​Ernest Hemingway – 500 words a day.
Graham Greene – 500 words a day.
J.R.R. Tolkien – 245 words a day.
Tom Wolfe – 135 words a day.
 
A professional writer can be identified by his or her ability to write every day. Or so I’ve been told.
 
Whether I’m feeling it or not, a much-published acquaintance told me years ago, I plant my butt in the chair and turn out words. Good sentences, bad sentences, entire pages that go nowhere – it doesn’t matter. I don’t finish for the day until I’ve done my 3,000 words.
 
I didn’t know if she was simply stating a fact, or bragging, or bragging while stating a fact. She shared that Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) famously wrote 3,000 words a day. As did Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason). She was following in their footsteps, although she didn’t create mysteries. She wrote Harlequin romances.
 
You know who wouldn’t have been impressed by my associate’s daily word count? Michael Crichton, the Jurassic Park author. He went into his office and didn’t turn out the lights until he’d done 10,000 words each day. That’s a head-swimming number. If he didn’t rewrite his manuscripts so often, he could have put out a novel almost weekly.
 
If I could put out a solid novel once every seven days, I’d work for seven days a year. Or, if a Barbie convention was coming up, maybe fourteen.
 
In our house, five hundred pretty decent words in a day is a solid effort. My partner and I have done a multiple of that on those days when the creativity is really cooking – or, once upon a time, when we were on deadline and running out of time – but there have also been days when we wrote diddly-squat. Hell, there were years when we wrote diddly-squat.
 
(Just so that you don’t leave this blog without learning something today, the phrase “diddly-squat” originated as “doodly-squat”, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Its origins date back to 1934, but nobody seems to know why it came into use. Over the years, doodly-squat got twisted into diddly-squat, both words meaning “almost nothing” or “the least bit of something.”)
 
Do you know how many words we added to our current project, the serial fiction story, in the last eight days? The least bit of something. Three hundred words. Not three hundred words per day. Three hundred words in total. We only made it that far because we were able to resolve how to start the billionaire’s portion of our serial fiction, the section that was stumping us last week. Using the billionaire’s assistant as his surrogate allowed us to tell the reader how flawless, brilliant, handsome, and wonderful the billionaire is without it sounding like the fellow is bragging about himself.
 
Rereading the words this morning, I realized our 300 words need a rewrite. (Michael Crichton could relate.) While the assistant does tell the world how flawless, brilliant, handsome and wonderful the billionaire is, as required, he also makes fun of his name. Gently hints that his employer’s a thief.
 
It’s almost like he detests him.
 
I find this a more interesting read, but it’s probably a bad approach if we want to sell some eBooks. You know who I should ask for help? Michelle Douglas. Her book, Cinderella and the Brooding Billionaire, comes out from Harlequin.com in October! I wouldn’t know this if I hadn’t decided to check if Harlequin was still in business. They are and, presumably, this is because they know what sells. Billionaire romances sell. Brooding billionaire romances sell very well.
 
I imagine the Harlequin group also knows what doesn’t sell. Going through their catalog, I see they aren’t offering any eBooks where the focus is on the billionaire’s indispensable assistant who rather dislikes his employer.
 
Food for thought.
 
I see this blog is about to pass 650 words, a solid daily effort, so it’s time for me to plant my butt and paint another gourd bird. I have twelve of them to complete before all is said and done. Have a lovely week and I’ll see you next Tuesday. 

​Instead of working on our latest serial fiction, I’ve been goofing off. My partner hasn’t felt like doing his end of the struggle, either. There’s something that’s just a little off about our current writing project. It’s not the storyline… except, now that I think about it, maybe it is the storyline. Bear with me, I want to see if I’m right.
 
At first, we were all gung-ho (but not about Gung Ho, the Michael Keaton movie, which really should have been better). For the first several chapters of the new manuscript, everything is told from the viewpoint of our heroine. Our heroine is young, smart, struggling to make ends meet, and reasonably freaked when she wakes up and discovers her brain inhabiting someone else’s body. A someone else who has stolen a very important McGuffin from a rich and powerful billionaire. While she struggles to come to terms with this, the billionaire’s thugs are pounding on her front door, demanding she give the McGuffin back.
 
Except that our heroine doesn’t know what the McGuffin is or where it’s hidden. She’s in a fix.
 
We felt this was a relatable story. I mean, who hasn’t had something similar happen, right? Going to bed as, say, Kristin Faraday, then waking up in Charlize Theron’s body and discovering that a sexy, handsome version of Bill Gates has sent his goons to strongarm you? If it hasn’t happened to you personally, it’s almost certainly happened to one of your friends or family members.
 
We pride ourselves in grounding our fiction in reality.
 
The writing went along very smoothly – serial fiction is all about the cliffhangers, and the cliffhangers were falling nicely – until the middle of last week. On Wednesday, it was Handsome Bill Gates turn to tell the story from his point of view. The reader would learn why the McGuffin mattered and, if it was handled correctly, the next few episodes would give the reader a reason to like Bill beyond his eleven-figure bank account. In theory.
 
So, why are we struggling to put words on paper? We know where the story is supposed to go. The problem is, as ridiculous as Kristin Faraday’s situation might be, we find the idea of a self-made, altruistic, physically perfect and totally gorgeous billionaire to be an even more fantastical conceit. For us, it’s easy to present the billionaire as a threatening presence. It’s going to be a battle to make him every woman’s dream lover. 
 
I suggested that we give up on Sexy Bill Gates and create someone more in keeping with what we read about the super-rich. Will readers stay with us if present the billionaire as a soft-bellied, balding, and cretinous villain? I’ve argued that anything’s possible, but my partner doesn’t believe that mean-spirited cretin romance is the Next Big Thing.
 
Unable to come to a consensus on where to go next, we each wandered off to do other things that weren’t writing fiction. I opened my paint set. When I’m at loose ends, I paint Arizona birds on small, egg-shaped gourds; oh, don’t shake your head at me, there are worse hobbies. Each painting fills a few hours over two or three days. Once the latest bird was done, I went online to pass some time. Somehow, I found Entertainment Weekly’s Which Superhero Character Are You? quiz.
 
I’ve provided a link to the quiz, but it’s a complete waste of time. If you insist on checking it out, you’ll notice that it’s Marvel-centric. The superhero character options appear pretty male-centric, too. There’s no Lady Luck, or Raven, or Jill Trent, Science Sleuth among the character options. But the “game” was right in front of me, it was free, and I was bored.
 
I was stumped by the very first question: My greatest asset is my…*
(A) Ambition
(B) Discipline
(C) Strength
(D) Loyalty
(E) Intelligence
 
There’s no (F) None of the above. A, B and E didn’t seem right, because I was sitting on my butt doing a superhero character quiz, instead of working on a billionaire romance that might make a few bucks. C is definitely not my reality and no one except an Akita should pick D as their answer. Finally, I went with “intelligence” because I was smart enough to know that they’d provided no appropriate answer for a slacker like me.
 
The second question is about favorite foods. Nothing on their list would have made my top twenty choices. I went with “pie”, because, really, what’s wrong with pie? The third question wanted to know how my friends would describe me. I called the Good Witch. Her answer – “A pain in the butt. I had to get out of the shower to answer your call” – is not on there. The fourth question, about favorite colors, included blue and green. My favorite color is turquoise. The fifth, and final question, asking about fitness routines? Oh, please. Crossfit? Karate? Boxing? So… yeah, no real thought went into Question #5. I stabbed blindly.
 
Having filled in largely incorrect answers for all of the questions, Entertainment Weekly then refused to provide the superhero character answer unless I gave them an email to spam me on a regular basis. If you ignore my warning and play the game, they will do this to you, too. (It makes me want to send their marketing department a quiz: Which Supervillain Character Are You?) I gave them my spam email site, the one I don’t check, to go forward.
 
Their answer? Iron Man. The handsome, well-muscled, arrogant yet altruistic billionaire that has, somehow, charmed millions of movie-goers. The perfect candidate for a billionaire romance.
 
I have no idea what the universe is trying to tell me. I should have spent my time, finishing my Arizona bluebird.
 
 

​I know this is getting posted a little early, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Tomorrow is such a busy day, I’m afraid I’ll forget to blog if I wait. Since I’ve promised to fill this weekly spot for at least a year, that is NOT allowed to happen.
 
I’m feeling grumpy about Amazon’s Vella serial fiction failure, so let’s talk about something else for today. Last Friday, as I settled onto the couch for the evening, I noticed that my life partner was reading a paperback book. An old paperback book, purporting to tell the story of Liz Crowley, a woman who sells her love. Although the woman on the cover was dressed fairly modestly, the cover copy promised that this book was, “A Night-By-Night Account of a Prostitute’s Life – By the Girl Who Lived It.”
 
I cleared my throat. My partner looked up.
 
“Good book?” I asked, which was a better opening than, hey, that looks sleazy.
 
“It’s all right,” he replied.
 
“Looks sleazy.” I had to go there. I was already tired of waiting.
 
“A study of human behavior,” he replied. He pointed to the upside-down triangle at the bottom of the woman’s photo. (By the way, Google tells me an upside-down triangle is called a nabla. This comes from the Greek word for a Phoenician harp. I do not anticipate ever using this knowledge again.) On the nabla, I read the words, Monarch Human Behavior Books.
 
Borrowing the book, I opened the cover. On the first page, I read: He grabbed me roughly. “You’re a no-good prostitute,” he snarled. “The lowest thing there is – a disgrace to the human race – not fit to breathe the same air with the rest of the world. Get your clothes off. Fast!”
 
The speaker wasn’t asking her to remove her clothing because it was on fire. He had an ulterior motive. The reader soon learns that speaker is a cop from the Vice Squad, taking advantage of his position.
 
I decided I was right the first time. I said, “Sleaze.”
 
“Classic erotica,” my partner advised me. “Published sixty-one years ago, when such things were usually suggestive, not overt. We’ve written hotter stuff.”
 
Flipping through the book, this turned out to be true. One sexual encounter was described as “…the world went around and around and exploded on top of us with one hell of a noise.” If this was hot stuff in 1960, be pleased you weren’t reading sleaze sixty-one years ago.
 
“This was one of Larry’s early novels,” my partner said. “I wanted to see how it read.”
 
When he said, “Larry”, I knew who he meant. Lawrence Block has made quite a name as an author. He’s seen his novels made into movies, he’s won just about every award a mystery writer can win, and his Matthew Scudder detective series was a big hit. Glynn enjoys Block’s “Burglar” books, so, when a new one hadn’t come out in a while, he wrote him to ask why. This was years ago, when people used to write letters. When Mr. Block replied, he signed his note as, “Larry.”
 
Since then, he’s been Larry in our house. Decades before he became a Big Deal, Larry wrote a series of spicy books under various pseudonyms. Books like I Sell Love. There were mouths to feed and bills to be paid. The books had titles like Born to Be Bad, Campus Tramp and A Strange Kind of Love. Not only is LB unembarrassed by his past, he has 25 “classic erotica” titles listed on his website for purchase. Good for him, I say.
 
I want to close by adding that, as a writer, Larry continues to impress. Last year, his dark and disturbing novel, Dead Girl Blues, came out, as did an anthology he edited, The Darkling Halls of Ivy. This year, he put out a new anthology (Collectibles, Glynn recommends it) and a memoir, A Writer Prepares.
 
The memoir was officially published in June, on the man’s 83rd birthday.
 
I feel like such a slacker.

​​Did you have a pleasant Labor Day?
 
In the United States, Labor Day is a federal holiday. This is the time when the people of the nation go online to see if they can get 30% off on that La-Z-Boy Recliner they’ve been desiring. (Is it awful that I didn’t know the proper spelling for those chairs? Until this morning, I thought people were buying Lazy Boy recliners. I was wrong. Apparently, the words “lazy” and “boy” are too generic to create a rock-solid trademark for La-Z-Boy, Inc, so they made up their own word.) The holiday is supposed to be the day when a grateful nation celebrates the contributions of its workers. That might have been what happened in the 19th century, but, these days, not so much. During the part of my lifetime that I remember, Labor Day has been when the country’s retailers make their workers put in overtime to ring up discounted merchandise.
 
Our Canadian friends celebrate Labor Day, too, but they spell the holiday as, “Labour Day.” Vowels are as plentiful as maple syrup in Canada, so they add a few extra to any word they can.
 
My Labor Day was largely uneventful, although I did receive one notable text. It was from a friend who has recently started writing, and she’d just received her first negative book review. She’s received some very nice reviews, but she never texts me about them. I suggested (a) she stop reading her reviews, since many writers only remember the bad ones; and (b) reassured her that even the most acclaimed writers will receive the occasional thumb in the eye.
 
I don’t think I helped. There are times when it’s better just to listen.
 
But (b) was absolutely true. Everyone with any kind of readership will get a bad review sooner or later. Today, I’m going to prove it. Knowing that people’s taste in books can be very different – it sounds crazy, but some people might not enjoy Agatha Christie’s Curtain, a story I love – I decided I should find a list of swell reads selected by someone other than myself. Not only swell reads, the BEST reads. In 2003, The Guardian (UK) offered their readership The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I decided that would do nicely.
 
I confess, I recognized a lot of the names on the list, but I haven’t read most of the books they selected. I’d like to have read several of them without actually having to spend the time to do so. (Ulysses by James Joyce? #45 on Guardian’s list. It’s supposed to be brilliant. Here’s one review: Worse book that I have read. It should not be considered a "classic".) Then I went onto Amazon to see if anyone said grumpy things about these other works of genius.
 
Horrible book it is beyond confusing. If you wish to be confused trying to keep up with a million characters the(n) be my guest (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL by James Ellroy. #95 on Guardian’s list.)
 
I sure hope the movie is better than this book. There is no "zero" star rating or I would have given it for this book. (TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY by John le Carré. #78 on Guardian’s list.)
 
It was a terrible book. The book is so unbelievable and weird. (NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell – Penguin Clothbound Classics. #59 on Guardian’s list.)
 
AHHHHHHHHHH, worst book i ever read! sorry Mark Twain but its really really bad! (ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain. #31 on Guardian’s list. Included here to tweak my writing partner, who adores the novel.)
 
This was literally the worst book I have EVER read. Well except 50 shades of Gray. (MOBY DICK: OR, THE WHITE WHALE by Herman Melville. #21 on Guardian’s list.)
 
Jumbled writing, many events were simply not plausible and downright depressing to the very end. I cannot count the number of times I simply wanted to scream at the protagonist. (FRANKENSTEIN – Reader’s Library Classics – by Mary Shelley. #10 on Guardian’s list.)
 
If you like road-trip stories, potty humor and the slapstick comedy of a bumbling protagonist, you may very well like this book. (DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes/Translated by Edith Grossman. #1 on Guardian’s list.)
 
These were all one-star reviews. Every book I checked had readers complaining about something or other. Every book. Do I feel these readers were wrong in their opinions? Hardly. They know what they like, and the various authors didn’t deliver an enjoyable experience for them. The readers shared their thoughts with the world. That’s fair.
 
One more, before I go:
 
Agatha Christie has written some stinkers, but really this is the worse. (CURTAIN by Agatha Christie. #1 on my Agatha Christie collection list.)
 
So, rest easy, L. You’re among some very good company.