Poaching is a Crime

Ugh! Behind again! I did so well in September, and then the last two to three weeks fell apart for me--including one ER trip for my son--and I'm back to having the weird blogging schedule again. Oh well. ;) I'm now the mother a five-year-old--how the heck did that happen? Overall, things are going well with my son, so that's about as much can be hoped for at the moment.

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Today's post is something that's been driving me nuts lately: Poaching.

I'm not talking about boiling meats, either, or illegal hunting of wild game.

The type of poaching I'm talking about is cyber-poaching. This is where Friend A from one circle you move in decides to befriend on Facebook or Google+ Friend B of yours from a completely different circle of your friends. They otherwise would have no other reason to be friends with each other besides the fact they both know you.

Some people may not see why this is harmful, but it is, especially if the person in the middle has no idea it's going on until it's too late. You say something to Friend B that Friend A misconstrues, and then you get a snide note from Friend A. Or they jump into the conversation which was supposedly otherwise "private." (Although, let's be realistic: just how much privacy do you really have on the Internet these days?)

Honestly, I find poaching rather creepy, especially when it's done from friends to family or vice-versa. My friend, Chila Woychik, has also agreed with this in the past on her own Facebook page, and actually labeled it what I'm calling it. Why does, say, Friend B need to befriend my cousin? Or, why does my uncle need to be friends with an author friend of mine? (These are examples--they are not real, just so you know.) Pre-Facebook, there would have been no way for most people's different circles they move in to come in contact with other circles, except, perhaps, at very specific instances--birthday parties, weddings, funerals.

But, just because the way to connect with others has gotten easier doesn't mean we shouldn't show some restraint. And, I'm not talking about honest-to-goodness networking--where you're a business-owner and reach out to another person who is doing what you're doing to learn from them and their experiences. However, next time you're tempted to make a friend request to someone because you have a friend in common, stop and ask yourself why you'd want to be friends with that person. If it's only because of that other friend, maybe you'd be better off not pressing that friend request button.

That being said, here are my general rules for how I handle my social networking.

• Do I know the person in real life? This can be through a menagerie of ways: church, family, writers, politics, old school chums, etc.
• Do I have a legitimate reason to know this person besides our friend of a friend? For instance, is this person another writer? A politician whom I would like to keep track of? A pastor or support staff at my church?
• If I do not know this person, do we have a lot of mutual friends where I can easily identify which group of friends they belong to? For instance, if they're friends with K.M. Weiland, Linda Yezak, and 216 other friends who are writers, the likelihood is this person is a reader or a writer, and probably okay to befriend.

I use these guidelines when I send a friend request, and I also use it when I'm sent a friend request. If someone is new to Facebook, it is quite often the case that when I receive a request, I do not see many, if any, common friends, so I will sit on the request for a while and wait for more friends to be added. If none come to light, I ignore the request permanently.  Another option, being that I manage four pages (including my Author Facebook and Google+ pages), I'll direct that person to whichever seems the best fit.

How about you? Do you find "poaching" a problem in your cyber-life? Do you have guidelines on how you handle networking and mutual friends? If so, share below!

Until next time,

Structuring Your Novel: A Review

As a "pantser" writer, me and structure/outlining don't necessarily go together naturally. Oil and water, we are.

However, every writer should continue to learn about her craft, and that's where K.M. Weiland's new book, Structuring Your Novel, comes into play. I was absolutely delighted, I must say, when K.M. asked me to be an early reader, as I was for her last nonfiction book, Outlining Your Novel. Even so, being in a bit of a hectic time of life, I'm getting to the actual reviewing a bit late. But, that old adage is true: better late than never.

Being a pantser means I don't usually pay attention to structure, whether it's outlining or otherwise. I've only actually ever used an outline with success once, and that was for NaNoWriMo back in 2009. Yet, K.M.'s previous non-fiction book left me thinking, and while I'm still not an outliner, I can honestly say I recognize the merits of outlining, and when I'm stuck, will sit down and outline the next few chapters to get me going again.

I approached Structuring in much the same way. I'm a pantser: what can this book do for me?

Well, a lot, I'll say that. Not so much a "how to" book, more a "these are the qualities of a strong book" book, Structuring Your Novel uses examples from familiar books and movies to describe fundamentally how all successful stories are arranged, what readers and viewers expect. Surprisingly enough, if you've read enough quality books or watched solid movies, you probably intuitively know a lot about story structure. But, K.M. lays it out perfunctorily so you can understand why you need to do XYZ by a set point in the story, for instance, having all your major characters introduced by the first plot point, around the 25% mark in your story.

What I learned most: I don't have to outline my novels, but I should sit down and at least figure out if my drafts are in line with what typically happens in a book. Is my first plot point too early? Too late? What can I do to adjust its timing?

Additionally, I really enjoyed the second and third parts: Part Two is on Scene Structure, and Part Three is a short piece on Sentence Structure. Some of "Scene Structure" will be familiar if you've been following K.M.'s blog, Helping Writers Become Authors, but it's nice to have the refresher in an easy-to-snag spot on my Kindle. Sentence Structure really is a crash course in many do's and don't's common in early novels: repetitiveness, ambiguity, pompous words, etc.

Who needs this book: Every fiction writer who wants to get a better handle on the elements of storytelling, outliner and pantser alike. While newbies especially would benefit, those of us who are old-hands at story (whether published or not) can use the refresher, and gain new insights into how to tell a superb story. Maybe we will realize we need to move some bodies around in our stories because of Structuring. (That's a little murder mystery writer humor!)

Structuring Your Novel is available through Amazon.com (and other booksellers) for $2.99 for Kindle presently, however, the list price is $12.75. Paperbacks cost $10.42, also at the same list price. Whichever version you pick up, it is well worth the cost. Getting a solid grasp on structure--even if you're a pantser like me--will help make you a better writer, and in the end, isn't that what all of us writers want?

Until next time,

A Face-Palm Moment

You know, when I picked up writing again on this blog a couple weeks ago, I joked I may be sharing my cooking disasters here.

It really was meant to be a joke. Truly, it was.

Unfortunately, barely a week had passed when I did it.

Normally, I don't have full-out disasters in the kitchen. I'm really a pretty good cook. I will, occasionally, choose recipes that don't go over well. I will experiment, and things won't be as flavorful  as they could be. Or, I'll be absent an ingredient and will substitute something that really shouldn't be in there. Like... cilantro instead of basil.

My husband has decided I should not be grilling any longer. Unfortunately, his hours require me to grill if we're going to be grilling on a weeknight or it could be 9 PM before we eat dinner.

Enter a bad combination of events last week.

• I was grilling.
• I was grilling mule deer ribs.
• I wanted to watch the season finale of A&E's "Longmire" before it expired on my iPhone app.
• I decided doing all of these at the same time was a good idea.

iPhone in hand, I began grilling our mule deer ribs after having properly thawed them for 2 days in my fridge. I'd seasoned them lightly, and as I watched Walt Longmire's TV portrayal, went inside to get my side dishes going, and wash and set the table. My kids were being a little needy... I probably should have sent them to their rooms.

I get a little engrossed in the show, but go out to flip the ribs. They're looking pretty good, and I turn down the heat, mostly because I'd gotten a text from my adorable husband that he would be a little late. No big  deal, I do this all the time with the grill.

Mistake #1: Pushing the ribs to the back of the grill.

Mistake #2: Not turning off a burner.

I come back out 10 - 15 minutes later... and the thermometer on the top of the grill immediately tells me something is definitely wrong. 600°?!?! How the heck is it 600°!

Robert Taylor on A&E's "Longmire"

Opening the lid, I find my ribs a charred mess, and mostly ablaze. It had gotten so hot, some of the rib bones had turned to ash, I discover once the fire is mostly out.

Needless to say, none of us were thrilled. We couldn't find much edible meat, though enough for a few bites a piece. Hubby and I were still hungry after we put the kids to bed (late) and had to share a bowl of popcorn.


On the plus side, the "Longmire" season finale made me wish it wasn't a summer show. Thirteen episodes a year are not nearly enough. I can't wait to find out what happens next!


Until next time,