The Freelance Writers Den – Review

The Freelance Writers Den will be opening up to new members soon.  I tweeted about it last week, but haven’t really discussed the Den anywhere, so I thought I’d write a quick review. 

I signed up for the Den a few months ago.  At the time, I was taking their Blast Off Class and one of the perks for registrants was that you had the option of becoming a Member, even though the site was closed to enrollment at the time.  I’d seen mentions of the site here and there, but I’d never joined before because there is a monthly fee ($25) and, as many of you know, there are an awful lot of free resources out there.  Here’s why I decided it was worth the cost:

The Freelance Writers Den includes forums and a lot, I mean a lot, of training material. They offer transcripts of their classes for Members of the site.  I’m a big believer in investing in my education and have taken a number of different online courses over the years.  For me, though, I don’t need to actually be involved in a class to get something out of it – usually the material is enough.  Also, the classes are worth a great deal more than $25, so I think it’s a pretty good investment, if you’re going to do the work that will make the experience beneficial – basically, if you’re going to sign up and do nothing, don’t bother.  But if you’re going to learn new techniques or brush up on things, and then do the work to get new assignments, I definitely recommend it. 

I don’t spend a great deal of time in the forums, just kind of pop in there once in a while.  Though, I did edit my own website significantly after getting some great feedback there.  It’s Rhetoric Unlimited, if you want to take a look.

My main reason for joining was that, prior to going full-time again this past spring, I hadn’t actively worked as a writer in a few years – the assignments I’d been taking over that time were from set clients and not too much in web content.  I knew I had to brush up on changes in web writing, seo content, etc.  It was worth the cost just to brush up, because the material really is good and you can find something significant on just about any type of writing.  Another perk, though, I found new platforms – blogs to check, places to submit, etc.  The first query I sent out to one of those blogs got accepted, and that guest post paid $50 – so I essentially paid for the first two months with one assignment.

I’m giving you the link below to reserve a spot.  It’s not open right now, but once it opens, they’ll give you the option of joining, if you’re on the list.  When they do open to new members, it usually fills up pretty quick – I feel like a used car salesman telling you that, but it’s true.  Before I actually joined, it opened up and I thought about joining… waited two days and it was already closed when I went to do it.  Literally, that quick. 

One more thing – the link below is my affiliate link.  If you’re adverse to using affiliate links, feel free to search it on your own… you’ll still get to the same site either way.  

Grow your freelance income… reserve a seat in Freelance Writers Den.http://freelancewritersden.com

Heartsick

The Amazing Chris Eldin

This morning, I woke up to an alert on facebook – one of my writing friends (the awesome Stephen Parrish) tagged me in a post to alert me to the following article. It hit me so hard, it literally knocked the wind out of me. I had to walk away from the computer before I could finish the short article. I absolutely could not stomach the comments.

Chris deserved a tribute - prose and poetry, and something outlandish, because that’s what she would have done for anyone else. And the article was just some little news story, by someone who didn’t know her, had no idea how many lives she touched or who she was… it was printed at the time of her death – almost a year ago. THAT realization might have hit me even harder than the news. We didn’t know. I think many thought the same thing I did – she was on a social media break and would come bursting back into the blog-o-sphere with some new jolt of energy, rallying the troops or just adopting some new persona to amuse the masses.

I first met Chris Eldin at her early blog, A Bench Press , and all around the blog-o-sphere on different publishing sites. Later, she was the driving force of Book Roast. Then she moved on to her own site, Chris Eldin.

There was a tribute to her after Blog Roast was retired that Shona Snowden was kind enough to link on facebook, and I’ll include here - The Last Roast. Reading through the lovely comments from friends and admirers is probably the best way to show you who she was.

I first met Chris when she was using the blog name, Church Lady. She was witty and energetic and amazing. If her personality didn’t win you over, you were daft. But her writing, well, that was probably even more amazing. I fully expected to see her published. I’m usually not wrong about that, either. We chatted on a lot of different blogs and boards, because we were both working on middle grade fiction and our circles all seemed to intersect. But honestly, as much as I adored her, I only knew the writer. We talked fiction and even when we did email, it was always about doing some bit of marketing or blog tours for a new author, or some new contest running around the writing circle.

She was tireless in her efforts to help new authors succeed and market their work, without pay or for any motivation other than maybe being driven to clear the path. She was an innovator in every sense of the word. Some writers have mentioned getting together to do something in tribute. If you’re stopping by here and are in the process of organizing anything, please let me know.

Chris, if you’re still checking your blog feeds, I hope you’ve found peace, and light, and love. And I hope you can feel it with every essence of your being.

You are and will be missed.

  

Book Club Blogs... How I Miss Them

On Sunday, I spent the entire day reading.  The. Entire. Day.  Can you hear the angels sing? 

It’s really not uncommon for me to spend a good portion of the day reading.  I read fairly constantly – articles on writing, web design, work-related such and such.  I peruse websites, check fb, and, yes, I do open up a few books during the course of the day – both reference and whatever novels I happen to be chewing on. 

But on Sunday, I opened up a new novel, fell into the first chapter, and didn’t come up for air for the entire day (except when I absolutely had to).  I’ll be writing a review of that novel to post on the blog sometime this week… I’m still savoring it.

Just that simple joy, of being able to read for the enjoyment of the story, got me to thinking about the old Book Club Blogs.  Back in my early blogging days, I hosted a few book club blogs, and they were a lot of fun.  I hosted one on the book, Lottery, by Patricia Wood – and the awesome author stopped in for the conversation.  Prior to that, I’d hosted ones for The Mists of Avalon and, on my first blog back on a community blogging site that’s now defunct, I hosted Willa Cather’s, My Antonia.

Blogging, as a medium, has changed considerably in the last few years.  I think that may be one of the reasons that seasoned bloggers have moved on to other platforms.  There just isn’t the same discussion that blogging once encouraged.  Now, people check in at blogs on their readers or through their email.  They page in but don’t participate in the same way.  The standard blogging principal five or six years ago was to encourage comments you should always end your post by posing a question or asking for feedback.  We looked at it as a way to start the conversation.  Today, the standard is to approach each post as an article.  Some bloggers even turn off the comments, so readers don’t see the glaring “0 Comments” attached to every post.

So, I’m going against today’s common rationale to pose this question.  Would there be any interest in resurrecting a book club blog?  I could easily just choose my own books and post reviews, but I’m wondering if any of the other bloggers still tooling around the blog-o-sphere might like the group discussion.

Thoughts?

The Soul of the Person

Basic Translation to the e card pictured above:

I listen,

Not to the words;

I listen,

To the glances, the gestures;

I listen,

To the soul of the person.

I ran across that picture on Facebook – sometimes curated content is fairly awesome.  The translation might not be exact (my Italian is very limited) but that’s the gist of it. 

As much as it is an amazing instruction for living your life – it also struck me as dead on when it comes to fiction writing.  I struggled for a long time with the “Show, don’t tell” thing.  When you take yourself out of the work enough, you can see it… you can certainly read it in other people’s work.  When you spoon feed too much information on what your reader is supposed to think/feel/understand, the characters ring empty.  You’re telling me who they are, but I don’t really believe you.

I’ve read a lot of writers (published and non) who use the dialog to “show” you who their characters are.  Technically, it’s not telling if you have one character explaining himself to another… except it is. 

I listen, not to the words…

Well, that sounds a little counterproductive to us writers, doesn't it?  They’re all words. 

Except what you really want is for the words to disappear.  You don’t want to be so overly enamored with the way you sling a phrase that your characters have no soul.  That’s what you need to capture – their soul.

How do you determine the soul of a person in your real life?  Is it what they say to you?  If you have a person who tells you how smart they are, do you believe them?  My general rule is that when a person has to tell me they are smart, they’re not.  Either they’re not confident in their mental prowess and are attempting to overcome that by becoming the persona they’re putting out there.  Or they’re just wrong.  And quite frankly, an idiot doesn’t tend to know they’re an idiot.  Often when someone hands you boastful characteristics that they’re attributing to themselves, they’re lying. 

While we can tell the reader certain things, the character can’t be real unless your reader can listen to their soul.  You have to show this.  In real life.  In fiction. 

A lover might say, “I love you” often.  But, if that same lover cheats, forgets your birthday, puts his own needs and wants above any thought of you, do you believe him? 

Love is an action.  The words don’t matter; it’s the act, the movement, what’s shown.  Character is not the words.  You can speak words of great character, but unless you’re walking the walk – just like life, they’re just words.

The tricky part is aspiring to make your writing more than just words.  So how do you listen to the soul of the person?

The Naming of a Thing

If you look at my updated profile, you’ll see that I’ve had a change of career.  After handing in my resignation last month, I am now a full-time writer.  It’s funny, because I think I always was a full time writer… I was just dabbling at 40 hour a week career doing something else.  As much as I liked what I did for a living (my clients were amazingly awesome and the work with web configurations was way more fun than I would have thought going in), I came home itching to write.  The itch was strong enough that I still took on freelance assignments, even though it meant I was essentially working 7 days a week.

I was skyping with one of my longtime writing buddies right before I made the big jump.  The funny thing – he’s known me, in all of my online venues as well as through private conversations, for years.  He never knew I’d been ghost writing.  I’d never mentioned it.  Weird, right?  Why wouldn’t I talk about my writing with another writer?

In my head, I’ve always kept ghost writing and writing web content separate from fiction.  This blog and most of my online writing (with my name on it, that is) has centered on fiction.  It didn’t occur to me that anyone would ever be interested in the fact that I’ve been making money as a writer for quite a long time – since 2006.

It’s the naming of the thing.  I can call myself a writer, because I am.  Before I ever got paid a dime for my writing I would have categorized myself as an aspiring writer, but a writer, nonetheless.  I’ve never called myself an author.  Technically, maybe I could.  I have one short story published… doesn’t quite count for me – I’ll consider myself an author the day I sign my first deal for novel length fiction.  It’s my own barometer.  I don’t think anyone else has to subscribe to my labeling system.  But that little internal thing is likely the reason I haven’t much mentioned my freelance writing on this blog.  This blog has always been my venue to discuss fiction.

These first few weeks of business have been largely set up.  I completed a few assignments last week and am working my way through my business plan now - along with deciding on a new name - the naming of the thing.  I know a lot of freelancers just use their own name – Suzy Freelancer, professional writer.  I kind of toyed with that, but I’m not sure how to answer the phone.  I almost feel like an idiot, answering with my name.  Plus, it still keeps the whole thing somewhat separate.  This is my writing business – the bottom line is that it is a business.  This is my fiction writing – the bottom line being that it’s mine. 

The business writing is very much NOT mine.  You can market yourself any way you want but, if you’re writing for businesses or other entities, you’re speaking for them, your words are theirs, and they need to be carefully constructed to portray their specific message.   

This blog has been largely inactive for more than a year now… and the postings were scattered before that.  I thought about what I wanted to do here because, logically, this blog will not be an asset to the business.  On the other hand, it’s my fiction writing home.  So it stays.  Because it’s been an asset to me.

I’m working out a schedule for blogging time.  I know I’ll also have to clean out the links on the sidebar.  I just hate doing that.  Every link represents a person who was at some point very connected to the blog, my writing, and my journey.  I’m going to build a different blog for the business, attached to the website I’m working on.  Not sure if I want to cross link or not – I guess it depends on whether the readership I build back up here would be interested in the type of writing posts I’d be creating there.

For now, this stays my fiction writing home… along with weird little anecdotes about my kids, who you all know are far more amusing than me. 

An Artist in Motion Tends to Stay in Motion

Newton’s law of motion – you guys know this one.  An object at rest stays at rest, unless an external force affects it.  An object in motion stays in motion, unless something impedes it or changes its direction.  Okay, that’s not a direct quote and I’m not actually that great with scientific theory, but that’s the gist of it.

This is one of those things I’ve known for a long time, just on experience.  I know that the more creative I’m allowed to be, the more I feel like being creative.  Those people who “wait” for the muse are kidding themselves.  The muse won’t come to you unless you’re likely to do her bidding.  She’s kind of a realist that way.

True story about writing – it keeps going, long after you’ve closed down your computer.  Any writer will tell you this.  The story line is playing out in our head when we carry out mundane conversations, do our taxes, or wash the dishes.  When we’re out with normal people in the middle of a social gathering, there’s a voice in our head writing a scene.  We tune it out when something important is going on around us… but not always.

I think it takes a special brand of person to put up with us.  Whatever characteristics you’re born with, it still appears that you’re not paying attention to the people in your real world on a fairly regular basis.  Sometimes we’re not.  Often we’re multitasking.  Real world people might think, “What’s more important?  Me or the stories in your head that aren’t even real?”  If we’re honest, they might not like the answer every time.

I have the pleasure of watching the creative psychosis manifest itself in my daughter these days.  It’s funny.  I know these things about myself, and other creative types that I’ve known.  But to see my daughter have the same leanings kind of brings it home.  It’s not something you can get around – maybe it’s not something to be overcome. 

With my daughter, it’s a lot of things – but her main creative focus is music.  She went to a concert with friends – a local band someone’s sister was in.  When she came home, she gushed about how great the musicians were, showed me a tee shirt and cd she bought, and then spent the next 5 consecutive hours playing… first piano, then guitar, then bass, back to piano, her keyboard… then bass again.  It was a weekend, so I didn’t bug her about it… I think she called it around 3 in the morning.

She had a concert at school last week.  It went well and she had a short solo… did she come home ready to be done with it?  Nope.  I had to make her stop playing at midnight.  That time she was composing.  “Mom… just two more measures… I can’t stop here.”

And I get it.  Playing doesn’t quench the urge to play.  It stokes the fire.  Writing doesn’t fulfill your desire to paint your story… it propels you further.

When your muses have all abandoned you, write something.  Read something.  Surround yourself with those who are creating.  Creativity begets creativity.  And the motion starts with you.

Community Notebook

I started carrying a notebook when I was about 15.  Not for any particular class or reason, it was just kind of a spare that I doodled in, wrote bits and scraps of stories, and mindlessly penned song lyrics in.  That notebook would eventually become what I referred to as, “My Journal” - the first edition, anyway.  There were many editions – I called all of them, “My Journal”.

I always had one – loose leaf, spiral bound, whatever color suited my fancy when the last page of my previous journal was filled.  Of course, this was before you had phones that were basically little computers.  Back when handwriting was what you did to get the idea down somewhere until you could get to your computer.

On each of these editions I scrawled, “My Journal” – it was written in permanent marker or scratched so deep into the laminated colorful exterior of the notebook in ballpoint pen as to make it permanent.  The outside of the journal would get decorated over the course of its use in a myriad of ways.  Phone numbers would be jotted down on the fly, little doodles of characters or scenery peaked from this tattered corner or that.  I remember one journal specifically having a sticker on the front that read, “Hot and Spicy Italian”.  It was from a package of sausage, but I thought it was amusing.  Yes, I’ve always been easily amused.

I carried it with me everywhere.  No, literally, everywhere.  When I started driving, it was with me – I might leave it in the car, but only when I was somewhere that the journal might be compromised (read as beer soaked or otherwise degraded).   There was a box, and each edition would be placed on top of its predecessors as it was retired.  And a bright sparkly new journal would take its place in my every day.

My first novel was penned in notebooks.  Three of them.  The entire rough draft was hand written.  The first revision was the one that I keyed in to my computer.  That’s the only time I’ve handwritten a long piece.  It was crap.  But the process was slightly cathartic.  Even when I was writing that novel, I had a “Journal” – separate from the novel notebooks, all its own.

See, that’s what the journal is for me.  It’s not a place to write out long fiction.  It’s a place to play.  To write rough ideas of whatever it is I’m working on – outlines, character sketches, sometimes just bits of dialogue that pop into my head and I don’t know where to put them… but they’re too cool to just chalk up to nothing.  To noodle ideas, draft silliness, and otherwise spark my mind into action – most especially when it’s sluggish and unwilling to stop procrastinating.

My journals in the last few years never seem to get finished.  I still have one.  My current edition is blue.  The outside cover does not proclaim that it is “MY JOURNAL”.  It’s a run of the mill notebook in every conceivable way – except that it’s mine.  There are bits of query letters.  Notes from resumes I’ve written freelance (a mark of the economy, I suppose).  Notes of markets to check and checklists of tasks that are writing and home related in a hodgepodge that I may or may not get back to… but the act of writing it down somehow cements it in my head.  Because that’s how I am – I’m a words person.  I think in words, not pictures.  I kind of miss the stickers and doodles, though… the bits proclaiming to the outside world that it’s mine, and I’m weird… and raspberries to you if you don’t get me.

Last week, I went to grab my notebook off the dining room table before leaving for work.  I do that, still.  Grab it and keep it in the car, so that I can jot things down if I have time on my lunch break.  Only, my notebook was gone.  Of course, I could have found another notebook to use, but I didn’t want another one.  I wanted mine.  Because it’s mine.  Funny the things you’re hard pressed to relinquish.  I almost made myself late for work looking for it, and came up empty handed.

Two more days passed and I still couldn’t find it.  And then, I walked into my daughter’s room to put her laundry on her bed and noticed a notebook open on her pillow.  The top two pages were handwritten – what looked like song lyrics but I didn’t read them, because they weren’t mine.  The notebook, however was mine.  I tore the pages out and left them on her bed.  When she came home, I mentioned it to her:

Me:  Hey, I left your work on your bed.  But that notebook is mine.

Gracie Girl:  Huh? You didn’t read it, did you?

Me:  No.  That’s yours.  The notebook’s mine.

Gracie Girl:  Well, don’t read it.  It’s a song and it’s not done.  And I didn’t know it was YOUR notebook.  It just looked like a notebook.  And I needed one.

Me:  You’ve got a ton of notebooks.

Gracie Girl:  Those are school notebooks.  Or music notebooks.  I needed a different notebook.

Okay, that sounded familiar.  When I went out to the store that night, I grabbed a little something extra.  I knocked on Gracie’s door when I got home.

Gracie Girl:  Yeah.

Me:  (opening the door)  Here, I got this for you.

I held up a brand new shiny notebook.  Plain, college ruled loose leaf, spiral bound.

Gracie Girl:  *Jumping off the bed*  Yay!  For me?  Yay!

She literally hugged it.  She’s had it with her every day.  When she goes to sleep, it’s next to her pillow.  When she leaves for school, it’s in her arm, not in her bookbag with the boring, old school notebooks.  Apparently that “My Journal” thing is hereditary.  

So, I've Been Away For A While...

And what did I learn in my year of bloggy abstinence?  A little of this and a little of that.  One of the things about blogging that bothered me a bit was that I felt like it was a hindrance to the actual writing.  I put time and energy into posts that could well have been paid articles or essays, and I knew it.  You can feel the difference between good writing and “meh” and I was putting a lot of good writing into my posts, and not a heck of a lot of “meh”…

One of my favorite blogging writer friends, the awesome Erica Orloff, used to refer to blogging as priming the pump.  It was part of her routine to get the juices flowing.  Of course, she’s also one of the most prolific writers you’ll ever meet.  But I think there was a point to that.  Not that the writing of the posts got my juices flowing so much as the interaction with other writers. 

In one of the Rocky movies (yes, I’m just greaseball enough to quote this), Rocky was not having any luck finding a job and wanted to go back to fighting.  So he went and talked to Mickey (for those of you who never saw the movies because a rock fell on you or something – Mickey was his trainer), who told him there was no way he should go back to boxing.  His eyes were too bad from getting hit.  So Rocky asked for a job sweeping up around the gym, and the old trainer looked at him with his eyes full of pity and tried to talk him out of it.  Saying, “You’re like royalty around there…” and asking how he could walk around with spit buckets for guys who looked up to him like that.  And Rocky said, “I just have to be around it.”

And I think, in a way, that’s what blogging does for me.  It keeps me connected with other writers, which keeps me excited about writing… or at least eases a bit of the black hole you get when no one around you really gets what you’re doing.

So I think it’s time to begin again.  The blog is going through some transformations… because I’ve been through a few and I guess it’s reflective of where my head’s at.  What I’ve been doing is a little different than where I was back when I started this.  The kids are older.  I work full time and still write freelance on the side.  Am I still writing fiction?  I haven’t been as prolific as I want to be.  And that’s one of the things I’m aiming to change.  The difference between now and a year ago is that I realize that blogging was never one of the things holding me back.

We’ll see where it goes from here.  Hopefully, I’ll find some of my blogging circle still active – I know many have found other venues for their online time.  And maybe I’ll meet a few new writers to capture my attention and get me thinking.

If you’re new to these parts, pull up a chair…and a martini… and a sense of humor, because you’ll need one to peruse any of my meanderings.  If you’ve been here before, welcome back.  Happy to take the next leg of the journey with you.

Everything I Know About Character, I Learned on the Playground

It’s a fact of life, if you play your hardest, your ass is going to hit the blacktop. If the fall is bad enough to break something, you’re allowed to cry for a minute or two. Otherwise, rub some dirt on it and get back in the game.

Most games are full of bad calls. You’d take the ones that go in your favor easy enough.  Don’t whine about the ones that go against you.

Nobody likes a snitch. Not even the teachers.

You’ll never feel good about a game you had to win by cheating.

Nobody likes to lose, but it’s way more fun with friends on your team to laugh with.

Not all of the “Teacher’s Rules” apply. Sometimes they’re just plain stupid. Never hurt a friend to follow a rule.

You’ll find a lot of friends to laugh with, and lots more when you have something to share. But the best friends are the ones who are still on your side, even when you’re dead wrong.

Nice guys really do finish last a lot of the time. But they’d feel a lot worse finishing first if they had to be a son of a bitch to do it.

Gum, candy, and any other contraband that’s against the rules always taste sweeter
when you’ve got a buddy to share it with.

A quick wit, when used properly, can garner you more attention than looks or money.

A quick wit, when not used properly, will teach you how to fight.

There is no “Time Out” in a fight. There are also no rules. The only real aim is to be the last one standing, so know what you’re getting into before you run your mouth or swing. (Fight stories always sound way cooler than a black eye feels).

Sometimes the kid picked last for a team will be the one who wins the game. Never discount anyone.

You’re not going to be the best at everything, but most of the kids around you are too busy worrying about how good they’re doing to notice anyway.

The most genuine people are the ones who do their good deeds by stealth. Don’t put too much faith in the guy who does you a favor, but reminds you of it in front of others.

Trying to make someone feel small makes you smaller.

Never pick on the weaker kid. You might get lucky enough to have a bunch of people around you that won’t stand up for him, but they’ll secretly wish a bigger kid pummels you later. Eventually they’ll all be bigger kids.

Sometimes doing the right thing will get you in trouble. Better to take a punishment than to have to live with not doing the right thing.

As you can tell, we cursed a bit on my playground. And to be honest, everything I learned about character I learned from my father first – life just has a way of reinforcing its truths. And it’s really never more honest than it was in the beginning, before people start holding their tongues to stay polite.

Which bit of character did you pick up on the playground?

Quiet Integrity (Happy Holidays)

The company I work for is a family owned business, so the Christmas party was a small affair at my boss’s house.  Sitting around the table, exchanging stories, the writer in me was keenly reminded that each of us has stories, and each person in our circle encompasses some role, often becoming the hero of a funny anecdote or personal family gem.

Generally, each person in our circle serves some larger purpose that we don’t even pay very much attention to on a regular basis.  There’s always the one person who can be called upon, day or night, who would give you everything they have because you need it.  There’s always one person everyone gravitates to, sometimes fun or childish or just charismatic.  There are as many labels as you can think of but, for the most part, any community only works as well as each of the members.  Humanity’s an odd beast.  It takes advantage of the weak and feeds off the charitable, and it never ceases to amaze me how often people mistake kindness for weakness.

When I tell stories about my family, whether they’re tales from my own childhood or those of my children, I almost always tell the funny ones.  You’ll hear me mention Gracie Girl perhaps the most, because she’s a smart ass.  She supplies ample material for daily comedy.  Littlest Guy will get many a mention as well – he has that spark, that intangible thing that makes people gravitate to him.  You could see it in him from day one, children flock to him and adults adore him. 

I think when you prefer to laugh, or want something light hearted and fun, those are the kind of personalities that make for good heroes.

My oldest son has always been quiet and more to himself.  He’s quick and intelligent, but doesn’t often seek out a spotlight.  There are home movies from his 3^rd birthday – throughout the entire video, Gracie girl is right in front of the camera, singing and prancing and telling jokes.  Littlest guy is babbling and grinning and charming the hell out of everyone.  And there’s Johnny, off in the background, playing with a car he got as a present… and when his one year old brother came up to where he was playing, Johnny handed him the car and showed him how to do it.

People are always telling me how thoughtful and polite he is, as if I have anything to do with it.  He was gifted with a generous soul.  It’s not something I did as a parent, it’s intrinsically who he is.

There was the time I had all three of them lined up to find out who did something.  I don’t even remember what it was, but all three of them said the universal “I don’t know”.  At a loss for what to do, I grounded all three of them.  Johnny said, “Sorry, Mom.  I did it.  Gracie and DJ shouldn’t have to be grounded, too.”

I found out way later that his little brother did it, Johnny just said he did and took the punishment for him.  You can teach a kid not to snitch, but you can’t teach that.

A few Christmases ago, Santa got a new Nintendo DS for Johnny.  His brother broke his a few months prior, and he was way worse on those things than Johnny ever had been – Johnny’s a kid you never have to tell to take care of his things or do his homework.  So Santa figured, Johnny should get the new one, and DJ could get Johnny’s old one.  A few days before Christmas, DJ broke Johnny’s Nintendo.  Santa didn’t have the time or funds to get two, so I kinda figured, Johnny gets the new one and I knew he’d share, and then DJ could get one for his birthday.

Christmas morning, we all came down and there, with DJ’s toys from Santa, was the brand new Nintendo.  Johnny got up earlier than everyone else, and moved it to DJ’s pile.  He said Santa must’ve made a mistake because DJ wanted one so much more than he did.

In the grand circle of things, I can see him being the ant – all the grasshoppers are out playing while he works and saves, and then he gives them anything they need because they need it, without taking anything for himself.  He reminds me of Beth, from Little Women, who always tugged at my heart more than any other character.

And I worry about him being taken advantage of, because people don’t see kindness for what it is, and they don’t understand generosity for its own sake.  But when I get past the lump in my throat at anything that might hurt him, I hope he never loses that.

Maybe the world would be a better place if we prized quiet integrity more than witty quips.

I Haven't Been Writing

I haven’t been writing.

I’ve been paging in at blogs that used to be my regular habitat… like a voyeur… staring in through windows.  Some of them stained glass and breathtaking, some with gell clings letting light shine through in colorful splashes, some quaint, some gritty, and all beautiful.

I was out with a friend a few weeks back and someone asked me what I did for a living, and I kind of froze… trying I guess to figure out how to explain my job, which encompasses a lot of things, from data entry to report coallation to web design… and my friend said, “She’s a writer.” 

I swear to you, I turned around to see who the hell she was talking about.

Oh, yeah.  Me.  I think that’s me.  Or it used to be me.

I’ve done that a few times over the past few months – paged up old blogs or facebook statuses, and read something I said a year ago… and then I remember, I was a writer.  I’ve picked up books, and fallen into them like I’ve found the only place that I could ever rest my head, and then I remember, oh yeah, I was a writer.  In the middle of a rather hectic day, with no break in sight, brand new shiny idea popped right into my head, like the urge to get these people down on the page never abandoned me… of course, I couldn’t stop what I was doing to encourage it, but still, it was better than the silence.

Oh my God the fucking silence. 

If any of you ever heard of Padre Pio, he was a monk, now a saint… I once read that he said he knew what hell was.  It wasn’t fire and brimstone and demons assailing you.  It was the absence of God.  It was not being able to feel Him, to hear Him, to know He was with you.  It was the silence.

And I’m sure some people will read this and think, “Really, you’re comparing telling stories to God?”  Yeah, I am.  And it’s not some sappy bit about the muse being divine and these stories being salvation… but the absence of it, the loss of that compulsion, it’s like they took all the air out of the room.  You don’t even think about air when you’re breathing fine, it’s about the only thing you can think of when you’re drowning, though.

There are a million lofty sentiments people throw at you when you’re not doing so well.  “God never gives you more than you can handle.”

The fuck He doesn’t.  Why do you think people drink themselves stupid or throw themselves in front of trains?  More than they could handle, I’d say.  And I used to think, somewhere deep down where the real scared little shit who makes up excuses for why the boogy man could never get me lives, that those people were weak, or quitters, or something.  Something I wasn’t.

I always love stories about underdogs.  I love it, in real life and in fiction, when someone beats the odds, fights their way through, finds their happy ending against great odds. No one ever tells you how to see the beauty in failing.  The truth is, most people fail.  Some gracefully, some kicking and screaming, some taking as many people with them as they can grab onto.

So the blog’s been silent.  My head’s been silent.  Maybe it’s just a down cycle… or a reflective year.  And I don’t think I care so much if I fail anymore… but I’d really rather do it with the voices in my head chattering away again.

Guest Post - Mark Terry (bet you wished he was at YOUR blog...)

Today, as a special treat, Mark Terry is guest posting at the blog. I have an awesome photo in which he looks quite handsome and writerly and such, but blogger's being a bitch, so you guys miss out...sorry.... I did, however, get it to post the cover for his latest release, THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS. I'm not going to take up much of your time with a long and winding introduction about how unbelievably brilliant he is - his writing more than speaks for itself... so go ahead, read the blog...

Snakes on Brokeback Mountain

Mark Terry

I have on more than one occasion thought back to an interview given by Samuel L. Jackson when he was promoting, "Snakes On A Plane." The interviewers kept sort of prodding him about the seriousness of the role, and at some point, partly in frustration, he said, "Look, we're not talking 'Snakes On Brokeback Mountain.' We're talking 'Snakes On A Plane.'"

This resonated strongly with me, especially after I stopped laughing. Because what Samuel L. Jackson was saying was, "We're not talking about a movie likely to win the Academy Awards or go down in film history as a great work of art. It's a horror movie!"

I recently read a Vanity Fair (or perhaps it was Esquire) piece on Jake Gyllenhaal promoting “Source Code.” Someone in the article noted that Jake was a really, really serious actor with a lot of very serious ambitions, but at some point during the filming of “The Day After Tomorrow” somebody took him aside and said, “Jake, take off the tuxedo and stop practicing your acceptance speech. We’re making a disaster film here.”

And one of the reasons it resonates with me is that sometimes critics don't get it. One of my key criteria when I reviewed books was: "Did the author accomplish what they were trying to accomplish?"

So if you're writing an adventure novel and it's not exciting, but it sure has plenty of imagery and symbolism and seems "literary," I can't help but feel the author may have missed the point. Example: "The Crown of Columbus," by Louise Erdich and Michael Dorris. This story is about a historian (I think) who may have clues to where a "crown" of some sort is hidden that Christopher Columbus brought with him while exploring the New World. In point of fact, the crown is the crown of thorns that Christ wore when he was crucified. This novel had all the makings of "The Da Vinci Code" only it was written about 15 years earlier, and although the writing was without a doubt better than Dan Brown's, it was not, to my mind, a better book. Why? Because the authors had a different agenda than writing an adventure novel. They were writing a mainstream "literary" novel and as a result, the novel seemed schizophrenic and didn't - to my mind - succeed as either thing. It sure as hell wasn't "thrilling" or "exciting" or an "adventure." But critics liked it and so did plenty of readers who knew what they were getting.

I don't want to get too much into the art versus commerce argument here, although I actually have pretty strong opinions on the subject. But I do want to make a point. The process is almost entirely identifical.

Let me say that again: The process of creating art and creating a commercial book (movie, etc) is almost completely identical.

The process that Samuel L. Jackson and the director and the writer and all the other actors in "Snakes On A Plane" took is almost entirely identical to the process they would take if they had been making "Ghandi" or "Brokeback Mountain" or "Casablanca."

Yes, it's possible people will walk their way through their work. Yes, it's possible they'll do it entirely for money.

My point here is when Samuel L. and company decided to make "Snakes On A Plane" they decided they wanted a film that was scary and fun and thrilling and suspenseful and funny and designed to give laughs and shivers and screams, etc.

When everybody concerned went about making "Brokeback Mountain," they weren't looking to make scary and fun and thrilling and suspenseful; they were intent on raising another set of emotions and moving people to think and to feel a certain thing.

The PROCESS is essentially the same. The INTENTION is different.

And for the record, I've never seen "Brokeback Mountain," because it's not my type of movie, ie., a romance (the gay theme doesn't bother me). I love romantic comedies, but straight romances, like "The Horse Whisperer" leave me cold. For that matter, I’ve never seen "Snakes On A Plane." Although I love thrillers, I hate snakes. Yeah, me and Indiana Jones. Although the snakes in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" don't bother me that much, I can guarantee you that I would have a hard time with "Snakes On A Plane" and all its POV shots of slithering snakes. It's a family joke: "Let's drag Dad into the reptile house at the Detroit Zoo."

Pssssst - Thank you, Mark, for taking the time to write such an awesome article for my little blog...

I'm sure Mark will be by in comments, so please feel free to extend the conversation - I loves that...

How Do You Know When You've Found Your Voice?

There’s a lot about writing that seems almost mystical – to people who don’t write, and even to those of us breathing in this damn, frustrating, lovely, mind-sucking, hole of death what we call writing.

One of the things you hear most often is VOICE. Big sparkly letters here, because that’s the onus us writing folk put on voice. It’s kind of like literary fiction – no one can tell you how to do it, but we sure the fuck know it when we see it. And then we get even more confusing about it – insisting that an author not only capture his or her own distinctive voice, but also capture each character’s voice. And the character’s voice has to be separate from the writer’s voice… and each character has to have their own voice so that you don’t have cardboard bullshit characters… oh, and don’t use any petty trickery or overused catch-phrases so that your reader literally rolls their eyes and tosses your book in a moldy laundry pile rather than finish it. We talk non-stop about craft and technique and grammar. We beat other works about the head and ears for feats of stupidity or, worse, purple prose.

Can you hear my voice? I bet you can. I can. I know it’s there and I know what it sounds like and guess what – it’s grammatically flawed as all hell. It doesn’t follow any of the rules. Okay, it follows some of the rules, but mostly by accident. You get to a point where you know them backwards and forwards and have to toss them out the window to get comfortable in your skin and say what you have to say. Because the bottom line in voice is communication. That’s it – plain and simple.

That’s all this really is – saying something. Saying something important, life changing, immortal, embarrassing, consuming, eloquent, clever, or blatant… I like blatant, myself. It often has a dry wit all its own. That’s all we’re trying to do here, whether it’s through articles or blog posts or works of fiction. We’re saying something – and in order to communicate, if you’re really good at it, you need to make sure your audience gets it. If your audience is full of high brow fancy schmancy types… go get a thesaurus so they don’t feel slighted by your mundane language – and leave your fucking profanity at the door. If your audience is full of deep thinkers, be more concerned with the ideas than the way they’re couched – deep thinkers don’t care what it looks like to the outside world. They’re not in it to impress anyone else. They want the essence of a story or idea that will make their mind take off… say it in pig latin, if it’s brilliant, they’ll still go with you.

But what you’re saying seems beside the point when you’re talking about voice, right? It’s part of it, but I’ll get back to that. Voice is most often categorized as the flavor of the way you say things, kind of like an accent on the page. And yeah, I can hear New York or Southern Charm, or an Irish Brogue. But it’s not just that.

Remember when you were in high school? Remember when you wanted all the cool kids to like you, or when you started digging combat boots and dyed your hair and spoke in Violent Femmes lyrics? Remember when you stole little phrases from rock stars or friends that were just too fucking cool? Remember that kid, teetering on the curb, trying to get his bearings and up his courage to walk in the middle of the road, pretty as you fucking please? That kid. The one who wanted to be someone special, but didn’t know quite how to get there so he borrowed bits from here and there and adapted other bits that might have been his or maybe they were scrapped up from somewhere else… and he wore them like a mantle of independent thinking – just like everybody else.

Yeah, well if your voice is that – you’re doing it wrong.

The problem with that kid is he was playing at being someone other people might admire. He wasn’t there yet. His confidence was low and his braggadocio was borrowed. That’s not where your voice comes from. You can’t borrow someone else’s… scratch that, you can, actually… if you’ve got a really good ear for language (and if you’re a writer, we’ll assume that you do), you can, in fact, mimic another writer… another person… adopt it and wear it and put it out there… but you won’t have developed YOUR voice.

And they’ll tell you that no one can help you find your voice. There are no instructions to get there or develop it or bring it out. Which is probably true – every journey seems to be as different as every writer. A writer friend recently told me that he could tell that I turned a corner. That my writing voice was the strongest he’d ever seen it. That I was ready. And I think I am. I am more confident in my writing and my voice than I ever was before. So how did I get there? I stopped giving a shit about any of the people who were not going to “get” me. That was it. That simple. I stopped tempering my language because people who don’t know me might mistake my profanity for ignorance. I stopped rethinking overlarge words that fit or mundane words that weren’t impressive enough, and I said what I had to say… and then I edited the hell out of it. (Anyone who tells you voice is natural and comes with no editing is a moron… writing is more editing than writing… when I find a writer who doesn’t follow that, I don’t want to read them.)

Oh, and what you have to say… remember? I said we’d get back to that. Voice and theme go hand in hand as far as I can tell. And some writers have more than one theme that they work with, some may not pay any attention to it at all… they’re just telling a story and don’t notice that their stories all have the same finite number of themes. YOU have something to say. You wouldn’t be writing if you didn’t have anything to say. There is something deeper to this profession than sheer love of words… and yeah, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole. If I only loved the words, I’d be perfectly content to devour great works by other authors. But it’s not only that with us, we have something to say, and that something, whether deep or frivolous, something to move us or move mountains, something just to make us laugh, that’s as imperative to our voice as the way we turn a phrase. You just can’t have a voice with nothing to vocalize… it would just be a hum, or a moan, or a whimper.

So how did you find your voice? And what have you got to say? Figured out your themes yet?

Manufacturing Time

Some time ago, the awesomeness that is Stephen Parrish, posted a personal story and asked for his readers’ stories in return. I read his post and it moved me, and instead of posting, I sent him an email… the funny thing was, as I was sending him an essay length personal story for no reason other than it struck me, Stephen was sending me a simple, “Doing okay over there?” out of the blue.

Because he’s one of the good ones. One of those writer friends who knows when the rest of the world is beating your ass and takes the time to tell you to get over it and write already.

He wrote me back to tell me to publish that essay. To put it out there. I don’t take things Stephen says about writing lightly. I’ve never seen him compliment anything that didn’t have extreme merit, so on that note it did what Stephen always does – made me feel like writing.

My status update today on facebook was, “wishes I could figure out how to manufacture more time in a day”. And lately I’ve been downright whiney about my lack of time which has culminated in an absence of writing which sometimes feels like a lack of air. The stories are still there, the characters still knock on my eyeballs and kick around the cobwebbed corridors in my noggin… but they’re getting softer, harder to hear, farther away from lack of listening. Pretty soon they’ll find windows to break in someone else’s head… okay, maybe not, but I think it’s like a muscle. Writing isn’t all muse and fluff and magical inspiration. It’s sit in the fucking chair, get your shit together, and do the work. When you can’t find the time to do that, you have to make it.

Yes, I can manufacture time. Twenty minutes later to bed, a half an hour earlier in the morning… less facebook, more Microsoft word. I’ve done this before. Gone without sleep to write. Gone without tv or social time or whatever… And I logged back into facebook today, and saw that quote up on my page and thought, “Well, hell, you whiney bitch, what’s wrong with right now?”

So it starts with a blog post. While dinner’s on the stove… I’m not allowing myself sleep until I hit a decent word count. Time to stop lamenting the woes of my little corner of the world and get on with it… that’s the one thing about being creative by nature... you have to find the wherewithal to push yourself. No one else will do it; no one else cares if you make it. It’s up to you to manufacture your time.

Where do you find the time? Is it a routine or whenever the fancy strikes? And do you wait for the elusive muse, or hog tie her ass and make her stick around til the word count is in?