Shiro‘s doing awesome. She now weights 28 grams, incredibly energetic and jumps on top of Kuro all the time to assert her dominance. Yay! :)

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Have you seen Nalini‘s Angels' Blood cover? It's just awesome. It's out on March 3. I can't wait. :)

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Two industry insiders' view on Kindle's text-to-speech feature:

Neil Gaiman's position is that TTS is okay. Jason Pinter disagrees since TTS can potentially cannibalize audio sales. He quoted an interview with Robert B. Parker:

…what about an author who makes $60,000 a year, $10,000 of which comes from audio sales? What if, down the road, the Kindle cannibalizes his/her audio sales to the point where another contract is not offered? Audiobooks are more expensive to produce than print books and carry a higher price tag, so the author loses out on a certain dollar amount for every audio sale lost. Saying this issue is no big deal is like a politician claiming we're in a “mental recession” while riding in his private jet, unaware that below him there are people losing their homes. At some point perspective is lost, and while arguing dollars and cents may seem silly to some, to other it ceding this completely may at some point alter their career.

There have been other blogs and organizations stating their positions on TTS. But what I find singularly interesting is that most of pro-TTS people are telling authors to just hand over rights without getting compensated. I haven't seen a single pro-TTS people telling Amazon to cough up some dough and pay the authors for TTS.

BTW — IBM has TTS technology that sounds like a real human. So it is a very real possibility that something like Kindle TTS may replace audio books within years.

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This interview with Binky Urban just rocks. I love the part where she discusses McCormick.

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Nathan Bransford discusses sympathetic v. unsympathetic characters. Everyone should go read it. :)

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That's it! Do you have anything to share? Or discuss further? :)

mood: slightly sleep deprived
currently reading: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
Shiro's status: hanging in there; gained 2 grams :)

I can't believe Margie Lawson's Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors workshop is over. For those of you who know me well probably know that I'm not the one to get all spiritual and frou-frou, and Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors doesn't sound like something that would tempt me to sign up. You're right. It's not. But I'm glad I did. She teaches it once a year in January, and I encourage everyone to take it if they can. It's worth every penny and more.

Margie also teaches Empowering Character's Emotions (ECE) and EDITS workshops. I bought her lecture packets for ECE and EDITS, and already went through ECE and took tons of notes. Again, I encourage people to take the class. (She's teaching ECE in March.) The only reason why I decided not to sign up is because I'm planning to outline and draft a new project in March, and I honestly can't take a revision class while drafting a project. My internal editor will go crazy.

For All the King's Women 1st round of revision, I plan to do something a bit different. I'm going to revise backward.

What does that mean?

Instead of starting from the first chapter (my standard M.O.), I'm going to start from the last chapter. I tend to rush the ending, and I want to devote the most time and energy on making the ending very strong. Of course, I'll do a read-through from Chapter One to make sure everything flows correctly before sending the revised draft to my beta-readers.

mood: upbeat; well-rested and happy
currently thrilled about: All the King's Women 1st draft
signed up for: another workshop; this time, Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways

Yesterday went pretty well. I figured out exactly how to end the story, so I'm feeling quite pleased. :)

So here's yesterday's progress:

I want to address one of the points brought up re: Pre-Published v. Unpublished because I got quite a few comments / messages on MySpace.

I'm not against being positive or wanting to reaffirm one's dedication to one's dream. If your goal is to become published, good for you. But…!

If you want to be published, you need to understand how publishing works and present yourself professionally. Misusing terms and misrepresenting yourself do not help your cause.

There are many people who want to feel good, feel validated, feel warm and fuzzy, etc. etc. But it's all about feel, feel, feel.

Forget feel for a moment. Put on your thinking cap and think. Imagine you're an industry professional. Let's say…an agent. And someone misrepresent their publishing credit / status. Even if it was born out of ignorance or desire to feel good, wouldn't you be annoyed that you wasted your time googling the writer's name to see what that person has published?

IMHO, most professionals want to work with someone who understands how business works. Someone who's done their homework. And when you're putting yourself out there as a professional, it's not the time to feel, but to think.

Lawrence Block wrote in Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print, “If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.”

Why?

Because it's very very difficult to write a novel.

If Block's advice fails to change your mind, then start writing. But even as you embark on your journey, read the following books to learn your craft and get some inspiration along the way.

Writing the Breakout Novel Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook: Hands-On Help for Making Your Novel Stand Out and Succeed The Writer's Journey, Second Edition: Mythic Structure for Writers Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles On Writing

When you've written your first novel, then read the following books:

• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print
• How To Be Your Own Literary Agent: An Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published

As you repeat the process over and over again, don't forget to have a little sense of humor and learn to prioritize and put things in perspective. It's OK to get a rejection (or two or three…or…a million) on your first novel. Most people don't sell their first novel anyway. Think of this as a learning opportunity, a journey to self-discovery.

And always remember that you're a writer and that writers write.

mood: excellent
cooked: spicy chicken & veggie soup, sweet & spicy shrimp pineapple stir-fry, Cajun potatoes
just watched: You Don't Mess with the Zohan

No writing progress today since today's my official day off. I'm still trying to not write at least two days out of a week, unless I absolutely must (translation: contractual obligations, which I don't have at this point). I'm itching to write a scene, but I must calmly wait. Oi…!

Onto to the real meat of today's post —

I've blogged about it before elsewhere, but decided to repost it since I saw another writer misuse the term “pre-published”.

I hope people would just stop using the term “pre-published” to describe their “unpublished” status. So many unpublished writers use it, like it somehow makes them more special or something to call themselves “pre-published”.

Pre-published is a very specific word describing a very specific situation in publishing. Nephele Tempest, a literary agent, explains:

Pre-published implies that an author has sold a book, but it hasn't actually hit the shelves yet.

I don't understand why people think that calling themselves “pre-published” when they're really “unpublished” is affirming and positive.

Do you call your friends on diet “pre-thin”? Do you call your single friends “pre-wives” or “pre-husbands”? Do you call people with cancer or other terminal illnesses “pre-dead”?

Surely not.

Calling yourself pre-published when you're not only makes you sound pretentious, ignorant and/or worse, foolish, like you don't know what the word really means and/or use it anyway to sound “cool”.

Diana Fox wrote an interesting post on agents with day jobs. You should all go read it. It's very illuminating.

Something else to consider in addition to what she's written:

Agents only make 15% of what you make. Since publishing pays authors very very little and agents take 15% of that very very little pay, do the math.

Furthermore, I think it was Donald Maass who said that it's extremely stressful when a client quits his day job too soon and begs his agent to sell anything so he doesn't have to get a job that gives him steady paychecks. Unfortunately the client is too depressed and/or worried about money that he can't produce his best work, and his agent is reluctant to shop substandard projects.

Now reverse the above situation. Imagine you have an agent who quit his steady paycheck job too soon. He realizes that he can't survive in the commissions he makes, so he tells his clients to pump out books faster so he can start shopping projects around, hoping to get commissions faster even though the client projects could've benefited from an extra month of revision. Or worse, he may get tempted by the client money and embezzle. (Desperation can make people do stuff that they would never dream of doing otherwise.)

I'd rather have an agent with a day job who doesn't pressure me to write faster than I'm comfortable with and / or doesn't get tempted into doing anything questionable / unethical.