers, neighbors, and maybe that blind date your great-aunt Gertrude set you up on last month. You learn details about these people, but you might be hard pressed to describe them to a police sketch artist if the need ever arose. I know our receptionist has a twin sister and she takes cream and sugar in her coffee. She wears slacks and skirts. I’ve never seen her in a dress. But I don’t know if she hates dresses, or just doesn’t have any appropriate for work.

In our books, these characters might be the same roles: a minor co-worker, a bad blind date, a random neighbor. We need a tiny taste of who they are, and that’s it. Enough that we understand their role, but significant or personal details don’t need to be revealed.
 

Read the rest of the post, which covers Recurring Characters and Main Characters, on Megan Rebekah Blogs…and Writes.