In editing the first draft of my new novel I often find places where the flow was present. Unfortunately that usually means I show (not tell for godssake) my characters moving from place to place, thinking thoughts they’ve already articulated, and generally feeling a bit too much. Logistics, getting people from place to place, are the first to go. They are usually unnecessary. Take them out and see if it still makes sense. (It will.) I remember teaching seventh graders writing and a boy who was completely stumped at how to get his story started without having his character get out of bed, brush his teeth, take a shower, eat breakfast, etc. etc. All the boring parts of living, right? As Elmore Leonard says, take out the boring stuff. 

The other thing in editing your second draft is that the first chapter can probably go. It was necessary for your flow when you started. It made you get deep inside the psyche of your character. But now that you’re there don’t burden your readers with it. Let it come out naturally later. I tend to load up my protagonists with heavy baggage so I’ll have something to work with later. Maybe it’s not necessary. Or maybe I can work it in little by little and not load up the poor reader too.

One thing I’ve learned as a reader is that I don’t like serious angst at the start of a book. It’s a turn-off. I’ve done it myself, and I’ve read it. You have to be seriously skilled as a writer to make it work for you, to draw in a reader to care about your damaged character. Depression, sadness, grief: they aren’t attractive to readers. Start elsewhere, young writer. Crack a joke. It’ll get you farther. Then after the story is trotting along dig a little deeper. It’s okay to have damaged people, hey, they’re out there, plenty of them. But draw the gentle reader along, don’t hit him over the head.

Back to the editing. Wish me luck.

Reblogged from PandoDaily:

It had to happen sooner or later. Paul Carr had to get something about the startup business right. He’s been saying for years that books and publishing was going to get sexy again– and not just for wonks like us who write books and naturally care about the fortunes of the boutique industry. If you’d asked me whether SOPA or books would drive more traffic our first week, I never would have guessed books in a million years. Books are apparently the new Lady Gaga Pantsless in Paris. (The phrase AOL once used …

Heads up on this new blog, PandoDaily. Sarah Lacy and friends write about publishing, ebooks, technology, and the internet. Good stuff.

Those are the basics. John taught and researched plant physiology his entire career and continued his interest in the origin of species in a book he wrote after retirement — we still have to get that book together, sisters! (Grandsons?) It sits on his computer, waiting for us to rediscover it. John had three daughters, none of whom followed him into science, a consequence that never seemed to bother him. Or if it did, like many things, he never mentioned it. He ended up with four darling grandsons to make up for the lack of sons. They often remind me of John. They are tinkerers and thinkers, conjurers of brew, hands-on builders of stuff,  outdoor adventurers, and computer whizzes — all things he loved.

My father had to teach freshman biology every so often at the University of Nebraska. It makes me squint just thinking about. I never took a course from him, but now I wonder why. I should have. I had friends who took classes from him. I’m sure he wasn’t the best lecturer in the world and public speaking was low on his favorites list but I’m also positive that his students felt his genuine love of pure science and the way it relates to the world we live in. (Zero Population Growth was one of his passions.) I can hardly remember one thing my father ever said about his teaching. He wasn’t one to discuss his work, successes or not. Like many academics he felt his work spoke for itself, or maybe that none of us would understand. A family story — when I was about six or so and wanted to be noticed by my father (middle child, what can I say: I always wanted to be noticed) I climbed on his lap, stroked his cheek, and said in a vampish voice: “Tell me about your enzymes.” I still have no idea about enzymes, not really. So if you, blog reader, want to tell me about your enzymes, go ahead.

My father named me Lise after a physicist he admired, Lise Meitner. An Austrian physicist, Meitner helped develop nuclear fission. The spelling is often a problem, people never know how to pronounce it (lee-za) but I will never change it. (Yes, I am still daddy’s girl.) He loved to sail, a consequence of growing up in Minnesota around all those lakes. He had a sixteen-foot sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay when we were young, and made us a little yellow bathtub sailboat with a polka dot sail to learn on. I’ll never forget sailing with him around the Bay, and the time the wind knocked the boom into him, he tumbled overboard, and lost his glasses! Fun times!

In 1999 my parents came out to Montana for a vacation in our ski house at Big Sky. My book, Nordic Nights, had just come out and I was going on a little tour around the state to bookstores. I piled the kids and the grands in the Suburban and hit the road. I love so much that we were able to share that time together. Like my father I don’t like to boast about my work. Writing, like research science, is a pretty private affair. My father loved to read and would often pass me mysteries he loved, like Tony Hillerman or P.D. James. He particularly liked James, whose books include brainy characters like himself. At a reading in Whitefish someone asked me if I was Norwegian like my character, Alix Thorssen. My father popped up in the back of the room (so much for shyness!) and said: “The Scots are just shipwrecked Vikings, you know!”

He had a great sense of humor. Mostly he loved a good pun — “the lowest form of humor.” I will always remember his laugh — even if I have forgotten all those puns. I hope you’re enjoying a pun and a dram of single malt with Darwin, Daddy, wherever you are. Love you always, Lise.

I’ve been writing fiction — by myself! generally — since 1984. I had been teaching broadcasting at a community college in Wyoming, which at the time seemed like a dream job. Especially in the middle of Wyoming. There aren’t too many professional jobs in a field as esoteric as broadcasting and communications anywhere, and in a little town in a giant county in a low population state, very few. I felt blessed. Especially when I gave birth to my second child with only one final exam to go in spring semester. But as things turned out, they cleaned out my desk and gave my office to somebody else over the summer and I didn’t go back. I did a little PR hack work, publicized the heck out of a town centennial, then turned to fiction. And never looked back.

While I’ve been involved with writing groups over the years, many of them excellent, I don’t do that much anymore. I’ve moved a couple times as well and searching out writers in new towns is like the proverbial needle in a haystack. Where do they hide? Who knows, but they are probably like me, working at home, solitary, on my own schedule, and liking it that way.

But sometimes, well, it just makes you weird. You start shouting on twitter and facebook about your books, endlessly, wondering if that hollow sound is your voice returning unheard. You make a nuisance of yourself to your friends and relatives. You wait eagerly, trying to look nonchalant, as your friends try to sell your work to strangers. (Thank you, friends, know you are so appreciated.) You try to explain your work to others, faultingly, then give up. Your family doesn’t understand. They leave you alone if you’re lucky. But then you are…

ALONE.

I resolve to read more! National Gallery of Denmark: Constantin Hansen, 1826

You have to be happy in that solitary state. Susan Isaacs once told me, “it’s our dirty little secret… we just want to be left alone in our rooms.” So true. Without that alone time I go a little nuts. Then I’ll swing the other way and get bonkers about not seeing anybody for days and go on mad cleaning sprees and hang out at the mall just to see people. It’s a strange life but over nearly thirty years it has felt so right to me. Writing fiction makes you introspective, if you’re lucky. You consider the human existence, what it might mean, how it begins, how it ends, and everything in the middle that matters. Which is a lot of stuff to think about. You can’t put it all in one novel. So you grab onto one idea and run with it until it reaches its natural narrative end. Then you do it all again, and again. May we never run out of ideas, and people to write about.

Back to my bad habits, since you’re all dying to know. I confessed to one the other day: my messy office. It is a source of marital friction especially since my current one is right off the front hall, in plain sight. Right now, despite my pledge to spend ten (okay, fifteen) minutes a day keeping my office tidy, there are piles of manuscript pages on the floor in front of the white board where I am rearranging scenes and trying to figure out the structure of my new manuscript. I *will* tidy up the piles and get them off the floor tonight! I will! I know people who do this and they seem perfectly sane. Well, sort of sane. For me, tidying up is something your boss makes you do, or you do on your own once a year when you finish a project. Or your mother is coming to visit. Otherwise, forget it. Chaos reigns. I like it that way.

My next resolution is stop tweeting about my books and obsessing about sales numbers. With the advent of small press publishing at Amazon and all the other outlets, you can get your sales data in real time. This is a revelation because for ages and ages, publishing companies have sent you royalty checks for books you sold a full calendar year in the past, and that was the only way you knew what you were selling. But now I know, for instance, I sold one copy of Jump Cut today. One! (Only one. Or rather, not none!) This is a plus/minus situation. I would really like to not think about books I’ve already sent out into the world and get on with the next one. Because we all know it will be better than the last. Or would be if I spent more time on it and not on the internet getting weird about sales figures.

And lastly, I would like to write here more, spend more time being personal with all of you whoever you may be. Because it’s a lonely life being a writer. Not in a bad way at all, but it is just me most of the time. It’s my dirty little secret that I like it that way. And my dirty little secret that I don’t.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Then they go home or back to school. Time to get organized for the new year. First and foremost (because it bugs the hell out of my hubby) is that I will spend ten or fifteen minutes every day keeping my desk clean. Confession: I am a messy person. Usually I clean my desk and office when I finish a book. Also, I leave the mail on the kitchen island and catalogues all over the place. I take this messy persona as evidence that I am a creative person, and therefore don’t really care if you can’t find a paper clip or a receipt or the chair in my office.  I embrace my chaotic side but must hit it with a hammer: clean it up! File it! Throw it out! Box it up! Get it out of sight! (Maybe not exactly what my husband wants but it will suffice.)

My office is not always a mess. Here is evidence for a guest blog I recently wrote. Look at that gleaming wood! My downfall, I confess, is piles of stuff: printouts, files, notes, and other detritus. I resist putting things into file folders because I fear I will forget to do something. Hey, it’s happened. And keeping it all in your head is one of the things about being a novelist that makes you … different. You have to keep that entire story going in your head. Not word by word, but the trajectory, the back story, the goal. It’s not easy, and even with outlines, sticky notes, and bulletin boards (cue messy crap) you have to keep it all juggling. A glance at some research you printed out two months ago may trigger something that gives you a new perspective, a new idea for the project in motion. But not if you dutifully filed that printout. Hey, how many of you go through your files?

So happy tidy new year. But keep the chaos going because no matter what your spouse says, a certain amount of mess is what being a writer is all about.

All three are now available, for just $6.99 if you go through the Iambik website: One O’clock Jump, Sweet and Lowdown, and Blackbird Fly. (Your mileage elsewhere will vary.) Here’s a good reason to go direct to Iambik: if you buy all three, you pay only a bit over $15 for all of them! That’s 25% off. Use the code “mcclendon-audio” when you check out.

Here’s what Miette at Iambik had to say about them. My favorite line: “She writes like she means it.” Being in the running as a literary badass pretty much makes Christmas though.

If Iambik were to offer a Residency in Literary Badassedness, well, it’d be a coveted position, and we’d have a lot of authors in the running.  And Lise McClendon would be among them.   She’s written seven novels, another under her pseudonym, is a member of the Thalia Press Author’s Coop, blogs, and as a rule, she writes like she means it.  It doesn’t hurt that her books are good, with a sharp edge and a cunning, lingering use of language.  Here, she chats with audiobook narrators Denice Stradling and Mark Douglas Nelson.

Read the interview HERE.

But back to our list. Serious now. You’ve bought your tree, picked out one you like or chopped one down or unearthed it from its cardboard coffin. If you have a man in your life you cook for you might have tricked him into setting it up for you. You’ve put the books under the legs of the stand so the tree is moderately straight. (Unless it’s fake and it better be damn straight. Fake or real is fine with me, by the way. I go with nature but I am slightly allergic to pine so I understand fake trees. Some of them are lovely. None of those are pink or white though.)

Granny's almost-straight tree

Then you’ve unearthed all your lights and baubles. Warm memories of Christmases past flood back to you, like the time the tree fell over and smashed all the pretty balls, or the time you went skiing and people were rude because they hoped they’d have the slopes to themselves. Now you’re ready. Let’s begin.

1. Put the lights on first. But before you do, plug them into the wall and fix them. If they still don’t work, throw them back in the box to deal with next year. Plenty of company in the light box. That said, put on LOTS of lights, especially on the side of the tree facing the window. You need something to disguise that flat hole in the tree back there. Oh, and blue LED lights and the old kind do NOT mix.

2. Next put on the biggest, showiest balls. (I’m going to say ‘balls’ a lot. Stop smirking.) I used to have eight or ten lovely large gold balls that reflect the lights so nicely. Until the tree fell over.

3. Avoid tinsel at all costs. Well, maybe get some green tinsel if you like tinsel but be prepared for angry looks at the recycling center after the holidays. Avoid flocking at all costs. Because it’s ugly and messy. Does anybody flock their tree anymore?

4. Put on the new ornaments. Every year you should get a few new ones. The old balls break, plus it’s nice to get something new each year. Once in awhile get some ornaments that say the year on them. It’s all about the memories, making or dredging them up. Commemorate a new member of your family with an ornament: new baby, new in-law, new status as a granny. (Grannies love that sort of stuff.) Put these ornaments front and center so everyone can admire them. If you’re crafty, buy cute wooden ornaments and put names and dates on them of the kids, grandkids, etc., with puff paint or markers. Even if they don’t look fantastic you’ll be happy you did it in years to come.

5. Next put on the smaller colored balls and all the other crapola from years past, the dumb thing from the ornament exchange and the kids’ preschool projects, taking care to step back once in awhile and view your masterpiece from across the room. Alternately have your spouse stand across the room and shout at you. Or bring you more egg nog.

6. Not feeling flush and have a whole tree to decorate? Back to craftiness: make some ornaments out of felt and glue. Nothing could be easier than a felt snowman with a glued-on hat and scarf. Blanket stitch the edges, stuff him with cotton balls, and make a thread hanger. My first Christmas away from my family I made half a dozen of these. Several survive to this day.

7. There’s a rule: you can never have too many small red balls or candy canes. Not expensive but showy, as all good baubles should be.

8. Garlands are your friend. When bead garlands came out in the ’80s I bought them in gold, silver, and red. Great for throwing to the top of the tree a la tinsel. I have rope ones too, and ones with sequiny balls on them, and more. Charlie Brown and I love garlands.

9. Everything DOES NOT have to go on the tree. Decorate your formal dining room, if you have one. You’ll be using it over the holidays. Some ornaments are too big (like the lovely needlepoint ones my friends made me) or heavy to go on the tree. Put them on tables, the stairway, around the guest bath mirror.

10. You don’t have to put anything on top. When I was a kid we had a light-up angel with white hair. She was just creepy. I go with a papier mache star these days, when I can get it up there. The barbecue fork is your tool here. But the tree looks fine without a topper. Really.

If this takes more than two hours you are obsessing. And you know you’re going to be rearranging over the next weeks when you spot a lonely branch or an unlit spot. So have some more egg nog, put on some cheesy carols, and relax.

Lise McClendon

by Julie Koerber

A new pen name, a new book & a new line of work

Stirring up a new plot has never been a problem for Lise McClendon. Just like a rich stew, ingredients are added and sprinkled until the perfect mystery has been simmered to perfection. When we first met her in 2004, she had a handful of novels under her writing belt. Since then, she’s grabbed a new pen name, has a new book fresh on the shelves and has taken on a new role, that of publisher.

“It’s a whole new world of publishing these days,” Lise admits when sharing how she got into the publishing side of the business in the first place. Two years ago, she and a fellow author and friend started a small press with the hopes of bringing back some of their out of print books. The venture is called Thalia Press and since then, they’ve taken a handful of authors under their wing. “We recently opened up our press to a small group of mystery writers who wanted to bring their books back,” she shares. “We are trying to help each other. With electronic readers and print on demand, you can do a lot yourself. You don’t need a big publisher.” And, since she learned the ropes to bring her own books back to life, “You can help others avoid some of the pitfalls.”

She shares that with one of her “publishing experiments,” she put one of her books up as a free download for the Amazon Kindle. “This summer, I had ‘Blackbird Fly’ as one of my free books. It hadn’t really gotten a lot of notice so I thought I would just try this. In 10 days there were 57,000 downloads. Then, the price went back on the book and I sold quite a few after that. It was extremely exciting.”

Turn the page in Lise’s life and you’ll also find a new pen name – Rory Tate. It’s ambiguous, she says, on purpose. She laughs when she says, “Sometimes men don’t necessarily like to read books by women. Women will read books by men but it doesn’t always go the other way around!”

“Jump Cut” is the new Rory Tate novel, one Lise describes as an “edgy, modern thriller” about a television news reporter with a serial killer, some humor and romance all melded together on its pages.

* * * * *

Read the rest of the article, and about some cool Montana women doing all sorts of amazing things at: Yellowstone Valley Woman Magazine. The glossy is now over a hundred pages long, and still free!