Judging a book by its cover

The old adage about books and their covers is sage advice when it comes to people or houses or pretty much anything, even books. But wise or not, if we didn’t actually judge books by their covers, the book industry wouldn’t spend a signficant amount of time and treasure trying to concoct the perfect alchemy of design, subject, and layout that will get a potential buyer to actually pick that book off the shelf.

For all that time and treasure, you’d think there were extensive marketing studies to determine what sells and what doesn’t. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. Every book that makes it as far as a bookstore shelf already faces ridiculous odds actually being sold, so it’s truly mystifying that publishers don’t work harder to help themselves when it comes to the cover art. This recommendation is particularly brilliant, especially since it comes with the authority of someone who has that firsthand experience with book selling.

So here’s what I propose to help save yourselves money: create a group of power-indie handsellers, folks with years of experience who know their business cold and excel at recommending books to readers.

I mean, right? It seems so obvious, yet the idea of consulting the people who actually, you know, sell books is apparently a revolutionary thought in the publishing biz. Which means that for every cover that entices us to pick up a book, there are dozens more that are utterly forgettable in their sameness. Or worse, make us cringe. What gives, publishers? Sure, a good design takes some work, and the design that has that something special can be as elusive as a winning lottery ticket, but surely some missteps are avoidable?

Science fiction and fantasy are some of the worst culprits, by the way. I love sff almost as much as I love my cats, but the cover art for a fair majority of books in this genre seems to wallow in a special hell of awful. I’m not even talking about the pulpy-type of covers, which have a so-bad-it’s-good kind of appeal, but the kind of covers that scream, “I’m a socially-challenged teenage boy who spends way too much time playing WoW and making design schematics of ships on Star Trek.” (Or worse, the kind that scream, “CLEARLY I HAVE BEEN EXPERIMENTING WITH HALLUCINOGENICS SOMEONE TAKE AWAY MY AIR BRUSH.”)

There isn’t anything wrong with socially-challenged teenage boys, of course, nor playing WoW or being a huge Star Trek fan. But not everyone who reads sff falls in the center of that Venn diagram. For me personally, covers with ridiculously muscled men, scantily-clad women, and oddly stylized backgrounds of space ships, futuristic cities, mythological creatures, and alien landscapes, or any combination thereof, are more likely to induce a “DO NOT WANT” than an “Ooooh shiny!”. If a book cover makes a reader embarrassed to read it on a bus, then there’s something seriously broken in the art department.

The myth of balance

I have to agree with Kameron Hurley about the realities of finding balance as a writer:

“I spend my time like a person who knows there isn’t a whole lot of it, I suppose. I enjoy what I can, when I can, and carve out pieces for one to give to the other when necessary. Maybe there’s some cosmic overall life balance to be had, but if that’s so, it’s something only other people will be able to see when they look at the long, crazy arc of my life, long after I’m all gone to dust.”

True not just for writers, really. Anyone who spends their days juggling multiple responsibilities — most of us, I suspect — knows it’s a delicate act that depends on a combination of sacrifice, timing, organization, and no little amount of luck. It’s so delicate, in fact, that there are days when the slightest disruption can send the whole chaotic affair crashing down on our heads.

In a typical day, I spend 10 to 14 hours at my day job, which almost always includes at least a meeting or teleconference (often two, three, four, or more), receiving at least several dozen emails and replying to all but a few of them, overseeing two departments, and meeting at least two daily deadlines. None of that includes my actual work, that’s just the typical topography of my day. I fit what work I can in the valleys between the mountains and hills of that topography. I eat my lunch at my desk most of the time and my two work-from-home days are reserved for focusing on as much work as I can get done without the interruptions of being in the office. Although it doesn’t always work out that way; there are often teleconferences on those days, as well, and the email barrage can sometimes be as bad or worse. I’m fortunate to enjoy a great deal of flexibility and autonomy in my job, but its demands nonetheless make it a pretty rigid aspect of my life.

I get home between 6:30 and 9:00 unless I have an outside commitment or obligation thatcuts my day shorter. Dinner is generally dependent on how late I get home. If I can manage to get home by 7:30 or earlier, I will make some attempt at making a meal that requires some form of cooking. The later it gets, the simpler my meal plans become: a single pan entree, something I made ahead and stocked in the freezer, a sandwich, leftovers, cheese and crackers and veggies…toast. I feed the cats, eat, and put together my lunch for the next day. Since I also post on my website about my lunches, I write up the post about it during this time so that all I’ll have to do the next day is snap a pic of my lunch, insert it in the post, and publish it to the site.

After that, I try to do at least some nominal housekeeping chore. Dishes, usually, since not having a dishwasher means they pile up quickly. Some (most?) days, nothing gets done and we just have to live with a messy house until the weekend. Other days, the tottering piles of dishes are a safety hazard and must be bumped up the priority list. The housekeeping is dependent on how late it is, how tired I am, how behind it is, and how motivated I am to be doing something else. Which I generally am.

Then it’s writing time, which includes not just the actual act of writing, but revisions, noting story ideas, story research, industry research, etc. If I’m not in the mood and feel like pushing myself is going to be detrimental instead of helpful, I try to spend at least some time doing something creative or otherwise creatively rejuvenating — working in my art journal, reading for pleasure, or watching a favorite show or movie while I catch up online.

How long I do that is somewhat dependent on when the Prince is headed home. He gets home anywhere between 9 PM and 1 AM, depending on what subject his class is covering that day and whether or not he rode his bike to work. I stop what I’m doing to spend time with him and give the poor kitties some undivided attention.

Somewhere in there, I try to catch up on my various social accounts — LJ, twitter, Tumblr, DreamWidth — some number of the ridiculous number of blogs I follow, comments, and email replies. (This part of my day is important for two reasons: 1) to keep up with people I care about, as much as I can; and 2) as part of the increasing requirement that writers who wish to be published must have an established online presence in all these forms and others.) This is also the time when I try to post to any of those sites or this one if I have something to post about. These things may be bumped up the priority list if I’ve neglected them for a few days or they may take a backseat when I just can’t fit everything in and need to drop something from my task list.

This is also when I get ready for the next day to minimize how much time it takes to get ready in the morning (and thus, allowing me to sleep later): laying out my clothes, taking a bath (since we don’t have a shower), packing my work bag, preparing lists for any errands I need to run during lunch or on the way home. And Eru bless the miracle of online shopping, automatic bill pays, and grocery delivery because this is the only time of our day that we can fit any of these tasks in.

Oh, and if I need to do any work for my website clients (about four to seven evenings every month), then pretty much everything except the basic functions are put on hold until that’s done.

The Prince works a similarly long day (or longer!) on a schedule shifted from mine, which means that we only see each other for a few hours (at most) in the evening, and very briefly in the morning before I leave for work. I stay up late so we can maximize our time together on weekdays, which means going to bed between 1:30 AM and 2 AM and getting up at 7 AM. If I’ve really hit a writing groove, the Prince goes to bed without me and I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open so I don’t waste that opportunity to make progress on the story.

Most people are doing a similar juggling act, whether it’s trying to incorporate a similar artistic pursuit into their daily life or something equally demanding like raising kids or starting a new business. Sometimes, we benefit from the help and support of people who love us*, but one way or another, we find a way to fit in the things that are most important. That includes being willing to redefine “most important” every day, and living with the fact it will only rarely all be in balance. Rarely, if ever.

*I am incredibly fortunate in this department. The Prince does as much or more than I do to keep the household functioning and still manages to fit in the occasional thoughtful things that can make all the difference on a challenging day. Like the morning I’m running late for work, remember just as I’m starting the car that the needle was well past ‘E’ when I coasted to a stop the night before, and realize that he somehow found time to fill the gas tank. I have no interest in diamonds — things like this are a billion times more priceless.

On talent, and the subjectiveness thereof

Have you ever read a well-regarded book with slight bafflement as to what all the fuss is about? I don’t mean a popular book that takes the reading public by storm but proves to be embarrassingly hacktastic (I’m looking at you, Bridges of Madision County), but one which wins a respectable award or three, is highly-rated on Amazon, GoodReads, etc., and you see or hear recommended from multiple sources. Not even necessarily a “best of the year” sort of book, nothing that’s going to win a Pulitizer, but just, you know, a well-recommended-by-those-whose-opinions-on-such-things-you-trust sort of book?

Yeah, I’m reading one of those right now. It’s genre fic*, has won a notable genre award or three, and I’ve seen it on many recommended lists, everything from The Onion A.V. Club to the people on my f-list who have a good record of interests that dovetail with mine. I read the author’s blog regularly and admire his/her boggling prolificacy. I in fact had sort of started to develop a complex as this author has continued to churn out one book after another, posting daily word counts that simply exhaust me, and announcing new deals and short story submission acceptances that make me suspect this person is either superhuman or has access to some sort of time suspension device. (To keep myself from getting too discouraged and developing a full-blown complex over it, I just remind myself that every writer is different, and we all have our different paths. Different, not better, not worse. I am not prolific. My stories take a long time to develop, are complicated and require much research, planning, and layering, and are subject to competition with the fifty trillion other demands on my time. I am not this author, and that’s okay — the world doesn’t need two of us.)

*I make the distinction not because it matters to me, but simply to differentiate that no, this is not the sort of book written by an MFA blowhard and lauded by a bunch literary critics at The New Yorker who pride themselves on recommending shit that’s not in any way an enjoyable read. Lit fic gets caught up in its own importance as often as not, too busy shoving its intellectual whatever in your face to get on with the business of the story or the characters or both. I’m all for the transcendental story that transforms us, but those stories are rare, lit fic or otherwise. There’s plenty of good, terrific, and even life-changing lit fic out there, and plenty of it that emphatically isn’t, and the only bad thing about it is that it’s championed over genre fic as if it’s somehow better. Oh, how greatly I beg to differ with that opinion. I’ve read my share of just about everything you want to throw at me, lit fic or otherwise, and let me tell you, there are just as many good, terrific, and yes, even life-changing stories told under the genre umbrella as under the literary one, and the entire publishing world would be well-served if they would stop with the haughty disdain for all things mystery, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or romance.

ANYWAY. I’m enjoying this story, don’t get me wrong, and it has many things to recommend it. It deserves to be on those recommended lists for being an engaging, interesting, and imaginative read (I think — I haven’t finished it yet). But there are plenty of things about it, particularly about the writing, that I find mediocre. It’s chock full of exposition, for one thing, and only thinly-disguised (or not disguised at all) “as you know, Bob” exposition at times. There’s a dismaying amount of telling rather than showing, and far, far, FAR too much description of mundane action that’s utterly irrelevant. Doors closing, putting on seatbelts, taking a drink, whatever. You put some of those details in to enhance the story, provide detail or color (or even to drop in as throwaways that become important later), but I don’t need to know that a character opened the door, walked through it, and shut it. Most of the time, I don’t really give a shit that the character went through a door at all. As a reader, it does nothing but pull me out of the story or bore me or both. Unless it’s important to the story or the character, it’s a distraction. Make the action count, make the dialogue count, make the scene count.

That’s not to say I’m not guilty of these sins. I totally am. (Oh my god, my verbosity, let me show you it.) Even good, well-respected writers are guilty of them. But it’s the kind of thing that you fix during revisions. You need to be one ruthless SOB in revisions, and you hunt those weaknesses down and kill those suckers dead, dead, dead. I’m no paragon of writing ability, and obviously, I haven’t been published, so I don’t claim to have all the answers. But at the very least, you’d think this kind of stuff would’ve been tightened during the editorial stage. (The editor in this case being a good one with a sound reputation.) So I’m left scratching my head saying to myself, “Really? Nobody redlined this in a draft somewhere?”

It’s not a dealbreaker for the story. I am, as I mentioned, still enjoying it. But it’s disappointing and instructive that even the stamp of approval that publishing gives you doesn’t mean that you don’t have a lot of room to improve. And it’s a reminder that even for an author who’s getting a lot of buzz and generally making it big may not be as big of a talent as you let yourself believe.

Got my pitch critique!

Yep! Received my pitch critique Tuesday afternoon. I’m pretty stunned by their turnaround, considering they had 200 participants in the workshop. Especially considering the detailed, instructive feedback I received on mine.

I’m immensely pleased. I won’t have to chuck it and completely start over, and I have a clear idea of where I need to really focus my improvement efforts. They even said that “this is a strong start for your pitch”, which was very encouraging and makes me feel like I’ve got the right idea for my approach, I just need to refine it.

So back to revisions on the ms and refining the pitch. Then: query!

Random Friday

I have links! Of writerly sorts of topics!

• April Henry posted earlier this week about a really fun and fascinating project called The Novel Live! in which 36 NW authors take turns writing an entire novel in six days, a kind of marathon-relay-writing adventure. It’s wrapping up tomorrow, but you can still catch the live stream of the project in action. Like, actually watch the writer in action AND simultaneously see the words s/he is writing appear on the screen AND chat with the writer to offer suggestions, comments, etc. (LIVING IN THE FUTURE OMG STILL THE BESTEST). This has to be one of the cleverest things I’ve seen in awhile, and it’s a fundraiser for a good cause, as well.
• How Can One Afford To Be A Writer? (Spoiler: You can’t. Do it anyway.)
• Okay, this one isn’t really writerly, but I just love it so much I’m posting it everywhere like a crazy person. The God of Cake, from one of my favorite blogs, Hyperbole and a Half. Just…go, click and read it. I promise, you will love me for making you.

Random Friday

Well, writing-related random, anyway.

First: porn for the book lover slash interior decorator in all of us. Or is that only me? No, porn is for everyone!

Second: if I had an agent like this, I would send her cookies made by Sal every week. (Seriously. If I got an acceptance letter from Agent Kristen, it would be almost as good as getting a letter of acceptance from a publisher.)

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

The future of publishing and what it means for readers

A friend directed me to this article on Salon.com by Laura Miller that speculates on the possible good (and bad) for readers when self-publishing becomes a matter of course. (After a rather bizarre intro, I have to say. Pinochet’s overthrow? Really?)

Depending on whom you listen to, traditional publishing may or may not be in its death throes. There can be no doubt that the industry is struggling with an array of challenges, and certainly it’s undergoing a transformation (willingly or not) in this world where change is measured in nanoseconds. One such challenge, electronic publishing, is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — threat to The Old Way Of Doing Things.

Electronic publishing means e-books, of course, and online delivery of content. But it also encompasses the world of self-publishing, wherein an author can bypass the traditional gatekeeprs of agent, editors, marketing, publishers, and retailers and offer their books (in any form they desire) to their audience. And it’s that world of self-publishing that’s the big question mark when it comes to just what dreams may come. (hee)

As Miller points out, self-publishing widens a reader’s choices unimaginably. No matter their predilections, there is guaranteed to be something for them to read.

Whether or not it’s readable is another question entirely.

She explains about the horrors of the slushpile so I won’t waste space on it here, but the point is important:  whatever you may think about traditional publishing and its role as a gatekeeper, the fact is that they read the crap so you don’t have to. Which isn’t to say that crap doesn’t get published, because we’ve all read enough books that made us ball our hands into fists and pound them against our skulls while chanting, “HOW DID THIS GET PUBLISHED?” But as she points out, the signal-to-noise ratio of readable stories that get published versus what exists in the slushpile? A difference of incalculable proportions. And if the publishing industry goes the way of T-Rex, the slushpile gets dumped into the media delivery systems like a deep water oil well gushing light sweet crude into the community swimming hole.

Because I think what this period of evolution in publishing — and media of any sort, really — is really about is understanding the exact nature of what their product is. Now that their traditional role of delivering books/content is being usurped by the new waves of technology and innovation, it seems clear that delivering books/content isn’t their product. Rather, it’s the expertise and authority publishers bring to the table to help readers find something that’s worth reading. (The definition of “worth reading” being hugely subjective itself, obviously.) That is, their product is the very valuable bundle of services that include identifying potential, editing, design, and marketing.  And in the brave new world of publishing that I think we’re entering, it will be their reputation that becomes the currency of the industry, and drives their sales.

The smartest and best will understand that just as Pixar has developed such a sterling reputation for excellent movies with terrific stories and unsurpassed quality for children (and a sizeable percentage of grownups ), a publisher’s branding will identify that This Book Right Here Is Worth Your Time. Publishers as a group are doing a stellar job of Not Getting It when it comes to that realization, but I think the ones that will survive the change are going to be the ones that move toward a model centered around the services they provide rather than the physical product they produce.

Which isn’t to say that there won’t be more successes that emerge from the self-publishing realm, or that self-publshing won’t become a viable, respectable, and lucrative route to success. I think self-publishing can indeed produce a book every bit as worth reading as anything produced by a traditional reputable publisher. There’ve already been such successes, though only a handful to date. That will increase with time, I think.

[I’ll just note that my focus here is on authors who want to be read by as many people as possible, whose goal is to become published — whatever the route is — and perhaps even make a living from their work. I realize that there are many, many, many people who write with no desire/intention of being published, and who may choose self-publishing as a means for sharing their material with a select audience or simply to be able to hold their story in their hands and be able to place it on a bookshelf. Obviously, I understand that. :) ]

But there are two factors to consider here. First, as Miller points out, such successes largely depend on the author’s willingness and ability to market themselves and their book. (We’ll assume for the sake of argument that they have some kind of editing resource, like a good beta reader or circle, or even paying a freelance editor, and that they can also pay for copyediting and layout expertise, or are capable of doing that on their own. We’ll also assume that they’re design-savvy or have access to and/or the funds for someone who can do a decent design of a cover if they’re selling print books. Templates don’t count.) There are authors who are willing to do this and have the ability to do it very well. There are many others who have either the willingness or the ability but not both. There are many who don’t have either one. (Guess which one I am.) Self-publishing is only a route for successful publishing if you’re willing to do the work that the publishing houses do and I remain unconvinced that the availability of self-publishing will magically confer these very special skills to the many authors out there who have something worth reading to offer.

The other factor to understand is that even if you are such an author with such a rare skill set to be both your own publisher (and all that it entails) and a writer, that’s still no guarantee that anyone but your parents and the neighbor across the street will ever read or even know about your book. This is something that the traditional publishers already struggle with, and their bottom lines are testimony to the incredible difficulty of enticing a reader to pick up that book, turn it over, and consider buying it. Actually buying it? The odds in favor are vanishingly small. Doing that over and over again so that the book pays for itself? Microscopic. If traditional publishers had a good sense of just what is guaranteed to sell, they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in.

So imagine the scenario where the reading market is flooded with hundreds of thousands of new options available every year. As Miller points out, consumers have a tendency to become overwhelmed with too much choice and end up selecting the same thing everyone else is choosing. Sure, there’ll be the readers willing to sift through, develop their own network of identifying what’s worth their time to read. Many of us do that already, especially if our reading preferences are for less popular material (i.e., we don’t tend to read items that appear on the NYT list, for example). But even those brave readers will spend an inordinate amount of time sifting and a lot less time reading.

I’m not saying that self-publishing is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think it’s terrific, and I’m excited about the possibilities for where books and other media are headed in the next few years. I love that people are getting their creations out there for others to read/experience, and the opportunity to share with the world is opening up for us all. I love the communal aspect of creativity it engenders, and the organic ways in which storytelling as an art form has grown and diversified as the internet and technology has allowed us the means to share those stories with each other. The democratization of information is a beautiful thing.

But I think it’s important to remember that it’s a messy thing, too, and just as we have gatekeepers now, we’ll have them in the future, too. Different gatekeepers, perhaps. Better ones, maybe. And though the future of publishing is a guessing game at best, the rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated.

(edited in a few places for typos and clarity)

Won't someone think of the zombies??

Libraries in communities across the country are facing devastating budget cuts or even closure. To say that this is bad is to call the Gulf Oil spill “unfortunate”. Thanks to some amazing people, a great grassroots advocacy organization, and some truly hilarious and talented folks, there’s a clever new campaign to raise awareness and donations: Zombies for Libraries! They’re the brilliant minds behind this terrific and hilariously awesome video:

(Check out their site for more great videos featuring zombies, libraries, and brainnnnnsssssss. I love their motto: ”Libraries Feed Brains! Brains Feed Zombies! Help the Zombies Help The Libraries!”)

Without libraries, people of every age and income bracket — but especially low-income kids — lose a vital link to the best, most valuable resource anyone has: information and knowledge. For some, it’s their only access to online facilities or information or both.

Without libraries, yours truly couldn’t have read the hundreds of books she burned through in her formative years. Books were my haven and my escape, and there were and are a lot of kids just like me who probably couldn’t even function if they didn’t have a way to feed their book hunger.

The librarian at my public library growing up granted me an exception to both their checkout limit and age rule because my reading level was higher than the children’s and young adults’ sections (though I did read most everything in both of those sections) and I read so much that I was basically checking out a new book every day when I was limited to only six books at once. The summer I spent in an even smaller town that my own hometown would’ve been seriously impacted if not for the twice weekly trips to the little library up the street (partly because I was recovering from a broken arm that summer); the librarian there waived the limitations for me, too, after the first three weeks of visits.

It was librarians who first introduced me to Jane Austen, Robert Heinlein, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ursula K. LeGuin, S.E. Hinton, and others well before any high school or college literature class. Kids like I was aren’t rare, and all over the country, librarians are some of the most important figures in a young person’s life.

We have librarians to thank for some of the best books for children and young adults, because their word-of-mouth recommendations and networking are considered better and more powerful PR than any book review or NYT list appearance. If librarians support a book, publishers are known to expand their push for a particular book or even reconsider the marketing budget a book initially received.

And it’s libraries and librarians we have to thank for keeping the most commonly censored books, the ones that regularly appear on book banning lists, alive and well and available for everyone. They are staunch activists against censorship — including internet censorship — and they stand up to some pretty frightening machinery of anger and hysteria and ignorance.  Because of them, libraries truly represent the idea of “freedom of information”, and if that concept has any importance to you, then you’ll consider doing something to save libraries.

Linger-ing effect

Maggie Stiefvater — author of the wonderful novel, Shiver — put together the most amazing book trailer for the next book in her Wolves of Mercy Falls series. She did the whole trailer herself — storyboarded, shot, and edited it, composed(!) and played the music, did all the artwork in the trailer itself (by hand!)…everything. And the end result is absolutely gorgeous.

Writer, artist, musician, filmmaker…it should be illegal to have that many talents.

Another step in the right direction

Progress! My Writerly Pursuits week is underway, and I actually am making some sort of progress on writing-related tasks.

On my agenda for this week, as previously mentioned, are tackling my query letter and synopsis. The former is a single page introduction letter to a potential agent, in which a writer has one or two paragraphs (three at the very most!) to distill the essence of the story and convince the agent to read further (i.e., either the attached synopsis, if they take them in submission, or to request a synopsis or a partial or full manuscript). The query letter is much like the blurb on the back cover a book meant to excite a potential reader into wanting to read the book itself.

It is very intimidating.

So I decided today to help myself get into the groove by instead tackling the synopsis. My idea here is that immersing myself in the story and getting into the mode of distilling it down for a synopsis will help me drill down on the way to sell the story in an even shorter format. Familiarity with the material and alla that. (I mean, obviously I’m familiar with the material since I wrote it, and have read and reread it approximately fifty gajillion times, but you know how it is when you get on a roll working on something, and you you hit that sweet spot of everything just flowing right along…that’s what I’m after.)

The synopsis is, depending on where you look and who you trust, anywhere from a 1 page to a 25 page summary of the main story and characters, including main plot twists and the ending. Kind of a big range, there. (There’s all kinds of contradictory information out there as to how long it should be, in the absence of an express definition in a submission guideline. And submission guidelines vary widely from agent to agent. So.) I’m going to go ahead and write mine up and then edit it down, with a goal of hitting somewhere between 5 and 7 pages. For almost 500 pages of manuscript, that ought to be quite a trick….

But work has begun, and I’m already onto page 3 and feeling quite chuffed with myself. So, as I say, progress is being had. In the course of working today, I wanted to look up a couple of things I remembered saving about synopsis tips in my handy bookmarked “Writing Stuff” folder. Over the last couple of years, I’ve accumulated quite a collection of links on all facets of publishing and writing and whatnot. And I’m pathologically organizational by nature, but as I’ve accumulated more and more links, the initial structure I’d set up and later modified has gotten less and less manageable for all of those links. Finding those tips I wanted took far longer than it should’ve, and I thought to myself, as I have many times in the last few months, that I really need to go through and reorganize the folders I’d set up for them to better reflect the way I’m using that folder now. A bit of a project that I just haven’t had time for, even as I keep adding links and terrific information gets buried under the sheer multitude of what I’ve accumulated. And then I thought “AHA!” Because, after all, that is exactly what this week is all about — taking the time I need to focus strictly on doing things for my writerly pursuits. (No I’m not avoiding that scary query letter. Am not. Am not. Shut up.)

Two hours later, and my pathologically organized self is quite content with my newly restructured “Writing Stuff” folder, with renamed folders and rearranged subfolders and newly-added folders and subfolders and all the inevitable dead links weeded out. Oh, it’s enough to make my little OCD heart to go pitter pat.

Since I know that there are those among you who share either my writing passion or my OCD tendencies (or both!), I thought I’d share the end result. (Note that there are some duplications here, which were intentional, and that this doesn’t constitute everything in my writing universe; there are many blogs/sites that I follow with Bloglines or whatever, and so don’t need to keep bookmarked. And some that I do follow with those other methods that I also have bookmarked, because that’s just how I roll.)

Behold, for I am awesome!*  

*And for those of you asking yourselves, “Um…why didn’t she just share these via delicious/Google Bookmarks/etc.? Does she not realize this is soooooo Web 1.0**??” Well, boys and girls, doing so would require more than just a simple upload, would in fact require some sort of organizing or cleaning or whatever before and/or after doing so in order to make some sense of the wealth of information contained therein, and as I am currently doing my best to stay on task***, I am indeed opting for a less elegant, more brute force method.

**Also, when did Firefox start adding hidden gobbledygook code to their export bookmarks file? Because holy extraneous code, Batman!

***We will ignore the amount of time I already wasted doing both of those things before giving up realizing that it was going to take way more time than I wanted to spend. In other news, tagging is a great organizational method, but there is still something to be said for the tree system of organizing information. I AM LOOKING AT YOU DELICIOUS.