Why I Love Color Words and Why Whom Should Die

The view out our driveway the other day. This seems to be shaping up to be a snowy winter!

This week's topic is a good one for the annual Word Whores' Holiday Party. We're breaking out the brandied eggnog, mead and cookies this week and throwing out the cocktail conversation challenge:

What are your five most loved and hated words?

So, I have a confession to make.

As usual, huh?

Must be the brandied eggnog.

I started a list of "Good Words" when I was twelve. I know, I know - my best friend made the 7th grade cheerleading squad and had a boyfriend. I was making lists of good words. This might seem like a stretch, but those words and my feelings about them were absolutely tied in with my burgeoning sexuality. Unlike my friend, I wasn't ready to make out with boys at parties, but I thought about, and read about, sex a lot.

This, no doubt, explains a great deal about how I've ended up where I am today.

I've lost that list - I bet there were 30-50 words on it, that I added to over time - but I know that many of my favorite words today were on it. All of them tie into sensual, exuberant feelings. Here are five of them:

Exquisite

Ebullient

Effervescent

Egregious

Voluptuous

Why do so many begin with the letter "e"? I have no idea. Probably some Facebook app personality analysis would return a verdict. My original list also contained a lot of color/jewel-related words. It's no coincidence that my Facets of Passion series has color titles - or that my original title for Rogue's Pawn was "Obsidian." Yes, I have a list of color words I like, as potential future titles for the Facets of Passion. As a hint, the next three I have contracted are Emerald, Adamantine and Amber.

 As for my most hated words?

You know, this isn't a thing for me. Probably this says something about me, too, but I don't really have words I despise in the same way I have words that make me tingle all over. I know a lot of people hate "moist" or "suckle." They don't bother me. In fact, I can think of only one word that I'll never willingly use:

Whom

Right? I mean, enough already. It's archaic. Most of my editors consider it optional and restricted to formal English. Nobody uses it in conversation. (Okay, yes, some of you do. Have some more mead and stop that.)

I am, however, willing to entertain votes for hated words. Anyone got one that makes their skin crawl?

Playlists - Does Anyone *Really* Care?

We’re on our way back from Telluride today, driving through the rain on an unseasonably cool and misty morning. Yesterday we ate lunch by a firepit in the ski village and drank Irish coffee. Delightful, but possibly my coldest birthday celebration ever.

Feels like it could be an early fall. Makes me want to go out and pinch caterpillars to assess their furriness quotient.

This week’s topic is all about playlists. Do we make writing ones, do we make specific playlists for certain books, do our readers care.

I really wonder about that last one.

But, I’ll address the questions in order.

I do make writing playlists, but not nearly as often as I used to, and now usually only for specific reasons. 

When I first started writing novels, trying to build a consistent ritual of working and producing a reliable body of work each day, I used music as a tool. It was much more difficult for me then to get in the correct frame of mind to sink into the story and gather up the threads. I learned to rely on ritual to get me there – certain clothes, certain timing, a pattern of entry into that world. From very early on, I found that the soundtrack to The Mission would get me there. The opening strains of On Earth as It Is in Heaven, soft strings vibrating into life, would transport me and the words would flow.

For a long time I just played that, over and over. Then I added to it – the soundtrack from Master and Commander and then Billy Joel’s classical piano album, Fantasies and Delusions. To this day, the playlist sits in my iTunes, labeled “Writing Music.” A relic, in many ways.

Because I don’t really need it anymore.

Like a professional athlete, I’ve spent enough time and effort training now that I don’t need to trick myself into producing word count. In fact, nearly all of the time, I prefer total silence now. Not only do I not need the music, it’s a distraction.

The only exception is when I’m deliberately trying to create – or retrieve – a mood that I’m having trouble getting at. I did this last year, when I was writing Ruby, my New Orleans steamy romance that came out in May. I really wanted to capture that ineffable New Orleans vibe, so much of which comes from the music. The story mainly takes place in the French Quarter, in restaurants and clubs. There’s even dancing. So I made a Ruby playlist, composed of many of my old favorites. That meant buying a lot of the songs, as much of my collection had been on cassette tapes.

I also needed one song in particular that wasn’t Cajun or New Orleans. You’ll see why.

I only listened to it some. Once I got the groove, I went back to writing in the quiet, with the music playing in my head for just the characters to hear.

So here’s that playlist.

501 Boogie                                    Professor Longhair
Zydeco Gris Gris                            BeauSoleil
Tipitina                                           Professor Longhair
Thank You Pretty Baby                  Professor Longhair
She Walk Right In                          Professor Longhair
Ruby Tuesday                                The Rolling Stones
No Buts and No Maybes               Professor Longhair
Madame Bozo                               BeauSoleil
La Valse du Malchanceux               BeauSoleil
Kolinda                                          BeauSoleil
Junco Partner                                 Professor Longhair
Jongle a Moi                                  BeauSoleil
It's You I Love                               BeauSoleil
Hey Little Girl                                Professor Longhair
Gonna Leave This Town                Professor Longhair
Gone so Long                               Professor Longhair
G Jam                                           Professor Longhair
The Flame Will Never Die             BeauSoleil
Fais Pas Ca                                  BeauSoleil
Every Day I Have the Blues          Professor Longhair
Dr. Professor Longhair                  Professor Longhair
Dimanche Apres-Midi                   BeauSoleil
Chez Seychelles                            BeauSoleil
Cherry Pie                                    Professor Longhair
Cabbagehead                               Professor Longhair
Big Chief                                      Professor Longhair
Beausoleil Boogie                         BeauSoleil

So… now you tell me, lovely readers. Do you care? For those who haven’t read Ruby, does the playlist intrigue you? For those who have, is it fun knowing?

I’ll give a book away to a randomly selected winner – either one of mine or one from the pile ‘o books still left from summer conference season!

He Said. She Said. We Snorted.

Ruby releases tomorrow!

Thus I have my Pimping Party Prom dress on and am shamelessly cross-posting this at the Here Be Magic blog as well.

And, to complete the pimpage, here are a couple of reviews posted to today for it here and here. One is also in French, should you care to stretch those neurons you haven't used since high school.

So, this week's topic is "Dialogue Tags: He Said, She Asked, They Exclaimed ... when to use what."

I'm a really bad person to kick off this topic because, if there's one thing my Carina editor, Deb Nemeth, consistently hammers me for, it's dialogue tags. If she and I were married, this would be the one thing she'd say she'd change about me. She'd say it to the marriage counselor with a deep and heartfelt sigh, while I sat on the other corner of the couch, arms folded defensively.

Because I don't WANT to change. I feel like she should love me for who I am.

See, this comment comes directly from my most recent round of edits with her:

Most of the line edits are to correct punctuation surrounding dialogue. You have a habit of punctuating tags as beats and vice-versa. This technical aspect to craft is something I’d appreciate you paying closer attention to when you self-edit book three before sending it in to me, not only because it’s rather time-consuming to make these corrections, but because I’m always afraid the copyeditor and I won’t catch them all. Use the comma + lower case only for bona fide tags, a period + initial cap for beats. Note that laugh, snort, told, said it (as opposed to plain said) are beats, not tags. Let me know if this isn’t clear. 

How she hurts me.

Really, I think she'd be happy if I just used "said" a lot more. The thing about "said" as in:

"I hate when you harp on my dialogue tags," she said.

is that our readerly eyes go right over it. It's nearly invisible. Studies have actually shown this. Our brains process what the character expressed and register the "she said" part like punctuation. But you guys know me - I'm just not that sweet and obedient. My characters don't just SAY things - they snort them! They laugh out words and sometimes they hiss them!

(This is another of my editorial world pet-peeves - there's this "rule" that you can't have someone hiss what they're saying unless there are sibilants in the word. So you can have

"Sheer bliss," she hissed.

but not

"Get out," she hissed.

I don't know about you people, but I can totally hiss "get out." I may or may not walk around the house hissing words that my editor inSISTS can't be hissed.

Not that I'm bitter.

Amusingly, one of my publishers - Ellora's Cave - officially reversed their policy on the hissing thing. So my EC characters can hiss anything they damn well want to while my Carina ones can only hiss with sibilants in the words. I don't know where Kensington will weigh in yet.

The upshot for me is, even though my editor - who really does love me in every other way - calls this a craft issue, I view it as an editorial one. Some editors care passionately about dialogue tags, others do not. I had one editor who really disliked parenthetical asides. (You can just imagine how well we got along.)

For me, it's voice, which I'm going to stick to as much as I can. I'll bow to editorial decisions and house style, which is part of being a professional writer, but if I can get away with a bit of dialogue snorting, I'm going to do it every time.

After all, she knew it when she married me.

How I Clean Up My MSS Before Sending

A photo from our freezing fog the other day. (Another picture here.) I love the pattern of frosted vine and shadow. Layers upon layers.

Last week, my editor, the fabulous Deb Nemeth, and I finished up the copy edits on Ruby, the third book in my Facets of Passion series. (Amusingly, I tried to link to the series on Amazon, instead of just book 2, which I ended up doing. When I searched, Amazon asked me if I meant "Faucets of Passion." I'm totally writing that next!

At any rate, all the editing for Ruby went really fast, which was particularly great because we did them over the winter holidays, to meet a sale date four months earlier than expected. However, they also went faster because I've gotten smarter.

This is the fourth publication I've done with Deb. I know by now what she looks for and I've - gasp! - started fixing them before she asks me to. I actually created a checklist for my final polish before I send something back to her, to remind myself of my common errors.

So, that's why I suggested this week's topic of what kinds of final checks we all make before sending a manuscript. I'm really interested to hear what everyone else does. (And may add to my own list.)

Here's mine:

• Search for [ ]

While I'm writing along, if I can't think of a word, want to check the brand name, need to check the previous book, etc. - basically anything that would halt the writing flow - I put it in square brackets as a placeholder. Sometimes I forget about them. My CPs usually catch them, but they shouldn't have to.

• Search for “now” 
• Search for “just” 

"Now" and "just" are my usual verbal tics. I use them ALL THE TIME. It drives me crazy. I don't even know I'm doing it. Most of them can just (see???) be deleted. Sometimes I have to restructure. I leave some in, but not fifty-million.

• Replace towards with toward 

This is a Carina Press house rule. For some reason I'm addicted to towards, which is apparently more British. I fix them as a last step.

• Search for endearment of the day 

Another of my tics. I have a name-thing. Most of my stories play with names and what people call each other. I don't know why I have this - I don't plan it out at all. But it ends up being fundamental to the characters and their interaction and sometimes their transformation. But I overdo it and Deb is forever asking me to reel it back. 

• Search for actions as dialogue tags. 

Another Carina house rule, but that's probably good for me to learn. An example would be: "No," he picked up the chicken and threw it at her, "I won't cook you dinner!" I tend to construct this way. It would change to: "No!" He picked up the chicken and threw it at her. "I won't cook you dinner."

 (I feel like I should caveat that the above example is not an actual line from Ruby, or from anything else I would ever write. Chickens are not for hurting.)

• Search for overused dialogue tags. 

Deb always reminds me that "said" and "asked" are just fine and are nearly invisible to the reader. I have to go through and remove a certain percentage of my livelier tags and tone it down a bit.

 So, there's my dirty editing laundry! What does everyone else do??