this title doesn't mean anything. i just thought it was funny.
You can ask for anything?
Ask for, yes. It's called negotiating.
Took a long walk yesterday in the morning. Still not early enough to escape the heat.
Darin doesn't like to visit clients--one of his requirements for potential employers is that they won't need him on-site, because being away from his pookie (fyi: me) for more than about two hours is just too much. But periodically they do need him on-site so much that they are willing to negotiate. (It's fun being married to someone like that--you can see this kind of negotiation in action.)
Knowing his general reluctance to travel, one of his current clients asked, "What do you want?"
Darin asked me, "What should I ask for?"
I suggested, "One hundred billion dollars and a small clone named Mini Me."
He took this under advisement. And typed something else in his mail message.
I had coffee with Mary yesterday. Grace was there too, but she didn't drink very much coffee, at least not directly. She was sacked out most of the time in her car seat. Life is pretty good when you're 3 months old--eat, sleep, and poop. It's a good deal if you can get it.
We met at the Starbucks at the Barnes and Noble in Encino. This was a two-fer on the Evil Corporate Overlord Meter, but it was a nice central location and every Barnes and Noble has a baby changing stall in their bathrooms, which makes them baby-friendly. (I pointed that out to my sister, in case she needed to locate bathrooms while out with my niece.)
Mary had to feed Grace at one point. She looked around and said, "Okay, this isn't a Borders, so I won't be thrown out." She told me a story she'd heard about a woman who breastfed at a Borders, the store asked her to leave, and she threatened to sue. Now, reportedly, Borders have signs posted reading, "Please breastfeed here." Mary actually tossed a blanket over her and Grace, so it actually looked like she had a big yellow sling over her arm.
We discussed writing--Mary manages to get several hours of writing in a day, mostly by staying up late. I talked about my mystery writing class and Mary discussed a problem she's having with her Disney script, which was a big ol' cue to me to riff on how to solve her problems. As always, I said, "These are Bad Ideas--use them to get to Good Ideas," but it helps to have outside minds work on your stuff, to get new perspectives.
I've been really happy with the quality of submissions in the Mystery Writing class. I know, that sounds really snotty, but you have no idea what you're going to get in a class where random people can sign up. Hey, I had to apply to USC's Screenwriting Program and it was still touch and go as to the quality of my fellow students' work.
Several submissions promise interesting books, although one chapter is pretty darn far from a finished book. And that, as Jerrilyn put it, is the key thing. You have to finish the book. There are plenty of mediocre mysteries published because those authors finished the damn books. Talent, as she said, is not the important part of being an author; persistence is.
People liked my chapter, generally, although there were a few things that were unclear. That always happens though. The way to fix that is not to put, "He was a thieving murderer," but to find a better way to make it clear to the reader that the character is both a murderer and a thief without being really on-the-nose (if you don't want to be on-the-nose about those points). There are always better ways; usually they involve tons of rewriting, which sucks, but there you are.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com