My Weblog

On endings

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

Ivan Held--the president of the Putnam, Dutton, and Berkley imprints of the publisher I still insist was crazy not to celebrate its merger by calling itself Random Penguin--published a moving tribute to Sue Grafton this week. If we hadn't lost her too soon, we'd all be celebrating the release of Z is for Zero right now.

I also wish she'd lived to finish Z, and would have looked forward eagerly to whatever she decided to do in her post-alphabet career. I'm sad that there will be no more books, no more interviews, no more panels. Damn.

But I'm an oddball in one respect: I'm okay with the fact that she didn't get to wrap up the series. In fact, I'm relieved.

I hate endings. A movie, an individual book, a fairy tale--yeah, they need endings. But a book series or a TV series? Especially a beloved one that I wish were continuing? I don't want everything tied up in neat bows. Let me think of the characters still living their lives and having whatever adventures or misadventures I enjoyed reading about or watching.

There are a few exceptions. I rather liked the final episode of M.A.S.H. I could have lived without it, but I liked it. The final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer--loved that. But I think I liked the final episode of Angel better. (Stop reading here if you don't want even the slightest of spoilers. Although I'll try to avoid them.)

For those who never ventured into the Buffyverse, Angel was a character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then the protagonist of a five-season spinoff called Angel. He's a vampire fighting on the side of the good against an increasingly powerful array of evil antagonists.  In the last episode, Angel and his allies defeat a powerful force of evil, but are well aware that there are plenty of other evil forces lying in wait for them. In fact, after a brief victory celebration, the good guys find themselves surrounded by what is by any reasonable measurement an impossibly overpowering force of evil creatures. Angel says "Let's get to work." And they do. We'll never know if they won or not.  We just know that they went on fighting.

In discussing this episode, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy and Angel, said: "This was not the final grace note after a symphony, the way the Buffy finale was. We are definitely still in the thick of it. But the point of the show is that you're never done; no matter who goes down, the fight goes on."

Perfect for Angel. A non-ending ending.

And for the most part, I'm happier when a TV or book series doesn't wrap everything up neatly in the final episode. I like to think that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are in the middle of another five-year mission. That Ilya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo are still emerging from Del Floria's to battle THRUSH. That the game is still afoot for Sherlock Holmes and Watson.  That Alan Shore and Denny Crane are at this moment smoking another cigar on the Crane, Poole, and Schmidt offices. That Nero Wolfe's latest client will have to wait until he and Archie have finished one of Fritz's superb dinners.  That Jessica Fletcher is still expressing astonishment that murder has struck in peaceful Cabot Cove. And that Kinsey is still renting her tiny apartment from Henry, enjoying dinners at Rosie's, and writing "Respectfully submitted, Kinsey Milhone" at the end of another case report.

I'm fine that I don't get to see their further adventures. I just want them to continue to exist, somewhere out there in Fictionland.

I've even been known to hang onto the last book in a series for a long, long time, just to avoid the ending. I may never read Agatha Christie's Curtain. And I have yet to read Y is for Yesterday.

Someday.

Just not yet, dammit!

 

 

 

Welcome guest Nancy Cole Silverman: Murder on the Douro

by Nancy Cole Silverman

I recently returned from Portugal and Spain where my husband and I did a river cruise down the Douro River.  It was a much-needed break before my new book, The House on Hallowed Ground dropped, and I began edits for book two of the series.  Writers know how difficult it can be to get time off between writing, pitching, and editing, so I was particularly thankful we could find time to escape. This was a trip we were looking forward to, and it didn’t disappoint.

My husband and I have become big fans of river trips. It’s a chance to sit back, enjoy the scenery, and visit ancient cities as they were meant to be seen, from the river—without the hassle of transferring from one hotel to the next or worrying about traffic.  It’s also a chance to sip wine, sample regional cheeses, and meet new people.

The ships are small, ours had just over a hundred passengers, and invariably our conversation with our fellow travelers would come around to what we’d seen that day, how much we were enjoying the voyage, how many river trips we had taken, and what we did for a living.

My husband’s in advertising.  Me? I kill people.  

That’s always a conversation starter.  And usually, a gentle way to lead into the fact I’m a mystery writer, and that the only murders I’ve ever committed were on the page.

It also leads to a discussion about how I’ve knocked people off.  I’ve never used a gun.  In fact, in both my series, The Carol Childs Mysteries and the brand, spanking new, Misty Dawn Mysteries, (Henery Press), I’ve managed to find creative ways to eliminate characters. Not to worry; there’s no blood and guts on the page.  These are soft-boiled mysteries or cozies sans the graphic violence or play-by-play descriptions.

As I explained to my fellow passengers, thus far between my two series; I’ve poisoned people, pushed them helicopters, had one die after being kicked by a horse (poor horse), hung them, stabbed them, and most recently drowned them.  All pretty nasty way to go, but since I was discussing my methods of elimination while on a river cruise where we were studying the Spanish Inquisition; certainly no more gruesome than burning someone at the stake or beheading them. 

All in all, it made for unusual dinner conversation. People wanted to know how I came up with my ideas. “Actually, poisoning is easy,” I said, “and not always detectable.”  I had recently come across a book Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons, that was particularly helpful in directing me to various  poisons and how they work. I leave a copy out on my kitchen counter when we have friends over for dinner. It’s amazing the conversation starter that is; and how much food I have left over. 

There’s a funny thing that happens to writers when they share what they do for a living.  Invariably, people will tell stories they might not tell anyone else, and my experience on the cruise was no different. Nearly every day, my fellow passengers would stop by our dinner table to offer some new idea or method by which someone had done someone in or to ask about my book or the name of the poision book I’d used for reference.

Kind of made me wonder what people might be doing when they got home.  I hope it’s my book they’re reading.

About the book:

When Misty Dawn, a former Hollywood Psychic to the Stars, moves into an old craftsman house, she encounters the former owner, the recently deceased Hollywood set designer, Wilson Thorne. Wilson is unaware of his circumstances, and when Misty explains the particulars of his limbo state, and how he might help himself if he helps her, he’s not at all happy. That is until young actress Zoey Chamberlain comes to Misty’s door for help. Zoey has recently purchased The Pink Mansion, a historic Hollywood Hills home, and believes it’s haunted. But when Misty arrives to search the house, it’s not a ghost she finds, but a dead body. The police are quick to suspect Zoey of murdering her best friend. Zoey maintains her innocence and fears her friend’s death may have been a result of the ghost...and a long-time family curse. Together Misty and Wilson must untangle the secrets of The Pink Mansion or submit to the powers of the family curse.

About the author: 

Nancy Cole Silverman enjoyed a long and very successful career in radio before turning to print journalism and later, to fiction.

As a graduate of Arizona State University with a degree in Mass Communications, Nancy was one of the first female on-air television reporters in her hometown of Phoenix. After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970’s she turned to the business side of broadcasting, becoming one of the top advertising sales executives in the market. After stints at KNX, KFWB, KABC and KXTA radio, she was appointed General Manager at KMPC, making her one of only two female managers in America’s second-largest radio market.

But in her heart of hearts, Nancy thought first of herself as a writer. In 2001 she left the radio business to found and edit The Equestrian News, a monthly publication for equine enthusiasts. “That’s when I really began to write,” said Silverman, “toggling between writing articles for the News and fiction I’d been thinking about for years.”

Today Nancy is a full-time author. Her two series, The Carol Childs Mysteries, and the new Misty Dawn mysteries, are available wherever you buy books.

My castle is sparkle-free.

I gave birth to a Disney Princess. I don’t know how it happened. Yes, I’d put in a request for a girl but I just figured I’d get a girl like the kind I was - a muddy, adventurous, tree-climbing, slaying imaginary dragons with stick swords, doll-hating, decidedly non-princessy girl. And pink! Boy howdy does this girl love herself some pink. To quote M'Lynn Eatonton, "It looks like the place has been hosed down with Pepto Bismal."

Please don’t get me wrong, I love her just exactly the way she is even if I find her bewildering sometimes. Y’all she can put on false eyelashes! I had no idea real people could do that. I thought you had a makeup artist that did it or one of those YouTube makeup girls who do tutorials for a hobby. Not real people who had jobs working with small children or took AP exams in flannel pajama bottoms like my girl does/did.

She wears lipstick on the reg like women of my mother and grandmother’s generations did. How do you even remember you need to reapply that stuff? She just shrugs when I ask her And she dresses cute for school. For no reason. Not like it’s picture day just any day. Tuesday. It’s all so odd to me.

And it makes me love her all the more. She’s herself. One hundred percent. Even growing up with a mother who generally wasn’t interested in those means of expressing oneself.

Now we get to the Disney part.

Wild animals love my daughter.

Small children love my daughter.

Adults love my daughter.

Everyone loves my daughter.

I don’t blame anyone for loving her. She’s a special human - sweet, kind, talented, smart, clever, and beautiful, inside and outside.

She loves books, especially Harry Potter (she’s not so different from other kids her age in that respect), but also mysteries like her mom. She goes more for historicals than I do but she’ll take a contemporary. She’s super proud that I’m a writer and tells total strangers about my books. She’s also super excited to hang out with my author friends who … you guessed it, adore her.

Then she did something truly awful. She went away to college. Can you believe it?

It’s been a weird time for me. My house is tidier than it’s ever been. There are no shoes kicked off everywhere (yup, she loves shoes too) or wet towels on the bed (apparently, real life Disney princesses don’t come with the cartoon animals to keep house) and I do the dishes and laundry so much less often. But it’s lonelier too. No music blasting in her bathroom while she showers. No giggles as she FaceTimes with her friends or boyfriend. Much of the light and life is gone.

People tell me adjusting to the “new” normal is a process. I’ve been making plans to redo her bathroom and finally turn the second closet in her room into built-ins. Then we went to her school for Family Weekend. We attended the Study Abroad fair and she’s very excited about a few programs - Scotland and Bath, England specifically. She didn’t want to go to most of the rest of the planned activities so we made our own itinerary and she showed us around her new city. We went to the petting zoo that was only rescues. Then to a living museum and yet more animals that cannot live in the wild. 

We saw Fort Monroe which is also called Freedom’s Fort and saw a whole raft of information about all the people who died but it was the pet cemetery along the fort’s ramparts that she refused to look at. Cemeteries give her the creeps even ones full of beloved pets who lived inside the walls of the fort and in death spend eternity guarding the perimeter.

We ate lots and lots of really great food!

When we left her after the obligatory Target run I was fine. I did cross stitch on the way home and then we got here and back to our baby puppies but … it didn’t feel like home anymore. She’d been gone a month already but it was just yesterday that this house didn’t make sense to my heart anymore.

The castle has lost it’s princess sparkle, I guess.

RenFaire

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I went to the Maryland Renaissance Faire this weekend. Not for the first time--I've been there multiple times before, though not in the last few years. I've also been to Renaissance fairs in Northern and Southern California, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee. If RenFaire attendance were a crime, I'd be a hardened offender.

But this time I wasn't just going for fun--it was research! Friends and family members of writers learn to be suspicious of this phrase, which we tend to use as justification for just about anything we want to get up to. But in this case I'm serious! The book I'm working on--The Falcon Always Wings Twice--is set at a Renfair, and I felt the need to refresh my memory.

And here are a few of the things I'm busily trying to cram between the pages of the book.

Swordsmen!

Swordswomen!

Drama!

Food!

Musicians!

Jugglers!

Cool craft booths!

Fascinating faces!

His Majesty!

And jousting!

I'd go on, but . . . I have a draft to finish. And I need to be this stern with myself.

 

Why do we still have spam?

by Kris Neri, with the Femmes Fatales

Why do we still have spam?

I understand why we did when the Internet was new. When we naively thought anything print had to be true. When grammatically and English-challenged grifters first grasped the idea that they could use email to scam a few bucks. 

Even back then, though, it wasn’t merely a few bucks. Once I read a newspaper
article about a woman who spammed for a living. It was a long time ago, and my memory of it isn’t perfect — but I vaguely recall that she claimed to work 4-6 hours a day sending out spam emails, and made $250,000 per year.

Is it any wonder the number of spammers exploded? 

When I lived in Sedona and owned a bookstore there, a woman used to come in periodically who always asked if we knew anyone who’d be interested in “Internet marketing.” I never asked anything about it, so I can’t share any particulars. Interestingly, she sometimes came to one of the writing workshops fiction authors often put on for us, though she rarely bought the author’s book. I am assuming she made more from “Internet marketing” than either most authors or booksellers.

But back to the question of why we still have spam…why do we? We’re not naive anymore. Is there anyone who still believes Nigerians struggle to give away free money? Are there any men around anymore who believe that young girls, who are the most horrific spellers on the planet, desperately want them, sight unseen?

Even worse than email — because spam filters catch much of it today — is phone spamming. And it’s just as ridiculous. Sometimes our caller IDs say the calls come from…us. That’s right, they use our names. Does anyone take a call from themselves? We receive calls warning us that some warranty is about to expire, and giving us the chance to renew it — for a fee, of course — on some non-specific product. We’re told we’re about to be arrested for some unnamed crime, but we can get out of it for, once again, by paying the caller a fee. We’re told our Social Security number has been suspended, and once more, for a charge we can have it restored again. And on and on with increasingly more ridiculous scenarios and offers.

So, I repeat: Why do we still have spam? Who still believes in these offers? Who still falls for these come-ons? 

As I wrote earlier, email programs today have spam filters that catch most of the scam or phishing emails. Do some people peruse their junk folders for offers too good to be true? 

According to Google, for every 12.5 million spam emails sent out, only one person responds. That sounds like shockingly few responses — until you take into account that a whopping 14 billion (billion with a B!) spam messages are sent out every day. 

Google also says that 34.8 billion spam calls flood merely the US phone market every year. And most present illegal offers.

Clearly, if nobody bit, they would all go away. If you’re that one out of 12.5 million who just can’t resist one of these offers, do the rest of us a favor and quit it.

How about you? Have any good spam stories? 

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NEVER SAY DIE: Hit by a car and left for dead on a San Diego street, it is only because of her indomitable will that professional triathlete Zoey Morgan is able to fight her way back from death's door. Too bad she left behind in that nether world, not only her memory of the vehicular assault, but the events that led up to it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KZTS1FM (Kindle)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615981836 (Paperback)

Summer is too short (and trying to get excited about Fall)

by LynDee Walker of the Femmes Fatales.

Summer. From long school days of countdown calendars and decreasing homework to blazing afternoons in courthouse hallways that never seemed to be air conditioned waiting for a jury to return a verdict, to endless Richmond sunshine by the pool, it’s always been my favorite season. 

Heat? Eh, I grew up in Texas, so most of the time Virginia is tolerable if not downright lovely. And I love the farmers markets and fresh produce, my littles being home from school, and the later daylight. 

I only wish it would stop flying by faster every year. 

It’s after Labor Day, my children are back in school, and I’m back at my desk in a quiet house—and none of that is bad. My littles are bright and curious and they love school and are fortunate to go to schools where they are loved and thriving. I love my work and am having great fun catching up with Nichelle. 

But I feel like school just got out. I just turned in a book. And I blinked twice and it’s September. I’m not alone: just about every mom I’ve talked to the past two weeks has the same story. Chatting with a friend at elementary Back to School night last week, we figured part of it out: we miss the long lazy summers we had when they were little. Back then,
dragging half the house to the pool and juggling a stroller and the sleepy toddler of the moment just to get in an activity for the day, our young mom selves couldn’t wait for the littles to be older. Now that they are, they’re all so busy the days blur into months and before I know it we’re buying book bags and packing lunches and running out the door to the bus again. We want the lazy days back, but with the older kids we love to hang out with (and who carry their own pool stuff). I’ve decided my mission this year is to figure out how to make that happen. Any and all ideas welcome.

But for now, it’s nonstop homework and projects and basketball—two more blinks and Christmas will be here, four and they’ll be out for another summer I’ll hopefully be better equipped to stretch and savor and make great memories with. I miss it, but I also dislike sadness and looking back.

This week, I’m focusing on the things I love about Fall, and there are many: campfires and turning leaves, jeans and boots and cooler days, football and soups and family time on Sundays. And my new book! LEAVE NO STONE is coming November 19 from Severn River Publishing, and it is the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s also my first hardcover release, and the first-off the press copy got here just in time to cushion the end of summer blues with a big shiny book launch to look forward to. For the next couple of months, I'll be profiling a new book I love in my
slots here, so even the staunchest summer fans among us can find something to get excited about.

How about you, Femmes and readers? What do you love about Autumn? And don't forget to tell me what books you're looking forward to!

Why Only Women Authors in A Me Too Short Stories Anthology?

Today, the Femmes are happy to welcome Elizabeth Zelvin as a guest blogger.

Take it away, Liz...

When I decided to compile an anthology of short stories on the theme, "Me Too—crimes against women, tales of retribution and healing," I asked only women writers to submit. I wanted women's voices—authors' voices as well as those of the girls and women whose stories they would tell.  

Of course, people asked: 

"Do you have only women authors?" 

"Why do you have only women authors?" 

"Don't you think men can write a good story about a me too situation?" 

"Do you think all men are abusers?" 

No one actually asked, "Do you think men are the enemy?" But I could hear them think it.

For the record, I don't. I know plenty of kind and decent men who don't see the world through sexist lenses. My husband and my son are among them. So are some of the best short story writers I know. Only one guy I know was snide about the project, and everybody else ignored him. But “Why only women?” is a question that deserves an answer.

Author Lyndsay Faye wrote eloquently about what's wrong with "Not all men are like that" in a blog post in November 2017. We already know that, she said, but "there's a reason it makes women crazy." When a woman is telling her story, "she doesn't care about your own credentials while she's in the middle of telling a painful story. It's interrupting. It's changing the subject." If your boat is sinking, she says, you don't want to hear that not all boats are leaky.  

In asking women only to contribute to Me Too Short Stories, I was saying, "Don't interrupt. Sure you could write a story. But this time, it's our turn." Furthermore, most women understood why I made that choice, even if they themselves would have included male authors in such a volume. I didn't have to explain. I didn't have to explain a lot of things that I trust women, especially those who choose to write a me-too story, to understand. 

I'm the first to affirm that the tools of a fiction writer's trade are imagination and empathy. Literature is filled with female characters well written by male authors. But I have two reasons not to trust them with this particular kind of woman. First, good men were so surprised by how many women in all kinds of circumstances stood up and said, "Me too." Second, I did this book because crime fiction was getting it wrong. Some men might have gotten it, but I didn't want to have to explain the nuances. I didn't want to instruct or correct. If they wanted to learn, let them read what women had to say.

In general, there are a lot of things I don’t have to explain to women. Sure, "women understand" is a gross oversimplification. But here are some of the things that we're more likely to know: 

A story about violence against women doesn’t need to be graphic. It doesn’t even need an assault scene.

It’s better to give molested children a voice than ban stories about them.

Not every victim wants revenge.

Not every woman who seeks retribution is a gun-toting action heroine, an honorary man with breasts.

Fear is as complex as anger. Survivors can feel a whole spectrum of emotions from shame to grief to ambivalence to rage to acceptance to forgiveness. 

Most women are not loners, but relational beings who grow through connection with others. They have mothers, daughters, sisters, friends. Read any feminist psychology lately?

Our relationships with our bodies may not conform to the stereotypes. Our feelings about fat, breasts, age, and beauty vary.

The relationship between violence and pleasure can be confusing. This is one reason that sexual molestation is so shaming to the young, along with the pain and betrayal of trust.

Women often don't talk about what men imagine we talk about. In particular, a lot of us don't talk about men at all. This doesn't mean we don't like or love you individually, guys. You're just not as interesting as you think you are.

Oh, yeah. And there are no femmes fatales.

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Elizabeth Zelvin is the author of the Bruce Kohler Mysteries and the Mendoza Family Saga. Her short stories appear in EQMM and AHMM and have been nominated three times each for the Derringer and Agatha awards. Liz is also a New Yorker, an online therapist, a poet, a singer-songwriter, and a grandma.

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Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology (paperback)

https://www.amazon.com/Too-Short-Stories-Elizabeth-Zelvin/dp/1947915134

 

Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology (Kindle)

https://www.amazon.com/Me-Too-Short-Stories-Anthology-ebook/dp/B07X9J68TT

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A Graphic Break from Writing

I just hit send on edits for my fifth Gethsemane Brown novel, Execution in E. Just, as in forty-five minutes before I sat down to write this post. (Which is why it’s late and why it may ramble.) Right now, I’m at that stage in an author’s life when I’m relieved that I finally—finally—don’t have a manuscript deadline hanging over my head (oh, sweet freedom) and where I kind of hate writing stories and never want to write again.

Of course, that’s hyperbole. I don’t hate writing, I love it. I’m amazed when a random idea stirs thoughts that my brain translates into words and puts them together in some order that makes sense not only to me but to others. But writing is hard work, mentally and (according to my eyes, wrists, back, and neck) physically exhausting. After I finish a manuscript, I need a break before jumping into the next writing project. But what kind of break?

I don’t want to do nothing. There’s too much risk of never going back to doing something. Doing nothing is my default setting because it’s so easy. I could whittle my TBR pile. Get lost in the rabbit hole (or black hole) of social media. Catch up on long-neglected emails. (Apologies to everyone I’ve ignored. Blame the edits.) But, at least for a few days, I need to take a break that doesn’t involve words. I need to exercise the visual part of my brain, the part that’s been pushed to the back of the shelf during these months while I’ve been editing my book. And, no, exercise is not a synonym for bingewatch.

I’ve decided to participate in The Sketchbook Project, sponsored by The Brooklyn Art Library. The Sketchbook Project and its companion, The Tiny Sketchbook Project, are physical collections of more than 40,000 artist sketchbooks housed at the Brooklyn Art Library in Brooklyn, New York. To participate, you buy a blank, kraft paper-covered, 5x7” and/or 2.33x1.66” notebook, register the book’s unique barcode with the library, fill the pages and decorate the covers of your book, mail the book back to the library by the deadline (each volume of the Project has a deadline—there’s no escaping them!), eh, voila!—You’re in the permanent collection. The library sends a list of suggested themes for each volume but you don’t have to stick to them. You can Instagram your progress (natch), using hashtag #sbpprogress, and you can opt (for an additional fee) to have your finished sketchbook digitized for the library’s online archive.

I’m going to challenge myself to explore visual arts while I take a break from the literary arts. Then, it’s time to jump into book six.

Writing avoidance

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

If another woman writer came to my house and looked around, she'd probably say "Aha! Donna can't possibly be on deadline."

And she would be wrong.

Normally a clean house is the sign of a writer on deadline. The closer we get to a deadline, or the more behind we get on our assigned quotas, the more we indulge in writing avoidance activities. And for many writers--especially women writers--cleaning is the number one writing avoidance activity. Hence, a messy house is the sign of a writer not feeling any deadline pressure. (At least for me. I know a few more disciplined writers for whom a messy house is the sign that they are hard at work and meeting whatever goals they set for themselves with clockwork regularity. I try not to hate them.)

At the moment I'm two days behind where I wanted to be in writing the next book--The Falcon Always Wings Twice--and feeling a little anxiety because I already see that when I get there I will I need to do lot more brainstorming about that part of the book that immediately follows the discovery of the murder.  This is a perfectly normal situation to be in at this point in a book. What's not normal is that my house is messy.

Really messy.

No, I am not showing you any pictures. I don't even want to admit to myself how messy it is, much less share with others.

Normally, when I look around and see clutter and disorganization, I can nod to myself with a complacent air and murmur, "Yes . . . but I'm on schedule!"

Sadly, this time around I seem to have discovered other writing avoidance activities that, while not as satisfying as cleaning, have at least the charm of novelty. For example, there's obsessing about the dead gnat behind the screen of my monitor. I actually have quite a few dead gnats behind the screen, but by carefully stroking the screen with just the right degree of pressure I have managed to coax most of them down so they're on the blue bar at the bottom of my Windows screen, where they're not that intrusive. But the one remains stubbornly in the middle of the active, useful part of the screen. (You think I'm kidding? You can see them below. Note the almost invisible black dots in the blue bar, and the one highly visible black dot smack dab in the middle of everything. Grrr.)

So . . . take the monitor apart? Not really something I want to tackle. Buy a new monitor? But this one is still perfectly good! I end up spending good writing time alternating between stroking the monitor and Googling variations on "fix for gnats inside monitor." So far neither activity has proved productive.

Even if I do clean, I've gotten positively brilliant at picking things to clean that don't actually contribute to the overall appearance of the house. For example, cleaning out the refrigerator. It''s a good thing to do. A useful thing. Regular refrigerator maintenance prevents many bad happenings, like evil smells pervading the refrigerator, re-buying things you already have but cannot find, and succumbing to food poisoning. But taking everything out of the refrigerator, wiping down every inch of the interior, scrutinizing every item in it--"Has it gone visibly bad? Is it past its expiration date? Even if the answer to both questions is no, is this something I will ever eat?"--and arranging the contents in ways designed to improve my ability to find them when needed--that goes beyond useful cleaning and becomes writing avoidance. The same for pruning my bulging paper files: reducing a messy two-inch-thick file full of extraneous items to a lean, mean, alphabetized/date sorted quarter inch file full of only the mission-critical documents is a worthy accomplishment. But it doesn't push the book forward. And neither fridge cleaning nor file purging does much to reduce the visible clutter around me.

And then there's list-making. I love lists. So I start with a simple to-do list with "Write quota" as the number one item. And then I add the other things that I absolutely must do that day. Paying the bills, especially the power bill, because making quota would get a lot harder if they turned the power off. Doing at least one load of laundry, because even if I'm staying in to write all day today, I might need to go out tomorrow--to restock the Diet Coke supply, for example.

But then list-making gets good to me.  I start another section of the list for the things I won't do today unless I make quota. A list of things I won't have time to get to today, even if I make quota, but ought to get done this week. A list of things I shouldn't even think about doing this week, but don't want to forget. A list of fun things from which to choose a reward when I finish quota. A list--

At this point, list-making has become a highly effective writing avoidance activity, in and of itself. So I stop, and make one more very short list.

1. Write to quota
2. When #1 is complete, see what else really needs to be done

Off to work on item #1.

p.s. In case you're curious, Terns of Endearment came out last month, and Owl Be Home for Christmas comes out next month, and one of the things I really ought be to doing is promoting them somehow.  But my quota awaits.