The Plot Bunny Farm

Back in part two, I mentioned that I’d just written a review for a writing book. The review’s available online, so you’re welcome to check that out: Book Review: Writing Novels That Sell by Jack Bickham

Today, I’m going to talk a little about quilting because Nicki asked. Quilting is one of those things that I always thought I should know how to do. My first encounter with quilting was when I was still in single digits; my parents were working on one. My dad made this square wooden block that they were using as a template, and there were stacks of squares sitting on the ironing board (I think that’s where I saw them). As far as I know, the quilt was never pieced together, which is a shame. ( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Taking another question each from B.C and Nicki:

How do you stay motivated to send stuff out into the wide world of publishing?

Random digression: I grew up in Reno. As you might have heard, there are slot machines there, at least a couple. Casinos will advertise things like “97.3% payback!” Right — for every $100 you bet, you lose $2.70, and people keep playing. You have to ask yourself why.

Intermittent reinforcement. Basically, animals and people are more likely to continue a given behavior if they’re only rewarded some of the time. Those random payoffs? Keep people gambling, even if overall they’re losing money.

From a psychological perspective, the fact that I had an early success (short story sale), followed by intermittent other successes, predisposes me to maintain the pattern of behavior that leads to that reward. Fortunately, I’m only losing time, not money, to the process, and along the way I’m getting better at my writing.

That’s the other thing that keeps me going — as time has gone on, I’ve had more near misses, more personal rejections, more successes in the various ways that I define success. My writing is getting better, and the chances of selling it are going up. And as my thesis advisor often said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” If I don’t submit my stories to markets, the answer is automatically “No.” The only way to get a “Yes” is to send it out.

It also helps that I’m a stubborn woman from a family of stubborn people and most of the time, I treat “no” as meaning “You just haven’t tried hard enough yet.” (This is also why I spent much longer bashing my head against my thesis project in grad school than any rational person would have done.)

Best book you’ve read this month, whatever it was

I’m in the middle of a few, and some are really excellent. But I did recently finish an older how-to writing book, Writing Novels That Sell, by Jack M. Bickham. I took a while to read it because some of the chapters really required time to sink in. I wrote a review, and if/when it’s available online, I’ll post a link. Meanwhile, that’s my current nonfiction recommendation.

Oddly enough, most of my current TBR pile is MG or YA, and I’m actually feeling stressed because I’m getting so little of it done.

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

I recently got Alex Fayle, editor for SpeckLit, to answer some questions about this new market. (Disclosure: I have some drabbles coming up in this next quarter at SpeckLit!)

Q. SpeckLit focuses on the drabble — short pieces in exactly 100 words. Why a drabble in particular, rather than any other form of flash?

A. We live in a sound-bite world. Our lives are reduced to 140 character conversations on Twitter and to screen-sized chunks of text on our smart phones. Reading has to squeeze into tiny slices of time between one interruption and another. Drabbles are the perfect answer to that. They give readers a chance to get a full story in a glance. As for sticking with a drabble-only format, yes, we will be doing that — our vision is to provide readers with worlds of wonder a hundred words at a time, so until we change our vision, drabbles will be our focus. ( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so I’ll lay down the ground rules for anyone who’s popped in recently without reading the archives (because, really, who would read everything ever written in a blog, no matter how entertaining?). I write a short introduction, then I ask and answer questions related to the topic, generally in the most tongue-in-cheek manner I can manage.

Q: What makes you think people want to read you talking to yourself?

A: They’re on my blog. Also, I tend to get good comments for these posts.

Q: So why did you stop?

A: I didn’t stop. I’m doing one right NOW.

Q: Okay, then, why take a break?

A: I couldn’t think of a topic? Or maybe I was busy. Anyway, I’m doing it now, as I think I mentioned.

Q: How often do you do these?

A: When I remember, once a week — used to be on Fridays. We’ll see if I can get back to that.

Q: Anything else to add?

A: If others have questions, they can leave them in the comments.

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.