Yesterday, I wrote fresh words on my work in progress. And though the writing’s been slower with this book than I’d hoped, (in that I set a pretty high goal for myself that isn’t necessary, was just personal) I finished my word count earlier than expected. So, I revised. Not the book I’m still writing, though it might get to that point, when I realize I’m writing out of order and need to go back to see what bits and pieces need filling in. Nope, I revised a different book.

Again.

And I finished revising it last night, only to wake this morning full of self doubt, thinking about all the places I hadn’t revised.

So, here’s the thing.

Sometimes, the book is finished. Sometimes you can revise it forever, and it’s never going to be finished. So you have to decide, at some point, to let it go.

I’m back to writing fresh words today, but I’m already thinking about how I might revise them, and I’m looking forward to it!

M

Are you a writer with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you a reader with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you Keanu Reeves, wanting to take me on a motorcycle ride?

…you don’t even NEED to ask.

So! G’wan. Ask away!

M

Are you a writer with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you a reader with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you Keanu Reeves, wanting to take me on a motorcycle ride?

…you don’t even NEED to ask.

So! G’wan. Ask away!

M

Are you a writer with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you a reader with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you Norman Reedus, wanting to take a picture of me while we listen to The Glitch Mob?
…you don’t even NEED to ask.

So! G’wan. Ask away!

M

Well, my doves, the writing is a slow-going slog recently. I’ve been working on cleaning up my computer so I can upgrade the operating system, and you know, that’s never a quick or easy project. I love my computer…I work on a 27 inch iMac I’ve had for about three years. The only problem I have with it is that it works so well and is so awesome I can’t justify getting a new computer! (bright! shiny! new!)

Anyway, I’m thinking about the book all the time, but the words are coming more slowly than I’d like. That’s just how it goes sometimes, though. If they’re not there, they just ain’t.

Still, you don’t write a book a chapter or page or even a sentence at a time.

You write one word at a time.

One after another after another after another, and then one more, and then another one comes after that…

So I’m off to do that word-writing thing! Happy Thursday!

Oh, and a favorite bit from what I’ve been doing…

She looks at him over her shoulder at the window. “Remember when we used to have those tin-can phones?”

“Yeah.” Gabe props himself on his elbow. His heartbeat’s slowing, but the heat low in his belly is taking longer to go away. He won’t get up to go to the bathroom until she’s gone.

“We were stupid little kids, weren’t we?”

“Yeah. Total assholes.”

She smiles at him, almost like she means to say more. Gabe hopes she does, though he’s not sure what, exactly, he hopes she’ll say.

Instead, Janelle pushes aside his curtains and slides up the window. With one leg over the sill, she makes a show of looking down.
“If I ever break my neck doing this…”
He sits up higher, thinking there’s something important she means to say. He’s a little too high for it, whatever it is. He should be more serious, he thinks. Though she isn’t.

Janelle giggles, her throat working for a second as she tips her head back. She lets it loll forward. Then she pulls the other leg through the window, props her foot on the wooden shelf Gabe built to hold his air conditioner in the summer and stretches her other leg out to the nearly identical shelf at her window. She left hers open. Her room will be freezing cold, he thinks.

If she ever broke her neck doing that, he thinks, if she ever fell when she tried to jump…what would he do? Would he jump after her? Would he pretend he didn’t know what she was doing? Would he lie and say he pushed her just to keep everyone from knowing the truth?

The next morning, not high, in fact so deathly sober it’s like someone put a stack of encyclopedias on his head, Gabe is late for the bus and has to run. Everyone’s laughing at him when he gets on the bus, even Janelle. She sits in the middle, her mask of makeup turning her into a stranger. She doesn’t look at him until he pauses at her seat, thinking this once he’ll ask if he can sit with her. Wondering what she’d do if he leaned down right this minute and kissed her for the first time in front of everyone.

“Sit down back there!” Hollers the bus driver, and Gabe moves to the back of the bus, his usual seat.

From there he can watch the back of Janelle’s head and see her profile when she turns, as she always does, to look out the window. So he watches. She never looks back.

M

Are you a writer with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you a reader with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you Norman Reedus, wanting to take a picture of me while we listen to The Glitch Mob?
…you don’t even NEED to ask.

So! G’wan. Ask away!

M

My question is — if you’re gonna use a pen name, why hijack someone else’s?

Now listen — I don’t hold with some crazy assed notion that nobody else should be allowed to use the name Megan. I mean, it’s my real name, it’s the real name of many many other people. And the last name Hart, which is ALSO my real name, belongs to many many other people, too. So there are authors who use the name Megan. There are authors who use the name Hart. Sometimes they’re real names, sometimes they’re pen names. There’s a Megan Hart who’s a baker on some reality show, and one who writes cookbooks, and one who’s a singer and one who’s a wrestler. I have no belief that if someone uses the name “Megan” they’re somehow infringing on my reputation or whatever. Same with Hart.

Megan Harten? I kind of have a problem with. (Unless it’s your legal name, in which case you have every right to use it.)

I mean, I don’t go around using the name Nora Robertson just because I’d like to sell a bunch of stuff. Or Steven King. You see what I’m saying?

If Megan Hart or Megan Harten’s your real name, hey, good for you. Go on with your bad self. It’s a great name.

But if it’s not your real name…if you’re just trying to piggyback onto someone else’s ride…that’s just gross.

Maybe Kay Raines’ real name is Megan Harten. Maybe she wrote a bunch of erotica under a penname and decided to come clean with the world and show her real face and use her real name.

Maybe.

At any rate, if you buy “Megan Harten’s” stuff an like it, good for you. If, on the other hand, you don’t think it quite matches up to the rest of my work, there’s a good reason for it. I didn’t write it.

M

The thing is, I’ve been thinking about this book for a long time. Going Home is about a woman who moves back to her tiny hometown to take care of her ailing grandmother. The house next door still belongs to the same family who lived there when she was younger and lived with her grandma.

There was a scandal.

She left.

Now she’s back and struggling with her life, raising a son, caring for her grandma, dealing with a lot of stuff.

And the boys next door have all grown up.

It’s not a romance. It’s not erotic. It’s mainstream fiction and I’ve had this book in my head for so long I thought it would be so easy to just sit down and write it…but of course, the truth is, it’s never easy. Writing isn’t easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it!

So I’m working on that, finding my way through it. Figuring out who the characters are and why they acted the way they did. I’m writing out of order because there are some scenes so vividly etched in my head it’s easier to start with them, and since I started using Scrivener it’s so easy to rearrange chapters.

So that’s where I am — starting a new book. Feeling my way. I’m not really a plotter, at least not more than a few chapters at a time, because once I start writing, so much changes.

But here’s a bit I particularly liked:

“Old habits didn’t just die hard, they rose like the undead and just kept walking.”

M

Are you a writer with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you a reader with questions about writing?
Ask!

Are you Norman Reedus, wanting to take a picture of me while we listen to The Glitch Mob?
…you don’t even NEED to ask.

So! G’wan. Ask away!

M

Let me say, first of all, that I’ve been using the Kindle self-publishing program for a few years now. My experience with self-publishing has been fine. I prefer traditional publishing in which I get paid money up front, sometimes before I’ve written the book, but I also do like that thar new-fangled digital publishing thing, too. In fact, I got my start in e-press, so I’ve been doing that since before it was cool. The point is, I like writing and being published and selling books. It’s my job, and I love it, and I’m blessed to do it. I think the digital publishing rollercoaster is exciting and wonderful and I’m happy to be part of it.

I self publish, and I’m enjoying that, but I PREFER traditional publishing.

Having said that, let me just say again… What fuckery is THIS?

Let’s play this out, shall we?

1. OMG I COULD MAKE 7,500 DOLLLLARRRRSSSS!!!! HOLY SHIT! THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY!!!!!

2. …wait a minute. I’ll let you read those terms and conditions. I’ll wait. I’m not copy/pasting, because god forbid I plaigerize (wish I could spell that right) them or something like that. G’head. You read. I’ll be here when you come back.

3.  okay. So I want to make my book available in this lending library program, so that I can earn a portion of their monthly fund which could be 7500 DOLLLLARRRRSSSS!!! Let’s see.

Exclusivity: I have to let Amazon be the only place selling or distributing my book for 90 days. That’s not so bad, if I don’t like it, I can get out of it. I mean, I’ll have to remember to unenroll since they auto renew, but I can do that. I iz smart writer.

So…I can’t sell or distribute my book to anyone else or anywhere else. I also can’t sell or distribute ANY CONTENT that is reasonably likely to compete commercially with my book, or diminish its value or confuse readers somehow.

In other words…anything else I write. Right? AMIRITE? Reasonably likely to compete? Sounds to me like anything else I write and sell or distribute in any other place could “reasonably” compete with the thing I’m giving Amazon exclusivity for.

Wow.

So, okay, I either give them the right to sell EVERYTHING I have…or…well, what’s the worst that could happen, right? I mean, if I give them the exclusive right to lend my book out to prime members for a portion of their established monthly fund and they determine that I’ve got something else that’s competing, how bad could that be?

Let’s see…

4. Well, if I commit to this, even if I unpublish my book, anyone who borrowed it can still keep it for an undetermined amount of time. BUT…I still have to keep it exclusive to Amazon for the 90 day period. Even if I don’t want it with them anymore.

Also, if I don’t comply, like if I give them exclusivity on ONE thing and then I have something else for sale elsewhere and they decide it’s competing, therefore meaning I failed in my committment to the KDP program…like I said, how bad could it be? What could they do?

Keep all your money, bitches, that’s what they can do.

They can keep the money you’d have been owed if anyone borrowed your book. (Let me point out that they determine the monthly fund, well, apparently monthly and they have NO specific determination about how much that fund could be. 500k one month…1.25 the next, who knows?)

They not only can keep that money, they might offset money they paid you against anything else you might earn. Or, just to be really sweet, they can MAKE YOU PAY THEM. Make YOU pay THEM their royalties that you’d have earned if only you hadn’t dared to offer your work for sale someplace else. Also, while this is going on, they can hold ALL  your royalties from ALL your books, in the KDP or not, for up to 90 days. And it looks like they don’t have a limit on other “remedies” either…so I guess they can also give you a swirly, call you names, and pull you up by your underpants on the flagpole. You know, if they wanna.

So…that 7,500 of imaginary money…how nice does that sound now?

M

PS– maybe my reading comprehension skills are lacking and I misread their terms and conditions. Maybe.