But, fortunately, I heard something really interesting on As It Happens last night such that I can point you to a Wikipedia entry to learn all about “Penelope Ashe” and Naked Came the Stranger.

Maybe it’s just me – maybe I’ve been living under a rock – but I had never heard about this before.

It’s an interesting story and, to anyone who has ever attempted publication and been rejected I believe it’s a story containing equal parts “I told you so”, pain, desperation and, finally, laughter.

At any rate, give the Wikipedia entry a read and see what you think.

And nice cover, don’t you think?

Happy long weekend!

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

“Don’t be so judgmental.”

“You shouldn’t judge somebody until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.”

Heard any of these lately? I’m pretty sure you have because these days being judgmental is on the outs as a trait. It’s closely aligned with bigotry and narrow-mindedness. If we are good people we are not supposed to judge.

But we do. Humans do. All living beings do. I think it’s built into us as part of our survival strategy. Quickly assess – based on a million conscious and sub-conscious factors – judge and react. Do it fast.

It’s a pretty normal, in fact essential, process. It keeps prey animals alive. Especially if you’re a woman, there have been times (perhaps when alone on a dark street, perhaps when in a bar; you know the kinds of times I mean) when you’ve judged someone and thought “I’d rather be safe than sorry here,” and have ended up being safe and didn’t worry too much or too long about whether your judgment was correct.

As writers we use judgment. We rely on our readers judging. It lets us cut out all sorts of explanatory detail in description. We don’t have to tell readers our character is self-absorbed and narcissistic. We just have to show her not getting off her iPhone when she’s being served by the store clerk and then, just as we think she is getting off her iPhone to talk to the clerk, she instead uses the glare of her screen to check out her lipstick. Message received; this chick is a jerk.

We can also use judgment to shake our readers up. We let them think the guy sitting across from his girlfriend in a dimly lit Italian restaurant is uncaring and unfeeling as he spends the whole meal texting, however, later we reveal he was hammering out the details of the purchase offer on their first home together. Aw…so sweet!

(I realize both my examples involve public use of cellphones. I admit it, I do judge people who overuse their cellphones in public. Yes, I do.)

I still tell myself I should judge less. Should I? Maybe. Then again, maybe it’s not the initial judging that’s the problem. Maybe it’s an unwillingness to bend once you know more of the details behind the story. Who knows?

I know I do, and will continue to, let my readers’ in-built instinct to judge work in my stories. So, obviously for me, judging has its place.

Finally, on a personal note, what I will say is we all know we’re judged and we make conscious decisions based on that. “Am I too old to wear a skirt this short?” we wonder and “What will people think if my child goes to school with holes in both knees of their pants?” Also will I buy a car? What kind? What colour? And so on and so forth.

So, in summary I would say, as a writer, feel free to play around with judgment and use it where you can and, as a person, be aware those around you will judge you – they can’t help it – and so for goodness sakes don’t talk on your phone while you’re driving and don’t sit across from someone in a restaurant and stare at your screen the whole time because if you do, forget everyone else; I will be judging you!

P.S. Wikipedia has a useful note on the spelling of judgment (or judgement) here (scroll down to “Spellling”).

This post is coming to you a little earlier than my weekly posts normally do because it’s part of the on-going celebrations of the one-year anniversary of Still Moments Publishing (SMP).

I only discovered Still Moments not-so-very-long ago but, since then, have reaped many rewards.

First of all there was my first real-and-true-with-royalties publishing contract.

Then another contract. I haven’t actually gotten around to writing about that yet but my second story will appear in August’s “Heat Wave” themed anthology.

Those contracts were cool and great and fun and such a nice change of pace from the query grind I’d been going through for some time, but there was more.

Still Moments made me realize something about myself. It made me recognize I’m a HEA-er (Happily Ever After, for those of you who dislike acronyms) at heart. Without realizing it I’d been writing romance forever and a day. All my life. But I’d never tried to sell my work to a romance publisher. Duh…I know it sounds silly and obvious now but, honestly, finding SMP was a gift. So, in addition to two publishing contracts SMP gave me direction and a place where I fit.

And one more thing too. A big thing. The reason I’m writing this particular post. SMP comes with a built-in community. So nice. The minute you write for them they invite you into this big, warm, supportive family. From what I know of us as individuals, SMP writers are very different. We span huge geographical distances and we span decades and some of us are parents and some aren’t…and so on. But at heart we’re all writers and we all get each other and we all wish the best for each other.

When engaging in an activity that can be solitary and can be isolating and can be rejection-filled, it’s lovely to know a few messages will trickle into my inbox every day which are just about support and success and happiness – the equivalent of a pink envelope bearing a hand-written address in the midst of multiple white window-enveloped bills – those are my SMP messages and I appreciate them.

So thank you, SMP, for offering me constructive feedback on my writing and for publishing a polished version of my writing and for making sure there’s a little something happy in my inbox every day.

Oh, and by the way, so you can have something nice in your inbox too, SMP is generously giving away an eBook title to one lucky reader. All you have to do to be entered into the draw is leave a comment on this post. At the end of the day tomorrow (Friday), I’ll send the names of commenters to SMP and they’ll select the winner.

(You’ll need to provide your e-mail address to receive the eBook so if you don’t feel comfortable leaving it in your comment, please send it to me separately at tudor(at)tudorrobins(dot)ca.)

I had no idea what to write about this week and then I was standing in line to mail my tax return (aaarrrggghhh!) and the woman in front of me asked for some of the “horse” stamps and I saw they were Joe Fafard’s Running Horses and I thought ah-ha!

Because those horses are AWESOME. They make something inside me rise up and sing. Same with all the outdoor work at the National Art Gallery. Like Maman. Like One Hundred Foot Line.

And, you know (except for the horses which, of course, I would be drawn to no matter what), if you just described either one of those other two to me (giant spider, tall limbless tree) I’d sort of shrug and say, “meh” and would probably think take it or leave it, but they are gorgeous. They make you stop and stare. They give you the feeling of listening to a swelling rendition of the national anthem. There’s something moving in them.

For most people, anyway. That’s why the National Art Gallery paid so much money for them. That’s why they’re huge draws to tourists and locals alike. That’s why you’ll almost never see Maman without an adoring entourage. Standing under her is just so cool…

You see there’s this thing that some art achieves. This rallying of people. This thing that speaks to many, many people and moves them in some way. It can be big and grandiose or it can be simple and straightforward but it works for a big majority of the population and it can be hard to know why.

This is true of literature; you know it is. Anything by Jane Austen. Little Women. Goodnight Moon. The Hardy Boys (the original Hardy Boys!). More recently Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Shakespeare.

And, so you see, it can be lofty or down-to-earth. The language can be tongue-twisting or completely accessible (even criticized for being too accessible in some cases) but you know why Joe Fafard’s horses and Maman and Twilight have huge audiences and stand their ground?

Because they possess universality.

A very (very) magic ingredient.

And if you think I’m now going to tell you how to achieve it, I’m not. I have no idea. I wonder if the creators of those works did? Easier to think they didn’t because then it could just happen to any of us right? We could just do our best and, hey presto, out would pop a universally appealing piece of work.

It could happen…

When you think of works with universal appeal, what springs to mind?

There’s a tussle that goes on in many of our lives, between the tangible and the intangible. I know it’s not just me because I end up discussing this with many of my career clients. Most human beings work on both planes and feel unfulfilled if they don’t hit the right balance. People who work at high-level “thinking” jobs often express a wish they could produce something they could hold; they often envy carpenters or builders. Those who work with their hands for a living often have a rich inner life – like the housecleaner I interviewed who writes songs while he works.

It’s a struggle writers can feel. What we create can be both tangible and intangible depending on the circumstance and how it’s used.

So, how to strike right balance for you? The answer will be very individual but here are some thoughts:

• Do some practical work. As you might have noticed from my last post, I’ve been helping out with my school’s drive to be rebuilt. I sent out a press release (late!) one night this week and came downstairs the next morning to hear my words being read by Stu Mills on Ottawa Morning. Pretty tangible.
• Go on a flight of whimsy. If you’ve been doing too much practical work, write some poetry. Let your mind go, let the words flow; it doesn’t matter if it never sees the light of day.
• Format your work and print it out so you can hold it and read it. Self-publish a copy just for you or a few friends – U of T’s Print-on-Demand BookPOD service lets you do this right now. Or send it to your e-reader. Make it something real even if it’s just for you.
• Or write, write, write and do something tangible on the side. I quilt. Some people cook. Or garden. Or paint a room, build a shed. Whatever. Satisfy your tangible needs and you’ll soon long to create again.

In my author bio and interview posted this week over at Still Moments, I said “if you never have fun you’ll never have anything fun to write about”. This is another benefit of making sure your tangible needs are met – it can only give you more to write about.

Note: to those who come here for writing news and such, this is not a writing post. I pay for this blog and I maintain this blog so I get to use this blog to sound off when I’m disgusted and that would be now.

Another important note: I write this as a taxpayer in both Ottawa and Ontario. That, and being a parent of school-aged children, is the only “position” I hold. I represent me and, if you agree with me, I represent you too.

So, on to Hail Marys.

Having attending Catholic private school from K-6 I can recite these forwards and backwards but it was not the prayer Jan Harder and Lisa MacLeod were referring to earlier this week as they threatened a fellow elected official with “a hard time for the rest of her term” if she didn’t change her vote or resign her position.

No, what these women were referring to (I believe) was the Hail Mary Pass, generally used in football (not soccer) to refer to any very long forward pass made in desperation with only a small chance of success, especially at or near the end of a half.

This is how Ms. Harder and Ms. MacLeod saw the vote to put a rebuild of Broadview Avenue Public School on the Ottawa Carleton District School Board’s (OCDSB) capital priority list to be submitted to the provincial government.

Both women railed against the abuse and circumvention of process, saying it wasn’t about Broadview specifically, it was about doing things incorrectly and with no information.

Well. In an effort to create a pause in the flow of half-truths and misinformation that’s been rampant around this topic, I’ll tell you only what I know to be true.

What I know to be true is that Broadview’s School Council asked all and sundry – every possible person in the know, and many elected officials – what the proper process was to get on the priority list as a rebuild.

They then complied with every single requirement they were told to fulfill. This involved much consultation, research, reading and summarizing of reports, number-crunching, presentation-writing and presentation delivery which, eventually resulted in a preliminary vote (which still needs to be retaken) to put a rebuild of Broadview on the priority list.

Which is when all hell broke loose. Public letter-writing. Threats. Declarations of Hail Marys being thrown.

I’m not saying the OCDSB’s process is a good one but I am saying – such as it is – it was followed.

Now we have something new happening. We have an out-of-nowhere, blind-side, bizarre half proposal being bandied about in the press – and, presumably in many backrooms at the provincial, municipal and school board levels - suggesting that everyone should just back off and undo the process leading up to the last vote, take the Broadview rebuild back off the priority list and maybe, possibly, someday a property owned by the OCDSB in downtown Ottawa will be sold and whatever money that might generate will be used to “renovate and repair” urban core schools as a group.

I struggle to see how this follows process. I struggle to see how this is transparent, accountable or responsible.

Seeing how this came out-of-the-blue and, to me, smells last-ditch and desperate in the extreme, the only way I can describe this is as a great, big, whopper of a Hail Mary Pass.

Just sayin’…

Another light bulb moment at the dinner table tonight courtesy of my son’s English teacher.

My son was all fired up about a “Fortunately / Unfortunately” story they read today.

Just in case you’re not completely familiar with these stories, or you haven’t thought about them in a while, they go something like this:

Fortunately, I finished writing my novel.
Unfortunately, it needed some more work.
Fortunately, I got the revisions done.
Unfortunately I ended up re-writing half the manuscript.

You get the picture…

And it made me think how this is such a natural human rhythm. Our lives – if we’re lucky – follow the “fortunately / unfortunately” pattern. (When we’re unlucky we get a run of “unfortunately”s, but that’s another story).

My next-door neighbour and I walk our kids to school every morning and as we talk our stories tend to go this way:

Fortunately, my mother-in-law never stays over at our house.
Unfortunately, that’s because she lives two blocks away.
Fortunately, she doesn’t come over very often.
Unfortunately, whenever she does she comments on how dirty the house is.
(Disclaimer: this is a completely fictitious story. Neither one of us has this type of mother-in-law problem. However, the only other examples I could think of related to husbands and they just didn’t seem appropriate).

Anyway…it made me think, while I’ve seen all sorts of complicated formulas for plotting – some involving graphs and charts, etc. - the same effect could probably be achieved by simply following the “fortunately / unfortunately” pattern. I figure as long as the story ends on a “fortunately” my readers will be happy and, in the meantime, it will force me to throw some obstacles in my protagonist’s way.

I’m kind of excited about this idea.

Fortunately, it seems like it could work really well.
Unfortunately, I might have trouble sticking to it….

This is my answer to people who ask me “are you going back?” or “when are you going back?”

They mean back to work.

I’ve always known, in the back of my mind, that the above was my answer but now I feel the confidence to state, straight out, I am already back. This is it for me. This is what I want to be doing and what I do has reached the point of employment.

For a long time what I’ve done has fulfilled me (mostly – it’s not perfect but, it’s definitely the most satisfying work I’ve had since graduating from university). However, after doing some (tax) calculations (ugh!), I’ve realized it’s also financially pretty much as good as things are going to get.

Let me explain. I looked at what I earned last year and, while not high by any stretch of the imagination, it was about 50 per cent more than what I earned in the previous year (which makes sense as it was the first year I had both my kids in school full-time).

Then I started adding some stuff up. Like day care costs – before and after school in the school year; all day long in the summer – and house cleaning (because no, if I have to go to work 50 hours a week I am NOT coming home and cleaning my house). And a bus pass, which would be the least expensive way of me getting to work.

I took those numbers and I added them to what I’m already earning. The number was actually fairly substantial. Then I added the percentage on top of that I would have to make to pay Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty.

And, you know what? In a quick look through Monster.ca, I couldn’t find any jobs I was qualified for that paid more than that number.

Not to mention, if you consider my life in terms of a 40 to 50-hour work week, right now I probably spend about half that time doing “work” (and that’s work I mostly enjoy – let’s say work that gives me a 75 per cent satisfaction rating) and the rest of that time I spend either looking after my house or looking after my children. Both of which I think are important and enjoy.

Or, I could drop all that, pay someone else to look after my house and kids, and earn about the same amount by doing work I don’t think would hit the 75 per cent threshold (not in the jobs I’m seeing out there anyway).

Of course, these calculations also don’t take into account things like needing a decent wardrobe and probably having to pay a hairdresser instead of cutting my own hair in front of the bathroom mirror at 11:30 at night because I’m sick of the way it looks.

And, most importantly, they don’t tell the story of a more stressed household. Less homemade food. Fewer preparations for things like Easter Egg hunts and camping trips and family vacations. More getting-things-done-somehow-at-the-last-minute.

Not to mention they don’t answer the question of who goes on field trips and who reads with the Grade 2 class every Monday morning and who gets up off their hands and knees from washing the floor to run up to the school and bring home a child whose just thrown up in the classroom garbage can?

So, for now, this is my work and anyone who wants to make me change it is going to have to find me day care, hire me a cleaning lady and fight me tooth-and-nail to give it up.

In this post I am going to tell you to Just Do It.

This is despite the advice I’ve given my children that when someone is yelling “Do it! Do it! Do it!” and said person is holding a video camera, you should not do it (lessons learned from America’s Funniest Videos).

There are times when, if you think too much about something, you might not try it and, if you do, you’ll probably mess it up. In fact, there are many times like this.

Let me tell you about some in my recent memory:

(1) The horse I’ve been riding for several months now has some difficulties with her canter transitions. That is to say, she’s not very good at moving from one gait (trot) into the next gait (canter) and, when she does, she often takes the wrong lead (her front outside leg goes forward first instead of her front inside leg – getting this right is quite important for balance, etc.).

So, the other day our task was to ride a canter figure eight in the arena doing simple changes on the centre line. This means canter a circle in one direction (e.g. on the left lead) then, where the two circles connect, drop to a trot and pick up the canter to circle in the other direction, (e.g. on the right lead).

You can imagine it was highly unlikely Quinn was going to do this properly for me. Especially as we were to do it multiple times and she struggles with doing this once, with lots of space and nobody watching.

The thing is, I could have thought about it for a long time. Some might say I should have thought about it for a long time. Instead I just thought “let’s see what happens” and we went out and she nailed it. She picked up the canter quickly and on the correct lead every single time. All night. She has never done that before.

I was glad I had Just Done It.

(2) Skiing. So, I’m not going to pick one particular example but I will say if you stand at the top of a ski run for long enough – especially if said ski run is steep and / or has moguls on it – there’s a good chance you will either turn away and ski the green run beside it instead or, if you do tackle it, you will be so tentative and hesitant you will look like a complete dork while doing so.

I’m practicing just going. Not stopping on the lip and looking around and picking my route but seeing the lip ahead of me and skiing right over it while looking ahead for rocks and ice in the moment.

And, you know what, these runs aren’t perfect. I don’t make zero mistakes. But I have momentum and I keep going and I think I look like less of a dork than if I dithered for ages and then picked my way down and still made mistakes.

So, in other words, I’m finding Just Doing It is working for me.

(3) And now to writing. Of course. You knew it was coming didn’t you? Because if I think hard enough about it, I can wonder whether the next thing I write is going to be as good as the last thing I wrote. Or, I can question whether it’s really going to be possible for me to revise what I’ve written into something readable and understandable while retaining the essence of the story.

Think, think, think. Worry, wonder, worry. Dither and delay.

You can do all of the above or you can just do it. Just sit down and write it. Just open a new file and name it and start filling it up.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to a point in a story where I’ve thought “now what?”. I’ve wondered if inspiration has completely deserted me. If that’s going to be the end of my creativity in this particular story and, by extrapolation, maybe in my writing life in general.

Then I sit down (it usually helps if I’m sitting down somewhere with no distractions and very few entertainment alternatives – the hallway in the church outside my sons’ Cubs meeting is a great example) and I start writing and many times – definitely often enough to make the exercise worthwhile – the story ends up moving forward and past the “stuck” point and sometimes even somewhere unexpected but kind of cool.

And I walk away with 500 or 700 or 1000 words written and, more important than that, I’m no longer stuck.

I can’t guarantee clients or editors or publishers that I’ll be perfect first time, every time. Can’t promise I’ll knock it out of the park first try. But I can promise I’ll deliver and I’ll do it on time and I’ll keep doing it. It’s called Just Doing It and anyone can do it. Really, anyone. Get up and go. Don’t think too much; just go. Start, and try, and keep moving, and follow your nose (and your heart) and don’t get bogged down and JUST DO IT my friends.

I’ve signed a publishing contract!

Not the one you might think, and not even the one I expected, but a really fun one.

My story (working title “An Island Wedding”) will appear in the June “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” anthology of Still Moments Publishing.

Still Moments has been such a find for me. I just love what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

I love their premise of providing “getaway” reads for women. I love the way they treat their authors (I love being one of their authors!). I love how they’re on the cutting edge of publishing – offering stories in different formats (themed anthologies) and lengths and doing it all electronically.

In the short time I’ve been one of this group of writers I can say I’ve never come across a more positive environment.

Obviously I’ll send you a reminder in June when the anthology with my story in it is available but, in the meantime, if you’re looking for something fun and reasonably priced to load onto your e-reader, you might want to check out some of the titles already available from Still Moments.

Most of the anthologies contain four stories of about 20 to 25 pages each. While all are romances and they’re based on a common theme, the genres can be (and often are) very different. For about a buck a story it’s a great chance to try something new without making a huge time or money investment.

This is just another example of how there really are all sorts of opportunities out there. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open and try the ones that sound promising for you and you never know where you might end up.