It begins with a B and has more than five letters.

The word is BURNOUT. My little dictionary says burnout is a verb: Melt, break, or become otherwise unusable

I think at one time or another most writers have or will suffer from burnout. It’s inevitable. We’re creative people trying to make it in a business. We have lives outside of writing that need our attention, husbands, children, pets, yards, family illnesses and emergencies. And on top of that, we’re querying, we’re writing, we’re sending out, we’re promoting (if you’ve sold) and after a while it renders you…unusable. It wears you down.

You reach a point where you go ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!! I QUIT!!! NO MORE!!!!

Then what do you do? Do you hang it up and walk away? How do you regroup? Or have you managed to find the secret of avoiding burnout all together?

This week’s BTB is with my good friend MJ Fredrick (also known as Mary Fetcher hehe).

I first met Mary online at e-Harleqin. She was so smart and determined and driven (and a fellow   Texan!)–she’s quite an inspiration and a multiple Golden Heart Finalist!

Her second release, HOT  SHOT is now available from Samhain publishing, and I guarantee you won’t want to miss her Behind the Book!

HACK:  A writer who works on order; also a writer who aims solely for commercial success. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

HACK WRITER is a colloquial, usually pejorative, term used to refer to a writer who is paid to write low-quality…books “to order”… In a fiction-writing context, the term is used to describe writers who are paid to churn out sensational, lower-quality “pulp” fiction such as “true crime” novels or “bodice ripping” erotic paperbacks. (Wikipedia).

I’ve never been called a hack writer—although, as one who’s written what might be called “bodice-rippers”, I suppose I might qualify.  I can almost imagine myself living on Grub Street in London in the 1800s with all the other hack writers, an impoverished bohemian, huddling in a one-room flophouse across the street from a brothel.

But the disdain that seems to accompany the idea of writing for money amazes me sometimes.  It’s not that I’ve done this (yet), and I really try to put my best creative effort in whatever I do.  Ideally, I’d like to have both.
But if an artist/writer DID produce mainly for profit—what of it?  Are the arts supposed to be ABOVE wanting commercial success?  I’ve yet to hear of a used car salesman who was spurned for clearing out the lot, or a plumber who unclogged pipes solely because it was his gift from God.  Why are “creative” people cast in a different light?

Would I write if I didn’t get paid for it?
Yes.  Have done so, probably will do.  It’s a part of me, and of most serious writers, I think.  I’d write, even if it was just for myself.  And I’m not sure it’s necessary to sacrifice “art” for “craft”.

But would I mind being in the company of “hack” authors like Dickens, Chekhov, Fitzgerald and Faulker?
Would you?

Lord Byron, one of my favorite poets once wrote:

“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted writing … I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.”

Sooooooo, dear writer, where do you fall in this? Is writing a pleasant compulsion or an unavoidable torture? How do you feel about the above quote? Is there some part (how ever small) that resonates with you?

Today I’m talking titles. I’d been cruising by Dear Author/Smart Bitches and voting in their March Madness tourney, when at some point it was brought home to me how important titles are.  I freely admit to not being familiar with about three-quarters of the book choices in the tourney, so how did I go about voting?

By title. Alone. No going over the Amazon to check out the cover art, blurb and/or reviews. I just read the titles and made my decision. Bam!

I didn’t get what I was doing right away, partly because there were a few titles upfront that I was familiar (from reviews) or had sitting in my tbr pile; but as time when on I realized I didn’t have clue what most of the books were about and was too beat-assed tired to go trolling for info, so I went simply by title appeal. 

Was something evocative/poetic (Wicked Lovely ) or to the point (The Billionaire Next Door)?  Did it tell/hint at genre and tone (Magic Bites) or could it have been the title/name of any ole thing (Broken)?  Without cover art, blurb or familiarity with an author’s work, the title  is the only thing that will capture a reader’s fancy.  

With my upcoming July release I originally had the title of DENIAL. Can’t you just hear Robin Leach doing the voice over on the book trailer? (where’s the ‘big hunk of stinky cheese’ smilie? And, drat, how did I forget the exclamation point? A title like that just screams for an exclamation and embossed foil lettering!)    

After some revisions, I changed the title to FELICITY STRIPPED BARE. I think, without knowing another blessed thing about the book, the new title will (hopefully) elicit more interest than the previous tabloid-esque title.  

So what’s your preference? The Mormon Mistress’s Illicit Italian Affair type titles (which tell you in exactly 2.3 seconds what type story you’re getting. Important when you’ve got a full shopping  cart and 3 screaming kinds hanging off your calves–or so the Harlequin marketing whizards tell us), or something more along the lines of Almost Forever?

Big Spankable Asses or Mystic River?  

For some more food for thought (and a hella lot of laughs) with titles,  several of us had fun helping Amie with titles a couple of years ago.  

So I did the challenge. However good, bad or indifferent the piece turned out writing wise, to me it was a great exercise. It was nice to just be writing. Something New. Something Fresh! And trying to get the words in where they made sense . . . it was plain fun.

Hope you enjoy . . . and whenever you get stumped, grab yourself a list of words–as obscure or weird as possible–and sit and create–you never know where it will take you!

Enjoy ~

“Porter?” He was nowhere around. Sophie scanned the shelves in the tiny apartment. She’d never seen so much…crap decorated with cereal brands and whatnot.   (more…)