Square Pegs

Today was a bit exciting for us — it marked the third day we hit the gym this week (lack of exercise makes us dull and chubby). More to come on this. We also cleaned out our inbox. Usually we do this on Friday, but, well, see previous about the NaNo Villain in our life. We accomplished all sorts of tasks, big and small, and still managed to exceed our page total. Once again, the weekend looms, and we don’t have high hopes for repeating what happened last Saturday. There is rain on the horizon and even spiders must hide […]

First, we agree there isn’t enough silence in this world. We especially direct that thought toward chronic cell phone users. You know who you are and you know what we mean. And we agree that too much of good thing can, depending on the good thing, be a) wonderful, or b) overwhelming in a scary way. While the article linked below focuses on music, the same can be said for books. Who doesn’t feel a bit anxious when confronted with piles of books still unread even as the UPS driver is delivering another box from Amazon? Perhaps it’s our natural

In 2001, near the end of her two-hour extravaganza at the FleetCenter, Janet Jackson left the stage for five unforgivable minutes before returning to perform an encore. Was she having zipper trouble? Was she topping off her chakra with fan love as required by her life coach or choreographer? A novice concertgoer would have been led to believe that if only the fans clapped loudly enough, if the urgent desire for a few more sublime notes were made plain, the pop star would be compelled to reward the impassioned throngs with the spontaneous gift of extra song. Of course, there

We were very interested in the National Endowment for the Arts’s project focusing on writing projects for soldiers involved in the Iraq war. The NEA has expanded its Operation Homecoming project and has expanded its workshops to more military bases: “The program has been an overwhelming success. I don’t think the NEA fully appreciated the need and demand for the program when we first launched it,” [Dana] Gioia said. “We have doubled the size of the program.” NEA Expands Writing Project for Returning Veterans

Kevin was understandably thrilled to learn he was villain number one as we fight against the clock. And, yes, there was some discussion about whether the clock might also be working against us, but we see it as more a plot device. A villain surely counts as something designed to destroy the calm, linear progression of writing an entire novel in a single month. Knowing we’ve been thrown off our stride emboldened him, and now we find we must be more devious than ever before. This is difficult when going up against a master villain. We started by stumbling home

If you’re looking for a bit of a reality check, continue reading. If you prefer to live in blissful ignorance (and we cannot blame you), skip to the next item. Take our word for it. We often joke that we’re the only person in the greater Los Angeles area who is not working on a screenplay. It could be so cliche, and we can’t have that. Plus we don’t have cinematic vision, whatever that might be. Writing and submitting novels is rough. Writing for motion pictures? Something tells us that people look at all that lovely white space and think

There was a song in our heart when we awoke this morning (“Miss Santa Cruz County”. Cracker). We thought, without a doubt, this would be a normal day. Oh sure, we’d hedged our bets, sending security emails to certain clients, all of whom religiously occupy their desks by eight a.m.. By 9:01, not a single “we need you” email was received. We believed normalcy ruled the day and headed off for yoga. Sure, our teacher tried to kill us, but this was good. We got to meditate on something we wanted to heal and/or improve. We chose writing. Joy and

There is pretty much no news value in reporting on a lawsuit filed by James Patterson’s ex-girlfriend. Sure, when the case goes to court, we might have thoughts, but the fact that a lawsuit is permitted to proceed shouldn’t fascinate us. But it does. This probably has something do with one of our personality flaws. Or maybe it’s Patterson’s lack of interest in things like research and details. That probably rankled more than it should have, and we apparently bear grudges against people who don’t know we exist. {Via Publisher’s Lunch) Ex-Girlfriend Can Press Claims Against Best-Selling Author The Details

They say you’re supposed to make sure your family is aware that you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month. We believed this was so husbands, wives, children, parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. could offer unconditional support, mostly by preparing delicious meals and martinis. Clearly, our husband did not get the memo (or if he did receive it, there’s an excellent chance he presumed it was junk mail and didn’t read it). He wants to know why we haven’t gone all out and decorated our blog in NaNo stuff. Uh, if we haven’t had time to get our hair cut (and we

But we’re not going to find it. We are going to spend the rest of the day enjoying the vision of two tabloid newspapers donning little red boxing gloves and mouth guards, even as we begin to suspect one or more fights like a girl (which, we will point out, can be an effective battle technique in some situation). We are hoping for ugly. We crave vicious. We want ringside seats as the written word becomes a honed weapon. Oops, sorry. We’ve gone too far. That’s the problem with an active fantasy life. We should have stopped before part about