Fore!

I'm tossing again.

Back when I first started claiming home office expenses related to my writing on my income tax, I had a lightbulb moment of why my house was so cluttered. In order to claim expenses, you have to provide what proportion of your home office is of your total heated square footage, right?

So I did. And I was aghast to find out that my heated square footage was about 1, 100 square feet. No wonder I was walking around piles of stuff with no home. I joked with The Husband that I had 3,300 square feet of junk crammed in 1,100 square feet.

Maybe we don't have quite 3,300 square feet of junk, but we have way too much stuff for such a little house. So since then, I've been going through spells of decluttering, with the hope of one day getting down to a Zen-like bareness.

To that end, I checked out a book from the library called IT'S ALL TOO MUCH, by my hero of decluttering, Peter Walsh, the guy from CLEAN SWEEP.

It's more of the same message -- you can't put three cubic feet of junk into one cubic foot of space -- but I like the way Walsh puts it. Sometimes I'm so dense that I have to hear the same message in about a million different permutations before it really sinks in.

His big push is that form should follow function. A person or family should decide what the mission is for a particular space, and then subtract out everything that doesn't promote that mission.

It was so basic and fundamental a principle that I put the book down and tackled the top of my bureau, a no-man's land of stuff that didn't really have a home. And I thought, as I did it, about life and writing.

Why is it that we tolerate so much clutter in our lives -- not just real, physical clutter, but "issue-type" clutter? We tip-toe around it and make what my mom used to refer to as "pig-paths" around the heaps. We can't do A because someone's feelings might get hurt, and we can't accomplish B until we accomplish A. We need X, but first we have to stop doing Y, just so we'll have the money or the time or the space for it.

Same thing in writing: it was such a lightbulb moment, a better way to look at it than the "kill your darlings" old saw that writing teachers always talk about. Instead of looking at your darlings, or as Peter Walsh calls clutter, your stuff, look at what you want to accomplish. What's keeping you from it?

So hopefully from now on, as I'm writing a scene or a chapter or a book, I can look at the purpose of a scene, the mission of it. What's that purpose? What am I hoping to accomplish? What do I need to get rid of to make that path clear?

In the meantime, I am back on the tossing wagon at home, so if you're hanging around my house, consider yourselves ordered to duck!

Beyond perfection

The Kiddo has a Perfection Complex. I know this because I have to avert potential thermo-nuclear meltdowns on more occasions than I would like. She thinks she needs to make a 100 on every test. She thinks her hair has to be perfectly straight and glossy every day. She thinks her clothes need to match not only in color, but also to the exact temperature of recess -- never mind that recess is clocking in at 72 degrees, while school drop-off is clocking in at 39 degrees.

I swear, we don't push her. We don't nag. We don't even fuss. We don't have to. She beats herself up far more severely than we ever could.

But her perfection complex is not completely value-less for me. It provides me with a continual life lesson for me and my life and my writing.

When I was in middle school, I never worried about grades. I got what I got, which except for math were usually pretty good, at least a solid B.

Then a fateful moment occurred. A fellow student who had eeked out an A- was bewailing her grade. I glanced from the 83 or so that I'd scored on the same test and asked what the big deal was.

"My mama says that an A- is nearly a B, and a B- is nearly a C!" she explained.

I looked aghast at my 83, which was indeed numerically cheek-to-jowl with a C+. Quietly I folded my paper, tucked it in my messy book bag and vowed never again to have a B, save for math which came with a lifetime exclusion from any such blood oaths.

Fast-forward to high school. By then, even with a C in math (hey, that was a miracle for me, believe me!), I was making honor roll. Most of my grades were in the mid-90s.

That memory of the lowly station of an A minus, though, haunted me. If A minus was cheek-to-jowl with a B, then a 95, was neighbors with an A minus. That would not do.

My grade inflation slowly ratcheted upward, where no grade below a 98 in any subject save math would satisfy me. Oh, yes, I know. I was a tightly wound child.

It was college that saved me -- a psychology lecture on the Bell Curve. Suddenly I realized that statistically I was an aberration. Most people would fall within that heretofore hated C grade.

It was a lightbulb moment for me. No, I didn't start slacking and earning C's. But I stopped beating myself up about it so badly.

That's why seeing The Kiddo go down this same road is so painful for me -- especially when she started down it so much earlier than me.

Writers in particular can be just as severe on themselves. They kick and scream and wad up paper and let their internal editors convince them that any word they put to paper or commit to kilobytes is worthless.

Remember this, however. For most of the world, the prospect of writing a brief note to a teacher or a boss is only slightly less terrifying than having to speak in front of people. If you are a writer -- even a greenhorn newbie who still leans on adverbs and the passive tense -- you are already head and shoulders above most of the world.

So I give you the same advice that I give The Kiddo and myself: be kind to yourself. Be forgiving. Cut yourself a little slack. If you're doing the best that you can, it's all you can do ... and all anybody can expect of you.

Forward, MARCH

Lots of folks are hopping on the NANO bandwagon this month, and I wish them well. The whole spirit of NANO is to write a novel (or at least a good start) during the month of November, which requires you to fire your internal editor (or at least give her a month-long vacation if she's like my internal editor and won't be fired).

I've written the first draft of a novel in a month -- a full length, 80K word novel, so I know it can be done. Frequently the best approach for me in writing IS to write in a blitzkrieg session, getting it all done down in a month. Only then do I go back and tear it apart and revise it.

This month, though, it just doesn't seem doable, so I'm standing on the wharf, waving goodbye to all those aboard the NANO ship. I wish them bon voyage, but, what with a new dayjob and getting settled into a new dayjob schedule, I've just got too much baggage to go trucking across the gangway onto Good Ship NANO this year.

Still, I highly recommend it. Even if you can't do NANO in November, with the rest of the nation, take a look at your calendar, pick the least busy month (preferably one with 31 days), and set that aside for YOUR NANO.

The thing about writing, the thing that I've experienced first hand many times, is that the process of writing a novel bears a striking resemblance to walking in thigh-deep muck. As long as you keep moving, you're fine. The going can be slow, your steps frequently inelegant, but progress is assured.

Stop, though, and you sink. What's more, the mud locks you in a body cast sometimes so tightly that not even Houdini could break free.

I experienced that with every single novel I started way back before I finished my first one. I'd get to a place where I was full of doubt about where to go next, and I'd stop -- usually about Chapter Three. There, my poor project would die a death of starvation and neglect.

I'm not saying I march through the muck all the time now. In fact, I feel that muck clinging to me just now, as I've had to stop writing to adjust schedules and routines with this new dayjob. Maybe then, I'm preaching more to me than you.

Whatever the case, I know if I'm struggling with something, at least one other writer is also battling the same demon (those demons are fantastic multi-taskers.). My faint hope? That it will be of some use to you, O Struggling Writer, that I, too, have to point a stern finger at myself on occasion and bark, "Forward, MARCH!"

Lies our English teachers told us

We writers learned from an early age to revere our English teachers. After all, our English teacher was the one teacher we could count on to beam at approval when presented with our work.

I for one couldn’t count on that during, say, algebra, or ye gads, chemistry. My history teacher gave essay exams, so I could count on a beam on occasion from him, provided I didn’t confuse any dates. My high school Spanish class was the last class of the day, in a room with no air conditioning. That, combined with the sedative effect of conjugating irregular verbs, lulled me into a slumber so many times Senora sent a note home, so no smiles there.

But my English teacher … ah, I could count on her. When everyone else groaned about essays and themes, I hid a secret smile. When the rest of the class seemed completely flummoxed at the prospect of diagramming sentences, I could diagram a compound/complex sentence complete with gerund phrases and appositions.

So it is with a heavy heart that I tell you the truth. Many English teachers lie. Well, not lie, exactly, but certainly teach you habits that don’t translate into marketable fiction. And no, I’m not talking about how they crooned over THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE as a wonderful example of literature.

Thus follows a list – not a comprehensive one, but a good start – on the lies your English teacher (may) have told you.

Never write a fragment. This sounds like a wonderful command that should always be obeyed. However, try writing dialogue in complete sentences, and at once you’ll discover that your characters sound like stuffed shirts. Even in the narrative, a judicious use of a fragment is sometimes required.

Never end a sentence with a preposition. You remember the old grammarian’s favorite comeback after you ask, “Where’s something at?” She will (and I confess, I do this, too) invariably snap, “Behind the at!” and then cackle maniacally. But such a rule leads to some mighty convoluted wordsmithing. For instance, your character is asking, “Which bin should I put this in?” and suddenly, from the dusty recesses of your brain, you remember Mrs. English rapping her ruler at such a question and correcting with, “In which bin should I put this?” Like I said, you listen to Grammar Grouch and your characters will sound like stuffed shirts.

Adverbs are our friends. If there was one thing I wish my English teacher had told me, it was that the exact opposite is true. She had the right idea, of course: we need to use description and crisp imagery. But the beams that I got from Mrs. English came in response to essays and compositions larded with the hateful –ly family. I had no idea, when I first started writing toward publication, that adverbs were inferior crutches used to prop up lazy verbs.

So there you have it, just a few of the misguided notions that English teachers might possibly have let slip over the years. Yes, they were technically correct, but alas, when it comes to fiction writing, sometimes you have to bend the rules.

Honey-darlin' and other atrocities

One thing I had to get used to when I was writing for the Non-Southern World?

Having my characters call each other by name.

I know. For you Above-the-Mason-Dixon-Line folks, this sounds kind of weird. But we Southerners don't always refer to each other by name. In fact, about the only time we do is when we want to indicate that little Sarah Mary-Kate Johnson or William Joseph Baines (usually referred to as Billy Joe), is in hot water up to their eyelashes.

The rest of the time? Lord bless us, but we fall back on endearments.

Each Southerner, you'll find, has his or her particular pet "fill-name" for anybody younger than 16 or so -- and sometimes younger than 60. (Hey, when you get to be a certain age, you experience a lot of those "Some-timers" moments.) A common one in the south is Sugar.

We get teased about this quite a bit, us calling every man, woman and child "Sugar." But down here, it's an efficiency method, not meant to be sexist or insulting. We can concentrate on what you're actually saying, rather than trying to frantically recall just what your name is.

You have to remember that, at the same time we're carrying on this conversation with you, we're also juggling a double-handful of etiquette rules and regulations. For instance, most every conversation requires some reference to a person's mama, and how she's doing, which requires us to recall at an instant whether (a) someone's mama is actually still on this earth and (b) whether the person is currently on speaking terms with her mama (in the south, never a given, although we do revere our mamas).

This is generally covered by another short-cut, a simple question of, "How are all the folks doing?" Such a short-cut can backfire, as in the situations where we are treated to the wholesale discussion of someone's horrid sister-in-law's daughter's antics and Great Aunt Mabel's hemorrhoid surgery. It can even touch on how Buster, Big Willie Joe's bird dog, is sorrowing away since Big Willie Joe has had to take a night shift job and is no longer able to go bird hunting.

When you start bumping around someone's family tree, the limbs of said tree are apt to knock you a bit loopy. Thus, rather than accidentally insulting someone by calling her the wrong name (God forbid the dreaded sister-in-law), we just resort to Sugar.

I could have sworn I didn't use this method, that I never called anybody by a nickname that hadn't been earned by some cute little action he or she'd done while still in diapers. However, in the wake of my classroom volunteer experience, I was dished up a nice plate of crow.

Nope, I didn't call all the little people "Sugar." I called them "Sweetie." Boy, girl, or spotted giraffe, didn't matter. They were all Sweetie to me.

And I understood then the use of such an endearment, either Sugar or Sweetie or some other similar name (I've been called Honey, Darlin', Sweetie-Pie, and even Sugar-Foot, and those are just the ones I can easily remember). It wasn't just a memory device. It was another time-saver, a contraction of language.

What we might start out saying would be: "Be sweet as sugar and do X, Y, or Z for me." We Southerners have all heard that from our mamas or our grandmothers or some person acting in a parental way. Pretty soon, as slow as we talk, that got to be way too time-consuming, and it was truncated to: "Sugar, would you ..."

Translated? That meant, I'm going to assume you're going to be sweet as sugar and do X, Y, or Z, and if I call you that, you'll hopefully live up to your name. Since Southerners are always asking people to do something for them (not commanding or demanding), and since we're always juggling an arcane set of rules and regulations about social deportment, the use of the blanket endearment was born.

Back to my problems with writing. I went to the Wal-Mart School of Dialogue, where I soaked up dialogue and regurgitated it on the page. That gave me authentic Southern dialogue, complete with all the honeys and darlin's and sugarfoots that people might (and did) insert into their conversations.

Of course, when non-southerners like my critique partner Tawna Fenske or my editor would read such lovely appellations, they recoiled in horror. How COULD I allow my hero to be so sexist as to refer to my heroine as "darlin'" or "honey" or "sugar?"

It took awhile, but I learned that (a) either Non-Southerners have the thinnest skins in the known world, or (b) we Southerners, for all our hospitality, can be a bit dunderheaded. Since I"m Southern, I'll just blame myself and do a search and destroy with Word's find command on all my "sugars" and "darlin's" and any combination there-to.

Different (can be/is/might not be) good

Back when I was teaching a million years ago, I had this cute little poster (that has long since gone the way of Goodwill), with a group of stodgy penguins standing apart from one obviously doing-a-jig penguin in a loosely tied, striped necktie. The caption? I just gotta be me.

I thought about that this morning as I sent off The Kiddo to school. It's Red Ribbon Week, a week dedicated to teaching drug abuse awareness and helping kids hopefully make the right choice. Each day, the kids can dress up as something ... today it was Dress Like a Rocker and Rock Out to a Drug Free Life.

All weekend, The Kiddo has been planning her outfit. She's been looking up (with my help, of course) pictures of Madonna and the girl-bands of the 1980s. She was thrilled with her ensemble -- black glittery leggings, a hot pink tank-top - black net tutu skirt combo, gobs of jewelry, her hair twigged up in a Bam-Bam ponytail and decorated with a long glittery scarf. I even helped her finish off the ensemble with a plenteous amount of purple eyeshadow.

(And no, I didn't get a picture. Had to do the makeup and the hair and that meant we were lucky to get out the door on time. I'm praying that I can get one this afternoon.)

But when we pulled up to the school, The Kiddo hesitated. Most of the kids she saw climbing out of cars were wearing the usual kid-camo of tee-shirts, hoodies and jeans. "Mommy, are you sure it's rocker day?" she asked.

"Yep."

A long silence ensued from the back seat. Finally, in a very quiet voice, she announced, "I'm gonna wait to see if anybody else is dressed up."

A backwards look into my own experience of these particular types of dress up days told me that the tardy bell might ring before she saw another kid with her daring. "I tell you what," I told her. "If you get in there, and you are the only one dressed up, you can always call me and I'll bring you a change of clothes."

That was enough of a guarantee. She hopped out of the car and headed up the walk to the door. It's 9:11 as I write this, and so far, my cell phone and the house phone has remained silent. I think I'm past the danger point.

What does all that have to do with writing, or for living, for that matter?

Different can be/is/might not be good.

Take your choice, because every permutation of that sentence is spot-on true. We writers want to know the exact "rules" of a genre or a sub-genre -- the exact mix of romance to mystery in a romantic suspense, the right time-span between The Meet and The First Kiss in a romance, the proper amount of sizzle in an inspirational, the maximum amount of tell we can have before we're no longer showing, the genre that is selling now, so no agent or editor will immediately single our way-too-different query out and file it in the round file.

Like The Kiddo, we want to blend. We want to swim along in schools of similarly-colored fish so that we don't stick out. And while that camo will protect us from getting laughed at by agents and editors and the publishing biz, it also keeps us hidden from agents and editors and the publishing biz.

It's the old saw about risk: the risks are in direct proportion to the rewards. Your way-out-there idea? Yeah, it might get laughed out of an agent's office -- maybe even fifty agents' offices. But then again? It might be the Next Big Idea.

So rocker-up, like The Kiddo did this morning. Go on out there and dare to be different. Just make sure your mom's at home and able to bring you a change of clothes if worst comes to worst.

How to make the lightbulb moment a long-lasting light source, and other lies I tell myself

My Twitter friend and fellow writer Julie Weathers asked me to join in with an impromptu blog tour about my process. I've written about my writing process before (it involves Excel spreadsheets, chapter outlines and plotting out the wazoo.)

But since I'm on a mission to achieve both World Domination and to turn the pantsers of the world into plotters, I'll wax eloquent about it all over again. I'll try to take it from a slightly different angle -- more about how I turn an idea into a workable novel that I can then rip apart.

Take for instance, the story behind WHERE LOVE GROWS, my second pubbed book. This story is just so incredible that few people actually believe it. It says something about writers that they hear it and INSTANTLY know it's true.

Writers will tell you that there's no shortage of good ideas. But really, the trick is to take those good ideas and tweak them into something unique. It doesn't have to be a totally new wheel that you invent ... just a SUPERIOR wheel to those currently in the Bedrock City Tire Emporium.

The story germinated from a single irritant, yes, like a pearl does from a grain of sand annoying a poor old oyster. The Kiddo, then three, was in love with Kenny Chesney's music, especially SHE THINKS MY TRACTOR'S SEXY. I would pick her up from daycare and she would want to hear that CD ad nauseum. Don't get me wrong: I think Kenny's a pretty cool dude ('specially from the neck down), but every day? The same CD?

Shortly before I applied hot pokers to my eyes to see if THAT torture was more entertaining, my mind made that weird leap it sometimes does.

What kind of girl would think a guy with a farmer's tan, who makes a living driving a tractor, is sexy?

My writer's mind noodled that thought through the 100-gajillion times I listened to the song. You have to admit, Chesney's lyrics will create vivid images in your mind, and already I had a vision of a few scenes called for in the song. But a farmer? As a hero?

Then, NPR ran two different stories on Morning Edition, one about this ew-inspiring leafless vine called the giant dodder vine, and the other on crop insurance scams. The dodder vine, at first, didn't do a thing for me, except make me glad I wasn't a tomato in Texas (where the dodder vine actually lives.)

But then I heard the crop insurance scam, and I thought, Hmh. That would be a neat job for a hero, a crop insurance investigator.

My brain stubbed its toe on one problem, though: male investigators were more than a little cliche.

I kept working at that problem in my head. That's how I do things: once presented with a problem, I chew on it until I get it solved.

So picture this. I'm driving in from work, The Baby Kiddo singing "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" at the top of her lungs in the back seat, the insistent beat about to drive me out of my mind. Not to mention, I'm still worrying the twin problems of how to make a male investigator un-cliched, and how to make a farmer sexy.

I pull up into the garage. The song's still playing. My brain makes another leap. "Bet that farmer was never into crop insurance fraud." It was like nuclear fission after that. Farmer - crop insurance fraud - weird vine - make the GIRL the investigator.

The big pix in place, the huge leaps leapt, I started in on my usual process. For brevity sake's I've done it as a list.

- Write a movie synop -- if it won't hold together for the few minutes long enough to tell a friend about a movie, it's doomed to fall apart like overcooked pasta left too long in a pot of warm water.

- Write a character arc synop -- this is a longer synop, one where I take the characters through their growing pains. After all, if my farmer doesn't learn and grow, just being sexy won't be satisfying for my fab female investigator. Likewise, the fab female. Spunky's fine, but it's got a short half-life.

- Write a chapter by chapter outline. No big, just a sentence or two summary of the major plot points.

I'll send these off to my CPs (Tawna Fenske, for one), and they'll poke about a thousand holes in it, and then I'll fix it, and then I'll start writing. And yeah, I pretty much DO stick with my revised chapter outline, along with my Excel spreadsheets that I use to be SURE there aren't plot holes or loose plot threads or under-done character arcs.

Why, yes. I HAVE been told I'm an anal OCD woman. Thanks for the compliment!

Power of pink

The Kiddo's hairdresser (and a friend of mine) was giving away free hair extensions today after school in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. Yes, the extensions are bubblegum pink. I hesitated for about a millisecond before I let her do it, mainly because I figured The Husband would have a heart attack. When it comes to most things, he's the Traditional Southern Dad, using the Traditional Southern Dad's motto: If my dad wouldn't allow it, I shouldn't, either.

I told the ladies at school that I might have to bum up a couch after The Husband got a gander at the hair extensions ... and The Kiddo was as jumpy with excitement as a cat in a rocking chair factory. She wanted, like any kid, to see the resulting explosions.

What I hadn't bargained on, though, was The Husband's temporary lack of observation skills. Usually, he pounces on anything different. The Kiddo danced and spun and bounced in front of him, and, while he knew SOMETHING was up, he didn't know what. Finally she just about had to point to the hot pink streaks in her hair.

He acted all cool and nonchalant about it then, trying to cover up how unobservant he'd been. It reminded me of the the trait that ALL writers must have: being a nosy busy-body that latches onto any and every change.

Now I'm not saying that nosy busy-bodies are inherent writers. I'm saying we writers need to be sure we develop that trait. Whether it's eavesdropping in Wal-Mart (the better to develop our dialogue, m'dear), or staring at some wildy-patterned, definitely What-Not-To-Wear pants (the better to dress our characters, m'dear), our powers of observation have to be honed.

One thing that mission does is make wait times far less boring. The other day, while I waited in our local Department of Labor office, I turned my attention to the scuffed walls, the various people crowded around the tables, their dress, their attitudes, the expressions of exasperation on the staff's faces. I did it intentionally, because I wanted to be able to mine that experience later on, whenever I had a character unemployed.

Don't just stop at the sights and sounds, though. My CP Tawna Fenske is great about pointing out where I can beef up my scene building with the other, less obvious, senses: smells, tastes and touch. She reminds me to layer in an almost wrap-around experience.

Of course, this could be just another writer's justification for being the aforementioned nosy busybody. Even so, isn't that its own reward?

More than words can say

If you're a regular reader of this blog, and you aren't yet convinced that I was a weird kid, you must have been a weird kid, too -- weird, like me, in the nicest possible way.

We lived waaaay out in the sticks, and the library was too far for us. Ergo, I read a lot of books that probably I shouldn't have, including my mom's stash of Cosmopolitan. (Which is why I don't have Cosmo in my house. But really, they actually did have some pretty interesting serious articles beyond those bared-breasted cover girls.)

One book that I read, though, has served me well over the years. It was a book club edition that my mom didn't order but got anyway, because you know how those slips of "not this month, thank you" never get logged before the book-of-the-month gets mailed. It was The Body Language of Sex, Power & Aggression, by Julian Fast.

Writers, you need to read this. PEOPLE, you need to read this. It's a thin little book, and the format is all Q&A. Fast takes real-life types of questions and answers them with anecotal info or results of studies that he knows about.

What's that got to do with writing? If you want to show instead of tell, everything. Instead of just appending "nervously" to "he said," how can you show a character is nervous? Fast points out in one question's answer that the hands often give away nervousness and anxiety.

Same thing with showing the developing romance between characters. How can we get away from all those meaningful (but repetitive) gazes? What are some flirtatious gestures that our heroine can make toward the guy who will wind up as her one true love?

Back when I read the book, of course, my biggest kick was gluing a teacher to one side of a classroom. Yep, if you lean forward in your desk while a teacher is on your side of a classroom, then lean back when she wanders toward the other side, you will soon have her glued to your side of the line. And yes, I did it. But hey, I don't fall for it whenever I'm teaching, so I guess I learned from my devilment!

I'm not sure if the book is even in print, and certainly there are more recent books on body language, but don't forget this tool in your writing. Read up on body language. It helps introverts like so many of us writers read the human population better, AND it helps us communicate more vividly. That's a win-win in my book.

Symbolically speaking

Mouth the words "high school literature."

I'll bet, if your high school lit courses were anything like mine, the words evoked THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, MADAME BOVARY, Hemingway and ... symbolism.

I was a puffed-up little peacock about writing back then. When my English teachers talked to us about writers using symbolism in their works, I rolled my eyes to the point I nearly had to pick 'em up off the floor.

"Symbolism? Ha!" I thought. "Writers just write. It's all these English teachers and professors who start saying Hemingway is using Christian symbolism in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. Hemingway was probably too drunk to even think about symbolism."

I held my tongue, got an A and moved onto college, where I waded through still more swamps of symbolism. Sure, I could see how poets use symbolism. But writers of prose?

It was a movie which actually showed me the power of symbolism. SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY is a particular favorite of mine, although the book was more of a mixed bag. For those of you who haven't seen it or read the book, it is about an abused woman who fakes her death to escape the clutches of her husband.

In the movie (not the book), the life she escapes is one of wealth and privilege. Her husband is OCD about things being tidy and neat. The setting for the house is ultra modern, with cold, spare lines. But the house she escapes to is old-fashioned, with romantic frilly touches.

I remember seeing those two settings, remember how the power of that hit me. It was the juxtaposition of the two styles of homes that underscored the life she'd left -- cold and sterile -- for her new life -- warm and soft. It just drove the point home in a simple, non-verbal way.

That's when I realized that the objects and situations in a character's world could echo the plot. And really, isn't that what symbolism is? A shortcut of sorts?

So do I use symbolism in my romance novels? You betcha. In THE BABY WAIT, there is one situation that I use symbolically, and I had to break a rule to do it.

My two characters, a man and wife, are literally stuck in a traffic jam. Now, in every writer's seminar you will ever attend, they warn you against having two characters in a car talking. But in this case, I used that traffic jam to symbolize where they were at that point in the plot -- stuck in transit, not anywhere close to where they wanted to be.

Most of the symbolism that I use is very brief -- an object, a place, a song. It's got to be subtle, or else it's overkill. All I want to do is to create an echo.

So now do I think Hemingway used symbolism? Oh, yeah, I think he did. Now what about you? Do you use symbolism?

Does your main character need Prozac?

We writers can talk about motivation and backstory and character development until the cows come home. (Why, yes, I often do!) We can string together long paragraphs of introspection and volleys of dialogue in our efforts to "show, don't tell." (Oh, my, guilty as charged.)

One thing I can easily forget, though, is that a character's mood and outlook on life is probably one of the most important factors in making motivation make sense.

I was thinking about that as I read over two chapters that I've been working on in my current WIP. Both are from my heroine's point of view, and both take place by the same stretch of quiet river. In the first, when the river is a welcome refuge, my gal feels the cool river breeze. Later, though, as the scene goes on and when things go bad, that same river only feels hot and muggy and smells of dank fish.

My fingers hovered over the delete button as I read over those shifts. For a few minutes, I was convinced I needed to fix this. It showed a lapse in continuity, surely.

But I think I've talked myself out of it. After all, in real life, we don't always see things the same way, day in and day out, or even within the span of a day.

Think about how you view something as simple as a ringing telephone. If you're trying to avoid a call, your Great Aunt Zelda, say, whom you just know is going to draft you for bridesmaid duty, every ring creates knots in your stomach. You know how tacky your Great Aunt Zelda is, and her granddaughter, the bride-to-be? Well, her having been married three times already and still insisting on a church wedding and a white dress just says everything you need to know.

If, however, you're fully expecting Publisher's Clearinghouse peeps to call for directions to your house when they stop off with that big check, that r-r-riiiing is as beautiful as anything the New York Philharmonic could perform.

Of course, you can take this too far. If your character views anyone who shares even the most benign "good morning" as a Little Mary Sunshine, perhaps her next stop ought to be on a shrink's couch, with her hand out for a Prozac prescription.

The cool graphic that went with this blog post was purloined from JojoVanB's photobucket -- and trust me, it's better than Prozac to wash the blues away!

The Perils of Pauline and other ways we tempt readers

I learn so much from The Kiddo. I think that's a real blessing that parents have -- seeing the world through their children's eyes.

Take, for instance, the lesson she taught me about chapter hooks.

The Kiddo has been glomming Trixie Belden, and to encourage her to read silently (and thus get hooked on reading as a means of battery-free entertainment), I've let her "talk" me into allowing an extra chapter at night, if she reads it to herself.

Usually, there's no problem, as Trixie will have gotten herself into some scrape or another. The Kiddo will leap on the book and eagerly read away, eyes wide, lips compressed, looking for all the world as though she's been strapped on a roller coaster. You can always tell when Trixie's out of harm's way, because then The Kiddo will settle back.

But the other night, I glanced at the clock and saw it was later than usual. So after I got to the end of the chapter that I was reading aloud, I closed the book. The Kiddo didn't argue.

"What?" I asked, amazed. "No begging? No pleading for just one more chapter?"

She yawned and shook her head. "They didn't tempt me to read any more," she confessed.

I pondered on that comment for several days. That is exactly what a chapter hook is: a temptation to read just one more page to see how things work out. It reminded me of the old black and white silent cliffhangers I've seen bits of in documentaries. The films were designed in serial fashion so that they could part kids from their nickels week after week.

Of course, we have to be a trifle more sophisticated in our cliffhangers. Today's smart readers will catch on quickly that we put Pauline in peril just to get them to flip the pages.

I've been thinking about what makes ME stay up until 2 a.m. to finish a book. Here's my sucker-list.

1) Short chapters. This one sucks me in every time. I'll have consumed another chapter (and gotten snagged by another chapter hook) before I know it. I actually use this in my own writing, because I prefer to limit my chapters to a single scene or two at the most, and that usually isn't sustainable for more than ten or twelve pages.

2) Heroine in hot water. Yep, I still fall for Pauline in Peril ... she may not be tied to a railroad track with a locomotive about to flatten her, but if she's in danger and I care about her, I'm going to at least read the first few pages of the next chapter.

3) An unexpected plot twist. If the story zings off in a way I didn't anticipate, you can bet I'll read right on, and who cares if the clock's struck midnight?

4) A fast-paced plot. We can knock Dan Brown all we want, but he understood how to keep the reader flipping those pages. He programmed readers to expect the plot to move ahead in blitzkrieg fashion, and they wanted to see what came next.

Again, today's readers are too sophisticated for a whole series of Paulines in peril, and if you end a chapter with a heroine in hot water, it better be real trouble, not something that is easily fixed. Otherwise, even the most unsophisticated reader realizes that you're just pushing her buttons to get her to read on, and she'll know, instinctively, that you never intend for your heroine to be put in harm's way.

My advice to myself? Shake all those strategies up in a bag and use them randomly, so that the readers never knows what you're going to hit them with next.

Even a fish ...

When I put out a call for humorous, happy and upbeat blog topics on Twitter, @mistyprovencher suggested that I write about what people should say to agents in the happy instance that they call to make you an offer.

But that advice could be summed up with the old saying about even a fish would stay out of trouble if he kept his mouth shut. So I figured, hmh, maybe it would be funnier -- and more helpful -- if I wrote a list of things NOT to say to an agent with an offer of representation on the table.

The top five faves ...

5) Great! So this means you're gonna join in on my slumber parties? Will we trade pedicures and brush each other's hair?*

4) Maybe this is too much information, but my husband has just ... (fill in the blank).

3) Terrific news! Today's the 10th, so by the 17th, you should have me in an auction? And I'll pencil in Oprah for, hmh, next month?

2) That book? You wanna sell THAT BOOK? Oh, sheesh. I just deleted it off my hard-drive because I had decided it stank.

1) So, um, how much more complex will a six-figure advance make my troubles with the IRS?

As you can see (hopefully), the common theme in the list of should-nots is TMI and too high expectations. An agent is, above all, a professional. If you wouldn't tell/invite/ask your dentist, your accountant, your doctor, or some other highly-trained, highly experienced professional, don't ask your agent.

So I guess the best advice I could give when (notice I say WHEN and not IF) that happy day comes to pass would be this:

1) Say thank you.

2) Ask what her (or his) view of the book and the plan for going from here. (Revisions? Does she have an editor/house in mind?)

3) Ask what her plan B is if the book doesn't immediately sell. Ask this question with tact, so she'll understand that YOU understand worst case scenarios.

4) Ask what her preferences are on communication -- does she like frequent e-mails, or will she maintain radio silence until she has something to report?

5) Ask if she is an editing agent or not.

6) Tell her if the full is under consideration by any other agents.

7) Ask for 24 hours (AT LEAST) to consider her offer.

8) Say thank you. (Yeah, I know. But say it again anyway).

9) Hang up the phone.

Really, I add #9 in just because you're sure to forget to hang up and the agent will hear you freaking out after you think she's off the line. Now print this list, cut it out and tape it by your phone for when the happy day comes.

*This one was stolen without shame from Tawna Fenske. Yes, I'm a thievin' individual, and that makes Linda Grimes hopeful that I am soon to be corrupted.

A sackful of writing lessons

Bagging groceries is a lost art.

Some years ago, Tawna Fenske gifted me with a few reusable shopping bags, way before they were popular in my neck of the woods. I use those and an insulated shopping bag to pack my groceries in. Even now, the cashier and bagger will give me sort of quizzical looks, as though I've just asked them to stand on their heads.

This past Saturday the bagger totally ignored the chill bag and just tossed things harem-scarem into any bag she could get her hands on. The bathroom cleaner was chunked in with my bread. My frozen chicken tenders were in a bag all by their lonesome. And my chill bag? Well, the bagger held it in her hands and said, "Uh, guess I could have used this for the cold stuff."

I'd sorted the cold stuff as I put it on the register's conveyor belt. I'd asked the cashier to put my cold stuff in the chill bag. But bagger and cashier both looked lost as haints, as my grandmother used to say, so I pushed my cart out of the way of the next person in line and started re-bagging my groceries.

Yes, a tad OCD, but the temps were hovering in the 100-degree neighborhood, and I did have 30 minutes of drive-time in front of me to get home. As I rescued my bread from the bathroom cleaner -- which later proved to be leaking -- I thought about how baggers used to take such care with groceries. When I was little, paper bags were the rule, and cold things like ice cream went into a super-heavy small paper bag. Baggers took pride in filling the sacks so that, if the bag were ripped away, the contents would almost be able to stand in a tightly-packed tower.

I blame it on those infernal plastic bags. Baggers now toss a few items in each bag and stick your bread and your eggs on top of the pile. They've never learned the intricate art of assembling a bag of groceries -- or even that it mattered.

Computers, in a way, have made writing novels seem easy and accessible, just like those plastic bags. People think that writing a book is something you can just toss together: you open up a word processing document and start with Chapter One. No planning. No thinking of plot. No need to develop characters.

I'm not talking plotter vs. pantsers here. Pantsers do all the thinking and planning and character development after they have the framework done, whereas plotters get it done first. I'm not talking about people who are just starting out and don't know beans about writing - everybody's got to start somewhere.

Nope, I'm thinking instead of people who SHOULD know better but don't. They think a first draft is the ONLY draft they need to write before they send it off to a publisher, with the next stop Number One on the NYT Best-Seller List. They think that their manuscript should never be subjected to an editor's tender mercies, and that any suggestion of improving their story is a request for them to sacrifice their art on the altar of commerce.

Nobody reading this would fall in that category -- the folks I'm arghing about are too hard-headed to read blogs about writing. But as you continue to write, I can guarantee that you will run into these sorts of people -- the equivalent of my Saturday bagger who couldn't understand that cold stuff should go into a chill bag.

My advice? Smile and say, "Oh, you're writing a novel? Wow. That's great." If they're really interested in learning, they'll ask YOU questions that will signal that they understand the cardinal rule of being a writer: no matter where you are in learning the craft, there's always SOMETHING you can learn.

Because girls are worth power tools

I have spent 20 years trying to gift The Husband with power tools that he doesn't want to have and most certainly doesn't want to use. I have done this in the sneaky, indirect attempt to get what I want: a finished Honey-Do list.

Well, ladies (and gents), it's so not working.

When The Sister came and helped me paint my kitchen (before The Flood), she brought along her automatic battery powered screwdriver. Before that, when we were doing the refacing part of the project, she brought along her pneumatic brad gun.

I was terrified of the brad gun, and only slightly less intimidated at the prospect of using the battery-powered screwdriver. That's funny, really, because I grew up with a mom who did not move furniture around walls ... she moved walls around furniture.

But I was the littlest, and the baby, and everybody worried that I wasn't strong enough, and so I was given the all important job of fetching jugs of ice water and tea and lemonade.

After 20 years of THAT, I can fetch you a brilliant glass of lemonade, yes, ma'am. Power tools? Eh, not so much.

While we were putting on the hinges for the doors, The Sister handed The Kiddo the battery powered screwdriver and said, "Go to it, girlie." I looked on in horror, because of course The Sister doesn't have small fry of her own (just 30 kids that she teaches during the school year), so she wouldn't know that it was a Bad Idea To Give The Kiddo A Power Tool.

But then I thought, "Self, you have taught The Kiddo how to use your santoku knife to chop veggies, so maybe The Sister isn't so crazy."

The Sister wasn't so crazy.


(The Kiddo using a power drill on her SECOND project -- a kitchen that's not mine!)

It was a humbling experience, seeing The Kiddo tackle something that intimidated me. But it was also liberating. If a nine-year-old kid could do it, then surely I could tackle my fears of power tools and that Honey-Do list on my own.

Then my dad let me borrow his shop vac to suck up the water during The Flood, and I was hooked. I'd never bought The Husband a shop vac, because he wouldn't have appreciated it, and honestly, I couldn't think of why I'd benefit from one.

Not so. Tawna Fenske's Pythagoras has the right idea. That little sucker is handy. It was after I'd zapped all the cobwebs off my ceiling fan blades AND vacuumed out my garage AND vacuumed out my car that I realized the ultimate truth:

Girls are worth power tools.

Now how is this connected to writing? Bear with me. You know that computer you've been limping along with, the one that still runs Windows 98 and has the browser you can't upgrade? You're worth a new one. You know how you've been putting off moving from dial-up to DSL or buying that new modem? You're worth it. That printer you want to throw out in the street? Order a new one and condemn the old one to the recycle bin. You're worth it.

You know that Honey-Do list you've been nagging Hubby about? Grab that power drill and learn how to use it. What's the worst that could happen? (OK, I'm a writer, so we really don't want me thinking about the worst because I'll come up with a humdinger, so let's rephrase that -- what is most likely going to happen?)

Archimedes said that given the right lever, and a place to stand, he could move the earth. Well, I'm here to tell you, Archimedes knew a thing or two about how much more efficient we could be if we just had the proper tools to work with. And he would have LOVED power tools.

Missing a little Zip

The other night, The Kiddo and I settled down to read The Happy Hollisters and the Haunted House Mystery. We were in a very dramatic part, where three of the kids and the faithful collie Zip go check out the haunted house, which has no electricity.

As a mother with a pilot's license in helicopter hovering, I was horrified. In the story, the oldest kid is 12, one kid is deaf, and the third kid is 10. That their parents actually let them go poke around in a dark house BY THEMSELVES, armed only with a flashlight and waaaay before the invention of cell phones, made my hair stand up. The mother in the story does raise some qualms, but quickly decides it's okay if Zip goes along.

The Kiddo was biting her nails as we read about how Zip breaks away from the three kids after hearing a noise.

The story continues, with the kids racing up to an attic room filled with mysterious dog howlings and groans and moans, and finding the room empty. And I do mean empty: not even Zip is to be found, only the author didn't mention that.

The Kiddo jumped on it like a duck in a junebug. "Where's Zip?" she kept asking. "What happened to Zip?"

We finished reading the chapter and a little bit into the next, and Zip was completely MIA. He didn't show up until the plot needed him again. It worried The Kiddo to no end, in part because she's very tenderhearted when it comes to animals, and in part because she's all about the logic of a situation.

It got me to thinking about continuity in writing.

We writers write in piece-a-block fashion, even linear writers like me. We churn out an 80K MS in chunks, an hour here, two hours there, a scene, maybe a chapter, at a time. And even with professional editors and copy-editors looking over my shoulder, I've screwed up -- in my first book, I'd changed the countertops in my heroine's kitchen from slate to soapstone. But sure enough, upon re-reading the published book, I caught a mention of slate countertops.

So how do we do our best to eliminate continuity goofs? Here are a few tips that work for me.

1) Print out a blank calendar from Outlook of the proposed time-span of the novel. Jot down briefly the time and place of each scene and the characters involved. (You can also use index cards or create an Excel spreadsheet.)

2) If you have room on that same calendar, note the weather (a pet screw-up of mine -- I'll have my heroine outside in short sleeves in the dead of winter).

Now, take a look at the order of those scenes. Are they logical? Do they give your characters the time to get from one place to another? Do you have them eating two suppers in one night? Is the weather as it should be -- no snowing in July unless it's meterologically likely? No darkness falling at 5 p.m. in mid-summer in Georgia?

Then as you're doing your final edits, read for continuity, with a special eye for disappearing Zips. Have your Critique Partners or Beta Readers do the same. You're not looking at your word-smithing. You're looking at the logistical movement of your characters -- think like a detective.

Usually even the most egregious screw-ups are easy enough to fix in process. It's after the book is finished, and when your editor writes in her revision notes, "Uh, wait, better check the time-line on this? When is this happening?" that it's like untangling a knotted fishing line.

But of course, I'm the only doofus who ever does this, right? Me and the author of the Happy Hollisters and The Haunted House Mystery, who somehow lost Zip.

Lookie! A secret decoder ring!

I'm sure it's been done somewhere else on the web, but so many folks said that THEY hadn't heard of a phrase or an expression that I used in my post on Writerese in Jumping Over Jargon. So here is your very own Secret Decoder Ring to divine the short-hand we romance writers use.

BICHOK - Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard (the only way to ever type THE END)

MC - Main character (Could or could not be a squint-eyed game show host -- but he has to have the proper GMC and backstory to pull it off.)

GMC - Goals, Motivation and Conflict. What does your character want out of life, why does he want it, and who's the bear with the flashlight in his way?

HEA - Happily Ever After -- because, dadgummit, we don't always get that in real life, but we're the boss of this world.

HFN - Happy For Now -- because we want the fairy tale, but we're pragmatic.

Backstory - what happened before Chapter One, i.e., the Hero's dog died, his house burned down and he got fired for doing the right thing. Then he meets the heroine, and bam, does life EVER get complicated.

RUE - Resist The Urge To Explain -- in which we remember we don't have to tell ALL about how the Hero's dog died.

Show, don't tell -- in which we remember to have our hero turn a vivid green, his eyes go red, and his muscles suddenly split his jeans and shirt off rather than have him mumble, "I am so angry. I am so angry. You wouldn't like me when I get angry."

Synop - Short for synopsis, an instrument of torture designed by agents and editors in a rarely publicized secret meeting as a method to separate the wheat from the chaff. They define it as a short (1-2 pp) or medium (5-8 pp) or long (10-25 pp) summary of your book. No pressure.

Partial - the first three chaps and a synop.

Chap - Chapter. B/c by this time, you're too tired to type it all out.

BM or BBM - contrary to popular belief, nothing to do with bathrooms or diapers, but instead the Big Black Moment where the boy royally screws up and loses the girl or the girl royally screws up and loses the boy. All hope is gone. Hankies are required.

H/h - shorthand for Hero and heroine, or the boy and the girl in "boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back." I know. We romance writers are secretly sexist, because everybody knows that heroine should get the BIG H.

TSTL - Too Stupid To Live - a modifier used to describe the dumb thing the h does because you REALLY need her alone in the basement for the serial killer to attack her so that the H can come and rescue her b/c this is how they get over their BBM. (The H and the h. Not the serial killer. After the H gets hold of him, Mr. Serial Killer is having a totally different kind of BM.)

Organic to the Plot - which means that if you've created an h who is a prima donna ballerina in your romantic suspense, then she better be using some of those emboités and fouetté turns and grand jetés to take down the bad guy, not suddenly develop a black belt in karate.

All rightie, then, what have I missed? What abbreviations/terms/jargon should I add to the list?

Going around my elbow to get to my nose

When it comes to revisions, sometimes I resemble nothing so much as a plane circling an airport, waiting for a landing strip to open up.

A departure from my usual "this is step A, this is step B" approach, revisions are rather circuitous for me. Tawna Fenske, Nelsa Roberto and another critique partner of mine, Stephanie Bose, have been privy to my inelegant approach to starting revisions. I've nearly driven them insane with my mumbled, "No, no, THAT won't work," when they offered me a suggested fix.

For me, it's about as fun as being dunked in a croaker-sack full of itching powders.* I keep hitting the same walls, treading the same paths, knowing that there's something that I'm missing, feeling like an ingrate for not seeing the sparkling genius of my friends' fixes. And, most of all, feeling like a pluperfect idiot for having to fix the blasted manuscript in the first place.

My revision process starts with a lot of talking. It's absolutely critical that I rehash the plot with my CPs, preferably by phone. While they may feel that an hour's talk on the subject accomplishes nothing except getting dizzy from following me around in circles and hearing me say, "No, no, THAT won't work," it actually helps a lot.

During the phone calls or the volley of e-mails, I just keep saying, "But the reason he's like that is because ..."

When I have enough "becauses," I finally get a detailed job description of the revision, everything it's supposed to accomplish, every problem it's supposed to solve.

That's when a lightning bolt of a solution will hit me, and I will get tingles because it solves SO many problems that I was trying to figure out. Lovely, lovely tingles. Just when I had practically given up on myself. Of course, then I pound fist to forehead and ask myself why I went round my elbow to get to my nose.

*It occurs to me that I need to translate the idiom "a croaker-sack full of itching powders." A croaker sack is alternately known as a tow sack, a gunny sack, a burlap sack, or a feed sack -- picture the sack you'd be presented with if you were in a sack race. There's no such thing as itching powders, but you can imagine how you'd feel if there were, and it was a whole croaker-sack full and ...

Well, hopefully you get the pix. I'm off to scratch now.

The Sum of Our Parts

You may have read earlier that I am gearing up for The Kiddo's birthday. I'm beginning to think $5 iPod cupcakes are a steal, now that I've tried (and mostly failed) my hand at making my own. Frosting and I get along about as well as Saran wrap and I do, which is the same as saying not at all.

The one thing that the Kiddo really, really, REALLY wants for her birthday is an iPod (hence, the iPod cupcakes.) I have been asking her what songs she would want on her iPod, should she get one, maybe, hmm, for Christmas.

The usual suspects crop up: a boatload of Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana, and of course that irritating song by the Bieberdroid. (No offense to his mother. He is a cute kid, but that song could be considered torture under the Geneva Convention.) The Kiddo is a girl from the South (even though she came via China), and her tastes tilt heavily toward country -- Brad Paisley & Kenny Chesney & Jason Aldean.

But then, as I was wrapping up a list so long that it made my credit card company call me up to see if a tweenager had hijacked my plastic and was smoking it in iTunes, The Kiddo had one more request.

"And Mommy, I've GOT to have Sweet Home Alabama."

My head whipped around. "What?"

"You know, Sweet Home Alabama."

The child is not even double-digit in years yet. How could she know about Sweet Home Alabama? True, it is practically the anthem of the South, and no child of the 70s and 80s was considered grown up until she could at least sing the refrain. Boys were not considered adult until they could air guitar the entire solo, bonus points if they could do the long version.

"Which Sweet Home Alabama?" I asked, not sure if there were another, perhaps Disney, version out there.

Dadburned if The Kiddo did not start belting out Lynard Skynard.

"Let me get this straight. You want Lynard Skynard on your iPod?" I asked.

"Leonard who?" she asked. "No, Mommy, I want Sweet Home Alabama." And she began singing again.

"Yeah, yeah. I know it. Of course I know it. Where'd you hear that song?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh. Somewhere." At that point, she wandered off, sure in the knowledge that her mother, never the brightest bulb in the box, knew which song to put on the iPod that, yeah, right, was coming for, oh, yeah, Christmas.

I tend to view even the most random happenings in my life through the filter of writing. And as I found my finger hesitating over the buy song button by Sweet Home Alabama in iTunes, I thought about the myriad of influences that makes us the writers we are.

The odd bits of life that we happen across, those are the things that make a person who she is. Like coin and stamp collecting, it's the variances, the oddities, that make someone interesting. I know I bring everything I've ever experienced to the table when I write. I'm not -- and I don't know of any successful writer who is -- a sheltered hermit too timid to embrace life.

Yes, we need to work on our craft. Yes, vocabulary and wordsmithing are important. Yes, reading is critical. But above all, we have to live. We have to experience ups and downs, joys and sorrows, the mundane and the exotic. Because without living? Well, the writing would be mighty dull.

And my little writer? Well, one thing she's experienced is the pulsing beat of Lynard Skynard's Sweet Home Alabama. Yeah. The long version.

How quirky is too quirky?

The lovely and talented Tawna Fenske, one of my critique partners, just critiqued a revised chapter of mine.

Her most used word? Ick.

The character is supposed to be icky, but not quite as over-the-top icky as I'd apparently made him. It reminded me of the cardinal rule: in character building, as in life, less is more.

Too many times we writers fall in love with a good thing, a gotta-be-a-sure thing. We're like sous-chefs let loose while the master is away. And like those in-progress chefs, we reach for the obvious and dump in a whole lotta of quirkiness.

We're also -- at least I can be at times -- a lazy tribe. We read a popular book, and we think, "Ha! So you take a quirky character, and you give him a sidekick, and maybe an Achilles heel, and voila!"

I've actually seen this happen. I love Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. The characters are so vivid and unique and -- yeah -- quirky. You've got a genius recluse detective and a man-about-town charmer sidekick/narrator, set in a brownstone that has a live-in chef in New York.

One day in a book store I picked up a detective mystery that looked promising. The jacket flap blurb reminded me of Nero Wolfe, so I bought it.

I got it home and started reading it, then literally threw it aside in disgust. No wonder it reminded me strongly of Nero Wolfe -- it was a slavish imitation of it, down to the in-house chef, the expensive hobby (tropical fish, I think, instead of orchids) and the man-about-town charmer sidekick/narrator. To compensate? The author upped the quirk factor.

Quirks stacked upon quirks do not an interesting character make. My rule: one quirky character per book, one quirk per quirky character. It can be a big quirk. It can be a hard-to-miss quirk. But it can't be lost in a sea of quirks.

Because, let's face it, real people just aren't that quirky. And real people will be reading my books to see if my characters seem real.

So now? I'm off to dial back the quirky/ick factor of my quirky/ick character.