Preposition Me

I am in love with prepositions. I must be. I can’t seem to let a sentence go by without including an “in there,” “over here,” “beside him,” or “for me,” or the equivalent. For example, just picking up the draft of the contemporary I’m working on, I find: “He didn’t know how else to describe the incredible joy her smile aroused in him.”

All right, answer me this—where in heck else would joy be aroused if not in him? He was watching a tree bounce with joy maybe?

Perhaps this isn’t the best example since I’m learning (after how many years? Twenty?) to cut these excesses while I’m writing instead of waiting for the editing process, but they still creep in. How many times have I written the equivalent of “He sat over there on the chair and sipped his beer” ? I know that’s how I talk. I like words, and the more, the merrier. But when writing, I’m limited to 100,000 words, and any extras just cause the eyes to glaze over.

And if you think I’m being hard on myself, note that the above example from my manuscript was immediately followed by this sentence: “He would have stood on his head and sung the La Marseillaise if she’d asked it of him.”

Sings so nicely, doesn’t it? Arggghhhhh!

Did someone say writing is easy? Slap them for me if they did.

State of the Industry

I’ve just returned from the Reno Romance Writers Conference where my ability to fry machines under stress expressed itself by frying my laptop, the ethernet modem, and apparently the hotel’s patience. This is my excuse for not keeping up my blog or email, and I’m sticking to it. Even had I managed to log on using dial-up, my sentiments would have been unprintable and would reflect very badly on the saintly image I attempt to uphold.

The conference itself was overwhelming but a great place to schmooze and greet old friends again. I can’t say that reports on the industry caused me to rush home in a fervor to start writing, but I am delighted to hear of all the barriers crashing down as publishers invent new ways of reaching an increasingly inaccessible market.

Someday, should I ever reach any segment of the reading populace and persuade them to comment, I’d like to know what entices readers to buy books, and what turns them off. Being an avid reader, I have my own theories on this, but I’m sure there is more than one answer to these questions.

For now, I would simply like to know enough to figure out how to reach more blogs than my own!