Hi everyone,

    For a while I was doing these 1,000-word blogs. And then I realized that was a 1,000 words I could be putting onto my next novel.

    So now I do short, sweet tweets EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY. That seems to work better for most people.

    If I have something REALLY WORTHWHILE to say and it's worth your time to read 1,000 words, I will post here. But if not, please visit:

        https://twitter.com/suzannechazin

 There, you can get a dose of inspiration every weekday (all the value with none of the fat). Or find the same posts on my professional facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzanne-Chazin/310628139068684

     It's called "Word Caffeine," and here is the new announcement for it I just had printed up:

Why Writers Aren't Airline Pilots

Why Writers Aren't Surgeons

In case you were wondering why I have not been blogging, as you can see, I've been extremely busy!

10 Thoughts of the Day for Writers

  

1.   If you want a writer to visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, give him a 

      deadline.

2.   An outline is a thrilling map of all the places your story will never go.

3.   If you want your friends to stop confiding in you, tell them you’re working on a 

      novel.

4.   Never tell someone at a party that you’re a novelist. Chances are, they won’t

      know who you are or what you’ve written but they’ll have an opinion anyway.

5.   Selling books these days is like selling bottled water next to a water fountain. No

      one needs to buy what they can get for free.

6.   How come no one wants to tell you what’s wrong with your manuscript but 

      everyone wants to tell you what’s wrong with your published book?

7.   Treat your fictional characters as charitably as you would your significant other.

      You can dump your significant other but those characters will sit around in print 

      for a long, long time.

8.   When you start, you live to write. When you get successful, you write to live. 

      Never forget the first phase.

9.   A story is like a car. A writer works the gas and brakes. An editor helps him

      steer. But it’s readers who make the road.

10. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do an awful first draft on today.

Off to Bouchercon!

    I'm off to Bouchercon tomorrow for four days. For most people, this sounds like some sort of convention of French butchers. Actually, it's the annual conference for mystery and thriller writers. I should have gone years ago and never did. Well, finally I'm going.

    Confession time: I've never been to a convention. As a journalist, I always traveled to do a story. I dressed the way my subjects dressed, went where they went, ate what they ate. Since my subjects tended, for the most part, not to be movie stars or Supreme Court judges, this usually meant "dress casual." Sometimes, it meant jeans and a T-shirt. I was there to blend in, gain my subject's trust and get their story. I wasn't there to press a business card in their hand and sell them something.

    But a convention, I assume, is sort of a see-and-be-seen event. In other words, I have to schmooze. I've never learned the art of schmoozing. I don't even have a schmoozing wardrobe!

     What do you wear to a convention? I know what my husband wears when he goes to firefighters' conventions--a navy blue polo shirt and khakis (it's almost a uniform with these guys). I don't think I'm the navy-blue-polo-shirt-and-khakis-type.

     The conventions my husband goes to have great giveaways. This year, they gave everyone a squeezy stress-relief doll shaped like a fat fireman. Do you think Bouchercon will have stress relief dolls shaped like publishers? I'd love to give a few of them a squeeze at the moment...

     Wish me luck--I think I need it.

   

Embrace the Chicken

    So…I’m trying to get back into my work routine but unfortunately, I’m having the exterior of my house repainted at the moment. The good news: I have a very conscientious painter who is sanding everything—and I do mean everything. Our shrubbery is coated in an inch of sawdust. We look like the before pictures in a termite commercial.

     The bad news: I feel like I’m living inside a dentist’s drill. I can’t get any work done. Nada. I can barely sit on my office chair without the vibrations knocking me off. I don’t have a laptop (gotta sell that book before I can afford one). So today I decided to be a good daughter and spend most of the day helping my 94-year-old father do his chores.

     Don’t let my dad’s advanced age fool you; he’s a Russian. And just like vodka, he is no less potent with age. He reads dozens of books a year, still has a full head of hair and knows to the penny what he has in his bank account. 

     But that said, spending the day with a very elderly person (which I try to do once a week) can often be an exercise in extreme patience. This morning, I found myself inside the A&P supermarket for an hour (longer than I would ever be there myself) while my dad debated the merits of various cheeses.

     I wouldn’t have minded so much but the market was freezing. Outside, it was 85 degrees. Inside, we were hovering at Siberian winter. Of course my sturdy Russian-stock father didn’t notice the cold at all. He just kept debating the merits of Swiss cheese at $7.99 a pound versus Cheddar at $5.99 while I slowly turned the color of the Roquefort. Have patience, I tried to tell myself.

     I wanted to feel compassionate.

     I wanted to feel my toes.

     In desperation for warmth, I grabbed a pre-cooked oven roasted chicken from the warming counter and clutched it in my arms like a baby.

     This is not exactly how I want to picture myself at this juncture in life, standing in the middle of an A&P, embracing a Perdue oven roaster while my dad decides whether he’d prefer the spreadable brie or the pre-diced pepperjack and my painter slowly reduces my house to a toothpick. But hey, sometimes in life, you just have to go where circumstances lead you.

     Sometimes, you have to embrace the chicken.