Lacey Kaye

Julia Quinn used truthiness in The Lost Duke of Wyndham. Does anyone else find this hysterical?

Over the last month, I’ve done exactly one productive thing. Unfortunately, that productive thing wasn’t writing a book. In fact, in the last six months I’ve done almost nothing productive when it comes to writing a book. I’m not okay with that, but that concern is for another post.

Long-time readers know I’m a process engineer. I’m devoted to studying and improving productivity and output; it’s my passion. I never thought I could go at it, though, with the same sort of single-minded determination I used to use to write novels. Engineering seems so…black and white. I guess I was just waiting for the right opportunity.

A month ago, I became head of a project that meant big time savings for my organization. It had the potential to improve communication between various orgs, and almost assuredly would create higher morale and job satisfaction for my minions and minions everywhere. The only problem was I had 3 weeks to pull the whole thing off, including implementation and beta testing. During those three weeks, I received requests for the same program to be implemented at other sites — that would be the program we hadn’t even written yet.

And I have a life.

Suddenly, I felt very, very kindred with Maven Erica My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. My email was full of bug reports and frequently asked questions. I had one week to get 100 people up to speed on a user interface that had never been tested and was barely developed. I had three devoted coders working around the clock to keep up with the changes. I was making phone calls and shooting off emails to organizations I’d never contacted before and presenting the concept to managers I desperately needed to have buy in from.

It was so, so awesome.

The energy was amazing. Apparently, I thrive on God-awful deadlines. Who knew? And seeing all the shocked-yet-hopeful faces when it was announced the project had eliminated the need for the daily afternoon meeting we’d been having for thirty years — quite literally, priceless.

I wonder if we’re authors because we like to see what’s in our imagination come alive. I can equate every step in this project with the same sort of ephemeral buzz I get when writing. First, we had a workshop to talk about the future state [of the meeting we ended up eliminating, w00t]. That was like when I get together with the Mavens and brainstorm the concept of a novel. Then I was locked in a room with three bright, enthusiastic coders ready to tackle the logic to create the software — that was like storyboarding. (We even had food.) Then we banged out a draft just to see if the concept worked; I don’t need to draw this part of the picture for you. Then we fine-tuned it, and then, knowing it was buggy as hell, we released it into the world to have beta testers help us locate and smash them. (Contesting and beta reading, anyone?)

It was and still is hard to come in every day to my inbox and realize the interface isn’t perfect. It will probably never be perfect, as it’s written in Visual Basic and heavily utilizes Microsoft programs…(sorry, Keira, but it’s true). But when the feedback is positive — wow. Is that a great feeling or what? And when we’re improving job satisfaction, not just because we’re saving faceless money, but because we’re literally helping people have a better day…that’s nothing short of amazing.

The only problem is that during this time, my “life” became about this project. Either I was working on this project or not sleeping because of this project or worrying about this project or out kicking it with friends, valiantly trying to forget about this project. And now, just 2 days from full implementation, I’m still blogging about this project. It never ends!

But I am trying. My game plan this last week has been to come home ON TIME (+/- an hour of over time), work out, take a nap, and either a) play with my Xbox (damn you, Ryu!) b) watch an episode or two of LOST (can you really watch just one?) c) read a book (Lost Duke of Wyndham is on my TBR) d) go to happy hour (no comment) or e) do nothing. Yes, that’s right. Do nothing.

But we had to filter through a, b, c, and d to get to nothing.

YOUR TURN: Do you ever let yourself stop? Do you ever feel like even when you’re “relaxing,” you’re really trying to cram something fun into your day? Do you ever find yourself replacing the joy of writing (Freudian? I just typed “job”) with the joy of something else? (there goes that job again)

The last 3 and a half weeks of silence can be summed up like this:

• 1 impossible project deadline reached
• 40 hours of overtime charged
• 1 quarter of a million dollars in process improvements 
• 250 less meetings per year
• 1 crash-and-burn non-relationship
• 1.5 bottles of wine
• 17 sleepless nights
• 28 miles run
• 3.5 pounds lost
• 4 new friends made
• 1 plasma tv
• 1 home invasion adventure
• 4 Match.com winks
• 2 “skinny” shirts looking fabulous
• 1 dry streak broken
• 1 minion crisis averted
• 1 minion who will never, ever be allowed to go on vacation again (you know who you are)
• 1 level 5 HD Puzzle Fighter milestone smashed
• 3 turbo bitch breakdowns
• 9 pull-me-off-the-ledge-God-hurry-up-I’m-going-over email/IM sessions
• 1 crushing agent rejection
• 0 manuscripts opened
• 1 new laptop
• 1000x my appreciation for my friends

What have you been up to?

This week, I decided to check out online dating. I have several friends who’ve been doing it for years and while I suppose that might mean they haven’t technically been successful (as arguably, were they “successful” they would not still be dating), they’ve had enough harmless fun with it that I figured it couldn’t hurt to find out what it’s all about.

What’s our motto again? Oh, research. Right. Research.

My first order of business was to create my profile. Should be easy, right? I have pictures of me and I know me and I know how to click a check box. The “What is your favorite thing to do?” text boxes should be a cinch. I mean, I write romance novels. I convince higher-ups to fund my crazy ideas <em>all the time</em>. Surely, between those two talents I must be able to write <em>something</em> that will generate a little interest in me.

Never, ever underestimate how difficult it is to write an online dating profile. On the one hand, you’re selling yourself. Should be easy — just list your good points, right? But on the other hand, you’re paying money to find people who like you just the way you are. Why jeopardize that with a varnished version of the truth?

I’ve browsed perhaps 50 men between the ages of 26 and 35 and I have to tell you, I’m surprised at the number of intelligent, well-though-out profiles I’ve seen out there. I’m not sure if this is a function of the type of people who are most likely to a) be able to shell out the money for an arguably overpriced online dating site b) be interested enough in finding a relationship to shell out money for an online dating site or c) meet the education level and income level I’ve narrowed my search to, but I’d say if nothing else, there’s good news out there for women everywhere. Not every single man in the world just lurched out of his Xbox cave, grunting and dragging pin up calendars behind him.

The only downside to the online dating thing — okay, actually there are two — is that if I try to narrow my search to the few qualities I consider absolutely imperative, I match exactly…<em>zero</em> men. Now, that is partly because lots of people don’t fill out all their fields, and you can’t match with a blank field. But that’s also partly because let’s face it, we can’t always get what we want. Sometimes what we think we want is wrong. Isn’t that how every romance novel relationship starts out, anyway?

I’m not saying one needs to settle to find a match (I would never, ever say that), but just that it might be a better approach to look for a little chemistry to start things off. I’m not speaking from online dating experience here, as I just started three days ago. But scanning a list of potential qualities really doesn’t give me the same thrill reading a really well-written, witty, engaging, slightly sarcastic profile (uh, with a hot picture) does.

I have no idea where I’m going with this.

YOUR TURN: Have you ever tried online dating? Blind dating? (I haven’t yet…better put that on the list of things to do!) Speed dating? Are you a stickler for some quality in a mate? What world views constitute no-gos for you? Can I deduct my online dating fee in my taxes if I write a book about it?!

This week, I got a rejection letter that was very nearly a perfect summation of every rejection I’ve ever received. Bummer, yes. HUGE bummer. But never one to focus on the roiling disappointment of a bruised sky when the weatherman predicted sunny all week, I dug out my telescope and located my silver lining through the rain. A thin lining, perhaps, but definitely something to celebrate.

Nowhere in the 1-page (typed, single spaced) Rejection Letter to Eat All Other Rejections did she mention my hero was too weak to take on my heroine. WOOO HOOOO! Party time! What a nice hurdle to have finally overcome. I know exactly who to thank for that, too, and I’m sure the long-time MaveFave I’m referring to knows who she is, too.

What I loved about her advice and what made it so easy to take is that she “got” my concept and worked with it, instead of telling me (as so many others have done) that I needed to can my beta hero and go with something a little more saleable. Double bonus: not only did she come up with a solution, but she came up with a mindset that I, as the writer, could easily slip into while working on said revision. She said, “Whenever X happens, he needs to think Y. And then he needs to act on it.”

Action. Right.

So thanks, Steathly Ninja MaveFave, and thanks to the Mavens for holding my hand through the Revision Letter to End Every Writer’s Dreams.

We all read blogs, talk with fellow writers, devour books on craft, and listen to RWA conference lectures over and over — to name a few of the more obvious resources at our disposal. What I’m wondering is, how often does any of that affect our technique? Do we read others’ how-tos and test out the ones that appeal to us, or do we mire ourselves in “I could never do it that way” and “that would make me crazy”?

(Un)specifically, my family recently had a huge email thread on exercise going. Exercise is one of those things we all know (and have always known) we should do, but most of us don’t do it. I bet there are as many ways to implement exercise into one’s regimen as there are people in the world. My brother pointed out that many of us benchmark what other people are doing and try to implement that routine with disastrous results. He hypothesized that it can be more self-defeating to try to do it someone else’s way than to not do it at all. It’s a matter of ownership. As long as I’m not trying to do it your way, I’m doing it my way (which may be not at all). But as soon as I try to do it your way, I’m inherently not doing it my way, and my brain (often) immediately starts fighting back.

He suggested it might be more productive to think about and truly understand your personal goal and your reasons for wanting to reach it than to ask around and find out what other people are targeting and how they are working to reach it.

Now, you may be thinking that this post is, in fact, yet another example of how someone does something in a way that doesn’t feel natural to you…just sit back and enjoy the irony I happened to think his opinion was an interesting take on self-improvement. Do you copy the NYT author who writes 4 pages a day, or do you seek out your own internal rhythm and work with it?

One last thing before I head off — and this is totally unrelated, so bear with me, but it was a huge epiphany for me and I’ve been dying to post it forever: In the last month or so I realized something about losing weight. I’m serious here…even though it’s simple math, the logic escaped me.

They say you need to burn 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. That has always made losing 20 pounds seem insurmountable to me. But then I realized what was wrong in my thinking. You don’t burn 500 calories a day this week and 1000 calories a day next week, i.e. keep off the 500 you lost last week plus take off another 500 calories this week. You just trend at -500 calories <em>and the old calories never come back</em>. Obvious, right? But if it were truly obvious, people might not have so much trouble keeping the lost weight off. In other words, you don’t have to necessarily work harder to lose more weight. You just have to have patience…<strong>lots</strong> of it.

/End remedial anatomy lesson

YOUR TURN: Which do you prefer? Doing things your way or benchmarking others? A little of both? Do you like to have a starting place then adapt it to your personal groove? Am I the only one who ever made losing weight more complicated than it has to be?

Here’s a fun one: define vixenating. Most entertaining answer* wins a free book!

*As determined by the person who wants to know

I’m going to San Francisco. w00t!

Anyone got a room to share? I can sleep on the floor…

Yesterday, I was chatting with a new acquaintance of mine, trying to nail down a mutually agreeable time we could meet up to play some pinball. Now, this person is notorious for no call / no show, so I wanted to be *sure* the time was agreeable. I didn’t stop to wonder why I needed to know this person would show. To me, that was obvious. It’s why they’re called plans. You know, you plan them, and then they happen. Work the plan. Any changes to the plan need to be communicated in a timely fashion, to all parties, and should certainly be kept to a minimum. After all, changing the plan confuses people. It’s frustrating. And if you can’t look forward to what you’re going to do at the end of the week, what’s the point of going out on Friday, anyway? I mean, that IS the point, right? Good times will be had by all. You know it for a fact.

Never say there could be another point of view.

Are there people who actually thrive on not knowing what their Friday night will hold?

Apparently.

Who are they?

People *I* know?

I don’t think so…

My friend IMed back: Never make (P)lans with a (P)erceiver!

I IMed back: What is this crazy talk?

What I got in response sort of annoyed me. Nobody wants to think of herself as a (J)udger. How terribly unflattering.

So I googled it, having heard of the Myers Briggs assessment before, even if it didn’t trip up instant recognition at the first mention. (I even wrote a blog about it a year ago.) Now, I’ve taken other types of assessments at work, as requirements for certain group projects. (See blog above.) I know my type. And no, it’s not always flattering. But it’s me and it makes sense to me and the rest of you…stop being so scatter-brained!

Well, being the type of person I am, I never really read through any of the other possible assessment outcomes. (And literally, that fits perfectly with the type of person I am.) Imagine my surprise when I read up on Perceivers. What craziness is this? People who don’t wear watches!? People who thrive on chaos? People who celebrate their ability to generate creative ideas but shirk the responsibility of implementing them?! People who don’t like to make plans way in advance, for fear of limiting their options as things come up?

That’s insanity.

Or is insanity someone like me repeatedly trying to get someone like that to behave in the same way I expect myself to behave? Being the type of person that I am (and yes, this is in the type description nearly verbatim), having gained this new insight, I immediately revised my expectations so as to avoid generating the same unwanted outcome in the future. And, naturally, I phoned a friend to discuss. Because being the type of person I am, I like to talk my issues out, not sit alone with them and percolate.

Which basically started a flurry of interpersonal assessments that resulted in my reading a few other possible outcomes. You know, the ones I never had any interest in before. (Why? Well, if you guessed that perfectly matches my personality type…you’re probably paying attention ) All this reading up on various personality types — ones that are eerily, freakily close to reality; so much so it’s hard to believe anyone was able to nail down my and my friends’ psychosis in so few words — made me think about those authors who swear by Sun books or Sign books or that one book with all the hero / heroine combinations, whose name I can’t remember (and as my personality type, don’t care enough to look up because I trust someone else will supply the minutia). I’ve clearly never cracked one open before. I never thought I needed to. I mean, I’ve known enough people in my life to paint a few personality traits, right?

Or is that just my personality type talking? The one that says I can see the big picture, so why stress myself with the details? Or is getting the combination of your character’s personality too much like having the answers to the test — is it cheating to be able to conceive of how their internal clockwork ticks if you haven’t even had a chance to get to know them yet?

YOUR TURN: Have you or do you use a personality book to help you craft your characters? Have you taken a Myers Briggs assessment (or other assessment), and if you have, were you surprised — or freaked out — by the results? Have you and your spouse / significant other / close friend ever taken a test together? Are you a judger or a perceiver?

Last week, I told you about my perceived cluelessness when it comes to writing contemporary-style romance. A few of you had some great recs, and after yet another thought-provoking discussion with MaveFave Keira (I owe her so much!), I’ve spent the last few days curled up with various women’s fiction novels. Flirting With Forty, fellow Eastsider Jane Porter’s novel-turned-soon-to-be-made-for-tv movie, really has deep POV nailed down. Also-Eastsider Shannon McKelden’s recently re-released Venus Envy (let the spam comments commence) does “deliciously smitten hero” in a way that makes me wish Luke Stanton was stalking me. And fellow Washingtonian Lisa Kleypas’s Blue Eyed Devil mixes contemporary issues with her classic, lyrical writing so well, it makes me wonder why I ever swore I’d never read her new, first-person Texas-set novels. (Which is actually the same thing I thought after reading Sugar Daddy last year, but whatever.)

So what have I learned thus far? (Besides being sick is a great excuse to get to all the TBRs stacked up next to my bed.) Well, two things. One, what I said to Keira the other day actually turned out to be true. Which is weird and not weird, because I knew it was true when I said it, but it was one of those you know it’s true but it doesn’t make it any easier to sit down and do it. Oh, what I said…right. I said there was nothing in the world that makes me want to write my books more than reading other people’s books.

Good books, bad books, books I’d never write and books so close to mine I want to jump out of the nearest barouche. All books make me want to write my books. Similarly, watching very good tv (How I Met Your Mother, House) and very good movies (Becoming Jane, Becoming Jane) makes me want to write books. But in the last year — ever since I stopped watching tv — I’ve watched zero tv. As in, no tv. At all. Even sneaked. And the number of movies I’ve watched has dwindled to almost zero, too. And the number of books I’ve read…well, you get the picture.

I’ve been living with a scripted entertainment deficit, and it seems to have gotten to me.

So I popped in my Sex and the City DVDs after last week’s post, and this week I read a few books. Which brings me to thing I learned number two: I desperately want to finish my book. My historical book. Which makes no sense, seeing as how I’ve been building up my contemporary stores, but there you have it. I miss Roman. I love Roman. I want Roman to get his HEA, dammit, and I want him to get laid already. Desperately.

YOUR TURN: How do you feel about entertainment input? Do you live a deficit-inducing lifestyle? Does watching really well-written tv make you want to compete, in a sense, with the emotion/witticism/characterization/etc? Do you keep up your reading while you’re writing, or do you put it away for fear you’ll accidentally copy a voice/plot/etc? Do you ever want your characters to get laid, or am I projecting? Oh, maybe don’t answer that…