Most readers are not too fond of the TSTL heroine unless she manages to redeem herself (or she’s Stephanie Plum–sorry, I couldn’t help myself), but since they’re only fictional folk, there’s not too much damage done, except to the psyches of the young girls who admire them.

But I was tooling around the blogosphere today and I happened on an article at the Women in Crime site talking about gullible real-life women who risk much to be with men who mistreat or kill them. Case in point: Sandra Boss and her daughter who was duped by a supposed Rockefeller, a man with no social security card, no job or history of having one, no real family. How the hell did this guy fool a supposedly smart woman duped into sharing their lives and their fortunes with reprobate men.

A big part of the equation is that these men don’t want you to know. They go to great lengths to preserve their con. This is their whole life and when it starts to unravel, they usually do one of two things–kill to cover their tracks or disappear. Luckily for little Reigh Rockefeller (now Boss) her dad chose the latter route even if he took her with him.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that there is something lacking in these women that these men pick up on and exploit. I would agree with that. When you consider that many of these type of love stories begin with the same formula: a whirlwind courtship followed by a quick marriage. Then the woman finds herself separated either emotionally or physically from her family and friends. It’s the same way many abusers and other predators behave: separate the weak one from the herd.

Another part of the equation is the pervasive sentiment that we women are still not complete without a man. We spout crazy statistics like we are more likely to get hit by lightning than to find that man after a certain age. Like a demented game of muscial chairs women are afraid to be the one left without a place to call their own. So, many close their eyes to signals anyone else would see. They don’t want to admit, until perhaps too late, that their (possibly) one shot at love isn’t who or what they claim to be.

But I think it’s also true that some folks take the fantasy of the romance novel and the movie theatre too literally. Some guy sweeps into their life and rather than being suspicious about why some man with millions wants ordinary ol’ you, you swoon. It’s not like Cinderella stories never happen, but more than likely the heroine ends up in divorce court trying to salvage some bit of her life, in a shallow grave–or, perhaps, my next novel. We’ll have to wait and see.

I forgot yesterday when I posted that I would be blogging here again today that it’s my turn to do the deed at Blogging in Black. So if you want to know what’s on my mind today, head on over. I’ll meet you there.

To Patricia I say, thank you, thank you, first for writing the post and second for allowing me to post it here and to feature it on my for writers page.

For more sage advice from Patricia, vist her blog. For now, enjoy her post on writing workshops.

Online Writing Classes, Do’s and Don’ts

I don’t know that anyone has ever published etiquette or guidelines for behavior related to taking online classes but I thought someone might find my observations and experiences helpful. So here’s my take on this:

First, the Don’ts:
Don’t take a class if you don’t have time for it.
Sure, you can get and print out the lessons but why not wait for a later time when you’ll be fully engaged? You and your fellow partiicipants will gain more from your full involvement. And, if there is limited class size, you won’t be taking up space that could be used by someone who’s ready to learn.

Don’t take a class and then share all the handouts with all of your writing buddies and critique partners.
Yes, the material was great and you just know all your writer friends will think so too. Encourage them to take the class. What did it cost you, 20 bucks? Support the instructor and class sponsor by encouraging others to enroll.

Don’t be afraid to participate.
You may find yourself in the company of other published writers, or at least a whole lot of folks who seem to know a lot more about this writing thing than you do. Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated! Sit at your desk, in your most comfy pjs, and jump right in! Ask questions, engage in discussions, and lend your support of the other class members, many of whom feel just like you.

Don’t take a class and assume you are now an expert on the subject.
This one can be difficult, especially if the material really resonated with you. Perhaps you really do have a deeper understanding of the subject mattter. Put it to work in your writing so that you can truly master it.

Don’t allow the class to overwhelm with what you don’t know.
Some of the classes are short, maybe only a week or two. At the end, you may feel no more enlightened than when you started. Keep studying until you hit the nugget of truth that helps you to get it.

Don’t assume what you just learned is the only way to approach the subject matter.
Writing is like baking a cake. There are many recipes, all of which result in delicious eating. If something doesn’t resonate with you, don’t bad mouth it. Realize you still got something out of the class. You learned what doesn’t work for you.

Don’t take the class as an opportunity to posit your own theory on the subject matter.
This is the instructor’s class, not yours. Input is certainly welcomed but don’t take up the instructor’s time nor that of your classmates, challenging every point the instructor makes. If you’re not truly interested in learning the subject matter as it’s being taught, or quickly discover that the class is not for you, simply bow out. Don’t try to hijack the course and change it into what you need it to be.

Now the Do’s…

• DO seek class recommendations.
• DO research the class and instructor before signing up.
• DO register before the deadline.
• DO devote reasonable time to the workshop.
• DO complete the assignments.
• DO engage in class discussions.
• DO ask questions.
• DO keep up with the pace of the class so your questions are timely.
• DO network with other class participants.
• DO use digest to manage the message volume.
• DO print out or download the lessons and handouts.
• DO soak up as much information as you can, keeping what will be helpful to you, and graciously discarding the rest.

Most of all, keep writing!

One last point. I find the majority of online classes are offered between January and September, with July being an “off” month due to the RWA convention. Plan accordingly.

Peace & Blessings,
PatriciaW
Stay focused. Move Forward. Believe.

What I Know So Far is no more. I’ve brought all the old posts over here. So if you want to browse through any of the old stuff, it’s here. Until I started importing the posts, I didn’t realize I’d been at this blogging thing since 2005. As Jenny from Always would say, Good Gravy!

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You’ve got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into a brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself – and you don’t care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

Let’s start with Crimesistahs, where Angela blogs about the latest survey from Sisters in Crime . It’s amazing what information you can find on the market if you just look around. I hadn’t realized the mystery was genre non grata until I read this post. From now on I write thrillers, dammit.

Next stop is Sarah Weinman’s blog. She steals a bit from an essay on suspense written by Thomas Perry for LA Weekly.

Suspense isn’t a pleasant sensation. We go to great lengths to manage our lives in ways that will keep us from having to go through periods of uncertainty — particularly when it’s prolonged, and when the stakes are high. But in reading fiction, especially a novel, we crave this sensation of increasing tension, and the higher the stakes, the better. We love the experience of sitting somewhere in perfect safety with a book while some character serves as our surrogate in facing a world full of danger. What we’re enjoying is growing excitement, followed by a tantalizingly delayed cathartic ending. It’s a quality of all good fiction, and it’s why the reader keeps turning the pages.

My response is exactly! I know that’s why I read and the experience I hope to engender in my work.

Weinman also posits that Perry is correct when he speculates that the literati aren’t enamored with suspense is “perhaps because [suspense] seems to stimulate emotion rather than intellect: It makes readers care rather than think.”

Isn’t that the mission of all genre fiction? To bring the reader into the world of the protagonists and make them feel what the characters feel? And perhaps that’s why romance is the most denegrated genre of all, since the character’s feelings play such a prominent role in the development of the story.

And finally, Patricia Woodside blogs about finding your literary voice.

Hope you enjoyed this mini-roundup. Now that the heat wave here in New York has broken, I’m actually going outside.

Well, readers of crime fiction like to feel smart. To the extent that you can debunk closely-held myths in the course of your writing, agents, editors, and ultimately readers will love it. If you can tell readers how things REALLY happen—as opposed to the way they look on TV, it will give your work a feeling of authenticity that’s often missing in crime fiction (and nonfiction.)

That’s always been my goal in writing crime fiction–to show what I know that the reader doesn’t without making them feel foolish for believing everything you see on CSI.

So, I end by asking you the same question as Mr. Hoffman does his readers–whast are your bugaboos and pet peeves about crime fiction (or even reportage of true crime)? What story line could you do without ever seeing again? Fess up!

This is how the post starts out:

A legitimate criticism of romance as serious literature is it’s often cavalier treatment of important life topics. Too often, war, separation, human indignity, are treated as plot devices, conflict mechanisms, and not given the attention and treatment those important issues deserve. How many romance books are thought provoking? How many challenge your personal concepts of right and wrong? How many portray multi hued individuals as both heroic and villianous? Surely within the umbrella of the romance genre, there is room for these books.

I can’t argue with anything that is said here, which does not mean, in my opinion, that no romances deal with important issues head on, but, in my opinion, fewer than should do. In other words, if you’ve got a protagonist recovering from a bad marriage, missing child, breast cancer, rape, whatever, or you’ve got a character who’s a soldier or cop, nurse or counselor, they experience life in particular ways that are often glossed over rather than exploited properly for the verisimilitude of their story.

This to my mind doesn’t mean every story has to be heavy or heavy handed. However, if you’re going to bring up the heroine’s unkind personal history, or whatever, let the effects of it reverberate in her life on a deeper level than making her wary of the hero’s attentions. Almost any serious event injected into a character’s life produces a constellation of effects. These can be explored even if you do it in a less than grave way.

I know that I had a hard time writing my hero for Soldier Boys. The story was supposed to be light and airy, so I kept it that way as much as I could. However, the guys a freaking marine sniper, and after reading even minimally about these guys and giving him the background that I did, I knew I couldn’t divorce the story from the realities of the ongoing war and keep it in any way beleivable. So I didn’t. The result is a deeper story, I hope, even though it is also really, really hot. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it works.

But I also don’t think that romance is alone in glossing over serious events or issues. The more suspense and mystery I read, the more I become aware that every genre has its way of trivializing that which it isn’t prepared to deal with. Ever read a sex scene in your average testosterone-filled thriller? Either it’s one of those wham-bam- excuse me while I come, ma’am, deals where it’s over in two seconds (doesn’t say much for the hero if you ask me) or it’s the sappiest bit of crap that no romance writer could get away with in a million years.

The truth of it is, there is room for shades of gray in every genre: true exploration of the human psyche and human emotions in every genre; contemplation of right and wrong and just in every genre and when we gloss over it or exploit it not for what it is but what we want it to be, we do both ourselves and our readers an injustice.

If we define the protagonist as “the character we root for,” then this presumes that the protagonist’s goals are always worthy. In the case of tragedies, they frequently are not. Really, did anyone actually want Oedipus to marry Jocasta?

My answer: not really. As for stories closer to my heart, she posits: And then there’s romance. Can a story ever really have two protagonists? I’m sure it can, but isn’t it nice to have someone talk about romance without scorn? A big NY hug for that.

I’m sure the discussion isn’t over, but if you want more insight, check out the post.

I hope it’s on the dean’s list, too.