Goodbye for now

You all know I'm a writer. Most of you also know I'm the mom of four very little children. For the past few months I've been pondering how I can be both a good mom AND a good writer. I've realized that, to make it work, I need to give up some things. One of those things is this blog. I plan to come back to it. Maybe in a few months. Maybe in three years, when my baby is in preschool. I don't know. Right now I want to focus all of my nearly non-existent free time on writing books. I'll miss you. I know I haven't kept up very well these past few months, but I do care about you and I'll try to check in on your blogs every now and then. If you ever have a question or just want to chat about writing, books, publishing, parenting, or anything else, please EMAIL ME. I even added an email button to the sidebar to make it easier. You can also tweet me, though I should warn you, my tweets are sporadic. I'm @nataliebahm on Twitter. Good luck to all of you! I hope to see many of your names on book covers soon. Happy writing.

Liar Society Blog Tour

Today I have the privilege of welcoming Lisa and Laura Roecker, the authors of THE LIAR SOCIETY, as part of their Blog Tour of Awesome.

Lisa and Laura are two of my favorite, favorite bloggers. They are hilarious and super sweet and inclusive. When they sent me an ARC for their debut novel THE LIAR SOCIETY, I knew I was in for a treat.

I was not disappointed. THE LIAR SOCIETY was a very fun read. One of the things I appreciated most was the well thought out mystery. They kept me guessing right up to the end. I asked them to share a bit about how they managed to keep the mystery fresh and exciting.

KEEPING A MYSTERY MYSTERIOUS


A big part of our process when we're writing a mystery is outlining. We would be completely lost if we didn't have some kind of road map while we're drafting. For us, outlining and mysteries go hand in hand. We need to at least have a rough idea of where the story is going. For us that translates into a loose outline of the entire book and then a more detailed chapter outline for Act 1. After we wrote the first act we created an outline for Act 2. This worked really well for us because we had both structure and flexibility as we drafted.


Revising was an entirely different beast. After editing The Liar Society for the nine millionth time, we began to really, truly, whole-heartedly regret our choice to write mysteries in the first place. Keeping track of which clues went where and who we were supposed to suspect and when is enough to make our collective heads explode. Our number one goal while writing was obviously to keep the mystery fresh, but not completely out of left field.


At the end of the day, for us, the most important thing was to have fun with the book. Our hope is always that if we have fun writing, our readers will have fun reading. Hopefully our theory holds up!

If you want to enter The Liar Society Blog Tour of Awesome contest, and really, who wouldn't want to enter!?! There's a $100 Amazon gift card up for grabs! Just click here and enter the super secret password, BFFS, for an entry. Remember you can enter one time for each stop on our blog tour, so be sure to click here and see where else we're visiting this month to maximize your chances of winning.

Audi, Vide, Tace,

L&L

Thank you Lisa and Laura!

Empathy

I feel so sad for all the people affected by the tsunami in Japan. I hope the worst has passed and the people can start healing.

On that note, today I wanted to write a little about empathy.

Last Thursday, I was reading a book with my three-year-old son while his big sisters were at school. He stopped me, mid-sentence and said, "I wish [big sister] was a boy."

I asked him, "Why do you wish she was a boy?"

He replied, "Because it hurts her head when you brush her hair."

So sweet. He wasn't thinking of how cool it would be to have a big brother, he was worried about the pain his sister goes through every morning when we brush out her long tangley hair.

The conversation got me thinking about empathy.

I've read several books lately where I was unable to connect with the main characters. The authors tried to create sympathetic characters. The ingredients were there, (sad past, dismal looking future, and a lot of personality), but for some reason the characters didn't work for me.

Then I read I AM THE MESSENGER, by Markus Zusak. WOW. I was so invested in the main character. I felt his pain. I wanted him to find happiness. And because I was felt so much empathy for the main character I loved the book.

When I write a character I try to make her real. I try to make her likable. I want the reader to care about what happens to her. I don't always succeed.

I wish I could give you a checklist for "how to create characters that people care about," but the truth is I have no idea how to do it. For me, sometimes a character works, and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes half of the readers love him and the other half don't. It's something I'm working hard to get right in my current WIP.

So, since I have no easy answers, I'll ask you.

How do you create characters people will care about?

Being Honest

Some days I read something brilliant and feel like a hack.

Some days I read something awful and wonder HOW it ever got published.

Some days I write and I'm sure what I've written is fantastic.

Some days I read what I wrote the day before and think, "How did I think this was okay yesterday?"

Some days the words flow and I love writing.

Some days writing is hard. I force words to come. Those words suck.

Some days I wonder why I didn't choose a less frustrating obsession. Like cooking. If I put all the time I've devoted to writing into cooking I could be an awesome cook. Maybe. But I love to eat, and if I was an awesome cook I'd probably be a bit chubbier, so it might be a good thing that I chose writing.

Some days I don't write at all. I hold my baby. I read a book. I play blocks with my three-year-old. I watch American Idol. I might even do some laundry.

Some days I'm sure I'll never finish writing this stupid book.

But I'm sure I will... someday.

Writing, Parenting, and GUILT

Lately I've been feeling a lot of guilt.

This is mostly because:

When I'm writing, I remember the pile of laundry that needs to be done. When I'm doing laundry I think I should really be spending time reading with my five-year old. When I'm reading with my five-year-old I feel bad about the sinkful of dirty dishes. When I'm working on the dishes the baby starts crying and I know I should just hold him for a minute. When I'm holding the baby the big kids start fighting about what to watch on TV and I think I really should get them all dressed up in warm clothes and send them outside for a half hour to play. When they finally get outside I feel like I should be writing.

It's a vicious cycle.

I think it's impossible to be a parent and not feel guilty every now and then. Being a parent is hard and it takes SO MUCH TIME and ENERGY. It's physically impossible to accomplish everything I need/want to do everyday in 16 waking hours. I often feel overwhelmed.

Then I get reminded of just how great my life is.

A few weeks ago I was putting my oldest to bed she gave me a big hug and said, "Mom, I know you work real hard to clean the house and write your book, and I think you're doing a great job."

I may not be anywhere close to perfect, and I may never be able to do everything I wish I could, but I do have very sweet kids and a wonderful husband who love me despite my imperfections. That's got to count for something.

Do you have mom guilt, dad guilt, writer guilt, etc.?

A healthy dose of PERSPECTIVE

I'm very sick right now. Three of my kids are sick too, including the baby. My family hasn't all been healthy at once since January, and because of that I haven't written anything all month. I'm snuggled up in bed right now with baby, trying to keep warm despite a wicked case of the chills. I've been feeling pretty sorry for myself for the past couple of days.

And then I read about the earthquake in New Zealand. I realized that Chistchurch is where my dear friend Wen Baragrey lives. Any of you that follow Wen know that she and her family have had a very trying couple of months. Her premature grandson was born in November and seemed to have complication after complication before he finally came home in January only to head back to the hospital last week.

Thankfully he and all of the rest of Wen's family made it out of the city okay, but it was a scary time for everyone. Wen detailed the experiences of her family here.

It's so easy for me to get caught up in mylife and my worries and not realize that other people are suffering far greater challenges. But today my thoughts and prayers are with Wen and the people of Christchurch, NZ.

The Author Website

We've had a whole lot of yuck at my house this week. The baby had an ear infection and now he and my 3-year-old have RSV, and my girls are recovering from strep. Not fun.

So I'll keep this short and sweet.

For months I've known I needed to create an author website.

My agent recommends that ALL writers who want to submit their work have a website (not just a blog). Websites are nice because agents and/or editors can look through in just a few minutes and get a pretty good idea of who you are and what you write.

I worried putting up a website would be a ton of work and/or super expensive and/or very time consuming. I didn't want to think about it, so I put it off for months.

Last week I finally decided it was time. I now have an author website www.nataliebahm.com. It's nothing fancy, but I think it will be sufficient for now. And to my surprise, it wasn't hard, it wasn't expensive, and I got it done in just a couple of days.

Do you have an author website? If not, have you thought about creating one?