Readers! Writers! Here's a how-to unlike any you've ever read: The Creative Habit

I rarely write reviews but want to make an exception for a book called THE CREATIVE HABIT by the choreographer Twyla Tharp. Writers, those who want to write, artists, dancers and "everyday people" will find help and inspiration in its pages.

An elegant book physically, pleasing to the eye and the hand, THE CREATIVE HABIT is generous, authoritative, intelligent and well written.  Each page brims with practical advice, specific how-to’s, questionnaires and exercises about how to:

• open your mind
• overcome fear
• deal with failure
• defeat distraction
• clarify your thinking

Ms. Tharp offers valuable advice, based on her own experience about how make your way through confusion and had to find solutions when you know something’s wrong but don’t even know quite what the problem is—the last an issue that regularly comes up, at least for me, in the course of writing a book.

Using a wide-ranging set of examples ranging from Homer to Proust, from Ulysses S Grand to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Pope LeoX, from Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine to Ansel Adams, Raymond Chandler, Mozart and Yogi Berra, TCH offers a detailed road map how to define your creative identity.

 Practical, down to earth and never flinching from the daily nitty-gritty, Ms. Tharp explains the importance of

• routine
• ritual
• setting goals
• how to know the difference between a good idea and a bad idea

She also addresses the common, but difficult dilemma facing creative people who must recognize ruts when they’re in one and she offers explicit guidelines about how to get out of them.

Of special interest to baby boomers (and we're all going to be there one day!) is her candid description of the impact of aging—in her case particularly significant since, as a dancer and choreographer, her life is all about physical expression and movement.  She talks about her recognition of the decrease in stamina, the need to set new challenges and explains how she turned the same brutal honesty on herself that she relies on to guide her dancers.

She tells how she changed her approach and work habits when, moving through her fifties, she recognizes she isn’t the same dancer she’d been twenty years before and confronts the need to change.  She describes what, specifically, she did to make the transition from habits that had served her well for two decades to establishing new approaches that turned the reality of aging into an absorbing challenge.

You will find out about the value of “doing a verb” and about building a bridge to the next day, about the relationship between failure and success, the miracle of second chances and what to do when denial is no longer an option. It is hard for me to imagine anyone who won’t learn from or be inspired by a book that is part memoir, part manual, part how-to.

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"A beautiful and subtle love story. The character of Zuri, the baby rhino is beautifully written. I absolutely loved Zuri!."     Read the whole review from Rabid Readers Reviews here.

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A NYT bestselling author shares: 6 Things Pro Writers Taught Me About Writing

Before I was a NYT bestselling author, I was an editor (Dell, Bantam, Kensington) and worked with lots of writers. Some work first thing in the AM, others in the PM, some don’t get started until midnight. Some write sober, some don’t. Some write on a computer, some on legal pads, and these days some write on tablets. Some edit as they go along, perfecting each sentence before going on to the next. Some keep strict, almost corporate office hours, some write irregularly but in hot rushes of productivity.

Others power through a first draft as fast as they can, then go back to edit and revise. Some outline in detail; some prepare elaborate storyboards, others work from a jotted list of scribbled notes; still others let the characters do the work. Some brainstorm the plot with a trusted friend, spouse or editor. Some work with a crit partner getting comments and guidance along the way; others won’t let anyone see their work until it’s finished.

Bottom line, there’s no ONE way to get the job done.

No matter where, when or how writers write, though, professional writers have taught me the following:

Let yourself go. Don’t kill your darlings, kill your inhibitions instead.

Get rid of the inner censor, that stern, humorless second-guessing nay-sayer that kills your ideas before they’re born. That killjoy is telling you your idea is too outrageous, too unbelievable, too OTT to see the light of day?

Don't listen. Tune him out, shout her down.

Don’t quash that zany/loony/nutty idea; instead, let it rip. Play with it and see where it goes. The “unspeakable,” the “unbelievable,” the OMG! “you can’t write that,” are exactly the ideas that lead to the fresh, original breakthrough. Considering every possibility, no matter how OTT, is the reason TV writers’ rooms are noted for Raunch & Irreverence. The reason? R & I break through the conventions, the “should’s, don'ts and can’ts” that destroy creativity.

Learn to edit yourself.

Heresy coming from a former editor, I know, but professional writers are often excellent editors of their own work. After years of experience, they have learned to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and figured out effective work-arounds.  Their approach is practical: what works stays, what doesn’t work hits the cutting room floor; aka the delete button.

 The ability to self-edit comes with time and experience but it’s a goal for beginning writers to keep in mind. Consider your book from the POV of a marriage, not a hot affair. Spouses get to know each other very well, are aware of all the plusses and minuses and still love each other. Take off the rose-colored glasses of passionate romance, marry your book instead and live happily ever after.

Butt in chair. Feet on ground.

Most of the professional authors I’ve known don’t clutter their minds with undefined notions of “relevance,” “significance” or “art.” Instead, they are experienced, disciplined and competent storytellers and entertainers who understand that craft matters.

Great books are about characters, plot, setting, if “art” is the outcome, so much the better but, as in building a house, don’t rely on a gauzy fantasy when what you need is a hammer and some nails.

Master your genre.

Successful writers whether of horror, romance, thrillers or mystery study their genre. They know what their readers expect and they do NOT let them down. Period.

• No unhappy endings for romances. Readers want the HEA & that's what the pro delivers.
• No “revelation” at the end that the whole book, the characters and their trials and tribulations, was the MC’s dream. We're talking compelling fiction here, not a shaggy dog story.
• No tearing up in tough-guy noir. Hard edges, dammit!
• No weepy heart-to-heart confessions in action thrillers. Paranoia is the WTG because paranoia works & paranoia is what the reader wants. Disappoint him or her at your peril.

Don't think you can reinvent the wheel. Pros know better.

Rescue yourself.

One of the great old-time pulp writers (200+ books) once told me “Each book is a pain in the ass in a different way.”  What he meant was that at some point each one is going to present a problem.

• A plot going nowhere.
• A boring/clueless/addled/DebbieDowner character.
• Too much/not enough background/research.
• Too long.
• Too short.
• You name it, sometime, somewhere in the course of writing a book, you will most likely get stuck.

Professional writers have learned how to bail themselves out. Whether it means going back to the beginning to hunt down the problem, a light rewrite, some strategic revisions, a personality transplant (for a character, not the writer—lol), the pros have learned how to deal with the glitches, get themselves out of trouble and get back on track.

Write. Write a lot. Then write some more.

Seriously. Professional writers turn out copy, they meet deadlines, they get the job done and the more they write the better they get. Same with any job, career or profession.

Do you want a surgeon who’s just out of med school or one who’s done hundreds of knee/hip replacements? See what I mean?

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When Collaborators Disagree—And Live To Tell The Tale

Love doesn’t always run a smooth path (no kidding!) and neither does collaboration. There are inevitably going to be times when co-authors—in my case, my DH, Michael—don’t see a character, a scene, even a line of dialogue the same way. 

Most of the time while Michael and I were writing our thriller, HOOKED, we were in synch but there was one scene about which we had radically different opinions. I hated it so much I deleted it. Michael, appalled, retrieved it from the trash.

The scene occurs midway through the book and involves two characters. One is Gavin Jenkins, the brilliant and charismatic miracle doctor who is at the center of the story. The other is Adriana Partos, a world-famous concert pianist who has retired at the request of her lover, billionaire tycoon, Nicky Kiskalesi. Now, however, Nicky misses Adriana’s fame and celebrity and wants her to make a come-back.

The problem is that arthritis has made it impossible for Adriana to play without pain. Nicky, who didn’t get rich by giving up, suggests she consult Gavin Jenkins, a doctor who, it seems, can cure almost anything. Adriana, reluctant but also afraid of losing Nicky, agrees to meet with Gavin.

As the scene was originally written, Adriana dislikes Gavin for intuitive reasons: she finds him “cold” and “hidden” although no specific examples of cold and/or hidden behavior are given. The scene, based on her instinctive dislike, seemed weak and unconvincing to me: ergo, the delete button.

Michael convinced me the scene was necessary and could be made to work.

The question was: how?

I trust Michael’s opinions so we had several conversations over the course of a day or two about why I hated the scene and thought it should be cut—and why he thought it was essential and should stay. We finally came to an agreement when we decided that “something” specific had to happen in the scene to validate Adriana’s dislike of Gavin.

The question was: what was the “something?”

Neither of us could come up with an incident that would work for what the reader already knows about both characters. We had solved our impasse but we now faced a new dilemma.

After another day or two of conversation and getting nowhere and still having no idea of what the “something” was, I got impatient. Typical!

Annoyed with our lack of progress, I went to the computer to rewrite the scene with our discussions in mind. I began by taking out the language referring to Adriana’s “intuitive” dislike of Gavin—his “coldness” and “hidden” personality. Cutting, as it so often does, equalled improvement.

Still, what was going to happen next? I had no idea but when I got to the lines that describe Gavin taking her arm in an intimate, almost caressing way and giving her the shot for which he has become renowned, the words, apparently of their own volition, popped out of my unconscious and emerged on the screen:

“You’ve never felt this good, have you?” he whispers seductively as he presses down on the syringe and the fluid enters her vein.

That brief line of dialogue—unplanned and unanticipated—gave us the specific, dramatic “something” we needed.

Appalled by Gavin’s creepy whispered question, Adriana slaps him. He reacts by calling her a bitch. He wants to give her a second (different) injection but she walks out on him and leaves his consulting room. The scene ends with Adriana standing on the sidewalk outside his office and remembering the bulge in his pants.

Had she been seeing things?, she wonders. Imagining things? Or did he have an erection as he administered the shot?

Since we already know about Gavin’s sexual quirks from earlier scenes, we now had a compelling scene that advances the plot, creates conflict between Adriana and the gifted doctor whose help she will depend on if she is to resume her career and keep her lover. The rescued scene also adds a new dimension to Gavin’s intriguing, slightly sinister character.

Sometimes disagreement is the friction that produces the pearl. Sometimes disagreement is part of the process of getting from the problem to the solution. In this instance, it was both.

 HOOKED, A Thriller

"Written by pros who know how to tell a story. Slick and sexy!" —Publisher's Weekly

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My life in the slush pile.

Back in the twentieth century when I started out in publishing, publishers did not insist that all submissions be agented, and direct submissions, aka the slush pile, served as training wheels (more like hamster wheels as it turned out) for young editors. In my beginner's job at Bantam, I was assigned a desk in the secretarial bullpen where a monster stack of manuscripts waited for me. My job was to read them to see if any might be worth passing on to one of the older, more experienced editors. Conscientious and wanting to impress the senior editor who was my boss, I began to read, at first assiduously finishing one manuscript after another. Here is what I confronted:

• The quasi-literate who loved "big" words but used them incorrectly.
• The sub-literate and illiterate sandwiched at random between the religious visionaries, the sexually shall-we-say peculiar, and the politically febrile.
• The demented, the deranged, the delusional and the dangerous—the last represented by submissions from jails and penitentiaries.
• The would-be writers who had no idea how to shape a scene or introduce a character much less write a line of dialogue that any human being might actually have uttered.
• The wannabes (that word didn’t exist then) to whom punctuation seemed a galactic mystery as did sentences containing both a subject and a verb.

 I was no literary snob and my reading choices embraced everything from Willa Cather to Mickey Spillane—but the slush pile almost did me in.

No matter how fast I plowed through, attaching Bantam’s form rejection letter to the top and placing them in the required SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope), the pile never diminished. Every morning and every afternoon (two mail deliveries a day back then) the mail room guy dumped another stack on my desk. They were typewritten, smeary, often single-spaced, sans margins, punctuation or paragraphing; some were hand written, scrawled in pencil in old-fashioned school notebooks, the kind with the marbelized black-and-white cover. They were held together by rubber bands, string, yarn and, once in a while, ribbon.

 The pages were occasionally pristine but more predictably smudged, dog eared, defaced by icky, unidentifiable substances, or dotted with coffee stains and cookie crumbs left by previous editors who had read—or made a valiant effort to read—the submission in question and, as they say in the trade, “passed.” 

I soon learned to read the first one or two pages, maybe scan a few more, then flip to somewhere around the middle to see if anything had improved and, if any shred of hope remained, look at the last page to see if a more careful reading might be called for. (Dream on.)

The only response from these would-be authors was an occasional complaint that they’d left a piece of white thread on page 125 and, when the ms came bouncing back, the piece of white thread remained in place. Why, they wanted to know, hadn’t the entire ms been read? How could we (the nameless editors because no one ever signed a name to a form rejection) reject their masterpiece without reading it in its entirety?

Let me count the ways. :-(

As the years passed, I moved on and so did the slush pile: to agents who weren’t about to pay a young assistant to slog through the slush—in a short while, it was their unpaid interns. This new, "improved" system provided a double benefit: neither publishers nor agents had to hire salaried employees to sift through the slush pile and submissions had now been vetted before appearing on an editor’s desk.

As time passed, we arrived somewhere in first decade of the twenty-first century and reading the slush pile had gone from paid labor to unpaid labor. A sort of progress, I guess, but one last glimmer of progress beckoned: the internet. The quick and easy upload that earned Amazon a 70% cut every time a 99c book was purchased. The magic of the internet had managed what had long seemed impossible: it  turned a huge time and money sink into a profit center.

Lest you think me excessively bitter and cynical, I will add that the SP was not 1000% hopeless. There are writers who have made it out. Stephanie Meyers (Twilight) was rescued from an agent’s SP. Philip Roth back in 1958 from a Paris Review SP (you can look it up on Google). And Kathleen Woodiwiss, one of the queens of the Bodice Rippers, was originally pulled out of the SP as was Rosemary Rogers.

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The news and the olds.

Diane Sawyer and me.

I’m getting older. So are my friends. We tell each other how good we look and we mean it. We look healthy, alive, interested, interesting.

What we don’t tell each other is how young we look. Because we don’t. We look—more or less—our age. We know it and, while we visit our dermatologist and perhaps even a plastic surgeon; while we wear flattering makeup, patronize talented hair stylists and care about clothes, we don’t make excessive efforts to fool anyone about how many years we've been gracing the planet.

So why does just about every anchor or news personality on tv—most of whom are in their 50s, 60s or beyond—so faux-young?  Look up Diane Sawyer or Nancy Grace, Leslie Stahl, Greta Van Susteren or Katie Couric on the internet and, odds are, one of Google’s first guesses as you type in their names includes the term “plastic surgery.”  Barbara Walters is pushing eighty but, counting in TV years, eighty isn’t pushing back.  And it’s not just the women.  Al Roker, Sam Donaldson and Sam Champion all rank high on the plastic surgery websites.

I’m a true believer in the power of lighting, hair and makeup and I’m certainly not proposing that these knowledgable and experienced people look as if they’d just rolled out of bed to tell us about the most recent global disasters, political crises and economic trends.   In fact, I want them to look their best.  Still, how much Botox, plastic surgery, teeth whitening and fake bake are we supposed to be fooled by?

We grew up with them;  we know approximately how old they are.  We know what we look like and we can probably even guess what they look like.

As we grow older, looking in the mirror isn’t always great but it’s not always terrible, either. Like everyone else, we have our good days and our not-so-good days.  Diane and Katie, Barbara and Al are all very smart and very good at what they do.  Their age and experience are a large part of the reason they’re so respected.  How about letting at least a little bit of it show?  After all, what’s more powerful than authenticity?

We women—and men—“of a certain age” grew up with TV and still have the TV habit. We’re the ones to whom TV wants to sell their relentlessly advertised arthritis-relievers and erection-enhancers.  Do the executives who hire on-air journalists think we forgot we knew their star anchors and reporters back in the day?

Doesn’t occur to them that in their twisted zeal for youthification they risk insulting the very audience they most want to woo? The grown-up audience that hasn’t—at least not yet—deserted them in droves for the internet?

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5 sex thrills (almost) no one talks about.

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Coming soon on iBooks

Freud asked what women want. Well, Dr. F, here are a few clues:

The vaunted 6-pack? Meh.

The big shoulders and small waist? Big effing deal.

The biceps and triceps? The quads and hammies? Oh, yawn.

Lifts weights like an Olympic champ but won’t lift a finger around the house? Surely you jest.

Bulked-up cover boys remind me of Arnold Schwartzenegger and we all know about him. Or else they bring to mind  narcissistic movie stars who flit from woman to woman and pro athletes—baseball, football, basketball, you name it—with a different baby mama in every city his team blesses with its presence.

I have zero interest in a man who devotes hours to himself and “sculpting” his body. He’s the kind of man I’m going to have to fight for mirror time in the AM, who uses more—and more expensive—“beauty” products than I do, and the kind of man whose self-involvement turns me off, not on.

What turns me on in a man is:

1: Competence—Can he change a tire, fix a leaky faucet? Big plus for sure if he can, but, no, I’m not looking for a handyman. Sometimes I just want the man who knows who to call to get the job done.

2: Humor—Give me a man who can make me laugh—over spilled milk, a bad haircut, a new recipe even the dog won’t eat. He’s the kind of man who can make me smile all the way into the bed room

3: Integrity—Introduce me to the man I can trust. The guy who won’t cheat on me, steal my money or turn into a vampire sucking my energy, ambition, goals, dreams is the man who turns me on and keeps me turned on.

4: Savvy—Set me up with the man who knows how to wangle/charm his way into an airline upgrade, can order in a french/spanish/chinese/dominican restaurant, is knowledgable about finance, art and architecture, movies, tv and world affairs. He’s the man you can live with for a life time and never be one of those couples who sit through dinner without a word to say to each other.

5: Smile—Who can resist a guy with the kind of smile that would melt a glacier or even contribute to global warming? Does his smile start with a glint in the eyes, go to the mouth and light up the whole face? Please. Give him my number and twitter handle.

Oh, and a few more essentials, kindness and, as old fashioned as it sounds, good manners. A man who treats others well—who respects his parents and siblings, his colleagues and co-workers—will treat me well. And nice but not necessary, a guy who can cook dinner and clean up afterwards without acting like turning on the stove or washing a dish will make his man root shrivel up and fall off. But if he's a klutz in the kitchen, he knows how to pick up the phone and order take-out when I'm too tired, too hungry and too cranky to cook.

Spare me the studs. Keep your hunks. You can have those “irresistible” bad boys all the girls seem to love. Just give me a man who appreciates everyday life and knows how to live it.

So, girlfriends, do you agree? Do you have anything to add to my turn-on list?

Romancing The Wild: From the "bodice rippers" of the 1980's to 50 Shades of you-know-what.

Romance and an accidental collision.

Romance as a category has shown its strength over the decades as it evolved from the early days of the nurse romance—pretty nurse Patricia wins handsome Dr. Phillips—through the “bodice rippers” of the Eighties to the many sub-genres that exist today including, of course, the steamy erotic romances descending from 50 Shades.

No matter the sub-genre, there always seems to be room for further expansion and an eager audience willing to follow writers wherever our imaginations take us. To pirates and pirate ships, to the Middle Ages, Regency England, and the settling of the American West. Wherever there are people, people can—and will—fall in love.  We want to write about them and readers love to read about them.

ZURI—the word means "beautiful" in Swahili—is a romance with an unusual setting: an animal orphanage named Kihali located in Africa. The initial idea for the book was the product of an accidental collision.

Out Of Africa, set in Kenya in the early 1920’s and starring Meryl Streep as the Danish writer Isaak Dinesen, and the young, golden Robert Redford as a white hunter, is a grand romance—and one of my favorite movies. I watch it every now and then and had just seen it again when, while casually flipping thru TV channels one evening, I happened to see a clip of a baby rhino. I was blown away by the little rhino’s appeal and gracefulness.

Baby animals never fail but a rhino? Could a baby rhino actually be adorable? Yes, indeed. Very much so.

Baby rhino enjoying a handout.

I was also aware via newspaper and internet articles that poaching had become an extremely lucrative international crime. The slaughter of rhinos and elephants was decimating the wildlife populations of Africa to the point where they are now endangered species. Between the glamor of Africa, the vulnerability and appeal of helpless animals and the sweeping Streep-Redford romance, the germ for the book was firmly planted.

The need for research was obvious. I had to find out about the people involved in the dangerous work of animal rescue and protection, the newest scientific discoveries in animal communication as more and more is learned about their high intelligence, the gory reality of poaching and the ruthless criminal gangs who profit from its bloody endeavors.

Then there were the details of rhino husbandry and veterinary, the amazing work being done by African animal orphanages, the risks involved in wildlife care, the details of rhino and elephant behavior—Zuri, the orphaned baby rhino who is the story’s heroine, meets elephant and other animal friends at Kihali. I also needed to find out about the local language, Swahili, Kenyan cuisine & wedding rituals—and I needed to use my research in a way that fit in naturally with the narrative flow of the book.

The research was fascinating. Did you know that the illicit trade in wild animals is third only to the illegal trades in drugs & weapons? Or that rhino horn—it’s actually keratin, the same material found in feathers and nails—is thought to cure cancer, maintain sexual vigor and is considered a miracle medicine in Asia, although it is, in fact, of zero medical value? The price of rhino horn, driven by demand in booming Asian economies, is now more expensive than gold as is the ivory from elephant tusks, used not for “medicinal” purposes but to make carved trinkets.

Of course, in a romance, a love story is crucial. Therefore: Renny Kudrow, the sexy scientist and expert in animal communication, who is the moody Alpha hero. Renny is the Director of Kihali and Starlite Higgins is his newly-hired vet, a talented doctor who hides a horrifying secret. Their relationship gets off to a rocky start when Starlite panics and almost causes Zuri's rescue to fail. The two who must work together to save Zuri and the other animals in their care must also work their way through their initial very rough beginning to a much-deserved Happily Ever After ending.

 By the time I finished writing ZURI, I thought of the book as romance in its broadest sense, meaning love of beauty, love of nature, love of animals, and, of course, the romantic and transformative power of human love.

Readers, do you enjoy romances with off-beat backgrounds and unusual settings? Or do you prefer your romance with backgrounds that seem familiar?

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