Chocolate Pudding Slick & Conference Report

So, the other night, I was at my writer's group meeting feeling like I'd earned an evening out with the fun women in my ANWA chapter since I spent the week cleaning my house after, seriously, 18 months of writing non-stop and never doing deep cleaning. I'd even cleaned out the sludgy, sludgy fridge and the microwave that looked worse than the microwave at the end of the school year in a college apartment full of freshman boys.

Yessss!

But when I got home, quite late, I might add, my 11 year old son was still up. He's a corker, certainly one of a kind. "Um, Mom?" Yeah? "I might've spilled a bit of pudding." Oh, that's okay. Wipe it up and it'll be fine. "Um, well, so I tried, but there might be kind of a lot." What do you mean, a lot? "Well, I made a triple batch, and then the bowl dumped when I was putting it back in the fridge." That's fine. Just do your best.

I responded calmly (thanks to the calming effects of my happy writers group), but sent the kid to bed and went over to discover what can only be compared to the Exxon Valdez of pudding spills.

Holy chocolate oil slicks!

My white floursack towels might never be the same. Sigh.

I love that he made the triple batch, though. There's a kid after my own heart. If one box of pudding is good, three's better.

And believe me, if one day of the ANWA Conference 2012 is good, three is better. In fact, this was the best writers conference I've ever been to. So much information was packed into a single weekend, I got home and every time I closed my eyes the great stuff I learned from the presenters was still swirling past my closed eyelids. I had withdrawal for almost a whole week! So fun. Plus, I laughed so hard with the women from my chapter who went with me I almost threw up. Twice. Thank you, ladies!

A zillion things went on. There were agents from NYC and Denver, as well as from SLC for LDS fiction and non-fiction. The senior editor of the Ensign magazine was on hand with a hilarious sense of humor and some good guidance. Great guy, Josh Perkey and his pretty wife with the Disney Princess hair. 

Donna Hatch taught us how NOT to write romance novels.

Larry Brooks gave his spiel on Story Engineering (a book I intend to buy soon!).

Conrad Storad gave us tips on how to read aloud to children if we get invited to read in schools.

Janette Rallison talked about how to use internal dialogue in our writing to improve characterization.

Dave Eaton--wow! He taught us about outsmarting Google to get our published books to the top of the search engine lists using search engine optimization (which kinda blew my mind.)

Most exciting to me was Matt Petersen's class on how to start up your own freelance writing business. Killer! It made me think, hey, just because I was an English major doesn't mean I can never earn money.

In the bad old days of joking around with my husband, he used to tell me this joke: "What did the English major say to the Engineering major?" What. "You want fries with that?"

Hardeharhar.

And those were just the classes I attended. There were a dozen others. Great stuff. I can't imagine missing it ever in future years. Lots of women pitched their novels to the agents, and I know of at least one who has already signed with the New York agency.

Thank you, ANWA Conference. It was open to members of ANWA and non-members. It was open to men and women. It will be going on again next February. If you can, black out that weekend and make it a priority! So much information, it almost felt like another Exxon Valdez. But a good one.
Well, no more! Now it's, "Do you want me to write the copy for your website and your newsletter and update your blog? Okay, that'll be $350." Sweet.

Writing for Fun and Profit and Jalapeno Corn

It's only October and I'm already starting to formulate goals for the New Year.

This is probably due to the fact that I spent the morning Christmas shopping. Is this jumping the gun or getting a jump on the gun-to-your-head type season that is coming at me like an army with bayonets?

I'm not sure.

Anyhow, I'm thinking about what kind of things I can be doing next year for writing. I have love, love, loved my novel writing experiences. I think it's the most satifying writing I've ever done. However, novel writing is what I'd put in the trickle-down category of earning. It takes a while to earn anything from writing a novel, royalties only come in a lump sum every six months (at least that's how mine come), and it eventually trickles to a drip, which is fine unless you have something new written coming down the pipe and didn't take a couple of years off to be the mommy of the kids. 

That's fine. Most novelists don't quit their day jobs, and I never could (as a stay-at-home mom it would be a colossal mistake. Plus, I kinda like my job. My bosses are pretty hilarious. And good fodder for the novels.)

So, as for the new goals, I think I'm starting to want to try some new formats. I've been writing novels for about 15 years. Before that, I wrote essays and short stories--and a bunch of papers for college (not a format I'd like to revisit.) My good friend Donna Hatch told me recently she had written a couple of novellas she put up on Smashwords and made available for Kindle and Nook. She had a fun time writing them. That sounded fun to me, and like not as much pressure as a full-blown 85,000 word novel to calibrate. And if I get something cute done, nice and frothy, I might do what Donna did and make it available for sale as an e-book. Even if I only make a few bucks, that's a profit, right?

For the past several years I've been writing a book review column for our local newspaper. I love it. I get to inflict on the local populace my taste in books. Ha! Sometimes I go to a doctor's office or a city luncheon and people say, "I've heard your name. Where...?" I tell them I write the column, and that's usually how they knew me. I'm using up all 15 minutes of my fame this way. It's not a bad way, promoting other writers' books. Good times! I haven't written a column lately (too busy writing to read much I'd like to recommend), so I think in the new year my goal will be to step that up, funnel a few more columns their way.

Besides that, I got a new community-involvement-assignment to work on the county's state Centennial celebration and do the write-ups for that. It should be a good variety of challenges, from the news releases to a pamphlet here and there, to website content, to a history of a local landmark. That'll make me stretch.

A friend of mine, Valerie Steimle Bashein Foy, from ANWA (my writers group) keeps posting on our Facebook group whenever she gets a byline in a magazine, newspaper, or e-zine. She's raking in the clips! It's inspiring! I don't know how much she gets paid for each column, but even if it's just a few dollars here and there, it's cool that her writing is valuable enough that she is being paid for it. That makes her a professional writer. I love it. She's quite the inspiration.

I'm not going to quit working on my latest novel (it's going to be the cotton candy fun I love to spin), but I want to branch out and make myself stretch into new projects in the new year. If I can just get through the holidays!

I can't wait for the holidays. Seriously. When is food a bigger part of our lives than those diet-deadly and delicious six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day? Ah, I think I can taste the jalapeno corn already. Mmm!

Here's my recipe:

4 bags frozen white corn
1 8-oz cube cream cheese
1 cube butter
1/4 cup milk
3 jalapenos seeded and chopped
garlic salt
season salt

On stovetop in saucepan combine cheese, milk, butter, seasoning and peppers. Stir until creamy and bubbling. Pour over thawed corn. Cook on stovetop stirring occasionally until peppers are tender. Keep warm in crock pot until ready to serve. Makes enough for the whole Thanksgiving gang (but I have to double this because our gang is gigantic.)

Cracking a Code -- and White Chocolate Popcorn (recipe!)

Sometimes I come across information that works almost like a Rosetta Stone. It opens things up to understanding the way things work in writing and helps me look at almost every piece of writing with new eyes. The book The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes is one of those things. *(ooh, baby. i just saw it's available on Kindle.)



At the writers retreat last week I was lucky to get asked to present one of the workshops. My friend Colleen had introduced me to this super useful book a couple of years ago, and I decided it was the thing to share with the women in the pines. She stumbled across it mis-shelved in Bookmans, as thought it were meant for her and only her to find. (Cue mysterious music here.)

The three authors of this book have analyzed and boiled down millennia of literary works. They categorized eight types of heroes and eight types of heroines based on classic and modern literature. Their contention is that all truly memorable heroes/heroines are classifiable into one (or two, if they are layered types) of these archetypes.

When I first picked up the book, I found myself resisting the idea. I thought, I'm not going to use this--I want to create *unique* characters, not stereotypes. HOWEVER, reading on, I realized stereotypes and archetypes are not the same thing. Archetypes have more to do with general personalities, backgrounds that shape their views, and what motivates the heroes in a similar category. Their example (one of them) was that both Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek and Professor Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady were both the CHIEF archetype. They both made quick, decisive choices, were used to being right and being obeyed, etc. However, if Henry Higgins sat at the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise, what a different show it would have been.

So archetype does not equal stereotype.

Another aspect of this is that a character can be a CORE archetype (same all the way through the story, like Superman is always the WARRIOR; he doesn't change), or he can be a LAYERED archetype (like Rhett Butler is both the CHIEF and the BAD BOY), or he can be EVOLVING, like my character Buck the sumo wrestler who goes from being the walked-on BEST FRIEND to the WARRIOR who fights for the girl and won't let evil go unpunished.

When I shared the sixteen archetypes with the women, at the end of each explanation, they were able to identify and shout out examples from film and literature (and a few from family and church members they knew, haha) with ease. They're all around. And I think these ladies who wrote it are onto something really useful. The book also includes how different archetypes interact, how the clash/mesh/change when thrown together.

Another friend up there, Donna Hatch, said she uses the Enneagram to help her nail down personality types for her writing, and I can see that being useful as well. But she said she liked this because it takes the hero at that particular moment in time, including his background and what got him to this point--not just the set of personality traits he was born with.

Here's one of the motivational posters my friend Melinda Sanchez came up with and placed around the cabin at the retreat. The theme was "Gone With the Pen," and the ANWA board presented a fun skit using Miss Scarlett (SEDUCTRESS)and Ashley Wilkes (LOST SOUL, I think?) and Miss Melanie (NURTURER) and all the good (archetypical) characters from Gone With the Wind.



And now, back to the snack table. My contribution was this thing my sister brought me when we went to D.C. together a year or two ago. Her neighbor made it. At first I couldn't tell what it was that made it so fantastic, but it's SUPER simple. Now my daughter's teachers request it on the day it's my turn to send the snack. I have to make an extra bag just for them.

WHITE CHOCOLATE POPCORN
4 bags microwave popcorn
4 cubes Almond Bark (or the white Candy-Quick)

Pop popcorn. Pour into large bowl. Melt white chocolate. Drizzle over popcorn and stir. Cool.
A-ma-zing.