Feeling slightly crazy today as I work on two books at once. The deadlines for both are in the distance, comfortably far away. Like a tiny dot in the ocean that will – when it gets closer – reveal itself to be a giant ocean liner, the deadlines are easy to ignore for the moment. I could spend the day at a movie, on facebook, writing a blog….. but I know that all ships come to harbor, and all book deadlines eventually come due.

So instead of procrastinating, I am writing. This morning I worked on one, and this afternoon I will work on the other. It’s not really difficult to go back and forth. Not anymore difficult than having brunch with one friend and dinner with another. I don’t usually get people mixed up – real or fictional.

I’m also prepping for a class I’ll be teaching at Story Studio Chicago on February 10th. (Click on “Building a Mystery” at http://www.storystudiochicago.com if you would like to sign up.) It’s about writing a mystery novel. After six completed novels and these two in the early stages, I have a good idea what I will talk about. But now, working on my own books, I’m becoming very aware of whether I’m following the “rules” of writing a mystery – is my first chapter hooking the reader, are my character clearly defined, am I making sure to plan information early on for use later in the mystery? No idea… but I’m hoping.

The good thing, I realize, is that far away deadlines mean I can play with my characters, let them do what they like for a while and see where they take me. I’ll let you know how that goes….

I’d like to blog once or twice a week just to keep the habit going, but I’ve realized, I’m just not interesting enough to write about myself twice a week.  Luckily for me (and you) I have lots of friends who are doing cool things… among them author friends with books I’d like to share with you.

First up is Tony Perona. Tony is the author of a mystery series featuring stay-at-home dad and former investigative reporter Nick Bertetto. He has just finished his second term as Midwest Chapter President of the Mystery Writers of America.  His newest book, The Final Mayan Prophecy, is a stand-alone thriller that deals with the end of the 5,126-year-old Mayan calendar in December of this year and speculates on the question, did the Mayans know something we don’t?

This book is Tony’s first foray into the world of self-publishing. It’s intrigued me, because it offers more control and potentially more income than the traditional publishers. But there are drawbacks, and Tony’s guest blog addresses the biggest one authors worry about…

 
What makes a book legitimate?

by Tony Perona
I’m asking because, just between you and me, my new book comes with an asterisk. You know the asterisk, it follows around those major league home run hitters who achieved their records by using steroids. Makes the record seem … suspect. Not that I was using steroids when I wrote THE FINAL MAYAN PROPHECY. No, the book has an asterisk because: it’s self-published.
I’m one of those guys who usually plays by the rules. When television producer Paul Skorich hired me to write the screenplay for this thing, we both hoped it would be a film. (One film producer who read the script told Paul, “You do realize this is a $300 million dollar movie?”) Next, when we turned it into a novel, we hoped a publisher would buy it. But its path to agents and editors felt at times like the plot of a screwball comedy. (By the time one agent got it, he told me, “It’s good, but I don’t need the pressure of having to sell this thing in six months.”) You see, the book reaches its climax with the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012. By December of 2010, with traditional publishers needing at least a year to get it out and then a year for sales, my hopes were shot. In despair, I let the manuscript sit in a drawer through most of 2011, and then … well, I did IT.
Because in my heart I believe it’s a really good story, and that it deserves to be out there. I know that self-publishing allows some books into the world that shouldn’t be there. My inner Woody Allen is afraid I’ll be lumped in with those. I want people to think instead of the successes of John Locke and Amanda Hocking, or the legitimacy spearheaded by the Joe Konraths and Barry Eislers of the world.
What I need is a big, bold, defiant Barry Eisler asterisk.
Or maybe steroids.
Anybody know where Barry Eisler keeps his asterisks?

2012 is the last year of the earth. At least according to some crackpots who are misreading Mayan culture. But that’s good enough for me.

Since 2012 is it, I should do something special, something I’ve always wanted to do (like George Clooney). And take a vacation. I travel so much for my job as a TV producer that I rarely travel for fun. Not this year. And I’ll stop accumulating stuff – since none of it will be of any use after December 21st.

I’ll wake up early to get in a little quiet time before the day gets started. I’ll eat a cupcake if I feel like it, but I’ll try to remember that my body can only do for me if I do for it. I’ll read good books all the way to the last page, but when I’m not feeling it I’ll go ahead and stop without guilt.

I’ll keep writing. I know what you’re thinking, my books scheduled for release in 2013 will never see the light of day, so what’s the point? But I don’t write for you (sorry), I write for me. I write because much of the time I really love it. Not all of the time if I’m being honest, but enough to keep going.

And I’ll mostly try to savor these last few remaining months of the planet, even on days like today when it’s so freaking cold that I have to bury myself under a dozen quilts to keep warm. Luckily I happen to have a dozen quilts, so it all works out. I may even use some of the valuable time left to make a few more, just in case I get a chill as the world comes to a stop.

And, on the slim chance that the nutjobs are wrong, perhaps these “last year on earth” resolutions will just make 2012 a good year.

What about you? What are you doing with the 11 months, 3 days you have left?

Welcome to the new year. So far so good. I managed to do pretty much nothing on the 1st, except meditate, exercise and knit. I’m assuming the rest of the year will be busier, but I’m in no hurry.

I don’t make resolutions mainly because it’s too depressing when I break them, but this year I’ve decided to make a few. Let’s all see how long I manage to keep them.

1. In 2012, I plan to stop thinking that the book I’m not writing is a way better book than the one I am writing. I’m always excited about the idea I have no time to write, which sometimes depresses me about the idea I’m working on. This year I’m going to focus on the book, the chapter, the character, and the sentence that I’m actually writing.

2. In 2012, I will stop downloading episodes of Dexter, True Blood, Justified etc… and telling myself that since I’m at my computer, it counts as “working.”

3. In 2012, I will stop adding books to my “to be read”  pile until I’ve read at least half the books that are already there.

4. In 2012, I will stop checking my amazon ranking because it only serves to either temporary excite me or depress the hell out of me.

5. In 2012, I plan to just have fun with the writing, the readers and authors I meet, and my fantastic team (editor Becky, publicist Mary and agent Sharon) instead of worrying all the time when it’s going to come to a crashing halt.

And, of course, I plan to eat right, exercise, meditate daily, pray for world peace and all that other junk.

What’s on your list for 2012?

I can tell you from experience that every writer has heard some version of, “I have this great idea for a novel. You write it, and we’ll split the profits.” We’ve also all heard the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

These are people who think ideas are hard to come by. They are not. Writers get inspiration from everything we do, everywhere we go, and everyone we meet. In fact, we’re swimming in ideas. Everything gets filed away in the brain (or on the computer) for possible inclusion in a book someday.

Years ago I was dating a fellow writer and we had an argument… we had many arguments but this one in particular stands out… I said something intended to be both witty and cutting. Apparently it was. But instead of being hurt, my boyfriend/writer got a piece of paper and wrote down my words.  “That was good,” he said. “One of us should use that in something.”   That pretty much ended the argument because it’s hard to yell and write at the same time and neither of us knew shorthand. He kept the paper, so hopefully he used whatever it was I said in something he wrote.

Thanksfully it’s not always an argument that inspires. It’s usually the most mundane of moments. Yesterday I was in the grocery store trying to buy deoderant, specifically unscented deoderant. There were scents like “meadow” and “wildflowers” and “fresh” but no unscented. Why would I want my armpits to smell like wildflowers? And what exactly does “fresh” smell like? I looked around and noticed that a lot of things are scented that don’t need to be – tampons (I really don’t want to smell like wildflowers there), laundry detergent, soap… it made me wonder if people have to layer their scents. You don’t want lavender smelling clothes, clover smelling skin, and hair that smells like freshly falling snow. It would be confusing for the smellee. On the other hand, you don’t want to go around with an overwhelming odor of just picked apples, because everything from your underwear to your lip gloss is “apple scented.”

I walked out of the store without my unscented deoderant but I didn’t leave empty handed. I know that at some point I’ll use that little moment in a book. Just like I’ve used a thousand equally small moments as insiration for characters, scenes and whole books. I try to tell people I don’t get my ideas from anywhere, they’re just there, but I guess in a way, I get them at the grocery store, right between the peppermint scented eyedrops and the cherry flavored condoms.

In this month’s issue of Scientific American Mind, there’s an article about how scientists have discovered that reading fiction  – far from being the socially isolating experience some people think it is – can actually build social skills. Author Keith Oatley writes, “The process of entering imagined worlds of fiction builds empathy and improves your ability to take another person’s point of view. It can even change your personality. The seemingly solitary act of holing up with a book, then, is actually an exercise in human interaction.”

As one of those people who grew up with her nose in a book, I know that reading helped me see other worlds, choices, and opportunities that were far beyond anything I experienced on Chicago’s south side. Books allowed me to “try out” other lives – whether it was the morally bankrupt (but beautifully written) world of Gatsby, or the life of a London street urchin in Oliver Twist. I remember an old book I got from the library when I was about twelve – Junior Year Abroad, by Rosamond DuJardin, about an American college student spending her junior year in Paris. It was the match that lit a dream I had to study abroad. My spending my junior year in London may not have come about if I hadn’t first read that book.

But fiction serves as more than inspiration, science has found. Fiction allows us to enter, not just another world, but another life, because we so strongly identify with the main character as we read. We are taking the journey together, in a way, and experiencing the fears, joys, worries and excitement the character feels. Maybe it’s as close as we ever get to walking in another’s shoes.

According to the article, avid fiction readers are better at correctly identifying other people’s moods and are more “open and perceptive to others.” Recently I was complimented about my “uncanny ability to read people” – high praise that made me laugh. Now, I think of the wording of the compliment – maybe I get my practice in “reading people” everytime I open a book.

What do you think? Does reading make you more open, more perceptive?

Or is it a science?

I should know the answer because it seems I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the subject. Lately I start to do something then find myself giving up with an, ”I’ll do the rest tomorrow.” I blame it on the half cold that I have. Yes, I have half a cold. Stuffy, but not stuffed, nose, occasional cough, achy-ish…It’s like my immune system kicked in at the first sign of germs and then, with the job half done, said, “I’ll do the rest tomorrow.”

I have a nearly finished gift for a friend, several packages to mail if I can just get the right boxes which are somewhere, if I felt like looking. I have a pile of papers that need to be sorted and tons of those catalogs that show up on masse at this time of year that have to be recycled… and this book that should be written.

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I’ve stated that on several occasions. But whatever I’m experiencing these days comes pretty close (and pre-dates the half-cold, so can’t blame that.) I have all of these ideas in my head and not the slightest desire to get them on paper. This is that time when I toggle back and forth between “art can’t be rushed” and “writing is my job, so I have to do it.”

Agatha Christie said, “Write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.” And she should know, she wrote more than 80 novels.  And, given that she remains the most successful mystery writer of all time, who am I to argue?

But is it possible that a little procrastination is a good thing? That doing nothing is good for the mind, body and soul? Is it possible that while I’m downloading old episodes of True Blood on HBO-Go (really an evil and addictive invention) that what I’m actually doing is refreshing myself so that I’ll be ready to finish that gift/find those boxes/sort through the mail/ write that novel tomorrow?

What do you think? Should I follow Agatha’s advice or wait for inspiration?