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SHELFARI

Here’s the cover. How can you resist? (and I love that the knight in the graphic above has an earring)

Today makes twenty-nine weeks and I don’t know… maybe it’s time to stop counting. But maybe it’s not.

Maybe it is because I was at the surgeon earlier in the week. He pronounced the rupture and retina tear fully healed. That was the best part, I suppose. There was more good stuff: I can try to wear a contact in the injured eye and see if I can tolerate it. The scar tissue and my eye in general is finally stable. He’s ordering a retina scan so we have a benchmark of what my new normal is.

There was middle-of-the-road stuff: he estimates between six months to a year before the final surgery.

And there was some bad: I may be on the pressure eye drops for the rest of my life. The cataract surgery may change things. It’s hard to know. The surgeon may send me to a glaucoma specialist; he’s not sure yet. And… I will never see 20/20 out of the bad eye.

So on the one hand, it’s time to stop counting. The eye is healed. Time to start a new chapter, the post-eye-trauma chapter.

Except…

When I fell, I must have done something to my left arm. I remember landing on my left side, and I remember falling back on my left arm a second time, right before the handlebar hit. Two weeks ago, the pain became intolerable; I hadn’t slept for two weeks prior to that. So I took myself off to my trusty massage therapist (really, everyone needs a Keith in their lives!) and he spent two back-to-back weeks working on it. He relocated my radius and a rib up near my shoulder. He teased and coaxed and worked my muscles and the nerve that’s been problematic. He gave it his all, and for Keith, that’s saying quite a lot.

Which brings me to where we are: we’re both ready to concede I did something when I fell. Something that is so inflamed and angry and nasty that I need more than he can give right now. (read: right now)

So yesterday, I called my sports med doctor and I’ll let him take a look. He’s going to love this one… and I’m sure he’ll share my frustration that everyone was so focused on the eye that no one thought to look beyond the most obvious part (even when I asked them to).

Which means maybe it’s not time to stop counting. Because I’m not fully back to whatever my new normal is. Things are still wrong. Very very wrong.

But today, I’ll try not to think about it. The boy is home from Frisbee camp, full of new experiences, new lessons, new relationships — and a pair of shorts that used to belong to this year’s Callahan winner, Trent Dillon. Hopefully, he’s elevated his game. The boy, that is. Not Trent, who seemed like a nice guy when I chatted with him at pickup yesterday. I’m not sure Trent can elevate his game, but I hope I’ll get to watch.

Today is week 29. I’ll be on two fields today, sort of. The boy has practice with his summer team. Tonight, my Thunderbirds play their first-ever home playoff game.

My hand, I’m sure, will tingle and hurt and make me want to cry and puke and even contemplate cutting it off, just to get the pain to stop. But I’ll look up at the sky and watch the disc fly and… somehow, it’ll all be okay. Twenty nine weeks later, I know this.

I’d just thought the end, where it’s all okay, would have come sooner. And I’d thought, like everyone else seemed to, that the eye was the least of it and the worst of it, the most of it and the easiest. We all might have been wrong.

I don’t fully understand it, but here it is.

After thousands of downloads, after Amazon’s continued refusal over a span of many years to price-match, I’ve had to unpublish one of the short stories of my heart, Mannequin.

Why?

Because four years ago, Smashwords changed the requirements for the size of their covers. And the cover for Mannequin was no longer compliant.

Faced with the choice of spending money on a perma-free story that wasn’t leading to increased sales (and, despite the downloads, I don’t remember the last time I saw a review of it! See, folks? Reviews MATTER) or… doing something else, I chose the latter. I suppose I could have left it at Amazon, gone exclusive with it over there (although I don’t believe in exclusives) or taken it out of Smashwords’ premium catalog and left it at Smashwords itself, since so many of those downloads came from there. But… nope. That felt like doing something halfway, and I don’t like to do things halfway. Not when I can help it.

So I was conflicted. What to do with this little story I love so much?

Credit my teenaged daughter with a creative solution: she created an account for me over at Wattpad — yes, the domain of the young and the unpublished and the hopeful and the experimental and the fan-based — and slapped Mannequin up over there.

You can go read it.

If you have a blog, you can talk about it. Reviews matter. Reviews help drive sales. And the benefit to you? If someone reads a review you wrote and agrees, you’ve just become a tastemaker. Go, you.

I’m sad about this. Like I said: story of my heart.

But on the other hand, the girl is going to fill my shelf with stuff. She’s going to talk to cover artists she knows. She has plans for her mom, with the promise that if there’s any revenue to be made, she’ll get some. I’ll get that kid through college with only large, instead of insurmountable, debt yet!

So stay tuned. You just may see some fiction up there that you’ve never seen from me before. Like I said, the girl has plans. And I have a hard drive that’s full of stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day.

Why do I have a feeling there’s a lot of revision in my near future?

SOMETHING DIFFERENT (The Three Graces Book Two) by Nia Farrell. Starving artist Anna James has sworn off men. Rock gods Jackson and Jacob Thomason just promised her the best sex of her life. Does Anna dare submit to the part-Comanche twins who perform as No Mercy?

Buy links to SOMETHING DIFFERENT (a BSDM MFM ménage rock star erotic romance):

Amazon ➔ https://mybook.to/SomethingDifferent

Barnes and Noble ➔ https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/something-different-nia-farrell/1122718107?ean=2940150808072

Allromance ➔ https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-somethingdifferent-1897500-147.html

BookStrand ➔ https://www.bookstrand.com/something-different-0

Smashwords ➔ https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/581142

Dark Hollows Press ➔ https://www.darkhollowspress.com/#!something-different/c13v4

“Why is it,” I muttered under my breath, or maybe in that part of my writer’s brain that’s always writing and narrating, “that the boy is so damn good about getting up every day at 6AM for school but can’t get up at 8AM twice a week to volunteer at the local township’s camp?”

The answer, of course, is multi-layered:
1. Mom’s cranky when she has to get him up in the morning
2. He doesn’t care as much about volunteering at the local township’s camp as he does about not missing the bus
3. It’s summer and he wants to be lazy and have zero responsibilities, even though he’s started to work on his Eagle project
4. It’s summer and he’s been staying up late, as is the right and responsibility of every teenager ever. Circadian rhythms and all that.
5. He likes being awakened by a smart-aleck of a mom.
6. It’s two days a week instead of five, and harder to find a rhythm.

But if you strip out those reasons, you’re left without character consistency.

In fiction, this can be taken a few ways:
1. It’s bad writing because characters should be consistent to themselves
2. If this was Young Adult, it’s a Sign! Of a Big Problem! a Tragedy! And the parents must now investigate, but they are bumbling idiots, so it’s up to the younger sibling (usually a girl) who is the main point of view character and who will now save the day.
3. The author is using the lack of character consistency to signal a left turn in the plot and character arc that you didn’t see coming (refer back to #1)

Most of the time, it’s taken as a sign of bad writing, not a flaw in the character. (note: MOST of the time) And a lot of the time (note: A LOT, not all and not most), you can avoid being called a bad writer by taking a bit more time to show what’s going on. The mom who wakes up at 1AM to see the light seeping through the cracks in the door, or hears him talking to his friends via Skype or voice chat or whatever he’s using this week. Maybe you show that the kid needs the interaction with his mom, who’s a lot less cranky two hours later and a heck of a lot funnier or more reasonable (You’d have to ask him how different I am without the pressure of “No, I am NOT schlepping your rear the whole way to school so get moving” and all.) — as always with fiction, there are a million possibilities.

Which means that it’s okay to let your characters be inconsistent from time to time, especially in the early drafting stages. You can revise them into submission later. But, like I’m always encouraging you, push yourself. Stretch. Don’t fall into Reason #2 time and time again. Do you see how many cliches I packed into that one point?

Don’t be a cliche packer. (wow. That sounds… wrong)

Push yourself. Stretch your writerly wings. Once you do, you can either revise and work on crafting it into perfection, or you can revise and edit it out until no one knows you tried.

But you’ll know. And if you’re the kid of writer I know you are, all you who struggle with Inherent Writerly Insecurity, you’ll learn from the experiment. Which means that next time, you’ll be less likely to fail.

Go for it. Character consistency. Character INconsistency — except, it’s not inconsistent. Not when you get done with it.

It’s that time of year again!

Every July, Smashwords has a huge, mega sale. And every July, I enter my books into it.

Go pick them up.

And once you do, since it’s the Smashwords July Sale, take some time to browse. Find some new-to-you authors. Check the discounts on books I’ve featured here or over at The Rock of Pages, THE home of Rock Fiction. Books are available in all formats, so don’t be shy because you think you can only buy from this vendor or this online bookstore or whatever. A Smashwords book will work on your reader.

Once you’ve done that, the next step is the best, simplest one: sit down somewhere comfy and start to read. Grab a beer, a glass of wine, a citronella candle, a poolside lounger… you name it. Have some fun. Don’t like a book? Delete and move on to the next!

But love it or hate it, always remember that one of the best things you can do is to leave a review. At Smashwords, at the retailer you usually get your books from, on a blog, over at a social reading site like GoodReads. After all, we authors aren’t making any money off our free books, and the books that are reduced in price bring a reduced royalty, too.

Reviews help authors in so, so many ways. Even if you say, “This was a great read. Highly recommended.”

But, of course, if you want to write more but are struggling, drop me a line. I’ll tell you what: If you want to work with a real wordsmith and former pro reviewer to leave a review for a book you like, tell me you’re reviewing a book you picked up at the Smashwords July Sale, and I’ll slash my rates. Not down to free, but slashed nonetheless.

Because reviews are that important. And so is helping you learn to craft a good review, and to feel good about what you write.

So. A slew of free books. And a pro helping you say thanks to the authors in the most helpful way possible.

Go have a great July, everyone!

SOMETHING DIFFERENT (The Three Graces Book Two) by Nia Farrell. Starving artist Anna James has sworn off men. Rock gods Jackson and Jacob Thomason just promised her the best sex of her life. Does Anna dare submit to the part-Comanche twins who perform as No Mercy?

Buy links to SOMETHING DIFFERENT (a BSDM MFM ménage rock star erotic romance):

Amazon ➔ https://mybook.to/SomethingDifferent

Barnes and Noble ➔ https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/something-different-nia-farrell/1122718107?ean=2940150808072

Allromance ➔ https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-somethingdifferent-1897500-147.html

BookStrand ➔ https://www.bookstrand.com/something-different-0

Smashwords ➔ https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/581142

Dark Hollows Press ➔ https://www.darkhollowspress.com/#!something-different/c13v4

Today is the twenty-sixth Saturday of 2016. That means it’s exactly six months since I fell off my bike and tried to take out my own eye.

How you noticed how the way I talk about it has changed? From a “catastropic fall off my bike” to “trying to take out my own eye.”

Time heals all wounds, the cliche goes. And my eye is healing. I just got back from a visit to my optometrist, who was able to adjust my prescription down. It’s still honkingly high – that’s what one of those sixes refers to — but it’s better than it was. And for the first time, the optometrist grabbed a prism and took a look inside. He said it looks good. He said that until he looked up to the area of the original tear, he’s seen similar scarring in eyes that haven’t had surgery, eyes that have had worse vision than a minus six. And he said the cataract was almost impossible to look through without dilating my eye. I can’t wait to hear what the surgeon says when I see him in a few weeks.

Way back in February and March, when celebrities and it seemed like everyone else was dropping dead on a daily basis, a lot of my friends were wishing they could have a do-over for 2016.

I get where they are coming from. I feel for their pain. It was a very rough way to start a new year.

But me? Nope. I wouldn’t redo most of the past six months. I wouldn’t reset time and not be on my bike. I wouldn’t stop my handlebar from hitting me. I might have gone directly to the second ER a bit faster, but that’s about the only change I think I’d make — but even that is a hard call, as it was the first ER who called the surgeon who saved my eye. Would the second have done that? Or would they have called someone else, someone who wasn’t as skilled?

I’d let it happen again. I think I’d let it all happen, exactly as it did.

Crazy, huh?

That’s because I had to almost lose my vision in order to see more clearly.

And boy oh boy, do I see more clearly. Like the value of so-called friends and the people who don’t call themselves friends but act like it when the time is right. Like the difference between what’s worth fighting for and what’s worth fighting over. The definition of respect, of healthy relationships, of what it means to be scared and what it means to have faith in yourself. I first noticed this back in March, at my son’s Frisbee tournament, but I am not planted in one spot anymore. I can and do move, and it’s fun and it’s great and I’ve got a right eye full of scars and ripples that may never go away and will always affect my vision and dammit, but I’ve never been happier.

I had to almost lose my vision to find a new freedom.

Six. Six months after that horrible Saturday morning. You can still look at me and see the incision the surgeon made just to the side of my iris. You can still look at the outside corner of my eye and see where it ruptured. You can still see a bloodshot eye that’s not quite as white as its partner. The incision should smooth out. The bloodshot areas may or may not go away and the trauma and steroids may not let my eye ever be totally white again, but frankly, I hope the rupture never lies flat.

I almost lost my eye, not just my vision. I should have a visible reminder of that. You all should see the scars; you all should know what happened, what I’ve overcome. And you all should celebrate with me that we can see those scars, that there is an eye to look at.

On the six-month anniversary, on the twenty-sixth Saturday of the year, the vision in my beat-up right eye is a minus six. It’s an improvement from what it had been.

Six. Six. Six.

I remember being in the hospital the day after it all happened — the fall, the hospital hop, the surgery — and asking the good-looking resident and the cool-as-anything fellow if it was fair to expect to spend the bulk of 2016 dealing with this. It was a fair question: it was the third day of 2016. People are still thinking about the promise of a year ahead at that point.

He couldn’t answer. Or he wouldn’t.

But I knew.

Twenty-six weeks. Six months.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.

“We can make that sappy shit happen ourselves. But how often do you get to take on the bad guys and save the world?”

It’s free everywhere but Amazon (sigh):
Smashwords
B&N
iTunes/iBooks/Apple
Amazon
Kobo
Overdrive
Scribd

You can probably guess where Week 24 found me… among other places. Life has taken a new, fuller swing, although the healing’s not nearly done yet. I’ve got another month to go before the next surgeon’s visit and I’m both on pins and needles to see what his verdict will be — another back-of-the-eye surgery to deal with scar tissue or not — and I’m beyond ready for all of this to be over. I keep reminding myself to be patient, to give myself time to heal, to be gentle with myself.

Being gentle with ourselves is a big one, a reminder most of us need. As writers, we’ve got a double burden: compelling fiction demands we torture our darlings while at the same time, giving them the space to be gentle with themselves.

That’s something I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say when talking about torturing our darlings. We talk about putting them in conflict. Not letting them take the easy way out. Action, action, reaction, reaction, more action.

But without that gentle period, that time to shut down, defenses up, our characters — and ourselves — can’t do the other essential part of fiction (and life): grow.

And without growth, no one’s satisfied. The real-life people become stuck in a rut (often a dangerous one). The fictional ones become frustrating to read about because as readers, one of the elements we seek — albeit unconsciously — is the character growth part of the journey. That’s the part we need in order to make the emotional connection to the characters on the page. That’s what brings them to life.

What made me think of this all night wasn’t my own frustration with my slow healing. It was watching one of the guys at the field last night. One in particular. He’s someone I’ve met, chatted with, someone whose smile makes me swoon. We have mutual friends, of course; the community isn’t nearly that big.

Over the course of this season, I’ve noticed that he’s been stiffer than he had been last summer. Last week, someone pointed out that his physical appearance has gone from being very colorful (and often joyously mismatched, at that) to being scarily monochrome. And when I speak to mutual friends, there’s an undercurrent when they talk about an action this guy took last autumn. Like they don’t approve. Or understand.

I’d like to say it’s the writer in me that’s intrigued by this guy, and until he smiles, it probably is. Where’d this new stiffness come from? Where’d the ease of his movements go, the quick smile, the dancing eyes?

At the game last night, my friends and I were standing in a spot that let me have a good look as he walked past, to and from the locker room. And that’s when I noticed it: he’s not just stiff. He’s shut down, defenses up. Suspicion in his eyes, maybe a bit of anger. Body held tight, shoulders taut, hips stiff. The arms don’t swing the way they had. He’s shut down, defenses up all right. And then some.

He looked like one gentle touch was all it would take to make him completely unravel.

Damn, I’m tempted. To grab him, to find out where his colors went, what it’ll take to bring them back. To remind him that being gentle with yourself is important, it’s vital, it’s how we figure out who we are and where we are headed, although one thing I’ve learned over the past six months is that trying to figure out the why of it all is an exercise in futility. That’s one of those things only hindsight can give us.

Of course, as crazy fun and outrageous as I can be these days — one of the blessings of that damn fall off my bike — reaching out to someone so very shut down isn’t something I’m going to do. Too much of a risk to my own need to be gentle with myself.

So I’ll put it into fiction: mine and that of my clients. Are we letting our characters have the time to shut down, defenses up, until they are ready to emerge from the cocoon, new and (hopefully) improved? Are we giving them the space to make sense, or do we merely let them react, react, react, act, act, act? Sure, sometimes in life and fiction, that’s where growth comes from. Changing the strategy and/or actions taken in order to have success in the penultimate fight.

But a little self-reflection, no matter how plot-driven a story, isn’t always a bad thing.

As for that guy whose smiles make me swoon? Yeah. Now that. That is a bad thing. The unattainable always is.

This one’s for you erotic romance lovers out there!

Unfortunately, it’s only available for you Kindle owners out there. Guess the rest of us don’t matter? Anyway, your link’s embedded there, so make use! Not only of this new one, but the other two in the series, as well.

This was part of an incentive from Rock Star PR, but if you’ve got a teaser of your own, I’d love to run it for you! Instructions can be found here.

Buy link (Amazon worldwide)

Here’s the cover:

(Art & Storyboard for the graphic novel is credited to Wendy Carey. Give Wendy lots of love)

How can you resist???

I’m still waiting on a bunch of clients, who are busy doing hard work before they turn their baby over to me. They need me… just not right now.

Do you need me?

This is a really good time to get a hold of me. Drop a manuscript in my inbox. Send me a sample so that when you’re ready for an edit, you and I are on the same page about who you are, what you need, and how I work.

Summers are always busy, and I’m planning a couple of trips away during August. One’s set and paid for. The other… well, we’ll see. The possibility exists. And that’s not including spontaneous road trips to visit family!

Don’t delay. Best of all, sending me work keeps me out of trouble and we all know what happens around here when I get into trouble…

(Besides, in my first post about the injury, I said I didn’t know if I’d be able to work and was worried about finances. No one was generous enough to set up a Go Fund Me or anything to help, and with the clients who’ve been all, “Oh, I didn’t want to add to your troubles right now” and with medical bills and the general thing called life, things are… lean. Very lean around here. And I hate it and am embarrassed to admit it ’cause dude. I’m successful. I edit best-selling indie authors like India Drummond. India’s picky as hell, so you know I’m good.)

Goodreads

Buy links:
Amazon Kindle
B&N Nook
Kobo
iBooks
Google Play

Got a graphic, or a favorite line from your own book, or a book you love? Send ’em along! Details here.

I turned away a client this week.

It’s not that I’m currently so backed up that I did it in order to get Steve’s manuscript in front of competent eyes faster (if that had been the case, I’d have called in a subcontractor). Truth is that I’m waiting on about four clients to finish up and send their manuscripts along. If anything, I’m a little bored — and we all know that bad things tend to happen when I get bored. Still, if it means a better manuscript from my clients, I’ll gladly wait.

I’d just like to have something more to work on while I wait. Catching up is only interesting for so long. I mean, there’s a reason that stuff slid in the first place!

So then you’re asking why I didn’t take Steve on. I have the time. I need the income. So what’s up?

Well, I could have. I could have been like all those other editors out there who focus on taking money from clients. I would have done a better job by Steve, of course, because I’m good at what I do, but in the end, I decided it wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

Steve wasn’t ready for me. And he didn’t know it yet.

Folks, using friends and colleagues as beta readers and critique partners is valuable stuff. Learning the craft is vital. Yes, I can teach that. Yes, I now offer writing coaching along with pure editing. Yes, I like to work with debut novelists and first-time writers and all that.

So what gives? What made me turn this guy away?

Well, maybe it’s about morals. That I could have taken his money. A LOT of his money. And I could have given this manuscript my all. But… I’d have been miserable for doing it. I’d have spent too long gnashing my teeth and swearing about why I’d taken this on. Or I’d have hoped he would listen to me and take my advice and the next draft — because there would be a next draft — would be better than the first. Markedly better.

But the simple truth is that I wanted Steve to save his money. To find some critique partners, some beta readers. To join writing groups and spend some time learning craft. It’s a step we as writers all need; not even I, when I am writing fiction, operate as an island. I have people I trust to read and be brutal in their assessments. I have an editor. I read articles about writing, talk craft with my friends, listen to what I say to my clients.

Steve… he wasn’t there yet. He needed to go through all that. And so I turned him away.

Working with him at this time wasn’t in his best interests. It sure wasn’t in mine.

Sometimes, it goes like that.

And sometimes, I’m a little less bored and a lot more in love with my chosen career.

Keep doing the hard work, people. I’m ready for you once you have.

Week nineteen. Yep, still counting. I will be until I’m cleared after the final surgery, so count along with me.

Over the weekend, Facebook was kind enough to remind me of this post, the one all about Inherent Writerly Insecurity.

IWI pops up in interesting ways, doesn’t it? As writers, we face it not just in our writing, but in life, too. I am seeing the surgeon this week for a check-up. The appointment isn’t for a week yet, and yet IWI is rearing its ugly head in my life. What if the eye’s not healing right? What if the eye drops aren’t working the way they are supposed to and the pressure is up again? What if the surgeon won’t be able, once I’m fully healed, to give me 20/20 vision when it’s all over? What if, what if, what if, what IF????

Writers do this with our books, too — only sometimes, we dwell on the wrong things. Where we should be dwelling on the What Ifs associated with decisions our characters make, or plot points, or something within the story itself, too often, we look at the external: what if BookBub won’t take my ad? What if that agent says no? What if silence means rejection and they are too polite to say so? What if I publish it and the reviews pan it horribly? What if my publisher drops me?

Look. I’m telling myself this, too, this week. Save the What Ifs for the things you can control. What if Stacy professes her love in the third chapter instead of the thirteenth? What if the drama student chooses a different path to get home? What if her bike tire goes flat a block earlier, before she turned onto the path through the deserted park? What if I mention the yellow flowers here? Will anyone notice later on, when yellow flowers play a role in the plot? And what if they don’t? Will the reader still get a full reading experience?

What if can be your best friend as a writer. It can be your worst enemy, too. While it’s fun to tinker with your plot, you also can’t let the what ifs stop you from finishing the book (and then needing to banish the other what ifs from your life). At some point, you have to love what you’ve got, accept it for its flawed beauty, and move on to the next project, the next manuscript… the next eye appointment with the surgeon.

What if…

What if we only focus on the things we can directly control?

Feel free to keep reminding me of that one. And then apply it to your work-in-progress. What if…

It’s a loaded question, and it’s not one without power. Use that power wisely.

.
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SOMETHING MORE (The Three Graces Book Three) by Nia Farrell. Rachel Givens is supposed to be dead. She has post-rape PTSD and a three-year-old autistic daughter, father unknown. When her former lovers walk into the diner where she works, this single mother learns just how much more she can handle. Nominated for Best BDSM Book of the Year, Ménage Category, 2016 Golden Flogger Awards.

Buy links to SOMETHING MORE (a BSDM MFM ménage secret baby erotic romance):
Amazon  https://mybook.to/SomethingMore
Barnes and Noble  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/something-more-nia-farrell/1122797262?ean=2940151160094
Allromance  https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-somethingmore-1905345-147.html
Smashwords  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/585262
Dark Hollows Press  https://www.darkhollowspress.com/#!something-more/c1clr

Week eighteen has come and gone. Week seventeen since the retinal repair.

And really, there’s not much worth talking about. I’m healing. Dodging Frisbees. Starting to get out on my road bike, although it needs to go in for repair; it seems maybe there’s a problem with the front tire. Probably not a surprise, but until I figure it out, it’s not worth talking about. Yet. Maybe ever. I mean, everyone who owns and rides their bike(s) has problems with their front tire from time to time.

That’s the point of the post today. The mundane. The not worth talking about.

If it’s not worth talking about, why do so many young writers talk about it in their fictional narratives? He stood from the table and walked outside, then down the street to the barn, where his horse was waiting.

Yawn.

I call it play by play when I talk to my clients about it.

Try this instead:
When Stevie didn’t answer, Tom calmly left her house and headed to the barn.

Not only do we have more information here — Stevie didn’t answer, they were in her house — but we have emotion, too. Tom does it calmly.

What Tom doesn’t do is have the narrator spell out each step he takes.

Most writers know not to mention every eye blink, every swallow, every burp or sneeze, and every trip to the bathroom. Only point those things out when they are important: the first eye blink after the overnight, after-surgery bandage comes off, when you’re testing it out to see if the eye still blinks properly – and you’re fluttering it for a few seconds, putting off the ultimate test: how much vision you have.

Not that I’ve ever done that. Twice, in fact.

You see that I am so bored by play by play, I can’t even bear to write about it!

And that’s the problem. It’s boring. It’s mundane. It’s not worth talking about. It’s pedantic.

And I can go on and on about why you shouldn’t do it. I don’t think you need me to; the only thing worse than play by play is when the author beats the horse dead and bloody. That’s for another day, though.

For now, go back to your manuscript. Are there simple, everyday actions that won’t hurt the narrative if they are cut out? Do people stand, turn, look, walk, enter, or exit? Do they do those things often?

If the answer’s yes, start using that backspace and/or delete key. Re-craft your sentences as you need to. Take the time to invest in your word choice, and be sure to vary your word choice, your characters’ actions, and your sentence structures. (Oh, is THAT all?)

And, of course, if you get stuck on a better way to word something, drop me a line. I’m offering coaching for just this sort of issue, and I’m offering it pretty cheap, at $25 an hour. One-on-one work, when you need it, and edited manuscripts back to you within a business day or two. How can you beat it?

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Weeks fifteen and sixteen are behind us now. They’ve been weeks of transformations, if not for me personally — seems that the status quo is holding, and I suppose that’s good — but for the things in my life.

My bike now sports its new handlebar tape. While there’s some pink in the tape, there’s not enough to be confused with what tried to take me out. Mostly, what you see is black. It has changed the look of my bike. Maybe it makes it look as evil as the bike must be, to have attacked the way it did. (although I’m still holding out hope for demon possession or voodoo being the cause.)

It was my first time wrapping handlebars. I think I did okay. I think I’d have done better, except my road bike has this cool feature: a second set of hand brakes up on top of the handlebars. This is super useful when I want to sit upright and don’t need to change gears but want the brakes near to hand. (Go figure someone wants their brakes handy.)

And my furniture has been shifted around, thanks to a birthday gift. The old couch is in the basement, with more to follow. New stuff is arriving in dibs and dabs and hopefully without holes, at least for rounds two and three. Too late for round one.

If you missed it, Women’s Day featured me as one of Ten Real Women Open Up About How They Make Money Working From Home. The link will take you to the page about me, but take a few minutes to look at them all. Interesting group I’m part of. Pretty darn cool.

So what’s all this got to do with writing? This is a #SaysTheEditor post, after all.

Well, just that a few weeks ago, the only change I saw on the horizon was the handlebar tape. When my sister and I ripped the old pink tape off, I knew I wanted new furniture. Knew I needed it. Didn’t expect to have the funds so quickly. (That $60 an hour in the interview sounds good until you look at the reality and how my time is divided up and accounted for!) Didn’t expect to find the furniture on my first real trip to a store. I mean, I was only killing time, gathering intel, learning…

And that’s how transformation affects your writing. When you are open to letting the story (or life) take you where you need to go, where it needs to take you, you find… new possibilities. New horizons. New furniture!

The pantsters — those of us who write by the seat of our pants — are all nodding sagely. We get this. We live it. We open up a document, introduce some characters, and sit back and see where it’ll take us. We’re all about these moments that wind up being story transformations. “But the book wasn’t supposed to be about you, minor character!” we’ll howl and try to fight the minor character who has seized control. But even as we do, we know it’s futile. Our story’s transformed.

But you plotters? (and one of my upcoming books was written to an outline, so maybe I’m one of you now, too?) It’s a harder thing. Plotters have a tighter control on their stories and their characters. At first sign of that minor character and his or her contemplation of a coup, the plotter nudges them back in line. If that doesn’t work, they make promises: behave in this one and the next one’s all about you.

Still not working? They chuck the character to the curb. Figuratively speaking.

This is both good and bad. Plotters sometimes miss the beauty of finding a better story. They miss the shock, the frustration, the process of coming to accept the story’s transformation. Yes, it’s a process. And like most processes, even the familiar ones, it’s a learning experience.

But so is the discipline of sticking to your plot, of staying focused on the story you sat down intending to write. Maybe when you don’t deviate from your outline, the transformations can still happen. They’re just more subtle. The author has to seek them out and maybe they’re not on a big, universal level. Maybe the discovery is in the small stuff, like how the new handlebar tape feels under hands that are still a bit unsteady on this particular bike. Maybe the transformation that happens is just subtle enough to make the author a bit uncertain at first. Like poking a toe into a pond to gauge how cold the water is.

Us pantsters miss out on this part of the writing process. Maybe that lack of discipline actually winds up hurting our attempts to write a strong story. Maybe we miss the subtle stuff.

I’m not sure, so chime in with your experiences in the comments. Pantster? Plotter? What have been your biggest transformations in your fiction?

Fess up. I’m all ears. Relaxing in my new chair-and-a-half, but all ears.