Imaginary Friends

And can I just say I hate the term "pantser?" My Mac hates it, too. It keeps trying to change it into panther. That's a much cooler thing to be. So instead of plotters and pantsers, let's call them plodders and panthers and move on from there. :P Plodders are the people who write detailed outlines of how an entire novel should take shape before they actually start writing it. Panthers are those who simply sit down and write with no idea where they're going, "by the seat of their panths" as it were. Anyway, I do try to outline a book before I start writing it. The first novel I wrote had no outline and it turned into a train wreck. No, it was too far from any tracks to be a train wreck. It was like if you took a train and dropped it in the middle of a lake. The second book, well, I tried to write an outline but I got it all completely wrong and doomed the book from the very start. The third one I thought and thought about for a long time, wrote an

These are the things I wanted to say in my query letter but decided I shouldn't. I don't know who you are. I've been sending queries to ten agents a week, and I don't have all day to cyber-stalk you properly. I visited your website, if you have one. First, I looked up your bio to make sure you might want my book. Then I checked the submission guidelines. I started a new email, typed in the subject "Query: DRIVERS," wrote Dear [You] at the top, and pasted in my query letter. I may have followed that up with a painful synopsis and/or sample pages from Drivers  that I'd previously formatted with spaces between paragraphs. (So it'd look better in email, you know.) That query is my sixth version, meaning it was at least my sixth try at writing a query from scratch for Drivers,  which is the third novel I've written, revised, and edited. I wrote it from my heart, the way everyone says we're supposed to, and I've never been sure anyone else wo

As in mine is seriously bad these days. I'm talking short-term memory, because my long-term memory seems to be fine. I can find my house, usually. Like, I saw a thing where someone asked who said the following: "If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot." And I knew it was from a movie, and I knew I'd just recently seen that movie. It was on the verge of coming to me for like five mind-imploding minutes until I finally just cheated and Googled it. And you know what? I totally should have known who said it, because I had just seen it, and it's from one of my favorite movies, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . I'd just watched it with my kids the week before. (They thought it was weird. But you know, they watch the Backyardigans, so who are they to talk?) But anyway, that's not why I say I have a bad memory. It's because I've thought of three or four things I could write a blog entry about

Wow, that was weird. I typed a title and hit enter, and it published this without any content. So now I'm updating my update. Which is to say, I'm simply saying I've updated my pitch for Drivers,  and you can find it here . (The Drivers tab at the top of my blog.) I've also been working on the manuscript again. Making it better. I just went back and read over the change I made to the first chapter right after Christmas, and I really like it. Love it, in fact. It was one of those, "Wow, I wrote this?" moments. See, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who group everyone into two categories, and those who don't. Ha! I'm so funny. Seriously, there are those who can relate to a depressed main character, and those who can't. My wife can't. Or couldn't until I started adding memories of Ash's life and how he ended up suicidal in the first place. Gah, it's seven in the morning and my brain is already fried. How shall

There are a thousand things I could blog about: Christmas, sushi, Kindles, children, the book I started writing, the book I went back to fix something in, the contest I won, email, fabrication with duct tape and foam core board, desk arrangements, the utter lack of snow on the ground, etc. But I want to say something that only I can say. There are millions of people expressing opinions and viewpoints out there, offering advice, critiquing, etc. (That's the word of the year, I just decided. Et cetera. ) Many of them are very good, insightful, inspiring, etc. (Okay, maybe that's obnoxious.) I want to say things that only I can say. And so, even though there are also a thousand people doing similar things for hundreds of blogfests, I'm going to say a little about myself. Hi, I'm Ben. I love cross country skiing. Since I was a little boy, I've gone with my dad and his friends skiing up the mountain behind our old house or one of the canyons. We don't ski flat