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I think RWA is (generally speaking) a great organization. I think a lot of times it's extremely helpful. I think RWA has done much to help romance become a genre that's taken seriously. I think RWA refuses to be shunted aside by people who say, "Oh, it's just women." I think that is awesome.

However. The number one thing I see from RWA members that makes me cringe is this "Pro" thing. Really. Stop it. I don't care that you have a pro pin. It doesn't actually make you a professional at all. In fact, I sort of mentally groan and roll my eyes and think to myself, "Great, yet another person who has no idea what she's doing."

It's not your fault -- RWA encourages you to think this is important. That's fine. But here's a reality check: it doesn't matter. If you're sending me a proposal, I care about your words a lot, and your publishing history/contacts a little bit, and your RWA status not at all.

(If you don't know what I am talking about, here's a quick definition: RWA offers something called a "Pro pin" to its members who have finished and submitted a manuscript. Since 999 times out of 1,000 (999,999 times out of 1,000,000?) a first-time submission won't get published, you can prove that you are a "pro" by showing them your rejection letter. Seriously. I have run into more than one person who writes and submits a crappy ms. just for a pro pin, and more than one person who thinks that a pro pin means something to editors. It does not. Obviously.)

La la la. Moving on. Yesterday when I woke up, Vincent was dragging his back legs. In fact, I woke up because he was making weird noise. It was like he didn't have the use of his hips, but he wouldn't let me look at his legs. So I called my vet and left a message and called in sick to work. I kept calling my vet. To make a long story short, she couldn't see me, so I went with both cats to the ghetto vet near the Williamsburg Bridge. Vincent was fine -- by the time we got there, he was totally okay. But it turns out that Shiksa's got conjunctivitis!

I felt kind of hysterical and ridiculous -- yet at the same time absolutely vindicated because something was wrong.

Then I went to the office, because I am a compulsive workaholic, and, before going out for supper with some of my friends, I stopped in at a B&N near my office. I was kind of appalled to see that romance only had two bookshelves, whereas mystery had five, but whatever. I picked up six or seven books, and read one of them while drinking a mocha -- The Admiral's Bride by Suzanne Brockmann. She's one of my favorite writers, and this is a reprint (originally published in 1999), and I loved it. And when I was finished, I realized that I shouldn't have done that. I should have saved her for last.

Because the other five books or however many I had? Were crap. I flipped through them on the train on my way home. The most egregious errors were ones the copyeditor really should have caught (like the heroine who first graduated in 1996 and then in 1998, and either way, there was no way that she was a successful sociology professor!). I hated so many of the characters. There were a lot of clumsy beginnings -- dossiers instead of character development, etc. Totally boring stuff that actually kind of upset me. Why so lazy, writers?

Not to even mention that 99% of the time, when there's a dossier to introduce characters, they're always accurate. I hate that. I think it would be much more interesting to do something like what

cesperanza did in her story MVP and have the dossier actually be inaccurate (or not entirely accurate, anyway). Come on, shake things up.

Jeez.

I don't mean to sound so vehement, but.... blah. I had high hopes. I always do. I just hate everything! I can see why other people would enjoy some of it (sometimes I can, anyway), but I just... Hm. Like my userinfo used to say, I am interested exclusively in things that are interesting.

Things I have tried and failed at in the last few days: to set up a "real" blog using movable type (that shit is hard!), Trackbacks, PB Wiki (

scratchyfishie and

2muchexposition both have one, but I can't figure out what to use it for!), the Xvid codec, the DivX codec, and to teach myself to compress video files without losing too much quality.

I have, however, suceeded at eating a lot of burritos, listening to a lot of Kane, watching a lot of Supernatural and Criminal Minds and Grey's Anatomy and The Evidence, and planning out what I am going to do with my life, which includes opening a roadside truckstop diner with my friends where we will serve pie.

In conclusion, Christian Kane is hot. There's not much more I can say about that.

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There are certain discussion loops and services available only to Pro members, and there's a Pro retreat at National, which I think is just a series of workshops on the first day of the conference. (I'm going to National for the first time this year.)

Anyway, I am RWA-Pro, but it never would've occurred to me to mention that fact in a query letter, because all that really means is I finished a manuscript and had the guts to send it out--a fact I'm proving anyway by querying! I did mention my membership in my local chapter and in the Beau Monde (the Regency special interest chapter--I write in that era, though with more battlefields than ballrooms), but only in the next-to-last paragraph after talking about my book and where I thought it would fit in the market. And I must've done something right, or at least not too badly wrong, because I have an agent now!

Vincent is a good cat, but I think that level of manipulation is slightly beyond him! Hee.

I emailed you. Yes, I'm now officially Canadian!

But he's a cat! They're plotting world domination!

(Or at least that's what Tigger thinks. LOL)

You forgot to add, "And we liked it!" at the end after teh walking uphill both ways part.

YAY!!

I don't have an email. Boo.

Okay, Vincent absolutely does not think that. he just wants to be left alone with his turkey dinner and his Torah!

AND WE LIKED IT!!!

Well, I liked it. It took me a long time to get used to diaryland and livejournal and that stuff. I still don't really like MT and all that junk. And wikis! OMG! They really conuse me!

>>RWA offers something called a "Pro pin" to its members who have finished and submitted a manuscript.<<

That's it? I was expecting a lot more, frankly, as in "professional published". Someone who's got a book coming out from Tor, sure. :) But I tried sending out my first novel when I was 12...handwritten on notebook paper on both sides of the page...and I don't exactly think that merits a pin...

Wow! *is impressed* How did you wind up with such a cooperative cat? *g*

I like blogger but I think of my blog there as a different kind of tool than my LJ which is more personal and a lot lazier.

MT and Wordpress are too complicated for me and I'm apparently an old fuddy duddy inside and hate to deal with new fangled stuff.

Babylon 5 was a cumulative effort. I got into it during the second season when the overarching storyline became very sinister and the cahracters that we thought were comical took some evil turns while the characters that seemed one note villains in the first season found some nobility and nothing went right for anyone (there were some episodes where the tagline could be answered with a resounding No. As in "will the captain prevent the war from starting?" No. "Will the doctor save a race of aliens before they all die from the plague?" Not a chance.)

But then I tried watching the whole thing all the way through after it was on TNT and teh first season is hideously awful.

Overall it's a great storyline, but JMS has really clunky dialogue that only the best actors can overcome (and not even them at times)

So you'd probably prefer to watch that episode of Deadwood where she gets beaten and shot in the head?

The cool thing about the biker gang guy is the irony of the fact that he's pretty much the one actor in the cast who has the upbringing of most of the characters (very rich kid in Los Angeles with a Hollywood family - or in his case, he's the great grandson of Frank Capra) but he's definitely the best character in the bunch.

Although Logan is a great character too - mostly over the course of an entire season where he's so contradictory.

But I suppose if Veronica annoys you, there's really no convincing you to give it another chance. Oh well. It's just a television show. Just a television show.

Oh and if you don't post before next week, have a great Pesach.

I thought Deadwood was kind of boring too.

I suppose if Veronica annoys you, there's really no convincing you to give it another chance.

I've given it waaaaay more than one chance. Are you kidding? I actually got a bunch of my friends to start watching it back in the first season -- episodes one and two were interesting. But by episode three, forget it. I kept coming back, and kept thinking, "This crap is too clever for its own good."

Finally I just gave up. I mean.... why bother, when there's so many other tv shows I can watch, you know?

You might want to keep a close watch on Vincent -- if it happens again, definitely get him to your vet and consider getting an x-ray. I'm not trying to be alarmist, but difficulty with his hind legs was the first signal we had that something was wrong with the late great Mr. Louis P. Fluffcat.

As for "Pro" status, I understand why RWA started it up -- there was such an outcry about "not enough being" done for the unpubbed that this really seemed the only way to calm the masses. While I'm going to apply once I qualify again (since my last rejection was a couple of years ago before I burned out and just wrote fic for a while) because I'd like access to the "boot camp" workshops they do on the PRO list, it's not something I'd put in a query letter. In fact, when I queried for a historical romance, my RWA membership was mentioned only in passing because I included that I'd done presentations on historical costuming at a couple of Nationals. Given how long ago that was now, I probably wouldn't even include that.

I've heard people in my chapter say one should just go ahead and submit any old thing to get the rejection so one can get the Pro Pin, but the idea of submitting something that I don't feel is ready is anathema to me. Waste of my time, waste of the editor's time.

I tried Moveable Type for my writing blog -- didn't like it and ended up with WordPress. Problem is, you end up spending a fair amount of time figuring out how to use SQL and manipulate CSS stylesheets.

Those were fun times.

But I've learned a lot about HTML that way, and when I got a blog, I just picked the first template and rewrote the entire thing to make it look the way I want. Something you can't do with LJ. I've also applied for a Europa Domain and when that one works, I'll design a really cool website. :)

I think both LJ and blogs have their advantages, and that's why I have both.

One of the problems is that critique groups and how-to books and so forth are teaching a One True Way to write. It's making everything too much the same.

Some suggestions are useful, but I've learned to trust my instincts rather than the books, and I break a lot of "rules".

[winces] I hope you don't think all e-presses are crappy. Though that is precisely why I say it is an e-press and put the name of the e-press in question in my query letters when it's a relevant market credit -- if I just toss off "I am a published author" without the details, I'm sure it really does look like either I don't know that editors know how to use Google, or I'm hoping that they won't.

I've spent the last year in a state of paranoia about whether it is better to state the credits up front, or to *not* state them up front and have them found by Googling. :-)

Ah, CSS. I remember when CSS first hit the streets (ahem) and I loved it. Now I can hardly remember how to tag pages so that the underlines don't show up when I link things. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

I am definitely keeping a close eye on him. It seemed silly to think it then, but a little research on the internet (hah) makes me wonder if it's not neurological.

And as for RWA... there's always an outcry. First it's the unpubbeds, and then it's PAN, and... etc. People always think that not enough is being done for them.

Some e-presses are crappy. Others are not. I have spent a good deal of the last year trying to figure out how to write an article about e-published fiction without sounding like a print snob. Especially since... some print houses are crappy. Others are not.

*g*

Oh, I hear you. This is part of the problem from my perspective. I *know* some e-presses are crappy. In fact, I think "some" is an understatement. They may even follow Sturgeon's Law. But since I'm epublished myself, how do I say "Some are not" without it sounding like special pleading?

And when trying to explain to someone with her first contract why she should *read* the contract before signing it, and think about whether as a reader she would buy books from that publisher, how do I say "Yes, some are crappy" without sounding like a print snob?

Yeah, I think we're stuck.

And even the good print/e houses have their problems. I will be the first to say that Tor ha spublished some stinkers!! It's a tough line to draw. But you know what? I can almost always tell when someone's been e-published from the text, and I can't do that with print publishing. (And how do you write in a rejection letter, "Seriously, take this to epublisher X and you'll be very successful there" without sounding HIDEOUS?)

I second the suggestion to keep a close eye on the kitty. My friend's dog recently died, and the first major symptom was difficulty/inability to move his hind legs. She took him to the vet who initially diagnosed him with a pinched muscle but unfortunately that didn't turn out to be the case. Of course, her dog was like 15 years old so it was probably old age rather than anything else.

Anyway, it sounds like you have it under control. Hopefully it's nothing serious!

P.S. Enjoyed Touch of Evil, loved The Challenge and am really digging The Dare! =)

Yay, that is always nice to hear!

I think the one thing that the pro pin can signify (not that this is saying much, mind you) but it can at least show that someone has completed a manuscript. Given how many people in RWA are contest whores who are masters of the partial and wouldn't know how to complete a manuscript if it came up and led them by the hand, I think this counts for something. Not necessarily something to mention in a query letter-- but it's an accomplishment.

I have bigger issues with the notion of all the unpublished writers being referred to as "pre-published." You're either published, or you're not. Semantics, perhaps, but it's one of the things that's always chafed my knickers a bit.

I will have to turn my mother's famous chocolate bourban pecan pie (with chocolate ganoush drizzle) into a vegan recipe and send it to you. I can't imagine there's much in there that can't be made vegan. :)

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